Tag Archives: children

November 8, 2011 · 6:34 pm

Worms Fail Me

There is a routine by which my children leave the house each school day. It is a fairly logical succession of events that usually culminates with a mad dash to the bus stop, backpacks and jackets flapping as they run, their unruly manes trailing behind them. Of all the memories of motherhood I am sure to harvest, the one that features their early morning race across the lawn, a blur of gangly legs and unbridled enthusiasm, will be a favorite. It is likely, too, that I will remember the many times they paused in the street, still blackened and slick from the unending rains of spring, to rescue untold numbers of earthworms from what would appear to be certain death (i.e. either from being drowned right there on the pavement or crushed by the bus that would soon round the bend).

Quickly, yet gingerly, they scoop them up and place them where it is safe, pleased to have made a difference in a small yet meaningful way. And as I witness this determined albeit futile effort to “…rescue them all, Mom,” morning after morning I am moved, inspired almost, to join in their worthy deeds. Of course, it would be cruel to utter the obvious truth: “You can’t possibly save them all.” So instead I bite my tongue and agree that worms, too, have a purpose. “They aerate and enrich the soil, Mom.” Again I am reminded of the exuberance of youth and of the remarkable capacity children have for storing data sure to wow me. A decade from now, if either of them announces a plan to become somehow involved in a lifelong pursuit to save beached whales, I will not be surprised. Nor will I be disappointed.

At any rate, it goes without saying that worms lack the ability to communicate their needs and desires—no matter how compelling or dire they might be. Granted, they couldn’t deliver any sort of message that anyone could ever hope to interpret. Crazy as it sounds, there are times that I can relate to such hapless creatures—especially as I struggle to connect with my brood via meaningful discourse. Indeed, sometimes words fail me—when weighty subjects arise, when unanswerable questions surface, when reflective listening falls flat, when my children’s growing allegiance to privacy begins to rear its ugly head. That said, I am determined to improve the way in which we connect over the stuff that matters—as well as the stuff that doesn’t particularly.

For starters (and as completely simplistic as it sounds), I’ve made a solemn pledge to find time on a daily basis to engage each of my daughters in conversation—to stop whatever it is I happen to be doing and tune in to their respective worlds. To find out who has a crush on whom, which item on the lunch menu is to die for these days and just how many Pokémon cards it truly takes to be complete. (The jury is still out on that one). For my oldest, my curiosities would be more akin to: which D.C. restaurant is her new fave, what, exactly, does one do with a graphic design degree anyway and when (oh when!) will the boyfriend be getting a haircut. And although I make light of it here, I understand how important it is to have these conversations with my children. Somehow over the last decade or so I’ve allowed life’s harried pace to take precedence over bonding in this manner—even over the seemingly insignificant happenings of life. That is precisely what I wish to change.

So aside from vowing to carve out more one-on-one “face time” with my co-ed daughter (who is still away at college), I plan to call more, and TEXT more, which the people at Verizon will undoubtedly be delighted to hear. Strangely enough, I suspect I’ll even utilize Facebook’s messaging system on a more regular basis—a concept I never once imagined myself embracing.

As for my two youngest charges, I’ve taken a big step forward on the path to opening the lines of communication by purchasing each of them Just Between Us: A No-Stress, No-Rules Journal for Girls and Their Mothers by Meredith and Sofie Jacobs (Chronicle Books). So in addition to the aforementioned “face time,” we now have this wonderfully interactive, perfectly confidential, writing prompt-infused means of communicating with one another—a tool that encourages us to “talk” about everything from boys and bands to wishes and worries, all within the confines of a tangible journal that we conveniently pass back and forth. Of course, it doesn’t replace or devalue our customary method of conversing, but instead offers another, perhaps deeper, layer of connecting—which is a good thing, methinks.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (where worms, I mean words sometimes fail me). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

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Filed under Kid-Speak, Mushy Stuff

Tagged as children, communicating, diary, humor, journals, parenting

November 7, 2011 · 5:00 am

Sweating the Small Stuff

Contrary to some of the most sensible advice on the planet, I sweat the small stuff. Every. Single. Day. And although my left-brained, logical self is keenly aware of such a destructive penchant, it seems I cannot help myself.

Sadly, said sweating goes far beyond the garden-variety neuroses I’ve described in the past, eclipsing my obsession with the worst-case scenario game I play as a matter of course. It also exceeds the bounds of reason with respect to the picayune nature of my parenting gripes. That said, I sweat the small stuff in a very large way. And at no time does this particular foible become more apparent than now—as I’ve recently joined the ranks of the Sandwich Generation, a group of individuals who try (and often fail spectacularly) to attend AT ONCE to the many and varied needs of a young family and aging parents.

