Parenting Archives - Page 11 of 11

Are you a Slacker Mom?

Posted by Caitlin - 27 Comments

Are you a slacker mom? Here’s why your kids will thank you.

What is a Slacker Mom?

Slacker Moms are mothers who would like their kids to have delicious home-cooked organic dinners every night, but would also like not to spend an hour standing at the stove with kids pulling at their pants only to gag on the meal and end up eating toast.

Slacker Moms don’t care to get competitive with other parents about things that really don’t matter. We opt out of the Mommy rat race, choosing not to stay up until 3am on February 13 assembling adorable and witty Pinterest-inspired homemade Valentine’s treats for all of our children’s classmates.

Slacker Moms are able to prioritize what’s really important and what to let go of (free of guilt!). Reading books with your kids? Important. Remembering to sign that annoying reading log every night? Meh.

Slacker Moms are blessed with confidence. We don’t obsess over what other Moms think of us because we know we are taking care of the important stuff and that’s all that really matters. We are not plagued with worry that we are failing as parents because our kids have tasted a McDonalds french fry.

In a world full of soccer moms, tiger moms, and helicopter moms, let’s make it OK to be a Slacker Mom.

5 Signs you might be a Slacker Mom

1. You don’t so much “cook dinner” as do you “prepare food”.

Baking chicken nuggets and microwaving some steamfresh corn doesn’t really qualify as cooking so let’s just call a spade a spade.

2. Nightly baths? Let’s try weekly baths.

They don’t get THAT dirty during school, right? And in the summer, swimming in the pool totally counts as bathing.

3. You offer your kids candy bribes for cooperation.

Who really cares about intrinsic motivation when 2 M&Ms cuts 45 minutes off your morning routine?

4. When the teacher sends an email asking parents to bring in food for the class party, you are first one to sign up to bring napkins.

You want me to bake? When it’s not even my kid’s birthday?

5. It has to be a special occasion for you to dress your baby in actual clothes.

Footie pajamas absolutely pass as clothes for the first year. I’m pretty sure the first time my youngest child ever wore pants was Christmas. He was born in May.

OK, so I might be a Slacker Mom. Are my children doomed?

Not only are the children of Slacker Moms not doomed, I would actually say they reap benefits from this style of parenting.

Slacker Moms are not Neglectful Moms. We just know the difference between a want and a need. We are able to meet our kids’ needs without putting our own needs last.

The kids see that Mommy is a person too, with her own goals, hobbies, desires, and obligations that do not involve them. It is OK, and healthy, for children to see that their mother is a whole, complex person and not a being who exists to serve them.

Children of Slacker Moms have opportunities to learn responsibility. A good rule of thumb (and one of the pillars of my parenting style) is “don’t do anything for your child that he can do himself“.

We don’t feel the need to micromanage our children by doing things like packing their backpacks for them each night and remembering to include their library book on the correct day. This means little Johnny knows if he wants to pick a new book on library day, he has to remember his book on the right day. After a couple times of forgetting, Johnny will remember to put it in his backpack on Wednesday. Johnny just took responsibility.

The children of Slacker Moms get to enjoy a certain amount of freedom. Maybe not “free range Mom” freedom, but certainly a huge step up from “helicopter Mom” freedom.

They can climb trees, because Slacker Moms are fans old school, normal childhood activities and aren’t paranoid about the possibility of injury. Our children can play in the woods without Mom being there to watch their every move. They can pick up a stick. They can enjoy the feeling of being barefoot in the grass on a warm summer day.

Take a deep breath, Slacker Mom.

The next time your kid goes to a 5th birthday party decorated with centerpieces more extravagant than the ones you had at your wedding, remember this. That over-achieving Mom probably worked herself into a frenzy doing party prep that none of the kids noticed or cared about. You probably played checkers with your kid that day. He’ll remember the checkers.

Thu
26 ^th

The Dark Side of Parenting: 7 Truths I Wish I Knew Before Having Kids

Posted by Caitlin - 25 Comments

Everyone tells you having kids will change your life. The part they don’t always tell you is, it’s not always for the better.

Yes, the half-pints are adorable (just look at mine!) and yes, you will love them like you’ve never loved anything before. But all the rosy stories about kids that end with “and I wouldn’t change a thing!” are a flat-out fraud. Who wouldn’t change the baby that wakes up every two hours into a baby that sleeps all night? Who wouldn’t change their tantrumming toddler into a child who says “that’s ok if my blue cup is in the dishwasher Mom. Just give me whichever one is available”?

Let’s be honest- there’s a lot we would change. The Moms with the flawless family pictures on Facebook paint a picture of life with kids that is glorious, a life that somehow transcends any possible joy or fulfillment childless people could ever experience. Oh, how young childless me longed to experience such enlightenment!

