Bothered by bickering? Frustrated by family feuds? At your wits end over arguments? Check out my new post, Bickering Be Gone, on the Chicago Moms Blog.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Visit Me @ Chicago Moms Blog
Bothered by bickering? Frustrated by family feuds? At your wits end over arguments? Check out my new post, Bickering Be Gone, on the Chicago Moms Blog.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Night and Day
My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)A Few Figs from Thistles, 1920
There are two kinds of people in the world: morning people and night owls.
When I was a kid, my mother let us extend our bedtime by 15 minutes each year. As a consequence, I came to believe that by the time you were an adult, you didn't need to sleep at all. This would explain four sleep-free years at college (well, this and lots of No-Doz and even more diet Pepsi).
I used to hate going to sleep at night. I loved pushing past the point of no return to finish a book — even a lousy book. I loved late-night TV — talk shows, bad movies and infomercials. I loved hanging with dormmates or roommates or friends and solving all the problems of the world before dawn.
As a working woman, I would still push the envelope. In an office, you need merely to be polite and professional in the morning, not necessarily friendly. After a few hours and a little caffeine, everything would be all right again.
Then came children. It should be illegal, or at least biologically unfavorable for a night owl to give birth to morning people. Three of my four offspring, however, are morning people and one of the little mutants is known as the "Crack-of-dawn Boy."
You can't get by with simply grunting at your children in the morning. You have to be awake. And pleasant. And ready to go. You don't get weekends off. There are no holidays from these morning people. There they are, every day, little faces hovering over you as you sleep, whispering anxiously: "Mama, are you awake?"
No.
"Now are you awake?"
The only human in this bunch would sleep to a reasonable hour if it weren't for the fact that the poor bugger shares a room with Crack-of-dawn Boy. No matter how much COD Boy is threatened by the late sleeper or me, he just can't seem to resist waking up his brother.
My children have forced me to adopt a semi-pleasant morning outlook. I no longer hit the snooze button 75 times before I finally drag myself out of bed. I have learned by rote to smile and say "good morning". I have developed a reasonably effective routine that keeps me from killing anyone before 8:00 a.m. And I do it all without caffeine.
But I have not trained myself to go to bed at a regular, reasonable hour. Instead I have developed a schizophrenic cycle of pushing myself to ridiculously late hours three or four nights in a row, and then having to crash by 8:00 p.m. for the next two or three nights.
Van Gogh said: "I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." Of course, he cut off his ear and committed suicide.
I know I get my best, most creative work done at night. Perhaps there are fewer distractions. Maybe I have come to think of the night as my time. Maybe it's just a bad habit. But if you find yourself fighting insomnia, send me an email. Three or four nights a week, I'm likely to respond.
Let me know if you are a(n) annoying, perky, pain-in-ass morning person or a normal, creative, interesting night owl by clicking here. In the meantime, it's 1:10 a.m., so before I cut off something important, I'd best get to bed.
If you're still awake, check out this truly angsty interpretation of Cole Porter's classic Night and Day by U2:
Friday, September 12, 2008
Assuage Any Trouble
"I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage." — Charles De Secondat (1689-1755)
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love to read and those who don't. I don't remember learning how to read. In fact, I don't remember not knowing how to read.
I do remember the feeling of power that reading gave me — the power to travel, to explore, to learn, to laugh, to escape. The power to be someone else. The power to imagine. It seems this essential skill has always been imbedded deep in my brain cells, due in no small part to my mother, the librarian, who read to us generously from our earliest days and gifted us with her own love of reading.
I have been a flashlight-under-the-covers reader for as long as I can remember, and I have only recently given myself permission to stop reading a book I don't like. Like my mom, I love reading to my kids. The big kids and I are slowly working our way through the final Harry Potter book. It has taken forever, not because we aren't enjoying it, but because it's hard to find time with teenagers and none of us is willing to let one of the other two get ahead in the story. I'm on my second time through the Rowling series, this time with the little boys, and we are nearly finished with book four. I love that this woman had kids waiting in line to buy her books.
