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Tag: "parenting"

a superhero origin story, and some hair

[ 1 ] December 14, 2008

We had a huge rainstorm the other day. “The whole world is flooding!” said Sophie. Actually, it was just our driveway. But the kids had fun playing in the puddles…until it started to thunder and lightening.

Luc, particularly, doesn’t like thunder. So we ran back inside and stripped off the wet stuff while it crashed and banged outside. Rainstorms are really loud in a yurt. Luc and Sophie covered their ears and yelled and said, “I don’t like it!”, until Sophie had a brilliant idea. Instead of being scared of the lightening, she would harness it as a superpower!

Thus was born, Lightening Girl!

And her trusty side-kick Thunder Guy!

A few minutes with Tux-Paint and a pair of scissors, along with a quick rustle through the clothes piles, and her costume was made. Ka-pow!

You must see the close up on the special power bracelet that shoots lightening.

No, that isn’t a gangsta hand motion—it’s a sign language ‘L’ for Lightening, of course! Can you see the little lightening bolt on her wrist? She loved that.

Quickly, Lightening Girl made a yellow chest badge of power for Luc, a dark cloud with emerging raindrops and large letters proclaiming, “Ba-Boom!” I wish I could have gotten a picture of Luc in his costume, running screaming “Ba-Boom! Ba-Boom!” through the yurt, but he wasn’t having any. He is anti-photo right now, a move I totally understand.

Suddenly, the loud and scary sounds of the storm were gleeful moments to strike super hero poses. Fear had been vanquished by creativity and a sense of humor! Freedom and Fun were restored!

Isn’t that cool?

But, you may ask, was I, too, caught up in the superhero frenzy? And if so, what was my superpower? Well, I’ll tell you. I had the superpower of….Good Hair! The rainstorm and its accompanying humidity had given me Super Curls and Extra Body! Wow!

Days like that are what my hair is really like. All those other days are fluke ‘bad hair’ days. Even if there is only one day a year of Good Hair, that is what my hair really is. All the rest of those 364 days are an anomaly and have no impact on my inner hair image. I have spoken.

Luckily for all of us, the Good Hair Documentation Task Force (that would be Sophie) captured this amazing moment.

This is me pretending I’m in a shampoo commercial, grabbing a hank of my hair and saying, “Don’t hate me because I have Good Hair. Today. For five minutes.”

I promise to use my power only for good.

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screen time for fun and profit

[ 3 ] July 17, 2008

Kids and computers are an incredible combination. I remember the old Commodore 64 I had when I was a kid–I was just fascinated by it, and used to type in these pages and pages of number code to get some clunky, worthless game, and I just adored it. Remember those commercials with Bach Invention No. 13? I still feel excited about computers when I play that song.

I am so glad my mom never chose to put stupid limits on when or how much I was on the computer (or watching tv). But what I hear, over and over, in the mommy circles, is parents thinking they need to limit ’screen time,’ by which they mean, reading, writing, making art, communicating with friends, watching stories, listening to music, making music, playing games, looking something up, being entertained, studying something, etc etc…if and when any of these activities includes a monitor. Which strikes me as about as idiotic as lumping all, similar, paper-related activities together and putting limits on ‘page time.’ How condescending to one’s kid is that?

Anyway, a month ago or so my 2 and a half year old, Luc, just *poof* started drawing images. It was so cool, like his little brain just flipped a switch. The same hand-eye-connection switch also gave him access to the computer because suddenly, he grokked how to use the mouse. Magic. He couldn’t–and then he could.

RIght now, one of his favorites is Poisson Rouge (french for ‘red fish’) or “Red Fiss,” as Luc calls it. This is about the coolest site, ever, with a bazillion little games, elegantly designed, all accessible and interesting to a very small person, partially because there is no reading involved. Smash glass bottles, light up constellations on a star map, take a submarine around an ocean full of creatures and games, move posable dolls around, play with optical illusions, find bugs in the leaves, it goes on and on.

