Archive for January, 2008
Noodles not love
The other evening, I told Matty that I loved him. His reply: “NO!” I asked him if he loved me and once again: “NO!” I asked him in a couple of different ways a few more times only to have him tell me, “NO!” I even asked for a hug and he wouldn’t do that.
The next morning, while he was sitting on the potty, I told him that I loved him.
This time his reply was, “I love you too.”
I was taken aback by this. I asked him why he didn’t just say that the night before.
He told me, “Cuz I wanted noodles.” 
5 comments January 31, 2008
Casualties of Snow
When it snows, it hurts.
Rachel is home sick today. Kevin had to go get her from school yesterday because she was running a fever of 102.5. She has a Rudolph nose and a frog in her throat. Poor baby. Of course, she takes after her mom and won’t just lay around and chill. Hopefully, she will go back to school tomorrow.
Austin also was a casualty. He got to school this morning, slipped 
on some ice and hit a pole….with his stomach. It made him vomit. Kevin went and rescued him before classes were even able to start.
Knock on wood…but so far Lauren and Matty are doing okay. Hopefully, they will survive the day 
1 comment January 29, 2008
Blizzard of ‘08
As you all have heard me yammer before I live in the high desert. So snow is NOT normal in large quantities. Blizzards NEVER happen. If we get an accumulation of snow it is never more than 1/2 inch. So look what was happening outside for the past 15 minutes. My crazy hubby thought it was fun and exciting to go stand in 40 mph winds with thunder snow and take pictures. I have no words for him.
* * * *
Being safe under the car port
Street Lamp
Street Lamp from another angle
House across the street
House across the street part 2
Next Door neighbor
Snow blowing under the car port
Picture of all of our summer furnishing getting tossed around like nothing
The snow is blowing one way but somehow the van till gets snow on it like it’s blowing the other way….hmmm
This is under the carport, in an enclosed area
Schools are on a 2 hour delay for tomorrow!!
7 comments January 28, 2008
Toilet Training Idea
On Friday, a mom on the fragile x listserv asked how to change big kids diapers in public. I haven’t had to do this in a couple of years but one mom had such a fantastic idea that I had to share it. So if you have an older child still in diapers maybe this can help.
Original Question:
How do you handle changing big kids’ diapers in public? Kids who are WAY too big for the diaper changing table in the restrooms? I’m going to be approaching this problem someday. Right now we throw a coat on the floor in the restroom and change the boys there — they are squirmy though and there isn’t always a lot of space for a growing boy….
The Answer:
4 words….Pet pads and Lysol. You can get the Pet pads at the pet section of Wal-Mart, Target stores, etc. They look just like the bed pads nurses use in a hospital for an adult bed. Just Lysol spray the floor, lay pad down on the bathroom floor, get on your knees, and do your thing. Throw everything away in a plastic baggie. I never liked the baby changing thing on the wall. I like to be lined up with the boys at pull-up/diaper time. Just my 2 cents. We quit carrying a true diaper bag when DS was age 3 and started carrying a black backpack…looked less awkward as he aged and still wasn’t potty trained.
4 comments January 28, 2008
Musical bedrooms
Back in August, I shared that I was splitting up Lauren & Rachel’s room, and putting Rachel’s bedroom in half of the living room. Well, we played magical bedrooms once again.
Austin has been having a very hard time waking up in the morning. Well, Austin has this way with telling us what the problem is first, then dropping little hints here and there as to the cause. Matty was the cause. Fragile X kids seem to have this wierd thing about needing minimal sleep. Matt would go to bed at like 8 p.m. and be wide awake at 3 a.m. He then would lay in his bed until everyone else starting moving around. But in those 2+ hours he was jabbering, giggling, and stealing Austin’s covers. Austin is our night owl so he would be finally going to sleep at about 11 p.m. only to be woke up by Matt at 3 a.m. The poor teen was not getting adequate rest.
