Family matters, partner campaign, sponsored

Turning the kids into responsible humans is an ongoing process

02/18/2016 Nichole 1 Comment

My intention when I sat down at the computer this evening was to write a Pley-inspired post about How I Teach The Children About Responsibility. I was going to write about how it’s our job as parents to help our children to grow into functional and dependable adults, and that we have many tools at our disposal to that end. I was going to share some of those tools, and I was going to allow you to bask in the stern but warm glow of my parenting insights.

But then I got distracted by some cat-print leggings, which naturally sent me down a rabbit hole from which I didn’t escape until I hit the bottom. And when I say “the bottom,” please understand that I was considering buying this:

I rarely ever wear the Darth Vader dress I already own, so I talked myself off this sartorial ledge.

Yeah, it’s a caped dress adorned with a bedazzled Darth Vader head. And yeah, for a brief moment it was in my shopping cart. But then I reminded myself that I rarely ever wear the Darth Vader dress that I already own, so I closed those tabs and started typing.

And then I was so into “Carefree Highway” that my words slipped away on me. (And then of course I had to look up the lyrics to make sure I was using them accurately.)

And then I remembered there were Thin Mints in the cupboard, so I had to go to the kitchen to eat ~~one~~ the remaining three.

And then it was my turn in my ongoing game of Facebook Scrabble with my dad, and when the game ended (I lost, as usual) and I tried to start a new one it wouldn’t let me and so I started to wonder if my dad had unfriended me on Facebook Scrabble. (I still don’t know the answer to that one.)

What I’m trying to say is: Sometimes I wonder whether I am the ideal person to Teach The Children About Responsibility. And yet Poppy and Pete are my children, and as such I have a responsibility to Teach Them About Responsibility.

Learning how to be responsible is an ongoing and ever-evolving process. For all of us. Here are some of the ways in which Rockford and I are trying to Teach The Children About Responsibility:

Chores

Rockford and I feel that chores are an important part of teaching kids to be responsible, both as a way to be helpful, contributing members of our four-person society and as a way to make money. So Poppy and Pete each have a daily chore list, which includes things like Do Your Laundry, Unload the Dishwasher and Clean the Toilet. Their chores haven’t been required (other than the laundry one), and the kids go through cycles of being very diligent in their work and completely slacking off. Whenever they get into a slacking-off rut, we try to come up with a new way to encourage them to get their work done.

When we first gave the kids chores, I thought that money would be sufficient encouragement. But that didn’t mean much to them until I started making them buy their own ICEEs at Target. At that point, Pete began to graciously offer to treat his sister to an ICEE and Poppy graciously accepted whilst depositing her own coins into her piggy bank. Much as I appreciated his generosity, he wasn’t saving any of his money. Financial responsibility is pretty important, so we tried a new tactic. The kids put half of their allowance into The Spending Jar and the other half into The Savings Pig. I’ve told them that we’ll match whatever they’ve saved when it’s time to buy their first cars, but that hasn’t much of an impact. Pete apparently doesn’t realize how much his dream car — a limousine — is going to set him back, and I think Poppy is planning to take the bus.

The kids haven’t been doing a great job on their chores lately, so it’s time to change things up again. They don’t know this yet — or rather, they’re finding out right now as Poppy reads this — but starting this Monday we’ll be linking Chore Competition to Electronics Time.

School

Every homeschool operates differently, but in our homeschool there isn’t much urgency for the kids to get their schoolwork done by a specific hour. They work off of a to-do list, and I don’t keep them to a schedule on it. So long as everything’s done by the end of the day, I’m happy. My goal for now is to lead them toward taking care of business under their own initiative. Some days they do, but most days I still have to remind them to check their lists and do their work. Frequently. I am positive that they’ll get there eventually.

Outsourcing

For us, the leaders in the kids’ extracurricular activities — particularly at tae kwon do — are playing a great role in teaching them about responsibility. Show up at tae kwon do without your belt? Don’t know your form? You may be tempted to blame your dog for chewing on your belt or your mom for not reminding you to practice, but that kind of thing does not fly over there. The instructor will call you out, fix her steely-eyed gaze upon you and say “Whose tae kwon do practice is this? Is this your mother’s tae kwon do practice? No. It is yours, and you are responsible for it.” It makes my inner helicopter parents squirm a little when such tough love is directed at my own precious flowers, but then I squash my inner helicopter parent. Because I think it means a lot for a kid to know that their parents aren’t the only people who notice or care about it when they try to slack off.

Helping our children to become responsible people is a huge and important task, and there are plenty of advice columns and talking heads out there who will tell us how to do it. But all the tools and helpful tips in the world will be worthless if Rockford and I don’t lead Pete and Poppy by example. We can tell them 1,000 times over to clean their rooms, but there isn’t going to be much weight behind the command if the floor of our room is covered with baseball cards and Micro Machines. So we try to set a good example for them by being responsible in our own lives, and we do our best to encourage them to be responsible in theirs. It’s a long and winding road that’s worth trudging down.

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menu plan Monday

An overabundance of anxiety calls for copious amounts of chocolate pudding

02/15/2016 Nichole 1 Comment

Poppy was perusing a local magazine last Monday as the two of us waited for Pete to finish his guitar lesson.

“Uh, Mama? This says our doctors office is closing,” she said, holding the magazine out to me. I took it from her and read over the ad, and indeed it was as she said.

“We are closing in Spring 2016,” it said. “Call us or email us so you can come get your records before we toss them into our Beltane bonfire.”

