Extreme Parenting

The Balloon Parents have landed.

Forgive me if I want to look away, to somehow allow these children to hold onto a family that for all its flaws, is theirs and thus entitled despite the parents attempts otherwise, to a bit of safeguarding. I would seek to shelter this family from its worst impulses, and to use this unfortuante incident to allow child protective services not to take away these children, but to investigate and ensure the long term health and stability and safety and security of this whole family.

The arm chair pundits have prepared for the ultimate drama of watching children be removed from a home. We should not be wishing such a public blow up on anyone, even a person who believes in UFO's, chases storms and now has finally caught the noteriety he so craved and found it far more dangerous than any of the real or imagined monsterous realities he sought.

As painful and frightening as watching a homemade weather balloon drift 8000 feet in the air possibly carrying a six year old was, watching a homemade television tornado destroy a whole family publically and probably permanently, is worse.

We've known trophy kids for years, children who are immersed in activities done more for show than tell, more for the awards and accolades and prestige than the joy of movement, pleasure from the experience or benefits of a skill. Competitive parenting has always existed in the fields of academics, athletes and the arts. Sometimes it was kid driven, but more often than not, there was a grown up reliving Glory days that never were, or dreaming for their child.

We have witnessed the fruit of that unhealthy impulse in this family. But they are a product of a society that seems committed to the demise of leisure. When we measure down time in billable moments, not allowing for dullness, we are not taking a break but announcing our change in schedule. Vacations ought to include times when one learns to entertain one's self and others, (road trips), rather than a spin of perpetual enrichment exercises that make for good photo-ops and bragging postcards, twitters and the like, squeezed in-between isolatory moments of self indulgent individualized entertainment. We are becoming islands within our own families with the iPods and DVD’s and game boys that mean the only human contact is the occasional demand for batteries or a bathroom break.

Even camping has become something that must include a Face book worthy posting quality, a blog about being along the Appalachian Trail, a green awareness epiphany or a Zen moment of clarity about one's future job. We should be praying for moments that are not definable by praise or appreciation from others in our lives and seeking them. All of life is not blog, twitter, face book, IM, text or YouTube worthy.

So read a story to a child not because it will improve their test scores but because you think they'll like the book. Brush their hair and put in the ribbons if they love them, even if they don't match. Allow an older one to take a break from studying even if there's more time, and break out the Rock Band. The pseudo accomplishments of play that aren't taken seriously have serious benefits that no ribbons, trophies or public "Like this" thumbs up can match. Play for fun. Write for fun. Create a hearth out of your home and do all the things you do, because you would do them even without the A's, without the accolades.

Life is not just about showing up, but about being present. Not about being noticed, but noticing others.

There are places where it is easy to see the creative heart of God. For some, it is in their children’s eyes. For others, it is found in hiking trails and breathing in the smells of a hardwood forest or on the ocean surrounded by the sheer force and energy and beauty of the sky and water. We are called to come to the mass and find Christ in our midst, and to learn see Him present with us in all our sufferings and in all our joys. We are called to come and be present and learn how to be present to others. Because ultimately, what creates childhood memories, what creates dreams and drives are not all the extra classes or ultimate experiences, but the times of everyday, the little touches and something extras that made the ordinary time sacred.

Lego My Ego

I have a confession to make.

When I was a kid, I loved legos. My brothers got all these cool blue and black and grey legos and sometimes, they'd even let me play with them --and we'd make, well, they only came in rectangles and squares so we made lots of cities and houses and buildings. Then we'd rip them apart and do it again. There were unlimited possibilities provided one didn't mind that everything was a cube.

I kept trying to make a castle but there just weren't the right types of pieces for my complete vision. I didn’t just want ridges, I wanted turrets, I wanted it fantastic. And blue and grey weren’t going to cut it.

But modern sensibilities have ruined my childhood love. Now, legos come in all sizes and colors and with instructions. As such, they become ships. They become bridges and human figures and full scale renditions of famous landmarks of both film and reality. My sons love them.

However, because legos now come with special pieces and specific forms, my boys assemble them and then, well, that's it. The masterpieces are to be placed on mantles, tables, bookshelves, and never touched again.

I know.

One day I was cleaning a bit too close and knocked a few things down quite by accident.I had to apologize and promise to be more careful. It took ice cream and a round of baseball to get back into my kid’s good graces.

For many Christmas and Birthdays, the legos were gifts and the piles of created pieces mounted up. And I said nothing and was very careful where I vacuumed.

But the mantles and bookshelves were starting to get crowded. In the basement, there was a 4x8 library table we set up for arts and crafts. It was now overrun.Having once attempted to clear the table only to be stopped by a near melt down, "You're throwing away my childhood." type drama, I am now seeking a statute of limitations from either my boys or the lego company, beyond which it may not be considered reasonable for legos to remain in their assembled form.

The corporation has so far not returned my calls.

My sons on the other hand…
"How about a year?"

No answer.
"How about two?"

...Okay, but once they leave for college, I'm making a serious castle out of those babies...and then, no one's touching it until I retire.

Spring Thaw

One of the problems I face raising so many children, is getting into a parental rut; like not varying the menu or not thinking to expose my kids to a type of art work because for me, I’ve done this six times before. The tone I use with the three pre-schoolers cannot apply to older, nor can the ironic humor used with teens be salted in conversations with pre-teens. If you only eat Nutella, you forget other chocolates like semi-sweet have a beauty that’s worth appreciating. Drinking only one type of wine or hearing only one kind of song will ultimately become dull. Parenting the same way with everyone is a guaranteed recipe for failure. As of late, the sheer numbers had resulted in my engaging in mostly triage style parenting, fixing what needed help the most and trying to just muddle through the rest.

