mamaTRUE: parenting as practice

Read These Books About Manners

Sonya Fehér — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:06:51 +0000

One of the debates I’ve heard (and engaged in) with other moms is about teaching manners. I grew up calling my friends’ parents by their first names, so when I moved to Texas and everyone said, “Ma’am” and “Sir,” I didn’t like it. It felt too formal, authoritarian, and didn’t jive at all with my belief that no one is superior or deserving of respect just because of age. You need to be nice to people, respectful to everyone, no big power imbalance.

I do believe in “please” and thank you” however. The world is a softer place when you observe the social niceties.

When Cavanaugh was two, I found What Do You Say, Dear? amidst books inherited from my childhood. It seems unlikely that it would get published today because we don’t typically joke about kids being threatened with violence (dragons, dinosaurs, guns), but it’s hilarious. Each vignette offers a scenario in which one must practice one’s manners e.g. “You are at a wedding party because you are the bride. You have a fine husband and an enormous wedding cake, and you are going to live happily ever after, only first you are very, very hungry. / What do you say, dear? / ‘Would you please pass the cake?’”

Just after we started reading What Do You Say, Dear? Cavanaugh said “please” for the first time (and we didn’t even have cake).

We’re reading it again, because he’s five and bossing me around a lot, trying to figure out what is his to control, what he’s responsible for, and what I need to help with. Making him food and reading him bedtime stories are my territory, but he can put his own clothes in the hamper and carry his glass of water up to the bedroom. Even when he’s asking me to do something that he couldn’t do himself, I appreciate being asked nicely.

What Do You Say, Dear? is helping teach him–in a totally hilarious manner. What do you say when you run your plane through someone’s roof? Same thing you say when you accidentally break your friend’s toy: “I’m sorry.” What do you say when the queen has served you a spaghetti appetizer, spaghetti salad, spaghetti dinner, and you’re too full for spaghetti dessert? Same thing you say when you’re done eating dinner with your family: “May I please be excused?”

We’re also reading Mind Your Manners, a Classic Winnie the Pooh knock-off (totally not by A.A. Milne). Pooh goes to a picnic hosted by Christopher Robin and is so excited that he forgets to say “hallo,” “please pass the honey,” or anything else polite. He reaches in front of Eeyore, drinks milk while Tigger cleans up the flowers he knocked over, and doesn’t say “thank you” or even “good-bye.”

Cavanaugh often neglects to say good-bye when people are leaving, even after they’ve said it to him. He got presents for his birthday or Christmas and knows to say, “Thank you,” but many times didn’t. Balancing the totally over-the-top examples from What Do You Say, Dear? with the much more relatable scenarios in Mind Your Manners means I’m not giving lectures or constantly reminding Cavanaugh to mind his manners.

He laughs at the idea of saying, “How do you do?” to a baby elephant and is more likely to remember to say, “hi” when our friends arrive. I’m loving these books, even the gun page (though I totally understand that some parents might skip it). Bad Nose Bill asks, “Would you like me to shoot a hole in your head?”

What do you say, dear?

“No, thank you” of course!

One Drawer at a Time

Sonya Fehér — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:13:15 +0000

I don’t have $20,000 to replace my kitchen cabinets but I wanted a spice drawer. I want a lot of things actually. And I’ve been finding a way to get many of them, including a spice drawer for less than $15. Can I tell you how people’s eyes light up when I tell them I just got a spice drawer? It’s like I won the lottery, a very small one, but still….

Though there are all sorts of retrofit cabinet options for folks who want a more organized kitchen, most of them don’t even fit the dimensions of my cabinets. My drawers don’t pull out all the way. Drilling even small screw holes into them is asking for trouble.

But I wanted to stop walking the almost 20 feet from the counter where I prep food into the pantry where the spice racks hung on the wall. The ugly yellow laminate that has been on my counters since the house was built in 1975, oh so inconveniently run all the wall up the wall to the hanging cabinets. Hanging the spice racks on the kitchen walls wouldn’t work.

Putting spice racks on the inside of the cabinet door, a great option for some folks would mean drilling into 35+ year old fake wood that might crumble, or not hold the weight, or need wood glue reinforcement and maybe patching and painting.