I may be paraphrasing a bit. I don’t know anything about Beltane. I doubt it’s associated with the destruction of pediatric medical files. But that was the gist of the message: Gather ye records while ye can.

So I called the office, but no one answered. I emailed the office, and no one answered. I called again several times over the course of the next few days. Sometimes it rang and rang into oblivion, other times it rang and then sounded a busy signal. Twice it sounded like an answering machine had picked up, but there was no message. Finally, after three days of calling, someone answered the phone on Thursday and said I could pick up the records on Monday — today — between 9am and 11am.

So naturally Pete has been sick since Friday night and we were supposed to get an ice storm overnight. We did not get an ice storm, but I still didn’t want to drag feverish, hacking Pete out in the cold. Someone actually answered this morning when I called to reschedule, which was nice. Hopefully the weather and our health will cooperate on Thursday, when we’re supposed to go pick up the records.

I’m not sure what happened that caused them to close up shop so abruptly, but I’m surprised that the only notification was a magazine ad. I would think an automated phone call or a letter to their patients would be a more efficient way to be sure you’ve reached everyone.

Writing this out, it occurs to me that the physician situation is probably contributing to the feeling of impending doom I’ve been having for several days now. That, and the fact that Pete was sick and Rockford was gone all week and was sick when he got home and I spent about seven hours over the course of two days at Poppy’s tae kwon do testing this weekend and Poppy’s twice-weekly soccer practices start up again this week, and I feel like I was and still am behind on everything.

For hours yesterday, especially, I felt like I was just about to topple over the edge into a panic attack. It eventually subsided after I went to the grocery store and came home and ate some pudding and read a book under my trusty blanket.

(“But Nichole,” you may be saying to your screen. “What about the yoga?” And I say to you that I don’t know, exactly, but I’ve been having a hard time turning down the static in my brain enough to focus on the yoga for the last several days. I’m still trying, though. Sometimes you need yoga, sometimes you need chocolate pudding.)

Speaking of the grocery store and awkward segues, here’s what we’re having for dinner this week:

Monday: Breakfast for dinner: Omelets and veggie sausages, most likely.

Tuesday: Hot ham and cheese sandwiches: Poppy will most likely forgo the ham.

Wednesday: Manicotti: I had ravioli on the menu, but frozen manicotti was BOGO when I got to the store. Manicotti it is.

Thursday: FreezerFest: We have a plethora of frozen proteins in the fridge, so it’ll be a Choose Your Own Adventure meal.

Friday: Pizza: Right now it looks like it might be warm enough to grill again by Friday, but I’m not holding my breath.

Looking for a less-neurotic menu plan? Start your search at OrgJunkie.

Gardening, partner campaign, Reading, reviews

How to hide a whole salad in your front yard

02/02/2016 Nichole 2 Comments

Farmer Ted is a gentleman in our circa-1955 neighborhood who has converted nearly all of the property around his home into an urban farm. He has fruit trees, a small pond and some ducks in the back yard, and a grid of raised beds covers his fenced-in front yard. He has chickens, too, and he made an ingenious wheeled coop for them that he moves from raised bed to raised bed every season. I admire the whole set-up every time I walk past it, and I almost always notice a small detail or smart feature that I’d never spotted before.

The neighbors across the street from him, however, are not so impressed. According to Farmer Ted, they’ve reported him to the city for all sorts of infractions in an effort to shut down his sustainability efforts. I haven’t discussed the matter with them, but he says they want the neighborhood to look like it did 55 years ago — with a green lawn and some nice, tidy landscaping.

So Farmer Ted wants to grow his own food on his own land, but his neighbors want the view from their living room to be more landscape than farmland. Is there a compromise to be found? Well, maybe not for Farmer Ted and his neighbors. I’m pretty sure the neighbors listed their house for sale recently, so I guess Farmer Ted won that fight.

Angela England's "Gardening Like a Ninja" It may be too late for our neighbors, but you can avoid a lot of gardening-related contention with your neighbors by becoming a Ninja Gardener.

Angela England’s new book, “Gardening Like a Ninja: A Guide to Sneaking Delicious Edibles into Your Landscape,” tells you which edible plants are most easily hidden in your traditional landscaping and shows you how to arrange them to look picture-perfect, but it’s a great resource even if you don’t have cranky neighbors to assuage. The book contains impressive lists of edible plants, their uses and their ideal growing conditions. Angela shows you how to build your edible garden from the ground up — lingonberries or strawberries down low and lavender or persimmon up top, perhaps? — which is very helpful for gardening novices like myself.

The list of edible plants in Angela’s book is as eye-opening as it is informational. You’d expect a plant like rosemary to be in such a guide, but did you know you can eat parts of a hosta? Dice that into your salad and eat it. (Or wrap it in bacon and broil it, maybe. Angela says the tender, leafy shoots are somewhat asparagus-like.)

So far we’ve kept our gardening efforts confined to the back yard, but “Gardening Like a Ninja” has me looking at the long-neglected island bed in the front yard in a new way. There are two dogwood trees and a big bush whose name I don’t recall anchoring it, and there used to be a lot of lavender around the anonymous bush. As much as I’d love to have some fruit trees, I’m not going to take down the big guys already there to make that happen. The lavender is pretty well dead, though, and everything else out there is ornamental, so I’m going to spend some quality time with “Gardening Like a Ninja” over the next few weeks and see if I can’t come up with an appetizing way to bring that sad space in the yard back to life.

Disclaimer: Angela England sent me a copy of “Gardening Like a Ninja” for review.