Indeed, this is perhaps the worst time to be stressing over the notion that my husband forgot to rummage through backpacks for important school papers virtually every day that I was gone (i.e. in and out of hospitals helping my parents)…or that he allowed our brood to pile sinful quantities of their beloved schlock upon the kitchen table at will…or that he let them wear skinny jeans (gasp!) to basketball practice.

Not because they had nothing suitable or clean to wear, or because our dear children suffered a mental lapse regarding the whereabouts of their shorts, but because I wasn’t there to flatly deny said request, to enlighten all interested parties that “dark jeans will transform perfectly wonderful underwear into hideous-looking, permanently ink-hued garmentage you’ll vehemently refuse to wear ever again.” “Besides, jeans don’t breathe especially well, and by wearing them you’ll get teased (read: mocked unmercifully) for committing a heinous crime of fashion.” Mister Mom apparently caved on the hotly contested ponytail-wearing issue, too. I can only imagine my charges’ unbridled manes flopping across their faces as they raced around the gym in a euphoric state of defiance. Oy.

Stupidly, I let this sort of thing bother me, along with the deluge of homework that was completed “differently” than I would’ve liked over a 10-day span, and the vat of laundry that was folded and arranged in a manner that offended my sensibilities—as if it really mattered how the fucking socks were mated and the shirts were stacked. Never mind the library books that may or may not have been returned on time or the journal entries that fell embarrassingly short of the standard three-paragraph length I routinely insist upon. It’s rumored a 22-minute telephone rant involving the aforementioned points of contention may have occurred. I blame my sleep-starved condition, an intolerable dearth of sunshine and an incapacitating need to control my environment.

As a result, and as a complete fool for the duration, I heaped mounds of undeserved criticism upon my husband—sending him the stingingly clear message that he was somehow “doing it wrong,” never mind the impossible task with which he had been charged—to parent, to provide and, at all costs, to resist the urge to tackle the laundry aside from folding and stacking it incorrectly. Of course, in my absence he also lobbied hard for the release of a certain pet frog into the wild (and succeeded!), held a funeral service for yet another frog that met an untimely demise, dealt with a plethora of thorny pre-adolescent issues, got our progenies to bed at a reasonable hour each night and onto the school bus each morning with a smile, faithfully delivered them to an ungodly number of sporting events and/or music rehearsals and, perhaps most impressively, removed that which had become the bane of my existence for much of October (i.e. the unsightly mass of pumpkin carnage whose stench and associated ooze were known far and wide).

Needless to say, the man deserved a medal—not only for his solo parenting feats, but for providing me with a soft spot to land. It’s good to be home.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (still sweating the small stuff). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

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Filed under Sandwich Generation, We Put the Fun in Dysfunction

Tagged as children, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, humor, parenting, sandwich generation, worry

November 4, 2011 · 2:15 pm

Building a Reader

There are letters, phonetic elements and, of course, words to which a vast array of meaning has been assigned over the course of history. Building blocks we parents turn to as we go about the important business of raising a reader. We tap our well of instructional instincts, consider our own path to literacy and look to the experts who willingly share all that we’ll ever need to know about teaching a child to read. Furthermore, we immerse our charges in literature, expose them to robust vocabulary, swear by the tried-and-true merits of repetition and, of course, read to them from the moment they become implanted within the uterine wall. Intuitively, we assume these ingredients help form a solid foundation upon which layers of understanding will take root and a lifelong love of reading will flourish. Theoretically, this is all well and good.

Enter: The unpredictable and highly diverse nature of children.

That said, for the better part of my oldest daughter’s childhood, she had what can only be described as a visceral hatred of books. In sum, she gave new meaning to the term “reluctant reader.” From the early days of Dr. Seuss through her interminable high school career/slightly disturbing Sylvia Plath phase, literature—even good literature, it seemed—was the bane of her existence.

Naturally, I was completely convinced that whatever I had or hadn’t done as a parent somehow led to this sorry state of affairs. Pages, upon which writers had built a rich tapestry of words, did little to woo her within. Ergo, I had failed at one of the most important assignments of motherhood—to nurture a love of books. However, I suppose her abhorrence could have stemmed from something far more simplistic—perhaps she found books to be pitifully uninspiring…or had yet to discover an author that spoke to her…or maybe she considered reading itself to be a horrendously taxing affair (with all that page turning and whatnot). And no matter how I tried (to reward her efforts, to involve her in summer literacy camp, to make the words on a given page come to life by reading aloud till I felt compelled to light myself on fire), it was all for naught—until she went away to college, that is. It was there that her passion for books finally blossomed. Better late than never, methinks.

