The Golden Rule: That Means YOU TOO!

Before you do something to somebody else, you are supposed to stop and ask yourself if it is the way you would like that person to treat you. It has been pounded into our brains since we were children. Shouldn't it be second nature by now?

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

There is nothing ambiguous about it. There is no room for wiggle. So why do people still think that being the parent gives them an automatic exemption from the Golden Rule? It doesn't.

There are parents out there that don't seem capable of speaking to their children in anything but a hateful tone. The banshee of the neighborhood, they do not scold their children as much as shriek at them. They snivel and snarl about how their children are ungrateful, unmotivated, and downright worthless, and all you can do is shake your head and say, "With parenting like yours, who'd a thunk it?"

I certainly don't want to be screeched at constantly, so it makes no sense to me to yell at my children. Believe me, I have my moments. When I finally blow, I blow big. But beneath every move I make is a general respect. I respect my kids as human beings, distinct and separate from myself. If I screw up, I do my best to fix it, to allow them to tell me that I've hurt them, to offer them an apology.

As it turns out, they are just as human as I am.

It only makes sense that a parent who speaks disrespectfully to their child will have a child that speaks disrespectfully to others. There is no stretch. But you can't tell screaming Mimi that, can you? Nope, in her eyes it is purely the child's fault. Effect and cause. They make me the way that I am.

*Shudders* Some people. Should not. Have children.

The good news is: Karma exists in parenting too.

Mommy Rule #326 "How Do We Eat an Elephant?" Homework, Procrastination and Catching-Up

Justin is fifteen, but he has called me twice a night for the last three nights.

Not because he is a momma's boy, which he is *smiles*, but because he felt overwhelmed and needed some direction. I am always Momlette to Justin, so I knew right away something was up when he said... "Mom, I'm just... I'm just soo... urgghhh...."

 "What's up son?"

"I have a whole buttload of schoolwork to do and I'm grounded until I get it done."

Justin you see, likes to procrastinate. A trait I am afraid he learned from his mother. It appeared that 26 assignments was the magic number as to what constitutes a "buttload." Even better, he had three days left in the term.Ouch.

"There is no way I am going to get all of this homework done, and they won't listen to me."  I can hear that tone rising in his voice, the one that is means he is about to launch into panic mode. Years of experience have taught me, don't push him past that point. Once you do, you have lost him.

You have to calm him down first, and come at it from his point of view. So, we step back and pull in Mommy Rule #326, How we eat an elephant.

First we calm down, then we define the problem. The problem is, Justin has always preferred play to work. The consequences are, he now has three days to fix it.

It is a bit harder to do from several hundred miles away than it was when he was here, but I finally convinced him to get all of his school work out and look at it. He needed to get a clear picture of how much work he really had to do, not just the inflated image he had in his mind.

He found nine homework assignments right away that were done, he just hadn't marked them off. In a matter of seconds his task had been reduced by a third. From there he figured the rest out on his own.

"If I divide them up... that only leaves only 5 assignments a day!"

I reminded them that he had done this on his own, as angry as he was about being grounded he was the only person who could fix it.

And he did...

He called me that night to tell me he had made it to his goal of 5 1/2 pages without trouble. He was really pleased with himself and I could hear it in his voice. We even had a few minutes to discuss our favorite topic of ultimate seriousness, Star Wars trivia.

The next night when he called, he was upset again. He had to keep working on his past due school work until it was done, nobody else would let him just do five assignments a day. I waited for him to calm down again. "How do you eat an elephant?" I asked him.

"One bite at a time.." he answered.

He was going to be grounded until the work was done either way, so stressing himself out over it was only hurting him. He brightened again. True, 11 pages still sounded like a lot, but the 5 he could handle. When he called me to check in later that night he was still right on target.

On the last night, I answered the phone to "Hey Momlett!" So I knew right away he was feeling better. "I was just calling for my nightly home work pep talk."

The elephant had grown smaller and smaller, and he was finally feeling confident again.