His other favorite is Tux Paint , an open source, free, drawing program, that is incredibly intuitive. Just sit the kid down in front of it and a few minutes later they are engrossed in creating art. Luc calls it “Penguin” due to the Linux-inspired program mascot. “Mommy, can you set me up with Penguin?” he says. Only it sounds like ‘peen-dwin.’ One cool thing Peen-dwin can do is ’stamps’ where you can choose from hundreds of images and stamp them anywhere in your drawing, in any size, making these cool collage-like pictures. Luc adores this, and has been working, lately on his frogs series, piles and piles of pictures of frogs in of all sizes, and colors, go figure.

The resources, fun, tools, and information available in our yurt, due to the computer/internet combo, is astonishing to me. I would sooner limit library access or ‘yard time’ then limit their time using such an amazing tool. Yesterday, I said, “I wonder what time Paul is coming home,” and Sophie said, “Let’s google it!” What we did, instead, was google-maps his office. And there it was, in satellite image. We waved. “Hi Daddy!”

Here is two year old Sophie playing “Moon Match.” Luc has just figured this game out. We walk around singing the song from it, which, oddly enough, goes, “I’m the maaaaan that you need, I’m the maaaaan that you need.” I think it is a Man in the Moon reference, but I could be wrong.

And, MAN, that old monitor was SO SMALL!  How did we ever stand it?  I say, don’t limit screen time–get a bigger monitor.

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the one baby item I wouldn’t do without

[ 0 ] June 9, 2008

When the kids were little, I loved carrying them. I figured they were only going to be small enough for a few years, so I better snuggle them up while I had the chance, before they were going going gone, before they were big enough to carry me. So I never put them down. It’s a wonder they ever learned to walk.

I saw my sister and her little guy the other day–he was riding fine in her new ergo. We have an ergo too, which is threadbare, stained, and dilapidated. It has been in nearly daily use for four years now, poor thing, quite a rag next to my sisters tricked out new one (side-loading, zippered pocket anyone?). This is the one baby item I would never do without, including bottles, cribs, toys, and even diapers. Nothing was as indispensable to me. Here is Luc in ours a year ago,

and here is little Sophie in the California redwoods in it.


But when the kiddos were smaller, what I really loved was wraps. There’s a learning curve, for sure. I learned how to do it from the little vids at mamatoto, and from a dvd I got from Children’s Needs. Once I had it, though, I could sling those babies up in seconds, and it looked really cool. Let me show you what I mean:


In that last one I’m nine months pregnant! Here’s one more because this is how Sophie took all her naps for that first year:

Isn’t she cute?

The Germans, and countries nearby, make all the goods ones, Didymos, Storchenwiege, Easycare, Girasol. There is quite a trade in used wraps (they last forever) at places like the babywearer forums. It’s like trading on the stock market. When I started unloading my stash, I would put up an ad there and get dozens of responses in minutes. I had a couple that were discontinued colors that got over a hundred responses within ten minutes, and I sold them for more than I bought them for. Wild.

But I carried Luc on a walk the other day (in the ergo) and could barely turn my neck afterward. Oops. The days of carrying my babies are coming to a close. They still ask me to put them in a wrap every now and them, and it feels wonderful to snuggle them close for the few minutes it takes them to be done and wriggle to get down and run off. I guess it’s a good thing they feel that way at about the same time they get too big to carry. I know carrying them will be replaced with new, good stuff–and already is–but it’s still sad to watch it go. So much about having kids is fleeting and bittersweet.

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7 All-Time Best Parenting Tips in the World (today)

[ 3 ] April 25, 2008

I’ve been thinking about things I have heard, or read, or discovered, over the last four years that have radically changed my parenting for the better. I thought I’d make a list.

1- HALT.

If things aren’t going well, I try this little self-quiz. Are the kiddos Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? In other words, don’t focus on the behavior. Focus on helping them meet the need behind the behavior.

2- Get on the floor and play with them.

70% of the time, this is the solution to whatever the ‘kid problem’ of the moment is. They love it. It makes them so happy–and happy kiddos usually solves the problem. The 30% of the time this doesn’t help right away, it gives me information that I need to help them, so, in a way, it helps 100% of the time.

3- Find a way to say Yes to Just About Everything.

