Tag Archives: kids

An open letter to my mom

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You were right.

Well, at least some of the time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

When you think about all of the stuff your mom said to you as a kid that just seemed incredible or downright ridiculous, it’s how funny so much of it actually was her telling you stuff you needed to know – even if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear at the time.

 

If they’re really your friends, they wouldn’t treat you like that.

This is so incredibly true it hurts. I mean, it actually HURTS when you think about all of the time you wasted on people who were toxic, people who made you feel less than you really are, people who only had you around because it served some purpose in their life without providing similar return to you. I’m not saying that you should run your life like a game of “Survivor”, but it is really rather fantastic how many people I used to know that I just don’t even miss, because they just weren’t positive influences in my life. My best friend of 24 years is still my best friend, even though we haven’t lived in the same city for two decades, because even as much as our lives have changed and we have evolved in (sometimes different) directions, we still share mutual love, admiration, respect, and a belief that the other person is *important*.

 

Always GO before you go.

Parents of children really GET this. Case in point: I took ds up to the elementary school on his bike the other day; he biked and I walked. He played for maybe 10 minutes before he suddenly announced that he needed facilities that aren’t open on the weekends. While I give him high marks for being able to hold all bodily functions until we got home, I give myself poor marks for not having forced him into the bathroom before we left. Sure, the school isn’t too far from the house – but this is a rookie mistake. (Right up there with that time I forgot to bring diapers to a well visit when dd was still an infant; that’s a mistake that you only make ONCE.)

 

You can do better.

This applies just across the board. When I think about how things are going at work (extremely well, by the way), I wonder how much of it is luck. I’m sure there’s some karma involved, but some of it is just that I work very hard – and very efficiently – so that I can deliver at a level that meets or exceeds expectations. And I always, ALWAYS, assume I can do better…to the point where people accuse me of being humble when I shouldn’t be. There’s always room for improvement, whether it’s at work, or at home, or in the never-ending fight with my waistline. That’s not to say that I’m at the Marxian level of complaining that the capitalist system sets things up so one can never reach the divine; it’s that I think there’s always room for go beyond where you are. My pie crust could be homemade. I could rely less on boxed and frozen items when cooking during the workweek. I could be a size 8. She was right, though. I really interpret this NOW as “Celebrate when you succeed, and plan how next to exceed.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

So, Ema, the basic point is: you were right. And I’ve learned a lot in the 41 years I’ve been on the planet – but none more so than in the 7-1/2 years since dd made her first public appearance in the delivery room. But you were right.

At least some of the time.

Exiting the kiddo birthday party arms race

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This was the year.

Since dd was on the cusp of 3yo, we’ve been attending kiddo birthday parties that made everything I grew up with pale by comparison. Honestly, I don’t remember my friends having big birthday parties when I was a kid…although, to be fair, I primarily was close just with my bff and didn’t really get the time of day from the “cool kids” that treated me like crap. (Back then, it wasn’t cool at all to be the smart-but-short-fat-girl-with-glasses; these days, I’d be the subject of my own YA book series with an option for a 3-movie deal.)

When we attended the first of these new-fangled kiddo parties, at a mini gym, we were immediately taken with the notion of having someone else be responsible for corralling, entertaining, and then cleaning up after a classroom of kiddos. It seemed like a fantastic idea. Well, that is until we saw the price of these parties.

In most cases, it was something on the order of $300+ just for the location and the staff; then you had to add in the cost of the cake (typically store-bought, for simplicity’s sake), pizza (if it was near a mealtime), drinks, and favors. In some cases, the starting price is even higher (especially for the indoor bouncy place near us), in which case the final tally for a party would be anywhere from $400-500. For a party. For pre-schoolers.

We knew this couldn’t last.

Last year, for dd’s 6th birthday party, we did a gymnastics party at our local YMCA. The limit on kids was something like 27 or 29, including dd (it was all based on ratios of coaches:kids), and we invited her entire Kindergarten class plus a small group of neighborhood kiddos and close friends. The idea was that we would wait to see who from her class just blew it off and then we’d add in the remainder of kids we also wanted to invite. Trouble was, nobody backed out. We had 100% YES RSVPs. It was shocking, to say the least. The YMCA team, much to their credit, rallied and managed to handle the large crowd in style – especially at improvising additional games/activities when some aspects of the party took less time than anticipated. I think we all just found the party overwhelming, and then after doing a twist on the invitation game with ds’ 4th birthday party this summer (starting with the list of neighborhood kids and close friends FIRST and then inviting only select kids from day care), we just felt like we were overspending and overthinking it all.

