Winning the Sock Wars

Laundry breeds in the dark. I’ll swear by it. The way my laundry pile grows…and grows…and grows the minute my back’s turned leads me to the only possible conclusion: Asexual reproduction is taking place in my laundry basket at the speed of a six year old mowing through a container of chicken nuggets. Competition for resources is so stiff, they’ve resorted to cannibalism.

Which brings me to the worst part about laundry: The bloody socks. 

I’m not a hoarder. I’m really, really not. I just can’t see the logic in throwing away a perfectly good pair of socks. Because of that, my kids have also adopted the mantra of, “It doesn’t have to match, it just has to fit.”

The sock basket. It’ll cough up two socks at a time. Good luck finding two of the same. It’s just easier to let it ride.

That’s fine if you don’t care, but I was getting frustrated. I couldn’t always find my youngest’s little socks in the bottom, so he’d end up wearing his dad’s or his brother’s. (He wears a 3. They wear a 12 and a 9, respectively. It wasn’t pretty.) I could never find a pair. When I sat down to sort socks, I’d spend almost two hours trying to put things together. The sheer volume of options was so overwhelming, I avoided sorting socks like the plague. Which resulted in the sock basket throwing up at regular intervals all over the stairs.

Enough. Was. Enough.

I stumbled over a fantastic post the other day that I wish I could find again. It was written by a mom of seven talking about how they managed socks. Her advice? To buy unique styles and colors of socks for each kid. All of each kids’ socks should match-that way you don’t have a pink sock, a purple sock, a blue sock, a white sock and a penguin sock, and not a pair to be found. When they outgrow those, gather all of them up, throw them away, and buy another bag.

I was a little skeptical, but I had to do something. So I bought everyone a new bag of socks, 10 pairs for each, and tossed all the old socks away. The first time sorting socks took me five minutes instead of 50, it was SO worth it. If there was a sock missing a pair, I could just grab another and put them together. 

That’s what we did. How do you keep your socks in line?

Homeschooling and the S Word

Today's post is brought to you by Jenny Herman, the social media coordinator for the Home Educating Association and blogger at ww.manyhatsmommy.com. She's a homeschooling parent, which made her the perfect person to ask when the question of how to socialize your homeschooler popped up!

The question? We learn so much in school. Not only our ABC's, or our 123's, but how to deal with people. How to cope with boredom, and the fact that life isn't always going to go our way. We make friends, test our boundaries, and develop a personality outside of our life at home. How do you help your homeschooler do the same? Jenny talks about her experience homeschooling with autism, and how she's making it work for her.
Homeschooling and the S Word

When I was young, I decided I wanted to be a teacher. I went into elementary education, and taught for six years in a private school. My mom assumed because I was a teacher that I would homeschool my children. That rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t want to homeschool. Just because I had a degree and experience in education didn’t mean I wanted to teach my own kids all day!

My oldest son decided to change that. He has Asperger’s syndrome, which on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. Regular preschool did not work for him. It was the worst seven weeks of my life. After much agonizing debate, my husband and I decided to put him into the developmental delay preschool room. This worked great…for a while. After a year, my son was at the top of his class, so to speak, and was starting to bring home regressive behaviors. But the other classes were not an option for him.

What to do now? How can I pull a kid who has social delays out of school? But if I don’t, I’m losing all we worked so hard for over the last year. Not an easy decision. What’s a mom to do?

Read.

The more I read, the more I found that often kids who are homeschooled get more socialization than their peers. Of course there’s always extremists in every case, but would those hide-away folks be socialized if they went to public school? Probably not.

I read many stories of children who could communicate with any age, not just those within the same birth year or two. (The one comment that really stuck out to me was, a classroom is the only place where we are with people our exact age. Everywhere else, we’re around mixed ages.) These children participate in things like Boy Scouts and 4-H. Many participate in competitions of all kinds across the country. Others reach out to those in their community—visiting elderly or babysitting youngsters. Parents mentioned how sports and fine arts developed not only talent but also social skills in their children.

But what about my child on the autism spectrum, who already has social challenges? I found a book that specifically discussed homeschool and autistic children. Many of the parents interviewed stated that socialization is actually more successful for autistic children who are homeschooled. Why? They can practice the needed skills at home first, in a safe, encouraging environment free from distraction. They can get the social script down pat and then take it out into the community when they are ready.