In a similar vein, my youngest child was and continues to be a challenge in the truest sense of the word. For the longest time, she refused to tackle anything unless its plot involved a horse that could talk, a dog overcome by some ridiculous misfortune or a hackneyed mystery soused with exceedingly dull dialogue. And I don’t know why, exactly, that sort of thing bothered me—except that I was largely responsible for reading the cussed things aloud after dinner, that is until my head lolled around as if it were tethered not to a neck, but to a spindly rubber hose. Needless to say, I remained dead asleep until my brood poked my eyelids with indiscriminate fingers, demanding to know what the stupid horse (or godforsaken dog or pint-sized super sleuth) had said. Oy.

Thankfully, the aforementioned reader-of-that-which-is-dreadfully-banal has progressed to more thought-provoking content in the titles she chooses nowadays. Better still, I have been relieved of my duties at the kitchen table. Translation: My neck no longer suffers from the ill effects of a droopy cranium.

In stark contrast (and as evidence that God does, indeed, smile upon me occasionally), my middle child has a deep and abiding love of books that I did almost nothing to cultivate. In a word, she disappears into the page and is swallowed whole by the story. Always has. At times, I lament the fact that her sisters didn’t come to reading in the same manner and with the same ferocity. Ultimately, though, I suppose what matters is that each of my children has a special relationship with books—a relationship that is as unique and individual as they are, one that will serve them well as they wend their way forward, a bond, I hope, that will enrich their lives and forever challenge their thinking. In the end, maybe that’s all we can effectively do, in addition to our level best as curators of impressionable youth.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (gathering more books for the masses). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

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Filed under Bookish Stuff

Tagged as children, humor, parenting, reading, reluctant readers

November 1, 2011 · 9:36 pm

Have You Hugged a Book Today?

We have a library in our house, which sounds slightly more impressive than it actually is. The area in question is far from a sprawling expanse littered with overstuffed chairs and an abundance of narrative gems. More correctly, our so-called library occupies a modest corner of our home—a place where a blue-checkered playpen once stood seemingly forever. Nevertheless, it is a space devoted to all-things-bookish. A small yet infinitely important enclave that exists for the sole purpose of fueling my children’s passion for reading. As it should be—during this Family Read Aloud Month of November, and always.

Almost a decade has passed since we began gathering a hodgepodge of titles and piling them into some semblance of order there upon the floor of our living room. Tallest to smallest. Favorites within easy reach. A perfect mélange of new and not-so-new tales—thanks to having traversed this parenting path once before.

Naturally, said books would spill out into the room after a certain couple of somebodies (read: Toddler One and Toddler Two) raided the cache, leaving a trail of literary goodness in their collective wake. Never mind that only yesterday pillows and great herds of stuffed animals were dragged there and commissioned for the purpose of building reading “nests” and whatnot. Only recently have we been able to place the prized entities elsewhere (i.e. upon the honey-colored bookshelf that now inhabits the aforementioned corner—the one that boasts a cavernous window through which the morning sun pours almost without fail).

It is perhaps a bit more special given that the shelf itself was one that my husband had designed and built back in 1969. It was the high school shop project that seemed destined never to be finished. Lo and behold, the four-tiered wonder was completed and for some 40 years it lived in his childhood home. That’s where I first ogled its glossy, maple finish—along with a handful of teakwood carvings that sat upon its top shelf. A one-humped camel and an Asian elephant with a missing tusk. Keepsakes that hailed from afar. Treasures with which my children were enamored each and every time we visited Grandma.

I guess I never really thought about the notion of my mother-in-law not being there to witness their growing curiosity. Nor did I entertain the possibility of adopting her wooden bookshelf when she died—complete with the coveted carvings. Of course, they still sit atop the shelf, nodding approval with each book selection my charges make. Grandma would be pleased, I’m sure.

Likewise, I think she’d be pleased to learn of the strides her granddaughters have made since kindergarten, and how their love of books has flourished during that same wedge of time. No longer do they reach for bedtime favorites like Goodnight Moon, the brilliantly penned Where the Wild Things Are, the infinitely tender Guess How Much I Love You and the exceedingly palpable Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge.

Indeed, the pure and simple joy of picture books has been replaced by the all-consuming nature of chapter books—ones that invite my progenies to dwell for a time, deliciously entangled within the words on a given page. Needless to say, their tastes have grown more sophisticated, as has their command of vocabulary. That said, Thing One is completely smitten with mysteries, all-things-Harry-Potter and that which is disturbingly terrifying while Thing Two is fond of cookbooks and craft books, although she went through an interminable phase during which she would read nothing unless its plot somehow involved a godforsaken dog, a horse blessed with the ability to speak or a wretched hamster. Of course, they both feast voraciously upon the celebrated Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, practically anything ever written by Roald Dahl, Barbara Park or Kate DiCamillo, and sadly, the idiocy that is Captain Underpants.