Instead of saying a knee-jerk No to some of the crazy stuff the kids want to do (Let’s hammer nails into the dining room table! Let’s paint each other!), figure out what part of the craziness is the important part, and find a way to make that happen. Maybe it is the hammering, not the location (which was just convenient–and don’t worry, I caught on to that plan before it was implemented), so help them hammer into a scrap of wood. And maybe we can switch to the non-toxic paint and take the game outdoors. Switch from “No!” to “Hey, cool, but let’s try it this way….” I want to be their ally, not their roadblock. Then they come to me for help, instead of sneaking behind my back.

4- Make this moment fun, friendly, and safe.

This moment. Don’t try to teach some lesson so they won’t do it again in future moments. Don’t worry about how, in the future, they won’t have this, or they’ll have to do that. Don’t try to be a better parent for the rest of my life. Just this moment. Keep the focus on right NOW. Fill life with happy, sweet moments that then turn into happy, sweet memories.

5- Be the change I want to see.

Okay, that’s a slogan and I hate slogans, but this one does help me. If I’m having a problem with my kids not sharing, for example, I need to be more generous to them. If they are yelling and interrupting, I need to stop yelling, talk more sweetly, and stop interrupting them. If they’re leaving a mess everywhere, I need to cheerfully clean it up. In other words, model the behavior I long to see in my kids. No one become generous, or sweet natured, or cheerfully neat, or whatever, by being shamed, yelled at, punished, or reprimanded. Which leads me to:

6- Become a better person.

Really. Work to become a kinder person. More fun. Learn better jokes. Become more interesting. More patient. Become someone that anyone with half a brain would want to hang out with. If I’m falling into being a grump monster, or boring, or self-involved, or controlling, then people, including my kids, won’t want to be around me (much less be nice to me). Every parenting issue is improved, and often solved, by sincerely trying to be a better person in that moment.

(No easy task. Sometimes I have this demented inner voice that doesn’t want to be a good person. She says, “Screw being kind! I want to kill him!” But that really doesn’t help. Being a peaceful, kind, friendly, patient person helps.)

7- Connect instead of disconnect.

When I think I need to get away, especially when I’m really grumpy about it, I’m disconnected from my kids. If I’m sitting there wishing I were somewhere else, doing something else, the problem isn’t that I need more ‘me-time.’ The problem is that I have gotten disconnected from them, and the solution is not more separation. The solution is to connect. This is counter-intuitive, but it really works. There is often tremendous resistance to this one, but the truth is, when I’m connected with them, I can see how incredibly cool they are. They are my favorite people! And suddenly I remember how much I love to hang out with them, and then I’m having fun, and then I don’t want ‘me-time.’ I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

Wow, my longest post yet.

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the counting thing

[ 0 ] April 18, 2008

There is something about children that can make otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people stop thinking. Maybe we don’t know what to do, so we grab the nearest tool and try to use it to get what we want, without stopping to critically and consciously consider how we are behaving. This really bugs me. Especially when I do it.

At a parent/kid event the other day I saw a loving, friendly, involved father do ‘the counting thing’ to get his daughter to comply with his demand to come sit for some portion of the event. I’ve heard it a million times, a harried parent says something like “Sam, get over here now, one, two, three…” and the kid usually scurries over.

Okay, this is bullying. This is a bigger person forcing a smaller person to comply by threatening them. I doubt that father would think of it this way, but really, what is the semi-veiled threat that is promised at the end of the counting? Probably force of some kind, right? Something bad will happen at the end of this count if you don’t do what I want you to do, and I’m going to do that bad thing, to you. Bullying. If my husband said that to me, in public, “Maya, get over here, one, two, three…” people would think he was some kind of monster, or at least a jerk. But it is such a common way to interact with a child that this upstanding man was unembarrassed to be seen and heard acting in this way to his kid. Why is it okay to bully people? Even if they are young?

When I hear something coming out of my mouth by rote, I try to stop and consider. I especially watch myself for bullying: raising my voice, shaming, any “if you don’t ____, then I’m going to______”, threats. I don’t want to be mean to people I love. And bullying is mean.

Okay, I’m done.

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