Extra (Hour)dinary Parenting

Christmas Coping Strategies: Or, Why Opening Presents Early is Ok

ACMJ — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:26:07 +0000

I have no doubt that there are children out there who sail through the holiday time with great equanimity, smoothly transitioning through the sugar overload and piles of presents with smiles, graciousness, and charm. I’m sure their clothes are all pristine green and red, and never accented with schmears of chocolate chips consumed as if life as we know it depends upon getting another chip in the mouth as quickly and as messily as possible. I’m sure if those children have an Elf of the Shelf, they don’t hunt it down each morning with a mania that borders on stalker-ish behavior.

However, those children do not live at the EHP homestead. Not. At. All.

So we have developed a few coping strategies to deal with the reality of the EHP children as they are, in all their holiday glory. Perhaps these will help you out too on a difficult day:

1. Open Early: I am a full convert to the idea of opening Christmas presents that arrive by mail from relatives and friends early. This is not to say they should be opened immediately, but the giant pile of presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day? It’s overwhelming, and frankly, unrealistic. It also distracts from the meaning of the day, which, depending on your point of view, should be about family, tradition, faith, and friends, or some combination thereof.

2. Wish List It: the Amazon.com wishlist function has saved the day more times than I can count. When the “need” for something becomes overwhelming, we put it on the EHP kiddos’ Amazon wish lists. It’s visual, it’s concrete, and it’s affirming. Make sure that on birthdays and at Christmas that someone actually BUYS off the wish list. I can’t stress enough how key this is. Your child has to know that the Wish List works, that delaying gratification does ultimately result in gratification at some point.

3. Reinvent It: I’ve taken to making enormous piles out of the EHP kids’ toys around this time of year. No neat storage, no toys put in their place. Nope. I dump it in the center of the room, and make a big mess out of playing with it. Why? Because it reminds them – both visually and tangibly – of how much they already have. It feels “full” to them. They don’t see it as messy, they see it as exciting. And this helps them cope – really well, actually – with the constant pressure and expectation of “getting” during the Holiday Season, because they realize that they have already “gotten”.

As we all work to teach our kids the right meaning of the season and the holidays, I hope these tips will help you manage those difficult emotions too! And, remember, on really bad days, there is nothing wrong with feeding your child a big bowl of chocolate chips and letting them go to town on it. Christmas really does only come once a year.

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Christmas Coping Strategies: Or, Why Opening Presents Early is Ok

Top 10 Holiday Tips for Busy Parents

ACMJ — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:13:05 +0000

I haven’t been able to post for awhile here at EHP, but that doesn’t mean the posts haven’t been writing themselves in my head. They always do! I just don’t always get a moment to jot them down. But as we are on a plane for Thanksgiving travel and both EHP kids are asleep, I am seizing the moment where I can to write my top ten holiday realities for busy parents:

1. Seize the Moment Where You Can: You knew this one was coming! Seriously, don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. The cakes, the cookies, the decorations don’t need to be perfect to be meaningful. Kids like all things Christmas and Holiday, and they have short attention spans. 15 minutes of holiday fun with red/green colors, sprinkles, chalk or other short projects like decorating, making an ornament, or singing a Christmas song go a long way with kids to helping them sense of the magic of the holidays. Take those moments where they present themselves!

2. Dollar Aisle All the Way: Need gifts for all the kids in your child’s class? Small items for the neighbors? Some charity items to wrap up and demonstrate the meaning of Christmas? The dollar aisles at favorite stores like Walmart, Target, or the Dollar Store itself are a fabulous way to let your child take part in the decision-making, the spirit of giving, and the idea of matching up a person with a present without breaking your bank. Shop early while all the good stuff is still out there (my apologies to local EHP readers for the fact that the EHP kid and I just bought up 35 of the felt ornaments at our Target).

3. Light it Up: Kids love lights, period. You can buy them super cheap at the Dollar Store. They may not last forever, but they will go a few years for you for very few bucks. Lights go a loooong way with kids. Forget expensive or complex or breakable decorations: light it up instead.

4. Teach Patience: Advent calendars, Elf on a Shelf, all of these tools not only help as conversation pieces about Christmas and the Holidays, but they serve as an excellent way to teach children patience, anticipation, calendar dates, and time.

5. Schedule Extra Time for Helpers: It takes a lot more time to bake cookies when your “assistant” is measuring out the flour and sugar. Consider cutting back your ambitions for production, and go for quality time instead. It makes a big difference to them, and in the end, no one actually need alllll those cookies!