All things considered, I deem my children’s journey as emerging readers to have been nothing short of remarkable, and I can’t help but feel indebted to those who’ve helped cultivate their enduring love of books—today and always.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (with an abundance of books worthy of hugging…and barely able to breathe ever since a request was made for Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

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Filed under Bookish Stuff

Tagged as books, children, Family Read Aloud Month, kids, parenting, reading

October 26, 2011 · 10:31 am

Creatures of Habit

I have a favorite pair of sweatpants that I’ve owned since the Precambrian period. They’re a tired shade of gray, with barely a suggestion of the navy lettering that once graced its cottony surface. American Eagle, I think.

Of course, they’re shamefully dilapidated, torn and tattered beyond all repair. My mother-in-law, master seamstress and sock darner extraordinaire, dug deeply into her repertoire of needle-and-thread-ish miracles time and again to patch them up and make them whole—or at least to make them presentable. Sometimes she succeeded. Sometimes not. Mostly she just shook her head; dismayed by my stubbornness—and astonished by my inability to recognize when something had long since passed its prime. Then again, I have trouble in the produce aisle.

I admit; most would be embarrassed to be seen with me, clad in such disgraceful toggery, kneecaps naked to the world. What am I saying? My DOG is embarrassed to be seen with me. But the silly things have charm and character and that beloved quality of familiarity. Slipping into said fleeciness in the middle of January or even during a cool summer’s eve feels cozy and oh-so-comfortable—like the warmth of a lover’s arms, the refuge of a mother’s embrace, the company of an old friend. And on those rare occasions, when I entertain the notion of trading them in for something shiny and new, I feel nothing less than the shame of betrayal. The ignominy of sin.

Simply put, I cannot bear the thought of parting with my cherished garb; although my rational left-brained self knows better. The wretched things need to be ditched. Out with the old. In with the new.

I suppose I’m no better or worse than anyone else who has ever been mired in denial, inextricably attached to all-that-is-worn-and-hackneyed. We all have issues of a similar sort. Some are just more debilitating than others. That being said, my husband refuses to chuck any of his shabby, old t-shirts, which are perhaps some of the most pathetic examples of apparel on the face of the earth (second only to my sweatpants). Indeed, he lovingly deems those prized entities as something far from archaic. “They’re seasoned,” he defends. “Broken-in like a good leather ball glove.” He won’t dispose of his blasted water shoes either, which now sport portholes through which his toes protrude freely. Gak! Oddly enough, the man owns another pair. Brand spanking new ones with nary a defect. He bought them because he knew it was time for a change, only he couldn’t follow through. Apparently, it’s against his religion.

Needless to say, dysfunction doesn’t fall far from our family tree. Eccentricity flourishes under this roof and there is barely a day without someone hoarding something that ought not to. Ratty toothbrushes, Band-Aid boxes (Hello Kitty, of course), rocks of all shapes and sizes, bits and scraps of discarded paper, foolish tripe found on the bus or at school. And the list goes on. But the most bizarre item yet has been a brown paper snack bag for which a certain seven-year-old developed a crippling affinity. The bag itself was quite ordinary with regard to its form and function, however when its tour of duty surpassed the bounds of reasonableness (a month, maybe?), that’s when I hit the “Now this is just about ENOUGH!” button. “I can’t keep patching up these stinking holes with tape! It’s ridiculous! The bag is a train wreck!” (Read: I have taped tape on top of tape, and if I have to tape anymore, I’m going to screeeeeam! This is not a freakingtriage center for paper goods!)

Of course, we have a bazillion perfectly wonderful bags (WITHOUT CAVERNOUS HOLES) that have been at my daughter’s disposal since September. Bags begging to be toted to school…eager to be personalized with her scratches and scribbles…hankering for the opportunity (tedious though it might be) to house the EXACT SAME SNACK each and every day from now till eternity!

“But I like my bag. And my teacher likes my bag. She thinks the doggies I drew on it are pretty. I’m keeping it for-ever and EVER! And the little holes are cool because they let me peek inside to see what I have for my snack.” Are you forgetting, my dear child, that you ask for the SAME thing every day?! Apparently so. That being said, we couldn’t use duct tape for the massive and multiple repairs (tempting though it might have been), because that would negate the whole peeking-at-the-stupid-snack dealie. Arrrrg!

The kid will probably grow up to be a sock darner. It’s also likely I’ll be buried in my sweatpants.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live. Visit me there at http://www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.