The blogosphere has its knickers in a knot over this, the Atlanta, GA restaurant that has asked that people take their screaming kids outside to calm them down.

Um.

Am I the only one that isn’t bothered by this?

Seriously. This makes total sense to me. In fact, it’s what I do anyway.

If I’m at a restaurant and my kid starts freaking out, and that freakout can’t be contained at the table level, then I walk out with her. For a lot of reasons. To take her away from whatever it is that’s making her freak out. To get her attention focused on me. And, amazingly, to make sure that her craziness doesn’t bother anyone else.

Shocking, I know, that a parent could possibly have some sense of responsibility to those around her. Except it’s NOT shocking. Most parents I know would do the same thing. So I guess I am surprised that this restaurant feels the need to state it right there in their menu; “Please take your screaming whirling dervishes away from the glassware”. Because I do it anyway. It’s responsible, and kind to others, and good for your child, and what people just… do.

Don’t you?

Yesterday morning my husband and five-year-old son set out just after 6am for their hockey game. It was going to be exciting, my son had explained, because they’d played this team twice before and split the wins. It would also be exciting because it was finally his turn to play goalie again. And if it hadn’t been the 7am game, I might even have gone to watch.

They were in the dressing room right before the game with the rest of the team. My son was fully dressed in giant goalie pads, skates and sweater. He had his helmet and face mask on and was ready to go. My husband, the coach, was called out of the room for just a moment.

That was when the first violent wave of puke hit my son.

He threw up into his own helmet and face mask. They took off his helmet and he threw up all over his sweater and all over the equipment. He threw up into a garbage can. At least, I told him later, he wasn’t yet on the ice. Hey, you were still shy of the worst imaginable vomit scenario son! Buck up.

I was still in bed when they came home. My husband helped my son throw up again in the washroom before coming up to tell me what had happened. I got up to check on my boy and offer some comfort. And then I went back to bed.

That’s right. I went back to bed.

Doesn’t that sound horrible? Maybe it is horrible. Here’s what I was thinking. My husband was already awake and dealing with this even though he was complaining about feeling tired and sick himself. My brother just had a horrible gastro infection a couple days ago and I thought this could get pretty ugly. My daughter could start puking any moment and so could the baby. Hell, so could I. We needed to do a drugstore run for Pedialyte and I had to make a bunch of calls to cancel the dinner we were supposed to be hosting that night. It was going to be a long day, in other words, and I should probably try to get as much rest as I could while I could.

Anyway, one hungry baby and puke-y husband later, it didn’t really happen. I still get why I tried, but I feel super guilty about it at the same time. Into his mask! My baby!

How do we take care of ourselves and our families when we’re all sick anyway? Any stories? Tips?

…for date nights with their husbands.

I write a marriage column elsewhere (I am in NO WAY an expert – I just share what we have learned/read/done) and one thing I’ve rambled on about over there on many occasions is the need for a regular date night with your spouse. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy (unless you want it to be), but there’s something different about leaving your house, with your kids in the hands of a capable babysitter, that frees you somehow. You don’t need to deal with calls for one more cuddle/pee trip/glass of water and you can just be you. Well, you and him.

My husband and I aim to have a date night every two weeks. Sometimes it’s two weekends in a row, sometimes three weeks can go by between date nights. Sometimes we go out for dinner/Costco/movie, sometimes we go for drinks and a walk on the beach, sometimes we go on a double date with another couple. This past year, with all three kids in school, we sometimes meet for lunch on a work day.

My husband and I keep pretty connected day-to-day. We both help get the kids off to school in the morning, we text during the day and usually call each other at lunch, we hang out in the evenings once the kids are in bed. And yet, if too long goes between date nights out, I get antsy. So does he. That’s how we’re both feeling today as it’s been nearly three weeks since we last went out together. Plus, in addition to our regular crazy lives, we’ve been dealt a few harder issues lately and we haven’t had a break. So, we’ve made plans to drop the kids off at Grandma and Grandpa’s on Saturday evening to play while we hit the local pub for some nachos and drinks. We’ll be there all of an hour and a half, maybe two, but it will be exactly what we need. I can’t wait.

How about you? Do you go on date nights? Date lunches? Date walks? Any kind of date time?

I recently watched an episode of Parenthood, wherein Haddie Braverman suspects that her cousin Amber might be off having fun with her cute, young, politician boss, and goes and tells her own mother, who immediately jumps up and drives half the night to break up the pair of consenting adults before anything, I don’t know, consensual, can happen. She then drags her niece outta there, presumably to the apartment that Amber lives in and pays for on her own, because she’s an adult.