These kids get to practice in all different settings—grocery store, post office, playground, karate class, church, bank, shopping mall, library, etc.—at all different times of day. They experience social success and gain confidence.

This was a tough decision for me, but I knew we needed to change something. I am now a homeschool mom. Not at all what I expected, but the more I learn and watch, the more I see that the big S (socialization) isn’t such a big deal.

Come learn more about parenting with autism, homeschooling and how to be AWESOME by visiting Jenny over at www.manyhatsmommy.com!  

Review: "The Hunger Games"

Over the past three days, I’ve had three questions tossed at me: 

1.  Should I read The Hunger Games before I see the movie?
2.  Should I take my kids to see "The Hunger Games" in the theatre?
3.  And finally, after catching "The Hunger Games" on the big screen last night during opening weekend, “How was the movie?” 

Since it’s hard to review a movie without tossing lots of spoilers in (and spoilers really aren’t fair when you’re one of the only people you know who snuck out to see it opening weekend), I figure I’ll catch these instead!

Should You Read the Book First?

Let me start off by saying that I’ve had a dozen people ask me this since I scooted out to see the movie last night, and I’m no closer to being able to answer it than I was before.

It should be noted that I’m a dedicated book snob. 9.8 times out of 10 the book is much-much-much better than the movie. Things move at a slower pace. You get a better look at the inside of the characters’ heads. There’s an opportunity for more detail, smaller events, that can set the tone for the story but would take up too much time in the movie.

When I heard that The Hunger Games was coming out on film, I told my kids if they’d read the book first I’d take them to see the movie. After watching the movie, I’m not sure if I made the right call there. On one hand, there are giant gaps in the movie that don’t make a great deal of sense if you haven’t read the book. The screenwriter clearly counted on their audience already being familiar with the book. (I spent most of the first twenty minutes leaning over whispering explanations in my husband’s ear-I suspect he was ready to duct tape my mouth shut before it was all said and done.)

Not having a clue what was going on would have made parts of the movie extremely frustrating. It definitely loses something in translation. On the other hand, as with most book adaptations, there were giant parts of the story that were cut out. It hopped between major plot points without lingering too long over any of them, leaving huge gaps in the action, in events and in the characters’ thoughts that the book would close. So if you haven’t already read the book, think of it as…one of those really awesome movie companions. You get to see all kinds of cool and interesting things that didn’t happen on screen.

So should you read the book before you see the movie? Honestly, I’d say it’s up to you.

Should You Take Your Kids to See "The Hunger Games"?

By the end of the first day, "The Hunger Games" had made a splash. For what? For an excess of death, blood and violence in a story primarily intended for kids.

24 go in. 1 comes out. What exactly did they expect? If you’ve read the book, you know that the entire story is a testament to one young woman’s will to stay alive at any cost. There’s blood. There’s violence. But for the amount of death that takes place in a book like The Hunger Games, the gore was kept to a minimum. It was much more PG than I was expecting it to be.

My 9 and 11 year old went to see it, and I was fine with that. There were a few points where the kids jumped, and I think my daughter covered her eyes at one point. The makers did a good job keeping the more grisly aspects of the games to a minimum. If your kids are prone to nightmares, are easily frightened or flinch from the violence in television shows and cartoons intended for older children, this is a movie best watched at home-or when they’re a little older. On the other hand, if they’re fine with all of that, they’ll probably be okay.

At the point, the question is whether or not you’re okay with your children watching the Games play out on the big screen.

So How Was It, Really?

This is the part where I have to roast a film that had a $214 million opening weekend. The screenwriter who created "The Hunger Games" was guilty of the same crime as the people who created the first (and the last, if we’re going to be honest) adaptations of the Twilight books. They coasted on the success of the book, without putting nearly enough effort into creating a film designed to stand on its own.

The movie itself was 2.5 hours long; obviously some concessions had to be made for time. Despite that, I felt that parts of the movie that should have been allowed to play out were cut short, and parts that should have been cut short (or ignored altogether) dragged on for eternity. Some of the best moments in the book, moments that cemented your relationship with the characters, were nowhere to be seen.

Overall, I’d give "The Hunger Games" three stars. It wasn’t a bad movie. My kidlets both loved it. And we’ll probably go see the second one when it comes out. But unless you’re a die-hard fan of The Hunger Games and absolutely, positively can’t wait to see it on the big screen, I’d say you won’t lose a thing by waiting for it to come out on DVD.

