A Tale of Super Parents

Once upon a time, a man and a woman fell in love, got married, and had children. Like most parents, they wanted to be Super Parents of Super Children. So they read, and they spent way too much time reading books by parenting experts who told them what they needed to do to raise the most brilliant children ever to grace this earth.

So they did what everyone else did to become Super Parents of Super Children. At first, it was easy.  The woman nursed — for years and years! They used cloth diapers. They made their own baby food. They eschewed television, especially for the babies. They even co-slept, until the oldest child decided he’d had enough of sharing with the man and the woman and wanted his own space. The man and woman were sad, until they realized that it was much nicer to be able to actually sleep in their own bed, but then they had another child, and he much preferred sleeping in their bed to anywhere else. And still does, even though he regularly gets kicked out and sent back to his own bed.

But I digress.

The boys grew. They grew, and they grew, and the man and the woman realized that being Super  Parents wasn’t so easy anymore.  No one cared if they co-slept. Everyone would have cared had the woman still been nursing the children, but she wasn’t, so no one cared about that either, especially not the man and the woman.

So the man and the woman started doing what parents have always done: what made sense for their children, rather than what someone else told them they should do.   But why, they asked, could it be that the rules for being Super Parents were so clear for infants, and so discretionary for children? Could it be that other parents were also making it up as they went along?

The man and the woman decided that there had to be things that they had to do to remain Super Parents.  They made a list of all those things that they’d heard other parents say that they never let their children do, use, eat or experience,  plus all the things the experts  said that the man and woman weren’t supposed let their children do, use, eat or experience, plus some random items that were thrown in because the woman was feeling guilty about something that day.

The list looked something like this:

Things to Never-Ever Let Your Children Have, if You Want To Remain a Super Parent:

• Sugar. Of any sort. Except on Hallowe’en, and even then, only one piece.

• Juice.

• Video Games

• Television

• Knowledge of, or understanding of the existence of a world outside their neighbourhood (in other words, don’t let them watch the news!)

• Babysitters, Nannies, or Day Care Caregivers

• Homework

• Internet Access

The man and the woman looked at the list, and they knew that these were the things that the Super Parents of Super Children were supposed to care about. They were proud of themselves for figuring stuff out on their own without You Tube.

But there was one problem.

If you asked them to be truthful, the man and the woman didn’t care about any of this stuff. At least, not enough to deny outright any of these things to their children.  They tried to set rules around how often the children used the computer, but they fell by the wayside when the man and the woman realized that they could steal another few hours of sleep on the weekends if the kids played video games on the internet.  The woman, unwilling to give up her day job, happily delivered her children to day care each day. The occasional  glass of juice was drunk. Sugar was consumed, sometimes in mass quantities. Occasionally, the children went to bed without brushing their teeth on days when sugar was consumed. Not that often, mind you, but… yeah. It happened.

It happens. And it also happens that despite the man and the woman doing all those things that the parent experts and the other parents tell them that they’re not supposed to do, the children seem to be just fine.  Despite the video games, sugar, day care and the fact that they occasionally fall asleep, watching decorating shows while snuggling in bed with their parents, they’re thriving, even.  In the end, the man and the woman decided that they didn’t really need to be Super Parents. They were doing enough just being parents, and that was good enough for them.

Get Outside!

Great Britain’s National Trust has come up with a list of 50 things to do before you are 11 3/4.  They include skipping stones, climbing trees, observing rock pools, calling owls, and sliding in the mud.

The list makes a great activity to print up, read together and check off.  Then, when you have the list of things still to complete, head outdoors and have some old school fun.