Playing ball, the kids began a rhyming game and I had to marvel at how quickly my older children molded their behavior to keep the younger ones engaged. I conceded, I had been an all work and no fun parent as of late. Fortunately, my daughters and sons keep providing me with their fresh perspectives. Without their everyday examples, I’m not sure how one could rediscover experiencing toddlerhood the eighth time around and continue to recognize that a day spent scribble scrabbling through an entire ream of paper is much better time spent than even a few minutes agonizing over a difficult Sudoku.

The other day, my daughter put out the paper and crayons as soon as breakfast was over and had the toddlers make periscopes so they could play pirates. The project lasted all of 20 minutes but the joy was contagious and soon I had swabs running about the house saying “ARRR” and “AVAST” with lots of giggles, whereas boring old me would have cleaned the table and handed out the crayons and paper without the additional prompt.

How long had I been sleeping? These effortless acts that for some reason had for me, taken effort, were all around me. The children needed me to have new eyes too. A mental wall came down, making me wonder when I first put the darn thing up and why?

Suddenly, there were all sorts of possibilities. I could already foresee, reading the lyrics to rock band, our first grader would getting additional reading time and mentally planned a band session for the next day. That week, times tables were an issue for my baseball player, so we’re worked on drilling them as we played catch. “Pop fly Pop Quiz. Seven times Seven.” He had to catch, throw and give the answer. I told him it was just as hard for me without the math. After watching me drop a few routine flies, he agreed.

The calendar may say only March 8th, but the first signs of a real spring are here. For me, parenting is and will always be like listening to opera, watching a movie with subtitles, visiting a museum or hearing baseball on the radio. The experience itself is more pleasurable than the idea of the experience, and I need to not be put off by the concepts which often sound dryer and duller than the reality. The thaw of my hibernating fun parent has begun.

Yesterday was beautiful so we went outside. One daughter had too much homework, but in keeping with the new policy to squeeze in a little fun, she dribbled the basketball under the table as she worked on her geometry. The old me started to mess with it, after all, she was in the house, it was loud, what if the toddlers try to do this…visions of messes threatened to create six more weeks of winter. Then I remembered myself in a desk. Even in graduate school, my leg was always bouncing, I never sat still. Even in tests, I’d be almost twitching to get out of my seat and my notebooks were illustrated with dragons on every page whenever a lecture was taking place.

I made myself smile and ushered the younger ones outside to bike a game of red light green light, but before leaving, I drew a dragon on her worksheet. "Keep up the good work." I added.
“Cool Mom.” and she kept on dribbling. “Look, with my left hand too."

P.S. There are lots of lessons I’m taking in from this most recent child’s brief life, not the least of which is, whatever I’m currently worrying or obsessing about, it isn’t important. Life raising nine children suddenly seems a lot less difficult than I previously thought it was, and thus I am grateful to this little one for bringing with her, the gift of perspective.

Food Stalker

My daughter shall never starve even if lost in the woods if her innate hunter/gatherer/forager skills are any indication. This child finds hidden stashes of candy from Saint Valentine's Day and beyond and leaves no trace of the theft because she also consumes the wrappers.



By following her older siblings around, she can usually get the prime scraps from whatever they've decided to have for snack. Between her natural cupie doll looks and her fierce toddler will, "Can I have some, can I have some, can I have some, can I have some?" that enables her to repeat those same four words tirelessly for 20 minutes at a time if necessary; she gets extra slices of pizza from her older brothers, bags of chips from the team snack, bonus cookies at bake sales and a near unlimited supply of drinks. All of this was bad enough, but now she's become independent.



The food she acquires through persuasion is insufficient to meet her caloric needs. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack plus second breakfast which the next older brother views as a constitutional right rather than an eccentric dining convention of hobbits, are not enough. She can open the fridge. She can open the freezer, and using a chair, she can get to the higher shelves in the pantry. I’ve taken to putting “boring food” in front of the desired cereals, cookies, crackers and chips, but it gets hard sometimes to find things as a result. This past weekend, her father brought home a bag of apples and a box of clementines. I'm thinking, we're set for the week for fruit for the lunches. Yeah!



On Monday, she found the apples. I'm not sure what I was doing at the time. Maybe feeding/changing her brother, maybe making the bed or switching the laundry, but I came into the kitchen and noticed the apples were not in their basket. The basket was empty. I hunted. I called. The house was silent.



I began patrolling the rooms; first the upstairs, no one under the bed, no one in the closet having a picnic, no evidence hidden in a waste basket. On the main floor, my room was clean, the bathrooms, empty, the study and the dining room, vacant. Panic was seizing me. The apples had been gone at least ten minutes if not more. Downstairs I raced. The main room was a mess as usual but no kids. The kid's study was also quiet. The girl's room and bathroom needed sprucing but there was no trace of my three toddlers or the apples. Now where to look? I came back up puzzling and calling. Then I saw them.



On the screened in deck, they had 12 apples on their kid table, still unconsumed and three that were happily being crunched. The apples were in a line and the three of them were trying to put ten apples up on top. The fruit kept rolling but the oldest patiently kept trying to place one or two on top of his head and wondering why they wouldn't stay. The next oldest was holding the inspirational book open to the page and pointing.


I gathered up the fruit that was still unbruised, bagged it in a Ziplock and placed it in the back of the refrigerator on the top shelf. “There.” I thought to myself.


In the afternoon, the box of clementines went AWOL.