10 Ways to Win at Parenting This School Year

I’m kidding. I don’t have any actual tips to "Start the School Year Off Right", or "Make Mornings Your Family's Favorite Time of Day", or "Love Every Minute of Carpool."

To be honest, I actually have no freaking clue what I’m doing. I’m wandering around blindfolded in a dark room filled with mostly shin-high furniture and scattered Legos. Instead of beautifully crafted memes filled with misty lakes and burgeoning sunrises, I have the refrain “meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless” to offer. 

OK, that may be a bit bleak. I don’t actually think my parenting wisdom is meaningless, but I do think it may or may not be useful and there’s really no way I can be sure for at least, like, 40 years or so.

As we rocket toward another school year (that calendar by which parents measure time far more closely than by the New Year), my social media feeds are full of "10 Ways to Keep Your Kids Organized" and "13 Tricks to Healthy Lunches all Year Long". And maybe they work. If you find a suggestion or color coded calendar available for download that helps you out, Brava. I hope it fulfills all of your #momgoals for the year. But I don’t live with your kids in your house and you don’t live with my kids in mine so there’s really only so much that either of us is going to be able to teach the other one about how to do this parenting thing “right.”

You know who’d I take advice from? Some grandma with lovely grown grandchildren who were raised by her well-adjusted, productive children. She, however, is probably not writing a blog or posting carefully distressed signs with messages of love on Pinterest because she has transcended the realm of daily motherhood and no longer worries about such mundane things. She may also not exist because no matter how great of a parent you are, our kids can all decide to be drug addicts or shack up with a stripper named Glitter that they met during that gap year we convinced our spouse to let them take.

All the best advice in the world, all of the best ways to do this, or creative ways to do that may or may not be “best” in your life, or my life, or—and this is terrifying—even for all of our own kids. What works with one may or may not work for another. We really can’t tell in the middle of it.

I, for instance, teach my kids random things through pop songs written primarily before my birth.

Learning the seasons? —“You’ve Got a Friend” James Taylor,1971

Having trouble with prepositions? –“Under the Boardwalk”The Drifters, 1964

Wondering if there is such a thing as a Space Cowboy? –“TheJoker” Steve Miller Band, 1973

I send my kids to a pretty conservative private Christian school where I have to say things like “I think dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago no matter what your teacher said” and yet I also am explaining phrases like “we’ll be makin’ love…under the boardwalk” and “I’m a midnight toker” to my children. Fortunately, none of them asked about “I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree.”

What in the world am I doing?! Have I no sense of the middle ground?!? We've got Creationism and stoner anthems at the same time??!! I am totally afraid that I am breaking them most of the time. That they will turn out weird or ignorant or lost or lonely or afraid or….well, I don’t even know what. The reality is that they will be one or all of those things at some point. We all are.  

One of my kids has spent the last year in therapies attempting to address both physical and academic challenges that we can’t seem to find a cause for. In our last meeting our pediatrician looked at me and said, “This is a unique case for me.”

Well, damn. Is that unique like “that’s a unique smell” or what?

He said, “unique in that most parents aren’t as involved or knowledgeable about their children’s development and education as you are. Honestly, most of them want me to just fix it so they can go back to playing tennis.”

I suppose that’s a compliment (I took it that way because I have an overinflated ego at times—not all the time, mind you—that might actually be useful to my sense of accomplishment—just sometimes), but it was also terrifying. I don’t want to have a unique case. I don’t want my kid to suffer because maybe I’ve spent too much time thinking I know what to do or how to fix it and I’ve just made it worse. Maybe I am blowing this whole parenting thing to hell even in the one field I thought I may actually have had an advantage. Maybe I should have just gone to play tennis. I’ve heard they have wine there.

Earlier today, my oldest was looking at her brand new binder and said, “OOHHH, it says, ‘resists taaares.’ So the binder doesn’t tear on the inside.”  When I looked up she said, “I read it as ‘resists teeers’ and kept thinking, ‘how many people cry onto their binders’”?

