My Top 6 Reasons to Travel With Kids

Travelling with children is almost never easy and, needless to say, is an entirely different experience from travelling without them.  Although the latter can be perfectly lovely, and peacefully quiet, there are certain advantages to packing the bags and heading out as a family.  Here, I offer my top 6 reasons to include your kids on your next vacation:

1.  A book or photograph can never give your kids the sense of place or understanding that actually being there gives them.

2.  Every parent ought to test the limits of their patience on an 8-hour flight or car ride sometime.  Come on, isn't that one of the bonuses to parenting:  learning how very deep you can dig when you really need to?

3.  The forced family togetherness can create crankiness, sure.  But it can also promote brotherly bonds like no other.

4.  Peer detox.  See #3.  I'm always amazed at how well we all interact without the excess, external noise from pre-teen friends.

5.  The world is a BIG place.  Travelling to other places helps all of us understand that our small corner of the world is not the center of the universe.  It's so easy to get caught up in our schools and our sports and our social network that we don't stop to think about how this same thing is happening in towns all over the world.  Travelling gives kids a better perspective of how it all fits together.

6.  When a child knows he can look at a map and find his way around Rome, he's less likely to be daunted by the little bumps and bruises of life.

Of course there are innumerable other benefits, many of which aren't measurable, aren't tangible resume-building benefits.  But I contend that travel will build the resume of the spirit and the soul.  It will promote empathy and understanding.  It will boost the desire to reach across the border--whether it's a border between school districts, or board rooms, or cultures.  And the desire and ability to reach across those divides? That's life changing stuff.  Surely it's worth a few hassles in the car or on the airplane now, isn't it?

How to Build Your Own Lockers

So lots of people want to know about the lockers.  How did we do it?  Are we master craftsman?

No, we’re not.  We’re so far from it, well, you know.  We’re just not.

But we don’t shy away from a little hard work, either, and that’s what this took.  Also, we have a friend who loves woodworking.  That comes in handy.

So here’s how it went:

1. Hate hallway closet.  Bi-fold doors never close.
2. Covet lockers in friends’ houses.
   
3. Get quote from builder:  about $1200
   
4. No way!
   
5. We could do this.  Could we do this?
   
6. Google lots of lockers.  Draw design we like.
   
7. Tell our workworker friend about it.  He offers to cut wood.
   
8. We measure.
   
9. We measure again.
10. Our friend cuts.
    
11. I sand and paint.  And stain.  And polyurethane.
    
12. We nail it all in.  This takes much longer than expected.  Like ALL home projects.
    
13. We stand back and admire our handiwork.
    
14. Total cost:  around $250.
    

Sweet!

Wordless Wednesday: From Ugly Closets to Sweet New Lockers

See more Wordless Wednesday here and here.

Were You Here Last Monday?

If you were, you know I posted about either:

1)  Feeling Alone in Marriage  or  2) Holding Your Tongue

To read what I think about the other one, check out my post today at Blissfully Wed.

Moms! Here are the Top 50 Most Popular Text Terms

LOL    ILY    JK    NP    WYWH

If your children are little, perhaps you are young enough to be a professional texter yourself.

Although mine are a bit older (although my youngest is still young!), I text often  enough to annoy everyone.  This isn't my fault, though.  It's more of a genetic thing, because my mother was texting before I was, so it was pretty much inevitable.

However, I was with a few of my ladies who lunch the other day, and one of them asked about texting.  And twitter.  She didn't know much about either one.  Since I'm well acquainted with both, they all think I'm nuts, naturally.

Still, it got me thinking.  These women have kids.  With phones!  And without getting into the myriad issues that brings up, let's just say that as parents I think we have a responsibility to know what the heck our kids are saying on their phones.  And I don't mean when they're speaking.

That said, I found this handy reference for the Top 50 Most Popular Text Terms, by Erin Jansen.  These are 50 of the most popular, and therefore fairly tame.  If you want to know more--including lots of sexual references--pop on over and check out the site.  There are several other lists that you may find, well, revealing.

Afterwards, let's all go check our kids' phones.  

This Boy Loves His Dog

See more Wordless Wednesday here and here.

How to Get Your Kids to Stop Asking if They Can Watch TV

“Mom, can I watch a show?”

