Time for Family

The Real Von Trapps

2009-01-13T23:48:00.002-05:00

If you love the Sound of Music, then you probably will want to read this - but you probably shouldn't. It turns out, the story of the real Von Trapps has very little in common with the movie.

Still. It's fascinating.

Family Activities

2009-01-13T23:30:00.004-05:00

My daughter is finally old enough to want to do things as a family - or, really, she's finally capable enough to do some really fun things.

And recently, she's been requesting a family night - her idea was to make bead bracelets, which, unfortunately, was a disaster because the cheap plastic string in the kiddie kit kept breaking. She was in tears when her bracelet fell apart and all the beads went dancing across the floor.

I'm going to look into better materials, but now I'm on a roll, trying to think of things for us to do. I probably don't need to say that my husband wouldn't join - he was less than thrilled with the venture of a bead bracelet. Can't say I blame him, although, really, he was a bit of a spoil sport.

The problem is, it's winter and cold here. We seldom get snow - which is, by the way, a serious impediment to most of the 'family winter activity' suggestions you find online - but we get a lot of cold and rain and gray. So, finding things that are fun and warm is a bit of a challenge. For instance, we could go to the Y and swim every Friday night, but it is a huge hassle trying to dry off before the Y closes. Plus, it's just miserable, being wet and then going out in the cold.

I'm agin' it.

So, here's a list of ideas I've found thus far:

About.com published a list for fathers and kids, which is silly, because everybody could do anything on this list. It's got tons of snow-stuff - snowboarding, etc. The ideas I like are: Baking cookies (you could do bread, too), make a bird feeder, learn chess - complete with a link to a site that shows how parents can teach chess to kids - and the ever-popular build an indoor fort.
There are the usuals, too, like playing games, or painting, or some such. I do scrapbook, and I suppose I could share that - but, again, the husband is the problem. He'd probably do it, but he'd be looking for an exit as soon as he could find it. Perhaps I'll just switch this concept to mother/daughter night.
This family decided to learn how to fish and spent a whole day doing it - another great idea for spring or summer, but not the dead of winter. (Unless you live somewhere you can ice fish.)
This family did indoor putt-putt - nice fun, if you can get it. But I don't think they offer that around here. Bowling, maybe. (Assuming you can squeeze in past the leagues!)
Here's an idea from 365 Unplugged Family Activities: Set up a small town, dress your child up as a monster and make your own Godzilla film. We are totally doing this, just as soon as I can netflix Godzilla so she'll understand the concept.
Apparently, some families enjoy beer chugging.

Not a lot to choose from. I mean, really - it takes, what, an hour to bake some cookies? And then you've got nothing to do but eat them, and I so do not need the sugar.

It's just difficult to find something that's engaging for a five year old and two adults in their late 30s. Everything is either too kid-centric or too adult-focused and boring for the child. Plus, we only have the one child, so lots of otherwise fun things loose their joy when you're dealing with just one child and two adults.

Maybe we'll just work our way through a hobby list.

Carnival of Family Life Posts

2008-12-11T17:23:00.001-05:00

The Carnival of Family Life posted at All Rileyed Up. Looks like there are tons of good Christmas craft ideas. Gifts for Grandma, anyone?

Tis the Season for Sickness

2008-12-08T11:11:00.002-05:00

Starting with me, everybody in my family has been sick since last Sunday.I had a stomach bug. My husband has a cold. My daughter has chronic stomach problems that I keep fearing is not the usual problems, but my stomach bug - plus it looks like she's caught her father's cold. So she stayed home today.

Nothing cramps holiday plans quite as quickly as an illness. It got me thinking, though: Should I be more aggressive about cleaning after minor illnesses? I mean, I'm having a hard enough time getting the basics done as it is.

I found this post about cleaning a baby's toys - which becomes a much bigger deal when you're dealing with a five year old instead of a baby. One woman posted this piece of advice about 10 times:

"I clean the toys at my church. The way we were taught, was to wash them in soap and water, then rinse them in a bleach solution. I fill a deep sink with hot water and add 3 tbsp bleach (the ratio should be 95% water, 5% bleach.) The trick is to let the toys dry with the bleach on them, don't rinse! If you are cleaning something big like an exersaucer, try putting the 95/5 solution in a spray bottle."

But I think I'll just buy some Lysol and go to town spraying the doorknobs and light switches.

Save Money with Family Gifts

2008-12-03T22:35:00.002-05:00

If you're looking for a way to cut down on the holiday hassle and possibly save money, why not consider giving family gifts this year? By family gifts, I mean one gift for an entire family that encourages family togetherness.

I wrote about the idea in 2006, but I didn't mention at the time that it could be a way to cut your gift expenses. After all, you can buy a very nice family gift for everyone to share for less than you would spend on each individual.

Here's a list of family gift ideas to get you started.

The Value of Relaxing

2008-12-03T22:22:00.004-05:00

I was perusing the early posts of this blog and was amused to discover some posts from when I was trying to give up TV. I had to smile, because it's three years later, and I'm still debating whether or not to give up TV.

Sometimes, though, everybody just need to relax: You, the spouse, the kids, even the dog. And frankly, TV is a great way to do that.

I know, I know. Technically, it's not a great way to do that. Studies have shown there are a lot better, more efficient ways for your brain to relax. But nothing feels quite as laid back and low key as just chilling in front of the TV.

We watched Air Bud and then Hercules, which has what I consider to be cartoon violence and for some reason, my daughter gets a kick out of it. Mostly, I don't let her watch it, but every now and then I watch and episode and she claims to watch it, but mostly she plays.

At one point, I asked my daughter if she wanted me to read to her or just watch TV. She loves reading, but she opted for the TV. I think she needed to feel free to do her own thing and chill, too.

Just last month, I said I wanted to cut back on the TV. And we have. But this wasn't mindless, "hey dinner's over so we now watch TV." This was a deliberate decision to call off the work hounds, call off my errands and just be together. None of us felt up to much - I suspect my daughter might be on the cusp of a stomach flu - so we watched TV, with Sweatpea sitting in my lap while I rocked and hugged her.

I think what matters is not so much the TV itself, as the message it sends my daughter - which is that even her parents are going to be 'off' for tonight. She knows we're relaxing. When we read or do other things, I get antsy and end up doing work or otherwise being busy. When we watch TV, we all slow down, sit and just be together.

Of course, my daughter and I also have the ability to talk and interactive, even with the TV on. My husband does not. Plus he was sick, so he went to bed early.

It was a relaxing evening, and I can't help but think TV was a part of that. Are there better ways? Sure. But nothing says total sloth like TV night.

Family Friendlier: Working from Home or Normal Job?

2008-11-25T23:55:00.004-05:00

One of the reasons I've sort of dropped off the map here is I've really tried to increase my for-pay writing. I'm a freelance writer, which has been my dream forever, and since my child is now in Kindergarten (full day), I'm trying to build my business.

But I'm worried about the summer and how family friendly freelancing really is. It's always listed as a top job for moms, but mostly, it feels like I'm kidding myself. For instance, I took a nap once my husband came home and got up about the time my daughter went to bed. Why? So I could work and then be home with her tomorrow, because it's getting harder and harder to work with her at home.

I'm wondering how I'll juggle childcare with working from home during the long summer months, and, increasingly, I'm questioning whether it's really worth it. It's not like I'm writing anything I care deeply about, plus the pay is meager. Maybe I'll make $20,000 this year - maybe.

Of course, I don't work full-time. And if I had a full-time job out of my house, I'd have to give up things like being there on days off, picking her up from school, and those wonderful afternoons at the pool during June.

On the other hand, I need to make more money, and I can't help but think it would've been nice to spend tonight and tomorrow night with my family, instead of napping and working.

Plus, this schedule is hard on my healthy.

Am I robbing Peter to pay Paul? I think I may be, in more ways than one.

Family | Work/Life Balance | Time Management

No Time For Anything

2008-11-24T13:36:00.002-05:00

Lately, I've had no time for anything. It's been all work, work, work. And sick, sick, sick. And no sleeping.

I did manage to spare some time to do a craft with my daughter yesterday, after taking her shopping to get the craft - and, yes, a few scrapbook supplies for myself.

I seriously need to put the oxygen mask on myself. On airplanes, they warn parents if the oxygen mask sign comes on, they should put the mask on themselves first and then the child. That's to ensure they don't pass out. Passed out parents are no good to children or airlines.

But I forget to put the mask on myself first ALL THE TIME. I forget it when I don't eat right, get enough sleep, exercise or just take time for myself. Before I know it, I've passed out and can't take care of myself, much less my daughter, husband, the hamster, dog or house.

Today's my day to put on my oxygen mask again. Step one: Get enough sleep and water. Get back on the diet track.

What Do We Want Our Children To Learn?

2008-02-14T22:46:00.004-05:00

I'm contemplating a career change to teaching. In an effort to get a feel for what teachers do, how they think, how they prepare and so on, I'm reading a lot of books, blogs and articles.

Yes, I like to be prepared.

Lesson plans are particularly confusing to me. How do you make sure you're really teaching kids what they need to move on? Curriculum guidelines aren't as specific as you'd think - which makes me wonder if that's one reason why teachers end up teaching to standardized tests. I mean, love them or hate them, at least they offer a structured way of organizing all the material you could teach at a certain grade.

I started thinking about what I've needed to live and work in life. Then I realized that much of what I learned in high school I actually needed for college - and then haven't needed since, because if you're a liberal arts major, you specialize after college. If you're not a liberal arts major, you probably didn't need a whole bunch of the stuff you learned in high school.

This made me wonder if it'd be more efficient to work backwards from college. For instance, if you know a college calculus class or English class teaches at this level, what do you need to teach in high school to prepare students for doing that level of work?

I'm sure this varies by universities, but I also know universities are offering more and more remedial classes - so, clearly, students aren't showing up with the tools they need to do college level work. Remedial classes are a problem, because it extends the time you're in school and they cost way more than if you'd learned that stuff in high school - and I bet they play a role in the large student debt of which so many graduates complain these days.

This lead to me to think about raising my own daughter and I realized you could use this same approach in your day-to-day life with your child. I guess it's obvious, but it's easy to forget. We're raising children to be adults, so shouldn't we ask ourselves what kind of adults we hope they'll be? And then use that ideal as our "course outline" for what we're doing now?

I have to say, I'm not too pleased with what I'm doing as a parent when I think about what kind of adult would emerge from our day-to-day lives. It's not that she'd be a bad person, but here's a look at what we do many days, particularly in winter:
Too much technology, too little interaction. First, there's TV. True, she mostly watches educational programs - if you count Arthur as educational - but between her shows and our shows, the TV is on many, many hours. And when she's watching her shows, one or both of us are on the computer "quickly" checking email or looking something up or - ahem- blogging. Even when we put her to bed, we stay up to watch TV.

We do, at least, turn it off for a sit down dinner - but even sit down dinners are not something we do religiously. Not infrequently, we eat in shifts, with one person watching TV while another's eating. It's not deliberate - someone's not hungry or I need a nap because I was up too late. But it's not good.

Why do we do this? This is both how we were raised - the TV was on constantly at my house. If you didn't like what was on, you went in another room and did your own thing. So, safe bet that she'll have this same bad habit as an adult, since that's how I got it.

I hate this, but I'm not sure how to break out of this mold. I've played with getting rid of the TV, but what about movies? Lost? I know. Sad.

Not exercising. I hate to leave to exercise at night because that's family time and also because I seldom feel like it. But then again, wouldn't I rather teach her that nights are for exercising instead of TV? Wouldn't I rather teach her that an important part of adult life is taking care of yourself. I never saw my parents exercise. Never. Mom did a few sit ups and this weird pilates-esque circuit she'd learned somewhere once in a blue moon. When Dad was young, he did push ups and head stand push ups - which are a crazy sight to see, let me tell you. But otherwise, it wasn't an issue for them since they tended to get exercise through work. So, I never thought of it as something you made time for.

Eating bad food too quickly. On our best nights, we cook a healthy meal and sit down for a long meal and after dinner conversation. When I'm tired, someone's sick or other times when we're just not motivated, then we eat quick meals or my hubby brings in carry-out. Carry-out, I've decided, is not nutritionally better than fast food. Most of these meals look healthier, but have hidden salt and fat. We also will eat quickly and then migrate to our own corners of the world.

I did not learn this from my family. My mom cooked home meals and we seldom ate out. However, I didn't learn to cook, I don't like cooking, and so, it's a lazy habit.

No chores. This is another bad habit. We tend to clean in spurts, rather than using routines. I do teach my daughter about cleaning, but I'm not teaching her a discipline of teaching. I've tried routines. I hate them. So exactly what skills will my child have for handling things like laundry and house chores if I don't model them? None.

Overall, part of the problem is I don't have the energy I need to create the family I want. And it's not likely to improve in the next few years, since I'm thinking about returning to school for my teaching certificate. This will put us dangerously close to her pre-teen years. I'm open to ideas.

Family | TV | Self Respect

Twitter and Mothering

2008-02-14T10:27:00.002-05:00

This NY Times piece is too priceless. A mother who can't escape constant text messages from her children - with demands about where she's going - decides Twitter is the perfect technology answer to her problem.

And her kids hate it. They simply don't get it. These Web 2.0 spawn rebel.

In the process, though, she finally manages to break free of their technology tethers, so there's a happy ending.

Family | Twitter

Awesome Show About African American History

2008-02-14T00:07:00.005-05:00

My husband and I had just turned off the DVD player from our nightly viewing of The Tick and caught a few minutes of African American Lives 2 on PBS. Well, we were totally hooked and spent the next two hours watching it, despite plans for an early bedtime.

It traces the family lines of 16 people, including Maya Angelou, Chris Rock, Tina Turner, Morgan Freeman and Peter Gomes (one of my favorite religious writers) plus the show's host, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In addition to looking into old records, they do a DNA test and are able to tell people what their racial percentages are! That was pretty surprising, I can tell you.

Gates, who considers himself black and grew up black, ended up being 50 percent European! He was pretty shocked. Turns out, he's related to some Irish king. There's a great scene where he goes to Ireland, meets some Irish people and introduces himself as this king's relative and then - how's this for a stereotype - the next scene is him in an Irish pub, drinking ale with the locals. It was awesome.

There was also this segment on how African Americans tend to think they have Native American ancestors, but in fact, only a small percentage do. Tina Turner just knew she was Native American, but it turns out no. Not even a little bit. The same with Morgan Freeman - who noted the Choctaws in Oklahoma were going to be upset when they learned he'd misrepresented himself. As it turned out, the features they attributed to being Native American were, you guessed it, European.

Which makes me wonder about the traits white people attribute to Native American ancestry.

There was also an interesting bit about indentured white women who had children by black (and, they assume, slave) men. That's a story you never hear about - but it turns out, that was the situation in Gates' family. (I think it was Gates; they skipped around a lot.) And they'd always figured the woman was ... you guessed it ... Native American.

They were able to tell several people which one or two tribes they would've decided from, as well. Experts helped Gates actually narrow down to about seven ships his African ancestor may have been on for the middle passage.

I'd love to have some of the DNA work they discussed in the series. Apparently, there have been lots of country-specific DNA studies that make it possibly to really pinpoint people's genetic origins now. Fascinating stuff.

We were in tears during some of the stories and it was just so powerful, watching these people learn about their past through slave records and DNA.

I'd definitely recommend this series. There's also a teacher's resource on the site.

This site says it's sister company, AfricanDNA.com, was used in the show.

Housing with Other Generations Now Cool

2008-02-13T09:19:00.004-05:00

Apparently, builders have figured out - more or less - that some people want to live near their families and in multi-generational neighborhoods.

It's a great idea, but not new. People once called it "my hometown."