SO much about the way that whole scene played out drove me crazy. For one, Amber, for all of her previous questionable decision making, is an adult, and should therefore be exempt from being dragged out of a hotel room like a drunk 14 year old by her aunt. For another thing, what 17 year-old in the world – Haddie – finds out that her older cousin is going away for the weekend with their cute young boss, and runs to TELL HER MOM ABOUT IT? Especially when that somebody – Haddie – spent half of the previous season lying about being with her older, formerly badass boyfriend.

Nobody likes a tattle-tale, right? Isn’t that what we are supposed to teach our kids? I try to be proactive about it, telling my children, when they come to me with the minor transgressions of others, Worry about your own body.

What I mean by that is, I don’t particularly care that your sister took all the clothes out of her bottom drawer and flung them around the room, because right now that is keeping her busy, allowing me to finish what I’m doing.

And I certainly don’t want them to grow up to spoil each other’s adult lives – Haddie – by telling on their adult cousins when they go away on an otherwise lame business weekend with their cute boss. Worry about your own body, Haddie!

But – there’s a lot of in between here. For instance, in the future,  I do want my 12 year-old daughter to tell on her 14 year-old sister when her 14 year-old sister is doing the dumb sh*t that 14 year-olds will do. And I do want my 10 year-old daughter to tell on her 8 year-old sister if her 8 year-old sister is doing the dumb sh*t that 8 year-olds will do. See what I’m doing here?  I need them to learn to assess a situation and learn how to respond appropriately. Sometimes full disclosure on behalf of the sibling is the right response.

Yes, I’m totally picking and choosing when I want my kids to spill it to me. Petty offenses (she’s flinging clothes), personal business (she’s picking her nose) and normal rites-of-passage (she skipped a class), no. I don’t want my kids to tell on each other. More serious behaviour (she’s stealing clothes), personal harm (she’s smoking) or chronic flaying of the rules (she never goes to class), yes. Tell me. I will even reward you.

But most importantly, and I say this as both a younger and an older sister, I want my girls to stick together. I want them to look out for each other, to trust each other, to count on each other, even if it means that I don’t always get the intel I would want.

Because in the end, I will always haul a 14 year-old’s ass out of a sketchy situation, but by time they’re 19 – HADDIE! – I hope I’ve taught them to trust themselves and each other, make good decisions and worry about their own damn body.

My five-year-old son was sitting at the table yesterday afternoon, class list on hand, filling out his Valentine cards while my three year old was playing in the basement playroom by herself and the baby was napping upstairs in her crib. I was reading the paper with a coffee. How very French of me.

In her new book, Bringing up Bébé, American Pamela Druckerman writes about how French parents use a more laissez-faire approach and have better-behaved kids and more time to themselves as a result. French mothers don’t stress about their pregnancies, aren’t pressured to breastfeed beyond the first few weeks, lose their baby weight quickly and have babies who sleep through the night after a couple months. There’s no such thing as kid food and children are expected to play on their own and interact politely with adults. Quelle surprise!

Hey, it sounds like my parents were French. Much of what is described as an exotic, culturally distinct parenting style sounds like basic, traditional North American child-raising principles to me. (Note that I haven’t actually read the book, but I have read several articles about the book.) Maybe an older person isn’t crazy after all asking if my baby is sleeping through the night.  Perhaps I’m the crazy one for getting up every couple hours with a five-month old.

In fact, I’m becoming more French myself with every kid. My kids all go to bed at the same time and I have my evenings to myself. (Okay, so I spend them working. But I’m only a state-sponsored daycare away from relaxing at night!) I almost never play with my kids at home. We read stories together and talk and laugh. I take them places and I’ll strap on some skates or hop on the back of a toboggan for kicks, but I don’t drive toy cars around or attend more than the occasional pretend tea party. And I certainly don’t spend any time worrying about what my kids “like” when I’m making dinner.

How about you, bad moms? Are we more like the French than Druckerman thinks? How are you teaching your kids independence and scoring more time for yourself in the process?

As you may have gathered from last week’s post, it’s been a hard couple of weeks for me. If you read my personal site, then you know the back-story, and if you haven’t read it I can sum it up: Life has hit us from all sides. The biggest struggle right now has been with my middle child, my youngest son. He’s always been our most sensitive child, and this year has seen him dealing with anxiety. He had a few-day bout of it in the fall, but we worked through it and everything has been fine.

Two weekends ago something snapped, likely due to the fact that we had a power outage and a barfing little sister all at the same time. He, well, he freaked. Especially because this all happened while my husband and I were out at a concert. Thankfully (SO THANKFULLY), the babysitter on duty was their 23-year-old Auntie, and not one of the young teenage girls we often use.

