High Maintenance Mom

I have been thinking about what activities to put my almost 4 year old daughter in recently and have been getting a lot of suggestions from friends. She is in pre school every morning and we have a lot of fun post nap with various outings, etc. I just don't feel the need to have her in ballet, gymnastics, singing, etc...all of which have been suggested she do now. That does not mean she wont do them but not today. As I had this in my brain, I can across an interesting article about "slow parenting". I liked the ring of it so I continued reading and also found some articles on line. The term seemed to (from what I can gather from a blog with an email interview with the author) come from the followers of Carl Honore's books, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (Plus) and Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting ....

I have always loved politics and now that I am a Mom I have even more incentive to get involved with change. www.momsrising.org is a great web site for moms (and dads) who want a more family friendly country. Since 2006 members have brought important motherhood and family issues to the forefront of the country's awareness.

Every once in a while I find that I need to go back to basics when it comes to discipline. After a slow start to summer here in New England we jumped head first into weekend beach trips, airplane rides to see grandparents and a fun trip to NYC. That being said, discipline seems to fall by the wayside when kids are knee deep in sand castles, grandparents and sight seeing....

We moved our daughter in a "big girl bed" about 5 weeks ago and it has been a hilarious ride! All I asked was that she either sleep or play quietly in her room. Every time I went to her up from nap, she was redressed in everything and anything she could get her hands on. My favorite was her feetie PJ's, tights on over that, several shirts and a head band. Her room looked like a tornado ran through it.

There have been a flurry of "cool mom" reports on the news lately and they got me thinking about something my Mom said to me when I was young. She said, "I am not your friend, I am your Mom". I was hurt when I heard those words but now that I am a parent, I understand what she meant. My Mom (and Dad) wanted to be there for me to talk to but they also had to guide me into adulthood so I could make good decisions on my own. It is my opinion that it is a parents "job" to teach their child/children how to be a responsible, loving, well rounded adults who can contribute to society in a positive way and not how to be cool, liked by the popular crowd and not be their child's best friend....

Now that I have 2 kids and 1 can talk, I feel like I am defending my (good) parenting from time to time and I hate it. I wanted to do this post on the front page of the site but realized that at this point I am just venting. Bring it on if you have well meaning, informed information that would help but if you feed your kids soft drinks and french fries on a weekly basis keep it to yourself. If your kids bed time is later than mine (10pm) and they know the prime time TV line up nightly, dont give me any parenting advise and most of all, dont comment on my kids healthy food choices, scheduled nap and bed times and overall perfection.

We've been having trouble accomplishing our basic morning chores - get up, come to the table, eat breakfast, clear your plate, get dressed, etc. It's not really new trouble, just the realization that most mornings are a struggle. After reading Positive Discipline and particularly Positive Discipline A-Z: 1001 Solutions to Everyday Parenting Problems , which I highly recommend because it condenses the first book into 30 pages and then gives specific advice for numerous issues through the teenage years, I decided to try a family meeting. This was not our first family meeting. I've tried them several times while reading the books but I tend to want to try everything at once so it wasn't surprising they didn't work the first time. Somehow, this meeting was a success. Maybe the kids needed to adjust to the idea or maybe we were all in the perfect mood but somehow it worked...

I recently attended a talk by Madeline Levine, author of The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. It was a fabulous talk and I recommend the book. Levine talked about how we give birth twice, once to our fantasy child and the later to the real child. I feel as though I'm working on our fourth as I struggle to see our second child as his own person, not his brother, not my first version of a perfect child, and not my now modified version of what he could be...

As I continue to search for ways to make our family life easier, I recently realized we had slipped into a really difficult period. My kids were constantly having fits and I was too tired to handle it. I'd yell; they'd cry, stomp, slam doors, and yell; and then I would try to make things better only to repeat the cycle. Recently, I've been trying a 'new' trick - point out the positive things in our day. I know it sounds really simple and prior to having two kids over three, I didn't realize I could forget this but, surprise, surprise, I did...

I was at Whole Foods on Monday with both boys trying to get a medium size list of food. It was a reasonable trip with only a few trying moments such as N operating the automatic peanut grinder and both kids blocking the aisles. Another shopper, who was male, told me I was a great mom so I was trying even harder to be that person I want to be. Of course, the euphoria started to decline as the experience continued and by the time we got into the checkout line, we were all ready to go. N asked if he could stand up in the kid's cart he was pushing and I said no. A minute later I looked over, noticed he was standing up, and said in a nonconfrontational way, "N, it's not safe to stand in the cart. You asked if you could and I said no." I was amazed he asked in the first place but since he did, I thought I was handling things pretty well and he was getting out of the cart. It was at this point that the checkout clerk said, "looks like someone is going to get a spanking when they get home..."