He knows I know these things because we both have ADHD brains, and what works for the rest of the world doesn't always work for us. It takes a lot more energy for us to accomplish tasks than most people because our brain is always looking for a distraction.

I know what a struggle it is for me to work from home with the chaos that is our life. I have no office, I just move from room to room trying to find a place I can be as distraction free as possible. The bed, the sofa, and more often still the bathroom floor. Even with only the two girls home it can be hard to find a place to allow that focus to sink in.So I totally get where he is coming from.

I have barely learned to fight the distractions over 40 years of practice, so it will take him some time.That is one area I have always been thankful for the co-parents support. Where I am a scatter-brain my co-mom is OCD quality organized. In the time Justin has been with her she has reined in a lot of the areas I struggled with. It's good to know you have support.


Happy Un-grounding Justin, next time - just start with the tail!

PS I got 80%

“No mommy... I do it by self.” Parenting is Letting Go

Even before they were born, I knew that there would be things out there that would hurt them, it’s an inevitable part of human existence, but like any parent I still hoped that it was possible to just... you know... protect them from...  

Everything.

Eighteen years in it hasn't gotten any any easier. From birth onward, parenting is a process of letting go.  Give them roots and give them wings, that’s what we were supposed to do, right?

Yeah,  it sucks.Our children have to grow up and we have to let them. They have their own lives to live. The growing up is the easy part... it's the letting them that gets rough.

Even now as my one and only adult child explores her new grown-up world, I am having a very hard time with the letting go part. I am a mother. I want to protect her now, as much as I did the first time I held her. And she just wants to fly.


As one phase of childhood makes way for the next, both parent and child are forced to adjust. From their first skinned knee to their first broken heart, those hurts will come, and most people will survive those hardships relatively intact. Trying to protect them does no good whatsoever, but would we really be parents if we didn’t try?

I constantly question my parenting, well... I constantly question everything but.. I have more help in some ares than most.

I'm not just raising the three children I brought into this world, I am raising my step-daughter Jade full time as well. We keep having to rehash the same old argument about an adults right to happiness versus their responsibility to keep the children involved in their lives safe, but we don't seem to be getting anywhere with the adults. As a result we have a little girl who has seen and experienced far too much for her age. If trying to keep the other kids from growing up too fast is important to us, trying to keep her age appropriate is crucial.She's not having any of it.

With children ranging in age from 12 to 18, we are in the home stretch now. This is that phase that my young parenting self referred to as “the easy part.”

The naive little fool.

While I certainly do have more parental freedom these days, the kids have new freedoms as well... and it is all new and scary for everyone. I can leave the house a lot faster now than I could in the

A few of my old friends from high school are just starting their families. Their Facebook streams are filled with ultrasound images and proud first moments. I love seeing their children grow up, hearing about their joys and triumphs. I love watching the parents try to memorize each moment of their babies lives as if they can freeze it. They can't. Believe me, we have all tried...

We tried to pay attention, to hold on, to save every second of it too. Cooing, rolling over, sitting up. We watched their eyes light up when they learned something new too. Our heart swelled with pride but at the same time our heart broke just a little too. Each step towards adulthood is another step away from us. Away from the safety of our arms and into the world.

Then last week the daughter of one of my oldest friends announced that she got married. For a moment I was once again convinced that she skipped a few birthdays. The little girl who used to draw pictures of angels for me is a wife now. She will be a good wife, but damn if it wasn't supposed to be another twenty years or so before the possibility of growing up even crossed her mind.

Some are just taking their first steps, some are heading off to college, and some are getting married, and all we can do is watch them grow and let them go.We all say the same thing though: "It just happened so fast..."

I’m not ready to boot mine out yet, but I didn’t have to. Two months after Brooke turned eighteen she came home and said, “My friends and I found a house, and I’m moving out.” Our natural instincts are kicking in. We are getting on each others' nerves... she’s already beginning to hate me for meddling, so I guess it really is all on schedule.


