Category Archives: Parent Category

Parenting Like an 80s Drug Lord

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“Is this the real stuff?” my daughter asks warily.

What she wants to know is: ‘Has it been cut?’

She is right to be suspicious because that is what I do. I cut the product.

I wasn’t always this sneaky.

Maybe she did know what she was missing!

Maybe she did kind of know what she was missing!

My first child was virtually refined ‘sugar-free’ for a long time.
Family members grumbled and made comments like, “What are you going to give her for Easter? An avocado?” But the world is a sugary place and it couldn’t go on forever…. Once she tasted the sweet stuff, I knew the golden era of perfect eating was over.

That was okay, but I still wanted to keep things as healthy as possible.

I got the idea from a re-run of Miami Vice – an easy way to shrink the sugar intake was to make like a sleazy kingpin and cut the goods. It was a eureka moment in an otherwise sluggish, too-tired/lazy to turn off the TV and go to bed situation.

There was a learning curve and if I really were a drug lord I would’ve been killed and left in an alley long ago (hundreds of times over). Fortunately, my product is much more benign (cereal, flavoured yogurt, and juice) and duping my ‘clients’ isn’t dangerous.

It is all about finding the perfect ratio.

Mix plain Cheerios with sweet treat Honey Nut ones at 50/50 and you’re golden. It is still a ‘treat’ cereal. They don’t get it often but when they do, it is half as bad and just as tasty. Go 60/40 and you’ll get complaints so why even bother?

Yogurt is the same. Two tablespoons of plain mixed with two tablespoons of the fruit-flavoured ones (that would more accurately be described as pudding) is truly delicious. The alternative is serving all plain with a generous teaspoon of jam and letting them mix their own.

With juice the ratio is more like 80/20 juice to water. Any more water, and the kids start to get cranky. I’ve pushed the limits and that is why my two-year old insists on watching like a hawk when I pour the good stuff.

“Pour it here!’ she shouts. “I want to seeeeee!!!!”

“You need to relax,” I tell her. “Hey, is that a squirrel out there?” She’s no fool but the second she looks away, I am going to add some water.

In the words of Tony Montana: I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.

What other things can be ‘cut’ and still taste great? Does anyone else do this? Does anyone have any other valuable insights from the criminal underworld? Please share your thoughts.

Snap and become a happier parent!

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Almost everyone goes into parenthood with high hopes about how they will do things and the wonderful people they will raise.

The problem is that before most people ever become  parents, they’ve already judged all sorts of other parents for their ‘shortcomings’ (as they, or ‘In Touch’, ‘People’, assorted Twitterers or the rest of the internet perceive them) and in doing so, have set themselves up.

Perhaps you had all sorts of opinions about drug-free labour, even thinking less of someone who had an epidural (though it was never any of your business). In agony, at the hospital on Delivery-Day, you suddenly have to either live up to those expectations or take relief with a side order of guilt.

Or maybe before having a child you knew that you would never give a binky, or a pacie, or sucky – or allow such babyish words to be used in your perfect baby’s presence. Except you never know. You might need to change your mind.

In both of these scenarios, it would be easier if you weren’t up to your neck in potential failure to meet your own standards (as inflicted on others) when you decide.

The judgement epidemic is not isolated to so called ‘bad’ things. We also tend to get awfully tough on people who appear to be super-parents like the Gwyneths (seriously, why do we care that her children speak multiple languages and eat like jet-setting vegans? And how is it bad?) and Pinteresters of the world.

Either way, judging others is self defeating. It makes us less kind and more sensitive to the opinions of others which makes us even harsher judges of ourselves which makes us less confident and happy parents which makes us compare ourselves to others and do more judging. A vicious cycle!

There is a solution and it is simple if not easy: We need to stop judging each other’s parenting! 

Here is my idea: Slip a rubber band onto your wrist and give yourself a gentle snap each time you catch yourself thinking uncharitable or judge-y thoughts about someone’s parenting (or your own).