6. Let Each Kid Have a Holiday “Thing”: One of the EHP kids loves nutcrackers. He thinks they are amazing. Thus, we have started buying one small, inexpensive nutcracker each year. He sees those nutcrackers as his part of decorating the house for Christmas, and it makes the whole experience much more special for him.

7. Read About It: Christmas books are everywhere, and make nice presents for others as well. Pull your Christmas books to a pile by the bed and make a point of reading one or two each night. Explaining the holidays in other ways, words that don’t come from just Mom or Dad, is a great way to help children process the experience and capture the magic.

8. Do It, Don’t Eat It: One of the hardest parts of the holidays is how much they are centered around food. It can be easy to let cookies, chocolate Santas, and other types of food become the focus of the Season. Try to redirect if you can. Make the fun centered on shopping for gifts for others, wrapping gifts for others (buy a little extra paper to prepare for the inevitable paper tearing fun), decorating, investigating, reading, and looking (like at the lights in your neighborhood on a drive once or twice a week).

9. Prepare for the Let Down: January is a drag after the excitement and drama of Christmas. Budget, plan, or otherwise prepare for some transition back to the normal routine. This may mean you plan your garden seeds for the spring, or organize all the new and old toys together, deciding which ones can be given away. Jot down ideas and plans now, and put some of your Christmas budget aside for these activities. You will be really, really, really, really glad you did later on!

10. Embrace the Fun Yourself: However you need to do it, make yourself slow down and enjoy the fun as well. Look at the Holidays as a time to enjoy your family and yourself in a way you don’t usually have time to do. Everyone says that your kids are only little once, you’ll blink and it’s over,etc. I say: you are only a parent of young people once. You have a lifetime to be serious and focused. Part of the fun of having kids is to dip back into the magic of your childhood some more. Allow yourself the time and space to do so.

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Top 10 Holiday Tips for Busy Parents

Parenting Tip of the Day: Simplify Television

ACMJ — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:30:58 +0000

My eldest son really loves his television, and has always used it as inspiration for his play. He will watch a show, and spend the next several hours drawing, cutting, creating, and playing out extra scenes and related scenarios. He loves it.

At the same time, I have always struggled with a way to keep the television tides at bay. Even though we have always had a DVR and only watch channels that have no commercials (Disney, Sprout, Nick Jr.), I still have never liked how they slip in previews and other filler material that often raises requests I don’t want to meet or even hear, such as shows that we don’t watch, or referrals to games and other Internet activities I don’t want to get into just yet. Keeping the four-year old four, and not fourteen, is hard.

So after much deliberation, I finally decided to cancel my satellite cable TV subscription and move to a Netflix/Apple TV combo. I have not regretted the choice for a moment. An Apple TV box costs a one-time fee of $99. Netflix costs $8 a month for all your devices to access the entire library: iPads, iPhones, Apple TV, and all computers.

And the selection, the selection is amazing. It will take a long time for my son to exhaust the supply of movies and TVs stored in Netflix. When you combine it with what we have in iTunes already (your iTunes files stream wirelessly to the Apple TV from your computer or your iPad), it makes for a huge selection. And for $13, you can even pick up an AV port to HDMI adaptor that lets you stream, for instance, Hulu’s primtetime television service straight from your laptop to your television. There are a few network shows coming back this fall that are a favorite indulgence of mine (The Big Bang Theory, for example). Hulu keeps me plugged into that, *for free*.

Just to recap, this switch means you get all the kids stuff and all the parent stuff for about $112, plus $8 a month. What you *do not* get is ads, commercials, teasers, or anything but the show itself. Neither Netflix or Apple paid me or even asked me for this review. It was *such* a huge change in our lives, and in our parenting, that it was worth an unsolicited mention.

The one word I can think of to really describe the experience? Silent. There is a show, then silence. No jingles, no slogans, no hooks, no teasers. Silence. If that isn’t adding simplicity, I don’t know what is! I hope you enjoy it as much as we have.