Now here I am on the other side. In the trenches. With four tiny, loud humans depending on me for everything. Demanding. Needing. Wanting. Competing. Yes, there are wonderful, beautiful moments like I’d never experienced before. But there is also a dark side to parenthood that I never hear people talking about. Since they don’t talk about it, it’s easy to feel alone. You might wonder what’s wrong with you that this new life isn’t providing you with a constant state of bliss. The self-doubt starts to creep in.

Some days I have to remind myself, “Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.”

If people had been more open and honest with me, I would have been better prepared before having kids. Looking back now there are some parenting truths I wish I understood before permanently changing my life by becoming a Mom.

7 Truths I Wish I Knew Before Having Kids

1. Don’t even try to plan it. You are not in control.

You might have had success planning every detail of your life up to this point and you may be entirely sure that you can plan parenthood just as well. Let me just tell you now, it won’t go according to plan.

Maybe you’ll get pregnant when you weren’t supposed to be trying yet. Or maybe it will take 3 years and two rounds of IVF.

Maybe you will time it perfectly so that your due date will be right at the most convenient time for you to take off of work. But then you get sentenced to bed rest during your most busy time of year.

Maybe your dream of a natural, medication-free water birth is shattered when you end up having an emergency C-section.

Maybe your water breaks at 24 weeks and you end up spending months going back and forth to the NICU and your entire universe is turned upside down.

No amount of skill or OCD-esque personality traits will allow you to be in control of your entry to parenthood.

2. It might not be love at first sight.

You spend months, maybe even years dreaming about the first time you lay eyes on your child. So many people tell you it will be love at first sight.

Maybe it will be.

But if it’s not, that’s normal too. Of my four children, I can honestly say I felt love at first sight once. The other three took time. You give birth and the doctor hands you a stranger. It’s OK if it takes some time to develop that bond. Love grows at its own pace.

3. Your marriage will change.

Before having kids, my husband was my world. I wanted to know his every thought and feeling every single day. It was the two of us in our own private universe where nothing else mattered.

Until the kids came.

Four kids later, there are times when it feels like my husband and I are more like coworkers than intimate life partners. Conversations revolve around schedules and task delegation. We still love and care for one another, but the entire focus of the relationship has shifted.

4. Friendships will change.

That friend you’ve had since elementary school that you always envisioned your child calling “Auntie”? She might fall by the wayside after you realize how little time you have to devote to anything other than your little one.

Parenthood is so all-consuming, especially in the beginning, that you will feel you have nothing left of yourself to give. And even if you manage to put effort into the maintaining the friendship, she might decide that she’d rather go out with other childless companions rather than sit on your couch and listen to you gripe about colic.

5. It can be lonely.

Dark Side of parenting: It can be lonely. — Even though you’re never alone, being a Mom can still be lonely.

Once you’re out of the newborn haze, you will find yourself ready to make some Mommy friends. This sounds so simple, yet it ends up being an even more complex process than finding your spouse.

First you need to like her, and she needs to like you. Then the schedules need to sync up (a stay at home mom looking for a morning playgroup will have a tough time befriending the mom that works 9-5). Your kids and her kids need to be similar ages and get along reasonably well. Parenting styles need to mesh well or you will end up feeling judged the entire playdate for bringing your kid a juice box into the house where sugar is considered a sin.

6. THEY. NEVER. LEAVE.

Of course before having kids I was aware that they would be permanent. Or at least I thought I knew that.

Eight years later, the reality of how ever-present kids are continues to smack me in the face on a regular basis. When considering having kids, have a good honest sit down with yourself and ponder this: Do you like sleeping in on the weekends? Do you sometimes spend lazy days binge watching Netflix? Ever wake up hungover and need to lounge for hours until it wears off? Do you enjoy spontaneously deciding to go somewhere and just grabbing your purse and heading out the door? These are things you will not be able to do for YEARS.

You can’t call in sick to Mommyhood.

7. You might miss your old life.

I love my family infinitely and would be heartbroken if I didn’t have each one of my children. I’m sure all parents feel the same. But when parenthood gets exceptionally challenging and tiresome, you may find yourself longing for the days when the only person you had to worry about was yourself. It’s not that you want your kids gone, you just wish you could freeze them and save them for later. Then you’d go back to your child-free life and take a couple more vacations. Sleep in a few more weekends. Go check out the new sushi joint without being at the mercy of your 15 year old neighbor to come babysit. You might find yourself fantasizing about the most basic of things like being able to eat a brownie without sharing it or being able to use the bathroom without an audience.

I have never heard another mom say out loud that she misses her old life, but I know they sometimes have those feelings. And if you are a Mom who sometimes feels this way, you are not alone.

Thu
26 ^th

Perks to Having a Large(ish) Family

Posted by Caitlin - 9 Comments

How I ended up having a large family

A couple years after adopting our first two children, I decided I wanted to experience pregnancy and adding a biological child to our family. Having a third child seemed normal to us, as my husband and I both grew up in families with three children. Along came Elle and we were a happy family of 5.

