How Many Parenting Books Do You Have?

My oldest daughter, Emily, wanted to be a on pee wee drill team all through elementary school.  All her friends were on it.  We wouldn't let her participate.  She did participate in age appropriate tap and ballet classes.  I just had fundamental issues with pee wee football/drill team stuff.  She kept telling us that she would NEVER make cheerleader in middle school because only the girls who had been in peewee drill made it.  So be it then she wouldn't make it.  But, interestingly she did make and made it all through high school.  It would have been easy to cave and let her participate because anyone who was anyone participated in pee wee drill.  It seemed to be the thing to do.  We didn't cave and it still worked out.

I was in a book store recently and was overwhelmed by the number of parenting books available. There are books on how to raise every type of child imaginable.   There are books on how to raise the angry child, the stubborn child, the bilingual child, the child interested in science, the defiant child, the child with artistic potential, the obnoxious child (okay maybe not obnoxious) but seriously I was overwhelmed.  I didn't see a book on how to raise a normal child.  I wondered how many parents buy these books and turn their child into a defiant child.  Or how many parents walk out feeling like complete failures.

Parenting is made out to be so complicated.  If you don't have a college picked out before your child starts Kindergarten then you are a slacker.  If your child doesn't save 10% of his allowance he will never grow up to be fiscally responsible.   Your child only speaks one language?  Oh wow! There are enough parents at any little league game or dance studio to tell you how incompetent you are.

I am not saying if you teach your child another language or if you teach your child how to save money you are a bad parent.  Not at all.  There is a difference between exposure and teaching.  Even at that, if you want to teach your child some of these things, great but not at the expense of everyone's happiness.  If you don't do these things you are still a good parent.  And on a side note, I have met plenty of children who are in every type of class but could use a class on compassion for others.

Jennifer Senior in her article, For Parent Happiness is a Very High Bar, makes some very good arguments to slow down and take a deep breath.   I love what she says about focusing on "decency, a work ethic, love — and let happiness and self-esteem take care of themselves. I think if we all did that, the kids would still be all right, and so would their parents, possibly in both cases even better."

Imagine what our schools and playgrounds would look like if children came just with a sense of love and decency for each other and a sense to work hard on whatever they work on.  Maybe 2015 could be the year to focus on that!

In the mean time, take a deep breath and tell yourself you are a good parent!

The Single Most Important Activity is...

...reading aloud to your child.  I know, I know, I have said it before but it bares repeating because very few believe me.  It seems so easy, there are no worksheets, no quizzes, no way to measure how smart your child is.  And, let's face it, it's more impressive to say, We spell words every night, or My child has completed blah, blah phonics book, than to say, We just read every night.  

A friend of mine, a young mother, asked me what she could do to teach her three year old to read.  I think this mother was a little surprised when I told her, just read to her, talk to her.  This mother already does a fabulous job.  Her daughter has a great vocabulary for a three year old.

Take time to read the article, Reading Aloud to Children of All Ages or at least skim it and print out the books lists.  The article mentions several of the benefits but two particular benefits that lead to reading success are:

1. Reading aloud gives children background knowledge, which helps them make sense of what they see, hear, and read. The more adults read aloud to children, the larger their vocabularies will grow and the more they will know about the world and their place in it.
2. Reading aloud introduces the language of books, which differs from language heard in daily conversations, on television, and in movies. Book language is more descriptive and uses more formal grammatical structures.  Book language can throw a child off when he/she starts reading.

In addition to the above benefits it is so much fun!  Try it.  It is easy to stop reading aloud once your child starts reading.  Trust me, there are times you think, Thank goodness, he can read to himself! But your child can't read the books with the rich vocabulary.   More than likely, the books he reads will be very easy, limited in print.  

So don't stress over what all your friends are doing to get their child ready for reading and school. 

Get a book, get your child, snuggle up on the couch and just read!

5 Ways To Be a Better Parent

I love Jordan Shapiro and what he writes.   He is real and many times makes me think.  His article 5 Ways To Be a Better Parent is great.  If you don't read the entire article (it's what I call an easy read) at least read the first two paragraphs.  They speak to almost every parent I know.

I know that everyone can't fly to the Grand Canyon, but how can you show the world to your kids? How can you show your children compassion?  We all strive to do things better.   I tell teachers all the time that no parent wakes up, looks in the mirror and says, I am going to be a horrible parent today.  I am going to see how badly I can screw up my child.  Every parent does the very best with the tools they have.  Each of us tried to do things better or differently than our parents did.  I am sure my daughters have things they will do differently than I did.


