Ten Things I learned in 22 Years of Parenting

 When I first became pregnant with our first, I suddenly understood the joke my parents made about newbie parents.  Facing what seemed like an intractable impossible unreasonable problem (toilet training, bedtime, meals), a problem that destroyed all confidence, all personal belief in one's capacity to parent, they'd say, "Welcome to the NFL" and laugh.  Translation: You just got your first real hit.  Now get back up and get out there.   It's  game time.

Jennifer Fulwiler wrote a brilliant piece, 22 Things I learned in my first ten years of parenthood.  I loved it, shared it and got to thinking.  Jen has had six kids in ten years. But she's yet to discover the next big frontier of parenting, adolescence.  So being a blogger type friend, I wanted to be a Yoda to a fellow mom of many about the more yet to come. 

Let me preface it with a big smile.  "Welcome to the NFL."

10.  None of these people will have the same drama.  Any pats on the back you might give yourself for raising rugged individuals instead of cookie cutter offspring will be offset by the frustration of never quite becoming an expert, only less of a rookie.  I'm still not sure if I prefer the struggle of a kid who won't drive or the one who really wants to.  Ditto on dating, shopping, makeup... 

9.  The world likes to pretend it has professionalized everything, but most folks haven't surrendered their entire existence to a single sport or talent.  Most families are peopled with human beings who demand a degree of reasonableness to life.  So don't break in a cold sweat when the Tiger Mom Want-a-be starts talking about how the only way to have your kid make the team in high school let alone beyond is to join the exclusive league that travels six months a year and costs more than college tuition.   I promise you haven't robbed your son or daughter of a future, you've actually allowed them the luxury of a childhood.

8.  Have boys? Get them in sports and something social.  Something that keeps them from staying home locked in their room.  It can be anything, but it has to be something.  Going outside is different than looking at the outside.  The same is true for experiencing people and events.

7.  Have girls? Get them in sports and something social. Something that keeps them from staying home locked in their room.  I don't care if they chat online, it doesn't suffice.  Rock band isn't the same as guitar lessons.   We live in a world that provides substance free substitutes for all the real things that matter. (BTW, 7 and 8 do not contradict with 9, 7 and 8 are about getting your kids to be present with and for others, 9 is about not letting a talent keep your child from being present even to themselves).

6.  Date night with your teen may seem awkward. But it's actually fun, even if you are the only one who calls it that in your head and never in print or anywhere they might see it.   Call it pizza and a movie in, or let's go get hot chocolate or want to get a pedicure or I'm making slice and bake cookies, want some? but schedule time, frittery time. 

5.  They still need hugs, playtime and opportunities to be immature.   Provide them the opportunity and the experience in abundance.  Cards, video games, football, watching Sherlock, it doesn't matter the what, what matters is the who.   

4.  Jobs.  During the summer, they need jobs.  Summer school counts, but don't limit it.  Some of the biggest growing up comes from official type real responsibilities with pay and consequences.   Some of it comes from discovering what you don't want to do the rest of your life and some comes from simply discovering you can do something you didn't know how to do before.  Daughters disassembling a bed for example, proved to be a source of pride.  Son power washing the deck, also created a sense of accomplishment.

3.  Pay attention to all the messages you are sending.  I've had to work on taking better care of my appearance, as part of teaching them to be better stewards of themselves. Teens are great at pointing out where you stumbled up to now.  "Why should I get a hair cut? You don't." earned me a trip to the beauty parlor first.

2.  The kindle, computer, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, cell phones, blackberries, laptops and ipods can create a bubble which lets everything and everyone else in the world into their lives except you.  Don't let the electronic communication tools of today create a wall of silence.   These are things they can use, but there are limits and provisos.  Follow everything and everyone.  Use your veto power.  The machines like the internet, can be and sometimes should be turned off. 

1.  There will be a time when you stare at their room, their hair, their friends, their grades, their tweets, their something, and you will wonder, how, why, what have I been doing with my life? Did none of it sink in?  Where did the baby/child I loved go and when are they coming back? When the ugliness reaches its zenith and you honestly think, they're almost 18, they're almost 18 and at that point, as no other, prayer.  Prayer and patience.  This is the birth pain/labor of raising an adult, and them fighting hard to hold onto childish things.  There will be a little something, maybe they make their bed or slip a note under the door or bring a diet coke, a sign to you, they love you for not letting them remain children, and though it admittedly seems like it will never come while you are waiting, the payoff is oh....so worth it you forget the pain.

Spin Cycle on Doing Laundry

Laundry systems work best in theory. The best theory is to let someone else do them. That's a system that works every time it is tried. Normal laundry systems work too, it's just they work until the person working them is tired.

Recently I was asked to share the secrets of my laundry system because I felt proud that there were 14 baskets of laundry sitting in my main room. There are no secrets. Laundry is a constant of my life, it is proof that my home is full of life, and it can also make one feel like one has no life. At one point, I did the math and it came out to around 78 pieces of clothing per day. My heart didn't have the nerve to multiply by 7 to figure out how much a week or then by 52 for a year.

For the most part, I can do the wash. I can sort. I can do the dryer. I can fold. I can even put them all in their appropriate baskets. It is then that we hit a snag that rivals O'Hare with four feet of snow and a traffic controller's strike. Nothing moves.

I went into my living room after bragging of getting all the clothing folded including 150 pairs of socks. Socks! Children were carefully managing around these baskets or playing laundry bumper cars if they thought Mom would indulge such actions. The baskets were left there like parked cars. The children would rummage through for necessary items and then return to pretending they weren't there. Laundry Stonehenge it seemed to me was a real possibility. They weren't going to move these things without motivation, either carrot or stick. My proof: No one noticed for three days as the piles grew dangerously taller, threatening to cause concussive injury to any child that wandered past as a leaning tower of towels came tumbling down.