“Not right now, honey.”

“Okay.”

“Mom, can I watch a show now?”

Arrgghh!

When my first son was 3, this very conversation played out day after day in our home.  As you probably know by now, I’m not a big fan of turning on the Plug in Drug while my kids are awake.  (But you bet it’s on for The Office!)  Still, I didn’t want to create some sort of weird craving in my kids by never turning it on.  What to do?

The very first thing for all of us to do, I think, is to figure out where we stand.  Sometimes, as parents, our answers are wishy-washy because our resolve is wishy-washy.  If we “sort of” think we don’t want them to watch too much TV but we also really need half an hour to ourselves, it’s easy to toss the ideals and grab the remote.

But, if we articulate—for ourselves and our kids—how we feel, if we define our stance and understand the why behind our reasoning, suddenly we are rock solid.  And parents, rock solid is where we want to be.  Wishy-washy is for the birds!

I truly believe kids function better with structure (especially if that structure includes a couple of hours of unstructured play), so when my children were young I tried to plan all sorts of regular activities.  Not paid activities, like gymnastics class, mind you, but free activities, like going to the playground, or taking a walk around the lake, or visiting a book store.  (Yeah, that last one did end up costing a pretty penny…so, sort of free, but in the end, not so free.)  Sometimes we also had a paid activity on the calendar (like the aforementioned gymnastics class), but I think its important for kids to have activities where they aren’t being led.  How will they learn to explore, lead, wonder, if they don’t have time to simply wander? 

Okay, back to the TV thing.

I went to Staples and bought one of those huge desk calendars, like my grandfather used to have on his old wooden desk.  Because my son couldn’t read yet, I drew pictures of his daily activities.  One day, I drew a slide and some swings.  (Yep, playground.)  On two of the days, I drew a little schoolhouse.  (Uh huh.  Pre-school.)  And every Friday, I drew a picture of the TV.  On Friday afternoons he could choose any ½ hour video we had and chill out with Bob and Larry or Dora or Blues Clues (back when it was Steve!). 

Outcome:

• Helped him learn the days of the week
  
• Helped him understand planning and time
  
• Helped me organize our activities at the beginning of the week
  
• And the BEST:  If the “When can I watch…” question started, we only had to walk over to the calendar to count the days until Friday.
  

Two kids and MANY calendars later, I can attest that this works like a charm.  Now run on over to Staples.  Calendars are probably 80% off by now!

Is it About Being Alone in Marriage or About Holding Our Tongues?

I always have something to say about something.  You must know that by now, right?

Wonder what I'm saying about marriage today?  Pop on over to Blissfully Wed to find out!  (I'll write about the other topic next Monday...)

Haiku Friday: Spring

put away the skis

the snow and ice have melted

daffodils peek through

Photo credit:  foxypar4   .  See other Haikus for this week, here.

How to Catch a Confirmed Batchelor...

See more Wordless Wednesday here and here.

I Will Be Here

A few, short years ago I was living in San Francisco, engaged to the man I loved, and intent on climbing the corporate ladder.  Okay, the only part of that information that’s germane to this post is the fact that I was engaged, but I just like to include the rest for history’s sake. 

Among the many choices we made as we planned our wedding was which song to have sung during the ceremony.  Turns out, the one we chose was a timeless window into some of the commitment that marriage brings.  See my post over at Blissfully Wed to read more.

 

Teenage Girls Defend Chris Brown

Say it isn’t so!

Although I’d heard some talk about teenage girls defending Chris Brown, I didn’t pay much attention until I read Jan Hoffman’s article in the NY Times last Friday (Teenage Girls Stand By Their Man). 

Here are some of the most disturbing quotes I read:

“She probably made him mad for him to react like that,” the other ninth grader said. “You know, like, bring it on?”

“She probably feels bad that it was her fault, so she took him back.”

"Her friend nodded. "I don’t think he’ll hit her like that again,” she said."

“During a presentation about dating violence to ninth graders at Hostos-Lincoln Academy this week, one girl said, “If they hit you, smack them back. Both my parents say that to me.”

“Yeah, men hit women, and women hit men. It was blown out of proportion because they’re celebrities.”

