Sacred Time

As a day care mom, I used to leave work to pick up my children before day care closes at 6pm (until we had three kids, hired an au pair and then I left work at 5:30 to meet her at home by 6 after she picked everyone up). Over the last eight years, 5:30 - 7:30 pm has become sacred time. Without spending it with my kids, I get stressed and our lives get crazy.

5:30 because day care closes and after school activities end.

7:30 because it's bedtime so that my kids get the 11-12 hours they need per night to be energetic and well behaved at school, day care or camp the next day. Basically, so they're fun to be with rather than whiney, cranky monsters.

I've changed jobs every time I got pregnant and one-time, twice. And since my third most recent change (three kids, four changes), I've discussed my family time schedule with prospective hiring managers in my interviews. To their credit, they each told me that they would respect it and they each did.

It's ingrained in my schedule and that of my family and my colleagues. I recommend it to every parent. Because I do it 7 days a week, it's easy to plan on it. The kids know they are going to have time to talk, cuddle and play with me. Homework is checked and piano is practiced. The cell phone is off. The blackberry is charging. People don't call (except in emergencies). For 90-120 minutes per day, they have my full attention (other than cooking, bathing, reading - the normal chaos that goes into the witching hour).

My routine is not unusual - studies indicate children are getting daily time with their working parents. I figure - no one dies if I don't answer an email for 2 hours. And I reap the benefits because I need those cuddles and visits as much as they do - best stress reliever in the world.

Exasperating Eights

The terrible twos don’t come close to comparing with an enraged almost 8 year old. Every Thursday, my boys have a swim class. They’re at the same level but Taylor, the younger, is about to achieve his next “ribbon” and Benjamin is not. Benjamin learned this fact last week. Now showing: "Rage at Swim Lessons".

When I arrived – Benjamin was arguing with the instructor at the front desk about how he hates swimming and it’s stupid and he’s been working on the purple ribbon for over a year and he should have it. Privately, I completely agree with him that a year for a ribbon is too long between positive reinforcement events and I had spoken with the school about the pace. But my son was being disrespectful of his au pair who had asked him to swim and the instructors who were trying to teach him.

My approach was twofold: first, I asked the instructor when Benjamin received his prior ribbon and she confirmed September 2008. I asked Benjamin to tell me the current month and year and then confirm if a year had passed. Not quite. Second, I gave Benjamin a choice – he could sit on the bench next to me and not swim (and I was clearly not going to be warm and cuddly) or he could get in his trunks and go work on his purple ribbon. He chose to swim.

He’s a strong swimmer – he just prefers to play. Taylor, on the other hand, likes to practice sports until he masters skills. Different personalities lead to different outcomes. The instructors watched Benjamin closely this time and determined that he had all the skills – he just had to stop goofing off in order to be tested. It’s hard to be shown up by your younger brother – I understand Benjamin’s frustration.

The Talmud says we must teach our children to swim “Swimming both protects the child physically (from drowning) and also acts as a metaphor regarding independence.” (AllExperts.com). My son is learning that independence (the choice to play rather than practice) is earned and not always fun.

Food Fight

My eldest, Benjamin, is a proud, picky eater who traces his pickiness lineage right to his maternal grandpa. The doctor isn't worried, but that doesn't stop us from trying to instill healthy eating habits. It's the right thing to do, but it's led to some nasty food fights - which might just be over.

My mother always said she wasn't a short-order cook and I've adopted this philosophy. Benjamin learned how to cook SmartDogs in order to feed himself - which was fine until I read Better Safe than Soy about the impact of how much soy is in the American diet (think cows and chicken feed). With our family cancer tendencies, I knew I had to reduce the daily consumption of SmartDogs.

Thus began the family food fight - the battle of wills. I don't want to fight with my son every night. Long term, I cannot win this fight because he has to make healthy food choices himself. And frankly, I was stumped until yesterday.

After taking Taylor to the track yesterday, I wasn't sure if running a mile is a good thing for a 5 year old to do - so I looked at CrossFit Kids for the kids WOD. Suffice to say - a lot less than one mile.

CrossFit kids has a section called "sane nutrition for kids in 150 words". I read it out loud to Taylor. Benjamin heard it. And this morning, Benjamin went running with me (only let him do 800M). After running, he told me that he needs to start eating healthier if he wants to run faster and further. The 150 words made sense to him!

Here is Sane nutrition for kids in 150 words" from CrossFit Kids (emphasis mine) -

Our goal with kids isn't to get them on the zone, but to get them to think and make good choices about what they eat. Our goal is to teach them very basic concepts, sugar is bad, protein is good and you need to eat some in every meal. Nuts and seeds are good fats. Eat them, don't avoid them. Pasta, white bread, and white rice are not that good for you, stuff that's red, yellow, green and found in the fruit and vegetable aisle is good for you. Eat a lot of it.