Did you go see “The Hunger Games”? What did you think?

Mom Needs to Get a Life

I have no life. 
 

That’s the mantra of moms everywhere. We have no life. We, those fun, witty women who used to go out to karaoke on Saturday nights and slip out for cocktail on a Wednesday. We, who used to read books and magazines and get together in coffee shops to sip lattes and talk about life. We, who dressed in stylish clothes and actually OWNED a pair of dress boots to go with our jeans, used to have a life.

Now? Now we’re women in ponytails that roll out of bed in the morning, grab the first pair of pants that smell halfway clean and slog to the kitchen, ready to start another fun-filled day of ushering our children through the finer points of life.

“Mother” Is the Name Synonymous with God in the Heart and Mind of Every Child

See that little quote right above here? Those 15 words are probably the most misinterpreted in human history. (Right up there with “I’ll do it tomorrow.”) That one little phrase inspires mothers everywhere to drop everything and come running the minute their kids are awake, burying themselves in the minutiae of their lives and their laundry until the minute they go to bed. At which point, we lovingly fold even more laundry, wash the day’s dishes, and collapse on the couch to watch the only hour of adult television we’ll see all day.

If that.

A warning to all moms, and one I really, REALLY wish they’d publish in those parenting books they’re always going on and on about. If you’re not careful, motherhood will consume you. You’ll wake up one morning and realize that you’ve been so busy being a mom that you haven’t talked to your friends in a year. You have no idea when you last had a girl’s day out. All those hobbies you used to have? Gone. All gone.

Suddenly, you realize you’re not a mom. You’re a nanny drone. When you’re away from your kids, you’re not (insert your name here). You’re just the weird lady with the messy bun at the grocery store without a lick of makeup on, staring at the broccoli in horror trying to figure out where you went wrong.

Time to Stand Up for Our Right to Get a Life

If you’re not happy with yourself, if you don’t feel you’ve got balance in your life, you can’t be the best mom you could be. It’s on headlines everywhere. Single Dad Laughing is working on a whole series on it. But it’s not something most of us have time to think about.

Cause, you know, the laundry breeds the minute you turn your back on it.

You don’t stop being a woman just because you become a mother. A friend told me that shortly before my first was born, and I wish I could frame it for each and every woman I know. Balance is vitally important. Who you are with what you are.

The question is, how do you balance motherhood with actually having a life?

1)      Stay in touch with your friends. The beauty of text, email and Facebook is that it’s easy to stay in touch with your friends. Fifteen minutes a day can cement old friendships, help you stay up on the news and yes, have conversations that have nothing to do with diaper rash and Fisher Price.

2)      Go out. At least once a month, get together with your friends. Not your spouse. Not your kids. Have coffee. Go to a movie. Go out to dinner or hiking or dancing or bowling.

3)      Avoid the urge to live in sweats. This feels a little hypocritical, given the fact that I’m writing this in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, but spending the day lounging around in sweats makes it easy to let the rest slip away. Enjoy your sloppy days, but don’t forget to get up, get dressed, curl your hair and put on your game face before you go out to face the world. You know, the way you did before you were a mom!

4)      Make time for your hobbies. When I was in school, I was a musician. At least an hour a day was dedicated to half notes and whole notes and trills and scales. Except for the occasional Christmas carols for the kids, I haven’t taken the time to play that flute in years. And I miss that. Take time for your hobbies. They’re part of who you are.

5)      Make friends with people with kids. Keep the friends you had before you were kids, but don’t discount the value of making new friends too. If there’s one thing that really makes trying to balance having a life with being a mom, it’s that motherhood brings children into the mix. Tracking down a babysitter every time you want to go hang out is expensive and impractical. And impractical doesn’t even scratch the surface of what having a conversation with the kids in the room feels like.

So, go to story times. Go to playgroups. Join committees at school. Make friends with people who have children. Let the children play while the grown-ups do the same.

How do you balance motherhood with having a life?

Productivity, and Other Lies Parents Tell

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in the ugliest, most uncomfortable plastic chair you could think of. There are children screaming at dog whistle levels. Most of them are mine. My fingers are so purple, they match my favorite shirt perfectly. There are other things I could be doing right now to kill time until the awesomeness of Girl Scout cookies show up. (Love you Jo Jo. Seriously.) 