You’re in line at the grocery store, eyeballing the latest gossip rags, wanting to flip through and find out why everyone is so worked up about some Jolie-Pitt kid’s hair. Or did Suri really lose it in a park? Are the royals going to abandon their tiny prince for a holiday? Give yourself a snap! It is none of your business.

Instead of an inward (or worse, a snarky outward): ‘At least I am raising my own kids’ comment about the mom with the nanny, or the family with kids in extended daycare, ask yourself: do you really care or are you just being mean? If this doesn’t work, give yourself a snap and try again.

Snap as required before you judge the parents of the kid who:

Is disheveled;

Has a bad haircut;

Needs a haircut;

Is taking a long time toilet training;

Has tantrums;

Is hyper;

Sleeps in the parents’ bed;

Cries it out;

Eats sugary cereal;

Wears weird clothes;

Eats Lunchables;

Eats only ‘organic’;

Picks their nose;

Watches lots of television;

Goes to bed at 6PM;

Or goes to bed at 10:30PM.

SNAP as needed then ask yourself: Who cares?

Decide that you do not care and, if my theory is correct (and I think it is based on my completely unscientific experiment on myself) your life will be instantly improved because when you cut everyone else some slack, you can give some to yourself as well.

Does it matter how long someone else breastfeeds or doesn’t? If you said yes, take a snap!

Feeling the urge to side-eye a pregnant woman enjoying a coffee as she struts by in high heels? Snap!

There is advice everywhere but what matters is this: if you love your kids and meet their basic needs for affection, safety, shelter, food, healthcare and human interaction, that is good enough.

Obviously, we all have a responsibility to speak up if we see or suspect neglect or abuse, but there is a BIG range of normal and healthy and we need to embrace it.

As a parent who loves and cares for your kids, you don’t need to impress anyone except yourself. It is in your best interest to do what you can to make yourself easy to impress.

Going easier on other parents, will make it easier to give ourselves a break. And if we give ourselves a break, we can actually enjoy some of this parenting stuff.

Vomit roulette and other travel fun

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Whoever said  ‘getting there is half the fun’ clearly never traveled with small children.

From the terrible cold-sweat feeling of trying to silence an irate toddler on a packed plane, to the panicked horror of hearing your retching child*, travel can be rough! (* The panicked horror of recognition is not a problem the first time it happens because the first time, you just think it’s a cough. You have no idea what is coming. That time, you just end up queasy and dazed, outside a Tim Hortons, trying to clean up with a golf towel and some bottled water, thinking about selling your car but knowing that no one in their right mind would ever buy it now.)

I’ve survived these and worse and I have learned to be prepared. Over-prepared and then even more prepared than that.

But no matter how prepared you are,when you’re going traveling with the family, something is going to take you by surprise and probably not in a good way. You have to go with it and try your best to make it fun. Here are a few of the ways we try to stay cheerful:

Vomit Roulette

For car trips, my husband and I lay odds with each other on where, when and from whom car sickness will erupt. This makes the whole ride a little more interesting and, if the worst happens, at least someone gets to be right. If it doesn’t, we are perfectly happy to be wrong. For example: on our last long car trip – Christmas trek from Toronto to Ottawa (normally a four and a half hour drive that took eight and a half!!) – I predicted that the puker would be Eloise, before Whitby. My husband called Hazel in Belleville. I ‘won’. So at least I had that.

I Spy

Great for cars, trains or airports, a little game of ‘I Spy’ can kill as much as fifteen minutes and can be played pretty much anywhere. If you decide to start a game of ‘I spy’, I strongly recommend setting the rules to exclude other people to avoid shouted clues like: “I spy with my little eye…..A WITCH-LADY WITH A SCARY MOUSTACHE” (hint: she is always sitting immediately beside or across from you ). ‘I Spy’ will distract them, but by round three, a tantrum may start to feel appealing.