Look at your plate, make a fist, eat that much meat every meal; turn your hand over and fill it with nuts and seeds, eat that much good fat, fill the rest of your plate with stuff you found in the fruit and vegetable aisle. Fill your plate this way at every meal, don't eat more.

Try reading it out loud with your kids sometime you aren't fighting about food. Let me know if it works for you. I'll let you know if Benjamin follows through.

You are not alone

This morning, a work friend was clearly upset about something when she came into my office. She's doing the step-mom thing - which I think is probably a lot harder than the mom thing. And the mom thing is pretty tough. I asked if she was okay and she asked me to tell her something funny instead of talking about whatever happened with the kids at home yesterday or this morning. So I shared my amazement at the endurance and speed on my five year old on the track.

My story was about this morning's workout - I'm doing CrossFit on my quest to return my body to the size and weight it previously maintained prior to the three kids. I'm only trying to lose 15 pounds - but I have new respect for everyone who tries to lose weight. Anyway, my son Taylor asked if he could spend more time with me today so I invited him to join me for today's WOD (workout of the day) - 5 sets for time of 400 meter sprints and 15 overhead squats (with 95 lbs - no chance - I did it with 20 and I'm proud). Taylor didn't keep up on the first sprint and became my time keeper on the second one. Then he asked me if I could be his time keeper. His first 400M = 2:30. Second 400M = 2:12. Third 400M = 2:11. Then we walked to cool down and he wanted to know if he ran a mile. Since he hadn't, he wanted to do the last 400M split. Did that one in 2:11. He's 45" tall! I figure by the time he's 9, he'll be doing this in 1:30 or something. And his brother is a runner too - so now he wants to be timed.

In any case - my story of the track led to other practical parenting stories - some already on this blog, others to come. She smiled and laughed. She found lots of ideas that she could apply with the step-kids. And she realized that the issues, whatever they are, are common across kids and parents.

Too often I talk with other women who feel alone in their parenting adventure - joined only by her spouse/partner (hopefully). I'm incredibly lucky - I made a dear friend during the months leading to the birth of each of our first children and we've kvelled and been exasperated together over the last 8 years of our friendship. I have another friend (over 20 years) who is about a year ahead of me with her first. Thank God for these two women who are my sounding boards and sanity checks. I think they're both planning guest posts to the blog...stay tuned.

So many of my friends and acquaintances share their feelings of loneliness, exasperation or embarrassment about discussing some of the more frustrating or gross things that happens when raising kids. Everyone seems to feel like their kid is the only one who does this maddening thing. Not really ever the case - you just have to find the other people who've been through that already.

My suggestion is to tell everyone you can what's going on. The benefits - quickly you'll find someone who's faced the same thing and has an idea; when you give something a voice it stops being so loud in your head; most of these things are funny. And as they say in Free to be You and Me - "It's alright to cry...it's gonna make you feel better."

Karmic Carpooling

This morning, the kids asked me if we could go to Chuck E Cheese tonight after camp. When Neal's out of town, I don't mind one night of a "treat" dinner - provided we can get home before 7:15 so everyone can get to sleep on time. I told the boys that if they had a good day at camp, I'd call our au pair and ask her to meet me at the restaurant near my San Bruno office.

I didn't really factor in the impact of a carpool. Three families - we do pick up and they alternate drop-off.

Taylor announced to the other two boys that he was going to Chuck E Cheese tonight. This morning's driver emailed me asking me the plan with drop-off and do I want to take her son with us? What about dinner since adult food at Chuck E Cheese is not the main attraction. Sounded fun to have her and her family join us if we could work it out (adult food being the problem - solved by La Salsa).

The plan had been to drop Isaac off at Jujitsu and then meet the kids and au pair at Chuck E Cheese.

At 4:35 pm, my au pair calls - jujitsu is closed. That's when the carpool went karmic.

The plan:
Leave jujitsu and go pick up Ariel at day care.
Leave day care and go to Ilan's house to pick up Lilah and tokens. Leave Isaac there.
Call Isaac's Mom to tell her to pick up Isaac there. She says - no problem.

Told the plan to Ilan's mom who hung up to call Isaac's mom to pick up Ilan's sister at the same day care as Isaac's sister and bring the two girls to Ilan's house (following this?).

So - Isaac's mom brings the two girls to Ilan's house where all the other children are waiting. Everyone leaves for Chuck E Cheese - and I mean - everyone.

Best part of the story - other than setting it up, I continued working at my office and casually walked out at 5:20, drove 3 minutes and parked in front of Chuck E Cheese. About 5 minutes later, the first car of my friends and kids arrives with the question "want some kids?". The entire carpool gang with all siblings descended upon Chuck E Cheese to play.

8 children in 6 locations with two drivers. No stress, no problems and a delightful 90 minutes of kids playing and eating at Chuck E Cheese.