I didn’t want getting a spice drawer to be hard or expensive. And I didn’t want to have to buy new spice jars and label them so that everything would be uniform to fit into a spice drawer or rack. I wanted to use my spices as they were and not have a whole bunch of baggies of extra spice somewhere because they didn’t fit into my pretty spice bottles. I looked on Amazon, at Lowe’s and Home Depot, at the Container Store, and finally found the perfect spice drawer inserts at IKEA for $3.99. I measured my drawers and figured out I needed three of them, which would give me a couple of inches for the pepper can, the almond extract jar, the cinnamon sticks that weren’t in a jar, etc.

If you decide to do this, don’t forget to measure the length of your drawers to make sure the inserts will fit in. Cutting them to fit would turn this into the hard kitchen project category. I would not recommend it..

So for $11.97 plus tax, I have a spice drawer right next to my stove-top. It’s been life-changing. No, I’m not exaggerating. My old funky 70s kitchen functions better. Cooking is easier and faster. I don’t have to make multiple trips into my pantry, each one of which risks that I will be interrupted by my sweet son needing something or wanting some attention.

I organized the spices in groups likely to be used together: baking spices, peppers, spices for Mexican food, etc. That drawer is one of my favorite parts of the kitchen now.

And it’s just the first drawer. I’m taking that kitchen on one drawer at a time, to get the most that I can from with it, with the money and the space that I have.

Get Along Days

Sonya Fehér — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:46:50 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with our kids all of the time? Sometimes I want to tell my son, “I am ready to miss you now.”

What I’ve observed in my household and amongst my friends is that there are ages when some parents and kids shine, and others that are dull, for one party or another.

In one family I know, the dad was great with the babies. They slept a lot, couldn’t talk yet, and he could text, compute, and be on the phone while with them. Once they were toddlers, they interrupted his work. His wife, on the other hand, wasn’t so into the babies. They couldn’t do art projects or play games yet. They weren’t particularly engaging. Once out of infancy, however, she had a lot of fun with the kids.

Parenting through various stages of development feels similar to workplace advancement. You’re promoted out of the field and into a supervisory positions because you’re so good at your jobs. Only, the new duties don’t require the old skill set. It would be great if we were good at every age, but parenting a one-year old requires entirely different abilities than parenting a five-year old, or a teenager.

And somehow, when my son turned five, he entered puberty. He learned how to roll his eyes. He was able to speak in a sarcastic tone and ask rhetorical questions. He even puts his hands on his hips as if to say What did you just ask me to do?

It has not been my best parenting age. Parenting was much easier for me when he was an infant, and one, and two. He didn’t have colic or reflux or any food sensitivities. He barely stirred when he needed to breastfeed in the night, then he would nurse for five to ten minutes and go back to sleep. He was a good communicator and meeting his needs felt natural to me. It’s harder, now that he’s five, to remember how little he still is, especially when he can put on his own shirt but wants me to do it anyway, when he can use words like “assume” and “diversion.”

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike parenting him now, or even feel like I’m a bad parent. I just get tired. Parenting him at this age isn’t coming as naturally to me. I get ready to miss him, in the hopes that a few hours at school or a sleepover at his dad’s will give me the opportunity to look at him with new appreciation.

I don’t know if this is a developmental phase, if it started with turning five, or weeks of two sleepovers at his dad’s, or the holidays (with more sugar and gifts as his birthday was followed by Christmas), or his dad moving into a new house, or learning new skills, developing neurological pathways I can’t see, or something else I have yet to notice or would never think to relate to this.

That’s the other thing about parenting—besides the ever-evolving job description—we don’t actually know what’s happening with these little beings. I mean we can observe the behavior, like how he suddenly won’t turn on the bathroom light even though he’s been turning it on by himself for over a year now. But why won’t he? Is it because he’s afraid of the dark, as he says (even though he didn’t used to be afraid of the dark)? Because he observed a cockroach outside said bathroom one time when he had to poop? Because of something at school, at his dad’s house, in a book, in a video, or maybe it’s digression that will be followed by a developmental leap?

