Mommy's Pen

A writer's notes on family

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Archives for December 2011

To: abbiewaters[at]aol.com

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Hello,
 
I live in Portland, Oregon. Lots of folks sleep outside here all through the winter. Tuesday, on my walk to my office building, I saw a man wrapped in a blanket digging through a street corner trash can. I was running late, and even though I should have stopped to help him by buying him some breakfast or giving him a few dollars, I didn’t.
 
Then, Tuesday evening, I read about Abbie and your family’s desire to hear about acts of kindness on lateenough.com.
 
Wednesday morning, I left my home a few minutes early and stopped at Starbucks. I bought a grande cup of coffee, a warm bagel with cream cheese and a box lunch with fruit and cheese.
 
I walked to the place where I had seen the man the day before. He wasn’t there, but in front of City Hall, I saw a cluster of sleeping bags. Some people are spending their Christmas week sleeping in front of City Hall to call attention to the problem of homelessness in my community.  I walked up to two people who were awake and said, “Please give this to whoever wakes up and needs it most!”
 
They gratefully took the warm items out of my hands and I walked on to work — feeling rather warm myself.
 
Blessings to your family in this season. My thoughts are with you in the loss of your dear Abbie.

Sincerely,

Sue Campbell

Please perform an act of kindness this week and send it to abbiewaters{at}aol.com. Her family will print all the emails and fill Abbie’s stocking with them.  They will read them all on Christmas morning in memory of Abbie.

The Annual Campbell Christmas Letter

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My father-in-law, Larry, has a great gift for writing amusing Christmas letters. I’m sure you realize, if you’ve been sifting through your mail box this season, what a rare gift this is. Since I’ve been too lazy to post much in the last week, please enjoy my witty in-law in my stead.

Time flies. Betty White is almost 90. Elvis has been dead for 34 years. Miss Nora, the Princess of Portland, is 4 ½ already. And it’s time for another edition of our Oatmeal People Christmas Letter. Life is bland. And that’s just fine with us.

Last winter we made the grave error of not planning a mid-winter getaway. We spent merciless weeks hunkered down under layers of quilts, sipping tea, softly moaning to ourselves. So to make up for it, we took a trip to Winnipeg in July. The Riviera of the northern prairie. We realized that Canadians are Oatmeal People too. Just like us. How nice. Everywhere we went, calmness, politeness and civility reigned. Drivers stopped for pedestrians. Clerks took our American dollars with a smile (probably something to do with the exchange rate, no doubt), and the newspapers weren’t filled with political hogwash. A veritable plethora of pleasantness.

We were able to visit Ben, Sue and Nora in Portland twice this year. Our first trip was at Easter, with a jaunt to the beach for kit flying and nibbling of chocolate eggs. We returned for Halloween and a rousing round of trick-or-treating with Nora. She was a Rainbow Witch, something she made up herself. And we disguised ourselves as overprotective grandparents. Very convincing in every aspect. After we left, Nora told her parents, “I miss my daddy’s mom.” Awwwww.

We did a fair amount of biking this summer. One particularly fun ride was from Red Wing to Cannon Falls on the Cannon Valley Trail. It was wonderfully scenic, flat, shaded, and cool. We stopped for sandwiches at a quaint little deli where Barack Obama had lunch the following week. We keep telling people we lunched with the President…almost.

If you’ve been a faithful reader of our Oatmeal People Chronicle, you are perhaps wondering about Lucille, Elizabeth’s geriatric cat. We are happy to report that she is still alive, frisky, and well. That’s good news for us all. I’d hate to have to mention a dead cat in the Christmas letter. However, Elizabeth recently returned custody of Lucille to the friend who gave her to her in the first place. It wasn’t that Lucille was unwanted. Quite the contrary. It’s just that Elizabeth and her boyfriend Erik adopted a rambunctious puppy that would have terrorized that frail creature. Otis is part husky, part golden retriever, and all adolescent dog. Elizabeth says that if he were a person he would spend his evenings standing on street corners, smoking cigarettes and yelling obscenities at passing cars. They are hopeful that he will soon outgrow his puppiness and start behaving himself in public.

Larry continues to be fully entrenched in retirement, with Debbie stubbornly hanging onto her career. She still teaches a few classes at St. Cloud State, works part time for the Initiative Foundation in Little Falls as a Children & Families Associate, and does a bit of consulting/training along the way. The woman who helps us with our taxes looked at the stack of Debbie’s W-2 forms and dryly said, “You certainly have a lot of jobs for someone who’s retired.”

Nora is absolutely excited about Christmas. We can’t imagine anything more magical than being her age. We will do our best to make it special when they visit in a few weeks. All we need now is some snow. And a big bowl of oatmeal, of course.

Merry Christmas!

And Merry Christmas from Mommy’s Pen!

The “No-Bitch Christmas” Pledge

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I went to Target on Sunday morning, right at opening time to avoid some of the holiday craziness.  By the time I left the craziness was in full swing.  And I have to say, the behavior of many of the parents I saw was appalling.

I know holidays are stressful for many people.  There’s a lot to do on top of everything everybody already does and pressure to make it special.  But how are our kids going to feel special if we spend the three weeks before the big day saying things like, “You better not lag behind because I’m not putting up with your crap today.”

Maybe parents spend so much money on gifts for Christmas because they feel guilty about how bitchy they’ve been during the lead up.  Just a guess.