In our neck of the woods, there are plenty of kiddo party options (outside of the house). You can be active (YMCA, indoor bouncy / gym / playarea, karate, gymnastics, etc.), you can be crafty (Joanns, Michaels, paint-your-own pottery, etc.), you can be educational (such as kid-oriented museums), and you can be outdoorsy (hayride with pumpkin picking, hiking at the nearby Audubon or state park, etc.). The options become completely overwhelming, and the cost isn’t far behind. Even the party favors end up stressing me out: let’s see if we can spend less than $100 on gifts for up to 30 kids and not make it all plastic junk toys or candy. My go-to favor solution has mostly been some kind of notebook, notepad or coloring {thing}, along with some kind of writing/drawing implement (markers, crayons, or pencils) and some form of innocuous kid-oriented food {thing}, such as Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. Buying the writing/drawing stuff from the local Job Lot or Target and the Goldfish from BJs, we typically manage to keep the price on the favors within budget…but it’s all still crazy.

So, this is the year that I pulled the brakes – to a certain extent. I didn’t say that dd couldn’t have a birthday party; I figured we needed to get her on a step-down program. What we’re doing instead is a targeted party at a local Build-a-Bear for just a very select crew. I can’t adequately describe how awful I feel at not being able to invite all of the neighborhood kids, but it’s just cost-prohibitive. For this party, we’re keeping it to just 8 kids, including dd and ds, so she had 6 invitation slots she could fill. That. Was. It.

I figured we could skip the expense of the favor (each kid is going home with a stuffy they made themselves, so I am comfortable with saying THAT is their “favor”), and I let dd pick out a scaled-down cupcake cake that should result in no leftovers and be relatively easy to wrangle in the mall food court, as we take over a table for the food portion of the party after the bears (and other assorted stuffies) have been built.

There’s a part of me that is incredibly happy to say goodbye to the era of the big party for dd; aside from the expense, the stress of trying to figure out how to maximize the experience for a large number and variety of kids is exhausting. Even dealing with the thank you cards is just some new level of insanity; my hat is totally off to the parents of ds’ preschool classmate, who put thank you cards in each favor bag. KUDOS on getting that out of the way, man.

I don’t know how this party will go. It’s tomorrow, and both kids have been stoked to go build some bears. The other kiddos invited to the party have also been jumping up and down at the thought of going, so I’m hoping this doesn’t turn out to be some kind of build-up for not much actual return for them. I just want everyone to have a good time and for it not to break the bank. A part of me also wants dd (and ds) to have the parties I just don’t remember having or going to when I was that age, even though I sincerely doubt that withholding such parties will end up severely adding to their future therapy bills.

It’s just that fine line – balancing the needs of the few (dd & ds) with the needs of the many (all the other kids) and the needs of the one (checking account). Something had to give…and we drew the line in first grade. If this works out fine, ds has only 1-2 more years of “the big party” and then he’ll start his own party step-down program. It may seem crazy to think about it this way, but did I ever mention that I’m an overthinker? Yeah…in spades.

The perils of constantly questioning whether you’re the worst mom ever

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Being a parent is a tricky thing. You made some kind of choice – either explicit or implicit – that you were willing to bring a child into the world, and then you’re responsible for making sure that child is allowed to grow to the point where it can leave the proverbial nest. As my father (and Bill Cosby?) said, a parent’s responsibility is to civilize a child so they can survive in society. But really, there’s very little that prepares you for the constant nagging feeling that you’ve chosen wrong with just about everything you decide on your child’s behalf.

I discussed some of my concerns when we first put dd into summer camp last year, because she spent the better part of four weeks being utterly miserable. She hated camp. She didn’t want us to go each morning at drop-off. She wanted to be picked up early so she wouldn’t have to endure post-camp. Everything was awful, and she made that abundantly clear. For the better part of four weeks, I vacillated between thinking “OH DEAR LORD SHE’S RIGHT AND I’M SCARRING MY CHILD’S PSYCHE” and “This, too, shall pass.”