But the kids are having the time of their lives. So we’ll stay. For at least a little while longer.

 Revolving doors will keep them busy for hours. Trust me on this one.

The Hardest Part of Having Kids Was Learning How Not to Fail at Productivity

Last week I said I was going to set responsibility aside for a while and just be a mom. I think I’ve done pretty well at that this week. Helped along by the fact that my work load’s waaaaaaaaaaay down right now, my kids were on vacation, and we didn’t really have anything else we HAD to do. But as much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, there’s no getting around the fact that I still have to buy groceries. I still have to get the kids to dance and swim and tae kwon do. There are going to be days like today where it’s just an endless stream of errands from one end to the other.

Maybe I’ve romanticized it a little in my mind, but running errands feels like it was a lot easier when all I had to do was move the kids from carseat to shopping cart to car seat to stroller and back again. They weren’t running in three directions at once. They weren’t squabbling and fighting and forgetting to look with their eyes instead of their hands. They certainly weren’t boinging off the ceiling.

These days, my kids manage to do all of that. In a single trip. The fact that I still have hair is a miracle. The fact that I haven't just started keeping duct tape and handcuffs in the car is an ever bigger one. Fortunately, there are saner (and slightly less creepy) ways we get through our day. 

The most important of which is to plan lots and lots of time for time outs.

Sticking Your Kids on Time Out in the Car is a GOOD Idea??

Nope. Not if I want to have a car left, at any rate. No, I'm talking about something much more simple. Time out during the day. Time to stretch and play. Breaks between running errands to let them be kids instead of the mini-adults I expect them to be when they’re standing in line. 

At a birthday party a few years back, a friend asked if I took my kids to Chuck E. Cheese after running errands as a reward for being good. He looked slightly scandalized when I admitted that nope, we usually hit the House of Mouse first and bumped everything else back until after.

Yes, it’s kind of like eating your dessert first. You get the reward, then you have to slog through the healthy stuff you don’t really want (that you usually just suffer through to get to dessert). No, it probably doesn’t do a lot to teach self-control and delayed gratification.

But.

It might just be my kids, but I know after an hour long car ride, the mini-occupants of my back seat are ready to explode. They’re not going to walk quietly through the store. They’re not going to sit peacefully at the restaurant. Heck, I’m lucky if they don’t go running out into traffic!

I suppose I could spend the entire trip trying to get them to stay calm by promising them a treat later, but honestly? It’s a lot easier to take 30-40 minutes, go to Chuck E. Cheese (or the park, or the McDonald’s playplace, or whatever) and let them burn out that overflow of energy first. Then they’re a little calmer, and I’ve got a fighting chance at getting through the day with my sanity intact!

What are Your Super Secret Secrets?

Everyone has little tips and tricks that help them get through days of productivity relatively unscathed. This is mine-take lots and lots of breaks to let your kids be kids. What are your super secret secrets of productivity after you’ve added kidlets to your day?  

Responsibility Killed the Parenting Star

I can’t say I go out of my way to keep my personal views out of this blog. It’s just not nice to lie like that. But I have noticed in the past few months that I’ve been leaning more heavily toward facts than personal experiences. That’s  not what I started this blog for, and it took me a little while to put my finger on what the heck was going on. 

Quite simply, I’m figuring out that I’m way overdue to figure out how to be a parent.

When my kids were younger, being a parent was actually pretty easy. Feed them, change them. Teach them to use a fork and a spoon and walk them through their ABC’s. Take them to the playground, and remember to take time to go jump in a mud puddle every now and then.

 Simple. 

Then School and Expectations Rear Their Ugly Heads

Mr. A will be 11 in April. Princess C is turning 9 in less than two months, and G-money is exploring the wide, wonderful world of being 6. And I’m realizing that somewhere along the way, I stumbled. I tripped. I was so busy trying to be a good parent to three school-age kids that I forgot what it meant to be a parent.

Homework gets done. My first grader read his first chapter book the other day, and he’s starting in on his second. My fifth grader just tested at the 11^th grade reading level.

11^th grade, people. We took a time-out to celebrate that night.

The kids are in dance and tae kwon do. They take swim lessons and have their friends over on the weekends. I’m conscious of how much junk food they eat, how much time they spend playing video games and how much smack I let them talk before I remind them that if it’s not nice, and it’s not necessary, it really doesn’t need to come out of their mouths.