Having taught AP World History to 10^th graders in a highly academically competitive environment, I’m pretty sure I could name several kids who may have cried onto their binders. I also think that if you could sell a binder that could resist tears, the kind that pour from your children’s eyes and into their lives and hearts, Target would never be able to keep that thing stocked.

But we would be wrong to buy it. Our teeers and taaaares and hurts and heartaches and struggles and successes and even false successes are what make us valuable human beings full of love and compassion and not fragile robots prone to general jackassery. (That’s a word. I promise.)

I am probably breaking my kids. You are probably breaking your kids. We are, probably, right this very minute, doing something that could have been done with just a little bit more patience or grace or love or joy or meaningful stares at one another. Although that sounds vaguely creepy.  

Our parenting choices are far from meaningless, but they’re not all paramount, either. I think it’s easier for us to focus on the logistics and look for advice about discipline tickets or chore charts because that feels like something we can DO, not something we have to be. 

And that's the rub, isn't it? Really great parenting is when WE are full of peace and patience and kindness and love...not when we manage to do the back-to-school paperwork on time. This is both the most important job we’ll ever do and also the one in which there will never be an accurate year-end review until the job’s all over. Our only option is to go hard for the duration in the hopes that we get something right.

So, what are my actual "10 Ways to Win at Parenting this School Year?" 

1. Do your best—at whatever thing it seems to YOU needs attention at the time.
2. Ignore all the other parents’ social media feeds. They don’t have your kids.
3. Pray. This is actually 3-9. We’re all just guessing at what our kids need, but God in heaven knows.
4. (AKA number 10) Do it all over again every day for every year you get to be a parent. It’s the only totally exhausting job that you never want to end.

I hope that all of our kids have meaningful years of growth and maturity. I hope they learn and expand and rise. I hope they experience, and recover from, tears of all kinds. And I hope we all remember to treasure it as much as humanly possible. Happy Back to School.

Best Mom Tip #193: Set House Rules

Write Your Own House Rules

I love back-to-school preparations. I love the anticipation and the nervousness. I even love the smell of a school building and the heat from the laminating machine. I just love school. As the daughter of teachers, a former student, a teacher in my own right, and now the parent of school-aged children my entire life has moved with the rhythm of the school calendar. Although I no longer head into the classroom to teach, I still think about setting up my classroom and how fun it was to get started with the new year.

Back when I was in teacher school, one of my professors gave me a truly solid piece of advice about making class rules. He said, "keep it simple and keep it broad. You cannot possibly anticipate what goes on in their minds." And, boy, was he right--I just didn't know it yet.

The rules I came up with for my classroom were incredibly simple:  Be Kind. Be Respectful. Be Prepared.

I found, over the course of my 10 years teaching, that I could apply just about anything a kid did into one of these three simple rules. For instance, I could have said "keep your hands to yourself." That sounded reasonably simple and reasonably broad.

Except that it wouldn't have covered the time a kid went up to my desk for hand sanitizer, carefully collected a large glob in his hands, and gingerly walked back to his desk. All in order to throw the giant mess onto his buddy's new shirt, because in 15-year-old boy world that is hilarious.  He did, in fact, keep his hands to himself-just not his hand sanitizer. I believe I told him I was giving him administrative detention for "being a doofus."

Also, boys can use farts as a weapon.  I'm not going into more detail, but trust me when I say it falls under rules against being both unkind and disrespectful.

There was the kid who put his shirttail up over his head in the middle of a presentation.  I don't know why he was possessed to do that, but I know I would never have thought of a rule to cover it.  I guess, "keep your clothes in place" might have done it. He, by the way, told me he was being "Yellow Man."  No clue what that means.

I had a girl start dancing to the music only she could hear in her head who was highly offended when I told her that it was somewhat distracting, and therefore, disrespectful. One time I had a rather well-drawn and very explicit depiction of a sexual act penciled into a textbook. The participants had no heads, which I'm sure means something from a psychological point of view, but I know I wouldn't have made a rule against headless sex drawings because, really, I wouldn't have thought I needed to.

