Childrenfreude. If Your Kids are Acting Up, Come Sit by Me

Childrenfreude: the secret pleasure of watching bad kids happen to good parents.

When I first read about this concept many months ago, I was enthralled. I'll admit it, I LOVE seeing other people's kids misbehave. Not because I want to gloat over my superior parenting skills. No, just the opposite -- it makes me feel so much less alone with my own parenting skills, which at times feel inadequate. As I've mentioned before, I have "those" kids. You know the types, the ones who are always up to something and into everything.

I feel like I spend a good deal of time worrying that my kids aren't as well-behaved as everyone else's children are, and that somehow I'm a less effective mother than my counterparts. So, when I see someone else's darling throwing a temper tantrum, or having a hard time sharing their toys, it's all I can do to refrain from busting out in a happy dance right then and there. Maybe I'm not such an ineffectual disciplinarian. Maybe these antics are normal. Maybe we'll all be okay after all.

Not too long ago, our family was at a child's birthday party. This particular kid achieves angel-child status about 99% of the time. However, on this day, he was having a hard time sharing. My husband and I nearly high-fived each other, witnessing his "real kid" antics. When his mom apologized to us for his unwillingness to share, I blurted out, "Are you kidding me?! That was the best thing I've seen in ages. It's always my kids who are struggling to share or use only gentle touches. I feel so much better now."

Then, this morning I was at Target with my little guy. Long before I saw it, I heard a vicious temper tantrum coming our way. You know the kind, lots of tears, snot and screaming. Again, I loved it. Hooray! My kids aren't the only ones to garner looks from strangers while running errands. The look on the mom's face was one I'd worn many times before -- embarrassment, exhaustion and a fierce determination to get the hell outta dodge as quickly as possible. I gave her a look of understanding and solidarity. A smile that said, "I've been there. I get it. Go you!"

But then, I got worried. What if she misinterpreted my smile? What if she thought it was a smug-mum judgy smile? What if it somehow made her feel worse? I realized that we moms need a secret hand signal that we can use to encourage each other in such times of need and public humiliation. A flash of empowerment and understanding, easily recognized and understood by all. I'm thinking something along the lines of the Black Power raised fist that was popular back in the 70's.

Let's face it, being a mom can be rough and downright humiliating sometimes. Sometimes, when our kids are at their worst, our friends and family aren't there to tell us it'll be alright. We need other moms, moms who may not know us to say, "Go on with your bad self, fellow mom. I've been there too. I get it. Hold your head high with pride cuz you're doing the best you can." Any ideas for a mom-empowerment hand signal we can claim for our own? (Because, as is evidenced by the picture above, me in my polka dot jammies with no bra and no make-up at 10:00 at night is not the look of empowerment we moms should be aiming for)

Potty-Training: Part Deux

"No! Poo poo in my diapa. You change my diapa, mom!" When you put it that way, kid -- I don't blame you. You've got yourself a pretty good little system going there. You let it out whenever and wherever it suits you. You don't need to stop playing with 'ol Thomas the Tank Engine in order to take a dump, a slight pause for concentration and you're back in business. I, on the other hand, am so ready to retire the Diaper Genie.

Why, oh why, did I think potty-training would be easier the second time around?! I thought that this go-round, as a more experienced mom, I'd really have my shit together, so to speak... Not so. New kid, new set of psychology in play. While stickers, big girl underpants and calls to Grandma to brag about her successes, were highly motivating factors for my daughter, my son is not swayed in the least by any of these measures. He could care less if Buzz Lightyear adorns his little tushie, he's a loud, proud, diaper-wearing dude.

He also does not care if he's sitting in wet underpants. He does not find that to be the least bit uncomfortable. On the one occasion we experimented with the big boy underpants, he informed me that he'd gone pee pee in his diapers (several minutes after the fact...). When I reminded him that he wasn't wearing diapers, he was wearing big boy underpants, he just shrugged. While I've heard that many kids don't want to pee pee on Elmo, or Buzz or any other favored cartoon character, my little guy has no such qualms. If Buzz won't take his crap, Woody can be his new favorite Toy Story guy...

All of these signs strongly tell me he's not ready yet. However, the fact that he fairly regularly informs me when movement is either in play or imminent, allows that little voice in the back of my mind to say "If he knows what's happening, it's time." I don't want a prolonged battle but I also don't want to be passive about it all and just let it slide out of convenience. With my daughter, I put a lot of effort into the process. We stayed home and really worked on it. We had charts and stickers and a lot of discussion about the topic.