The scientist in me wondered how many days it could go. Could I play laundry jenga without ruing the consequences? I decided I couldn't and offered Pizza Pizza if all laundry baskets would be ferried to their appropriate rooms. Naturally, the zeal with which the first three baskets were pushed out of the way led to a collapse in the structural integrity of some of the piles.

But the floor was clear. Then the dryer signaled that the next load was ready for folding. Alas, I had no baskets nor mental energy to go and empty one of the three in my room (Mom's, Dad's, baby's) or the two auxiliary ones (towels, sheets), and so there was this pile of warm clothing that needed a temporary home. They could not squat in the dryer as the cue of wet clothing was also piling up. I had to rodeo the process along.

Playpen to the rescue! We have an extra folding crib. It is deep, it is wide, it is unused. It is a perfect holding zone. The problem with a perfect holding zone is, it's perfect. Load 1 goes in. Load 2 is dry. It goes in too. Load 3...in. Load 4...in. Load 5, Load 6...Load 7...Load 8...Load 9 spills over the top. Load ten is waiting.

I go to each of the rooms. There is the laundry, sitting in the basket like a museum exhibit. Waiting for me. So I can unload the basket so I can reload. Not happening.

In a fit of passive aggressiveness, I dump the folded mass that has acquired a jello mold consistency, and pile up the empties. It is oddly cathartic until I go in the next day and find my old enough to know better daughter has pushed the pile to the other side of her bed rather than put it away.   In fairness, some of the youngers have too. I may tell them,  they now get to sleep in the playpen.

Short answer: Here are my tips. These work. But they don't end the battle, they are merely tactics in the never ending war.

1) Have a basket for everyone.
2) Have one for the towels, the sheets and the socks.
3) Fold socks once a week such that there is enough for the week. Then stop.
4) Inform children if they fight, they will have to sort ten pairs of socks. Each time.
5) Bag fitted sheet with folded sheet inside of the pillowcase and toss in linen closet like a sack.
6) Have a laundry bag outside of each bathroom for easy gathering of clothing. If you're really organized (I'm not), have a bag for each kid --so there's no sorting or limited sorting necessary.
7) If your family isn't huge, wash a different person's each day of the week. If it is, you can try one of three methods:

1) wash every day, fold once a week. (This works for us) Folding parties are universally despised but they do last only about an hour and it's much better to have one hour of pain for 7-10 people, than 7-10 hours of pain for one.

2) Assign two per day. Make sure the two doing the wash are compatable partners. Don't do the girly girl with the boy who wants to wash everything seperately. Keep a chart. (I'm not good at charts).

3) Inform anyone over the age of 9, they are in charge of their clothing. They can work the x-box, ipads, blackberries, and Wii and use the DVD while playing the Wii, they can measure tide and push a few buttons.

4) Earn enough writing to pay someone else to solve this problem.  (It's a goal in my life). 

They'll Make A Liar of You Every Time

Granddaddy used to say that all the time about his nine children.

As a child, I concede my own fixations on taste and preference were often fickle and determined by whatever fight my brother and I were having at the moment. When he said he liked eggs, I decided that day, that moment, that eggs were on the verboten list. He liked strawberry ice cream. I avoided eating it for YEARS.

Mom drew the line when I tried to unbuckle my seatbelt to declare my individuality from my younger brother in the car. So we glared silently, seat belted, barely controlling our mutual disdain for the other’s existence. That was acceptable because it was muted. I only got into trouble when I lacked the internal good judgment not to say, “MOMMMMM, He’s LOOKING at me.”

Today, it is my turn, and I break into a cold sweat when asked such seemingly benign questions as “What do your kids like to eat?”

On any given day, I could serve cantaloupe, eggs, bagels and milk and would have children praising me for hours. Asking for more. The same would be true for spaghetti and meatballs with red sauce or pot roast, or baked chicken…until someone else makes it. Visions of children voicing emotionally ungrateful responses to other people’s charity have forced me to take dramatic measures to insure that even if my offspring find the food unpalatable, they aren’t going to be vocal about it.
Because there is a type of universality to children, I humbly offer the following tips.

1) Have a bag of M&m’s at the ready. Insert into any child’s mouth that you think questionable as you receive the food.

2) Make sure dessert looks so tantalizing that they’d be willing to consume liver, beets and lima beans in abundance and wash it all down with tap water…no ice.

3) Empty your refrigerator of condiments. Let the kiddos use liberally.

4) Duck and cover strategy: Cover whatever it is with either sauce or cheese.

5) Channel your inner marketer. Give the food a snazzy name, break out the good china, put on classical music and pretend to be a waiter. Use phrases like “Will that be all Madam?”

6) Stick approach. Eat it or do the dishes.

7) Create an alternative that you like that you know the kids despise, such that the first meal looks appetizing by comparison…it’s either this…or my baked cod with tomatoes…

8) Mommy Dearest method. It’s now or it’s breakfast. This is only if you are willing to suffer for the next 24 hours. I wouldn’t advise it.

9) Piece meal Peace meal. One serving of something at a time…so kids get a fraction of food that looks so small they’re intrigued and willing to try it. Let them add salt and pepper. Serve meal in small courses.

10) Surrender. Divide up the meal to those things the kids will eat, fire up the microwave, nuke some potpies and prepare to spend the next three weeks eating casserole.