Is that a statue or a real kid?

Good for rest stops or waiting at the airport, this game is all about making your kids stand still (and silent) while you try to figure out if they are a statue or a real kid. I learned about this one from my sister. The big plus with this one is the silence and it never fails to make them laugh. The drawback is that you have to participate like crazy (repeatedly asking, “HEY! Is that a STATUE? or is that a REAL KID?” and poking at them etc) or the game will fizzle.

Hop on the spot

This is a decent time killer but louder than ‘Is that a statue or a real kid?’. The trick here is to find a corner (anywhere off the main path as far from others as you can manage at whatever airport, train station or rest stop that has become your temporary hell) and throw down a challenge. Start by creating a boundary and make a contest. Who can hop on one foot longest? Can you do 20 jumping jacks? How about jumping straight up and down? etc. Do this until they are complaining about being tired then offer a prize and do it some more. They will be worn out which is what you want for the next portion or your trip. There is no downside to this one unless you have a sore loser. In which case, be sure to have everyone win a category.

The main thing is to remember that you will get to your destination eventually and hope that no one wins at Vomit Roulette.

Things I thought I would never say but said today before 11:15AM

Posted in Parent Category, Uncategorized by

Before I had children, I had all sorts of ideas about how it would be. I pictured myself as a serene, endlessly patient mother, usually wearing something white and billowy (it was my imagination, I can’t help the cliche!), laughing happily with my babies around me (perfectly behaved, snot and puke free of course!) most likely under a leafy tree or in a meadow.

I didn’t imagine repeating myself endlessly, or giving time outs, or that wearing white would be courting disaster.

Obviously I was disabused of most of my crazy notions within 30 minutes of the birth of my first child and the rest shortly after. But one of the biggest surprises I have had are the things that I hear myself say when I actually stop and listen to the words that come out of my mouth. Words I never thought I would utter. Ever.

For example, here are some things I said today before 11:15AM.

1. “Poor you! You bit your finger? Again?” I am beginning to get concerned about this one. It happens A LOT. And she always reacts like it is the first time…

2. “Do I have to put you to bed right now?” It was 9:45AM and I meant it.

3. “I think I just stepped in scrambled egg.” This is unusual only in that we did not eat scrambled eggs this morning. Or yesterday. Gross. Where did it come from???

As usual, there was no white flowy outfit. No leafy tree.

There was just one kid with a sore finger, another one complaining repeatedly about breakfast, and me with a foot-full of scrambled egg.

Ms Information

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My mother had what could be described as a hobby of giving my me and my sister questionable information. The ‘information’ we would get from our mother was often outlandish and completely inaccurate, or, funny but not useful or appropriate.

To this day, I cannot look at Queen Elizabeth without picturing her wearing skin-tight jeans, farting loudly into a microphone, and knocking over a centenarian. Yes, it sounds crazy,  but this came from a conversation that started with me asking my mom about the queen. My mother looked at me seriously and said, ‘Well, she isn’t as nice as she pretends to be. Have I told you what she did last week?’

And though I have since found out that my mother told the truth (sort of) about clergy and hosiery (many wear support hose to help with  all that standing up!), the priest at my school did not care to discuss the subject during a pre-First Communion Q & A session with my class.

I used to think that my mother made things up because she felt like a laugh but have recently started to suspect that at least some of the time, she created bizarre and inappropriate ‘facts’ because she just didn’t have an answer.  I think this because almost every day, I realize, courtesy of my three children, that I am woefully under-informed.

My plan as a mother was to be as honest and accurate as possible with my children but I  had no idea they would ask so many hard questions!