Since then, he’s been worried about things that have happened in the past, and things that have never happened but might possibly happen in the future. He’s worried he might barf/slip on the ice/hurt himself, etc. It’s also come out that a couple of kids on the playground were a little extra rough while playing hockey and soccer and he’s afraid that will happen again. He’s missed a lot of school as he doesn’t want to be away from us and has been constantly clutching his stomach and crying, while saying that his tummy hurts.

It’s been hard.

We’ve spent hours and hours talking to him and reassuring him and trying to get him to focus on the good stuff. We’ve been working with his teacher (She is AMAZING) to get him back to school. We met with our family Doctor (also a family friend) on Tuesday to make sure there was nothing physically wrong, and that helped my son to know that he was not sick, but just worried. We also have an appointment tomorrow with another woman we know who is a child psychologist, and who has given us some good tips over the phone in the meantime.

I may know my kids better than anyone else, but this has been a harsh lesson that I can’t always make it better, no matter how hard I try. He knows how much we love him, and I think he’d be in much rougher shape if that weren’t so concrete in his mind. We saw some improvement yesterday, so there’s hope, but I don’t think we’re out of the woods quite yet. That’s why we’ve called in the troops.

Have you ever had to deal with this (and have any advice)? Do you find it easy or hard to ask for help?

This is, indeed, the Bad Moms Club.

Where every mother branded as a “Bad” mother can find solace and understanding. Because most of the time, when someone is branded as a “bad” mother, it’s just about judgment and finger pointing and people who refuse to take individual lives and choices in to perspective. Most of us “bad” moms aren’t really bad, is our point. Our point is that it takes all kinds of parents to make a world, and let’s all try to get through this together, shall we?

But sometimes, it’s really hard to give somebody the benefit of the doubt.

Like this mom, who has her two daughters compete against each other in pageants and allows them to torment each other about it to the point of tears.

I’m trying here. I’m really trying. But pageant moms, I gotta say, have used up a lot of their goodwill right off the bat, because teaching your child that it’s really important to wear a lot of make-up and smile pretty so that other people can judge your looks and give you prizes based on how pretty you are is massively fucked up in the first place. But OK, I can maybe believe that there are still people who are raising children in a healthy way even if they participate in pageants.

Maybe.

But this one just.. there’s nothing healthy here. These kids are in endless pageants, getting endless judgment on their looks, and it doesn’t even stop at home. They’re in a nonstop, 24/7 competition cycle with each other. And mom thinks it’s just fine because it’ll “toughen them up”.

When I parent, I try to think of the kind of person I’m raising. What she’ll look like in 20 years, inside and out. And I can’t help but think that these two kids are going to believe that looks get you everywhere, and that primping is more important than kindness, and that it doesn’t matter if you hurt the ones you love as long as you win.

I’m sure these children are loved. I’m sure they’re not abused. But I’m also sure that Mom has her priorities all messed up, and these kids are going to grow up with their priorities all messed up too, and that’s sad. And I wish I could sit her down and say, maybe you should…. step away for a bit, and teach your children that not everyone wants to be a model or an actress, and their brains and their souls count for things too and that it’s time to perhaps indulge those things a little more. And to teach them that maybe it’s a good idea to be kinder to your sister, instead of tormenting her or making her cry.

But somehow, I doubt she’d listen.

Did you hear about the Swedish woman who crashed her car while she was breastfeeding her three-week old?

GASP! HOW COULD SHE? THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE! CRIMINAL! LET US ALL GAWK AND POINT AND JUDGE.

It’s true. She’s a 30-year-old mother of three who was driving with two of her children in their car seats, but was trying to breastfeed her newborn when she rear-ended a truck. The car is in bad shape, but everybody else is fine.

I just couldn’t believe this happened in Sweden, really. This is the country where keeping your 4 or 5 year old rear-facing is the norm, after all. (And many parents will keep their kids rear-facing even longer.) This is the country where toddlers wear special GPS vests while at daycare. This is the country that gave us Ikea! So, of course, the Swedish authorities are pressing charges. Of course.

Let me go on the record here and state that I do not approve of trying to breastfeed a baby while driving a car. All infants and children should be safely secured in their car seats while the car is moving. If you need to feed or comfort your child, you should pull over and safely park your car.

But I can imagine why she did it. I have two kids and a baby, and I know that sometimes you just need to go. There are time constraints in life that will not allow for last minute bathroom breaks and diaper blow outs and temper tantrums. They won’t even allow for time to feed a hungry baby. Or, sometimes, you have a baby that cries a lot, especially, when you strap that little baby in a car seat. And sometimes you can’t take the crying any more and you just want to comfort your newborn baby above all else.