Really?  This is what girls are saying?

Somebody help me.  This, I cannot understand.

photo credit:  joeltelling

The Altar of Motherhood

A new friend of mine shared an essay with me recently, an excerpt from a book by Walter Wangerin, Jr.  She said she thought of me when she read it, because I am a writer, and a mother.  And she added that she thought this essay was true for many mothers, not just writers.  Having not yet read the article, I just nodded and thanked her and smiled.  I picked up my child and waved good-bye.

A day or two passed before I found the time to sit down and read the few pages she had taken the time to photocopy for me.  I was busy with PTO and blogging and soccer and life.  But the papers on the counter kept calling and eventually, finally, I found time to sit down and read them.

In The Altar of Motherhood, Walter Wangerin, Jr. writes about a time in 1985 when he became the work-at-home parent while his wife went off to the office full-time.  During the school year, he managed nicely, thank you very much.  And then came summer, when he thought he’d complete his book manuscript.  (All work-at-home mothers may pause here, for a good, hearty laugh.)  As the days stretched on, he finally concluded, “these children of mine must take precedence—because they are children and they are mine and they come first…”

And all of us who have made that decision understand.  We understand that it is right for us.  We understand that even though it is right, it is hard.  It is exceedingly hard.  We understand that he speaks of a sacrifice of the highest order.

Walter Wangerin, Jr. went on to put it this way:

“Ah, Mother, every summer since then I have thought of you and of all your sisters through the ages…I see deep, and I see this:  that once there lay in the precinct of many mothers’ souls some private dream.  The characteristic by which they defined their selves and their purpose for being.  To write?  Maybe.  To run a marathon?  Or to run a company?  Yes.  Yes.

But then the baby came home, and then you and others like you made a terrible, terribly lovely choice.  You reached into your soul and withdrew that precious thing and lifted it up before your breast and began to walk.  Deliberate and utterly beautiful, you strode to an altar of love for this child and placed there the talent, the dream, some core part of your particular self—and in order to mother another, you released it.”

And though I write these words 23 years later, his words still ring true.  That first year after I brought my first baby home was one of the hardest times of my life.  When I decided, towards the end of that year, to place my career on that very altar, to sacrifice, for some undetermined time, the plan I had laid out, it was heartbreaking.  But it was the right choice for me.  I wasn’t coerced, for goodness-sakes.  I chose it.  And despite how hard it's been sometimes, I would choose it again.  Sitting in my home office, type, type, typing away and listening to my college-aged sitter play with my baby down the hall just wasn’t for me.  It wasn’t worth the trade.  Also, I knew that my break would be temporary, I just wasn't sure how long 'temporary' would be.  In fact, I continued consulting for quite a while, and that was a great compromise.  But still.  It was a compromise.  And you know, I guess that’s the thing.  We bring these tiny little people into the world, and they need us.  And so we make adjustments, changes, compromises to do what works best for us.  And what works best for them.  And somewhere along the way, we come to need them, too.

I felt vindicated, a bit, I suppose, when I read Walter Wangerin, Jr.'s essay, because sometimes I feel alone in this conflict.  I have many friends who didn’t share the same agony when they left a job or career to stay home.  They delighted in the infant days; they appreciated playgroups and enjoyed shopping at Gymboree.  I love these women; they are some of my dearest friends.  But it took awhile for me to join their circle, and still there are times, when I stand just outside, on the periphery, peering in, alone with my angst.

But I'm not alone.  Sacrifice, in whatever shape it takes, is hard, and lots of parents are making lots of sacrifices.  Earlier this week I read Mrs. Chicken’s eloquent narrative of the difficult time in which she and her husband currently find themselves.  And then I read Julie Pippert’s post about how hard it is to be true to yourself and to mother your children.  Oh, I know this pain.  It is hard.  It is. I agree with Julie when she says, “The funny thing, the odd thing, is that I think, in a way, the kids would…just as soon be home, running in the yard, largely ignoring us until they happened to need us in some way, while knowing we were there at their disposal.” 

Right on the money, Julie.  Right on the money.  They just want us there.  In case.

In the meantime, we go on.  We adjust and change and compromise and try our best to show them that it’s important to love yourself and it’s important to love others.  Sometimes we just don’t do both well at the same time.