As a trial, I started having Matt sleep on the couch in the living room to see how him and Rachel meshed. Matt could wake up and jabber and Rachel wouldn’t be fazed. Rachel could jabber and grind her teeth in her sleep and Matt would sleep through it.
So Kevin and I, quite timidly, mentioned to Austin about living in the living room. He stoked about it until he heard that he couldn’t take any furniture with him….just switch out belongings. I dropped little hints all week long about the advantages of it. Plus he started noticing that he could play the PS2 longer if the little kids weren’t in the living room. His friends could also sleep on the couch when they stay over and, if they stay up all night, they won’t be bothering anyone with their video games and refrigator raids.
We started the move yesterday. Rachel was with her dad so it was a perfect time to do it. We asked Austin one last time how he felt about it. He said he wanted to but he didn’t want to make Rachel upset. We had to laugh at him because he tries to pretend to hate her but he worries about her so much. When we told him that she would be happy about it he was off for the move.
Austin had a friend over that helped him move stuff around. Of course, they are not as 
efficient as, well, me. So this morning I did the finishing touches. I got the little kids room arranged so they have a block of floor space to play. I got the last of Austin’s things to his room. I got all the posters, pictures, medals, etc up in the little kids rooms. I got the last of Rachel’s stuff out of the living room.
I was just about done when Rachel got home. I wish you could have seen the big beautiful grin that she had on her face. She threw her arms up and started jumping up and down. She helped me finish it up.
Austin’s room isn’t quite done yet. He pretended to jokingly ask if I would help him like I was the little kids. I told him that he was a big boy and could do the room just fine. He was taller and more creative than the little kids. He said, “Good point,” and headed down the hall. But I think tomorrow night I’ll go give him a hand on the final touches.
So now I’m happy, the teens have their own rooms & are happy, and the little kids are sharing a room (once again) & are happy, and Kevin’s happy cuz we are. Why didn’t we think of this before?
3 comments January 27, 2008
Saying Sorry
Say You’re Sorry!
Is forcing your kids to apologize a bad idea?
Posted Friday, Jan. 18, 2008, at 12:37 PM ET
Last week, BET founder Bob Johnson made sure to say he was “truly sorry” when he apologized to Barack Obama for his “uncalled-for comments” (aka, apparent allusions to Obama’s drug use). Which somehow only made it seem more likely that the Clintons forced him to apologize in the first place. Begging forgiveness is an art. Even when it’s carefully considered, as this effort must have been, it’s hard to pull off gracefully.
Which leads me to a question: Is it good parenting to make your kids say they’re sorry to 
other kids whom they’ve wronged? There are two contexts in which I tend to do this. The first is brother-on-brother combat between my 8-year-old and almost 5-year-old, Eli and Simon, in which one seems to be the clear perpetrator. My theory, when I think it through, is that even a grudgingly muttered, “OK, sorry,” clears the air. It’s one way to strive for a modicum of family civility. And after all, growing up is sometimes an exercise in learning to go through the motions, and sometimes a genuine feeling can follow upon an action that’s repeated until it’s instilled. If I tell my kids to say they’re sorry 10,000 times, I can hope that someday the grudging mutter will turn willing and sincere.
The other time I hear myself barking “Say you’re sorry!” is when I’m with a friend and his or her kids, and one of my kids is being obnoxious, and I’m embarrassed. This one I can’t really defend: It’s a cheap way to signal that I, for one, have some manners; that I know my kids are being trolls and won’t let them get away with it, at least not entirely. Forcing an apology is a lot easier than imposing a real punishment. So, it suits for small- to medium-sized infractions that I feel like I should address (or rather shouldn’t be seen letting go). Especially, if I’m honest, toward the end of a long day.