What this woman did was reckless and irresponsible and dangerous. But was it criminal? Is there anything to be gained from pressing charges against her? Is she a repeat offender? A serial nursing-driver? Is there a rash of suckling and steering in Sweden? Should we expect copy-cat imitators? Or isn’t it more likely that she is already horrified by what has happened and grateful that nobody was hurt?

What do you think? Is this mom so bad she’s criminal? Or is learning her lesson the hard way punishment enough?

photo source anutkak43 on flickr

It’s been a rough couple of weeks at my house. The second half of January saw my husband and I being hit from all sides emotionally, professionally, and physically. I usually muster up the enthusiasm to bounce back up and blaze on, but for the first time in my life, I haven’t had it in me.

While watching my eldest child play basketball after school, my youngest child complained that she wanted a snack.

Her: I’m hungry!

Me: Well, I’m sad.

Her: Why?!?

Me: Because I had a rough day.

She teared up (she has a big heart, that girl of mine) and I wiped her eyes and told her not to worry. I get sad, just as she gets sad, but we’re going to be fine. We always are.

I don’t share the nitty gritty adult stuff that worries my husband and I (work, money, extended-family relations, etc.) but I think my kids need to know that I get sad sometimes too. I also get angry and I say I’m sorry. I get frustrated (and say I’m sorry). If I walked around with a smile on my face all day, every day, how would I teach them that emotions are normal? How would I teach them how to verbalize their feelings? How would I teach them that parents make mistakes, just like they make mistakes, just like everyone else on the planet makes mistakes?

I don’t know how else to teach them, other than by showing them that I am human, too. They’re going to figure it out eventually; I’d rather they heard it from me first.

Do you share how you’re feeling with your kids?

img Give Mom a Hug source

The house looks like someone picked it up and shook it. Deadline after deadline whizzes by my head, each one like a nuclear powered dragonfly armed with missiles. Emails sit unopened, telltale coffee rings adorn the countertop from when I frantically guzzled my almost-completely-cold coffee in one gulp just to get the caffeine in to my system. The single page of paper I’ve been using to frantically scribble notes to myself all day now looks like heiroglyphics, filled with scratchy and completely indecipherable writing. And just now, at 10 pm, I realized I completely forgot to brush my hair today. Or my teeth.

Welcome to “Husband Is Out Of Town, Day Two Of Five.”

I’ve seen a lot of flack around the internet lately from people who object to those of us who are normally partnered making a fuss about being a temporarily single parent. Even using that phrase – “temporarily single parent” – can, and has, gotten the knickers of many in to very significant knots. Apparently using the phrase “single parent” when you have a partner is using the wrong words, because I’m not technically single. Fair enough, but I don’t know what else to call it, and I’m too goddamn tired to think about it too much.

There’s too much angst around it. And I don’t get it. It’s not the Suffering Olympics, people.

It’s obvious that I’m not facing many of the same challenges a fully single parent does: for one, I have a very specific end date to my single-parenting.  But that doesn’t mean that while I’m a single parent, it isn’t a really hard thing to do. Being home solo with a sick and inconsolable and up all night badger and trying to organize everything like doctor visits and prescription pickups and whatever in order to get that sick badger better at the same time as trying to do everything I need to do as an adult and a grownup is hard, y’all. And if I say it’s hard, and if I say that flying solo this week is kicking my ass, it doesn’t mean I’m comparing myself wholesale to an actual single, unpartnered, parents by themselves all the time, never has any cavalry flying home to relieve them parent. You guys kick ass, and you rock, and you are awesome, and I am not pretending to be you. Seriously, people: I’m not comparing myself to anyone at all except to, well, me, me when my husband is home and the shit is not hitting the fan 24 hours a day and I actually feel like things are marginally under control around here. Right now they are not under control, not by a long shot, and part of that is the fact that this week, when the bottom is falling out of things, there’s nobody to clean the shit off the fan except for me. And that is a difficult place to be.

Right now is hard. A lot harder than a normal week.  And, swear to betsy: all I’m asking for when I say that is for you to say, geesh, dude, I bet. Let’s grab a drink when you have some free time!

I mean, you could say that any day, but you know what I mean.

So let’s lay off each other. If someone’s having a hard week, let them have a hard week without making them feel even worse about using the wrong words. And if you’re having a hard week: My sympathies. Let me know when to show up with a bottle of something only procurable in licensed establishments. Cause, I’ve been there.