Parenting

Having kids is a real trip- I love my kids and I think that I've generally done pretty well with them, but other parents continually baffle me. They won't give their kids straight answers and then expect the kid to not only not ask anyone else but also to trust what they say over anyone else. And God forbid that their kid asks you and you have the gall to answer them honestly. Do other parents really think that they are protecting their kids by avoiding talking to them about sex and drugs and other less than savory subjects until they are "old enough" and someone else has already answered their questions? I find the concept utterly flawed. 

My kids and I have had an ongoing discussion going about sex and drugs from the time that they were just old enough to ask what a cigarette was and why people smoke them. By the time that my kids were old enough for the schools to be thinking about teaching them sex ed, my kids were not only more well informed on the subject than most of their classmates, but their teachers were using them as back up on topics not covered by the textbooks, because they already had the correct information. Meanwhile, other kids are getting pregnant and ruining their lives with drugs because their parents won't tell them anything and the schools are waiting too long because the parents don't want them to bring it up and so the kids are asking other kids and getting bad advice. Other parents accuse me of pushing my kids to grow up too quick, or pushing them toward things they "aren't ready for," but I would argue that my kids speak for themselves. I have 2 in technical college programs (Computer Aided Manufacturing and Culinary) and 2 still in High School. All getting good grades, no drug or alcohol issues, no pregnancies or STDs or anything like that, and I have generally good relationships with all of them. My kids are the type that teachers generally love- they listen, they learn quickly and they are always doing research on stuff. You can bring up topics with them that most other kids have no clue on and my kids probably not only know what you are talking about but probably know stuff about it you don't.  Example: My 14 year old, Scott, was having a discussion with his teacher about behavioral psychology (started by a classroom discussion of the play Oedipus). It was the last class of the day, so Scott stuck around to continue talking with his teacher while the other kids slowly wandered off. Scott and his English teacher have a lot of great discussions and the other kids from the class will often stick around to listen because they always learn something when Scott starts talking. They began talking about the Oedipus syndrome and various ways that that tendency shows up in most people, such as girls tending to search for guys that have similar character traits to their dads, or boys wanting a girl who shares a talent with their mom, etc. and moved into a debate on the merits of Freud's work and after a few great points about how many of Freud's theories having a grain of merit that was often just taken to an unreasonable extreme, Scott's teacher commented that he seemed to be very knowledgeable about behavioral psychology and asked if that was what he planned to pursue after high school, to which Scott replied, "No, I'm going into Biochemistry. This was just something that I was reading about for fun." **Note this story was originally told to me by one of the other kids in the room and then later repeated to me again by the teacher during a conference.**  

All in all I think that I have done pretty well with my kids, so why is it that other parents don't seem to like them and routinely tell their kids that my kids are a bad influence? How? My kids are never in trouble, they're well behaved, outgoing, helpful, generally polite, and always willing to help their friends learn something new. Their friends love coming to our house and we've had more than a few of them want to move in. Why? Is it because we let them do whatever they want? Hell, NO! We have a very simple set of rules. Everyone in the house has a set of chores that they are expected to do and kids under 18 have a curfew and if the older ones are not coming home for the night they have to let us know before 9pm. Other than that our only rule is "Don't be that guy." I tell people that and they tend to look at me like I'm crazy, but it works. 

And who is "that guy"? We all know that guy. He's the one that pisses off everyone by playing pranks that no one else thinks is funny. He's the one that thinks that it's ok to not do the things they're supposed to because someone else will pick up the slack. He's the one that takes your stuff out of your room, wallet, purse, house, whatever, without asking and might return it in a couple of months if it is still mostly usable. He's the one that has no idea when it's ok to be loud and joke around and when it's better to be quiet. He's the one that bullies people into doing things their way all the time instead of letting other people have a turn leading once in a while. He's the one that never cares how anything he does affects anyone else. Hopefully you get the point. 

