Skilled

My parenting skills ebb and flow, like much of the things in my life. In one week I might fluctuate every other day between calm, in-charge Mommy and screaming, irrational Mommy. Other weeks I am on top of my game and confident. The next I will be nutty all week. Then there are days that throw it all in the mix.


My kids have to be confused by it all. Heck, I'M confused by it all. Consistency is key in discipline, relationships, maybe even in life. I'm reading and re-reading Love and Logic, (okay so I've never read the original...yet but I'm reading the early years and what to say when kids leave you speechless). The techniques work wonders for my kids if I remember to employ them.

When my kids fight (and they have been fighting often lately) in the car I've started telling them they'll need to pay me to listen to it and start naming ways they can pay me. If they argue at home, I simply leave whatever room they are arguing in. It's amazing how quickly the dispute is resolved without mom observing.

Why don't I use this stuff all the time? I suppose I need to practice more. Maybe by the time they have their own kids I'll have it down...but I doubt it.

Maybe I need one of those shock collars that some people use to prevent their dogs from barking. It could give me a jolt to remind me that yelling at my kids never works as well as being calm and confident.

Change of Plans

This is the time of week that I was going to write about a fun craft/game idea I had and implemented with my older daughter's Brownie troop but instead of having time to write that I spent the week tending to my feverish son, keeping him home from school Monday-Thursday with little hope that he will be able to attend on Friday, which incidentally is the end of the quarter. My boy needs more help with his schoolwork than my daughter does, so when he misses school it is more detrimental than it might be otherwise.

But I can't change it. He needs to stay home if he is sick. I don't appreciate when other parents send their sick kids to school so that mine might catch their illness, so I won't do it to others. It is frustrating though. I don't like seeing my kids sick and his sickness is one of those borderline sicknesses where his fever is just hovering at the low-grade end and disappears while the ibuprofen is working, returning like clockwork every 5-6 hours. So he feels great and fine for 4-5 hours at a time then crashes hard again.

His little sister doesn't understand that her usually boisterous all the time big brother doesn't feel well and that's why he is home. She wrestles him and picks at him until he's shouting at her to stop. Then she cries, confused at why he doesn't want to play. Then, an hour later he wants to play because the medicine is working. When it's nap time I know that my son is not feeling well because he consents to, and actually takes a nap. His little sister is again confused. This is a novelty that her brother is home and napping with her. She fights sleep in favor of trying to illicit her brother's giggles at her antics. Nap time has taken longer this week.

Despite the disruption to the routine we have managed to get some good cuddle time, I made some homemade soup, my two little kids have played together more than they have before (which was still quite often). My older daughter has been jealous that her brother gets to stay home and she has to go to school but I remind her that the break is coming. I also told her she could stay home if she took a nap. That clinched her desire to go to school!

I'm taking the Boy to the doctor today to see if perhaps he has an ear infection or something of the sort that would garner him some antibiotics and a prompter recovery. I almost hope that is the case just so he doesn't keep relapsing.

Besides, I bribed my kids to be good in school this quarter with a trip to the indoor water park in Owatonna, MN, and I want him to be healthy so he can enjoy his reward next week!

Helping Jar

Lately my kids (yes, all of them...even the 2-year-old) have spent a lot of time fighting just for the sport of it. I know a certain amount of disagreement and disharmony is normal with siblings but this has been reaching the point of being nearly unbearable. I hear "he/she hit me" "he/she looked at me" "he/she touched me/kicked me/stepped on me/pinched me/whateverelseakidcandotoanotherkid." I told my big kids a few times to just get it over with and hit one another until they bled. They refused of course and probably not the best thing to say to your kids but sometimes I think they need to be shocked into realizing what they are doing. "Go ahead and stand up and hit one another! Don't stop until you're both bleeding! Come on! Do it! You don't like one another anyway!"

"We like each other Mommy!" Doesn't seem like it to me.