Family | Community | Housing

How People Treat You

2008-02-13T07:00:00.006-05:00

I read a blog post yesterday contending we teach people how to treat us. Obviously, this is not a new idea - and the blogger was completely wrong in saying that sexual harassment victims 'teach' this behavior AND in his use of the term "probability" - but the basic concept has me thinking about managing friendships.

The truth is, I have quite a few friends who treat me in ways I'm not happy with, and I think it's because I've allowed them to. In short, I've taught them they can treat me poorly and I'll still be their friend.

Not to sound like an eighth-grader, but I'm re-evaluating these friendships, and not just for my own sake.

First, some of these people are what I would consider family friends. I don't want my daughter to think it's okay for people to do things like:

Snub you for a better plan
Never call you back or respond to your invitations
Constantly change the plans to something they've decided they'd rather do
Treat you as though they're better than you
Treat you as though you're not part of their elite club when they're around certain other people

Everybody does this stuff sometimes. But when there's a consistent behavior pattern - well, that's just rude. I don't know what message these people are trying to give me - are they just so busy they can't call back? Do they not like us and don't want to be around us? Are they trying to get me to conform to some standard? Personal problems: "It's me, not you"

But, it doesn't matter anymore, because my message is, "If you can't treat me respectfully and with dignity, forget it."

It's not easy to make friends as an adult, particularly not friends whose kids are the same age as you and who share your sense of humor, your interest, etc.

But it's also not impossible.

Family | Friends | Self Respect

Tips for Adopting Parents on Writing Profiles

2008-02-12T21:33:00.001-05:00

I found this great post via the Carnival of Family Life (see the sidebar for recent links).

It's by Lori Dowd of Best Light Adoption Profile Reviews and is for those who want to adopt and need to write an adoption profile, which I believe are more frequently used for U.S. adoptions.

It's a top 10 tips for writing your profile. Basically, the profiles are read by those seeking to place their unborn children at birth. The mothers read the profiles and pick which families they like.

I skimmed a lot of profiles when we were considering adoption, because I wanted to scope out the 'competition,' and see what we'd have to write. I have to say, I'm a professional writer and I still find the concept intimidating. Basically, what you write will be responsible for finding the birth mother of your future child.

The article includes feedback from real mothers who used the profiles to pick their children's future home.

Family | Adoption

Finding Family Friends

2008-02-12T17:55:00.002-05:00

I recently read a blog where the writer was bemoaning her lack of a social life since she moved to a new town. We've thought about moving before, and I realized it would be really hard to make friends, especially with other families, if we moved.

When we moved - as a young married couple - to Oklahoma, we had a hard time making new friends that we both liked. Eventually, I made friends at work with other people our age - one of whom was a married couple - and we hung out with my co-workers and their SOs. But it was tough going for about two years there.

Sometimes, too, I think we could use more family friends in our current town.

So, I thought I'd take a stab at brainstorming how to make new friends. Obviously, there's the old standbys, such as church, but not everybody goes to church or likes the people they find there. So...

1. Meetup.com. You can meet up with people who share your interests. I know in my area, stay at home moms and others have used Meetup to form play groups.

2. Organizing a group party for your child's X group - meaning, if your child plays soccer, organize a get-to-know-each-other party for the group. You can also do this for ballet classes, preschools, school classes, and so on.

3. Figure out where people that you liked in your old community hung out and try these locations in your new community.

This was something I did wrong in Oklahoma. I liked poetry, so we went to coffee shops and hung out. The thing is, while I enjoy a poetry reading, it turns out I don't enjoy the majority who frequent poetry readings. That's not to say I couldn't find someone I like, but it's not, apparently, my target friend demographic.

I should have thought about where I'd hang out with my friends from home and then visited similar places in Oklahoma.

For instance, I still keep in touch with my college friends, many of whom are now college professors. To meet my friends now, I would need to go where they hang out. I don't teach college, but I could go to work at a university, take a few classes, join the gym where they take their kids to swim, or move near the university. Or, I might find out where college professors tend to send their children to school or which preschool is known for attracting this crowd and enroll my child there. Most likely, you could find this out by doing a few keyword searches or asking around.

I also tend to like journalist, though they're often a bit...err...self-destructive for family life.

4. Forget about it. Instead of worrying about finding new friends, hit the road on the weekends and spend as much time as you can exploring the regional sites. This is actually how we spent a lot of our time in Oklahoma, and it was actually very rewarding. As a result, I don't feel like I ever need to go back. I'm pretty sure I saw everything I wanted to see while we were there. (Though, I do want to go back and see the bombing memorial.)

The hard part, of course, isn't meeting people, but moving on to the next step where you can do things together. I have a friend who excels at this. I'm not 100 percent sure what she does, but mostly I've noticed she invites people over for dinner, invite people she's just met over for parties, even birthday parties, or on family outings.

She also never turns down an invitation - even, I've noticed, if that person had to invite them, such as when there's a professional relationship that requires it. Many of us would excuse ourselves, feeling we really don't know the person well enough or telling ourselves it's a social formality, not a real invitation. Not her.

In short, she ignores a lot of the boundaries that, for most of us, separate people we've just met from friends and family. It's not the safest advice, but it works for her. She makes all kinds of friends wherever she goes.

Family | Friends | Moving | Relocating

When Should Schools Turn Discipline Over to the Law?

2008-02-12T12:51:00.002-05:00

I'm thinking about becoming a teacher, so I'm reading of blogs and articles about the profession these days.

The NEA has a piece about violence in schools. It's a complicated pictures.

However, a few things stood out to me that are of interest to parents. First, there's this:

And now safety records are under scrutiny because of provisions in the No Child Left Behind law that require schools to develop their own definitions of "persistently dangerous." Avoiding that label, which, if imposed, allows parents to transfer their children out of the school, is an incentive for underreporting violent incidents.

A. Do I really want that definition to vary by school?
B. Did that program accomplish anything it was meant to do??

The article also mentions this:

Over the past decade, the district has slashed programs for physical education, music, and other arts, cutting off important outlets for students.

"Students need something more than math and social studies," says Dennis Oulahan, president of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association. "Education becomes less and less of a positive experience and the climate of the school suffers. Students become angrier and more confrontational, and staff sometimes bear the brunt of student frustration."

And this is why we should fight against physical education and arts programs being cut. That said, I do feel like part of the reason the bullies were better after recess is because, yes, they were able to take their aggressions out during recess - by bullying the little kids.

But this raised a lot of questions for me as a parent:

When a threat is made, the team convenes to discuss the facts behind the threat and whether it is likely to be carried out. Ultimately, says Cornell, the process is concerned not with whether the student has made a threat, but with whether a student actually poses a threat.

The model divides threats into two categories: transient and substantive. Distinguishing between the two is a crucial component of any assessment program.
Transient threats typically include such comments from students as "You better watch it" or "I'm gonna get you," and are not likely to be carried out. When the threat assessment guidelines were field tested in 35 schools across the country, more than 70 percent of the reported threats were classified as transient.

Well, yes, no one in their right mind would call the police if someone said, "You better watch it." Although, I have seen police reports with "I'm gonna get you" listed as terroristic threatening.

But I wonder if the school is putting itself in legal jeopardy by taking on this role?

Maybe schools need to consult the police on this type of stuff. After all, they're the experts in criminal behavior. They should be able to provide guidance into when acting out is segueing into a crime. I propose that schools really aren't experts at criminal behavior and really don't want to gain that experience the hard way.

The bigger question to me is where you draw the line between the legal system and schools. How many times can a school act as sanctuary for criminal behavior before putting others in jeopardy and opening itself up to a legitimate lawsuit?

Is it a crime only if a teacher is involved? At one point are you actually doing my child and the teachers a disservice by not reporting another student's criminal behavior? (Because, yes, threats are a crime.)

Family | Schools | Discipline | Juveniles

Lost Boys of Sudan

2008-02-10T23:05:00.002-05:00

Hubby and I watched this film tonight and it is simply wonderful. We were skeptical, because we thought it would be too horrible to watch. Maybe that sounds shallow, but I really can't see the point of watching horror after horror when you can't really change the situation.

But it's actually very uplifting. True, it covers the horrors of what happened, and it's a very sad situation with the young men. But they're so smart - much smarter than most of us in America - about family and what matters. And it's strange, because they've been through so much horror, but they're also very naive and sweet.

Anyway, it's actually a great film for learning about building family, the responsibilities and joys of family and what family ties can really mean in this world. It was interesting to learn how the older boys took on these nurturing role with the younger boys. It was also telling that one of the things they disliked most about America was how their work limited their time together.

Beautiful.

Family | Lost Boys of Sudan

Are You or Your Children Privileged?

2008-02-09T00:27:00.000-05:00

I confess: I never pass these things on, much less actually do them. Or, in this case, start them. But I found this really interesting, because it points out how easy it is to forget how privileged most of us really are. You're supposed to bold what applies to you.

It's from this blog, which found it on another blog.

It's called "From What Privileges Do You Have? and is based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you email this, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright. To participate, bold the items that apply to you.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college (she did go to a trade school and finished, but not college)
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (not counting, since it was my younger cousins and only recently)
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs. (To be fair, a scholarship and my job paid most of my college costs, but my parents did cover my rent - and my siblings' college bills)
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp Although, my camp hardly was posh. Our water was pumped in from a pond, we had to help clean, there was no air conditioning and we spent about six hours every day in classes learning the Bible or hearing talks from missionaries or attending church. It was church camp. The most fun we had was a 3 p.m. frightening dodge ball game in the July sun. A horrible experience that's really more about indoctrination than privilege. I call foul!
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18 (Does my grandmother count?)
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels (Seldom, but a few times)
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child (my mom did paint a possum once)
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house (A new home, actually. Very fortunate here.)
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. (My dad loved history.)
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

If Every Day Was Just Like Christmas

2007-12-15T11:24:00.001-05:00

Every Christmas, I drag out my Elvis Christmas record/tape/CD - depending on the decade - and listen to it over and over and over again. It's the only Christmas record - other than Disco Duck Christmas - my family owned. In fact, in general, my family didn't play records, probably because my dad was always singing and playing his guitar when he was home and my mom enjoyed the quiet when he was gone.

It sounds great - very Mayberry - to have a dad who sings and plays guitar. And it was cool - I love my memories of Dad sitting on the front porch after dark, playing still songs to the stars.

But it's also kinda annoying, especially if you want to have a conversation with the man, or ask him to play with you or any of the other things kids want from parents.

But I love that Elvis record. Absolutely love it.

In the title track, "If Every Day Was Like Christmas," Elvis ponders why we can't be nice and love each other throughout the year. Over the years, I've had different relationships with this question. I use to cry about it and think, "Yeah, it should be like Christmas all year - we should give people gifts and all that!"

Then it just seemed naive and trite.

Now, I'm rethinking it again after reading this Psychology Today article, "Surviving Holiday Hell."

I wrote about it last year, and decided to revisit it to see if there were any ideas for breaking negative traditions and creating new ones. As it turns out, the piece does offer advice about that, noting that when traditions become, essentially, dogmatic, no one enjoys them. They just soullessly go through the ritual - which is why it's a good idea to shake things up, particularly as life stages change.

For instance, if you've had the same Christmas morning ritual since your children were little, and now they're all teens, well, you should reexamine that ritual. It's probably no longer fun.

The article closes with this advice from some expert mentioned in the piece:

Better, he says, if we treat the rest of the year as if it were Christmas. And treat Christmas as if it were an ordeal. Cancel the big show. Don't bother smearing pate on the beef. Simply feed and nurture each other. Then no one will be disappointed.

I added the italics, because it really stood out to me as a way to rescue a holiday which, frankly, mostly feels like drudgery.

And I realized that part of the reason Christmas has been hard, too, is because we don't treat ourselves well during the rest of the year and it all comes to a head with the added stress of Christmas. In other words - we just notice at Christmas because all the bad stuff happens at the same time.

An example:
You have a problem saying no - to work, to your mother, to your mother-in-law and to your friends. All year, you're under a low-grade stress because of this, but generally, they don't all come calling at once and you manage. But at Christmas, they all put demands on you. And it's too much so you crack. "Enough!" You yell. "Why is Christmas so miserable?!?"

Well, clearly, if you'd had some boundaries in place and said no to some people all year, you wouldn't be under so much pressure now. Because they'd all know better and be used to your boundaries, plus you'd have a year of practice in for saying no.

You can apply this to just about any problem that 'seems' to be an issue at Christmas: Weight problems and overeating; overspending; poor organizational skills; an inability to delegate; poor household management - all come to a head during the holidays because you've added a deadline - Christmas - and pressed all the pressure points at once.

So: What if, next year, everyday were just like Christmas in that you nurtured yourself and your family - ahead of everyone else? My guess is, by the time Christmas did come around, you'd:
a. Know how to take care of yourself and your family so that
b. You'd be able to give more joyfully and
c. You'd know when to stop giving and start saying no.

Family | Holidays | Christmas | Elvis

Another Approach to Ending Hunger

2007-12-06T09:36:00.000-05:00

Earlier, I shared how Harvest's Backpack Program is feeding children who might not get enough food over the weekend.

Mark Winne, the former director of the Hartford (Conn.) Food System and author of "Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty," offers a very different take on food and programs like Second Harvest. In a recent Q&A with the Washington Post, Winne answered readers questions about his apparently controversial position about food banks:
What I am saying is that we cannot end hunger unless we end poverty; food banking as well as other antihunger programs do a good job of managing poverty by alleviating its worst symptom, hunger. While antihunger programs remain necessary for the time being, they have strayed too far from, and in some cases never acknowledged the need to end poverty.

From what he's saying here, I don't see that he's against food banks, per se. He - and others - just feel that food banks aren't the only answer, but too many people view them as the answer. Food banks were never designed to provide a long-term solution: They're to combat emergency needs, but increasingly, they've become the only solution.

Winne doesn't offer easy solutions, but he tackles some tough questions and he's raising touch challenges about what it will take to end hunger in our more-than-wealthy nation. He argues that it's going to take public policy - not just private handouts.

This piece doesn't yield itself to easy action steps, but here are the action steps I saw in the piece.

Make It Happen:

Support food banks and other emergency programs, but realize they aren't an end in and of themselves. It's time the U.S. looked at long-term, real solutions, such as giving a living wage to all workers.
If you work or volunteer for a food bank or soup kitchen, examine what government policies you can support that will create long-term, sustainable change for your clients. Winne recommends the Oregon Food Bank as a model.
If you're involved with any charity, make sure the group empowers those it helps to be part of the solution.
Winne urges that we "support community economic development strategies that will bring good paying job to poor communities."
Winne also suggests communities work to establish new supermarkets in low-income communities. Local markets give people access to lower-priced and healthier foods, plus they create jobs.
He also suggests supporting health care for the uninsured.
Do what you can to establish or support job training programs for the unemployed.

Public Policy | Hunger | Mark Winne | Living Wage

How to Join the Backpack Program

2007-12-06T09:34:00.000-05:00

As promised, I emailed the national coordinator for the Backpack Program, Dave Blair, and he very kindly replied with instructions on how to find out more about programs in your area. If you've just joined us, you can learn more about how the Backpack Program helps feed hungry children when they're not in school.

Here's what he said:

America’s Second Harvest is a membership organization, and all of our national programs and services are provided through our Member Network of food banks and food rescue organizations. I recommend that you readers contact their local food bank and they will have more information about what is happening on the local level. Please advise them to follow these steps to identify the nearest America's Second Harvest Food Bank:
Go online to www.secondharvest.org
Enter your zip code in the “Find Your Local Food Bank or Food Rescue Organization” section of the homepage

You can also email him.