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Parenting Tip of the Day: Simplify Television

Parenting Tip of the Day: Dealing with Sleep Deprivation

ACMJ — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:16:35 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

One of the odd things about parenting books is that there really aren’t too many on sleep deprivation and how to do all the parent things we are supposed to do – say 10 positive things for every negative one or correction, give them a multivitamin, fix healthy meals, encourage independence and impulse control, prepare them for social situations and school – when we are getting four hours of sleep for months on end. I always had big plans for what I would do with my kids at my favorite kid age – three year olds – but nothing prepared me for the fact that after four hours of sleep interrupted by the new baby that I would not have the energy to make coffee much less get everyone ready, work, and prepare an educational craft.

Yet so many families I know have two, three, four, and even five year-old children who still wake in the night. This is such a challenge. I did find Dr. Farber’s famous bookquite helpful, and, along with several other books along the whole spectrum of sleep and parenting philosophies, we have used it with moderate success on our older child.

But babies are still babies, and just because the older child sleeps through the night doesn’t mean the younger one won’t keep you up and down. Parenting without much sleep, especially for months on end through the first year, is incredibly challenging. So here at EHP, we’ve prepared a short tip list for how to make it manageable!

1. Schedule help. If you can’t afford childcare, schedule a swap with a neighbor or a moms-day-out.
2. If your child is old enough for preschool and you can afford it, send him/her, even if it is just one day a week. Preschool is awesome for three and four year-olds and their development. It’s a win-win, and it is often much cheaper than other forms of childcare.
3. Take shifts. My husband and I trade night duty until one of us has a bad night. Then we switch. This way, if we have a good run where both kids sleep, we both benefit. If one of us gets hit with a rough night, we know we at least have the next night. For a while we tried to split things up into two days on/two days off or weekday and weeknights, but someone always gets the short stick. By responding to the previous night, we both stay marginally functional.
4. Do some research. There are some good books out there on sleep and sleep habits. Don’t take every book as a form of gospel, but do some reading to educate yourself and get some ideas that might apply to your particular situation.
5. Keep a food/sleep journal. By tracking what your child eats, how they behave, how they sleep, and when they sleep, you can start to see patterns that in your sleep-deprived state you might miss.
6. Invest in some gear. If you can, get one of the $50 white noise makers or room heaters. If it is hot where you live, get a window air conditioner if you don’t have one. A lot of sleep issues are comfort related.
7. Keep the faith. It does get better. Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes it take over a year. But it gets better. Drive carefully. Focus harder on anything that could be dangerous. Be aware you aren’t firing at 100 percent.

Hang in there!

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Parenting Tip of the Day: Dealing with Sleep Deprivation

HappyBaby Baby Foods: Revisited Two Years Later

ACMJ — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:08:26 +0000

Two years ago, I wrote a post evaluating a new line of baby foods called HappyBaby. They were introducing a whole new kind of baby food. Served in astronaut-style pouches with caps that screwed back on, these organic, simple, healthy foods were designed to actually be…. tasty! This sounds logical, but if you have ever tasted baby food before feeding it to your child, you know that it can taste pretty bad. No wonder children don’t like vegetables! Yuck!

HappyBaby’s approach was different, and it was great fun watching them launch their product line (in Los Angeles at the time) and grow.

Two years later, it has been amazing to watch how well they have expanded, and to enjoy the fruits (and meats and vegetables) of that labor. The next generation of HappyBaby products is even more useful and thoughtfully designed than that first round. From the puffs, dried fruit, and yogurt bites, to the snacks and dinner entrees, they have continued to produce waste-free, high-quality baby and toddler food that is actually… good! I know that baby food is supposed to be bland; but there is a difference between blandness from low-quality, out-of-season fruits and veggies and blandness from lack of spice. HappyBaby focuses on making baby food that is from high-quality, in-season organic produce and products so that children receive simple flavors that are appealing and healthy.

HappyBaby in no way asked me to write this review, nor will I receive anything for it; however, their products have been so useful in the past year with my second son that they deserved a special mention. For ease and a better deal, I buy my HappyBaby products on amazon.com. Both my picky eaters enjoy their food.

There are a few other brands that have popped up since HappyBaby launched, but I still think their products and research are the very best. And what a great investment in your child’s diet and future! Hope you enjoy it!

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HappyBaby Baby Foods: Revisited Two Years Later

Parenting Tip of the Day: Empathy is Everything

ACMJ — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:39:50 +0000

: Image by sassycrafter via Flickr

I have often read that empathy is extremely important to children, but this holiday season really brought home to me what a fantastic tool it is for managing young and often scary emotions in children. I’m pretty sure all I did this month was restate 75% of what my son said. “You really want to open presents now.” “You can’t wait for Santa to come.” “You don’t want to leave the party.” “You’re so excited about Christmas.” over. and over. and over, again.