But I can’t remember the last time we went outside to dance in the rain. Or busted out the fingerpaints. Or built a tower out of cards on the kitchen table.

It’s not that we’re too busy, although it feels that way sometimes. Sure, our nights are full, but there’s always time for one more story. One more laugh. One more hug. It’s just that somewhere along the way, I got busy being responsible. 

Ugh. That word sends a shiver down my spine.

It’s true though. When I have free time at night, it usually ends up being laundry time or dishes time or pick-up-themess-in-my-living-room-that-never-stops-breeding time. Bed time is bed time. Dinner time is dinner time. Somewhere along the way, I got so busy “doing” that I forgot living isn’t about how clean your dishes are. And no matter what my neighbors think, it’s not about the last time I mowed my grass either.

It’s about the number of hugs in a day. It’s staying up late to watch a movie with your kids. It’s letting homework wait an extra half hour so you can go to the park. Eating cereal for dinner so you have time for that second game of UNO. And a third.

At the dinner table last night, we were talking about where the kids wanted to live when they grew up. And G-money crawled right up in my lap and cried because he didn’t want to stop living with me.

It was a kick in the pants, because that stage isn’t going to last forever. By the time he’s 18, he’s going to be foaming at the mouth to live someplace where mom and dad aren’t. And right now, I’m wasting these sweet, precious years worrying about how clean my house is or whether or not the kids have clean pants to wear.

My Promise to My Kids

So today, I’m doing something bold. Something daring. I’m giving up on being a responsible parent and focusing on being the parent that my kids need me to be. If that means washing a load of laundry at 6 in the morning so the kids have clean clothes, or doing dishes before dinner just to have a plate to eat on, or stepping on toys because it doesn’t happen to be Sunday, then that’s what it means. I don’t want to look back on these years and realize I’ve been so worried about being a responsible parent I forgot to take the time to be a good one.

I’m also requiring 48 hours notice if you want my house to be clean when you come to visit. Otherwise, you take what you get. Consider yourself warned.

When Should You Kick the Diaper Habit?

If there’s any milestone in the civilized world that garners more attention than potty training, I haven’t found it yet. Everyone has some advice to offer. Everyone has a timeline for when it should happen. 

Everyone can tell you all about how you’re doing it wrong.

Personally, I put potty training up there somewhere in the fifth circle of Hell. The wrathful section, that is. Parents and children caught in a never-ending struggle for supremacy. And anyone who’s danced the potty-training tango can tell you that this time, you're not the one holding the cards.

The mini-tyrants are the ones with the power.

Tee Time

If you’re going to start potty training, you HAVE to understand that one little fact. You aren’t the one that holds the power in that relationship. You can beg, cajole, blackmail, bribe and plead. That doesn’t mean that your little tycoon-in-training is going to kick those diapers to the curb one millisecond sooner than when they’re good and ready.

Three frustrating rounds of potty training later, I know. Oh, do I know. My eye (and the rest of me) still twitches violently every time I think about it.

So they hold the power, but if you’re going to get them out of diapers sometime before Kindergarten you have to take the reins. How the heck do you balance that?

Follow the Signs

Potty training success relies almost exclusively on your ability to tell when their objectives and yours are in the same century. You have to recognize the signs, none of which are as obvious as running through the hallways holding a pair of clean underwear and shouting, “Hasta la vista, diapers!”

So when MIGHT they be ready? Keep an eye out for any and all of the following:

·           

      Sneaking into the bathroom and playing with the toilet. (Flushers. Keep an eye out.) 

·          

      Taking off wet/poopy diapers on their own.

·         Telling you when they need a diaper change.

·         Willingly sitting on the potty. Reading a book, playing games. Kids who aren’t ready to potty train will fidget or run screaming in the other direction.

·         Lusting after big-kid underwear. The more they want it, the more they’re willing to work for it.

Be Willing to be a Sunday Driver

It’s tempting to jump all over your kids the minute they start showing the signs. This is one of those times where it pays to be a Sunday driver. Pushing your kids too far, too fast is going to put you farther back than you were when you started.

Move slow. Follow their lead. If you find that they’re digging in and rebelling, put potty training on ice. 

Sometimes a three to six month break is all you need. Come back to it.

Let them be the boss. It’s worth it in the end.