A Backpack Filled with Food and More

2007-12-06T09:33:00.000-05:00

Since I've become a parent, any story about children suffering causes me to cry. It's just unfathomable that we as a society should tolerate children being abused, neglected or hungry.

Okay - it makes sense to cry about something sad. So would somebody tell me why I teared up when I read this beautiful Shreveport Times story about a Louisiana program that makes sure children don't go hungry over the weekend?

No doubt you've read that for many children living in poverty, the only real meal of the day is often their school lunch. This is a real problem for schools, families and communities. Any parent can tell you that there are two factors certain to bring about a melt-down in any child, at any age:
1. If they haven't eaten in a few hours.
2. If they didn't get enough sleep.

If my daughter starts crying and throwing a tantrum, without fail, I can trace it back to one of these two things - and, most frequently, it's because it's because she didn't eat enough or has skipped a meal or snack.

To help, the Food Bank of Northwest Louisiana also offers dinner for children in the Ingersoll Elementary School after-school program four days out of every week. According to the article, approximately 96 percent of Ingersoll's students receive free or reduced-price lunches.

But teachers soon began to notice that children were returning to school on Monday too irritable and tired. They were pretty certain those children weren't being fed adequately over the weekend.

The Food Bank obtained a $10,000 grant from America's Second Harvest to start a new initiative called the BackPack Program. Each Friday, 85 children are given a backpack filled with seven to 10 healthy food items - all kid-friendly. They return their empty backpacks on Monday morning.

The school immediately noticed the students behaved better - decreasing behavioral problems for the school - and were more attentive Monday morning. The Shreveport Times quotes program coordinator Kimberly Page:

"If a child is hungry, you can't keep their attention. The only thing they're thinking about is what time is lunch? They're just acting better."

The Food Bank also has a unique partnership with the Shreveport Job Corps that ensures an additional 120 children are fed each day through another America's Second Harvest program, the Kid's Cafe.

Unfortunately, the grant - as many grants are - is only for launching the program. To keep it going for another year, the Food Bank will need to come up with $150 per backpack.

The article doesn't mention this, but this is a national program that originally launched in Arkansas, according to America's Second Harvest. It's offered in 39 states, plus Washington, D.C.. The program distributes up to 35,000 backpacks each week nationwide.

Donate to America's Second Harvest. Charity Navigator, which rates charities on their financial effectiveness and efficiency, gave America's Second Harvest four out of four stars. It also notes that only half a percent of their money goes to administrative expenses, 1.3 percent goes to fundraising, with a hefty 98 percent going to fund programs.

Make It Happen:

Here's what David Blair, who runs the Backpack Program, had to say about how to make this happen in your community or how to support a local program.
If you know of a child in need, help the child and family connect with these services. Remember, too, that behavior and attention problems could be an indication a child's nutritional needs aren't being met.
Contact your local food back to see if there's a Kid's Cafe. These cafes often need volunteers to serve food or just help with the children. I found a local Cafe by just googling my city, state and "Kid's Cafe." My local cafe also needed donations of paper plates, cups, napkins and dinnerware, so you may be able to make a donation if you can't volunteer.
Find out how many children are living in poverty and considered "Food Insecure" in your state by checking America's Second Harvest's Child Food Insecurity Statistics Map. Publicize these numbers by sharing them with friends, posting the information on your blog, writing a letter to your state and federal representatives, sending the stats to your clergy, a local columnist or reporter, or even putting them in your family holiday letter this year. While you're on the site, join the Hunger Action Center.
Support expanding the bi-partisan "Simplified Summer Food Service Program."

Children Learn When They Pick a Theme

2007-12-06T09:32:00.001-05:00

Most schools - particularly in the primary and middle school level - do adopt themes or units for study and they use these themes across the curriculum - which, in English, means they use the theme in all classes and subjects. So, if you're theme is "the forest," you'd read stories about the forest in literature, study trees in biology and do some sort of tree-related math problems.

But the faculty at the Robert Mellors Primary and Nursery in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, had the clever idea of letting the children pick the theme. But I think the key difference is how far the teachers and the administrators take the theme.

This year's curriculum is based on Harry Potter. Now, they could just throw up some posters, call one grade Gryffindor and another Slytherin and maybe mention Harry Potter here and there. But they just went crazy with it. I'm completely inspired by how they're translating that in the classroom. They even have a math incantation the students say before solving problems - and of course, the kids love it and are actually learning math.

You can find a list of class lessons at the end of the Daily Mail article about the school. They even incorporated it into PE!

But has all this play and fun translated into a better school?

Yes. In fact, I'd call the transformation "magical." Previously, the school ranked in the nation's bottom 25 percent, but in the three years since the children started picking the curriculum theme, the school jumped to the nation's top 5 percent. Impressive.

It's important to note this isn't just about Harry Potter. It's about letting the children determine the context for their education. Past themes included the Titanic, Africa and Princes and Princesses.

Make It Happen:

Share this news story with your child's teachers and school officials. Share this news article with other parents.
Find out whether your child's school has themes or units and think of ways you can support the school in using the theme. Maybe there's a special presentation related to your job or some skill or talent that you could share?
These things take money. Did you know in poorer schools, teachers often buy their own supplies and supplies for the children as well? Even if your child's school has tons of money, you homeschool, you don't have a child or your children aren't in school - advocate for school funding. So offer to organize a supply drive during the holidays for the school.
If you're opposed to public education funding, consider this: Can everyone homeschool? Would private schools really be able to offer education to all the students now served by public schools?

(Story found via The Good News Network.)

Setting a Theme for Your Family in the New Year

2007-11-28T14:39:00.000-05:00

Remember in A Christmas Story, where the teacher says the class has to write "A Theme!" and everybody groans?

Truth: I love a good theme.

I always wind up thinking about New Year's Resolutions early - probably because during the holidays, I think of about 1,000 things I should change or would like to do, "once Christmas is over." But this year, I've decided my family is going to try something different: We're not going to set New Year's Resolutions. Nope, not going to do it. It's too much stress and they seldom work out.

Instead, we're going to set a theme for the year.

I shared this approach in a September post, after reading, Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW! by Stephen M. Shapiro. The idea is that instead of setting goals - which let's face it, are so type-A and stressful - you set a direction for yourself, a compass, if you prefer. This compass then guides your overall decision making. For instance, if you've chosen "Adventure" for your direction, you wouldn't take your vacation in the same old local. You'd pick a new place, or maybe go for an adventure vacation package.

One couple translated this into a yearly theme. Each year, they picked a different theme and went after it in every aspect of their lives. For instance, during the Year of Exploration, the woman spent the year exploring her potential as a writer and starting her first book.

I love this idea for families, because it can guide so many of your day-to-day decisions, as well as your big lifetime decisions. And it's so easy to do - just decide what you really want more of in your life. For instance, we really want more fun in our lives. We get too serious, to embroiled in what we "should" do, and fun gets pushed to the side. Not surprisingly, my husband and I are experience a bit of drudgery in our lives. The remedy: More Fun and Freedom - permission to have fun and be free from worry, free from constant work, free to do what we want to do.

So, we've already agreed on our theme for the coming year: Fun & Freedom.

Carnival of Family Life Up

2007-11-27T20:30:00.000-05:00

The new Carnival of Family Life is up at On the Horizon. It includes a recent Time for Family post, "A Community Makes Time for Family."

I particularly liked the section on Holiday gift ideas, including a list of lead-free toys. Check it out.

Quick Tip: Christmas Lights and Coco

2007-11-26T12:48:00.000-05:00

Want an easy, low-stress family tradition for the holidays? That's right - I said "easy, low-stress" and "family tradition" in the same sentence.

When it's dark tonight, instead of plopping down in front of the TV, do this: Mix up some warm coco, put it in a thermos - or sippy cup, if you've got a preschooler - and head out after dark for a car tour of the neighborhood or downtown Christmas lights.

If you've thought far enough ahead, pop in a CD of seasonal songs, but chances are, carols are already playing on the radio.

One caveat: If you have a DVD player in your car, be sure to turn it off!

Some cities even have parks that host light displays, but these cost money and, well, driving around neighborhoods is relatively free - minus the $3 a gallon gas prices, of course. Plus, every town has those neighborhoods were people go all-out. Why not enjoy their creativity for free?

If you're up for it, and live in a neighborhood that loves to decorate, you could bundle up and go for a walk instead.

Christmas: Time to Heal?

2007-11-26T12:13:00.000-05:00

Given my humbuggery about Thanksgiving, I suppose it's only karma that I stumbled onto this article, "The Purpose Driven Christmas," by Rick Warren, author of the Purpose Drive Life and similar titles.

One of the ways Warren suggests we add meaning to the holiday is to "Make It a Time for Personal Growth," which has a very specific meaning for him. He challenges us to look at who we need to forgive and of whom we need to ask forgiveness. He writes:

Resentment always hurts you more than the person you resent because bitterness keeps you emotionally stuck in the past. Let go of those hurts and remember this: The most valuable and significant gift you can give anyone this Christmas is your forgiveness, because it will allow you to grow.

Obviously, I've got some forgiving to do. The question for me has always been how? To tell you the truth, I've never found that real forgiveness - where you can give as you did before the injury - happens easily or often. People forgive in that they let go of the anger, but they don't give up the fear, the mistrust or the pain. I think if you're really going to forgive, you have to do that as well. And that's damn hard to do if someone keeps hurting you by doing the same thing.

Here's a little secret: I'm trying a new form of therapy that's supposed to help you do exactly this. It's called EMDR, and I started going for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Oklahoma City bombing.

I'll be honest with you: If I'd walked into a therapist's office and she tried EMDR, I'd probably walk right out or never go back. But I have a psychiatrist friend who's been using it with his patients, and he reported nigh-miracle results: People off their medicines, completely different, happy and well-adjusted in a very short time. Then a friend tried it and it seemed to work for her.

After years of struggling with depression, always being on medicine and never getting very far in therapy, despite three therapists and years of work, I thought I'd give it a try.

And it seems to be working. Really, really well. Even my husband agrees.

So far, I have been able to 'let go' of a lot of pain and anger. What's nice about that is I can come from a place of strength and resolve without feeling all ick inside about it. You know what I mean: The nervousness, the anxiety. No, in the situations where we've done EMDR, I can just be myself and feel okay and not have to worry about it. I remember everything - but it's all clearer and in perspective.

Sometimes, like over Thanksgiving, I still get knocked down, but so far, it's always been in an area where we're still doing the work or a new area I've never tackled. It turns out, some of this depression stuff goes way, way back. Surprise. Maybe when we're finished with the EMDR, I won't have to write posts about 'subtracting' family members. Although, you know, after EMDR, I really have no guilt about cutting off some very dangerous, destructive family members. Previously, it was very hard for me to opt out - I felt guilty, as if I should make it possible to see them over the holidays, even though they didn't respect our requests, our rules and even potentially were a danger to my child.

If you're really struggling to forgiveness, depression, anger or anxiety, why not find an EMDR therapist and try. Be prepared to give it at least two months before you see results. And realize that you'll actually get worse before you get better. That's what happens when you dig up bones.

Hopefully, by Christmas, I'll be able to manage some forgiveness under the tree.

Family | Family Problems | Holidays

Prayer for A Lifetime

2007-11-25T19:07:00.001-05:00

I used to post prayers regularly, but I got out of the habit. Mostly, because religion has fallen off my radar in the past year. Sad, but true.

I found this great prayer at The River and the Vine and thought it was worth sharing:

O God, when I have food,
help me to remember the hungry;

When I have work,
help me to remember the jobless;

When I have a home,
help me to remember those who have no home;

When I am without pain,
help me to remember those who suffer,

And remembering,
help me to destroy my complacency;
bestir my compassion,
and be concerned enough to help
those who cry out for what we take for granted.

Amen.

-Samuel F. Pugh

You can find another great Thanksgiving prayer, sermons and other religious writings, at The River and The Vine, a blog written by Rev. Cynthia O'Brien of the Smith Memorial Presbyterian Church, Fairview, Oregon, and the Presbytery of the Cascades.

Defining Family: When to Subtract

2007-11-25T10:41:00.000-05:00

When I started this blog, one of the topics I wanted to explore - and I listed it right in the masthead (see, above this post) - was what it means to be a family. And I think a big part of that is defining family.

I'd never looked up the definition for family before because I thought I knew it. It turns out, I was surprised by how limiting the first entries or so are. I'm posting the first seven, because the rest don't apply, since they move in the idea of larger, official families (the family of Romantics, for instance). Dictionary.com defines family as:

parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not.
the children of one person or one couple collectively: We want a large family.
the spouse and children of one person: We're taking the family on vacation next week.
any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins: to marry into a socially prominent family.
all those persons considered as descendants of a common progenitor.
Chiefly British. approved lineage, esp. noble, titled, famous, or wealthy ancestry: young men of family.
a group of persons who form a household under one head, including parents, children, and servants.

For me, family has always been extended to definition four - any group of persons closely related by blood - and, frankly, their marriage partners as well.

I now see that's just a huge definition - no wonder 'family' makes me anxious! The family I carry around in my head is just too darn huge to feel like family.

You'll note the first three definitions are much smaller, essentially composed of the traditional, nuclear family: A parent and offspring.

Why all this defining of family?

Honestly, I'm pondering whether there are situations - things that happen, circumstances - that make it ridiculously to extend to someone the consideration of family.

In short: Can you kick people out of your family? Can you cut out the dysfunctional and limit who you consider your family to the point of creating a functional group?

If my extended family is so negative as to make me miserable, can I just delete them from my definition of family?

Obviously, in some ways, no. Family is family, and if there's a blood tie, there's not a lot you can do about it. You'll still all be invited to the same funerals, the same weddings, the same 'parties.' You can't control that.

But you can control how you relate to that person and whether or not you accept them as family - whether you continue to 'try' to be a part of their lives, their family.

And if you can delete people - if you can redefine family - then where is it fair to draw the line? I know people who've cut off their family over what seem to me to be nothing. But increasingly, as I move toward a healthier place for myself - I'm seeing that sometimes it's not about what people do so much as how they make you feel. Maybe these families didn't 'do' much to the outsider, but their words and actions, over time, have amounted to an ongoing psychological beating. And who wants to endure that all the time?

I was talking about how a friend might benefit from therapy to deal with some of her family issues. Her father's dead and she said, basically, that every one's parents hurt them - including her father's parents - and you shouldn't hold it against them since they were acting from a place of hurt. I pointed out that this didn't change the fact you'd been damaged and could get help recovering from that. It doesn't have to be about blame.

On the other hand, it occurs to me that it's much easier to 'get over' the pain when the family member is dead. We assume it's because their death gives us perspective, but even now, I understand my dad won't live forever, and I want to forgive him for some of the stupid things he's said and done and move on in a healthy way. But the truth is - while he's alive, I can't, because he's still saying the same stupid things. When your relative dies, they stop inflicting injuries, and you can heal. But while they're alive, they're still causing hurting you - and how can you get over it when just yesterday, your father put you down in the exact same way he did when you were 10? Or when you see him making fun of someone else the same way he did you?

Maybe when I'm healthy and strong, I'll be able to. But I'm not there yet, and I don't think anyone just 'gets there' without reconciling and recovering from the past.

Fortunately, my friend and I were just talking about psychological wounds - not being 'good enough' and being made fun of for our accomplishments. Thankfully, neither of us had to deal with physical or sexual abuse.

So, is it fair, then, to restrict your family interactions while you heal? I think it is.

But I also think maybe some things you can't overlook - physical/sexual abuse, for instance. For me, physical danger and excessive, deliberate psychological abuse all are grounds for being subtracted from family.

Family | Family Problems | Abuse

A Better Thanksgiving in 2008

2007-11-24T23:19:00.000-05:00

My Thanksgiving was so unbelievably horrible, my husband and I have decided to start a new tradition next year: Leaving town.