Running my puppies

What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails,
And puppy dog tails,
That's what little boys are made of.

Actually, little boys are made of pure energy. We could solve the energy crisis if we could figure out how to harness the energy of 2-8 year old boys. Who needs gasoline?

My husband and I are pretty high energy too. OK, in my case that's possibly a serious understatement. Suffice to say, we have very high energy boys. That's why we believe in puppy parenting. Here's the concept in a nutshell - run your puppies. Any dog person knows that young puppies need a lot of time in the yard to run. If you happen to adopt a Labrador, Golden or Irish Setter (we had the latter), you know that you either need a very big yard or get thee to a park. Little boys are just like puppies - full of love and affection as long as you run them like crazy. Get those boys to the yard or the park.

My second child has genuine shpilkes and loves sports. During the school year, it's a coin toss if we were going to get a note home about his ability to keep his hands and feet to himself. Which somehow manifests on the playground or field. Start summer- and start sports camps. The run your puppies philosophy says - as many hours running as possible in any given day will get the best results.

What do you know - not a single discipline problem. Maybe there's something to this. My dear friends have a son with sensory processing challenges. One of the techniques to help him be successful in school - a daily, challenging obstacle course. Run that puppy.

Sure, our kids a little crankier at bedtime when they're so tired they can hardly walk or eat. But they're so happy. Happy boys who are having fun and positively participating in activities make for very happy parents. By the way, my high energy daughter benefits as well from the running of the puppies. In her case, she's chasing the bigger boys or swimming.

I'm thinking that many of the challenges that young boys (disproportionately) have in grade school could be reduced if we insisted on puppy parenting - run the puppies in the morning,at lunch and in the afternoon. Once spent, they're able to focus. What do you think?

Masters Degree for Camp

This morning I had the same conversation, yet again, with another working Mom. Did you work out EVERY week for camp? For multiple children? Are they happy?

Truth be known, I long for Pine Grove Camp for my children. I started in 2nd grade at the Jamesburg campus (which now is an adult community - the Wall campus doesn't have the same rustic feeling), I think, and my sister must have started in kindergarten. This wasn't a specialty camp, religious camp or luxurious camp. But it was bona fide camp. There was bug juice for lunch (which was always hot, always included and generally edible). Although I never drank it, it certainly symbolized camp. We had bunks for our stuff - and there were some sleepover bunks that we used when we were older. There were fields for softball, kickball, dodgeball. I think there were basketball courts for people who played that (I think they were on the "boys camp" side...I didn't play basketball).

The structures were wooden or canvas. The playhouse was my second home - but I enjoyed the dance and gymnastics studios too. We did two musicals a year plus a talent show. I know my friends liked arts and crafts and ceramics. Science too. We had electives and we had group activities. We played intramural sport competitions with other camps.

And there was the waterfront. We had multiple pools and the lake. You had to pass a swim test to go boating or even swim in the deep-end. While we didn't have waterskiing (small lake), we did have canoeing, kayaking and row boating. We had swim lessons every day and we had free swim every day.

We left home, picked up by a small van bus, around 7:15 in the morning and got home after 5:30. We slept on the bus. Or we sang. Or we argued. The camp was only 40 minutes away...but we were always the first pickup/last drop off. And I went until I was 16. My best friends growing up were my friends from camp.

Fast forward 20+ years and I'm a parent of three great kids. Two of whom are in the prime zone to go to day camp. We live in Northern California, not New Jersey. I'm not sure what camp is like in New Jersey, but in the Bay Area, it requires a working parent to manage a complex spreadsheet of weekly/monthly camps with all sorts of varied deadlines for "applications" and commitments. We cannot have an empty week - because that means someone is taking off from work (which we do over the summer to be together and vacation) or someone is getting paid to recreate camp for our kids.

First - you have to know the deadlines of the camps you want. The community centers have great camps...and late sign ups. The private camps are much earlier. There really isn't day camp like Pine Grove - except north of Orinda and they won't bus from the Peninsula. Few camps start as soon as school is out. Few camps go until school starts...plan vacations accordingly! Second - you most consider drop-off and pick-up times, location, traffic and carpool probability. A few camps have aftercare for working parents...but mostly, you have to figure out if it is physically possible, with your work and parenting obligations, to get the kids to camp. Ideally they go to the same camp...but most of the parents I talk to cannot force this to happen - arg.

I probably spend about 30 hours researching, planning, coordinating and applying to camp. Another 10 hours ensuring everyone is paid, carpools are finalized and every version of the medical report is completed by the doctor.

The kids are having a great summer. But they're not at any camp long enough to make friends. So, we're looking back east for summer long sleep away camp. I do wish I could find Pine Grove, with busing, in the Bay Area. (And for all of you PJCC camp parents - it's a great camp...but it's where they go to school and the kids deserve some time off campus...plus, no lake and gorgeous - but not rustic.)