Tag: parenting

Ciao, Summer

It has been one of the greatest summers of my motherhood.

But I am not sad to see it go.

We’ve been to all the movies. I liked Kubo and the Two Strings best with Pete’s Dragon a close second. We swam in pools, lakes, rivers and oceans. We camped and hoteled and grandma’d. Went to bed at 10 and woke up at 9. We ate a lot of ice cream.

We are fat and tan and sassy.

It was a wonderful season, but the wheel is turning and I am ready for the greatest season of all: SCHOOL.

Blessings to the teachers whose school year started weeks ago with trainings and planning and classroom setting up. I see you.

But please, do not expect to see me until at least October.

My ears are bleeding from the 13 million times they have had to process the word Mom since June 10. Or Can I have a snack? Or Can we do something fun today?

My back is aching from loading the dishwasher twelve times a day with thrice the number of drinking glasses as children in the house.

My brain is weak from trying to solve the mathematical conundrums of laundry, like the ratio of shorts to underwear (many vs. hardly any) and family word problems (If five people are going to the pool and mom asks you to pack towels for everyone, how many towels do you need? SHOW YOUR WORK.)

My heart must recover from things like this cup of yuck I found on my hutch:

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“What in the HIGH HOLY HEAVEN is that??” I thought to myself. Then I called for Gabe.
“Oh yeah” he said. “I wanted to see what would happen if I rehydrated a piece of beef jerky.”
And if that wasn’t enough, Annie ran up the stairs yelling “Is it swimming??”

Or this hide and seek playdate run amuck:

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YES, I took a picture. I’ve learned to grab my phone when someone screams.  My friend said I’m like a war photographer. But who’s going to believe this stuff without proof?

I need a moment, just a month-long moment to recharge.

And then come October 1, armed with a pumpkin spice latte and orange cranberry muffin, I’ll be ready.

No Time for Martyrs

 

Grace

Here’s why the Martyr Mom thing doesn’t work.

You know what I’m talking about right? It’s the mom on the receiving end of back talk and side eye whose only response is to wonder where her baby went? The kids have moved beyond Share, Take Turns and Be Nice, but the parenting hasn’t.

All bad. And I’m not talking about the kids. We need a moment to grieve the loss of our sweet cheeked littles who used to be easily subdued with time outs and that’s what Moms Nights Out are for.

In the face of a surly 10 year old, we cannot fold.

Like a pack of velociraptors, our preteens are testing the fences. They will remember where the weak spots are. It’s futile to wish, whine or even pray it away. God can only do so much. The rest is up to us.

Here are the two most important things I learned in the trenches while teaching other people’s children.

  1. Words are not your friend: Negotiation Moms and Talk It Out moms, I see you planting the seeds for the long game and I like it, mostly. But when you find yourself having the same conversation for the third day, hour or minute in a row, it’s time to admit that your kids have Einstein’d you. They know they just have to look like they are listening patiently, nod in the right places, apologize and maybe give a parting hug—then they can continue to do whatever they want. It doesn’t cost them a thing. Not. One. Thing. They just have to wait you out.
  1. Anger is not a consequence: It’s an emotion, not a punishment. Maybe it used to work, but pretty soon they’ll figure out that anger is a lot like words—it’s easy to harden their hearts and wait it out. To drive this point home, consider—I once listened to a 16 year old girl tell her friends that she decided to sneak out of the house to meet her boyfriend after her parents told her no because “all they’re going to do is yell at me anyway. It’s not like they’ll take prom away.” When I told her that if I ever caught my daughter sneaking out, I’d take her phone, computer AND prom, she said “I feel sorry for your kids. You’re mean.”

DAMN SKIPPY. If one of my girls ever hooks a leg over the window sill at midnight, I want her to know exactly what it will cost her.

Teach them to call your bluff at their peril. Be the mom who says “I do this because I love you” while removing the hinges from their bedroom door, flinging their cell phones out the window of a moving car, and breaking their fishing poles over a knee in front of their friends.

I did that to one of my kids earlier this summer as a result of backtalk. Said child almost broke a smile when I did it. Not because it was funny, but in recognition that my mama game is strong.

Martyr Moms, now is the time to get down from the cross where you hung yourself, and decide you are not going to spend the next ten years—or more for those who super screw it up—battling your baby.

Lose on Purpose

 

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You know this whole American culture of win at all costs?

It’s got to go.

Our fellow humans are not our opponents and at some point we have to realize that sports is not a great analogy for life.

I’m not directing this at any one person.

Although Donald Trump is kind of the poster child of this whole King of the World movement. And doesn’t he constantly look like a five-year old with a bad case of pouty face? I would have sent him to his room in January and he’d still be there by our house rules, which are “Don’t come out until you can be nice.”

(#lifesentence)

The other day I was trying to think of any great historical leaders who made their people or places better by maintaining their own personal superiority to everyone.

I came up blank.

I can think of lots of great historical leaders who made their people and places better by putting their people and places first. Or even better, their God first.

There may be a lesson for Americans in there somewhere. I don’t know. I’m not responsible for all of us. Only my people and places.

So for us, this has been the summer of Lose on Purpose.