Here are our ideas for a new family (meaning, just the three of us) tradition for next year:

Thanksgiving with the Mouse. Disney is such an artificially pleasant place - and frankly, I could do with some forced pleasantry during Thanksgiving. After all, it sets the tone for the whole Christmas season. And believe me, I have no Christmas joy after this year's Thanksgiving. So, my logic is: Forced joy = Joy through the Christmas season. Actually, one year we spent the week before Christmas in Florida and visited Disney and it just brightened up our whole Christmas. Also, I figure once our daughter's married, there's no way her spouse's family can compete with a Disney vacation at Thanksgiving. But then again, we might get stuck with Thanksgiving and his family would get Christmas, which would just piss me off no end. So, maybe not. (You have to think ahead when planning new family traditions.)
Thanksgiving in New York - why not? Book the package, see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade up close and personal, stay the weekend and enjoy the Christmas lights. I recognize we may not want to do this every year, but it's my hands-down favorite for next year.
Thanksgiving in a different state, starting with Maine - or New York (see number 2). My least favorite, because once you finished with the original 13 colonies, I think it'd get pretty dull. Except for Florida, California and Hawaii. They'd be awesome. On the other hand, my daughter will be 5 and she'd be 18 by the time we finished the colonies. By that time, we'd have a long track record of not being home for Thanksgiving and could perhaps slack off a bit and do something more fun. And maybe we'd have more money to do something wild - like buy a time share for Thanksgiving in Hawaii. Aloha!
Thanksgiving in a cabin far, far away. As in, the Smokey Mountains, the Poconos, or possibly the Rockies.
Thanksgiving Abroad. No turkey, but no relatives either. We could revisit all the places the Pilgrims fled. It'd be very educational.
Thanksgiving in our new home state - of any-place-but-here.

Actually, I did enjoy seeing my extended family Friday night at my grandmothers. And my daughter loved playing with her cousins - well, second cousins, but they're all she has in terms of young relatives.

Thanksgiving | Family Problems | Surviving Holidays

Thanksgiving: Hunker Down and Get Through It

2007-11-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

I know this is a blog focusing on family, and in the past, I've had a tendency to focus on the potential of family more than the realities. But this holiday, I've got a bad case of the humbugs.

And, frankly, I'm just hunkering down to get through this hap-happiest time of the year. I do harbor hopes my attitude will improve before Christmas, but it's just too late for Thanksgiving.

The thing is, all is not well in Extended Family Land and the holidays are just forcing togetherness at a time when we'd be better off left alone. The truth is, the thought of the whole thing makes me queasy.

I'm not alone, as I recently discovered during a conversation with my mother.

Just last night, I learned my sister's new boyfriend would be joining us. Every year, there's a different stranger sitting beside my sister at the Thanksgiving table. At a time in our lives when we barely see each other, it's disconcerting to navigate dinner conversation with a stranger. To me, it just adds to the strain. I never brought boyfriends to holiday dinners and can't understand why she feels the need. Sure, he might become a member of the family one day - but, frankly, we've thought that about every guy she's brought to holiday dinners and let's just say the odds are against him.

My mother contends it's because my sister - who is the baby of the family - is the only one not married and that she has a right to bring any friend she wants to the family meal. And since it's my mother's house, what can I say, except the same was not true about my friends. "This is family-time," I was told very sternly. "Haven't they go their own family?"

But I digress. The point is, when I said the boyfriend made me anxious, my mother informed me she gets anxious having all of us to dinner. My father and she agreed that it'd be a 'successful' holiday if we could all get through it without fighting.

Which made me wonder, "Then why are we bothering?"

I mean, really. No one's looking forward to it. Everyone sees it as something to survive. Why bother? Why not just cancel Thanksgiving? Christmas will come soon enough as it is, and I know I'm not getting out of that one.

I realize this is not the holiday tripe I'm supposed to think. And it definitely doesn't reflect a positive mental attitude. But one does wonder: Are we just all in this because of our misguided ideas about family and it's importance? If we only see each other because we 'have to,' because it's a holiday, then is family really important? Or are we just playing at family?

It'd be nice if the solution were as easy as, "Just don't go." But the truth is, doing that would generate all this weird angst around the holiday table that would have ramifications through my mother's birthday and Christmas. It's easier to just endure.

One thing is clear: I don't want my own family - my husband and child - to be this way years from now. We've got to redefine the day for ourselves - cut loose somehow from the situations that make us grimace with anxiety and feel we're 'enduring' the holiday. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, some Thanksgiving in the future, we actually felt glad and grateful for a day to be together?

But not this year. So, until that fabled time comes when we're actually thankful to spend time with family, check out Mahalo's "How to Survive Thanksgiving Dinner with Your Family." You might also enjoy my post on Toxic Relatives from last November.

See you on the other end of the turkey!

Thanksgiving | Family Problems | Surviving Holidays

Quick Tip: Family Bonding List

2007-11-19T22:05:00.001-05:00

LifeEdit is this amazingly bold blog I stumbled across recently. I found this fun blog post on "50 Easy Family Bonding Activities" and thought I'd share it. If you're looking for a few ideas for this long holiday weekend, check it out. I would caution, however, that not all of the ideas are free or easy, despite what the post says. For instance, item number one - Go Camping - is anything but free or easy, unless you're camping right outside your house in a tent or camper that someone else has already set up for you.

Likewise, as I found out earlier this year, volunteering is rife with complications.

But there are lots of fun ideas here - some new, some forgotten, some just untried. Why not pick one Thursday and give it ago? I'd definitely like to try number 45 - Build a Lego model of your house - provided I can find enough Legos!

Family | Family Bonding

How Many Children Go Hungry in Your State?

2007-11-19T21:03:00.000-05:00

Do you know how many households in your state are considered "Food Insecure?" Do you know how many children are living in poverty? Find out by visiting America's Second Harvest's Child Food Insecurity Statistics Map.

While you're on the site, join the Hunger Action Center.

Hunger | Children

A Community Makes Time for Family

2007-11-18T23:56:00.000-05:00

I'm reading 100 Simple Secrets of Happy Families: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It (100 Simple Secrets Series). I love this book series - each item is only one page long and the books short, so it's easy to pick the book up and put it down.

Number 46 is "Encourage, but Don't Require Activities," and it includes a great idea I thought I'd share.

We've all read how children - especially suburban, middle-class children - these days are over-scheduled. Heck, the whole family is over-scheduled. Obviously, this is not The Biggest Problem in the World. There are much bigger problems - world hunger, war, child abuse. But I think this is a really bad trend for the following reasons:
1. Over-scheduled kids become accustomed to someone entertaining them. They therefore do not take responsibility for entertaining themselves. They are easily bored. All of which makes them easy prey for the entertainment industry.
2. Over-scheduled children and parents don't have time for self-reflection, or even processing what's happening in their lives. This leads to a less thoughtful society, a society busy being busy. This is a Bad Idea because it creates a society that is endlessly self-indulgent and too concerned with its own affairs to worry about real world problems.
3. Over-scheduling doesn't leave time for imaginative play and family bonding.

One school came up with a simple solution: Community leaders and school officials declared the suburb would have a Family Night - one evening a week when nothing was scheduled. No school activities, no homework, no city council meeting, nothing, nadda.

They actually received calls from people asking what they should plan to do on Family Night.

The book quotes one of the originators as saying the idea was to push the pause button on busy suburban lives. The woman, who is named only as Marcia, says:

"Some people say this is just the way it is to be a parent these days. Our community wants to throw out the suggestion that maybe there is a choice. Maybe all these activities and running around aren't in the best interest of your children."

I'll second that.

Action Steps:

Start circulating the idea among other parents at your child's school. Ask your child's teacher to consider one night a week without homework.
Move up: Ask your school or even your school district to support a Family Night. Start with the principal, write a letter to the superintendent and speak to the school board if necessary. Ask for one night a week, but accept no less than one night a month. No homework. No activities. Not even athletic practice.
Email your city council and suggest it support the idea.
Pick one: Either write a letter to the editor or email or phone a local newspaper columnist. Columnist and editors always looking for ideas to write about, and you may recruit a powerful ally with this one contact.

Parenting | Community | Schools

Where Did the Time Go?

2007-11-18T19:41:00.000-05:00

One of the more ironic aspects of writing this blog is that sometimes, I don't have time to write it, particularly if I want to spend time with my family. So, if you see long gaps, that's why - that, plus my innate tendency to like TV and surfing the Internet.

My hope is that I'll be more disciplined and a more faithful blogger once my Tidbit starts school - but that's still nearly a year away.

The realization that she's headed to school - and won't need me at home full time - is sending me into an identity tail spin. I simply can't decide what happens next. Among the ideas bouncing through my head:

Have another baby. I've always planned for two, but for a lot of reasons, that didn't happen and it's a really hard choice for me. Pregnancy just about kills me. And yet...
Go back to school or work full- or part-time.
Take a year off and get in better shape.
Really dig in and work hard at my freelance career. (Complicated, since she won't be in school year round and clients aren't likely to understand I need summers off!)
Try to start a new and different business that the whole family could participate in.
Try to launch a mega successful blog and/or write the next Harry Potter.
Keep going like I'm going now, same part-time freelance work, and just accept there are some things in life we'll never afford - such as retirement.

Right now, I spend a lot of time debating the merits of becoming a teacher versus continuing as a freelance writer. I'm even exploring getting a masters in teaching.

I've been reading "101 Secrets of Happy Families" off and on - it's one of those books you can read that way, since it's really more a series of short essays than a book. Anyway, one of the items is that Happy Families determine what they should do - not what they want to do. In other words, you stop focusing on your wants and on what needs to be done, what should be done, to further the family. This has been somewhat helpful. After all, I should do something that brings in money, adds to our future financial security and lets me still be home with my child as much as possible. So, when you look at it that way, I should be a teacher, since then my schedule and my daughter's schedule would be the same and I'd have a regular paycheck and retirement and even my own health insurance. Plus, I think I might actually like it.

(Go ahead - post about how teaching is a calling. But I know people who teach and didn't feel called. And they're good teachers. Great teachers, even. So, you may feel it's a calling, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to. Yes, yes: I realize it's not just days with kids and summers off - I know there's a lot of work involved, including long nights of homework and prep, so just back off people! I've got an eraser and I'm not afraid to use it!)

But then again, the book says happy families support each other in achieving their full potential. And for me, I've always dreamed of being a writer. Not the kind of writer I'm being now, I'll grant you. But nonetheless, a writer. While I could be a teacher - and really enjoy it and work hard to do it well - it's not my dream.

If only my dream job came with full retirement, full salary, the ability to write what I really want and summers off: Then we'd be talking. Instead, I'm pretty much a freelance writer just to be called that. I don't really write about anything I care about. Sad, huh? I just write to pay the bills - the writer's equivalent of taking in laundry.

And then there's this question: Which is a better role model for my daughter? Should I pursue my dream or be a responsible adult and get a real job that helps my family. After all, her father has to work at a 8-5, 40-hour a week job that's less than his dream. True, he wanted to do what he does, but I'm sure he'd love to be working from home in his pajamas, spending summers with her, too. Where do I get off thinking I'm entitled to such liberty? And do I really want to raise her with these kinds of expectations?

I am working. And I'm pretty happy with my salary - though full-time work would be better and allow us to buy lots of opportunities. Not stuff - I don't want just stuff, like huge TVs or expensive cars.

But, for instance, we want to camp as a family. I feel camping is a fantastic way to teach our environmental values to our child and bond as a family. It's also something my extended family does together. But this year, I aged out of tent camping. I just can't do it anymore. I ache too much - and we've tried everything. Plus, my daughter hated it.

So, to camp, we're going to need some form of camper and a different vehicle for toying. Right now, that means we're just not going camping because we don't have the funds for all that. And I'm not sure when we will, as long as I'm freelancing.

Freelance writing worked while my daughter was young. But long-term, I'm not sure what I do now is the best bet for me or my family.

Wow. Talk about a tangent. Not my usual type of post. But there you have it: Do you follow a career that's your calling or choose a career that most helps you further your family's goals and lifestyle?

Back from Vacation

2007-10-09T10:49:00.000-04:00

We've just returned from a family vacation to Florida - including a three-night stop at Disney World.

We had an awesome time. Disney really is amazing - though exhausting. We spent the first day at the Magic Kingdom, a humid, hot experience that left us wishing we'd built in a rest day before visiting Epcot. Still, my Little Bit got to visit almost all of the Princesses, plus ride the Dumbo ride twice, so she was happy. She actually became so exhausted, she asked to leave the Kingdom and go back to the hotel early - at 6 p.m.! Instead, she napped in the car and we drove to the Animal Kingdom, where we saw a giraffe, some sort of weird, horned cows and zebra before sitting down to an African buffet that was out of this world.

The next day, it rained mid-day - thank goodness, because that cooled everything off and got rid of some of the humidity that drug us down the day before. We really enjoyed Epcot - if you've never been, go. It's just such a nice change of pace after the Magic Kingdom. There are lots of interactive 'learning' things that you can take at your own pace. I even got to ride a Segway, which I've always wanted to try. We had a dinner with the Princesses in Norway, then enjoyed strolling through the various "countries" during the evening. I was disappointed to learn Epcot no longer had it's amazing closing parade - there's a fireworks show instead. Little Bit hates fireworks - she has some sort of bat-like hearing ability and loud noises freak her out.

Anyway, it was a good time. The next day, we drove across Florida - poor planning, that bit - and spent a few days helping my parents dog-sit in a beach house on the gulf. There was enough rain to give us a break from the heat, but enough sunshine to have a fantastic time. We even saw dolphins - possibly and porpoises - playing off the shore.

Since we'd already pre-arranged much of our vacation, I didn't use the family vacation planning idea I blogged about earlier. But since we were at Disney World and then opted to leave for a much more sedate few days at the beach, I did have to do a lot of damage control with my Little Bit, because I knew the beach would be boring after the Magic Kingdom. I also saw a lot of breakdowns - and endured two myself - at Disney. So here's what I learned about managing little ones during your vacation, whether you're vacation is go-go-go or sit and relax:

1. Always practice damage control. By this, I mean let your little one know each day what the rules are and what to expect. Each night, I'd tell her what would happen the next day, including any rules.
2. Build in conditions. By this I mean, tell them what fun thing they'll get to do - but also tell them when it will end and include a treat if all goes well. If all doesn't go well - then no treat. For example, I told her, "When we come back from the park, if we're not tired and you've eaten your dinner, then we'll go for a short swim in the pool." Another example: "We're going for a short swim in the pool, but it's late and we need to take a bath and go to bed so we can get up in the morning to go to see Papaw and Granny. So, when we say it's time to go, then you get out and come in with us - no crying. If you cry, I won't let you watch a cartoon after your bath." When I forgot to do this, we had a hard time getting her to move on to the next activity. When I remembered, life was much smoother.
3. Make sure one of your conditions is that your child eat - regularly. There was so much to see and do, Little Bit never wanted to eat. She was never hungry - until suddenly, she was a sniveling wreck of a child, totally out of control and inconsolable. I saw a lot of kids reach this state and after the first meltdown, I realized she had to eat regularly or we'd have many more meltdowns. So, we would insist she eat and say we couldn't go do X or Y until she ate. Usually, once we sat down, she ate like she hadn't eaten for months. (I also always gave her food she'd want to eat, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, pizza, fries and fruit.)
4. Don't let an agenda interfere with sleep. Originally, we planned to be at the Magic Kingdom when it opened so we could follow the agenda set out by The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2007 (Unofficial Guides). It's supposed to cut down on lines and maximize your enjoyment. But when 11 p.m. came and our over-excited Little Bit was just going to sleep, I turned off the alarm and decided it'd be more pleasant if we let her wake us up and spent the day in a few lines, but with a well-rested child. Of course, it also helped that early October is a low attendance time for the park - which we knew when we planned the trip.
5. Buy a portable DVD player if your car doesn't have one. Also buy a headset so you don't have to hear the movie. This will keep your child quiet and happy - but more importantly, your child will stay awake. Ours quit midtrip. Little Bit slept while we drove - which meant she arrived very well rested and we didn't. This is never a good thing for parents. Also, she didn't want to sleep that night because she slept most of the day.
6. Spend some time at a playground. Kids don't need big amusement parks to be happy. My daughter was surrounded by a place totally catering to all her dreams - and she wanted to hang out at the hotel playground. Playgrounds give you both a chance to decompress.
7. Don't pack a lunch when you go to the beach - or too many snacks. This will force your child to get out of the sun, give you a chance to relax in the air conditioning, maybe watch a little TV and catch a nap. Little Bit wouldn't nap, so we all got in bed, put on some cartoons after the morning at the beach. We got a chance to snooze and she rested a bit, too. Once the worst of the day's heat was over, we reapplied the sunscreen and hit the beach again.
8. For Pete's sake, let the child play in the water. I remember the only thing I really wanted to do, no matter what the vacation, was to play in the pool. So, we included pool time. And when we were in Disney, even though I knew she'd look a mess the rest of the day and be damp for a good 15 minutes in the Florida sun, I let her play in the water. They have play areas with water spouts set up at various places throughout the park. Frankly, it just proves that those Disney people are absolutely brilliant, because it helped the kids cool down and stay happy. There was a nice one surrounding the line for meeting Ariel - you know, the Mermaid? Smart, right? And yet, since meeting Ariel is a photo opportunity, there were parents who wouldn't let their children play in the water. I thought they were crazy - and if they weren't technically crazy, I bet their unhappy, hot children soon drove them to it.