I worry that I forgot to teach her something crucial. My late night checklist of “Things That Could Go Wrong” is in overdrive right now. I don’t get a retake here, what’s done is done. How did that experiment work after all?

In the spirit of honesty though, I must now admit that my daughter is technically only a block and a half away. She still comes over a few times a day. She raids our fridge, uses our washing machine, and hangs out to talk. She just sleeps somewhere else now. Just like that. She is still a momma’s girl; we are still close, but she is becoming what she was meant to be all along. An adult.

Jade, is the youngest and at the same time the oldest. She is headed for adulthood at a dead run and where we had to push my kids towards adulthood, with her we are having a hard time putting on the brakes. She's ready for perfume and makeup and curling irons.We want her back into Spongebob instead of Heartthrob.


Even my baby Mystery is slipping through my fingers. She will turn 13 this year. Officially a teenager. Ouch. Every time I look at her I see the signs of a little girl slipping away and that strange woman sneaking in and taking her place. Her hero isn't Scarlett O'Hara anymore, it's Elphaba Thropp. She doesn't want to be a vet anymore either, now she wants to be an attorney because they still help others but they make better money.

Justin's voice on the phone is not his voice anymore. He’s not a man yet, but... he is. I feel so far away from him and his life. From all of their lives. I am going from being the mom who knew all of their friends and their friends parents to not knowing where they are or what they are doing. Justin is still going to school with his Dad and I miss him. I still can't watch Toy Story without crying, but that's okay... we always have Star Wars.

That shadow above his lip isn't just a shadow anymore. He is taller than me now, and the distance between the tops of our heads keeps growing every time I see him. I knew there would be a day when he would look down upon me, but I didn't really think it would happen, not really. The other day on the phone he lectured me about his big sister. He informed me that she was growing up, and I might not like all of the decisions she is making right now but I couldn't protect her from everything.

He also reminded me that I did a good job, I gave her roots and I gave her wings. I did my job, she made it... she's an adult now.

My oldest moved out...Breathe momma, breathe...

I tell myself that she will flop and flail here and there and I will want to rescue her but she'll come to me when she needs me. If she really needs my help I will be here but now is the time to trust her. To trust all of them.

I have worked so hard to teach them how to make good decisions for a reason. I never wanted them to make the decisions that were right for me, or for their father, or even their future partner, I wanted them to make the decisions that would take them where ever they were meant to be.

I know, deep down they will all be fine. The toddler years just keep coming around again in new forms.

“No mommy... I do it by self.”

Twilight, and "good family values"? I'm sorry, but Edward Cullen is a creep.

Like most parents of tweens and older kids, I have heard a great deal about Twilight over the past few years. And now I hear, we can look forward to hearing the whole story again through Edwards eyes. Oh joy.

Even the adults rave about the books and movies. I am a die hard vampire fan so I must admit I was intrigued at first. I've read many of the different views of vampires and there really is something romantic about immortality. 

 

"Besides", other mothers kept telling me, "it has a great 'family values' message." I gave Twilight a shot, despite my prejudices towards emo guys that glitter. A vampire story is a vampire story after all. Twilight had been sold to me as the greatest thing to come to parenting since chastity belts were outlawed.  

There is nothing new about this story or the way it was told. Good girls have been attracted to the bad boy since the beginning of time, and if you play with a bad boy long enough you usually do get bitten. It only took one movie for me to become positive that Edward and Bella both have a livejournal out there somewhere, and it is filled with emotastic poetry. Teen drama activate!

As adults we are capable of understanding that Twilight is just a fairy tale, but there are twelve year old girls walking up to Robert Pattinson, the actor who plays Edward and asking them to bite them. That's a grip on reality right there.

 

But...  have to ask am I the only parent out there who was totally creeped out by Twilight? 