Here is the complete list.

image credit

1. Climb a tree

2. Roll down a really big hill

3. Camp out in the wild

4. Build a den

5. Skim a stone

6. Run around in the rain

7. Fly a kite

8. Catch a fish with a net

9. Eat an apple straight from a tree

10. Play conkers

11. Throw some snow

12. Hunt for treasure on the beach

13. Make a mud pie

14. Dam a stream

15. Go sledging

16. Bury someone in the sand

17. Set up a snail race

18. Balance on a fallen tree

19. Swing on a rope swing

20. Make a mud slide

21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild

22. Take a look inside a tree

23. Visit an island

24. Feel like you’re flying in the wind

25. Make a grass trumpet

26. Hunt for fossils and bones

27. Watch the sun wake up

28. Climb a huge hill

29. Get behind a waterfall

30. Feed a bird from your hand

31. Hunt for bugs

32. Find some frogspawn

33. Catch a butterfly in a net

34. Track wild animals

35. Discover what’s in a pond

36. Call an owl

37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool

38. Bring up a butterfly

39. Catch a crab

40. Go on a nature walk at night

41. Plant it, grow it, eat it

42. Go wild swimming

43. Go rafting

44. Light a fire without matches

45. Find your way with a map and compass

46. Try bouldering

47. Cook on a campfire

48. Try abseiling

49. Find a geocache

50. Canoe down a river

Friday Fun: Caine’s Arcade

Have you seen this yet? Nine year old Caine Monroy spent last summer built a fully-functioning cardboard arcade inside his father’s autobody shop in Los Angeles, California. In October of last year, a whole bunch of new friends showed up to play:

Go Caine! Kudos to filmmaker Nirvan Mullick, too. “I felt proud”, indeed.

Wheeling Into Spring

In our little neck of city alleyways, the blush of spring brings forth… wheels!  Big, small, four, two, as many as we can. We have little boys, and as you likely well know, boys like wheels.

This year, our waltz with wheels is more intense than usual.  My husband has just started a new job that is requiring the use of our one car.  So I’m at home, sola, with my three boys 5 days of the week, including Saturday.  We gave up being a two car household years ago, and I’m doing my utmost to forestall the purchase of another car for reasons environmental, financial, and health (even though I don’t want to, I walk and bike less when I have access to a car).

First off:  our bikes.  I know there are bravehearts out there who cycle in Toronto through the winter, but we’re not them.  So when the snows flush away and it’s possible to ride without a cold air headache, we’re on our bikes.  This year is special for us because our 3 year old now rides a two-wheeler.  In addition to the inherent fun-ness of that, his abilities make the 20 minute walk without children to my older son’s school a lot easier.

It’s still not that easy though, or quick, because I still walk with the baby.  We have a double bike trailer, but baby’s still too young for it, and it’s awfully big for just one child.  So, in anticipation of the very near future when I can ride my bike with him, I went to a bike shop recommended by a friend and got an infant bike seat installed on my bike.   I did this the day after I thought of the idea and was delighted with myself both because it seemed to expand our options so much to have us all on bikes, and also because I can sometimes procrastinate doing the things I want to get done.

The delight dampener came, however, when a couple of hours after picking up my bike from the shop, I went into the garage to look for something else and saw in plain frontal view the infant bike seat that my brother gave to me.  You know, the one in pristine condition.   It’s a mark of my commitment to you, reader, that I bring this memory to mind because doing so makes me $120 in the hole mental.

Let’s move to the four-wheelers, shall we?  I have a car seat stroller that I use all the time, even when I don’t drive; I like it because baby can sleep cozily in it.  But baby is now over 7 months old, and one disadvantage of the car seat stroller is that its shape forces him to recline, when he’d rather be bolt upright looking at all there is to look at.  The other disadvantage of that stroller is that it’s just one, and to fend off the spectre of two cars, its oneness seems too frail a front.

So I bent over double and hauled our pram out from under the back porch.  I didn’t know it was there until hubby told me so; I thought it had been stored in the garage.  I don’t think it’s been used for two years and it was, um, gross.  But, with my eye on more wheels, I fearlessly fumbled all the snaps and harness straps off, and threw the coverings in the wash.  Then I turned on the garden hose and let the boys have at it, after which they settled down with rags and toothbrushes to really clean that puppy properly.

Two days later, our baby sat and slept in that comfortable stroller which was likely cleaner than it has ever been since my sister hadned it down to me years ago.

In a pinch, I have a couple of umbrella strollers and a double stroller which I pray I’ll never have to heave against again.  And just in case you’re wondering at the wild stroller excess, please note that every single one was given to me except for the double, which I bought used at this annual sale for $65.