I’m not sure what brought on the sudden use of this rather well-established parenting tool; perhaps it was simply that I got tired of counting out the days on the Advent calendar to illustrate how long we had to wait until Santa arrived. After a while, I started restating my son’s complaints, angst, and other anxieties more to buy time than anything else, usually while juggling a conference call for work (for which I had myself on mute, of course) and an unhappy baby.

After a month of this, however, it’s a fairly ingrained first response, and it has become a wonderful way of defusing volatile emotions. I always try to give the *reason* for rules, for “no”s, and for other corrections so that my son learns something more than just not to do or say something. But while the adult in me finds the reasons supremely important, the kid in my child finds the empathy more so. I still give the reason for just about all correction or other issues, such as this morning’s crisis over the flu shot visit. I explained the flu shot, being healthy, being brave, etc. We watched a short cartoon about a character getting a flu shot. But after about five minutes of that, the rest of the pre-shot countdown was just me restating his fear and concern and wish not to go. And as it has for all of this month, the empathy and restatements had a bigger impact than any amount of reasoning I offered.

I’m marking this post to pop up in my inbox next Thanksgiving so I don’t have to wait for exhaustion to set it before I remember how effective empathy is, especially during those difficult weeks of the holiday season when young emotions and anticipation are too intense for them to handle. Then, more than any other time, empathy is everything.

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Parenting Tip of the Day: Empathy is Everything

Recommended: Testing for Kindergarten

ACMJ — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:07:13 +0000

I read a whole lot of books on parenting and pregnancy as a result of running this website. I also love to read, in general, and find few books to be a total waste of time. I am, you might say, very generous with books and authors, because I just love reading.

However, once in a while I come across books that truly change the way I parent. Nurtureshock was one. Brain Rules another.

This is the third.

Testing for Kindergarten is a rather benign, droll title for an incredibly dynamic book. The point of the book is, indeed, to help parents who live in places where competitive testing for kindergarten is a big deal and can make or break a child’s ability to get into the right schools when the right schools aren’t all that easy to access or to find.

But even if you don’t have to test for kindergarten, even if you live somewhere with good schools that don’t require testing of any kind, this is such a great collection of information. This book taught me a tremendous amount without wasting any of my time. There weren’t pages and pages of theories and pontification. Just short points, backed up with facts, and solutions. Lots and lots and lots of solutions.

Extrahourdinary Parenting is a site dedicated to solutions, so this book, naturally, greatly appealed to me. It has everything from tips on reading and how to teach it to small tweaks you can make to your games and everyday activities. In other words, all the suggestions are totally manageable stuff. This books also has actual solutions that don’t require you to buy anything. You don’t need to spent $750 after reading this book to take action. Those solutions? They are in you. This book is all about turning your awareness and your attention just a few degree here or there, changing your habits and language just so, in order to make the right kind of impact on any child, not just one trying to test into a gifted and talented program or an elite preschool.

I highly, highly, highly recommend this book. And if your child has a nanny or goes to daycare, I strongly suggest sharing a copy with them or using it as part of the screening process to see what they know and do already in their interactions with your children.

Testing for Kindergarten is – hands down – one of the most amazing books I’ve read in the many years of running this website. Buy it, borrow it, or rent it.

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Recommended: Testing for Kindergarten

Bashful Bump Bodysuits Maternity Product Review

ACMJ — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:07:26 +0000

EHP does not do a lot of maternity gear or clothing reviews, primarily because we tend to avoid maternity items completely and just opt for larger sized clothes when pregnant. Maternity gear always seems to be triple the usual price of its regular gear counterparts, and for no other reason than the manufacturers know they have you in a vulnerable (and uncomfortable) moment or two for forty weeks and can get away with charging you more. This annoys me, so I tend to avoid maternity items. Thus, the lack of such reviews on EHP.

However, I was recently sent a sample of a maternity bodysuit, and I must admit, this is one of the few items for which I would bend my no-maternity-gear rule. The material with which the bodysuits are made feels fantastic, and more importantly, there is no shirt tugging, jacket buttoning, pants fixing with these things. They stay in place.