Fast forward a couple years and we found ourselves pregnant with #4. For some reason, in our little enclave of the world having three children is completely normal and acceptable, but once you have four you are entering freak territory.

We knew of exactly one other family in our town with four children, and to be honest they did seem a little weird. Suddenly I was panicked at the thought of what I had done to my sweet little family of five by turning it into a huge and bizarre family of six.

Now that our fourth has been here a while and the dust has settled, I can say that while going from three kids to four may tip you from “average family” to “large family”, it’s not all Family Circus all the time. In fact, I have found there are even some advantages to having this brood. Yes, with four kids comes more noise, more mess, and more expenses, but here are the perks to having a large(ish) family.

1. Mom is not on entertainment duty.

The obvious perk to having a lot of kids? They play with each other.

I got my first two children at the same time, so I have never had only one child. But there are times when I find myself home alone with only one child, and that child follows me around like a lost puppy asking me to play with them!

While I enjoy a nice game of UNO as much as the next girl, there is no way I could be tasked with entertaining a child all day every day.

Typically in our house, two kids will pair off and play an agreed upon game while the other two play independently. When the pair no longer agrees on the play, it will switch. There are different options for playmates according to interest and the dynamics of the moment. Of course like all siblings they get into arguments with each other, but it is usually easy enough for them to move on from their argument and go play alone or with another sibling.

2. It creates a culture of “team” vs “individual”.

In a culture where individualism reigns supreme, it can be difficult to raise children who don’t view themselves as the center of the universe.

In a family of many, kids know that their individual wants and needs may be important, but they are cataloged among other people’s wants and needs too. For this reason I’ve found kids of larger families tend to be less entitled.

The kids have a basic understanding that they are part of a group and the group needs come before any one person’s. Basic team skills like sharing are a built-in regular occurrence (in fact, my kids are not strangers to being given 1/4 of a dessert).

One thing that always amazes me: my kids are so used to sharing, they will come home from a birthday party and immediately divvy up their candy among the siblings. It doesn’t even occur to them to hoard it all for themselves like I did as a kid.

3. Sibling peer pressure can work in your favor.

Peer pressure isn’t always a bad thing. When you have 3+ kids, there are enough people to create an atmosphere of positive peer pressure against whichever kid is making poor choices at the time.

Sometimes it’s as easy as offering a reward “if ALL of you do xyz” and then let them work out the rest. “If everyone gets their homework done before dinner, we can have a movie night!” inevitably results in the kids cheering each other on and motivating one another to complete the task.

Another example is potty training. Each child that I’ve potty trained has been progressively easier to train due to the example set by older siblings. When I got to number 3, the example and encouragement from the older kids made the potty seem incredibly grown up and cool. There was never a fight to get her on the potty- she wanted to do everything her big brother and sister did.

4. Many hands make light work.

In small families, it is easy for Mom to be the one who folds all the clothes, clears all the dishes, and cleans up all the toys. She is used it doing it, and after all it is doable.

As you add more kids to the picture, by necessity the kids have to start pulling their weight. Mom is simply unable to pick up every toy and article of clothing. Teaching kids to pick up after themselves becomes a priority (especially true if you’re a slacker mom!)

A group of kids can take on tasks that most parents would never ask a single child to do alone. In our house the big job is organizing the basement play room. Over time it turns into a toy dumping ground and it would be completely overwhelming to ask one child to perform such a large task.

With many siblings and little teamwork, it is achievable.

One of our family mottos is “everybody helps”. My oldest child has acquired the skill of delegating and is able to assign smaller jobs to her younger siblings. She understands how to break up the task in a way that everyone can contribute. Which brings me to my next point…

5. Older siblings develop leadership qualities.

By being around younger kids all the time, my older two have developed leadership and negotiation skills naturally.

In fact, sometimes they manage my little ones better than I do.

Once when my 4 year old was refusing to pick up her toys, I was uselessly pleading with her like a fool and making increasingly horrible threats. She just sat there, arms crossed, not caring.

My 8 year old walked over, quickly sized up the situation, and said “Elle! Clean up your toys and I’ll give you a virtual cookie!”

Elle said “yay!” and jumped to her feet to start cleaning.

Experience had taught my oldest child that a creative, silly reward could change the mood and motivate the irrational young child.

They aren’t old enough yet, but I love the idea that in a few years I can hire my oldest to babysit. My little kids will have the benefit of a babysitter who knows and loves them, and my big kids can learn responsibility and earn some money.

Sure, it’s chaos around here most of the time. But having a bigger family is also a lot of fun and in some ways, easier than a small family.

Share! How many kids do you think is the ideal number? What are some of the best parts about your family size?

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