We parents just get to observe and do our best. When he asks me to turn on the bathroom light because he “needs to pee really badly,” and I want him to do it himself because he can and I’m lying on the couch with a flu he generously shared with me, I get up because his little face is scrunched up near tears because he can’t, for whatever reason, turn the bathroom light on himself right now. He needs me to do it.

I get tired of this. Especially as a single mom. I am ready for him to do the things he can. So when he suddenly refuses to put on his own shirt, or he says, “Why did you give me the plate?” when I hand him his breakfast to take to the table on his own, I don’t feel like we’re getting along. I don’t want to fight all the time. I want it to be easier.

The easy days are what I call the Get Along Days. We hadn’t seen them in a few months, and I am slightly afraid to jinx myself by writing this here now, but we have had a week of Get Along Days. You know the ones, when your kids like you and you like them, when you say, “Hey do you want to_____?” and they actually do, whether it’s an arts and crafts activity, a playdate, or going to the grocery store. These are in direct contrast to the I Want to Miss You Days, which include your child refusing to eat chocolate because they will refuse to do anything you suggest, or when you or they or both of you wake up grumpy and it just gets worse from there.

Today, I remembered I hadn’t given Cavanaugh his vitamins as we were about to get in the car for school. I asked if he wanted to come with me to get them with me or wait for me, and he responded, “When I have a choice, I’m always going to choose with you.”

I said, “Because you like me?”

“Because I love you.”

That is a Get Along Day. I’ve been giving him high fives at night, saying, “We got along all day today. I really like it when we get along.”

Turns out he does too, even though he sometimes needs us not to. He needs to push back, to build those independence muscles for kindergarten next year, to test how I’ll react, to assure himself of my love, to feel for the boundaries, or something else …. Whatever purpose those harder days serve, I still love love love the Get Along Days.

Are there ages that have been easier for you to deal with as a parent? More challenging?

Weaning in Context of AP Principles

Sonya Fehér — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:54:13 +0000

Three years ago, I nightweaned my son. A little over a year after that, he weaned himself completely. In order to get ready for any of that, I volunteered to lead a meeting on weaning for our local chapter of Attachment Parenting International. The distance of teaching on the topic helped keep me from getting too emotional thinking about my son’s and my breastfeeding relationship coming to an end.

Many of the AP mamas I know plan on child-led weaning, but as their kids move further into toddlerhood, they experience mixed feelings about nursing and then guilt about wanting to wean. So I considered weaning in relation to the Eight Principles of API

Prepare for Parenting: Preparing for weaning includes considering goals for nursing plus different types of and strategies for weaning. I created a list of weaning resources I hope will help with this.
Feed with Love and Respect: If mama is feeling exhausted, angry, or impatient while nursing, even if she doesn’t voice those feelings to her child, she is not respecting her own needs, nor is the child getting a clear loving message during feeding.
Respond with Sensitivity: Being able to meet child’s needs and respond to child’s feelings with sensitivity doesn’t require breastfeeding.
Use Nurturing Touch: Many of the mamas I know who have weaned are experiencing even more cuddles with their kids. Moms are being able to relax because they’re not anticipating being asked for milk or having their shirt pulled up at any moment. The children receive other forms of touch like hugging, massage, holding hands, having their backs drawn on, sitting on parents’ laps, and fun play like airplane, tickling, and gentle wrestling.
Ensure Safe Sleep, Physically and Emotionally: At some point, children benefit physically from sleeping through the night (and mamas really appreciate it). Emotionally, sleep is safer if moms don’t go to bed dreading the next time they’re going to be woken up, which results in children getting to experience more emotional safety too.
Provide Consistent and Loving Care: If one’s feelings about nursing range from loving it to wishing it would end, the message to the child may not be consistent. “Particularly if nursing is for comfort, the emotional quality of the exchange is of great importance. …you are protecting your child from the mixed messages and resentment that can build up when you say yes, but really mean no.” Adventures in Tandem Nursing, p. 175.
Practice Positive Discipline: Setting loving limits for nursing can help keep the relationship rewarding. Toddler nursing doesn’t need to be on-demand all the time. Teaching children nursing manners and limiting nursing can make breastfeeding a time that is calm, sweet, and nurturing for both mother and child.
Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life: Balance between meeting children’s and parents needs can be one of the greatest challenges of AP. Whether weaning is partial or complete, the process of being able to exercise control over the breastfeeding relationship, rather than feeling at the mercy of one’s child, goes a long way towards helping familes achieve balance.