I'm not a fast reader; I read one word at a time, which has limited the number of books I have been able to absorb, but greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the ones I have read. I was delighted this summer to discover that "close reading", the way I do it, is a virtue according to Francine Prose (isn't that a perfect name for a writer?) in her passionate exploration of words, sentences and paragraphs called Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and Those Who Want to Write Them.
Have you ever walked into the library or bookstore and been totally overwhelmed by the number of possibilities? If you're looking for some guidance, check out the 2008 edition of Field-Tested Books. This Chicago publication contains 143 short (300-500 word) reviews from more than 90 contributors. The question asked of each reviewer was how their perception of a book was affected by the place in which it was read (or vice versa). The online counterpart has even more (and longer) offerings. Let me know what you discover.
Given the surfeit of reading materials — more than 190,000 US book titles published each year, thousands of magazines and countless Web pages — I'd like to thank you for spending some of your reading time on my blog.
I'm also excited to announce that I have been invited to be a contributing author on Chicago Moms Blog, a collaborative group of moms writing about their lives in Chicago. I will be submitting to this site twice a month and my first post, Lousy Lice, went up today. I look forward to your feedback. Check the sidebar for an updated list of where you can find my writing elsewhere on the Web.
Read — for pleasure, read to your kids, read to learn something new or just to escape. Read to assuage your troubles. And as always, I look forward to your comments — just click here.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Road Trip
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who take driving vacations and those who don't. Let me preface what may turn into a bit of a rant by acknowledging that during a summer when gas prices topped $4.00 a gallon, any vacation was a luxury (thanks, Mom and Dad).
So now that you know I'm not a total brat, I'd like to say that vacations just aren't what they used to be. I vaguely recall flying to foreign countries, sailing on the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean, and dining in ridiculously expensive restaurants in some of the world's best big cities. Though the memories are distant and few, I know I was there because I have the pictures to prove it (OK, non-digitized slides, so you'll have to take my word for it).
Now, vacations are all about driving. I was raised in a family that traveled almost exclusively by car. We took wonderful vacations all over the eastern US and well into Canada, and my parents took great care to make the road trip part of the vacation. I don't know how they did it. Perhaps it's because we weren't going to visit anyone, we were just traveling.
I really like to drive and my four kids are topnotch travelers, so when my parents lived in Michigan, I thought nothing of throwing everyone into the car and driving the 268 miles to their house on Pleasant Lake (exactly 4.5 hours door to door). My parents now live in Florida and we have made the trip from Chicago to The Villages about a half dozen times. I know my folks are happy there in the Sunshine State, but no matter how you slice it, 1,200 miles is a looooong road trip. We've tried everything to make it better:
- Interstate all the way (through IN, KY, TN, GA to FL; or through IL, KY, TN, AL to FL) — relatively efficient, but excruciatingly boring.
- Staying over one night with two full days of driving — the most straightforward and least taxing, but still boring.
- Staying over two nights and trying to do something "fun" along the way — cuts into the time you have to visit and it makes it feel like as soon as you get there, it's time to go home.
- Driving straight through starting at 2:30 in the morning — not as bad as it sounds, but pretty exhausting (and it made my father a nervous wreck worrying about us).
Part of the problem with driving between Chicago and Florida is that it's impossible to avoid Tennessee. My apologies to all you Volunteers, but the fact is that I have never been to Tennessee without encountering some form of weirdness. It's not that anything is ever completely wrong in Tennessee, but nothing is ever completely right, either. A couple of examples:
- We stopped at a grocery store that had a tattered sign on the conveyor belt that read: "Belt broken. Please push groceries forward by hand."
- We stopped at a hotel and ordered a rollaway bed. When it was delivered to the room, the springs meant to hold up the bottom half of the mattress were missing. When I pointed this out to the gentleman from housekeeping, he took off his belt and jerry-rigged it saying: "There, that ought to hold you for the night."
- We stopped for drive-thru fast food and it took 54 minutes.