For example, just today it has been revealed that I have no idea:

  • Why sharks are so mean. I am not even sure that they are mean. They are just hungry and everyone gets cranky when they are hungry….
  • How fish sleep. Do they sleep??? I feel like they don’t but then they must be exhausted! And if they do sleep, how do they avoid those mean sharks? 
  • The names of most dinosaurs and how they died. I vaguely remembered this from grade school but had to look it up. I understand that it might have been a massive asteroid that hit Earth. This is the kind of detail that  will lead to all sorts of other questions that will NOT help me at bedtime.  I want to honest but I want them to sleep at night more!

The temptation to make stuff up is strong.

Perhaps I should just send them to visit their grandmother.

The flush of new friendship

Posted in Parent Category, Random Stories by

Striking new friendships in mid-adulthood can be sort of awkward – kind of like dating – and each interaction will either be the last or lead to the next, slightly more meaningful interaction.

A couple of months ago, the combined forces of a lengthy plane delay (nine hours stuck in Tampa airport!) and our children, caused us to meet a very nice family. The shared situation and the fun our kids had playing for at least five of those nine long hours opened a window to a possible new friendship.

We kept in touch when we were back in Toronto.

They came to our house for muffins. It went well.

A few weeks later, they invited us for an early dinner. We accepted.

It seemed like we were well on our way to making new family friends!

On the evening of the dinner, we arrived at their beautiful home about twenty minutes late (aka about as close to on time as we get). The children all ran off to play right away, leaving the adults in the kitchen to chat.

It was going well. The conversation was just starting to flow with a brief exchange about our mayor, Rob Ford (in Toronto right now, “Can you believe he [insert crazy-deed-of-the-week]??” is the conversational equivalent of: ‘Hi. How are you?’; and “Who on earth voted for that guy?” is like saying: ‘Fine, thanks. How are you?’) Right as we were about to all agree that Rob Ford is definitely unbelievable  (Translation for rest of world: ‘Nice weather we’re having!’) our two year old waddled into the kitchen with a diaper that was ready to explode.

I scooped the kid up, and grabbed my supplies.

I asked if there was a plastic bag I could have to dispose of and seal the load-bearing dipe but our hostess insisted that I must just bring it back and pop it into her compost bin. In the kitchen. Under the sink. Where we were all standing and eating hors d’oeuvres. I headed to the powder room with my smelly spawn.

My daughter instantly tensed up in the tight quarters of a two-piece washroom (unfortunately, we do not have a powder room or any washroom conveniently located on our ground floor, and being in diapers, she has zero appreciation for such things anyway) and refused to lie down with her head under the sink.

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll do this standing up.”

And with the  toilet poking into my back, I wrestled her out of the dirty diaper and into a clean one. It was going well but the used diaper was extremely full. Really, really, really full.

I thought about how I might wrap it in a way that would  somehow make it appropriate to place it in the middle of a dinner party. Nothing reasonable came to mind. I decided that it would be best (for everyone!) to flush the contents first.

I emptied the diaper into the toilet then wrapped it into a tight, tidy ball for the green bin, feeling sure I had done the right thing.

Until I flushed.

The water splashed around but not everything disappeared and the water didn’t really go down.

Crap!

“Poo!” shouted my daughter.

I flushed again and the water rose higher to just an inch below the rim.

Crap! Crap!! Crap!!!

I admit that a few crazy thoughts went through my head including:

  • leaving and never looking back (I would take the kid and just walk out the door, the rest of our family would catch up with us eventually at home)
  • closing the lid and hoping that it wouldn’t be discovered for a few days
  • flushing again and hoping for the best despite the odds
  • starting a small fire that could adequately distract from the situation.

But realistically none of the ‘solutions’ would work:

  • I would have to live with an angry family
  • our hosts would almost certainly know it was us that had left the ‘gift’ in their toilet
  • another flush would ratchet this problem up to disaster level almost instantly
  • no matches.

I called out to my husband, Michael, who is great with this sort of thing (his ability to handle gross situations is a quality that I could never have known he possessed or imagined how much I would value prior to having children). He recognized my emergency tone and came right away.