Early on, we just got in the habit of stopping the kids and pointing out something that someone was doing that we thought fell into the "that guy" category and just saying, "Look! it's that guy again." or if they were doing it, "Would you like it if that was done to you? No? Then don't be that guy to anyone else."  If they asked what was wrong with something, we told them. "It's rude and hurts people's feelings." Or "he almost ran into those people and that would have really hurt." or "he's hurting himself and the people who are around him." or "it's not his." As the kids got older the explanations were asked for less and often could be a lot more technical, but the point is that their questions got answered, even it was "I'm not sure, but let's look it up." 

One of Scott's best friends' parents moved their family to the next town over and out right told their kid that now that they were in this new place Scott was not welcome. They are allowed contact with all their other friends, but not Scott. Why? Where is the logic. Scott helped this kid pass History last year and has tutored him in grammar. How is he a bad influence? Answer: He has too much freedom. They think that the fact that I was letting Scott ride the public bus on his own at age 10 was too soon. They think the fact that my kids know how to cook is dangerous. They think that the fact that my kid knew more about the research on the actual effects of extended use of assorted narcotics than they do means that we are encouraging them to use drugs. In short, they think they are protecting their kid, who is 2 years older than Scott and in total rebellion over all of this.  

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but I am frustrated and baffled.  

The Pink Cadillac Cafe

I got an e-mail from my mother last night about my uncle. Apparently last month he had brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor that was had grown there and they are asking for people to pray for him.

I have very mixed feelings about this news. On the one hand he is family and I do care about him and his kids, but on the other hand, this is a man who for reasons that apparently are only known to him has avoided contact with most of the family for as long as I can remember. I can in fact only remember seeing him on 3 occasions during my entire life and the last time was over 2 decades ago when I was in high school.

I was visiting my grandparents who only lived about 10 min. from his house, and I had called them because I wanted to see them while I was there. It took 3 days for me to get any response and when I did, it was my older cousin who responded. He was 18 at the time and was thrilled to get a chance to see me like me, he considers family to be important but since his parents tended to change the subject whenever the extended family was mentioned, he had had no way to contact us, but he had accidentally intercepted my message on the answering machine and decided to take it upon himself to come see me.

He and I spent most of that day together. He took me to his parent's house where I got to briefly see my aunt and uncle, neither of which said more than 3 words to me before leaving the house on an "errand", but I also got to see my other cousin and he joined his brother and I for the rest of the day.

We went to the mall for a while and about mid-afternoon, we decided that were hungry and they took me to one of their favorite hang-outs, The Pink Cadillac Cafe. Situated right in the middle of downtown, it was 50's style diner with the largest booth in the place being a bright pink colored Cadillac convertible who's front seats had been reversed to face the back and a table was embedded in the center. (Kind of like the car booths at the restaurant in the movie Pulp Fiction when John Travolta's character takes his boss's wife to dinner) A few of my cousins' friends met us there and we had a great time just visiting  and joking around while we ate. And after we ate they all took me to a nearby video arcade where we goofed around for a few more hours before they gave me a ride home.

That is my most vivid memory of any of them. I never saw any of them again and though I did send my cousin a letter about a month later, and again a few months after that,  he never responded and I am not even sure if he ever got them. It's always been one of my greatest frustrations that I didn't get to know them better, but after more than 20 years without any of them even acknowledging my existence, there is a small pouting child in the back corner of my mind that is still angry at my uncle for basically rejecting his little sister and all of her children, though I know that she tried repeatedly to establish a relationship with him and that kid thinks he has a lot of nerve expecting us to offer any kind of support now that something is going wrong in his little world that he never wanted us to be a part of.

How Do You Know You Have A Healthy Marriage?

I see posts on CafeMom or articles in magazines or on-line all the time talking about how important it is to keep up an active sex life in your marriage and it just makes me laugh. Sure it's important to keep that spark going, but you don't have to measure success by how many times a day/week you have sex.

In my opinion, one of the biggest things that my hubby and I  have going in our marriage is not the sex (though that is definitely important- LOL). It's the fact that we can spend time together for hours on end talking about things other than our family and not run out of things to talk about that we both care about. We share some of the same hobbies and like a lot of the same music and have the same basic beliefs when it comes to religion/faith and politics. It's very important to make sure that you married couples out there are spending some time together just being a couple and talking about these things that you have in common as well as your family. I don't think that my husband and I could have lasted the nearly 20 yrs as a couple that we have under our belts if we didn't keep those communication lines open and find time to just enjoy being the friends that we were even before we got romantically involved.