Giving Everyone a Say in the Family Vacation

2007-09-26T23:15:00.000-04:00

Here's a good idea from the blog of Doug Boude (Rhymes with Loud): Involve your children in planning the family vacation.

His family recently went to the beach in an effort to promote family unity. While there are always some things the parents need to decide - such as how much to spend and perhaps where to go - it helps to involve the children in decision-making as much as possible.

Doug went a long way toward promoting family harmony during the vacation by having a pre-vacation family meeting. This achieved two ends:

It gave the children a chance to reach a decision about some things before they pulled out of the drive.
It gave the parents a chance to outline the trip rules.

We're going on vacation soon, and I'm definitely giving the pre-vacation family meeting a try.

Tuesday Quick Tip: Tea Time

2007-09-25T01:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Family Day - a day dedicated to encouraging families to have meals together. I hope you took the time to have a family dinner yesterday, but if you didn't, no biggie - just plan on eating together as a family tonight. It doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to be together!

But I'd like to look at another fine tradition we've lost over time, particularly in America: Tea time.

I don't do this every day or week, or even every month, but every now and then, we all sit down before dinner and have a nice cup of tea, sometimes with a few cookies or lite snacks. While a fruity herbal tea is a great option for children or anyone who doesn't drink caffeine, Little Bit won't drink anything hot, so she has milk, water or juice instead.

Sometimes, I even break out a real teapot and our wedding china.

We sit down in the living room and enjoy a nice cup of tea and chat about our day in a civilized way. Hubby and I almost feel like real adults, and what child doesn't love a tea party? You could even use your child's tea cups if you want to add a bit of zing.

It's a fun, easy way to slow down, enjoy each other's company, and the snack is particularly nice if dinner's going to be awhile. Some even say the practice of tea time contribute to world peace - you may find it increases the peace in your home as well.

Tea can be made in the microwave, of course. But using the more traditional preparation adds a touch of elegance and relaxation to tea time.

For more on why tea time is a great idea for families and tips for preparing tea properly, read this essay by Karen Deuschle, a mother and nurse, on Old Fashioned Living.

If you don't like the idea of tea, think about adding a healthy late afternoon snack, perhaps cut vegetables, salad or soup, as a way to help hungry family members 'make it' until the adults can prepare a healthy sit-down dinner.
Family | Tea | Family Dinner

Five Fun Family Things to Do on a Week Night

2007-09-24T21:45:00.000-04:00

I had a tough day at work. A really tough day. It started out with five threatening emails from Germany, the senders of which apparently did not realize that there's a huge time difference between their country and the U.S. They didn't have a leg to stand on, but nobody tries to work things out in a decent manner anymore. They just jump straight to the threats.

It was actually an easily solved problem, but it set a nasty day tone for the day, apparently, since everyone I dealt with afterwards had something hateful or snide to say.

Frankly, by the end of the day, I felt a bit beat up. So, Hubby and I agreed we'd all do something fun tonight. And since I work from the home, I desperately needed to get out of the house.

The question was: What to do?

Recently, our favorite weekday past time has been swimming at a local outdoor pool. It's awesome - the pool is huge and we can all sort of float around aimlessly watching the blue sky and white clouds.

Since it's 96 degrees here, that appealed to us, but alas, the pool closed weeks ago. We wanted to swim at the indoor pool, but it was only open for lane swimmers and classes tonight.

As it turned out, pretty much everything was closed: The amusement park, the zoo, the museums. There are tons of ways to spend your evenings in the summer. But when summer ends, so, for some reason, does the fun.

I understand there's not a lot of demand for weekday family fun during the school year. Children need to go to bed early. There's homework. And of course, there's not as much daylight.

But sometimes, you need to have some a good time and forget your day. You need to break out of your routine. You need a mini-vacation, preferably away from your house.

In the past, we'd probably went for ice cream. But I'm on Weight Watchers now, so I thought it'd be best if we avoided food as the main attraction.

We brainstormed our options and here's what we came up with:

Go to Gattiland, or Chuck E. Cheese, or any restaurant with a fun zone where you and the kids can grab pizza and a few laughs. This is what we did. I had a nap while Little Bit and Hubby knocked out a level on Star Wars Legos, then we all headed for the pizza buffet at Gattiland's. Afterwards, we spent $5 and had an hour's worth of fun trying the arcade equivalent of Dance, Dance Revolution, throwing balls, playing air hockey, trying skee-ball and riding an indoor Merry-Go-Round. Hint: If you watch the inside, you actually get more dizzy than if you look outside the Merry-Go-Round.
Live near a city? Go for a horse-drawn carriage. Hubby checked - they run all the time in our downtown. Alternatively, you can visit a park and swing or bring your bikes and go for a ride. If you're in the country, go fishing. I loved fishing in the evenings when I was a kid and nothing erases the day like throwing a few lines after dinner.
Head outside after dark with some hot chocolate and check out the stars. You don't need a telescope - in fact, my daughter hates our telescope. Binoculars are actually a much more kid-friendly way to view stars and work just as well, if not better, than a telescope. There's also the old-fashioned star-gazing, where you just point out constellations with your finger.
Go to a movie. Why not? Some theaters even have discounts during the week.
Go bowling. For some reason, bowling alleys are open weeknights. I know it's impossible to get a lane on league night, but often you can grab a lane right after work and bowl a few games before the league players even show up. For children, bowling alleys will usually put up lane bumpers, so the game's not quite so frustrating.

Family | Fun | List

A Better Way to Make Family Goals

2007-09-22T19:44:00.000-04:00

I read a lot of self-help and advice books. Stuff about money, organization, goals and so forth. I guess it's sort of a sick hobby.

There are tons of interesting ideas that pique my interest. And I try most of them, but by and large, the recommended actions are very hard to sustain.

But very rarely, I'll read a book and think, "Wow. I can do this. This is really going to change how I live my life."

I happen to be reading such a book now: Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW! by Stephen M. Shapiro.

I admit it: I'm what Shapiro calls a Goalaholic. You just have to read the December/January entries in this blog to see that. But like most goalaholics, I never reach most of my goals. Some, certainly, particularly the career goals, but no where near most, and particularly not those involving my family. It's very frustrating, ugly cycle. You don't make a goal, you beat yourself up and you set the goal again.

Living your life through goals is also a good way to miss the best in life, Shapiro argues. Even if you achieve your goals, you can miss out on things that you actually wanted more - for instance, he was so focused on career success, he missed the fact his marriage was falling apart. And once the marriage was gone, he knew he'd rather have had the marriage than the great career goal - which he did achieve, by the way.

So, if you don't set goals, what do you do? How do you make sure you don't drift aimlessly through life, accomplishing nothing but an encyclopedic knowledge of sitcoms?

You use a compass, not a map, as Shapiro puts it. This means instead of goals, you set a direction, a theme, if you will. And you change it - as needed, but certainly yearly.

Setting a theme helps guide your decisions in all areas of your life and challenges you to bring more into your life of what you want.

The book offers some examples of themes that various people have used for a year or for their lives:

Shapiro's overarching map is "to make a massive and visible impact in the world." One year, his theme was flexibility - which meant creating a lifestyle that let him follow different paths. Another year, the theme was platform, meaning a place to express himself - he wrote this book.
Mark Grossman's overarching compass has been to be part of something bigger than himself, but to be true to himself.
Another couple followed the following themes: Year of Exploration (She decided to explore her potential as a writer and started a book); the Year of Adventure and the Year of Lightness, (for some calm time, after the year her book was published).

Shapiro explains how you can do this as an individual, but I think the theme idea would work wonders for family. And the idea of setting a compass - an overarching direction - for a family just strikes me as brilliant.

I'll post later with a few ideas on how this could be applied specifically to build family identity and bonding.

Family | Goals | Book Review

It Be National Talk Like A Pirate Day!

2007-09-19T13:01:00.000-04:00

Ahoy, Me Hearties. It be National Talk like a Pirate Day. It be a grand, grand idear for yer parents and ye little mateys to be bonding over de dinner table by talking like a pirate. Aye, that sure beats da plank.

Avast! Read up on these fine, fine tips for talking more like a matey and less like the landlubber ye be! Dinner be a grand, grand time for trying out ye new lingo, yer sprogs.

And whilst yer at it, ye be thanking Dave Barry for the idear. Yer can also learn more on about.com, which doth offer links to pirate and wench clothing.

It be a dinner the likes of which yer'll never forget!

Where Can Kids Eat Free?

2007-09-18T21:55:00.000-04:00

If you like free food - and who doesn't? - then check out the budding website, KidsEat4Free.com.

Right now, it's restricted to Louisville, Kentucky, but they are taking restaurant submissions from across the nation and hope to quickly grow the site to include other communities. If you know of a local (to you) restaurant that lets children eat free, you can help by clicking on "Recommend a Restaurant" on the left hand nav bar, and filling out the form.

Hey - family dinners are great for bonding and for - I kid you not - keeping your children off drugs. Nobody said these meals had to be cooked or served at home!

Family | dinner | Dining Out

Quick Tip: The Evening Stroll

2007-09-18T06:17:00.001-04:00

Fall's easing into my home state, Kentucky. For my money, there is no better time to live here. Gone are the oppressive heat and humidity of summer, replaced by clear air that crackles with energy. The trees are nearly magical in their beauty, caught between the silver greens of summer and the early yellows of autumn.

With the temperature a pleasant 75-85, it's perfect weather for an evening stroll. We've always had plans to make an evening walk part of our routine, but struggled with it. Since I often work late, I usually nap as soon as my husband comes home. Then there's dinner, clean up, exhausted TV watching and, finally, baths and bed for everyone else, work for me.

But that's changed recently. My daughter has finally gotten up the nerve to hop on her bicycle - she was a strictly Big Wheel kid previously. As children will do when they're learning a new skill, she's a bit obsessive about getting out on her bicycle. So every night, we're outside, walking or, in my husband's case, slowly pedaling his bike, while she confidently rides all over the neighborhood.

We're not alone. Since summer's heat has subsided, the neighborhood is alive with families pushing strollers, bicycling with little ones, and fathers and sons tossing footballs.

It's fantastic. I know an evening family walk isn't the most original of bonding ideas - but I think it's also one of those things we realize we could do, but don't do.

It doesn't have to be long. Even a 15 minute outing will increase your health, raise your family happiness quota and remind you of why it's good to be alive. My guess is, once you try it, you'll find it's hard to go back inside.

If you're having a hard time starting the habit, dedicate one week to trying it. My guess is, after that one week, you may be surprised to find you've created a habit your child won't let you forget.

And if that doesn't work, I ran across this Zen Habits post, "Engineer Life: Set Up Habit Changes So It’s Hard to Fail." The writer points out that to change a habit, you need to do four things:

Increase positive feedback for the habit you want to form.
Decrease positive feedback for what you're doing instead.
Decrease negative feedback for the new habit.
Increase negative feedback for the old habit.

Family | Time | Exercise

Carnival of Family Life

2007-09-17T17:20:00.001-04:00

If you've never checked out a blogging carnival, you'll be pleasantly surprised. I submitted a recent post on playing with your child and it's included in this week's Carnival of Family Life, hosted by Mother Approves.

Fun Blog, Good Advice

2007-09-15T00:48:00.000-04:00

Not long ago I stumbled across a relatively new blog, Millionaire Mommy Next Door. She uses treasure maps as a means of growing her money, which sound kooky, but I've used it and find it's a very effective tool for bringing money or whatever into your life. I make no claims as to understanding how it works - I suspect it's because it focuses your brain to look for opportunities, but some people view it as a form of prayer.

Anyway, I wanted to point out an excellent post titled "How to Make Money Management a Family Affair." The title is a bit too broad, since it doesn't really talk about getting the whole family involved in financial decisions so much as it focuses on teaching your child about money.

She mentions you can make a five-year-old a millionaire by 65 with a one time contribution of $9875 OR a monthly contribution of only $57. She provides a link, which also says you can achieve it with a $98 monthly contribution through age 18.

Right now, I put aside $30 a month for a college fund. Not enough, probably, but it should be about $7200 by the time she goes to college, at 8 percent. I'd love to make my child a millionaire, but I also would love to retire. So, maybe I'll focus more on the other tips so she can make her own million!

Family Finances | Money Management | Teaching Children About Money

The Crazy Cost of Family Health Insurance

2007-09-12T22:35:00.000-04:00

Did you know premiums for family health coverage have increased 78 percent since 2001?

By comparison, wages rose 19 percent and the inflation rate was 'only' 17 percent, according to this Columbus Business First article.

No wonder my husband's pay raises never seem to result in more money for us. I know it's the insurance, too, because my husband gets his pay increase in March and a cost of living adjust in January. However - the insurance plan doesn't change until July. This year, it ate up his entire pay raise, plus a three percent a cost of living adjust - and then some. Not only that - but our co-pays went up!

The article also included this cheering statistic:

Workers on average now contribute an average of about $3,281, or 27 percent, of their paychecks for a family plan.

Health Insurance | Family Finances

How Parents Benefit from Pretend Play

2007-09-12T22:17:00.001-04:00

I hate playing pretend with my daughter.

Yes, th guilt is unbearable, but so is the mind-numbing boredom that comes from trying to make a plastic seal talk to a plastic leopard for an hour. Or making up games for the My Little Ponies to play together, preferably while staying within the confines of your easy chair.

I'm much more of a talker. Occasionally, we'll play ponies and my pony will play by asking her pony what she learned at preschool. She saw through this ruse immediately.

"No!Talk about something that's not real!" She commanded.

Did I mention she's also very bossy when we play pretend?

After talking with other moms and learning that, yes, they too hate these games and avoid them at all time, I decided to give myself a break. After all, I read to her, I take her places, we watch movies together; heck, I even like playing with playdough.

So, who can blame me for avoiding this one particular mode of interacting with my child?

