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A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing

February 20, 2013 By 5 Comments

My kid came home from school yesterday and told me all about the dangers of angel dust and how even using cocaine one time can give you a heart attack, like it did Len Bias, who wasn’t a bad person but someone who made a bad choice.

Alrighty then.

My 9 year old daughter is discovering what it feels like to have friends who, out of the clear blue sky, get pissed off and stop talking to her but won’t tell her why.  Then the next day want to be her best friend again.

They both overheard me on the phone last week as I heard very upsetting news about something that happened to a family in our community.  As I discussed the graphic details over the phone trying to parse out what had actually occurred vs. what people were saying had occurred, their level of anxiety grew, because to them, families are where things stay safe, not where things become unsafe.

My children have inherited their senses of humor from their parents.  They have become, I am a little ashamed to admit, fans of Saturday Night Live.  Totally inappropriate for a 3rd grader and probably for a 5th grader, but a lot of it flies over their heads (she says, crossing her fingers).  The younger one is especially fond of Weekend Update.  I confess to being a bit proud of that.

I don’t remember much of when they were tiny…not the day to day anyway.  When I look at pictures I can recall details and their quirks and  individual cutenesses, but the ins and outs of daily living with a six month old and a nine month old and a one year old and a…you get the picture, I don’t remember.  This fact breaks my heart.

On the flip side, I have kids who ask me to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict at the dinner table.

On the other flip side – how many sides can we flip – my husband and I had a lengthy debate in hushed tones in the kitchen the other evening about how much it might or might not freak them out if they knew the reality of global warming.

This is one of my favorite poems:

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?

by Robert Hershon

Don’t fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn’t know
is that when we’re walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

Filed Under: Facts of Life, I Just Make Most of This Up, Keeping it Real, Parent of the Year Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Voices in Your Head Are Idiots. Also They are You.

January 31, 2013 By 2 Comments

Most of the time, you should tell the voices in your head to shut the hell up.

Exceptions:

I am over 85% sure I left the oven on.

Didn’t I bring more kids than this to the mall?

THAT is definitely a lump and I need to get it checked out.

I deserve more “me” time.

Cake makes everything better.

 

But otherwise, in my admittedly limited experience, the voices in your head, ok, my head, are idiots.  Also, they are you.  OK, me.

Those voices tend towards the confirmation bias.  That is, reinforcing what you already believe to be true about yourself, always in the negative.  Or they compare you unfavorably towards other people you know, especially if you particularly admire those people and definitely if you envy them at all.

Related, and much more interesting than anything I just wrote, read this great piece  from the New York Times about parenting roles.

Filed Under: Facts of Life, I Just Make Most of This Up, Parent of the Year Tagged With: , ,

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

July 9, 2011 By 5 Comments

I asked my daughter what I should write about.  She suggested I write about the family.  But since I can’t really write about THE family, lest I get all personal and reveal-y, maybe I’ll just write about A family.

Once upon a time there was a mom and a dad and a son and a daughter.  They were all doing their thing.  Or things, because in the summertime their things are all different.  And they were all trucking along doing their things, or so the mom thought, because there were no obvious glitches or bumps or mishaps.

One day the son decided that things were not, in fact, trucking along in a way that was satisfactory to him and that he had some pretty major gripes with status quo.  But he didn’t actually so much “decide” this, he more like “manifested” this in the form of disgruntlement, sadness, and twitchiness.   Which was pretty hard to miss.

When the mom and dad addressed the aforementioned disgruntlement, sadness, and twitchiness with the son, the son opened up a huge bag full of WORRY that he’d been carrying around and all of his gripes about the status quo came tumbling out.  What to do about these gripes gave the parents reason to WORRY.  Because that’s what parents do.  They WORRY.  The son shared his WORRY with his parents and he felt much better.  Problem is that now the parents were holding the bag full of WORRY and they’d added their own WORRY to the bag as well.

The parents spent a few uncomfortable days with their WORRY sifting through the problems and came up with some solutions.   The old status quo went out the window and was replaced with a new un status quo, meaning, the mom needs to pay better attention to what’s happening day in and day out and not assume that everybody’s happy just because they’re trucking along.

So that happened.  And now it’s done.

But now what am I supposed to do with this bag?

Filed Under: Facts of Life, Home is Where the Mess Is, Parent of the Year, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,
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