My 7 year-old wants to read my blog. Is there a V-chip for blogs?
There is also the old-fashioned answer: No, dear, you can’t. Sometimes old-style parenting does the trick.
Uh oh
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Tag Archives: Mothers
The simple pleasures
Today, I got to play with my son before work. Tonight, a former colleague is coming to dinner on a week night. In the go-go days, these things would never have happened.
On Saturday night, my partner and I have a dinner date with another couple. It is hard (and expensive) to find a Saturday night babysitter in August. So, my sister, brother-in-law and father are coming over to have pizza with our son and hang with him and put him to bed. Our son is so excited, and so is Grandpa. We save money on a babysitter and our son gets to play with his favorite aunt and uncle, and his grandpa.
Forget the green shoots in the economy. Look at the silver lining of the down turn.
Growing Pains
You are only as happy as your child is on any given day. And your child’s fears and sadnesses are like daggers in your heart. My mother would say things like this and I totally get it.
My son is now 7 and he has to manage social interactions and other activities which are not his strengths. And he has to do so beyond our reach and ability to facilitate the situations. And he needs to do this without us because he has to learn and grow and all that. I know, I know, I know, I know. I also know that I want to protect my little boy from all of life’s hurts from little boo-boos to real bona fide problems. I totally get why his imaginary worlds are way easier. If I were the least bit creative, I would really have grooved on imaginary worlds.
Last night he was so sad about having to do a performance at camp today. It was the entirety of his world and it was heartbreaking. I could tell him and tell him again that he should trust me that everything was going to be ok, that I know these things, that I am not letting anything bad happen. I could just hear his dread and feel his sadness and self-doubt. Finally, after a story, he fell asleep.
My partner and I internalized all his sadness, were grumpy until we went to sleep and both slept fitfully. At drop-off this morning, she promised him french fries with dinner. She called the camp today and spoke with the director. She checked on him and he was doing fine. We are tired, over-wrought, wrecks. He gets french fries tonight for being a trooper. I need a quart of Cherry Garcia. And a quart of New York Super Chunk Fudge. And maybe a french fry or six.
The good news is that we all survived the day at camp. I think my partner and I are more the worse for wear. My son — he’s fine.
Is it ok to lie to your child . . . .
Is it ok to lie to your child if the lie is, “I will always keep you safe,” knowing that as your child gets older, you won’t be able to, but somehow believing that by sheer force of will you will, even when you are 80 years old? Does reality, science and logic really have to be considered?
Soon, soon, soon
For a long time when our son asked when we would get some place or when his food would come at a restaurant or when he would start to like school, my partner would answer with “soon, sweetie”. About 18 months ago, at age 5-and1/2, he said in a very adult voice:
“Mommy, ‘soon‘ is not an answer because it doesn’t mean anything.”
I think of this every time someone says soon lenders will start lending again. Soon, the job cuts will abate. Soon, I will get to retire.
Soon, soon, soon
The Upside of the Downturn
It’s Saturday, July 2007, I am on the phone with clients and at my computer on a Saturday morning, trying to close a deal by Monday or Tuesday.
It’s Saturday, July 2009. For the last two hours I have been lying in bed next to my son watching cartoons. More TV time than he gets in two weeks, but it’s the summer and he had a few emotional days at camp (hormones and growth spurts). Cartoons are violent and weird, but those two hours hugging my child and tickling him during commercials were a little bit of heaven.
There is an upside to this downturn, as long as I can afford the apartment and the TV. Do you think that a yurt in Central Park can have wifi?
Visiting Day at Day Camp — Part II
Too many bugs in nature. But I braved the wilds of Rockland County for my son.
I went to camp for ten summers. I loved camp, notwithstanding my current aversion to the bugs and inconveniences of the natural world. (I need a NICE bathroom.)
So, having loved camp so much, I was game for all of the activities. My son wanted to relax after a hard day of having fun and lied down in the grass. My partner took pictures of him lying down. I got involved in a soccer game (and gracelessly tripped over the ball) and then played parent-child basketball games (even though my child was on the sidelines chilling out). And I ran to get the cherry italian ices for us that the camp gave as a parting snack. I overheard a father asking if there were lemon ices because the cherry kind stained permanently. I saw a woman in white pants (great idea for an evening at a camp) get splashed with cherry ices being eaten by a nearby child. It seemed to happen in slow motion, with love music in the background as the white and the cherry collided in a loving embrace. Ok, the woman and the child who was not her daughter — not so much loving happening there.
Our son wore most of his cherry ices on his clothes and on his face. The neon quality of the coloring made it a handy tracking device as we boarded the buses back to the city.
Visiting Day at Day Camp
Today is visiting day at day camp. Ok, it is visiting dinner, really.
I still remember my parents coming for visiting days when I was at sleep away camp. I remember the summer my mother went gray. It was 3-1/2 weeks since I had seen my parents and I wondered who were those odd people waving at me. Maybe it was my mother’s gray, my father’s checked pants and white shoes combo or the red keds (the really wimpy kind — not the now-preppy-cool kind) my mom wore. It was probably the whole picture that made me weak in the knees.
Luckily, my son saw us this morning so the trauma should be muted. More later.
Grandma, Mom and me
So I am not only becoming my mother, I am becoming my grandmother.
You may remember seeing old Jewish ladies like her. They had heavy accents and would offer you a “gless of tea in a kup” (because in the “old country” tea was served in glasses, but “vee know that here, in Amerrrica, dahlink, vee poot tea in a kup”).
They carried heavy shopping bags full of things. In fact, those shopping bags were so ubiquitous that they were called “Jewish luggage”. Which gets me to my point. This morning, I couldn’t seem to find any of my fancy shmancy bags in which to shove some of the daily detritus of my life. I spied a small Dean & Deluca shopping bag (note to self: remind family that this is not a eatery for recessionary times). So in went my blackberries (yes more than one), gym clothes, bills I need to pay, etc. Off I went to my fancy shmancy job at my fancy shmancy office with my shtetl style bag.
Some things must just be in our genes. From generation to generation. . . .
Being the other mother
I am not my son’s biological mother. My partner is. There are distinct advantages to being genetically irrelevant: no worries that the less-than-stellar genes I carry (recessive, of course) will transfer to my son. I can say that he is adorable and that he is smart, because I have nothing to do with those. The down side is that I don’t see my mother in him and she was such a positive life force.
I live the nature/nurture debate. I think humans are born hard-wired and nurture doesn’t change that. Nurture can create a safe, loving, encouraging environment so that a child’s better impulses, desires and dreams can flourish. That’s my job. It is hard sometimes because there is something about the biological connection that is primitive and similarly hard-wired.
I worry about my place in my son’s life. I have a piece of paper — court ordered adoption. I am legally and financially as responsible for him as is any biological parent. But that is no bright line upon which to stake my parental claim. Certainly if family were decided based on “blood” relations, I would lose. Court order sounds strong but it is paper and in “rock, paper, scissors,” I would lose to the scissors. So, it can’t be that strong.
I know I love him and he loves me. That’s the tie that binds. The rest shouldn’t matter. But until love is the litmus test for family, I am glad I have the piece of paper.