It turns out there is someone who blames me: Little Bit. Not a day goes by - not even an hour - that she doesn't lobby for me to play dolls, ponies, or animals with her. She can spend the whole day at a park, playing with other children, and still look at me with those big browns and say, "Will you play with me during bath time?"

'Why can't we just talk during bath,' I wondered as I pulled out the bucket of bath Barbies and miscellaneous water toys.

That's it hit me: I connect to the people I love by talking. But she connects to me and other people she loves by playing.

Playing isn't just a way for her to entertain herself and have fun. It's her way of reaching out and bonding.

I realized that if I want us to have a healthy mother/daughter relationship, with lots of great mother/daughter talks, chats and bonding, then I needed to respect her need to play with me.

So for the next hour, I happily sat and played the role of a talking baby seal, whose owner is a Barbie mermaid. And for once, I was happy to do it.

Pretend Play | Bonding with Your Child | Parenting

Plans Gone Awry

2007-09-12T00:07:00.001-04:00

Since I'm thinking about a five year plan for our family, I reviewed some of my early posts on New Year's resolutions. I have to say, I didn't get very far with them. For instance, I said I wanted to have Soup Sundays and invite in family and friends to dine with us.

I'm sure I wanted to do it at the time. And then we got the flu. And then spring came. And now, I can't imagine why I'd want to tie up myself to my house on Sundays when I could be outside doing something fun!

I also said I wanted us to volunteer and be more active in the community. To some extent, I tried this by volunteering more at our church - with disastrous results. (We're looking for a new church.) Otherwise, we never started volunteering - though I did make efforts to do so. It seems people aren't eager to have a four year old join their volunteer squad. So, that had to wait.

As I start the strategic plan for our family, it's going to be important to remember the idea isn't to create more goals. The point is to create a mission or values statement that will guide our day-to-day and year-to-year choices. That may lead to new action plans and goals may ensure, but the trick is: Goals can change and action plans can fail. A mission statement - which I translate as having an idea of where you want to go and what your values are - should be a more enduring statement of direction.

I think that's part of the reason I didn't achieve many of my resolutions: I didn't have a clear direction, except to spend more time with family and friends. Plus, I didn't ask Hubby to participate in the process. So, while the resolutions are fine in and of themselves, they couldn't stand up to competing interests that better reflect what I wanted to do - or even needed to do - with my life.

Sure I want to see friends and family. And Soup Sundays would be a great way to do that. But it's only one way, and when I really examine it, it's not particularly fun or effective and it actually would compete with other, more important goals - like spending more time with my immediate family and taking care of my own health.

While I haven't had a lot of success with resolutions, my family and I have had success with strategic planning. That's because strategic planning starts with the most important thing first: Define your purpose.

Here are some free online resources we'll be using as we begin this process:
Family Goal Setting: Ready, Aim, Achieve!
Setting Goals: You Can Achieve Any Dream You Desire
Dr. Phil's Five Factors for a Phenomenal Family (good fodder for what to cover and how to achieve your goals)

Family Goals | Strategic Planning | Families

What Will the Next Five Years Bring for our Family?

2007-09-10T22:18:00.000-04:00

I am a long-range planner. Every since middle school - at least - I've had a four to five year plan. What do I need to do to graduate high school. What do I need to do to graduate college in four years. Where will my husband and I be when he finishes the Navy in four years. Let's have a house and child within five years.

What can I say? Hubby and I are both strategic thinkers. Plus, we knew what we valued.

Until now.

The truth is, I had a five year plan. I planned to have another child and continue freelancing and working from home until said child turned five, by which time, I planned to have another plan.

But the thing is, you can't plan everything in life. And last year, my five year plan fell apart after a miscarriage. The second child didn't come. And now, we aren't sure it ever will.

And so, for the past year, we've been floating through life, status quo, with no real objectives. We've spent more money than we should on I don't even know what. I've started a job again, but I've no idea if I want to continue to freelance when my Little Bit goes to school full time next year. We have no savings goals, no long-term plans and even our values are confused.

Do we want to raise our daughter in the country - where I was raised - or city - where we live now?
Do we want to be nearer my parents?
Do we want a bigger house in a different location? Or should we stay here and invest more in this house?
Does my husband want to pursue a new career path or stay put?
Do I want to homeschool? Should we put Little Bit in private school? Would that be worth the financial sacrifices - and the long-range impact on our savings?
Do we want or need to relocate to another state? Country?
Do we want to live frugally and save? Or do we want to not worry about it and just enjoy life with our little one, even if it means adding a bit of debt for a camper and truck?
Do I want to be a teacher so I can have summers off with my child and a retirement plan? Do I want to go to work full time? Do I want to continue writing? Study law? Get a master's degree? Start a family business?

I just have tons of questions, and no answers right now.

I keep trying to accept that this is a time for reflection and chaos. A time to wait. But that's darn hard, especially when you consider how short five years is. I mean, within five years, we'll have a budding pre-teen on our hands who may not want to go camping with us. We'll be getting too close to my husband's retirement to consider a change. We'll be five years older, and if we're not careful and clear-headed, no farther along financially or professionally than we are now.

How do you solve this kind of dilemma? How do you pull yourself together and find a new direction when all your plans changed suddenly, and without your permission? Especially when life keeps throwing your family curve balls.

In the old days, hubby and I would sit down and hold a series of meetings. We'd used Deming's TQM method to identify our long-term goals. We'd take a few nights and hash out our feelings, thoughts and values. I kid you not. It sounds crazy, but it worked for us, because then we had a long-term plan to guide our decisions.

True, at the beginning of this year I did outline resolutions for this year: Build Family Identity, Show the Love, Become a Healthy Family, Widen Our Family Circle, Be Financially Responsible, Create a Family-Friendly Home. But, those resolutions didn't have specifics. And, they still leave a lot of unanswered questions, such as: How do we want to widen our family circle? How do we build family identity? And what does financially responsible mean beyond no debt?

Right now, my family is so caught up in day-to-day survival (eat, clean, run errands, work, sleep), when we do sit down - we have no idea where to start. All my husband can contribute is, "I'm tired," because he is and he's busy at work and home, and neither of us have time to even think about what we want, much less think about where our family is headed.

And if we do get started, we're quickly interrupted. And repeatedly.

The truth is, there's never a good time for long-range planning - which is why you have to schedule it. When our family didn't include a child, this was much easier than it is now.

I'm thinking we might need to take a weekend and go away to do some long-term soul searching and planning.

I'm going to search for some help on long-range planning for families. I'll report back on my findings.

Family Therapy Helpful for Bulimic Teens

2007-09-04T22:02:00.000-04:00

If you've ever been to therapy - and particularly if you've ever had weight issues - you probably won't be surprised by a recent study, reported by Reuters, that found family therapy is more effective than solo therapy for helping teenagers abstain from binging and purging.

I know I wasn't.

I love my family, but no one can drive me to overeat quite like they can.

Sadly, this is the first time U.S. researchers have evaluated treatment plans for bulimia nervosa in teens. The family-based therapy was broken into three phases:
Phase one: Patients and parents meet weekly for a therapist tot ry to help the parents stop their children from engaging in binging and purging. This phase lasts 2-3 months, according to the article.
Phase two: Begins only after success with stage one. In this stage, the family meets with a therapist every other week and the goal is to put give control over 'eating issues' back to the teen.
Phase three: Therapy is moved to once a month and they attempt to address how the eating disorder affects development processes.

The results beat solo therapy: Thirty-nine percent of the 41 patients in family-based therapy were completely abstaining from bulimic behavior, according to the story. Only 18 percent of the 39 bulimics who tried solo therapy had stopped binging and purging.

This family-based approach, called the Maudlsey approach, has also been used effectively to treat anorexia. You can find therapists who specialize in this approach online at Maudsleyparents.org.

Bulimic | Family Therapy | Mental Health | Weight |

Unschooling: An Option?

2007-07-10T23:53:00.000-04:00

Tidbit goes to school in 2008. I am not happy about this at all.

I hated school. Still do. It's a ridiculous institution, in my opinion. Where else do we lock human beings up for eight hours, give them 20 minutes to eat lunch, repeatedly tell them not to talk or socialize, and won't let them go to the bathroom when they need to? As my husband said, the big difference between schools and the military is he was given a modicum of respect in the military.

So, I'm considering homeschooling. Except, really, I don't want to be a teacher who uses workbooks and does all the same dull stuff school teachers do. I figured it was out of the question, until I found out about unschooling.

It's about stepping away from the traditional means of teaching and letting kids direct their own learning. Sure, you introduce them to things. You can even throw calculus books in their path. But it recognizes that we learn best when we're motivated to learn a subject - and that motivation doesn't always come right when you enter 8th grade and it's "time" to learn, say, Algebra.

Very intriguing stuff, and I think it could be a great fit for tidbit, who's very self-motivated, but also refuses to learn anything she's not interested in learning.

New Autism Resource for Families

2007-05-15T09:12:00.000-04:00

If someone in your family has an autism diagnosis, there's a new online resource you should check out. The Interactive Autism Network was created by the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore to connect families with other families and researchers, according to a recent article in the US News & World Report. You can fill out forms detailing your family member's treatment plan and find out more about how effective others view the treatment - though information is kept confidential unless you agree to have it released to researchers.

There's a community section , as well, where you can chat with other families. Within a month, the site has attracted 13,000 members - that's a lot of people who can give you feed back.

I have a friend whose child was diagnosed with autism. This child has a long medical history - she was born a micro preemie, and that means a lot of health problems and developmental uncertainity. She's had surgeries, is legally blind and is developmentally delayed. My friend handled these issues so well, I thought she should've been named Mother of the Year.

But the autism diagnosis was very difficult for her. It took her several months to process it and, more and less, accept it. (Everyone who knows this child has a lot of questions about the diagnosis, including me.)

My point is, autism is a frightening diagnosis because there's so little we know and we associate it with a child turning into some sort of robot that can't love us. But it's more complicated than that. Maybe this website will help doctors and families learn more about what autism is, what it means and what helps.

Monday Quick Tip: Judging Movies

2007-05-14T13:01:00.000-04:00

Ever wonder if a movie is really appropriate for your child?

I mean, every child differs. You can't really say that what one five-year-old loves won't scare your five-year-old into week-long nightmares. And movie ratings are so general, they're useless, particularly since nothing gets a G rating anymore. Almost everything is filed under the ubiquitious PG or PG-13.

Personally, I need a lot more information before I decide whether a film is okay for my child. And I hate those conservative sites that just issue blanket commands about what's good for kids and what's not. Personally, I don't mind my child watching Bugs Bunny. But a lot of fundamentalist and peaceniks do.

Here's what I do: I check out the movie on Kids-In-Mind. It's tag is "Movie Ratings that Actually Work." What I love about this site is that it lists exactly what it means when it says there's cartoon violence or crude language. I mean, down to the actual lines and scenes. It's great.

Thanks to Kids-In-Mind, I can screen for what I think is appropriate, not what some unknown critic with a child-raising agenda thinks is okay.

Family Finances

2007-04-11T11:41:00.000-04:00

This month, I've been tackling our family finances.

Thanks to a frugal upbringing, I entered my adult life without debt. My husband, alas, did not. In fact, because he decided to leave the Marine ROTC after receiving two-years of tuition at Boston college, he entered his post-college life with around $60,000 in debt.

He managed to wipe out more than $50,000 by joining the Navy and serving four years as an enlisted man - quite possibly, he ws the only enlisted man at the base who had a four-year degree.

Time and time again, I've read that money is the number one cause of divorce. It really doesn't have to be this way.

There are lots of online resources to help you get out of debt and manage money. And there are different ways of making it work if you and your spouse have different ideas about how to manage money. For years, one of my friends and her husband held separate accounts. They split their bills, each paying a percentage based on income. This worked for them for years. After the birth of their child, they merged accounts but by this time, they were on the same page financially, more or less, and they have an incredibly strong marriage and are financially healthy today.

When I married my husband, we set out to knock out the debt immediately. We went to extremes to do this: One car, beans for dinner, a crappy apartment, no new furniture and thrift store clothes. Of course, the fact that the Navy provided all his work clothes helped a lot on the wardrobe budget. I drew a bar chart on a piece of ruled paper and tacked it to our fridge. Each month, I'd color in our debt contribution, so we could see our progress.

We're debt free - except for our mortgage - and now we're applying those same techniques to savings. Yes, sometimes we still haggle over money, but we're never overwhelmed by our financial situation.

Here's an article to help you if you're dealing with family and financial stress. I particularly like the advice about setting aside money for your basic needs first. I would add a few more tips, though:

Set aside some money for savings. The rule of thumb is 10 percent, but if you can only save $10, then do that. Saving may seem like a luxury, but it's not. It's the only way to get out of debt in the long run. By creating a savings, you're building a cushion to pay for emergencies without incuring more debt. When we were young, lived in an apartment and had no children, I found that a $200-500 emergency fund would take care of most emergencies. When we bought a house, we needed more like $1000. Now that we have a child, I've realized we need more like $5000-$10,000 to comfortably deal with the myriad of things that can go wrong in a given year. We're not there yet, but we're working on it.
Decide how much you can pay on debt. If this is below what creditors want you to pay, then contact them and tell them what you will be paying. Really, devote 10 percent of your take-home to debt reduction and find a way to live off the rest. If you have more to spend, then you can try Dave Ramsey's Snowball approach or you can pay down the highest interst debt first. The first is psychologically rewarding and may be the carrot you need to keep going. The second is financially 'smarter' but can be discouraging if you have tons of different bills and collectors calling.
Cut expenses and stop spending. Some people call this "budgeting." If you hate that term, here's an easy fix for you: Grab some envelopes, get 70-80 percent of your money in cash and then start dividing it into the envelopes. Label the envelopes: Rent, food, gas, utilities, phone, clothes, household. Put more in food than you think you'll need. Not enough for clothes and households? Shop yardsales and thrift stores. Ask for clothes for your birthday. If you run out of gas, walk, carpool or take the bus.
Get another job. Hey, no one should ever be too good to deliver pizza. Not your teen, not your spouse, not you.

Monday Quick Tip: Tax Tips for All Ages

2007-04-09T09:50:00.000-04:00

The IRS posts a tip each day about taxes. This newsite has gathered all the tips in one place. You can scroll and skim for the tips that apply to you and your family.

I always review family finances in general around tax time. I can do this because hubby generally prepares the taxes. This year, I'm investigating 529 college savings plans. Here's a quick tip from Money magazine: Check into your state's 529. Does it offer deductions for contributions to its 529 plans? Mine, and many others, do not. Oh, sure, they'll tout that they "don't put income tax on earnings used for qualified expenses," but that's the very definition of a 529 - nobody taxes the earnings if they're used for qualified expenses.

If there are no tax benefits, then investigate another state's plan. It doesn't matter where you invest - you can use the benefits in any state, at any college. If there aren't tax deductions with your state, you may be better off going elsewhere. The key is to look at the expenses in managing and opening the fund.

Money suggests the Utah 529. I looked into it and thought the Virginia 529 plan also offered similar benefits, so I'm looking into both. Either plan offer great management, low expenses and are top picks.

You can research 529 funds at SavingforCollege.com.

Video Games: Good for Families?

2007-04-05T01:00:00.000-04:00

Read just about anything that's family-oriented, and you'll find video games are widely disparaged. They lead to attention deficit disorder, obesity and isolate your child (or husband) from the rest of the family. "Get outside, do something together, have a game night," these sources all say.

All of those things are good, of course. But I think it's time to back up off the video games.

Not long ago, we visited a family and stayed overnight. The next day, we all enjoyed a quiet Sunday and I got a sneak peek inside their regular weekend experience.

They played video games.

And they had a blast.