And finally, because even the most motivated legs can’t do everything, I joined a car share service.  I heard of car sharing years ago, and my initial interest piqued even more when a car location appeared a block from my house.  It was time.

And it’s worked out well.  We’ve used it twice already, and the walk is so short that even laden with car seats, it’s very do-able.  The kids are enjoying the novelty of a “new” car, and I like the escape hatch and freedom of it.

The wheeliness of everything is made simpler, of course, because it’s spring, glorious spring!  I’m not sure how we’ll fare when the weather turns cold again, but that seems such a distance away; who knows what will happen by then.

And I didn’t even mention the scooters…

In the middle of March Break

What a difference a year makes.

This time last year, the boys were desperate to get outside after a long, cold winter. Theyspent a whole afternoon chipping away at the ice in front of the house so that they could play ball hockey on the first sunny, remotely warm afternoon of March break.

 This year? They’re in shorts. It’s (as I type) 17 degrees Celsius outside. As every day from here until September promises to be as reasonably balmy (if not down right hot, by July) as the last, I’m not sensing any urgency in them to get out and enjoy the weather. So, they’re crashed in front of a movie, until I rouse them in a few minutes to go for a walk.

 In case you, like us, have been lulled into a state of inertia by this unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having, here are a few activities going on this week around the city. We still hope to check a few of them out:

• At the NFB Mediatheque, visit an exhibit that explores the world without sight.  Can you see in the dark? features interactive stations where children are challenged to use their other senses to discover all the ways one can “see” without eyes. Until March 18. Drop in, $5 per child, free for accompanying adults.  (NFB Mediatheque,150 John Street,Toronto).
• The Royal Ontario Museum has Mayan-themed activities running all week, as well as extended March Break hours. Make your own Mayan jewelry, visit with the bats, and say hi to the dinosaurs. See the ROM’s website for full details.  (100 Queen’s Park,Toronto).
• Always free, branches of the Toronto Public Library feature March Break activities all week long. Visit your local branch for details, or visit the Toronto Public Library’s website for more information.

Caecillius est in horto. Mater non est compos mentis.

What does it say about your child when he, having grown weary of the old-school teaching style of his Mandarin teacher (Mandarin being a required subject at his school as part of the TDSB’s integrated International Languages program), decides to try to convince his parents to write to the school excusing him from further Mandarin lessons, such a concession by the school to be made possible on promise that his mother will home-school him in her free time in another language of his request? And he continues this campaign for a couple of days straight?

And what if his language of choice is Latin?

Despite his pleas, and much to his chagrin, eldest child has not been excused from ongoing attendance in Mandarin class. He is now, however, the possessor of the first four chapters of  Latin for Children, which he shall start working through over the March Break.

All of this is to say: be careful what you wish for, especially when – surprise! – your mother studied Latin in high school.  You never know when a request like this might bite you in the nates.

May I have some more, please?

Here’s one of the things that has always worried me about having two boys: that one day, I might have to get a second job to keep us all in groceries. It happens to all of them, doesn’t it? One day they start eating, and a week later they’ve grown a foot taller, and they just keep eating constantly until they’re 25 and hopefully by then they’re buying their own food or at least bringing home dinner every now again but in the meantime you’ve wasted away because you continue to buy one pork chop too few, and you’re not going to deprive your growing boys, are you?

Tonight, they plowed through two packages of Italian sausage, an entire head of broccoli, and two servings each of these potatoes. Usually, we only make one package of sausage, and there are always left over broccoli bits or potatoes. It makes me wonder whether we’ve been starving them all these years. They’ve never been huge eaters — grazers, more likely — but have they been eating only half a sausage each all this time out of politeness? Has the sudden abundance of food made them reckless? I’m not sure what’s going on.

(Photo courtesty of Flickr Creative Commons/stu_spivack)

I do know this: the shoes we bought Sebastian at the beginning of January are already too small — and we had sized up a half-size larger than he’d been wearing so that he’d have room to grow. Daniel’s pants are all too short. They can’t keep their eyes open past 8:30. It might be too soon for a declaration, but I sense a trend: my bird-like grazers are on a growth spurt and appear to have turned into fully fledged eaters.  Send help. And more broccoli.