Which does not apply when wearing a uniform (so my brother and Dana don’t have coronaries and die when they read this.)

What I mean is that my kids are going through that phase where they need to be right. Even when they’re wrong, which means it’s really about winning. After a Spring of listening to ridiculous “No, it’s not—Yes, it is” one day I lost my mind and yelled “DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???”

It was a rhetorical question. But God answered me:

They take after you.

And so they do.

I started thinking, What’s the hardest thing for me to do in a situation where I feel challenged?

The answer is—to let it go.

To choose not to take it personally, or to make it my mission to correct others. To let them be wrong. To let myself be wrong. To admit that I am not in charge of everyone.

And—because people who want to be right and win more than anything else really struggle with this—to always be truth-full.

Which is why Hillary would also still be in her room by our house rules.

I figured we could go cold turkey on this whole idea, hence the summer motto. It actually has two parts: Lose on Purpose. Lift others up instead of squashing them down.

Like every other piece of parenting, it’s a marathon slog, not a sprint. There have been moments of understanding, like when Gabe rode his sister’s pink bike so his friend wouldn’t have to.

And there have been afternoons where they’ve been banished to the basement to preserve their own lives and my sanity.

But I knew we were on the right track when, after watching Trump in a news conference the other day, Kate said “He needs to learn to lose on purpose.”

And then some.

 

 

Cupcake-pocalypse

Some kids read books the first week of summer. Some kids go to camp.

Gabriel decided he wanted to make chocolate cupcakes with strawberry butter cream frosting. From scratch.

I was ten when I made my first cake. It didn’t go well and the trend has continued my whole life. However, Shea is awesome at cakes. He made this for Kate’s shark party last year.

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So really, Gabe had a 50-50 chance to nail this thing.

I was home for the cupcake part and it went awesome. He managed my Kitchenaid like a boss and cranked out perfectly cooked dark chocolate cupcakes.

Then I left to pick Kate up from Girls Scouts camp and take her to a doctor’s appointment. He was home alone for an hour.

When I got home, the hand mixer and the mini-prep food processor were in the sink. In a bowl of water. The appliance parts. The kitchen was a mess, but Gabriel swore he’d been cleaning for 30 minutes.

Huh.

I kicked off my flip-flops and headed to the sink, where things became curiouser. The floor was slippery.

In fact, everything was slippery. I took a closer look and noticed chunks of butter, well…everywhere.

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When I pointed out the butter on the watermelon, he finally caved.

“Mom, the butter was everywhere. It was on the lights over the sink.”

What happened???

“I don’t know. The hand mixer is broken or something.”

Or.

You turned it on high? You took it out of the bowl before you turned it off?

“Mom, I thought I was going to have to take a shower!”

Where’s your shirt?

“In the laundry. But mom–”

Oh no.

“It’s ruined. It got stuck in the beaters.”

Stuck. In. The. Beaters.

“I leaned over the bowl to see what was happening and then my shirt got in there and stuck.”

I found a little pile of buttery goodness on the floor in the laundry room. It was a 3 dish towel clean up. That’s impressive.

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HOWEVER.

This is the finished product.

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So the good news is, he can bake himself some cake.

The bad news is that I’ll be cleaning butter out of nooks and crannies for the next six months.

 

 

Why You Should Read the Stanford Victim’s Letter

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I didn’t want to read it.

The injustice is getting enough play on the news. The Stanford rapist who will go to jail for only six months because he’s white and wealthy and the judge felt sorry for him and his dad asked for leniency.

That’s all I’m going to say about him, because it’s not about him.

His victim, she wrote a letter. You’ve probably heard that by now too. I didn’t want to read it because I don’t like to step into that kind of pain unless I have to.

At 2:30 yesterday afternoon, I realized something. I have two daughters. I live in a world of injustice. My God calls me to justice.

I have to read it.

So I did.

In college, the nights I was in that same situation are too numerous to count. The mornings I woke up not remembering a thing—not a thing—of how I got home or who brought me.

Me and all my friends. Every one of us. Over and over.

It’s blind, stupid luck that I did not become a victim. This is not to say that she is at fault. Only to second what she says in the letter—that she was the “wounded antelope of the herd”. And that hunters know what they’re looking for.

I think if you have college aged kids, maybe even high school aged, they should read this letter after you do.

Then you should talk about what it means.

The part where she realizes that she isn’t wearing her underwear anymore and understands how she’s been assaulted. Where she says the man who rescued her was crying too hard to give a statement to the police, because of what he’d seen.

How she found out the details of her assault from a TV news report.

The questions she was asked on the witness stand.

The picture of bicycles she has posted above her bed.

And don’t miss the part where she says she told the probation officer that she didn’t want her assailant to rot away in prison. She reached for mercy. They used it against her.

All of it. Talk about all of it. The drinking. The guilt her sister feels. The frat party where it went down. The judge, and how his justice is not blind, but sees skin color and wealth and privilege. All the things that could have been different, should have been different.

It raises a lot of questions. And the answers are hard. But we have to talk about it.

 

For the full text of her letter: Here’s the Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read Aloud to Her Attacker 

To sign a petition to have the judge recalled from his elected position: Remove Judge Aaron Persky From the Bench