Whether by hope or just the passage of sufficient time for her to adjust to the new norm, she settled down sometime in that four weeks and suddenly, dramatically, fell madly in love with camp. It got to the point that she was terribly sad when she finished camp at the end of the summer and headed off to Kindergarten.

Figuring that we’d capitalize on her newfound love of camp, we set about putting her back in the same program this summer, timed to coincide with our return from our trip to DC. She got 1-1/2 weeks of gymnastics camp, then we had vacation, then she went back to her regular camp. And everything was fine. For all of one day.

By the time she’d gotten home from that first day, she decided that camp was (yet again) the worst thing EVER. And this time, with only five weeks of camp in front of her, she was going to drag this out as the worst experience for all of us if we didn’t fix it. The nagging concerns came back to the forefront of my brain again, wondering if we should’ve just left her in the gymnastics camp all summer. It was about the same cost, but the difference in commute (compounded by the fact that the location of that camp almost certainly requires that I’m on the only one who can get her) meant that I’d have to give up any hope of evening workouts in the gym, post-work. So, we all soldiered on.

I made her an advent calendar, of sorts, and challenged her to cross off each day at its conclusion and then write what she liked about camp at the end of each week. When we got to the end of the last day of the last week, I asked her to write down three things she liked about camp and to tell me which camp she wanted to go to next summer: regular camp or gymnastics camp. I fully expected to see her write GYMNASTICS CAMP in bright, shiny, blinking letters. Instead, she wrote REGULAR CAMP.

You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

It turns out, what dh and I were missing this entire time was that the difference between her pre-K camp and her first grade camp was that she didn’t get nap time. And, the difference between her first grade camp and the other camps at higher levels (2nd grade on up) is that the camps for older kids got at least one field trip per week. In other words, first grade camp is a total screw job where you’re trapped in one location and don’t even get a nap for your trouble. OH. It all makes sense now.

Fast forward to Sunday, when I brought dd to her first day of “pre-team” gymnastics training. It’s a 2hr session for girls who are interested in taking their gymnastics to the next level. Girls who really excel are invited to take on a second 2hr session every week, so that’s something to keep an eye out for. She’d been up and down about going pre-team, but she loves gymnastics and has shown quite an aptitude for it. When I finally got her registered for pre-team (no small feat), she looked at me as though I’d just knifed all her favorite stuffed animals. She’d asked for pre-team repeatedly, but that wasn’t the same as getting it. And so, for weeks, she alternated between planting her feet and taunting us with “I WON’T GO” and telling her friends, “I’m doing pre-team!”

{cue a very large palm-print on my forehead}

So, I took her on Sunday, and I was unsurprised that she hung on me tighter than any plastic wrap. I brought her into the gym, and she cried and clawed at me, begging me to stay. I managed to pry her off me, and eventually a coach led her off to sit with the other girls. I saw some sniffling, but it disappeared quickly. The start of class was slow, since it was the first time for this session and there were a ton of new girls (like dd), but this helped her get acclimated. She stretched, followed all the directions, and – amazingly – paid incredible attention to the coaches. She didn’t even gnaw on her fingernails, as she so often does; she was that engrossed in what they were teaching her. As she ran and pranced past me in the whirling mass of 6-13 year-olds, warming up, she would look for me at the window and wave, smiling brightly.

At her first water break, she bounded out for her water bottle and teased me for not leaving it in the gym. At the second break, she pulled me down to the locker room for girl talk while she had a bio break, and as she shut the bathroom stall door, she shouted at me, “I want to compete on pre-team!” I was nearly in tears. The idea that we’d possibly gotten it right was something that I kept in the back of my mind, because the pulling and crying and yelling and denials always end up pushing self-doubt forward and self-confidence to the back. Always.

I wonder if it’s like this for all parents…or just for some of us?

She asked me to take her to pre-team again next Sunday, and I’m looking forward to it. She said that I can go workout elsewhere in the gym, which I’d like to do, although there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to spend the entire 2hr stretch on a treadmill. Really, I want to watch her excel and smile…because sometimes the validation I need as a parent is what isn’t told to me. Sometimes, it’s just seeing the look on her face and understanding that – this time – I didn’t get it wrong.