It feels like just yesterday I was going through this with her. This is the downside to having your kids close together. You don't get a chance to recover from the emotional trauma of potty-training. Not to mention the chance to re-stock all of your cleaning supplies. When my son was about 18 months old, he showed a bit interest in the potty and wanted to go. While I went along with it, a big part of me was inwardly groaning, not ready to go through the process quite yet. He lost interest after a couple of weeks and has yet to regain it. Now, I worry that my lack of interest back then is to blame for his lack of interest now. Am I just being a lazy mom? Is that why I'm not making a full-hearted effort on this front? Or, am I just following his cues?

Time to Mommify the Mommymobile

“Is that your car, there?”

“Yeeaahh…”

“Oh, I always wondered who drove that thing. It sounds like a tank going up the street.”

This latest comment from a neighbor about my vehicle’s extraordinary auditory output has convinced me that it is, indeed, time to Mommify the Mommymobile.

Yes, that would be me -- The suburban, toddler-toting, NPR-listening mama, driving the souped-up SUV. How did this extra-loud Durango with the blinged-rims come to be mine, you ask? Well, it’s simple. I hate car-shopping and am not that interested in cars even when they come home. So, when it was time for us to replace my mommymobile, I told my husband to go out and buy a new car. Being a bit of a car-lover, he went out and did just that.

After much research, he finally, he found exactly what we were looking for. It had everything on his checklist (it’s a long list and I’m not sure I ever fully understood what all was on it) and everything on my checklist (1- must easily accommodate a double-stroller, 2- must be cheaper than our last vehicle).

“Are you sure you don’t want to test-drive it honey? Or at least see it before we buy it?” He asked me. No, no I did not. He warned me that the previous owners had done something to the exhaust so it was a bit loud and the rims were a bit “blingy,” so was I sure I didn’t want to at least look at it first? No, thank you.

When asked to describe the previous owners, he told me the woman was in her 40’s and looked like a blonde Posh Spice. They live in a nice, upscale neighborhood, so I thought – how loud can it be? An upper-middle class suburban woman isn’t going to be driving around anything too loud, right? Wrong.

Now I am the suburban woman driving around a really loud car. I’m told that every kid on our block knows when I’m coming home, long before my car comes into view. They hear me roaring (slowly) down our quiet, street and say “Dana’s home!” On the plus side, this is a bit of a safety feature, given that the kids on our block play in the street a lot.

My husband told me I’d get used to the noise, and about six months later, I largely have. As long as I don’t attempt to have conversations while on the freeway or when going uphill (did I mention we live on a mountain?), it’s really not so bad. I do worry a bit about waking the kids up from their naps if I ever leave during naptime, but that’s pretty rare.

However, this latest comment is making me think that it actually is time to undo whatever was done to that darn exhaust in the first place. Given that my husband likes the sound and I dislike spending time and money at a mechanic’s almost as much as I dislike car-shopping, it could be awhile before anything happens to “mommify” my mommymobile though…

Why Do We Have to Shop for Winter Clothes in August?

It was 77 degrees out, and I was scouring the internet for snowsuits for my kids. Obtaining inclement-weather apparel for my children was not what I wanted to be thinking about at the end of September, but retailers have dictated that I must. For, if I wait until November again, like I did the first winter I had a child, I'll be screwed.

I'm not the first to say this and it's unlikely that I'll be the last, but please, retailers of America -- align your selling schedules to coincide with the calendar and weather patterns the rest of us live by. I'm sick of looking for bathing suits in February and snowsuits in August. I have empathy for anyone who hasn't purchased their kids Halloween costumes yet, as it's slim-pickings out there, more than a month before the big day. Before I had kids, I found this "season ahead of reality" practice slightly annoying. With kids, it's beyond frustrating. I hate trying to predict shoe and garment sizes months in advance. I hate the panicky feeling, knowing that if their matching Christmas jammies aren't purchased by mid-September, they'll be wearing Valentine's Day or St. Patrick's Day jammies to bed on Christmas Eve. I wish my kids' growth schedules perfectly aligned with whatever bizarro-world retail calendar stores live by, but they don't.

One beef down, one more to go -- Things that shouldn't be gender-specific, but are.

Last year, watching my little guy in his affordable, Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man snowsuit, tumbling and barely able to walk because of his bulk, I vowed to invest in better winter gear the next time around. So, I started pricing things out. Yes, the better snowsuits are close to twice the price of what I'd been paying, but, if I got gender-neutral ones, my daughter could use it, then my son the following year. Snow boots and suits aren't something kids will wear out and are ideal candidates for hand-me-downs.