True, they couldn't all play together. Mom did spend some time working on her computer, but she was there in the family/dining room with everyone and frequently commented or laughed at things she heard. Dad was having a great time, doing something he loved with his son and older daughter. The youngest child went back and forth between watching and doing her own thing, but she was very happy to laugh at their antics.

They took turns, talked smack, moved around a lot, (video games can be very physical), and included my husband. They had a great time.

I don't see that this is so different than other hobbies and games. Right now, my hubby - who took the day off - is playing Lego Star Wars with Tidbit. She's asking lots of questions and they're talking. She's learning how to use the controls - which will help her later when we finally set up a computer for her. (We're a very technology-oriented family, since we both work in technology.)

I think the key is to make it a family activity and not let your child sit alone in a basement for hours playing video games. Set up a few rules about usage. Find child-friendly games and avoid the violence.

Gamer Dad is a great resource for age-appropriate video game information. That's where I learned about our favorite family games: Katamari Damacy, Dance, Dance Revolution, and Lego Star Wars I.

Building Family Bonds During Holidays

2007-04-04T10:34:00.000-04:00

Holidays mean family gatherings, and, for many, that translates into stressful and potential volatile interactions.

Diffuse the holiday with a little planning. This week, plan something you can do to lighten the atmosphere. Games are always a good choice. Everyone moans at charades, but it's always fun, and all ages can play. If it's fair weather, head out for an Easter Egg hunt - hey, who said adults don't like candy? - or a scrimmage game.

Or get out. Go boating, canoeing or hiking, if your family is so inclined. If the parents or grandparents won't go, then go with your siblings or younger relatives. There's nothing that says everybody has to stay in the same room after the meal. Breaking into smaller groups can help you bond with individual members of your family.

If you don't think you can get your family off the couch after the big meal, try these alternatives:

Bring a game system and play something fun, like Lego's Star Wars or Dance, Dance Revolution. No G games? You can always rent.
Beg, borrow or rent a Karaoke machine.
Play poker or Rook.
Look through old pictures of vacations and other fond memories.
Rent a fun movie everybody can enjoy. Even animated feature - such as Shrek - which appeal across the generations. Pop Peeps instead of Popcorn.

Studies indicate that couples who engage in fun, new activities renew the feelings of falling in love. Why shouldn't this logic apply to families as well?

I'd like to hear other ideas on how you can build family - instead of fight - during a holiday. Our next major holiday: Mother's Day!

We Try It: The YMCA's Healthy Kids Day

2007-04-03T09:40:00.000-04:00

Nationally, the YMCA's Healthy Kids Day will be April 14. But for some reason, our Metro Y decided to host the event earlier.

We were pretty excited to have a free, family-friendly event. As it turned out, a lot of people felt the same. And by "a lot," I mean thousands. A half hour past the start time, there was still a line just to get into the stadium parking lot! And a line to get into the stadium, where the event was held.

My first thought: Wrong day. There must be a game.

But then I saw the tiny yard signs indicating that, no, this was the right day. And yes, all these people were here for the YMCA Healthy Kids Day.

So, my first advice: Go early. Or go very late.

As it turned out, the Y staff was just as dumbfounded at the turnout as we were. Who knew there were that many families looking for fun all on the same day? Maybe it was the free t-shirts - which apparently ran out immediately - or the offer of free food -ice cream gone in the first hour, apples gone in the second. But it seemed like every kid in my city came.

The activities were cleary designed for a smaller crowd. The dance and jump rope demonstrations were sidewalk level, which caused a traffic jam with a lot of people standing around, unable to see. The karate demonstration, held on a sloping hill, was a bit easier to see, but it was a bit unorganized and, well, slow, so nobody paid much attention.

There was a half hour line at least for the three blow-up bouncers. We dutifully stood in line with our one child, who, when faced with the grinning catepillar bouncing maze, said, "I don't want to go," and started putting her shoes back on.

Inside the stadium, we found a relay race of some sort. Unfortunately, you couldn't just jump in. The teams were set up ahead of time, which was a huge disappointment to me. Also, the children all seemed to be in the late elementary range, which cut out a huge chunk of the child population.

There were some games involving a football and bean bags, but they only had one of each, which translated into long lines.

The police and firefighters brought their usual State Fair trucks for children to learn about fire drills and meth labs. We had to leave the police truck, because the pictures were a bit horrific for a four-year-old: What does it teach my child to see a toddler with third degree burns from a meth-lab accident? Don't hang out with bad parents? And do parents who run meth-labs go to health fairs? Do they take their kids anywhere near the state police? I dont' think so.

The bicycle obstacle course seemed fun, although, again, too old for my child. And no way was she going anywhere near a fire drill.

It wasn't the best time we've had. And I didn't feel like we learned anything about how to become more active as a family or how to make sure our child gets enough exercise. I mean, I knew there were places we could take karate!

But we did get a lot of free stuff: Two toothbrushes, two packets of peanuts, two cheese sticks - notice a pattern here? They also had lots of free water, which was really smart, especially since they apparently built this stadium without waterfountains.

Final verdict: For us, the best part was people watching and the wonderful weather. We'd also never seen the city's new stadium, so that was interesting. But overall, we wished we'd gone for a hike at a park.

This event offered little for families with young children or teens. It was designed almost exclusviely for the elementary age bracket.

Hopefully, in the future or perhaps at other locations, the Y will find ways to involve children of all ages. It'd also be nice if it were more family-oriented. Let's face it: In cities, which is where the Y tends to operate, children aren't going to be out and exercising if their parents are inside on the couch.

Quick Tip For Monday: April Fools Tricks for Families

2007-04-02T07:51:00.000-04:00

Despite the success of Punked and other prank-playing shows, it seems to me practical jokes are getting rarer by the year. I can't remember the last time someone I know pulled a really funny, decent prank on someone.

Yesterday was April Fool's Day. I always forget until the next day, but this year, I decided to do better. So I wrapped a rubber band around the sprayer on the kitchen sink. The idea was my husband would get a glass of water and the sprayer would turn on, dousing him.

Great idea - except I was up hours before my hubby and I managed to drench myself three times before he finally woke up. Patiently, I waited. He showered, got dressed for church and I had forgotten what I'd done until I finally hear him tell the dog, "Are you out of water? I'll get you water!" in his usual marytr tone.

Splash! From the kitchen, I heard, "Hey!" and I lost it.

He admitted it was a good prank, but added wistfully, "If that's how you want our relationship to be."

And there's the rub. If you pull a prank, you'd better watch your back and prepare to laugh it off when your victim seeks revenge.

Pranks are a great way to build family bonds. While you should be careful when you pick your victim - stodgy, angry Uncle Dude probably isn't your best first choice - there's no reason why you shouldn't introduce a bit of humor into your family life. Just make sure your prank is fun, innocent and done in good spirits - and that the 'victim' can laugh at his or herself.

Family Fun offers a list of pranks, including a slew of food pranks to play on the kids. Okay, it's not April 1 - but a day late makes the prank all the more surprising, doesn't it?

Oh, for you Internet fans, Google got me with this one, though I protest it's only because I hadn't had my coffee.

Y We'll Be at Healthy Kids Day Celebration

2007-03-30T08:59:00.000-04:00

There's a lot to do this weekend. Catching up on this blog could take me the better part of Saturday AND Sunday.

But, of course, there's really no 'catching up' with blogs.

So, instead, I plan to spend Saturday cleaning, but on Sunday, we're headed downtown for the YMCA Healthy Kids Day celebration.

Officially, YMCA Healthy Kids Day is April 14, but for some reason, our YMCA is holding it early - so I'll be able to give you a sneak preview of what to expect.

Locally, the agenda includes healthy snacks, dance and maritial arts demonstrations - hopefully, the children will be able to participate as well, inflatables and a short run. Local athletes are also schedule to appear.

I must say, this meets all of my criteria for a family event: It's active, educational, fun, and, not only is the event free, there's free food!

Plus, it meets my goal of getting us off the couch and moving!

We'll try it and report back on Monday!

Raising a Heart-Healthy Child

2007-03-18T14:34:00.000-04:00

While researching heart disease for a client, I stumbled across a great resource for families from the American Heart Association. This page for parents offers great tips for improving your child's health, from steps you can take to get your child moving - even your non-athlete - to tips for healthy fast food meals.

I particularly like the tips on dealing with a picky eater. My first step will be to reclaim our dinner table as a dinner table. Right now, it's where we do all our coloring, painting and computer work. (Ick!)

If your child does have a heart condition, be sure to check out the Disease, Conditions and Treatment page, which includes a nice section called "Ask the Pediatric Cardiologist."

While you're there, you might as well read up on what you can do to protect yourself and your SO from heart disease. Here's a few tips, though, in case you're too busy to peruse the site:

Stop smoking and don't hang around smokers
Eat low-fat dairy
Avoid saturated fats
The new recommendations for exercise: 60-90 minutes on most days if you're overweight!
Lose weight

Family Backyard

2007-03-15T13:33:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been reading about how to make your backyard into a lush, child-friendly garden.

Right now, when I look at my window, I see a metal shed that's falling down, a stark, uneven yard, a big metal swingset and my neighbor's garage. Ick.

I grew up in the country and spent about half my childhood talking to trees and cows, and making little flower sacrifices to the creek. My family grew vegetables and my grandmother had a whole green hand that she used to grow anything and everything green.

I can grow vegetables. And I could grow tobacco. Otherwise, I'm useless when it comes to gardening. So, I'm not sure where to begin when it comes to create a beautiful backyard that will give my child a place to play, a place to hide and the sort of wild freedom I had growing up - all within the confines of an fenced 50-feet by 50-feet backyard, (roughly).

So far, my favorite book is Home Landscaping Southeast Region, because it gives me various garden designs in two versions - shade and sunny - and tells me what will live in my area. I actually recognize some of the plant names. It's full of gardens that will provide a rich, very treed-look to a backyard.

I also like A Child's Garden: Enchanting Outdoor Spaces for Children and Parents. While I couldn't reproduce what's in this book - many of the gardens are large, public spaces with lots of space and money - it does give me plenty of ideas about how to make gardens more fun. It also has inspired me to try to put in a pond.

As for online resourches, Better Homes and Gardens offers lots of great stuff, and it's mostly free, including a Family Backyard plan I found that I'm using as a loose model for what I do in my backyard.

Here's what I plan to include in my backyard:

* A wooden fence (currently, it's chain link)
* A sandbox - preferably sunken into the ground with a cover.
* Lots of small trees and bushes
* Some hiding spots for children - perhaps amidst the bushes or under some small trellises with bean vines. A weeping mulberry tree for hiding.
* A pond. And eventually, a waterfall. I actually found plans for creating your own creek! I'd love to do this - and the plans are based on a yard about my size - but my yard's flat and I'm thinking it wouldn't work too well.
* Lots of decorative grasses
* A few fruit trees (already have a peach tree, although I may have killed it)
* Place for growing vegetables.
* Lots of cute little garden decorations that kids would like, such as a flower whose petals spin, a yard gnome and colorful butterflies.
* Perhaps a compost area.
* A better shed - perhaps something very cottage-looking
* Eventually, a playhouse made of wood.

We have a huge deck for sitting already, so I feel like the adult part is pretty well taken care of.

It's a lot for a small yard. But I think it's doable. It'll just be very...busy. I don't know. I'm going to start planting and digging and see what happens. I can always cut things down.

When Last We Spoke: Goals for the 2007

2007-03-12T09:21:00.000-04:00

Before this year began, I identified six New Year's goals for myself and my family. Wonder how I'm doing on those goals?

Well. May I speak frankly?

Not so well. The truth is, I've been very depressed the past few months. I believe this is leftover emotions from the miscarriage. But, finally, I'm feeling better. And I'm much more interested in doing things and living life again. So, I'm not beating myself up for just now getting to my goals. And I hope you won't either.

Now, back to the goals:
My first goal was simple: Show the Love.

I believe I've made progress on this. I cook more for my family. I give more spontaneous hugs. I never pass up a chance to rock my Little Bit - I know the days of that are numbered and I don't want to miss any opportunity. In the afternoons, we often rock and read five or six books at a sitting. It's fabulous. I believe my attitude has shifted and our family atmosphere is more congenial and pleasant. Though I do wish I had an extra bucket of patience for my four-year-old's boundary testing. Sometimes, her attitude makes us all a bit grouchy. Perhaps I should explain that to her?

Goal two: Build Family Identity. What I meant by this was to do chores, family dinner and other tasks together as a family. I also included doing activities that would reflect the values we wanted to instill in our child.

This is where I've really dropped the ball. While my hubby and I often eat together, we don't make our daughter sit down with us because I haven't paid attention to her snack times and she's snacked so much she's full. I also haven't enforced cleaning up together well.

As for volunteering, well, that fell of the face of the earth. It's really hard to find a way to volunteer with a preschooler. And I haven't had the energy. I still do want to send some of her old toys overseas, but we haven't had a chance to go through them. That sounds like a good plan for this week.

Goal Three: Become a Healthy Family. Wow. Have we totally neglected this. As a result, my husband and I are heavier and Little Bit isn't getting the exercise she needs. We are, however, being more diligent about sleep. Now that spring's surfacing, I hope we'll make a quick recovery here!

Goal Four: Widen Our Family Circle. We've been discussing them. I am trying to cultivate a few friendships more, but really, there hasn't been the energy or the wellness, (cold & flu season makes everyone stay in more). We still do our Thursday night dinners, though.

Goal Five: Be a Financially Responsible Family. This is where I've really done the work. We're on a budget using the old fashioned envelope system for things where we tend to overspend - dining out, auto fuel, (because we tack on snacks at the station), and entertainment. We're also saving more and cutting back on unfulfilling expenses. Part of this goal was to write a will. I'm pleased to report we've found an attorney to do our will - now we just need to get our tax refund so we can pay for it!

And the last goal: Create a Family-Friendly Home. We're trying some experiments here. Nothing major - just moving things around, putting toys in places where the family hangs out, moving the TV downstairs so it isn't the center of our life. I'm working on a backyard garden that will be a great place for my child to play. So, progress.

I'd love ideas for how I can achieve these goals.

Update

2007-03-12T09:09:00.000-04:00

Wow. I haven't posted in forever. Sorry about that. Twas the season for sickness and general blahs where I live.

This weekend, my family celebrated the return of the sun by gardening Saturday and hitting the road on Sunday. Our destination? Dinosaur World!

Using nothing but my wits, a printer and an Internet connection, I discovered a coupon on their site for free children's gift with a purchased children's ticket. So, with the touch of a button and the whirl of a printer cartridge, I turned into SuperMom, Finder of Free Dinosaur!

Dinosaur World, for those of you who might have missed this wonder, is a place with big plaster of Paris, (or some such durable substance), Dinosaurs. There is no effort to do real sizes, though there did seem to be some ratio of size among the dinosaur statutes, i.e., the little dinosaurs were smaller than the bigger dinosaurs and it could've been proportionate. But who knows? Who cares? This is roadside kitsch with a twist of education. And my Little Bit thought it was better than a Peanut Butter sandwich.

And here's the moral of the story: In your Big Dreams for your family - trip to Disney, visit Europe, pay for college - it's easy to overlook the little, nearby, cheap joys your children will love and remember years from now. It may look like old, badly painted crap to you, but it's a wonder world to them. And if it's Dinosaur World, it has just enough scare to really thrill a preschooler.

Prayer after Miscarriage or Stillbirth

2007-02-10T13:34:00.000-05:00

Today, my baby would have been due. By now, I'd be holding a brand new baby boy and everything would be wonderfully different.

But I had a miscarriage during the second trimester. The grief is no longer new, but today, I remember. And I urge you to realize that there are many, many women who hide the pain of miscarriage inside. You don't even know how many until you've had one.