How, you may ask, do we keep from going crazy during this long journey? That I can tell you in one word: tradition. Our traditions are ancient and, truth be told, we have no idea how they started, but they always include at least these three things: Egg McMuffins for breakfast, plenty of books on tape (or rather, CD) and listening to the entire soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof at least once.
Along the way, we've had more than our fair share of adventures: a blowout on I-65 near Elizabethtown, Kentucky — at midnight, in the rain; having to replace a damaged car-top carrier in the parking lot of Sears in Merillville, Indiana — in December, in the rain; and locking my keys, purse and cell phone in the car — first time ever, thankfully not in the rain.
This year's excitement came in my parents' driveway when I put the key in the ignition of my car and it would not turn. I jiggled the key; I tried turning the wheel; I tilted the steering column; I tried the remote start; I even read the manual. Nothing worked. One tow, four days and $319 dollars later, I had a brand new cylinder and could turn the key just fine.
Not all of our adventures have been disastrous. On one trip home, we were stuck in a traffic jam — Kentucky, this time, on I-65. Nothing was moving for miles in either direction. I'm a patient driver, but I hate just sitting in traffic, so we decided to go off route.
We were deep into the story of Tom Sawyer on CD, just at the part where Tom and Huck are rafting out to Jackson's Island on the Mississippi, when we somehow found ourselves driving through Mammoth Cave National Park. It was beautiful wending our way through the twisting roads of this magnificent forest. Along the way, we came upon a strange sign that read: "Road Ends in Water." I had absolutely no idea what that could mean, so we continued on over a hill when, sure enough, the road ended in water — the Green River, to be exact.
I was just about to turn around when I saw a man at the lip of the water waving us down to him. We crept down the hill to find that he was standing on a small cable ferry. He guided us on board and ferried us across the water to where the road started up again on the other side. I swear, during those few minutes aboard the cable ferry we felt like we had joined Huck and Tom on their log raft and it was pretty cool. You just don't get experiences like that on the Interstate. On the other hand, it took us an hour and a half to go fifteen miles, we were more than happy to return to I-65 and its 65-mile-an-hour speed limit.
I'll admit that our adventures have taught us a few things. My kids have learned that there is nothing we can't handle (after a momentary freak-out, of course). They have all become expert at reading a map and looking for alternate routes. And we have heard some classic tales on CD that none of us would ever have plowed through in print (Swiss Family Robinson, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew and The Borrowers, to name just a few).
Let's end by taking just a moment to honor the two most important accessories for a successful car trip: a cell phone and books on tape. Don't leave home without them, and look for my tips for painless road trips on my HubPages soon. Share your favorite road trip adventure by clicking here.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Leavin' on a Jet Plane
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who like to fly and those who don't. Remember when flying was fun? When your luggage flew for free and security meant checking to make sure you hadn't forgotten your ticket?
When I was a kid, flying was a big deal. It was expensive (by my family's standards, at least) and people still got dressed up to travel. Flying was such a special event that I remember exactly what I wore for my first flight — to Florida when I was 12 years old. My mom had made me a brand new outfit: heather brown elephant bell pants, a melon colored halter top and a cropped, window-pane-checked jacket with short princess sleeves. Wait, don't forget the platform sandals — the literal and figurative height of '70s fashion.
We were not a family of frequent flyers. My dad was, and still is, terrified of flying. His first flight, from Detroit to New York, was so turbulent that he took a train home. When he did have to fly for work, the only way he managed was with "greenies" and martinis. In other words, he was flying before he even boarded the plane.
Fear of flying takes many forms: some hate the takeoffs, others dread the landings; some fear crashing, others are troubled by turbulence. Then there is the airplane agoraphobic — the one who fears being stuck someplace where help may not be available.
For me, flying BC (before children) meant adventure — exotic vacations or weddings or warm-weather getaways in the middle of winter. I was always excited, not scared. Even the mishaps were exciting. Once, on a trip home to Detroit from Jamaica, we tried to outrun a winter storm and ended up on a Cleveland runway for 13 hours. The plane had no food, but plenty of alcohol and everyone was loaded with liquid happiness when our pilot, Captain Bobo (I'm not making that up) told us we would be taking off again and landing in New York just in time for New Year's Eve.