I explained my theory to my husband, who agreed (although, he probably would have agreed to just about anything, so I'd shut up about snow gear while we were out on our boat on a warm summer's afternoon...). The more I got to looking though, the harder I realized it would be to find gender-neutral snow clothes. I finally found one that, though slightly boyish, would work. I showed it to my husband, telling him it was the only one I'd found that was neither pink nor blue. "They're on to you," he said. "They know you're trying to cheap out and use the same snowsuit twice, so they intentionally make them in only pink or blue."

He's right, of course. As the mother of both a girl and a boy, I've found this to be true so much along the way. Things that have no business being gender-specific are nearly impossible to find in gender-neutral color-palettes. Bikes. For toddlers, there are Princess bikes and Lightning McQueen bikes. Luckily, my daughter likes Cars, so that worked. But, I couldn't help but wonder -- why couldn't there be a plain, yellow bike? Aside from the push to pigeon-hole kids into liking only "girlie" or "boy" things, this is ridiculously (and needlessly) expensive for us parents. A while back, a study came out saying that parents who had two girls were the happiest parents. I've figured out why, they know they're going to get their money's worth out of all those Princess bikes and pink, flowered snowsuits that they have to buy. As a parent who has both a girl and a boy, I beg of you -- please start making things that my kids can share.

Going Back to School

I started school again this week. Preschool to be exact. Yes, so it's technically my three year old daughter who started school, but since she's attending a co-op preschool, in many ways, I'm starting preschool too. Can I just say -- I am so not ready for this!! How is it that my baby is already such a big girl that she's going to preschool? I can't handle it.

The separation anxiety has been particularly difficult. On me. Not her. She's fine. Yesterday was the first time we did the "drop-off," and seeing how well she handled it and how excited she was to go play and be at school made me simultaneously so proud and so sad. The proud mama part of me just wanted to pat myself on the back for raising a secure and confident little girl who was excited about learning and school because I'd been telling her how fun and "big kid" it is to go to school. The needy mama part of me had a hard time with her acceptance and happiness and wanted to cry and say, "Don't you understand? This is terrible. We won't be together all day every day anymore. Mama doesn't get to be there with you and for you every second of every day. This is awful -- and you should probably cry and cling to my legs." Luckily, proud mama won out and I conducted myself rather admirably (if I do say so myself).

Adding to my anxiety was all of the "safety training" us co-op parents had to endure. Since I'll be working in the classroom two to three times per month, I, along with the other working parents got a bit of training. Learning where the cleaning supplies are and how to walk a group of three-year-olds to the playground I could handle. I even kinda liked checking out the red apron I'd be wearing on my work days. However, when it was time to review fire drill procedures and earthquake and lockdown procedures, I nearly lost it. One of my greatest fears is being separated from my kids during a disaster like that and spending an hour discussing those, almost sent me over the edge. It took every ounce of willpower I possess not to run out of there yelling, "Screw this! We're homeschooling through college. Phone tree in case of emergency my ass! My kid will always be in my visual line of sight."

So, clearly I'm not handling all of this too well. Yes, I'm excited for both of us to make new friends through the co-op and am happy to get the opportunity to share this experience with her. But, these signs that the babies are growing up, don't usually sit too well with me.

The other person who's having a tough time with all of this preschool nonsense is my son. At two, he relies on his older sister for pretty much everything. She is his world and his source of entertainment. She's his protector and his buddy. Having her gone has been really difficult for him. The past couple of weeks have been full of comments that break my heart. Comments like, "I want a best friend too, mom," when he sees her playing with friends -- and comments like, "I want to go to preschool too." Yesterday, about an hour and a half into her two hour school session, he and I were both ready to go spring her from her education prison. As an adult, I managed to limit my actions to checking my cell phone every three minutes to see if it was time yet. As a toddler, his impulse controls are more limited and he kept running to the car, yelling "Preschool! I want to go to preschool!" I hear ya buddy, I really do.

Next week, he and I are signed up for a class at the Little Gym during her school time (thanks to one of our Facebook readers who suggested that when I mentioned he currently believes he can "fly like Buzz Lightyear."). I'm hoping that makes our time away from our big girl easier to handle and gives us some special mommy-son time. Not to mention the hope that he'll learn how to safely jump from high places...

I can't believe I have to endure this all over again next week - and most every week thereafter for the next 16 or so years. Please tell me it gets easier.