Another Cautionary Tale, this one with a side of mortification

Mornings are my own personal experiment with chaos theory.  I don't enjoy them.  They are, each of them, little vignettes of failure and regret.

It's not the hour.  I enjoy quiet, peaceful early morning hours.

It's not that I have to go to work; I love my job.

It's that I live with all these other people, who need to arrive at various educational institutions with bright shiny faces, full warm bellies and lunch boxes loaded with nutritious and tasty goodness.  It's that they need to be wearing school uniforms.  Clean ones.  It's that on any given day, a few of them have soccer practice, and a few of them have early release days or late start days, or a change in the carpool, or forms to hand in, or projects to bring with them, or picture effing day.  This one needs hotdog money and that one is clamoring about free dress and that one yonder has a stuffy nose and this one I just tripped over needs her rat's nest of a hairdo transformed into a proper little Catholic schoolgirl coif.

This morning, all of that reduced me to tears and silence.  The tears are commonplace.  The silence, however, freaked out the kids.  I don't usually find myself at a loss for words when it comes to giving lectures.   Come to think of it, the silence freaked me at as well.

So I resolved that tonight, before my five offsprings' heads drifted down to, crashed into, or haphazardly landed upon a pillow, they would produce for me every article of clothing they each required for the next day: school clothes, soccer clothes, sweatshirts, socks, underwear, shoes...the whole nine.

This is where the cautionary bit begins.

Let me be a lesson to you.  Do not assume that basic messages are penetrating your children's skulls.  Do not -- ever! -- be afraid to repeat something you think for sure they must know.  Go ahead: be that broken record.  Annoy them.  Let them roll their eyes.  Let them say "I KNOW mom."

Should you choose not to heed my advice, you could be one of the players in this little morality play:

* * *

Mom:  "I am starting a load of laundry in a few minutes: bring me what you need for tomorrow.  If you don't have clean underwear in your drawer, bring me some to wash."

Daughter: "It's OK, mom.  I'm wearing underwear."

Mom: "Right.  I mean clean underwear for tomorrow."

Daughter: No words.  Just a quizzical look.

Mom: "Very funny.  Yes, dear, you do wear clean underwear everyday."

Daughter: "WHAT???  Are you KIDDING ME?? That is NUTS!  I wear them for a week!"

At this point, a sound sort of like being enveloped by a wind tunnel drowns out any other sound.  At least for the mom.  Howling through the tunnel are phrases like: What the--  and How the hell--  and You are effing kidding me!! and Have I taught her NOTHING??? and What kind of mother--

We're talking shades of Mr. Kurtz here.  When the howling scream subsides, the mom, unable to even look at her beautiful child, sternly sends the daughter to the laundry room to get clean underwear.

The daughter, meanwhile, and without the vortex of horror clogging up the mom's ears, can be heard completely melting down, and complaining to anyone who will listen, or anyone forced to listen by virtue of proximity, that her very, very mean and not nice mother is making her find clean underwear.

The mom lies on her bed, wallowing in abject failure, and wondering where it all went so horribly wrong.

Another gem wafts up from the living room: "Dad!  She wants me to find clean underwear!  She's CRAZY!"

There were other, even more embarrassing gems.  This is enough.  This is too much.  This is my sad little tale, and you should redeem my utter failure by telling your kids the obvious, every chance you get.

* * *

My kids are in for the following extensive lectures this week:

Eat food.
Do homework.
Brush teeth.  All of them.  Really.  Twice a day.  Really.
Pee when you need to.  Also?  The same for poop.  Every time.
Broken Glass?  No bare foot dancin'.

* * *

There.  Now don't you feel better about your parenting?

* * *

Do Not Teach Children To Help Out Around the House. Bad Things Happen

Ever feel like you're the only one in your family who cleans up?  The only one who keeps things running smoothly?  The only one who replaces the toilet paper roll, puts folded towels in the linen closet, keeps things in their rightful places?

Is so, consider yourself lucky.

I fell into the trap of trying to teach my kids responsibility, of trying to instill in them a sense of cooperation, of trying to make them human.  Big mistake.  Here are two cautionary tales from my botched attempt to get some help around the house.