 

Disney Daze

We’ve just come back from several enjoyable and unforgettable days in Florida. Each time I travel with my family, I learn something new about them. Traveling, even somewhere as relatively mundane as Florida, pushes out the walls of your comfort zone — and as Oprah-ish as that might sound, I think it’s a good thing for all of us to have our boundaries pushed at a little. My own boys seem each to be a year older and six inches taller today, and I swear that’s a by-product of being somewhere other than home for eight days.

Travel also reminds you of things you already knew, but probably have forgotten. To wit:

1. No matter how obedient your children might be, there will be moments when corrective action need be taken to keep their behaviour in check:

2. Not only are my boys friends, they are also best friends. Sometimes, they even act as if they are:

3. Theme parks are loud, crowded, and boisterous. They can be incredibly fun places if one is in the right frame of mind to be jostled, well prepared for the crowds, armed with a touring plan (we really liked this website, for that) and armed with a sense of humour and a large packet of patience.

Wine helps, too. Especially when you can sip that glass of wine anywhere in the park:

4.  I’m convinced that there exists over Disney’s Magic Kingdom theme park an invisible bubble, which keeps in all the fairy dust, happy, scented air and whatever else it is they spread around there that makes it virtually impossible to be angry or grumpy at anyone for the entire duration of your stay. About ten minutes after you leave, you will find yourself doubly confused, both by the sudden return of your cynicism about all things Disney, as well as by the gaping hole in your wallet where your money once was.

5.    Every now and again, it’s okay to get a little Goofy:

Related articles

• Disney World in 2012 (thedisneymoms.com)

We’re Game

Traveling with your children this week? With the extra week off of school after New Year’s Day his holiday, undoubtedly some of you are packing your bags for (hopefully) warmer climes.

But, how to entertain them on long car and plane trips? Thank Jobs for Iphones and Ipads.

Yes, I know. We survived family vacations with nothing but a deck of cards, travel bingo and those magic mystery ink books. But really, wouldn’t you have preferred to play Fruit Ninja when you were stuck in the backseat of the station wagon?

Here are some of my family’s favourite Ipad game apps. These are in frequent use in our house, even when we’re not on the road.

Carcassone:  Identical to the popular board game of the same name, play is   deceptively simple: build a medieval territory and garner the greatest number of “followers” by linking to other players’ roads, cloisters and and cities while preventing your opponents from doing the same.  Simple to learn, and quick to play. You can also play against others online.

Ipad Chess (Mastersoft Chess version): there are numerous chess apps available for the Ipad, but we like this one for its clean graphics and smooth play.

Scribblenauts Remix: You may already be familiar with Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS, but this game is even more fun to play on the larger Ipad screen. Maxwell, the game’s main character, needs to collect “starites” to complete each level.  You can use the objects on screen to achieve his goal, or you can summon random objects to help him. Type in a noun, add the required adjectives (my favourite so far, courtesy of Sebastian, has been “Big yellow knight shoes”) and see what happens. Educational (you have to spell the words correctly!) and imaginative, this game is fun even for grown-ups.

Of course, Angry Birds can eat up an afternoon, too. Not that I recommend that.

For younger kids, try out these apps:

AniMatch:  Littles will enjoy trying to match the animal faces. They can match animal sounds, too!

Pictureka!: Kind of like Where’s Waldo and I Spy, but with cooler graphics.  Note that the most recent version appears to be a bit buggy.

Helicopter Taxi:  Uses your Ipad camera to simulate a ride in a toy helicopter.Fly around the room and pick up more passengers as you go.

All of these apps work on your Iphone as well.

What are your favourite Ipad/Iphone apps? Any you think we should know about? Be sure to leave a comment.

Free to Be, You and Me, Replayed

I’ll ‘fess up – I don’t remember being aware of picture books as a child.  I assume this is because my parents didn’t read to me.  I must have been read to at school, and I do remember sitting cross-legged on a thin carpet looking up at teachers holding books, but I can’t recall what I was seeing.  And though I was a voracious reader, what I mostly remember are words on the page, not pictures and most unhelpfully, not titles.