After I had children, I would get a little nervous when I flew alone, wondering what would happen to them if something happened to me, but the danger seemed remote. Flying with children, on the other hand, is a whole different kind of adventure and, for our family of six, prohibitively expensive. These days, when we travel en masse, it's by car.
Last week I encountered a new kind of airborne angst: putting my child on a plane by herself. She's 16 and has flown alone before, but this trip felt different. I worked hard to find a non-stop flight (we couldn't have her stranded in, say, Atlanta if her connecting flight fell through), but even that didn't completely set my mind at ease.
She was thrilled to be heading off to a creative writing residency and didn't seem nervous at all until it was time for us to part so she could go through security. Suddenly, the idea of hanging out alone for an hour or so before boarding became overwhelming and she got a little teary. This was completely unfair. Now I had to suck it up and be the calm, reassuring grown up. I hate when that happens.
I'm happy to report that she arrived without a hitch 10 minutes ahead of schedule, and called me shortly after she deplaned, chatty and cheerful in the custody of her grandparents. I have yet to recover.
Just in case you were wondering, as I often do, here is Orville Wright's concise explanation of the phenomenon of flight: "The airplane stays up because it doesn't have time to fall." Don't you feel better?
Have any fabulous travel plans this summer — flying or driving? Click here to air your qualms or share your tips.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Bedtime Tips
If bedtime was a credit course at Mom School, I would be teaching at the graduate level. Did you know lack of sleep puts children at risk for a variety of mental and physical problems? But bedtime doesn't have to be a nightmare. The following post on how you can get your child into a good bedtime routine, improve everyone's mood and reduce family stress, was originally posted on HubPages.
I Give Good Bed
Around these parts, I am known as the Queen of Bedtime. In fact, my bedtime prowess even led to a new friendship. Some years ago, a woman I knew of but had never met, called me and said: “I heard a rumor that your kids are in bed by eight o’clock.”
“No,” I replied.
“I knew it was too good to be true,” she lamented.
“My kids are in bed by 7:30,” I said, “they’re asleep by 8:00.”
I told her my techniques and exactly one week later she called to say: “It worked! You’re my new best friend and I’m taking you out to dinner!” We have been best friends ever since.
Why Do Children Need Regular Bedtimes?
In today’s fast-paced world, developing and sticking to a regular bedtime seems like a Herculean task. We are all so busy with work and lessons and play dates and school that bedtime is often defined as the time when we finally get our children into bed. But studies have shown that children who don’t get adequate rest are at risk for a multitude of mental and physical problems, including:
- Depression
- Increased rates of injury
- Behavioral problems and learning difficulties
- Excessive worry
- Obesity Increased rates of tardiness and absence from school
- Aggression
- Headaches and stomachaches
- And, ironically, insomnia
When you consider that sleep deprivation has been used throughout history as a form of torture, it’s not surprising that a lack of sleep can cause all these problems and more. For most parents, all you have to do is recall those early days of your child’s infancy to bring back the horrors of sleep deprivation — the headaches, moodiness, feelings of disorientation and, often, despair. It’s no different for your children.
How Much Sleep Do Children Need?
According to Michael J. Breus, PhD, a diplomat of the American Board of Sleep Medicine in Westchester, IL, the amount of sleep varies depending on the age of the child:
- 1-3 years : 12 - 14 hours per day
- 3-6 years: 10 ¾ - 12 hours per day
- 7-12 years: 10 - 11 hours per day
- 12-18 years: 8 ¼ - 9 ½ hours per day
Some children need more sleep than others. Learn to recognize the signs that your child is not getting enough sleep:
- Irritability or frequent tantrums
- Excessive daytime sleepiness
- Changes in mood or behavior
- Snoring (which can be a sign of sleep apnea — a sometimes dangerous condition where people stop breathing for short periods when sleeping)
Sleep Habits are Learned Behaviors
Though sleep can be defined as “a natural and periodic state of rest during which consciousness of the world is suspended”, good sleep habits are learned, not born. In his seminal guide to children and sleep, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, Marc Weissbluth, MD, explains in detail the importance of developing good sleep habits in your child right from the start.