Weaning can feel like a loss or wonderful milestone depending upon how it’s approached. As Dr. Sears says, “If you resent it, change it.” Changing it doesn’t necessarily have to mean ending it. Setting some limits may allow a breastfeeding relationship to continue for months or even years longer.

65+ Fun Activities with Kids

Sonya Fehér — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:13:30 +0000

A friend of mine sent an email out to a few mama buddies asking for activity suggestions for the winter break from school. Here’s the thing, kids who have been in school get used to a certain level of stimulation and/or structure. Then they’re home, and they want attention, and they want stuff to do. If there’s more than one kid in the house, maybe they’re fighting over attention or what they want to do. It can be exactly the opposite of a holiday.

So, the mamas, including me, responded with lists of stuff they do for fun at their houses. And they agreed that I could share their wonderful activity suggestions with you. I share them with you in the hopes that we can all keep each other from losing our marbles or our cool:

Play marbles. Put a yarn or string in a circle on the floor with all the marbles inside. Use boulder/shooter (big marble so kids don’t have to flick but can roll) to knock little marbles out of the circle. Take turns until all marbles are knocked out of the circle.
Put 8 or so familiar items (comb, toothbrush, shoelace) in a bag and blindfold or have child guess what they feel. Or use the What’s in the Cat’s Hat? game where you put stuff in the hat and have to use cards to guess what it is.
Put several sized bottles/jars and lids in a box and have child find the correct ones.
Lacing shoe: pulled the shoelace out of my Converse this a.m. and Isa sat and put it back through.
Small basket of textured fabrics (silk, cotton, corduroy, terry cloth): present child w/ three pairs of fabrics with the greatest contrast in texture. Mix them and ask her to pair by feeling. Can add more fabrics–good if you have fabric stash.
Make Reindeer food: Bird seed, dry oatmeal and glitter (the big kind). You go out late on Christmas eve and sprinkle it in the yard so the Reindeer can have a snack while Santa delivers the presents…the glitter is so they can find the food.
Make Gloop by mixing cornstarch and water. It turns into different textures depending on how you play with it. We use it in the bathtub (with clothes on; Gloop on naked body makes for difficult clean-up) or put plastic shower curtain liner on kitchen floor.
Glue box: construction paper, feathers, metal confetti, pom poms, cut up tissue paper, glitter, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, yarn, felt, and glue sticks.
Make sock puppets then have a puppet show. Use all the stuff in glue box. We have more fun if he tells me to glue and I use glue gun because fabric/craft glue takes too long to dry.
Listen to audiobook together. This fosters great parallel “play.” Cavanaugh will play LEGOs while I get something done on computer, in kitchen, etc. We stop and talk about the story then go back to what we’re doing.
Cookie cutters: 1) With cookies (decorate with sprinkles, jimmies, powered sugar, icing, etc), 2) Salt-dough ornaments (bake and dry takes awhile so this might be a two-day project). Decorate with markers or tempera paint (not too much or dough will get soggy) and glitter, or 3) Playdoh.
Bake/make something in kitchen. Cavanaugh loves to measure out ingredients. He also loves the hand mixer (with help holding).
Painting: finger paints, watercolors, tempera paint on easel
Marble painting: Materials: construction paper cut into shapes, marbles, tempera paints, small bowls, spoons, pans (8×8, 9×9, anything with sides). Use different pan and bowl for each color of paint. Put watered down tempera paint and 2-4 marbles into each bowl. Put construction paper into pan. Spoon marbles and a bit of paint into the pan. Roll marbles around pan and over shape. Makes cool paint designs on the construction paper. Can move shape into more pans and use marbles/paint with different colors.
Draw on white paper with white crayon, then paint over it with watercolors to see the crayon drawings.
Paint w/ cork, small painting rollers (very popular here), sponges, etc. (I just bought a cheap table cloth which has a plastic-y side. I use big binder clips to pin to dining room table and then put out different things for a project.)