So, how do you know if you have a healthy marriage? I guess to some extent that depends on what a "healthy marriage" means to you. For me, it means that your spouse is someone that you want to spend time with doing things both with your kids AND on your own; someone you still enjoy sex with, but who understands if you just don't feel like it tonight so that you don't feel like you have to do it; and most importantly, it means that when something upsetting or really awesome happens, you can't wait to tell them about it and when you do tell them, they actually CARE and RECIPROCATE! In my opinion, if you are forcing yourself to have sex with your partner some arbitrary number of times a week out of a feeling of obligation or from some misguided notion that somehow doing so will fix your marriage, but you never do anything else together without the kids and you have nothing else in common, it's time for some serious couples counseling and soul-searching.

Mommy's Me Time

I'm sure a lot of moms can relate to this- sometimes I get so busy with my kids' projects and activities and appointments and whatnot that I just don't seem to be able to find time for me. This is one of those issues that I have been making a conscious effort to change for myself. Being a parent, whether you work outside the home or not, is a busy, challenging and often thankless job and there is no shame in just saying "TIME OUT! I need a break!" The tricky part is that because kids aren't nearly as understanding about this as they expect us to be, we have to really work on just planning in time for this into our days.

For me that means that when I walk my youngest out to his bus in the morning, I make a point of taking a walk around the block on my own before I go home to make sure my cyber-schoolers are up and eating breakfast so they can start their schoolwork. And when their dad gets home he gets to spend an hour with the kids so that I can take a shower or read or play on the computer for a while after spending all day with them. And then he gets his cool down time too, because being Daddy is hard work, too!

A lot of time it seems like people forget just how important it is to take some time for yourself, especially if you have one or more kid(s) with special needs, who typically need exceptional levels of supervision and assistance. I have some friends who seem to think that "me time" has to be treating yourself to something exceptional, e.g. getting your hair or nails done or getting a massage or going shopping, but that kind of mind-set seems like it causes more stress than anything else because it gets so damn pricey! I have a dear friend that drives me crazy with that mind-set. She works like 60hrs a week, barely gets to spend any time with her kids, never seems to have money for anything, but insists on constantly getting her nails done or buying herself another pair of shoes that she doesn't need and that costs way too much for what she got, all of which goes on her credit card and all in the name of treating herself and having me-time. Why?!? What is the point of reducing your stress in ways that cause you more stress when the credit card bill comes? "Me time" doesn't have to cost money, people.  It can be as simple as going for a walk or taking a shower uninterrupted so long as you do it on your own and enjoy it!

Obesity and the Healthcare Industry

I recently saw a report from the World Health Organization regarding obesity in Europe and the US which claimed that by 2030 about 1/2 of the populations of those regions will be "obese".  They urged the governments of those countries to take action to help curb this trend.

I understand the concerns regarding the correlation between obesity and other health problems such as diabetes, however I think that the WHO is barking up the wrong tree asking the governments to try to regulate this. Most of these governments are having trouble  balancing their budgets- what makes anyone think that they can balance our diets?

Aside from that, what in the world can the government do about it with out simply making people angry? I suppose that they could try to regulate the fast food chains more, but that's just going to piss off the fast food industry and their customers and encourage people to buy more junk food at the grocery stores. I suppose they could then extend the regulations to include many of the junk food items we currently have available to us in the stores, but you start mess with many of those items and you're gonna have some really angry people demanding the heads of the officials that are reducing their access to their Twinkies, potato chips and sodas.

WHO says that their numbers prove that we can't depend on people self-regulating this anymore, but I don't see any way that the government can regulate it for their citizens without instigating a lot of civil unrest and anger. If they really want to make a difference, maybe they need to invest some effort in teaching people how to regulate themselves. OR try regulating the prices of more healthy foods so that people can afford to buy more veggies and fruits, because I know that more often than not I end up choosing less healthy, more fattening foods because buying the equivalent in healthy foods is priced 50% or more higher for the same amount.