So in these first few weeks of 2015 what are you going to do to be better?  Here are my top five:
1. Be in the moment.  Whether it's with friends, children, grandchildren, I will put the technology down and focus on the moment.
2. Have more fun.  When we are  together, I will try to be more spontaneous.  Stop and play a silly game.  If the house doesn't get cleaned, oh well at least we built a memory and had fun.  I can assure you my kids remember things we did together more than how clean our house was!
3. Have friends/family over even though my house isn't perfect.  I still need flooring but that may be awhile.  I may be dead before I get it!
4. Try new things, like foods, places, games, books and share those with my kids and grandkids.
5. Don't beat myself up when I mess up as a friend, family member, professional, parent or grandparent.  I will just start over the next day.

I wish #5 for all of you too.  I think with all the social media parents beat themselves up because they don't think they measure up to what's "trending" for parenting.  As teachers, we do a pretty good job making you feel like you have messed up your kids too.  Take a deep breath and give yourself a hug.
You are doing better than you realize.

One last thing, remember, kids are like people.  They have a hard time getting back to the routines after a break just like you do.   Cut them some slack.

You just have to play in the snow

This is Christmas week.  I don't know of very many people that are 'ready', except my oldest sister. But really, are we ever ready?  There is always one more gift to buy, one more thing we could bake and at some point we all say, I'm done!  Not doing anything else!  We feel we can't slow down.

This week we are in Estes Park, Colorado.  My grand kids have been several times in the summer but never in the winter.  Since they live in Texas, they rarely see snow...real snow...snow that falls all evening and into the night!  Imagine their excitement.

When they asked (late at night) if they could put on their snowsuits and go out and play, it was ever so tempting to say, No, wait until the morning.  It's too late, it's too cold!  In fact, I think a couple of the adults tried to talk them out of it.  Being the Grandma though I trumped the other adults.  (This one time.)  We got all bundled up and went out and made a few snow angels, threw a little snow, froze, came back inside.  And yes, it took longer to get all dressed and undressed than it did to actually be outside.

I would do it again because it was "THE BEST night",  all 5 minutes of it.   Would I have gone out by myself?  Absolutely
not.  Did I have time?  I didn't think so.  But it takes little kids to remind us to slow down and just go out in the snow.  Whatever I was going to do during that 5 minutes didn't get done.  I don't even remember what I was going to do.  It's not important.

This holiday break, don't tell your kids to wait.   Go play that game.   Go for that walk.  Read that book.  All the important stuff you need to do will wait.  I promise!

Are you stressed yet?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!   Not only by things around me but by the Facebook posts and comments from friends.  It truly breaks my heart to see and hear young moms stressed about getting everything done in these last few days before Christmas.  A friend of my daughter's posted that she would not be sending out Christmas cards and she was terribly sorry and hoped everyone understood.  (She has three young boys.) REALLY?  If people don't understand they don't have kids and I say, take them off the list!  Better yet, let them babysit so you can get your cards done.  This will be the third year I haven't gotten mine done and my kids are grown!  I have good intentions but life gets in the way.

If  you watch any television you will be reminded once again how everything should be perfect. Today I heard that we should all be wrapping gifts for individual people according to their interests. So, for Parker I should be drawing Spiderman on all his presents.  Zoey's presents should have a Frozen theme.  I did that one year before kids.  Guess what, the gifts were all ripped open and nobody saved the beautiful, clever construction paper applique I had made.  Today, I wrapped gifts and slapped sticky gift tags on each one -  didn't even have bows.  We travel and I am tired of the bows getting squashed.  I can promise you, everyone will love their gifts just as much.

Teacher gifts were always stressful to me.  Will they like it, should I have done more, what is everyone else doing?  If you are thinking, "Oh $^%3, I didn't think about teacher gifts, don't worry about it!   My favorite teacher gifts were the ones children made or picked out.  I still have the ornaments a student made my first year of teaching.  She cut them out herself and they were out of pink and green felt!   Love them.  Then there was the year a child made an 'ornament' for me which was aluminum foil crumpled into a ball.  That was it!  He said he knew I would love it and I did.  My nephew, one year gave his teacher a shoebox full of his favorite things.  She loved it.   My husband always loved when I got baked goods, I don't bake.  If the teacher is any good, she will love whatever it is because she will realize it is sent in love.  Parker made a card for his teacher, I know she will love it, i would.

What is more important than having the perfect tree and getting your cards out is being 'present' with your children.   Read Christmas and other holiday books to them.  Watch a Christmas special on television.  Snuggle up and drink hot chocolate together.  Make some cards or write a letter to a friend.  Facetime with family.

Christmas is a time for family, so enjoy your family.  They will be grown before you know it.  And, trust me, they really aren't into snuggling and drinking hot chocolate with you when they are 20 something.

Jesus had pets and only one fairy???

Over the weekend I was reminded how young children try to make everything 'fit' their background knowledge.  I always say they have only been on this earth a short time and they spend a great deal of that time trying to make sense of the world. Which I might add is very confusing.