"The beautiful and dangerous" Edward watching Bella sleeping? For a vampire who can actually tolerate the sunlight, he spends a lot of time hiding in the shadows and most of that time is spent watching a teenage girl without her knowledge, or consent. Romantic for a vampire, but in real life. That's called stalking.

Edward insults Bella a lot too. He is jealous, needy, and seriously overprotective. Come on, after 110 years of being a teenager you'd think he would have overcome at least a bit of his teen angst.

 In real life a relationship that begins like this ends in abuse, emotional, psychological, and sometimes eventually physical. It ends with a girl giving up all she is to please a man who can't help being who he is.

By all means watch the movies by yourself or with your children, but if your daughters are among the Team Edward worshipers, do them a favor and tell them what really happens when you catch a bad boy. Obsession isn't love, it is lust and lust hurts, sometimes... it even kills.

Whatever values Twilight is teaching our youth, they aren't the values I want in my family.

But... maybe that's just me.

"And I'm the strange parent?" Parenting habits that don't make sense.

There are a lot of things we do with our kids that don’t really make much sense to me. From simple things like telling our kids not to talk to strangers and then getting upset with them when they refuse to sit on Santa’s lap, to hitting a child to teach them not to hit.

We send children conflicting messages on a regular basis, and we don’t even realize we are doing it. People call their children brats and then are somehow surprised when they act like one. Some call their kids dumb, some call them lazy, some call them fat. 

 

When you label a person, they tend to become the label. When we label our children negatively, the negative effects show. When we label them positively, they actually live up to those labels.

Parenting is an art, not a science.

I’ve also never understood the concept of forcing a child to clean their plate, especially when we have such a high rate of obesity in our country. Yes, they need to eat healthy, but that doesn’t mean they need to eat when they aren’t hungry.

Sometimes, rules were meant to be broken. 

 

Part of the art of parenting is knowing when to bend the rules and when to break them totally. The most fun we have had as a family were the times we broke the rules; the days we ate dessert before dinner, stayed up way past bedtime to do something silly, or took a day off to just go hang out.

Many of us have forgotten what it is like to be a kid. When you look at things from their point of view, you see things you never noticed before. The world can be a very confusing place for a child, and as parents we need to remember that. 

 

They are people too, and they have a right to be heard just as much as we do. That doesn’t mean we always have to give in, but we can at least take the time to listen to them, to validate their feelings and explain our point of view. 

 

Most of all, I have never understood why people think we are raising children in the first place. We are raising adults, and we only have 18 years to get it right. If we screw it up, there can be hell to pay. Just something else to think about...

"Tough Talks" Articles: Talking to kids about sex and protecting your child from sexual abuse

This week I found out that a woman I know is now dating her third sex offender... that we know of. Typing his name in Google brings up his record as the first four results, it would have taken her all of two seconds to check it, but she says she didn't. It isn't as if she doesn't know they are sex offenders, it is that she doesn't want to know.

There are a lot of things we don't want to know, but pretending they aren't real doesn't make them go away. There isn't a fairy godmother in the world who can make a sex offender not be a sex offender. It's what they do, it's like asking a scorpion not to sting or a spider not to bite.

They might not molest your child... but I wouldn't go poking around just to find out. If you are a parent, you have a responsibility to protect your children from child molesters, and nobody should have to explain this to you. It should be hardwired, but sadly... as soon as I posted something about it online I got several messages from people saying that they know women who seem to date pedophiles exclusively. What gives? I have NO idea.

It only takes a few minutes alone with a predator to change a life forever. If the red flags are there, don't ignore them. It doesn't matter how much you love your partner, if they are a danger to your children and you fail to act then you are just as guilty as they are, and maybe even more so. You chose to bring that child into the world, and you owe that child as safe a passage as possible.

There is very little room in parenting for selfishness when it comes to who will and will not be around your children. It can happen to anybody, once after that, well... as George W. Bush once said...

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." 

Eventually, your kids are going to have sex. We all know where grand-babies come from, and whether we like the method or not, it happens. It isn't that we want them to remain celibate forever, but any good parent wants to hold it off as long as possible.