Re-Do Your Closet For Less. Waaayyy Less.

My husband and I have been thinking about having our closet done.  At first, we thought, maybe something like this:

But then, we decided we didn’t want to sell one of our boys to pay for it.  Also, we don't have nearly that much space.  That's more like the size of our bedroom, bathroom, and closet combined.  So, we thought about this:

But then, I started thinking, which is always a bit dangerous.  And, as I was thinking, I thought, maybe the problem isn’t really with the closet.  Maybe it’s with the ever-expanding piles of stuff inside of it.

(Haaaa!  You thought I had a picture of THAT?  Sorry.  I wish I did, but I forgot to take one, so you're stuck with imagining the shoes, boxes, toy snakes, kites, and other random items that found their way in there.)

Instead of taking a wheelbarrow of money to Lowe’s, I suggested that we start by emptying the entire closet.  This took much longer than it should have.  Seriously.

And, empty, it doesn’t look too bad.

 

Then, we made two purchases.

Wicker baskets, from Target:  

and a skinny dresser, also courtesy of Tar-jay.

We dumped at least half of the clothes, toys, random papers, and old socks that were cluttering the space.

We grouped clothes by use (casual, dressy) and color.  (Okay, I did that.  He just sorted the jeans and khakis, and hung all of his shirts back up.)  It’s like a whole new place in there.  Amazing! 

And—better yet—we didn’t even have to sell a boy to fund it.

Wordless Wednesday: Don't Mess With Their (Lego) Guys

Wordless Wednesday.

Six Degrees of Separation or Peanut Allergies on the Today Show

Allergies have been in the news a lot, lately, and this week is no exception.  But this time, the person interviewed is my friend's, husband's cousin.  Yep, we're practically kin.

Another good friend of mine has a daughter with a severe peanut allergy, which for them means an entire lifestyle of vigilance that we simply don't have over here.  Our allergies are all the hay-fever kind, which means that this time of the year is a sniffling, snuffling joy for us.  But while we're sniffling, there's a good chance we're snacking on trail mix.

For those of you who know or love someone with a severe allergy like this, there may be hope.  A new trial, reported on the Today show has promising results...and features my friend's husband's cousin.  How cool is that?

Worried About Sexting

Sometimes, I think, I am the not-fun mom.  Sometimes, I think, I am the over-analyzer.  These thoughts tend to sneak up on me, most often following a funny look from another mom.  It's the look that says, "Really?  Huh.  Why would you worry about that?"  No Wii.  No X-Box.  Not even TiVo!  She doesn't say it, of course.  At least, not usually.  No, I am here to attest that, every so often, manners still win out.  

Don't misunderstand--my kids have plenty of fun.  We tube, we ski, we play charades, for goodness sakes.  But from the beginning I have been wary of media's influence on my kids.  The numbers are out there, and if you don't believe the numbers, take a look around the world, your town, your children's schools.  One of the reasons I'm wary about all of this so-called "education reform" is that it's not just the schools that are responsible for educating our kids.  I'm a firm advocate that parents are first, first, first--we are the front line for our kids and we decide, from a very early age, how they're going to spend their time.  It's the old garbage-in, garbage-out theory.  Firm believer.

Does this mean I think kids who play games on the Wii every week are bound for social and academic failure?  Please.  Come on.  Give me a smidge more credit than that.  The top kid in my son's class is a video-game stud, so no, I don't think that in the least.  Do I think there are better things my kids could do with their time?  You bet I do.  Wanna argue?  Bring it on.  I'm their mom, and for them, for now, I decide.  I've argued it before.  Happy to do it again.

With this background, please know that I am all for moderation.  If you own these games and use them when the whim hits, more power to you.  It's your family, see?  I'm all for each of us deciding what works best.  And hey, invite us over.  We love the Wii.  My 6-year old can beat me at Wii tennis every time, which is a tad embarrassing, but, you know, he's in lessons so he definitely has an advantage.  We're not Luddites.  We have friends.  We have family.  They have stuff.  We have plenty of opportunities to jump in on the technological fun.  