With such limited fodder, I’m allowing myself an exception to the requirements of this week’s issue and will highlight a movie I loved as a child:  Free to Be, You and Me.  This exception isn’t so very big since the movie was inspired a book which I now own:  a wonderful collection of stories, poems, songs, and other vignettes for children.  There’s also a CD recording, although I preferred to snap up a used album version soon after becoming a mom.

Marlo Thomas (along with many celebrities like Alan Alda, Harry Belafonte, Mel Brooks, Carol Channing, Shirley Jones and Diana Ross) created Free to Be, You and Me.  On the back cover of the album, Thomas wrote:

Making records is not my usual business, but this is not a business project.  It’s personal; as personal to me as my niece Dionne who started the whole thing.  She wanted a bedtime story read to her, and I was saddened to find that all of her books did just that; put her and her mind to sleep.  I started to look through stores and found, with few exceptions, shelf and shelf of books and records, for boys and girls, which charmingly dictated who and what they must be, colorfully directing new minds away from their own uniqueness.

… I found that many of my friends felt the same frustration for the children they loved, and happily donated their talents to this idea – an album of stories and songs to help girls and boys feel free to be who they are and who they want to be.

Marlo Thomas was one of the founders of Ms. magazine, and even as a girl, I recognized and drank in the messages of affirmation for girls.  But what is lovely about this collection is that it features a world in which there is harmony between both boys and girls, where the interests of one group are not set against the other, but depicted as intertwined and interdependent, which of course they are in real life.  There are no losers when equal respect and opportunity are afforded to the girls, nor  when boys can be real people with feelings.

As a mother of three boys, I find myself loving these messages again albeit from a somewhat different perspective, since now my responsibility is to help my boys-and-future-men be like the ones I wish I’d known.  While it’s easier now than it was in the ’70′s to find depictions of boys who respect girls as a matter of course, it can still be a challenge to find stories of boys who interact with girls while enjoying a full range of experience and emotion.

In these ways, Free to Be, You and Me is as relevant today as it was forty years ago.  Here you’ll find Atalanta, a princess who defeats all prospective husbands in a running race except for John who finished in a tie with her.  Although Atalanta’s father purports to give John the privilege to marry Atalanta, John respects her desire to see the world before she decides whether or not she will marry at all (we presume John’s actions prevent Atalanta from having to take on her daddy’s dictactorial ways).

Some stories are told memorably through song, and I distinctly remember William’s Doll (based on the this book), where a boy is teased for wanting to play with a doll, has a father who tries to steer him toward sports instead, and finally benefits from a grandmother who gives him a doll and shows everyone how to value William’s instinct to nurture.  It’s Alright to Cry is sung by a man (Rosey Grier) and features many shots of crying faces (different ages, different races, both genders – I remember most a picture of a crying professional basketball player).  I loved this song, because this message was nowhere else to be found in my world. And in the sweet, silky voice she is famed for, Diana Ross tells her male friend in When We Grow Up:

When we grow up, will I be pretty?
Will you be big and strong?
Will I wear dresses that show off my knees?
Will you wear trousers twice as long?
Well, I don’t care if I’m pretty at all.
And I don’t care if you never get tall.
I like what I look like, and you’re nice small.
We don’t have to change at all.

…

When I grow up, I’m gonna be happy and do what I like to do,
Like making noise and making faces and making friends like you.
And when we grow up, do you think we’ll see
That I’m still like you and you’re still like me?
I might be pretty; you might grow tall.
But we don’t have to change at all.

Then she speaks:  I don’t want to change, see, ’cause I still want to be your friend, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

If I really listen to this song, basically I become misty-eyed.  But that’s just me.

Except maybe it’s not.  A while bac, my husband and I hosted a dinner party with a couple and their son.  Free to Be, You and Me made it to the turntable and my husband stood blinking while the three women in the room belted out every word to the theme song.  My husband may not quite know how or why, but I feel he’s likely benefitted from the generation of women and men who caught the Free to Be, You and Me wave when it first aired.  My boys will benefit too, just more directly.  Because I’m going to make them learn the words verbatim and sing them back to me on road trips and my birthday.