I read something last week that sparked an idea. One woman made a "Brothers" bank. For us, it will be a "Family" bank or something like that. The idea is that whenever we catch the kids doing something nice for one another we put some money in a jar. The jar is banked for a long time and when the kids turn in their money they decide on something TOGETHER that we will do with the money.

My kids decided we needed a HUGE jar. It's a gigantic plastic jar that held 2 1/2 lbs of pretzels. I told the kids it would take a very long time to fill that jar if they didn't work extra hard to be helpful and nice to one another but they weren't swayed. I also told them that the jar, when filled, could potentially hold $1000 and could get us a nice vacation, membership at the Y, or any number of fun and exciting rewards.

My son immediately was willing to help his big sister. Whenever she asked him for help, he did it. My oldest, Miss M, will be more of a challenge. I hope she will come around. It will be fun to pay a few coins (I didn't set any amount...just coins...any coins) for my kids to be helpful to one another.

Fingers crossed that it works.

Fear in Parenthood

There are many things that have scared me about parenthood. The very act of choosing to create a baby, wondering how that baby would come out of my body...even how I would feed that baby.

In hindsight these things seem minor to the frightening aspects of sending those children out into the world without you by their sides.

When my first child started Kindergarten it was after spending years in an environment where I knew the parents of her friends well, knew her teachers well because they were former coworkers, and felt a lot of control over her environment. Sending her to a school where I knew few (one) of the children, none of the teachers and had zero control over her environment was a big shock.

I cried uncontrollably each day I dropped her off at school for days. I mourned our days together. Now, someone else was spending more time with my child each day than I was. This still irks me. I want my kids with me more than they are with someone else.

That aside, the fears of parenthood grow in elementary school. There is bullying. There is bullying even if there is an excellent behavior plan (and there is at my kids' school). Kids can be so mean and I think they are meaner than ever.

I think there are excellent parents out there and I think there are many, many more sub-par parents than ever out there. If you take into consideration parenting in years past, parents didn't have to worry about things like they do now. Yes, you may worry that your child will survive infancy in the past. Modern medicine has made this a slim worry. Now, though, you have to worry about drugs, guns, bullying to the point your child commits suicide in desperation, etc. And where do those bullies, gun-toters, drug dealers come from? Well, I'd guess some of them come from homes like yours and mine. Yes, I believe there are kids out there that will do wrong no matter what their parents do. But there are those kids out there whose parents propped them in a corner holding their own bottles when they were 4 months old. There are the mothers who smoked pot or did crack or whatever while they were pregnant. There are the parents who strike their kids for any impudence.

My kids are spirited. They back talk. I consider the back talk a sign that they are growing, testing, but they still know that they will be loved no matter what they say.

I hope that my children can navigate the school years without bullying, without shame, with heads head high.

I can't guarantee anything. There is the fear.

Challenges of Child Spacing

There are several aspects of having three children that I hadn’t considered or properly realized until recently. In my case, my two older children are just that, older.

While the spacing between my second and third children was not planned to be almost 4 years, that is how it worked out and for the most part it is working just fine. We don’t know any differently.

However, one challenge of having the third child so much younger than the other two is that as a toddler she wants to do everything her siblings do even if she physically can’t do it yet. Her siblings climb the tall slides at the parks or the indoor bounce house and D wants to join them. Nevermind that there are things just her size that she can do…it’s just not the same. Her frustration at her own size and limitations is evident in the squawks and screeches and the boneless protests of being led away from the “big kid” things.

I imagine I felt some of the same frustrations as a toddler, wanting to follow my older brother around and being just a little too small to do what I wanted. My brother is also almost 4 years older than I, like K is almost 4 years older than D.

Although the age difference is a bit challenging right now, I know that it will not always be so. By the time D turns 3 she will be running and jumping with her siblings and cousins without problem. She is close to that point already and she’s not quite two.

Before I know it, my three children will be running in a pack together, forgetting what it was like to be an only, or one of two, taking for granted that there are the three.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The interferer

I’m an interferer.