We even joined in, a bit, earlier this year, when we got our oldest son a cell phone.  Yes, yes, I know.  Everyone is stunned.  I even got a phone call from one friend who didn't believe it when her son came home with the news.  But here's the thing:  I don't want  'no' to be my knee-jerk reaction to my kids.  When I say 'no' to the X-Box, I have a reason.  I have more than one.  I have reasons I feel so strongly about that I'm not the least bit concerned about 'what everyone else' has or does.  I don't feel this way about the cell phone.  At this point, it's simply a social tool.  I'm not sure he's even talked on it, except with me.  Mostly he uses it for texting that looks something like this:

'Sup?

Nothin.

Kay.

C Ya.

Over and over again.  Occasionally there's more, like the loquacious, "'What's up lil man," but that's pretty rare.  These will be men of few words.

The one concern I have about texting is the growing practice of sexting.  You know what this is, right?  Sexting is the high-school girlfriend/boyfriend practice of e-mailing nude or sexually explicit photos of one another to one another.  Nice, huh?

As much as I would prefer to stick my head waaaayyyy down in the sand and forget I ever heard about this practice, I can't.  I know it seems like eons ago, but I was a teenager.  I had a boyfriend.  I can see how this happens in the tiny little world of love teenagers create for themselves.  But, like the WORLD WIDE web, a photo on a phone is anything but private.  An argument, some angry words, a couple of clicks, and it's the photo seen 'round the school.  High school was hard enough.  Thinking about this kind of pressure makes me cringe.

When we hear stories about sexting, I think it's natural for moms to think, "Well, she shouldn't have sent the photo in the first place," or "He should have used better judgement."  That's easy for us to say.  We're not teenagers in love.  They're not our kids.  She shouldn't have and he should have, but this is what's happening.  Twenty percent (20%!) of teens say they've sent or posted nude pictures or videos of themselves.  And they're the frontrunners.  How high will this number grow in the years until our kids reach high school?  This worries me, the not-fun, over-analytical mom.

Do my kids have good judgement?  Sure, for kids.  Will they make mistakes?  Yep, still human, last I checked.  It's the consequences of these mistakes that concerns me.  I made so many mistakes as a kid that I'm pretty sure my mom stopped counting somewhere along the way.  The fact that she didn't set me out at the curb with a "For Sale, Cheap" sign is a sure testament to her motherly love.  But there were no cell phones.  No digital photos.  No Internet.  My consequences were smaller.  More personal.  More contained.  And then I moved on.

For kids today, it's not so easy.  Last week, I watched an incredibly heartbreaking MSNBC clip.  In it, Matt Lauer interviews Cythia Logan, mom of Jesse Logan.  

Eight months ago, Jesse, a high school senior in Ohio, took her own life.  As a parent, I can't imagine a greater horror than walking into my child's bedroom and finding her hanging in her closet.  I can't imagine the pain, I can't imagine the anguish.  I can't imagine going forward.

Jesse had been dating a boy, and like most teenagers today, they both had cell phones.  She took a nude photo of herself and sent it to his phone.  Later, after their break-up, he forwarded the photo, leading to such a humiliating and painful trial for Jesse that she eventually ended her own life.

After the picture was forwarded, she tried to help others.  A disguised Jesse gave an interview to a Cincinnati TV station, warning other kids about the dangers of sexting, and pleading,  "I just want to make sure than no one else will ever have to go through this again."

In the Today Show clip on MSNBC, Dr. Mark Reinecke comments on the practice of teenage sexting by saying,

"In the moment, it's, to a teenager, just fine.  It's when it goes to the whole school or to the employer or to the college admissions office; that's when the trouble....and that's what they're not thinking about."

As photos of a smiling, happy Jesse roll, her mom, Cynthia, describes Jesse before the whole sexting incident.  Her daughter "was vivacious, she was fun, she was artistic, she was compassionate, she was a good kid."

If this watching this clip doesn't make you break down and cry, I don't know what will.  But I think we should watch it.  I think every parent with a child and a cell phone needs to get our heads out of the sand and into our kids lives.  I'm not naive enough to believe that we can protect our kids from all of the bad things that can happen.  But I am a proponent of doing what we can:  educating ourselves, educating our kids, and watching out for each other.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy.

photo credit:  eron_gpsf