“Can you secretly ransack this house and sneak us a plunger?” I asked through the cracked open door while simultaneously thwarting my toddler’s attempts to re-flush and flood the entire ground floor.  She was getting a little crusty about being trapped in the washroom with me.

“What?” He looked confused.

Our child, never one to miss an opportunity, pushed her way through the open bathroom door, tights still around her ankles, and tottered towards the kitchen and our hosts.

“We need a plunger,” I repeated, opening the door the rest of the way so he could see for himself.

“Shit!” he said, stating the obvious. “Okay, I’ll be right back.” He headed for the kitchen where he (to my horror even though realistically there was no way we were going to be able to locate a plunger without them knowing and they had to have  already figured out that something was wrong) requested a plunger.

Unpleasantly shocked or not, they were quick to provide the necessary equipment and Michael de-clogged the toilet.

It felt longer but we had been there all of twenty-five minutes at this point. Dinner was in another twenty and we were all back in the kitchen again trying to move forward with the evening.

I don’t think that there is ever a time in a relationship (any kind of relationship) when it is ideal to clog someone’s toilet and doing so on your third ‘date’ probably does not bode well for the future. But we actually had a nice time and shit really does happen and maybe we will see them again.

You never know.

Stop wrecking my kids!

Posted in Manifestoes, Parent Category by

I know you mean well and it’s just a little treat. A small toy. A few bucks. Nothing. Except it isn’t nothing. Too many gifts and treats are wrecking my kids. I am begging you, please stop wrecking my kids!

When I was a child, treats were sort of special, and gifts came on just a few occasions. In my family, those were Christmas and birthdays, with very rare exceptions. This has changed and gift giving to kids, any time and all the time is now the norm.

The problem is, that this is more of an adult indulgence than a kid one. It is fun to give stuff to little kids and now more than ever, it is monetarily cheap, and easy. But it is costing our children dearly.

Here is why constant gift giving  is bad for kids:

1. It takes away wishing and hoping.

Think back to being a kid when you wanted something very badly. I remember the first thing I really wanted –  a Baby Alive. I wrote to Santa. I told everyone. I memorized Baby Alive’s information (Wets her pants! Batteries not included!). I thought about Baby Alive a lot! And I hoped that I would get one for Christmas. When I got my Baby Alive, it was a VERY big deal and this remains a happy memory for me to this day. Kids deserve a big deal too.

2. It reduces creativity.

Kids do not need a toy for everything. There are few things more amazing than watching kids with something as basic as a yoga mat or a wooden spoon or an empty yogurt container, making up some crazy scenario and working through it. It helps them learn and create and problem solve. It is fun!! I am not saying that kids shouldn’t have toys but too many actually can slow the fun down.

3. It creates entitlement.

My kids, who actually have very nice manners and are (usually) very nice children cannot help but expect mountains of crap when they see certain relatives and friends. They expect (and get) junk food, stickers, small plastic toys pretty much every time.  They consume the food, play with (and usually break or lose) the toys, and the plastic pile in our basement grows. None of this makes their life any better. It doesn’t make them especially grateful – it isn’t special after all – nor does it make them any happier or nicer to be around.

3. It commodifies love.

Children are pretty literal. They absorb all  the information available to them to build their understanding and knowledge of the world. Constant gift giving sends a message about love. That it must come with stuff. I know some adults that feel this way and they are not happy people with fabulous relationships. They tend to be disappointed and not very nice to be around.

4. It’s gross.

This is last but not least. Most of the toys that kids get are cheap plastic junk that will become cheap plastic landfill. North American children have too much and it is not sustainable. It really is gross!

I am not suggesting the end of fun or gifts but I am suggesting a return to thoughtful, less frequent gifts that are appropriate to the occasion. Will your gift (note no ‘s’ at the end of ‘gift’) be special or meaningful to the child? Or will it become  flotsam in their home?

Please. It is the only way to stop wrecking the kids.