Let’s be clear: short of drugs, you can’t make someone fall asleep. Sleeping is a private, personal matter. Giving your children the tools they need to soothe themselves into a restful night’s sleep is a gift that will last a lifetime.
How to Make Bedtime Work for You
My family is no exception to the modern phenomenon of being overscheduled, but we strive to make missed bedtimes the exception, not the rule. When my teenagers moan that their friends don’t have bedtimes, I remind them that I am not their friends’ mom; I am their mom. I have known my children their whole lives and I can tell when they are not getting enough sleep.
I would like to claim that I have been a paragon of bedtime virtue right from the start, but in my case, necessity was the mother of invention. When my preemie twins came home from the hospital, my husband had just started a new business and was working crazy long hours, including every evening and every weekend. By 7:30 p.m., I was completely done, so I developed our first bedtime routine. It was the only way I could survive.
Set Up a Routine and Stick To It
Routine is the key to successful bedtimes. The goal should be to wind down the day to a quiet place that invites sleep.
Explain the Rules — We can’t expect children to obey rules they don’t know or understand. If your family has developed bad bedtime habits, don’t despair. Just decide on your new routine and lay it out for your kids. Ideally, you should do this first thing in the morning, but definitely not right before bedtime. Use the voice of an outside authority (lie if you have to): “Dr. So-and-so believes we are not getting enough sleep in this family, so starting tonight we are going to have a new bedtime routine.”
Be clear and thorough: What time will you start getting ready for bed? What time is “lights out”? What will the consequences be for not obeying the new rules?
Kids Take Their Cues from You, So Set the Tone — Most of your kids’ attitudes about sleeping and bedtime will come from you. When my children were very little and only understood facial and verbal cues, I would sing our way up the stairs to bed, smiling and cheering: “Guess what time it is — every mama’s favorite time of day — bedtime!” For many years, they were naïve enough to cheer right along with me.
Whenever my children are away from home for even one night, when it comes time for bed I always whisper some reinforcing words in their ears, like: “I’m glad you had fun at your sleepover, but doesn’t if feel great to be home in your own wonderful bed.” They almost always smile and snuggle in more deeply.
Help Your Child Identify a Portable, Safe Transitional Item — “Transitional item” is just a fancy word for a “woobie” or a “lovey” or a “blankie” — a stuffed animal or blanket-like object that your child can use to comfort himself. Some children identify their transitional item early on; others want to take the whole menagerie of stuffed animals into bed with them. It’s best to have just one (a few a most). One of my sons used a cloth diaper, which was great, because we had tons of them and they were interchangeable. My other children had one-of-a-kind items that were not replaceable, but worked for them (Skanky Blankie, Itchy Rainbow Blankie, Honey Bunny and Pooh Bear are all adopted members of our family).
Remove the Obvious Obstacles to Bedtime — Most of these are pretty obvious:
- don’t give your kids caffeine.
- try to stick to quiet activities in the hour before bedtime.
- don’t take phone calls or get involved in projects at bedtime; if you get distracted, so will your kids and the next thing you know, you’ll have to start the whole process over again.
- turn off the TV (and other screens, such as video games and computers) at least a half hour before bedtime. Fast-paced television programs can act as stimulants, and scary programs can lead to nightmares or a fear of them.
- cut back on excessive activities. This is probably the hardest thing to do at first — learning to say no to some fabulous opportunity for your child to learn or experience something new. But over scheduling can lead to postponed bedtimes and interrupted routines.
Don’t use bedtime as a form of punishment — I believe children should think of their beds as the safest, most comfortable, most wonderful place in the world. To this end, I never use early bedtime as punishment. I may say: “It seems to me that you are very tired today, so we are going to get an early start to make sure you get to bed on time.” I don’t send my children to their bedrooms for time out discipline, either. I may say: “It seems to me that you could use some time alone. Why don’t you go play in your room until you are ready to rejoin the family.”