Educating your children as well as yourself about sexual predators is just one step along the way. Teaching them about their bodies and their safety every chance you get is the only defense you have, and even then they sometimes get through. The best of mothers have discovered that someone they placed their trust in was not trustworthy. The guilt they suffer is tremendous, but you are dealing with a professional, and to beat them you had better get educated.

When we were kids we had National Geographic and our parents' dirty books. Today's kids have the internet. Anything you want to know is a mere Google search away. Children are becoming exposed to sex at earlier and earlier ages. Sex bracelets, lipstick parties, and sexting might be foreign to you, but if your kids are above the age of 13, they probably know more than you think. They sell thongs for toddlers now, and parents are actually buying them.

Teaching them about the birds and the bees is one of the least looked forward to tasks in the parenting handbook, and most of us want to get it over with as soon as humanly possible. It's our kids... and sex... and... awkward...

I can't come to your house and do it for you, but I can offer you a bit of a helping hand: a pair of articles from the Boshemia's Bohemia archives. Practical parenting tips and ideas for helping you decide what you can do about those great fears for your kids.

Talking to Kids About Sex

Protect Your Child From Sexual Abuse

What does parenting have to do with politics?

It has been a really negative year for everyone politically, you can't even turn on the news without seeing more negativity. Fighting and name calling are becoming par for the course. Our own government is acting more like a class of preschoolers than a leadership body made up of mature adults. Not just one party, but both are playing the "I don't like you, so you can't come to my birthday party" game.
  

I used to joke that maturity was overrated, but a little bit of maturity wouldn't hurt any of us right now. If you have a truth to speak then by all means speak it, but the minute we resort to including personal attacks and name calling we can no longer consider ourselves responsible adults.

One of my favorite parenting experts is a woman named Susan Stiffelman. She calls her parenting approach Passionate Parenting. She has taught me the futility of power struggles. The more you seek to control another person, the more they resist that control, and the faster you lose the control you seek. 

 

Perhaps she should expand her book to explain that this applies to every situation, not just our own children. We can all share our views as loudly and even as aggressively as possible, but when we shut them out before they even get a chance to hear it, what is the point of saying it at all?

It has been a year since I made the commitment to remain positive no matter what the situation. I picked a bad year to do it, and as hard as I have tried I still have a very long way to go. Along the way I have had to cut out a lot of activities, going to my much loved locals-only site is just one of those things. Not because anyone there has been unkind to me or attacked me in any way, but because the negativity is not only a physical but an emotional drain.

Those who teach positive living say that it takes five positives to counteract a single negative. If so, then the cloud of negativity hanging over this country is going to take centuries to conquer. Those same experts also teach that we should not focus on what we don't have, but what we do have. Instead of focusing on what is going wrong, we are supposed to focus on what is right. I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to speak your mind or to disagree with what is going on in the government right now. I'm just saying before you complain, see if you can find a way to turn that complaint into positive action.

One thing I have always stressed to my children is that bitching has never solved a single problem. Instead of focusing on the problem, focus first on the lessons we can learn from it and then focus on finding the solution. My children understand this concept, but so few adults seem to these days. Even my children know that smart people use their brains, and the rest resort to calling names. 

 

What are we teaching our children right now? That is is better to hate than to love? That it is better to complain that to take action? That it is okay to call other people names as long as you don't like them? That anyone who does not agree with you is the enemy?

Children do learn these lessons whether we mean to teach them or not, and it might seem okay to teach them to attack that which they do not like but... there will be times in every child's life when they do not like us. When those lessons come back to us, they sometimes hurt.

One area of our life affects every other. If we insist we are teaching our children respect but can't offer respect to our neighbor or even our president, then we aren't teaching them respect at all. We are teaching them to hate, and we really have no right to be surprised when that hate comes back home. Teach them love and compassion. Teach them to speak their truth respectfully. Teach them to create, not to destroy.