I learned that kids will test the limits of specific rules even if they don't really disagree with the rule itself. Some kids will honestly misunderstand the rule if it is too complicated. Still other kids will have no idea that there are rules, that they are posted in 12 inch letters on the wall, or that you read them out loud every day for two weeks. Those kids are the ones most likely to dance to the music in their heads.

So when Jay and I decided to come up with a list of house rules, I knew that we needed to use the same simple approach.  Our kids are getting to the age where we start telling them "no" for things that are not as easy to explain or justify as they once were. When your kids are toddlers this is easier--no one else's parents lets them go to the grocery store naked or only eat hot dogs for every meal, either.

But explaining to our 9-year-old that she can't go to a spend-the-night party because there's something that just gives me the creeps at Katie's* house is a lot harder.  We need rules that apply to a broad range of situations, allow us to adjust the specifics depending on the age and personality of the kid, and that are easy to remember.  Here's what we've come up with:

1. Be a good teammate
     We spend a lot of time talking about being a "family team."  We want our kids to know that we are in this life together, we work together, and we support each other.  We will always be a team. This is the rule I use to cover every form of brotherly torture you can imagine.  "Hands to yourself" would just not cover sitting on your brother's head, stealing his lovey, luring him away from the sofa to steal his spot, or using him as spitting target practice.  Brothers are brutal.

This rule also includes cleaning up after yourself, helping with chores and tasks around the house, and using positive and encouraging words. A good teammate is helpful, kind, and loving. A good teammate shares the ball. A good teammate focuses on the entire team winning, not just his or her own stats.

2. Be safe and healthy
     Jay and I have been talking a lot about our rules on electronic usage, phone ownership, and internet access with our kids.  And although we have some decent guidelines (no one is allowed to personally own an electronic device of any kind except for Jay and me), we know that those guidelines will shift as kids age and have different needs or concerns.  We do not currently have any electronics in bedrooms and our kids are not allowed on the internet without our supervision.  All internet access happens in the common rooms of our house.  But I know that these are rules for younger children, so we really talked about what the purpose of the rules are: we want them to be safe and healthy.

It is our job to allow their minds to grow and flourish just as we do the same for their bodies.  So, in this rule we cover movies/TV/songs they can see or listen to, where they're allowed to play with and without us, how many vegetables they have to eat, and why they can't just sit on the couch all Saturday long. When I was teaching I realized that even when a kid didn't like a decision, they could still understand (if they really believe you care about them) that you're doing something in their own best interests. When faced with a "Can I, pleeeaase" moment about a borderline activity we ask ourselves if we have any concerns about that particular child's physical and mental safety if we say yes.

So, no, you can't watch the new Spiderman movie because I think the bad guy is scary and it would not keep your dreams safe. Feel free to be mad at me.

3. Be well-rested
     This rule may not seem as important as being a good teammate or being safe and healthy, but I think it is. Our home should be a place of peace and rest for our family. No one person gets to disrupt the joy and calm of another. Right now, this applies mostly to hours of sleep at night and that, if you want to pitch a fit, you have to do it in a room by yourself. Every parent knows how angry and miserable a tired little kid can be, but on a regular basis it becomes a bigger problem. Sometimes it's worth it--we went to a Braves game this weekend that definitely messed up bedtime for everyone, but it was fun and an exception, not the general rule. What we're really talking about is that we set up a lifestyle where every family member has a reasonable expectation of being physically and mentally rested enough to take on the outside world.

As parents, this one is our job to enforce regularly. As the kids age, it is also coming to mean limits on the number of extra-curricular activities that they can pursue. It means saying no to some birthday party invitations. This rule does not make us popular with the kids, but if we don't help them learn how to set boundaries in their lives early on they will become like the millions of adults who feel overwhelmed and squeezed by their lives before they even wake up in the morning. It's a big deal.