Take care of business before bed — Make sure your children brush their teeth, get a drink and use the bathroom before you tuck them into bed. Take the “bathroom” question out of the equation. If your child is old enough to use the bathroom alone, she is old enough to do it without asking questions. Simply say: “If you have to go, go, but then get right back into bed.”
Limit Bedtime Stories — I believe in reading to your children, but in our house, a bedtime story means one story — my choice. Why just one? Negotiation is the death knell of a smooth bedtime. Once you start negotiating, you are doomed. Like the true predators they are, sleepy children can smell fear and will attack if they spot slightest sign of weakness. Pick another time of day to enrich your child with story telling. One bedtime story is enough to help your child settle down for the night.
The Answer is “No” — I tell my children that I am a great mama (OK, slight exaggeration) until bedtime. I will listen to them, answer their questions and try to say “yes” whenever it is reasonable and safe. After bedtime, the answer to any question they have is “no”.
- “Can I have some juice?” No.
- “Can I read with a flashlight?” No.
- “Can I go to college?” No, not tonight, go to sleep.
If you have a quick-witted child like my youngest, you need to be prepared for the inevitable smart-aleck question: “If the answer to any question is ‘no’, does that me I don’t have to go back to bed now?”
A smart-aleck question deserves a smart-aleck answer: “I’m sorry, but the answer center is closed. Please check back in the morning, and be sure to ask for your consequence for getting out of bed.”
Keep the Transition Short — Once you have read your one bedtime story, keep the hugs and kisses, goodnight wishes, and tucks brief. Beware of stall tactics, such as:
- “Mom, what was your favorite story when you were little?”
- “Mom, where do babies come from?
- “Mom, what if I hate college and can’t find a job?”
Believe it or not, my children have tried all of these. Kids can be sneaky little varmints, so I had to hone my skills and learn to recognize a wide variety of procrastination techniques. The solution for almost of them is simple: “Honey, I’d be happy to talk about this with you — tomorrow. Good night.”
The Ultimate Bedtime Secret
I absolutely swear by this one: stories on tape (or CD or iPod download). This is much better than letting your kid read in bed because she can do it in the dark. The rule is that they can listen to as many stories or chapters as they want as long as they stay in bed. If they get out of bed or start fooling around, the audio player gets taken away. For most kids, listening to a story in the dark while snuggled warmly in bed will help them fall asleep in short order.
Stories for every age and every taste are available in audio format, with more titles being added every day. My kids loved the Rabbit Ears Radio. Audio books can be expensive, but most public libraries have a good selection, or considering setting up a swap among your friends.
Common Bedtime Mistakes
I have given this advice to many people over the years, and most have had success with it. Occasionally, however, it doesn’t work and this is usually the result of substituting one bad routine with another. For example, one woman I knew decided that her new bedtime routine would include either her or her husband laying down with their child until he fell asleep. It’s true that the kid stayed in bed, but she didn’t learn to fall asleep on her own.
One other mistake that parents make is trying to adopt a routine that is too long or difficult to maintain. Keep it simple. Do what works for your family, and don’t be afraid to change the routine if it isn’t working.
Better Bedtimes Mean Happier Families
Once you get bedtime under control, you will experience a noticeable drop in your household stress level. Bedtime will no longer be a tug of war, but rather a satisfying ending to the day. I guarantee that a better bedtime will make you happier mom or dad.
These tips worked for me (most of the time). Let me know if they work for you. And, if you are so moved, please feel free to send me a gift certificate to your favorite restaurant.
Photo credits: Starry Night (top) by Drennen; Bedtime Story by greypoint, both via flickr.com.
Stumble It!Thursday, July 3, 2008
How Not to Hate Exercise
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have more than one blog and those who don't. I have started contributing to HubPages.com. HubPages hosts bloggers and writers interested in posting information-based articles, such as advice, how-tos and reviews.
My first HubPage post talks about two kinds of people (of course!) — those who like exercise and those who don't, and how I am trying to change from one to the other. You can check it out by clicking here or on the title of this blog post.
Happy Independence Day! Hope your celebration is full full of lots of ooohs and aaaahs.
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