Zoey, my 4 year old grand nugget helped me get out some of my nativity sets.  I was explaining to her who everyone was.  She was quite interested.  I thought I did an exceptional job explaining the birth story! There was one that I let her 'play' with, setting it up and resetting it.  She started explaining to her big brother, Parker,  that the camel, donkey and sheep were pets.  Who knew, Jesus had pets!  She then asked me why there was only one fairy, some of you might refer to it as an angel.  What made me realize, she was four and my great explanation didn't really sink in was when later she asked me if she could put my 'doll' set up again.  So after my great nativity explanation, she came away with the nativity is a doll set, some kid named Jesus with pets and one fairy.  Hmmm.

After I laughed a little I reminded myself that it's okay.  It is very difficult to understand that magical story.  The lines get blurred between the religious Christmas celebration and Santa arriving.  And, I'm sorry, they can see Santa at every turn so my guess is they believe that better than some baby with pets.  I mean, does anyone ever get pictures taken with Jesus?

To be fair, Zoey and Parker are in a blended family of Christian and Jewish traditions so it does get a little confusing.  But even in single faith families it is confusing.  It's hard to believe what we can't see.   Heavens, I still find it hard to believe how the computer and cell phones work and that has been explained to me many, many times!

So my point is if you want your child to understand the true meaning of Christmas, you have to explain it to them...year after year after year after year until one year it will make sense.  You have to make sure you model and differentiate between Christmas the religious time and Christmas the Santa/gift getting time.   They really are two very different things. Christmas is a season that goes until January 6th.  So if you spout Jesus is the reason for the season, can you really let superstition take over and take your Christmas decorations down the day after Christmas?

Enjoy this holiday season whatever your beliefs and realize that young children are experiencing it through their eyes and understanding.  It really is okay if they think Jesus had pets and only one fairy.
One day, maybe years from now, they will put it all together.   But if it is important to you that they know the difference between the two celebrations, you better model it.

Put the elf back on the shelf and relax!

This is that time of year when everyone goes crazy.  As a parent, this was the time of year that, if I didn't feel inferior already, I quickly did.  Back when my kids were young we didn't even have Elf on the Shelf and I still felt like a failure as a parent.

Each year I had visions of Hallmark moments of decorating the tree.  You know, everyone sipping hot chocolate, Christmas music playing softly in the background, while everyone cheerfully hanging the ornaments on the tree.  Or sometimes I dreamed of all of us getting in the car, so excited to go see Christmas lights around town and coming home to share that hot chocolate.

Typically what happened over the years was me getting the ornaments out, and bribing everyone to please just hang up one ornament, that's all, then you can go back to whatever it is you were doing. My son would sometimes just hang all his ornaments on one branch and declare he was through.  Looking at lights around town usually ended up with me and my husband not speaking to each other.  He would zoom past streets as I would say, there's a pretty street, oh never mind, you went by it, oops there is a good...oh never mind you can't turn around. My husband would drive and tell the kids to get back in their seat belts because he was driving.   Of course, they couldn't see out the window!  Forget about the hot chocolate!

I always tried to find the best, most interactive Advent calendar for my kids.  The favorite was the one with the little chocolate pieces behind each door.  I built up the anticipation only to find out they would wait several days and open several so they could eat more chocolate at a time.   Not quite the experience I envisioned.

I overheard a mom the other day tell her friend how she hated this time of year.  I thought how sad, this should be so much fun.  It is incredible to watch young children at this time of year and their excitement. I wish this excitement and good cheer lasted all year.

Instead of trying to out do your Facebook friends on where the elf is, take a step back and relax.  The things that are the most memorable won't be what you think.  Several years ago Emily asked me to wait until she got home to make the holiday candy.   Of course I did, thinking how sweet, she wants us to do it together  The night arrived and I started the festive cooking.   She sat.  Finally I said, I thought you wanted to help?  She replied, NO!  I just love sitting in the kitchen visiting while YOU make it. 

Here are some things you can do with your kids that will build memories and nobody will try to out do you on Facebook .

• Have them open a new book each day leading up to Christmas
• Clean out their toys and give them to a charity before they get new ones
• Make cookies for someone else
• Just go out and sing Christmas songs to the neighbors
• Adopt an angel from the Salvation Army tree as a family and shop together
• Buy a toy for one of the agencies collecting toys and go as a family
  
  to donate them
• Get some gloves, scarves, blankets and walk around town handing them out to homeless people
• Choose a day and tell everyone you meet, Merry Christmas

It defeats the purpose if we get so stressed we don't enjoy our family and friends.  We need to stop and slow down and enjoy each other.

In the meantime, put the elf on the shelf or better yet let your kids take turns putting him somewhere. I know, he is supposed to be 'watching' them to make sure they behave.  But maybe he could use some help hiding and we could all behave just because.  And,  if you really enjoy doing it, do it but keep it simple and realize your kids probably won't remember all the great places you hid him.