Does Your Child Need an Attitude Adjustment?

Does your child ever whine, talk back, throw tantrums at the store? Would you like to change attitude problems quickly and easily? Of course you would! That’s why James Lehman has created his transformational behavior program! Yay!

When I heard Mr. Lehman selling his goods on late night cable, I was tempted by the free gift with purchase: 10 Ways to Turn Around Your Child’s Attitude in One Minute or Less. Who wouldn’t want that? Then I remembered falling for a similar promise. Maybe you’ve heard of the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Key word: easy. Yeah right. I practically lost my mind trying to force my kid through those easy lessons. I suspect the same to be true of the one minute or less promise. Come on – parenting is a process. Are there really any magic beans?

One look at Mr. Lehman and you can tell he’s spent his life dealing with attitude challenged teenagers! But hey, if you want to give it a go, the program can be yours for ’3 convenient monthly payments of $109.00 billed to the credit card.’ Just don’t blame me if your own attitude suffers for it.

If you’re a parent, you’re just as expert as anyone else, so tell us all – what works for you?

Also – check out my advice on parenting. Totally free!

How Many Parents Does it Take to Make the 5th Grade Homecoming Float?

In a moment of weakness I volunteered for the 5th grade homecoming float committee. I know – the 5th grade has a homecoming float? There’s a long tradition in our town that the 5th graders participate in the high school homecoming parade. And when I say the ’5th graders participate’, it’s code for the ‘parents of the 5th graders compete’.

I attended two homecoming float committee meetings where I tried to keep quiet while no less than 8 women talked at the same time. In case you can’t tell by the tone of this blog, I’m not exactly a wallflower. I tend to speak up. However, I remind you – this is PTA stuff and I am afraid. Despite the chaos, the mob actually came up with a pretty good design and we planned to get the kids together on Sunday to work on it.

Okay, so by work on it, apparently we meant let the hormonal little beasts run around like wild dogs and eat the hostess out of Fritos and Gatorade. (They also spent a meager amount of time taping out football field lines and making posters with tempera paint.) Again, during the workday I tried to keep quiet. Because really – what do I know about floats? Nada. School spirit? I got nothin‘.

I listened to serious and necessary discussions about tissue paper vs. napkins, glitter vs. paint, and the many uses of hay bales. Pretty soon my confidence grew and I suggested to the parent designing the support frame that we use PVC pipe. However, he was a man and promptly shrugged off my idea. At one point I asked a friend to please shoot me in the head if I ever volunteered to head up the float committee, or any other PTA committee. Give me a cause, a board, a fundraiser, and I’ll make things happen. But when it comes to school, just pass me the glue and glitter and tell me what to do.

At the end of the workday, while our children ran through the street, we dedicated PTA parents met under a tree to review what we’d accomplished and what still needed to be done. The candy bags had been stuffed and the costumes arranged. The banner was located and the cardboard cut. All that was left to do was assemble the frame – out of PVC pipe.

Who Said Summer Was For Sleeping In?

As recently as a couple of years ago, my summers were a piece of cake. The kids and I slept in, lounged around in PJs ’till who knew when, and then poked around for something to do. The pool, perhaps. I read lots of books.

Now the kids are 8 and 10 and my summer leisure has been replaced by carting them around to all the things that will keep them from driving me insane for the next ten weeks. Not that I’m counting. In addition to trying to keep them engaged and interested in something other than TV and Nintendo DS screens, I am also attempting to get my work done, which means I have had to become the picture of super-organization.

Mornings for me now include a quick run before the kids get out of bed, double and triple checking the calendar, lining up the day’s food options, and tossing in a load of laundry (because there seems to be a whole lot more of it lately). Then I taxi and entertain, invite the friends over, referee sibling spats, and squeeze out my freelance writing commitments, five minutes at a time. Then it’s time for lunch. Afterwards, if we are all still breathing: round two.

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a contest sponsored by KRAFT BAGEL-FULS.

Satire For Geeks

Speaking of award-winning humorists… If you like satire, particularly of the business variety, then check out Capitalist Banter. I especially like the one on the outsourcing of spanking!

Speaking of spanking, where you do stand on the debate?

PS – You may not want to Google spanking, as I did in preparation for this post. Or you may. Your choice. Consider yourself warned.

Resist the Beach Photo Conspiracy

Photo: Lela Davidson (The Way Better Beach Photo That Was Actually Fun To Take)

For years I have admired idyllic scenes of happy families posing serenely on the beach, after what I’d imagined was a peaceful day of cavorting in the sand and surf. When we planned our vacation to Gulf Shores, Alabama last summer, I’ll admit that half the anticipation was the chance to take a beach photo. Finally – the picturesque Christmas card fantasy would come true!

I packed matching white shirts and clean khakis for everybody. Who wears that?

Once we got to the beach, I forgot everything. White sugar sand scrunched under foot on the way to the endless ocean. Everything was blue, green, and white and the colors changed all day with the sunlight. Little crooked fences coaxed sand into subtle dunes and sea creatures swam around us. The kids chased crabs and caught them. Every morning we woke to a fresh, awe-inspiring view and every afternoon we lived in a magazine layout. John buried the kids in the sand, and I hosed them down. We walked the windswept beach and slept like mad. We wore rumply clothes and bathing suits and did nothing but eat and drink.