You can check out the website here for more details on all the ways that these things work and what they do (also, it’s a great website in general with a nice design – take a look), but I want to highlight the feature I like the most: options. Maternity gear is typically devoid of options. Does that shirt actually give you enough room for the baby without exposing your entire neck, shoulder, and chest to the free world? Great! It only comes in puke green. Do those pants fit your growing belly, and butt, and thighs? Wonderful! They are only available in a length 22 inches too long for you specifically to occupy the in-house seamstress who knows you don’t have the energy to visit a cheaper tailor and charges a $30 quick alteration fee.

These bodysuits are different. Ordering one of these is like ordering a fancy cup of coffee from Starbucks: I’ll take mine black, medium, and full, with cap sleeves on top. It’s fantastic. In fact, some quick math shows that there are 64 different bodysuit combinations available. I don’t mind buying high quality specialty gear when it is actually especially made for me.

In fact, because of the design and the way the fabric pulls and falls, as well as the fact that you can buy exactly what fits and suits you, you can actually wear these bodysuits well after delivery, and believe or not, these are cool enough that you might actually want to.

If that’s not a ringing product endorsement, I don’t know what is.

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Bashful Bump Bodysuits Maternity Product Review

Monday Morning Memo: The Hiking Family

ACMJ — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:41:54 +0000

: Image by Rubén Marcos via Flickr

One of the cheapest but most rewarding of family activities you can do with kids of any age is to hike. There is a series of great books on this – here is the one I use – but you really just need a map of your area and perhaps an Internet connection to get a good idea of what places are the most kid friendly. A baby or toddler can ride in a special backpack or carrier like a Bjorn. Preschoolers can usually handle a one mile hike of elevation less than 500 feet. In fact, they can often handle the elevation better than we can! Older children can handle up to five miles, depending on their skill level and physical energy level.

A few things to remember about the family hike:
1. Pack more water than you think you will need.
2. Pack more food than you think you will need. Use trail friendly snacks like granola, granola bars, nuts, and fruit.
3. Pack more clothing than you think you will need. You never know if the hike will take much longer than advertised.
4. Bring a map and a compass, just in case!
5. Make the hike interesting for young ones. Point out items of interest, clouds in cool shapes, and uniquely colored leaves or trees.
6. Sing! Hikes are a great opportunity to get some music time in.
7. Put one person in charge of following the trail and marking it, if you need to, and another on keeping an eye on the kids. That way, you both know your primary duty on the trail.
8. Take out what you bring in. That means you will need to bring some odor disguising bags for dirty diapers and such.
9. Take pictures! It is fun to help your younger children process the hike later if they can see where they were and what they did.
10. Use back-friendly devices! You will end up carrying someone, if not everyone, at a point in the hike. Don’t bring a purse or a backpack with poor shoulder supports. Bring the comfortable stuff! That goes for shoes and clothes too.

Enjoy!!

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Monday Morning Memo: The Hiking Family

Raising a Glass to Raising Kids

ACMJ — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:50:16 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Cheers! If you are reading this post, odds are it is because you are a parent or about to become one. We at Extrahourdinary Parenting are taking a moment to toast your decision to do so!

Raising kids is exhausting, frustrating, and expensive, but as most people will tell you, it’s also a lot of fun. And most people won’t tell you that it is also the ultimate legacy. There are all sorts of ways you can leave a positive impact on this world, but perpetuating the species with a well-raised member of it… there’s not much greater legacy than that. In some parts of the world, birth rates are so low that entire populations will die out in the next 50 years or so (there is a great book on this called America in 2050: The Next Hundred Million). Raising kids is not always the cool thing to do, and much of American society had become a bit “unfriendly” to the logistics and tribulations of it as European and Japanese birth trends showed up here for a while in past decades.

Fortunately, that is changing, and having kids is much more the “in” thing to do these days. But in or out, kudos to you for being part of the greatest activity, and the greatest legacy, you will have the privilege of creating. It’s a tough choice, but a smart one. Cheers!!

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Raising a Glass to Raising Kids

Extra (Hour)dinary Parenting

Christmas Coping Strategies: Or, Why Opening Presents Early is Ok

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Top 10 Holiday Tips for Busy Parents

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Parenting Tip of the Day: Simplify Television

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Parenting Tip of the Day: Dealing with Sleep Deprivation

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HappyBaby Baby Foods: Revisited Two Years Later

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Parenting Tip of the Day: Empathy is Everything

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Recommended: Testing for Kindergarten

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Bashful Bump Bodysuits Maternity Product Review

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Monday Morning Memo: The Hiking Family

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