Tale #1: When Other People Clean, You Will Be Late

I recently re-instituted the simple idea of straightening up the common areas every evening.  We've been in this habit before, but have fallen woefully out of it, so I felt it was important to whip us back into shape.  The result?  We all went to bed in a clean house.  Mostly.  The other result?  The next morning, as we were trying to get out the door to school, I could not find my purse anywhere.  I looked high, and low, and in between.  I re-looked everywhere I could think of, in all of the places I've been known to put it.  I riffled through two laundry baskets twice, thinking it might have gotten tangled up with the clean underwear and towels.

Bordering on hyesteria, I sent the kids -- who were no help whatsoever -- out to the car to wait for me.  I searched in vain for another 5 or 10 minutes.  And then I remembered that we all cleaned up the night before.  I marched out to the car and said through clenched teeth: "Does anyone remember moving my white bag with the black flowers on it last night when we were cleaning up????"

Lady E: "OH!  YES!  I know where it is...but don't be mad!  I was cleaning, and I grabbed it off the dining room table, and I had a bunch of other stuff in my hands, and then I went up to my room and started doing something else, so I think it's on the doll crib in the corner!"

10 minutes late to school because I had the kids clean up the house the night before.

Tale #2: When Other People Help, Your Head Might Explode

Little T is finally catching on to the idea of helping.  So in the midst of the clean-up flurry the other night (same night as referenced above), she offered brightly: "Mommy, do you want me to bring in the towels from outside?"  Why yes, I thought!  That would be great, and I had forgotten that I had put them outside in the sun to dry earlier that morning.  Fantastic, sweetie: great idea.  Out she went, and back in she marched, arms full of sun-dried towels.  I told her to put them on the basket of clean laundry.

The next morning, I grabbed one of those towels for my shower.  I was taking a very late shower, one I wasn't even sure I had time for, and this was before I started looking for my purse.  I took my quick shower, jumped out, grabbed my towel, and started vigorously rubbing my hair and shoulders, aware that I had mere moments to get ready and still get the kids to school on time.  The towel was a little crunchy.  For a few seconds, this didn't bother me: sun dried towels usually are.

But then, I looked a little closer, and realized that in addition to the clean towels, Little T had also grabbed the towel someone put outside a month ago for cleaning off the chalkboards during the garden tour.  This towel was crunchy and chalk-dusty, and I had just rubbed it all over my head.  I now smelled chalky, felt gritty, and was in danger of having my head explode, all within 60 seconds of getting out of the shower.  With no time left to take another one.

These two tales illustrate why wise mothers say: "It's just easier to do it myself."

I don't care if my kids are lazy, entitled loafers who expect other people to do everything for them.  I'd rather arrive places clean and on time, thank you very much.

* * *

Reflection, Not Rejoicing

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

The single response that makes any sense to me comes from the Vatican. Please click through and read the link below. It doesn't matter if you are Catholic, Christian, animal, vegetable or mineral. Death is always devastating for someone.

Article title: Vatican says bin Laden's death cause for reflection, not rejoicing

How do we explain fist-pumping celebrations to our children?

* * *

Why Information Is Good for Kids

image credit: www.cksinfo.com

My 12 year old son has discovered the movie Stand By Me. Classic, wonderful, fantastic movie, especially for teen boys. Granted, twelve is more tween than teen, but he is straining against that particular boundary with every ounce of his hormone-ravaged puberty-bound person.

So I let him watch that movie. It has since become his favorite of all time, and we've had some great conversations, about fathers and sons, about profanity, about friendship and cruelty, about story-telling, and more. Apparently, one of the words used in this movie is also a word he asked me the meaning of years ago. At the time and at his age -- maybe 8? -- it seemed entirely inappropriate to really answer his question, so I opted for the following: "Oh, that's another word for kitty-cat!"

Those of you familiar with the movie will surely remember Vern, the chubby kid who provided so many classic moments. ("That's easy. Pez. Cherry flavored Pez. No question about it.") Well, today in the car, Sam was telling more stories from the movie and he momentarily forgot Vern's name. I offered helpfully, "Oh, his name is Vern!"

Sam, right out there in front of his little sibs: "Right. But they all call him pussy!"

And that, my friends, is why kids need accurate information: so they don't grow up to teach their younger siblings that it's perfectly acceptable to go around calling people pussy.

Can you say BACKTRACK? I can!

* * *