Then one evening we pulled out the neat white and khaki. I’d almost lost the desire, but not quite. You can’t not take the beach photo. (Okay, that’s a lie. I was dying to take the beach photo. It’s that important. There was no way I’d leave that place without evidence.)

Turns out those smiles in the beach photo are totally fake. It’s hot and uncomfortable on the sand, and try as you might you just can’t stop yourself from sweating. You are staring into the setting sun and trying not to squint. Your oldest child is fighting off a stomach bug. In a shining moment someone barks out:

Smile. Now! You can be sick when we’re done!

My advice: Skip the picture and let your little swimmers have all the fun they want, sans white shirts. Don’t forget to check out what other parent bloggers have to say, or better yet tell us your own favorite summer memory!

Parenting Blogs That Tell the Truth

I know you visit some blogs with that long list of their favorite blogs on the sidebar. You won’t find that here. For one, a lot of those bloggers are just plain lying. They don’t really like all those blogs. Because really, how could they? As a blogger AND parent (hence the parenting blog) I can attest to the fact that you can’t be halfway decent at either one if you’re taking the time to keep up with 100 or so blogs. I don’t have the time to be amused by others and produce such brilliant work here, all the while raising the two most awesomest people on the planet. Seriously, I’m only one woman.

Still, I want to introduce you to some [other] great blogs. I’m going the selective route. Here are the first three:

Dooce – Heather Armstrong is a force. Is it ironic that me, a fellow blogger has only started to read the most famous [un] Mommy Blog in existence after seeing Armstrong on the Today Show? Maybe. You’re probably all way ahead of me. Go pat yourself on the back.

Ashley’s Closet – Sassy to the edge and super smart. Please don’t like her better than me.

Wendi Aarons – Her tag line, they’re not all gems, is a lie. She is the funny that I am in my own imagination, before it comes out in words that are not quite as clever as I had thought they might be.

Go, now, read! And feel free to bookmark this page so you can come back here over, and over, and over to click these links!

I Will Beat You With a Stick and Sell You to the Gypsies

We parents have our own special language don’t we? I often threaten to beat my kids with a stick. And of course, it’s only funny because I haven’t so much as spanked them since they were toddlers.

My mom used to tell me all the time she was going to sell me to the gypsies. I’d never heard anyone else say that – ever – until a few weeks ago when I found this. Now, if you don’t know Dooce, you’re supposed to. I didn’t know I was supposed to like her, but how could I not? Gypsy selling and all.

In case you don’t know it, I’m a big geek for knowing how expressions, idioms, and other odd sayings originated. If you can help me trace the beginnings of threatening selling kids to gypsies, I’ll be forever in your debt!

PS – If I have a choice, I want to be sold to Johnny Depp. He’s a gypsy, right?

The Truth About Motherhood

Only a girlfriend will tell you the truth about motherhood. God-willing you have good girlfriends. I devoured the Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy, which was one of the breakout honest books when it comes to parenting – if you ask me. When I was pregnant with my first, I had a good friend who delivered two months before I did. Her words of wisdom?

You’ll never survive the first two weeks.

It wasn’t technically true. I lived. But that’s the kind of honesty that only a good girlfriend shares. None of this hokey miracle bonding crap. I was still pregnant, but she didn’t stoke my fantasy of Perfect Baby and Perfect Mother.

Then I made some new Mommy Friends and they admitted to spending entire days on the sofa, shouting at infants, crumpling on the kitchen floor over… yes, spilt milk. No, wait – that was me! We are all so very, very flawed. Motherhood just shines a spotlight on all your imperfections.

Can you tell I’m feeling like a stellar mom today? It has been brought to my attention that I yell at the Boy Child every day. Each and every one? Okay, maybe… lately – yes. I have been yelling at him every day. He is driving me insane. Please write and tell me it’s all going to be better soon. Or – the truth. If you’re my girlfriend.

What do you wish a girlfriend had told you?

Mosey over to the Parent Bloggers Network this weekend to find out what other mothers are saying.

Cater to Your Children’s Strengths

Have you heard of the ‘strengths’ movement? (Why everything today is a movement I don’t know, but that’s a post for another day.) Apparently it’s catching on that we should actually encourage our children’s strong areas and get over it when they’re bad at something. Say, for example – spelling. I was skeptical at first. Was this one of those touch-feeling, Johnny’s-good-at-kickball-because-everyone’s-good-at-kickball-and-we-all-get-a-blue-ribbon kind of philosophies? But no.

Strengths are defined in three key areas:

• Activity Strengths, the tasks that make you feel engaged and energized.
• Relationship Strengths, the things you do for and with others that make you feel valued and competent.
• Learning Strengths, the unique ways we approach and understand new information.

Those areas are extremely different. Every child is unique, but schools sometimes don’t want to (or can’t) deal with this. I have been told by an elementary school principal that the goal of our system is to get everybody through it in the normal range – meaning no one is below average, but no one is above either.

What if kids were allowed to fall below in some areas and excel in others? I don’t know if that’s practical, but what if? That’s the way it is out here in the real world. Check out the Parent Bloggers Network today to find out what other bloggers are saying.

It Takes a Squad

Forget the village, sometimes parents need a full-on squad! Check out the new site, ParentingSquad.com. It’s not your sticky-sweet, or information-only boring parenting site. You’ll find realistic tips and tricks for everything from soothing baby to relocating the family, including some sage advice and articles from yours truly!

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