My husband doesn’t believe in any of this. The second kind of “Say you’re sorry!” feels like a lame bid for social approval to him (it is). The first kind he thinks is useless, because it’s not from the heart. To which I’ve responded that apologizing is hard for adults to do, too, and the more practice our kids get, the better. Or so I used to say, that is, because now I think there might be a better strategy. Jane Nelsen is the author of 
Positive Discipline, a series of books about using “non-punitive methods to instill valuable social skills,” as one of them says on the back. In a chapter about teaching toddlers to share, Nelsen instructs parents against “forcing a reluctant apology.” “Doing so does not encourage sharing,” she says. OK, that makes sense for toddlers. But what about olderkids like Eli and Simon? I thought Nelsen might see a role for the forced apology for them.Wrong. “I don’t think you should force anyone to apologize at any age,” she tells me over the phone. “That’s teaching kids to lie. If they’re not sorry and we make them say sorry, just to make us feel good, that’s not about empathy.”
Nelsen is all for seeking forgiveness. She just thinks the idea needs to come from the kids themselves. Or so they should think. First, you sympathize with them about how they’re feeling: What was it that led Simon to spew an insult or Eli to send him sprawling? Nelsen calls this “connection before correction.” Once you’ve done your empathizing, then you can ask the leading questions that you hope will get your kid to do likewise. How did they make the other kid feel? What could they say to make her feel better? Maybe: “Sorry?”
Nelsen’s approach makes room for my notion that you have to practice saying “sorry” to get good at it. What she’s adding is a way to help make that practice involve feelings of contrition along the way. She calls this “operating from an internal locus of control.” My husband calls it speaking from the heart. My friend Rachel, who recommended Positive Discipline, points out that you can also walk the “sorry” walk yourself, by “making sure you apologize to your children if you think you have done something wrong, or letting your children see you apologize to your spouse.” (Of course, just before she suggested that, she found herself making one of her daughters apologize to the other.)
This all sounds good. And yet I couldn’t help sighing to Nelsen that some parents (i.e., me) might see her approach as a long way to the same destination. To which she retorted (nicely), “Did someone tell you that children didn’t take time? Oh my.”
Point taken.
When I got off the phone, I wondered if it would feel manipulative to ask Nelsen’s leading questions to Eli and Simon. Which led me to admit to myself that what I was really worried about was feeling silly. Asking a rehearsed set of questions feels, well, rehearsed. You have to put yourself through the paces along with your kids.
But you know what? I’m going to try it. Here’s why. A few weeks ago, Simon and Eli were on vacation with their cousins, one of whom, Matthew, is a year older than Eli. Inevitably, Eli and Matthew sometimes went off to play without Simon. One night after dinner, Simon was tearful and angry about this desertion, and Eli was defensive and mean. I started reading them a story to calm them down before bed. Simon interrupted. “We need to have a peace circle,” he said, or whimpered, rather. Eli rolled his eyes and scrunched his eyebrows. I’d never heard of a peace circle, but figured this was one more benefit of Simon’s Montessori school, and I got Eli to agree to come over and sit with us.
We made a circle, and I asked if we should hold hands. “No, we talk about our feelings,” Simon said. “Eli, I just don’t know what to do! I want to play with you and Matthew and you don’t even notice me. …” He was off, in a fairly coherent burst. When he was done talking, Eli said—calmly, in contrast to his previous defensiveness—”Well, Simon, sometimes I don’t notice you because I don’t see you. You’re behind us and because you’re smaller I don’t see your head. So you have to tell me you’re there. Sorry.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that Eli couldn’t see Simon, exactly. But Simon seemed to buy it. “OK,” he said. “Does anyone want to say anything else?” I asked tentatively. “No,” Simon said. “Read now.” Fight over. Wound salved.
This was my children operating from their internal loci of control, and speaking from 
their hearts. Eli’s “sorry” was unprompted, and it wasn’t even the main event. The boys proved that the less instruction from me, the better. Nelsen says this shows the value of another strategy she advocates: the weekly family meeting, in which disputes become agenda items to be written up on a list on the refrigerator when they can’t be resolved easily otherwise. She says that reduced fighting in her family by 80 percent. I’d take half of that result and call it a wild success. Maybe Simon will bring that idea home from school, too. Or maybe I can work up to offering it myself.
Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2182349/
2 comments January 25, 2008