It’s true. I jump in the middle of the boys’ arguments way, way, way too fast. I forget that Owen can and does instigate and therefore, should take the consequence from his brother, not in harm’s way of course, but that natural shunning thing that teaches the lesson better than I could ever imagine anyway. This started me down memory lane in which many of the most impacting lessons…I didn’t learn from my parents.

Good parents have to let the lessons come as they may.

And pick up the pieces afterward.

It is so hard for me to listen to the fighting, the idle threats, the mean words, the pushes, the shoves, the tattles, the yells. It is so hard for me to not mama bear in, pick them both up by the neck and give them a little shake. It is so hard for me to let them learn on their own! ARRRRRGGGGUUUUUUUHHHHHH I LIKE PEACE!

Peace comes in small doses with 6 and 3. When it does come, it is delightful. Like the time last week at the dinner table when Randy motioned to me, “do you hear that?” and it was silence. Like the time at Target when Drew grabbed Owen’s hand to cross the street and Owen let him. Like the morning after Owen threw up all night and Drew asked how he was and gave him a hug….a real one, not one demanded by his bear mama. Like right now where their pure, unadulterated laughter floats up from the basement.

Come what may.

It is my new mantra.
It is the idea for 2010.
Come what may, and let it be.

Not every aspect of life needs to be forced, planned, and responded to by me. Sometimes, many times, I need to sit back and let it come.

A Great One

There were people lining both sides of the walkway, just standing, immersed in their own conversations. It was a maze to snake through, with only space enough for on average-sized person to fit through although she’d need to turn sideways and shuffle every few feet.

“Excuse us,” my voice wasn’t nearly as commanding as it needed to be, and my words, even to myself, sounded like a suggestion.

“Excuse us,” I tried again with more volume and authority.

The blockade remained strong.

“Aw just run ‘em over Heather!” Brian would exclaim, smiling mischievously all the while.

So, with Brian’s blessing to use him as a battering ram, we’d begin to forge our way through, clipping heels and the occasional buttock, leaving startled spectators in our wake.

It was always Brian and I who led the way. Brian because he was the more outspoken between his sister and he. In a way, the pairings were reversed from what they should have been.

My friend Amy was much more willing to bellow at people to move it than I, and Jessica, her partner, was more soft-spoken.

But for reasons I don’t recall, or maybe they were never expressed, it was always Brian and Heather, followed by Jessica and Amy.

Most often our outings included a hockey game where we’d try to navigate the people, oblivious to their insensitivity, blocking the aisles until only one smallish person could slide through the space.

Neither Brian nor Jessica was a large teen. At nearly 17, Jessica’s ankles were, at best, the size of my wrists. Brian, the younger sibling of the pair, seemed to me much younger than the 4 years that separated us.

Both Brian and Jessica loved a good hockey game despite the difficulty the venue presented for two young adults pushing two teens confined to wheel chairs. Brian and Jessica both had ataxia telangiectasia, a degenerative disease that mimics several other diseases all rolled into one. It is a disease that robbed the two of muscle tone and mobility rather than intelligence and spirit.

My friend Amy was a home-health aide at the time that we went on these excursions with Brian and Jessica. They were two of her clients, but also friends. She was not on the clock on these outings (and neither was I).
Amy and I attended the first fund-raiser for ataxia in Rochester that Brian and Jessica’s family organized. That first year it was simply a golf-tournament followed by a banquet. Over the years it has evolved into a celebrity-attended annual silent auction and golf tournament, headed by NHL player Shjon Podein’s charity Team 25, which Podein started along with his wife after meeting Brian and Jessica Christensen.

The life expectancy of children with ataxia is not high (most do not reach their 20s), and sadly, Jessica lost her battle at 18.

Brian grew to be a man who brought his sunny smile and spirit to many. He grew awareness of his disease and through his efforts met celebrities who continue to raise funds for research because they were so struck by Brian’s dynamic personality.