So, time for a self-check.  Every time I catch myself being impatient and snarly, I’m going to stop and re-new my pledge to have a bitch-free Christmas.  Whatever it takes — keeping things simple, letting go of perfection, extra acupuncture and yoga sessions — I’ll do it. I want Nora to remember the love and warmth of the holidays, not the mood swings.

Won’t you join me?

 

8 Ways to Get the Best Behavior Out of Children

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Good parenting is about putting all the pieces together. Everyday. This is a list of everything I’ve gleaned about how to get the best out of kids. These are things I’ve learned from observing and speaking with educators, reading books, talking with other parents, and of course, parenting my four-year-old, Nora. Whenever a situation presents itself where Nora is acting up, my husband and I can always get the behavior back under control by examining which of these things we have let slide.

1. Routine

Kids are so much more comfortable when they know what’s coming next. With Nora, we notice a spike in undesirable behavior — screaming and loud talking in her case — the first day we have visitors from out of town and the first day we are visiting somewhere else. Once she’s adjusted to the situation, she settles right back to her normal self.

Establish a routine that allows for vigorous activity and downtimes and stick to it whenever possible.  If you know the routine will be disrupted, give your child a head’s up about how things will be different (and what will be staying the same) so the change won’t catch him off guard.

2. Healthy Food

Garbage in, garbage out. Fill your kid up with junk food and you get behavior to match. If you’ve fallen into the habit of letting your child eat junk food, pull it back by clearing all unhealthy food out of the house and offering only the healthiest of what she likes to eat.  Then add additional healthy foods from there.  Also, make sure she stays topped off all day long. Offer small meals every 3 hours or so.  Low blood sugar is a nasty business we should all avoid.

3. Sleep 

Kids need a ridiculous amount of sleep.  Think of all the processing of information and growing they have to do. While it may seem counter-intuitive, if your child is having trouble falling asleep at night, s/he may actually need an earlier bedtime. It’s hard to settle down when you’re overtired and your body is dumping adrenaline into your system to keep you going.  Calming routines and low light levels at night also help.  And for pity sake, no screens in the evening.  The human brain mistakes that glow for sunlight, don’t you know.

4. Respect

Listen when your child talks to you. Speak to your child as if someone you want to impress is always listening to you. Don’t yell, don’t hit, don’t belittle.  If you do, offer a sincere apology and explain how you will change your behavior next time.  This is called modeling and it’s the best tool in your kit.

Sometimes the little details of everyday life make a big difference. For example, Nora is constantly underfoot when I’m trying to get us out the door or get at something.  Instead of saying, “Move out of the way,” or even “Move out of the way, please,” I like to say, “Take five steps back for me, please, I’m trying to reach such-and-such.”

You must also insist on respect from your child. Confront disrespectful talk and back-sassing. Tell your child that kind of attitude is not acceptable and validate that you love him but you expect better behavior from him.

5. Wait an Extra Beat

Putting on a coat, scrambling into a carseat, walking down a flight of stairs: little kids just take longer to do things. I’m constantly tempted to urge Nora along during these tasks, but I find if I wait a second or two longer than I’m inclined, she is able to finish the task without my prompting (read: nagging).

6. Minimize Screen Time 

I know some of you are going fight me on this but hear me out.  Screen time winds kids up like little else — television and video games are non-stop stimulation. I’ve seen parents who use screens to get some relief from a child’s bad behavior, then the bad behavior is exacerbated by the extra screen time, so the parent is even more in need of a break, thus allows even more screen time, and the cycle continues.

And programming for kids often provide models for bad behavior.  Most programs that seek to teach offer  a 20 minute demonstration of “naughtiness” (being mean to other kids or not doing what they’re told) and two minutes of resolution.  What sticks with the kid is the bad behavior, not the moral tacked on at the end.

Try the following:  this weekend let your child have a normal amount of screen time for your family (or even a bit extra) and notice your child’s behavior. Then the next weekend try no screen time.  Notice any differences in behavior.  I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts, your child is better behaved without screens.

7. Not Too Many Toys 

Kids get overwhelmed by clutter. Consider getting rid of about half of your child’s current stock of toys and then tucking the remaining half into a “toy library” you can tap when boredom strikes.  Keep only the toys that spark imagination and don’t require batteries.  You’ll have less picking up to do and your child will have more fun.  Really.

8. Have Fun 

Don’t always be the heavy.  Make everyday activities more fun by injecting some imagination.  When Nora was about two and a half, getting her ready to go to daycare was becoming a big challenge.  Instead of making it about getting ready to go school, we created a game about fighting fires.  I would hear an imaginary phone ring. I would answer it, pretending to be at the Fire Station, then say that Nora and I would get on all of our special fire fighting gear and come put out the fire.  Then Nora and I would rush to her bedroom and get her dressed as fast as we could, then hop in our imaginary fire engine and drive to the living room where we’d put out the fire and rescue the people who had called.  It worked like a charm.

So that’s the best I’ve got; putting these elements together keeps everybody at my house happy most of the time.  And yes, these principles work pretty darn well when applied to other adults or even yourself.

What do you think of the list? What’s easy for you and what’s hard? What did I miss?

My reviews of my favorite books on parenting:

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk

Simplicity Parenting

Time Out for Parents

Nurture Shock