Let it Snow: Make snow angels using paper out of your paper shredder. Make paper snowflakes, snowmen out of cotton balls.
Make a playlist of favorite songs and learn the lyrics so you can sing together.
Trace your child or have her trace you on a big sheet of paper taped to the floor. Then, color/paint/etc.
Tape a big piece of paper to the floor and decorate with markers, crayon, watercolor, stamps, stickers, etc. you can use it as wrapping paper when you are done.
Have child pour water & transfer w/ eye dropper or baster: I use little creamers and small salt shaker bottles from thrift store. Put tray underneath. We do this w/ color outside.
Make granola.
Collage w/ recycled bits of magazine, felt, ribbon, paper, etc. (I may cut out a shape–tree, flower, fish– from paper or recycled cereal box, etc. and Isa glues on bits of the above.)
Cut paper — Isa loves to just cut paper /old magazines w/ scissors.
Clean out/rearrange a drawer.
Thread beads using a plastic needle with yarn in it.
Needlepoint w/ the plastic grid thing (don’t know what it’s called), burlap, or the stuff w/ the large squares that goes under carpet–sorry, writing this pre-coffee. I use a blunt plastic yarn needle and wool.
Wash all the veggies and fruit: I give Isa a squirt bottle w/ vinegar and water and she washes them all.
Jump on the bed (holding my hand).
Turn all her little chairs and stools on the side to make a train. She puts all her stuffed animals in and they “ride” around.
Use ideas from the Frugal Family Fun blog.
Scrub the kitchen floor. Set out a bowl or two of warm soapy water and some rags. At the end, you will have to use another towel to dry the whole thing, but they can actually get it semi-clean plus be entertained for half an hour.
Bowls/trays with dry beans, lentils or the like with a bunch of scoops. This is almost more messy than it is worth, but sweeps up pretty easily.
Spray bottles with water plus rags to wash the windows.
Finger crochet.
Make tents with a big sheet and the couch/chairs, etc.
Play pick-up sticks.
Move something to a different spot- like I will bring the dress up box into the living room, even though they could dress up at any time, and suddenly they are totally into dressing up together.
Random middle of the day bath can be fun. Crazy hairstyles and looking the mirror while in bath, also fun.
Make lists of things that they want to do sometime, put it on the fridge.
Write letters to grandparents and friends.
Drink cocoa by the tree.
Have a picnic by the tree.
Have a tea party.
Bake cheesy bread together.
Stick cloves in oranges.
Make a garland with twine or shoe laces and pasta with big holes.
Pipe cleaner work: twisting, putting into cheese shaker, make chains, thread beads onto it for bracelet.
Decorate the tree: get part of the tree where child can take the decorations off and put them on again.
Line up dominoes to make a long line, circle, snake, etc. Show her how to knock them down.
Dance party.
Slide in socks on the floor.
Do hair.
Paint your kid’s nails.
Come up with activities and outings related to a theme. You can find themes with suggestions and print basic preschool curriculum packets.
Play cards. We especially like I Spy Go Fish.
Play board games (with 4+ year-olds): Pictureka, Trouble, Blokus.
Put shaving cream into a baking pan and drop food coloring or Kool-aid powder into into. Kids can “paint” in the pan.
Take pictures or videos (or pull out ones you’ve taken in the past) and let your child see him/herself. Or look through photo albums from when you were a kid. Or give your kid the camera and see the world through his/her eyes.
Use a Chat Pack or other conversation starter to tell stories. We do this one at breakfast. Usually I’m the one telling the stories, but I end up telling my son stories about myself he never would have heard. He loves it! “Mama, tell the one again about what you made in the kitchen,” was repeated in our house for weeks after I told him about trying to make up a recipe that ended up as scrambled coffee cake pancake mush.
Play jacks. You can bounce the ball and catch it while child does onesies, twosies, etc.
Play Frog Hoppers. It’s like Tiddly Winks for little hands.
Go to the library. Come home, cuddle up, and read.
Count things: letters in family members’ names, how many slices in the clementine you’re eating for snack, etc.
Do a puzzle.

We’d love more suggestions! Please add them to comments.

Image by galifardeu