Brian beat the odds and lived to be 30 years old. He died May 22, 2008, the same day that my youngest child was born.

Destruction in the Land of Plenty

Both of my kids have special nicknames that I’ve listed in my profile on my blog, in addition to their simple initial “names” that I use to try to give them an illusion of privacy and safety on the Internet. M is, and always will be my “Turkey.” K is “Accident-Prone Man Jr.” and “Destructo-Boy.”

K, as of late however, has been leaning more toward the “Destructo-Boy” label rather than the “Accident Prone.” This is both good and bad. I’m thankful that he’s not hurting himself quite as regularly as he once did, but the destroying things is really grating on my nerves (and, in some cases, my wallet).

K, I say, watching him as he swings his new yo-yo around in circles and knocking it into various objects around the room, you’re going to break it. Rinse, repeat, 10 more times until suddenly the yo-yo breaks in half after a particularly hard crack against the floor.

It broke Mommy! K cries, utterly distraught and completely oblivious to the fact that I’d warned him 10 times to NOT swing it around or it would break.

We have to get a new one! He wails. Uh. No, we don’t.

I have gone to buy a new whateveritis only twice when he has broken things. Both instances were when he broke something of his sister’s. I didn’t think it would be fair to punish her for his destructive behavior.

I remember watching an episode of Super Nanny where there were two boys who loved to destroy their toys. Jo said it was because they had so many toys they didn’t really care if some were broken. I’ve already written that I know this is the case with my son.

I don’t know how to get him to respect his sister’s things however. If he breaks his own toys, well, that’s his problem. If he breaks his sister’s things? Well, that’s just not fair to her.

Mostly my solutions are to make M keep most of her toys in her room, then tell K he’s not allowed in her room unless she invites him in to play with her. At the same time that I’m telling her this, I think that she should be able to leave a few of her things out in the common area of the house without fear that it will be broken in her absence.

I’m hoping that K will outgrow this destructive habit (probably just in time for the baby to take over destroying things) but sometimes I wonder if that’s ever going to happen.

What do you think? Is this a phase that he’s going through? (A phase that’s lasting years?) Or is there something else going on here that I’m missing out on teaching him?

The Sound of Silence

I settle into the La-Z-Boy with a sigh. The kids are upstairs in M’s room, playing quietly together. After a moment, my body relaxes. It feels luxurious to sit and not have to referee a wrestling match for a few minutes.

Then it hits me. The kids are playing quietly.

This can’t be good.

Previous quiet playtime has resulted in such fiascoes as: the great hair-cutting incident; painting body, wall and miscellaneous other surfaces with Desitin (not easy to clean, by the way); the 4003-stuffed-animal jamboree and the feed-the-cat-12-days-worth-of-food-in-2-minutes-disaster. However, each of those little adventures occurred when my children were “playing” alone.

I shudder to think of the damage they could do putting TWO diabolically clever minds together.

As I approach the door I hear them.

How about then she went dancing?

Yeah! (There is humming.)

Could it be that they are using their combined powers for good and not evil?

Instead of disturbing the peace, I returned to my recliner to contemplate the silence. The good silence. I’ve been a parent long enough to know that you don’t do anything to upset the delicate peace on the rare occasions that it happens.

In actuality, my kids are good friends. They’re good friends who happen to be brother and sister so they are forced to be together longer and more often than any two people should have to when they didn’t choose that life.

Born two years and seven days apart, they’ve somehow developed an interest in many of the same things. My son plays with Polly Pockets and Barbie as often as my daughter plays trucks and Rescue Heroes. Their imaginations, when let loose unencumbered by time restrictions, continually amaze me.

Naturally, they fight as often as they get along. It’s expected, but still frustrating for me as a parent.

Their relationship, if we’re lucky, will be the longest relationship with another person in their lives. It is my hope for them that their closeness; their support for one another; continues long after I’m done refereeing.