4. Be of good character
     The number one thing our children can do to discover the vast array of our punishments is to lie to us. More than any other behavior, this rule cannot go unpunished. Without character, without honor, nothing else our children do will have meaning or purpose. When a liar does something good, people just wonder what they're up to.

When one of our kids lies to us, we bring the hammer down. If the crime would lose you a day of TV, the lie to cover it up loses you a week. We are downright draconian about lying. I know our kids are far from perfect and that they will lie to us--out of embarrassment, or fear of retribution, or because they just feel like it. I will still love them, but my trust will be damaged. I don't want them to wander around with guilt and shame, but I do want them to know that the words they say and the actions they take have real and lasting consequences. Convicting though this is, this rule is best taught by example. Jay and I have to keep our own characters in good standing to have any credibility with our children.

This rule also covers defending those weaker than you are, being generous to those in need, and respecting your parents. We are raising adults here, not children. They already know how to be children--loud and messy and irrational are not qualities we have to teach. Faithful, responsible, honest, patient--these take more practice.

That's it.
1. Be a good teammate
2. Be safe and healthy
3. Be well-rested
4. Be of good character

These are our house rules for the foreseeable future.  They are simple and broad. They can be interpreted for a wide variety of situations and they give us four pretty easy responses to the "but why can't I..." whine that we often hear. I'd love to hear if you have house rules or are thinking about it for your family. Happy back-to-school and good luck with writing your own general rules.

*not an actual kid. I'm not dumb enough to talk about the children of people who might read this. :) 

Best Mom Tip #151: Enjoy back-to-school chaos, don't just endure it

I try to avoid taking all 3 of my kids shopping at any one time. And I mean avoid like you might avoid licking the hand-hold pole on the subway. Avoid like nudist colonies try to avoid swarms of angry bees. But at least once a year, you have to take them with you, even if you have to traverse the subway, nudists, and angry bees all at the same time.

Back-to-school shopping requires that you have actual children's feet present in order to get the right size. Back-to-school shopping means that you have to have the input of the children who will be using the clothing or you will have drawers full of unworn items for the rest of your life.

There are pencils to buy, forms to fill out, and classroom Kleenex stockpiles to replenish. You need to pre-order yearbooks, join the PTA again, and make sure you understand this year's carpool system. It is enough to make you want to live in a hut. Well, maybe a hut with DVR service. We're not savages.

So how do you dive back into the land of homework and 7am bus pick-up without killing one of your children (or even the occasional innocent bystander)? I suggest you make at least one element of back-to-school season an EVENT.

When I was a child, my mother would have my Aunt Charlotte meet us at the mall for my annual birthday/back-to-school shopping trip. Charlotte was a wonderful third-party mediator. We would wander the racks and she would give me tips on creating basic pieces for my wardrobe to build off of. Never mind that I was 8 and my ideal wardrobe consisted of what I'll call rainbow-brite-meets-covered-in-red-clay chic. I felt special, and adult, and valued.

We would "do" lunch and there was, no matter how strapped for time we might be, always chocolate. I remember these chocolate shavings that came on top of a chocolate pie I ordered for dessert like it was yesterday. You don't forget the first time you realize that chocolate can be a garnish.

You may not have time for an all-out shopping day or you may have all boys who think that sounds a lot like torture, but you can do something that creates that event feeling for your kids. Maybe it's laying out all of the school supplies and packing backpacks as a family. Maybe it's a special day with just your family the weekend before school begins. Maybe you do your own version of shopping fun.

This year, my kids are still really little with one in elementary school, one in pre-school, and one still learning to walk. My mom came with us on our shopping trip and although by the end of it she suggested I rename my kids Flitsy, Hell-Bent, and While-You-Weren't-Looking, they did all get new shoes.

And they rode the carousel and got punch balloons. It was a special trip with special moments made just for them. I hope that they will remember and cherish these trips as adults like I treasure the memories of my own back-to-school events.

So take a deep breath, pull your kid down off of that display case, and enjoy the moment. School starts soon.