Parenting
We had never taken a family vacation with all three kids before this summer. A vacation with just our family of five. Not to visit family or friends. Not for a wedding. Not for a baptism. Just away. Just us. And clearly now I know what we were missing. We spent almost five days at our place in Wisconsin and could have stayed a million years. My mom has outfitted it with all the books and games of our childhood, and even though we go almost weekly for a day trip, this was our first time simply immersing ourselves in its over 100 acres of beauty with all three kids. No agenda. No schedules. No obligations. Just us. We picked apples from an ancient apple tree and made a crisp. We hiked on the trails and waded in the creek. We scouted on the location of a future tree house//fort. RIGHT UP THERE. What a tree! The beach in front of the tree doesn’t look too shabby, either. Lots of rocks to splunk. We read so many books. So so so many and many more. Everyday had a cadence of reading, playing cards, playing outside, snacks, meals, naps, AA going for his marathon training run, and me sewing. Everyday had its fair share of screaming and fighting but with no agenda and a relaxed day, that was much less than I had anticipated. When you two oldest can play UNO together: sudden and constant entertainment. One morning it was chilly…
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Before I had kids, I thought bribing your child to do something was akin to derelict parenting. In fact, I thought it was derelict parenting. I thought children should be treated like mini-adults, such that once they hit about 4 years old, they would understand the causal relationship between action & consequence and sorry, pal, you blew it, try again, would work. Bribing them with baseball cards, ice cream, trips to the train store, opportunities to get out of bed earlier and go to bed later, I mean, who would do such things? ME! ME! I used to say, Don’t do this or that or you won’t get this or that. And then I’d have to make good on my threats. And it always felt like a threat. I do bribes with glee, but threats–I end up feeling like a curmudgeon. And then have to constantly dole out a unique or (worse) oft-repeated punishment when they inevitably do not listen and obey. But beyond just saying it aloud (which goes in one adorable ear and out the awful one), I’ve finally landed on a tried & true method of pure incentivizing that actually works and has durability. It has lasted over a month. The subjective and indiscriminate point system. Here’s how it works: They start out at zero. The five year old has to hit 15 before the promised action//gift//treat. The three year old has to hit 10. And anything and everything can give and taketh away points. You hit your…
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While talking to a dear girlfriend from childhood the other day, the topic of how we teach our kids about the faith came up. Beyond meal prayer, night prayer, and weekly mass. How do we discuss and teach our faith while wiping bottoms, thawing food for dinner, picking up toys, maybe working on alphabets & reading, and calming fervored tantrums? I went to a state university and when I landed at the Catholic law school where I met my former-seminarian husband, I hadn’t been at Catholic school since the sixth grade. The task of being Catholic in the home had initially seemed like a specific subject to teach. Like table manners. Or reading. But as my kids grow, and their love and understanding of our faith grows, it is actually way simpler than I thought. If the environment is rich with culturally Catholic items, the kids kinda do it via osmosis. We do it like this. 1) Sacramentals. We are crawling with saints medals, holy cards, candles, rosaries, crucifixes, icons, incense, you name it. Holy water fonts in bedrooms, holy water to sprizzzle all around the house, and a few precious relics of saints. All those little physical reminders of our faith–many of them blessed. Just seeing them around the house and playing with (some) of them ignites the kids’ cultural Catholicism. Crucifixes like this one the baby got from his amazing Godparents are a beautiful reminder when I’m telling SuperBoy about how Jesus really suffered so put your sister touching your legos…
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Is it almost worse to criticize your spouse in your head? I can get on a real roll doing it there. No interruptions. No reality checks. No actual communications with him. Just me and my imagination. 1) Stop Thought. Literally. I block the cascading scene in my mind. I stop it and I tell myself you love him. It’s easy for me to feel the litany of not only what I saw him do “wrong”–as in, not my way, but playing the scenario out and getting my blood pressure up with it. Now you’re probably a really tranquil and balanced person who always sees all sides and doesn’t ever have irrational fits of self-righteousness. Good for you. For me, I’m the self-righteous one. Yikes. That lady. It’s almost soothing, comforting, this deep well you can go to to dip your cup in to feel like yes, i’m right; i’m the martyr mom; he just simply can’t blah blah blah. Board up the well. Go to a new homestead. Move on. 2) Acknowledge there are other valid choices beyond the one we’re attached to. As our kids grow and need more room for their wings (and for riding their bike or listening to books on tape!!!), I’m surprised to find that I am more set in my ways. What works for me. I know it. I live it for these long days when it’s just us four sans Dada. My methods are tried and truer than they used to be. Perhaps this sureness is a false sense…
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I was dubious. Couldn’t I teach my children everything? (including how to pick up trash as shown above?) I mean, come on. I am a devoted mother. I am an educated woman. I’m at home with them. Clearly I’m their only-ever teacher on every-thing-except-Calculus-don’t-ask-me-how-I-survived-AP-Calc. Another big wrong-o lesson for this insufferable woman over here living at my house and wearing my favorite target pj dress with built in bra that’s not fit for wearing all day like I do. This summer we had the extreme fortune of a handful of dedicated and lovely young lady teachers for the kids. I couldn’t love them more. And neither could the kids. From my little feisty lady’s music class wherein she daydreamed before class about how she and Teacher Julia could somehow play the instruments–JUST US, MAMA–for the whole class instead of sharing with the other kids, to a myriad of swim coaches at the two-week boot camps that we ran back to back to back to back to back, I was floored. We indulged in plenty of sewing JUST YOU AND ME, MAMA this summer too. But I’m not the best teacher. I can’t get this machine to really work. The magic of the teacher who isn’t the mother is deep. She offers an outside voice that somehow my selective-hearing-syndrom children could hear and heed. She captured their trust and their hearts and encouraged them with the energy of a 20 some year old (oh, those days gone by) whilst I’m concerned about…
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I’m sure there are couples out there who have children and those children provide them with bountiful and endless hours of loving tender couple-to-couple moments of synchronized oohs and aahs over gently executed bedtimes and healthfully imbibed dinners. That’s not us. We have 3 kids, five, three, and one. We have 24 hours in one day. We have 12 hours apart. We have 6-7 hours sleeping. And many days I want to lose my temper with everyone because I want to and want to and really want to. Husband, kids, dog, cat, my air conditioner unit in the window that was installed upside-down (don’t ask) and leaks. My six steps to saving my marriage from the wearing & tearing of small children: 1) Close eyes and bite tongue. Today we said goodbye to the last of our family in town for almost the past two weeks. It was hard to see them leave, and harder still to face the prospects of the cousin-provided entertainment and sibling-provided conversations go with them. Yet to relax, all I wanted in life was to watch White Collar online and work on my crocheting and finally get over this lingering flu bug. I did NOT want the kids to ruin it. I just wanted my husband to put them to bed so I could soak in solitude and air-conditioning. As things unfurled, this didn’t happen. Instead of yelping at him to somehow keep them away from me and in their beds, and why does your back have to be…
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