While we held our babies in our hearts and womb, we never held them in our arms. The prayer of the week is for the families one person short because their baby died before or at birth.

Prayer After Miscarriage or Stillbirth
By Sandy Eisenberg Sasso

God, we are weary and grieved. We were anticipating the birth of a child, but the promise of life was ended too soon. Our arms yearned to cradle new life, our mouths to sing soft lullabies. Our hearts ache from the emptiness and the silence. We are saddened and we are angry. We weep and we mourn. Weep with us, God, Creator of Life, for the life that could not be.

Source of healing, help us to find healing among those who care for us and those for whom we care. Shelter us under wings of love and help us to stand up again for life even as we mourn our loss.

Letters from Anne Frank's Father Found

2007-01-26T07:48:00.000-05:00

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will release letters by Otto Frank detailing how he tried to get his family - including young daughter Anne Frank - out of Nazi-occupied Holland on Feb. 14 - appropriately enough, Valentine's days. The letters were found last year as part of a collection of other records from agencies that helped people emmigrate from Europe.

The letters show Otto Frank tried to emigrate from Holland to the U.S. or Cuba, via Paris or Spain.

The YIVO Institute, which is based in New York, found the letters among 100,000 other Holocaust-related documents 18 months ago.

Anne Frank, of course, is the young woman who wrote Anne Frank's Diary, an account of her family's attempts to evade Nazi capture by hiding for two years in an attic.

It's a sad reminder of how the world failed so many families during the Holocaust.

Restless Thoughts

2007-01-21T21:04:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've been thinking that maybe, just maybe, security isn't the end all and be all of family life.

Right now, our life is secure. We live near family, Hubby's job is very secure, with a good retirement, decent salary and our town is very safe. We have friends that we see frequently and we attend a nice church, which my Little Bit likes very much.

For four years, Hubby and I lived in Oklahoma City, and it was hard. He was enlisted in the military - a reliable job, but not a good job. I couldn't find work for nearly a year. The first year, we had a crappy, flea infested apartment with a drug dealer for a neighbor. Our nearest friends and family were at least a seven hour drive away. Eventually, we did make a few friends, I found a job and we moved to a better apartment. But for two of our four years, it was hell.

When we returned, we were grateful to be in a city that offered something other than rodeo and where we knew more than five people. So, we immediately began putting down roots. Then Little Bit came into the picture and it seemed we'd settled for life.

But life has a funny way of throwing you curve balls and lately, we've been thinking maybe we've settled too soon. We're wondering if we should pull up and travel a bit, while Little Bit is still small enough to just need us.

We can't really afford to just take off for New Zealand or Italy for three months. So, Hubby would probably find a job - possibly on contract - and then we'd move somewhere and live there for a year or two before heading home.

Of course, people do this for their careers. But as itt turns out, some families do choose this lifestyle just so they can see and experience the world. In "Living Abroad with Children: It’s Easier Than You Think," one family shares their experience with relocating from Indiana to Dubai.

But I've had a bad experience. And I'm not alone: One couple I know spent a year in Germany and made no friends the entire year. They had a child and were very lonely.

So before we went overseas, I'd want to try another U.S. city first - just to make sure we could make it on our own.

It's a tempting proposition. In exchange for security, safety and seeing grandparents every week, I could give my daughter a bigger world, possibly a new language and a unique experience that would impact her - and me - all of her life. Plus, Hubby and I could realize a long suppressed dream of traveling and living in other places.

Ultimately, I think it could be a very positive, bonding experience for the three of us. The question is: Would we ever be able to truly come home again?

Book Review: Chores Without Wars

2007-01-20T08:50:00.000-05:00

I admit it. In previous posts, I may not have been fair to this book.

I'm not repenting of my previous comments, mind you. It does drive me crazy when parenting books suggest you turn into the parenting of the Stepord Wives.

But, nonetheless, I hadn't finished the book. And as it turned out, there's a lot of redeemable information if you can ignore the overly-pristine examples and press through the first 37 pages.

What's truly fabulous about this book is it addresses one of the most oppressive aspects of being a parent, but especially a mother: The feeling that you're ultimately responsible for everything.

And I've seen this worsen as the family grows: My friends have to harass their children to finish chores, homework and basically act as the administrative assistant for the whole family.

Micro-managing people will create stress, nagging and resentment on all sides. Plus, we're not raising our children to be functioning adults when we manage their lives, are we?

Chores Without Wars authors Lynn Lott and Riki Intner offer the only possible solution for this dilemma: Stop. Absolutely stop.

Of course, you tell them you're going to stop first. And here's the smart part - you offer to help train them, help them come up with solutions - but you don't force solutions on them. But you do stop doing it for them.

Lott and Intner offer you alternative tools for helping your family become functioning, autonomous adults. The tools are:

Family Meetings
Training
Joint Problem Solving
Family Routines

As I read on, I saw how their approach would free you by allowing you to detach emotionally from the issue. After all, it isn't your problem or your job as a parent to make sure children do what they've promised. It's your job to help them, to teach them, but it's not your job to do it.

Instead of the family secretary, you become the coach. You set up routines that will help the family train and learn to succeed. You bring up problems that the family needs to solve. You formulate the game plan - but you let them do the work and play the game. Brilliant!

Besides chores, the book discusses three other major issues for families today:
Allowances. The authors do not want you to use allowances as a reward for chores. Instead, they see allowances as a way to train children to manage money responsibly.
Blended families. It discusses how you can use the methods to integrate stepchildren and grandparents into your household.
Dealing with grown children who move back or refuse to leave.

So who should read this book? I'd recommend this book if you feel like:

No one does anything around the house except you.
A nag or b**ch around your family.
Your stepchildren aren't helping out or your spouse expects them to do too much.
Your mother, who just moved in, expects everyone to live their lives around her needs.
Your teen refuses to help or take any responsibility.
Your school-age child isn't expected to do any chores.
Your children don't understand the value of a dollar.
Your 24-year-old lives in your basement and won't get a real job.

Family | Books | Family Routines | Chores

Sickness

2007-01-15T17:02:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lag in posts. Mia famiglia has been sick. And so have I. Actually, mostly, it's just been me and Hubby sick. Little Bit seems to have supper teflon genes that keep her well. God bless her.

Cheap, Delicious, Easy Family Dinner Idea

2007-01-11T08:16:00.000-05:00

Generally, I try to plan my meals down to the last vegetable. I need a recipe, ingredient list and plan for every dinner. Otherwise, I just have no idea what to do with food.

Google has changed that. Now, I can buy a meat with high hopes of finding an easy, online recipe, preferably one that can be made in a crockpot. So, a few weeks ago, as an act of faith, I bought a bunch of chicken wings weeks ago and stored them in the freezer.

We've been sick, so groceries were low. Time to use the chicken wings. I found a recipe for Mediterrean Chicken on the Flylady site. There are lots of great, easy, slowcooker recipe, but I had the stuff for this one.

Basically, you throw the chicken wings,(you should probably rinse them off first), in the crockpot, put a can of tomatoes - I used diced - and a can of black olives, (I had whole ones leftover from Christmas and used these), on top and cook on high for five hours. If you leave for work in the morning, you could do low for all day.

I sprinkled in some pepper, thyme and oregano. When it was done, we added noodles and topped it with grated Parmesan cheese. It was fantastic!

You could do all sorts of variations. You could brown the meat first. You could use rice. You could use a different cheese, skip the olives or use green peppers instead. I suppose you could spunk it up with crushed red peppers or green chilies.

My daughter just ate the noodles - she does that. Starch at one meal, meat at a different meal. But Hubby and I loved it, plus it made enough for us to have seconds and him to have it for lunch. If you're looking for new, easy meal ideas, we recommend it.

Family | Easy Meals | Family Dinners

Scheduling Chores

2007-01-09T22:51:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Chores without Wars: Turning Housework into Teamwork for this week's book. I'll give a more thorough review on Thursday, but this book, along with my revelation that my family needs routines, inspired me to pick one problem that could be solved with a family routine.

I decided that dinner would be our starting point. Why this? Because, this is an area where everyone can help - even the three-year-old - and it's very clear what needs to be done. It can take one person half an hour to cook, then another half hour to clean up. If everyone pitches in, the cleanup can take a mere 5-10 minutes and prep time for cooking is cut down, too.

So basically, I called everyone up when the main entree was ready and said, "Okay, dinner time. But first we need to set the table, put out a salad and get drinks. Little Bit, what can you do?"

Little Bit loves to be included and she loves to do "big" stuff - although once she knows she can do it and it's her job, she tends to drag her heels. This was new, so she volunteered to sit the table. Hubby got the salad together and we all put out the condiments and drink.

We were no more than half way through the meal when I announced everyone would need to sit until we were all finish and then help with cleanup. Hubby and I had tea while Little Bit finished. For clean-up, I'd made a list and hung it on the fridge. Little Bit offered to wipe down the table - a job she's done to great applaud in the past. Hubby and I worked off the list. It felt great to work together and the kitchen is clean. I used the free time to clean up a bit more in another room and tomorrow, I'll be able to spend my cleaning time outside the kitchen for a change!

I've joked about parts of the book recently, but I must say, some of the recommendations are working for me. I also agree about the need for family routines. And I definitely intend to spend the rest of the month developing this new routine into a family habit!

Family | Chores | Family Dinners

A New Breed of Family: The Crunchy Conservatives

2007-01-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

Who drops off out of the dominant culture because it's too materialistic, joins an organic food co-op, and then starts a family farm without pesticides while homeschooling their children?

Apparently, it's a new breed of family called the Crunchy Conservatives.

According to this article, Crunchy Conservatives care about the environment, eat organic food and are dropping out of a culture they feel is too materialistic. Many sound like ex-yuppies who now feel called to a different life - a life that values the family.

What can I say? I agree. Our culture is too materialistic and we should stop worshipping the all-mighty dollar and care about the environment. I agree that work shouldn't be the focus of your life. And I definitely think we shouldn't enroll our children in ballet and six other kinds of activities, sending the family in 60 different directions every night, just because everybody else is.

I just hope that on their way out of the power cities, they remember to call up their power-friends and present their new outlook. I also hope they're respectful of the rural areas to which they're moving. Thanks to their previous incarnations as rich yuppies, they can afford to move to rural areas. Let's see if those farms remain whole instead of being subdivided into five-acre micro play farms.

I also hope they don't isolate themselves from the real, working people who live there - although, with all the homeschooling, it sounds like that might be a big part of the plan.

Still, all-in-all, Crunchy Conservatism, with its focus on the family, anti-materialism, and the environemtn, sounds great to me. Even if, as a liberal, I feel I beat them to the punch. ;-)

Family Values | Conservatives

The Flu

2007-01-09T18:09:00.000-05:00

Boy, nothing, I mean nothing, tests your family's ability to be together like sickness. Today, I actually asked my husband if he still had a job and our daughter wondered out loud, "Why Daddy isn't going out in the world?"

Our family's had the flu. Not the so-called stomach-flu, which is actually a different virus, but the congestion, in your chest, hacking and draining, body aching Flu.

For some reason, Little Bit didn't get sick. Which meant we had to do tag-team parenting, alternating naps and Dora-watching, until my mother finally caught on to all my hints and picked up Little Bit to bring to her house. Finally, we both got the sleep we needed. I picked up Little Bit and felt better....except not completely better. Just well enough to get up and make myself sick again. And apparently, Hubby's in the same boat. He went to work yesterday only to come home mid-day, hacking up a lung. I guess they'd rather he do that at home.

After a few vacation days, Christmas, a week of mourning, a funeral and now sickness - well, we're getting a lot of family togetherness in. It's kinda nice, having everyone home, but much of it consists of us being miserable and watching too much TV. Not exactly what you picture in the days before you give birth, but then again, that's the beauty of family: Good, bad, thick, thin, that's who sees it through with you.

Family | Flu

More from the Chore Without Wars Book

2007-01-07T12:03:00.000-05:00

And the laugh riot continues...Chores without Wars offers a list of jobs by age. According to this, among the tasks your two and three year olds should be able to do:

Empty waste baskets (great - my little thumbsucker, emptying the bathroom waste. Lovely thought)
Help clear the table (yeah, if you want everything broken and spilt!)
Scrub the sink and tub (??? Really. Because I want a two-year-old handling noxious chemicals.)

My favorite, though, is the suggestion that five year olds can help paint their rooms. In what world is this a good idea??? Kids that can barely color within the lines, painting? Brilliant! Also, they should be able to take out the garbage. These people must have little garbage bags and tiny dumpsters. Heck, I can barely haul out the garbage without making a mess!

Here's a list that seems more appropriate to me.

Family | Chores | Housecleaning

Passive Agressive Parenting Books - ARGH!

2007-01-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

I'm reading "Chores without Wars," a book that purports to turn 'housework into teamwork.' And something's been bugging me about this book but I couldn't put my finger on it. Until now.

After all, the book promises to do away with nagging and shouting and the usual arguments that go along with household work. Sounds great. Who wants to be that person anyway? I mean, I'm pretty sure that's core to the "mom" job description, but if these ladies have a better way, great! I'm all for it. I hate being that way.

First, the book starts by telling me I need to change my behavior and my way of thinking. Right off, that's annoying, because I've spent years trying to be a better me and I've had just about enough of it. It's a lot of work and frankly, the dividends just never came. Instead, people take more advantage of me and I'm a seething teapot of anger half the time because I never say what I really think because I'm trying to be a better person.

And since I've had my daughter, I realize that's all a load of crap. It may make you look nicer, but it makes you much less nice in actuality. It also makes you something of a patsy. And I don't want that for my daughter.

So, right off, I'm on my guard, but I still haven't pinpointed why. All of the above I figured out later.

Then I come to this scene, wherein mother Margie decides to give up reminding her seven year old of his promise to pick up his toys everyday. So here's what she does: She tells him their plan wasn't working, because he's not picking up his toys. He promises to remember - this time for sure.

Margie responds thusly:

'That's great. I'm glad to hear that, but I want to tell you want I've decided to do if you don't keep your agreement.'

You can almost feel the Grinch-like smile.

Lance asks what she means and the books says, I kid you not:

In a friendly tone Margie said, "I'm not going to remind you or nag you anymore. I expect that you'll do what you say. If you haven't picked up your toys by 5:30 each evening, I'll figure you want me to do it. If I do it, I'll put the toys in a box called the Sunday Box and you can get them the following Sunday."

Okay, on the surface, there's nothing wrong there. But after a few tries at this kind of logic, I realized I was turning into that mean girl who smiles at you so kindly just as she slips the knife between your shoulder blades. It's just so...cold and sterile. Like Margie's just waiting for the chance to take those toys.

And the whole book has been like that. You can almost feel how angry Mom is - and rightly so - but the 'better way' touted by the books is to set aside your emotions, smile and come up with consequences, which you then put in like a cold piece of steel. Not a good way to build a team, in my humble opinion.

Oh sure, there are caveats: Let them know in advance. Work it out together. Yadda, yadda. But in the end, every situation boils down to a passive aggressive move by mom. Teen not taking out the garbage? Change the night. Still doesn't do it? Set the garbage bags by the door and refuse to cook the next meal until he's moved it. It reminds me of first grade, where one dude would do something bad and the teacher would punish everyone. It's so institutional.

I'd much rather do it like this:

You know, it makes me really mad that you said you'd do this and you haven't. So I want you to pick up those tosy right now. Fom now on, if you don't pick up those toys when I ask you to, I'm taking them and you'll have to work to get them back. And if you don't miss them, well, I'm going to assume you have too many toys and we can talk about what we need to get rid of.

See the difference? One is emotionally honest and forthright. The other is just...passive aggressive and really mean. One is the person I really am. The other is...the mean girls who picked on everybody in high school.

Plus the book is all about how you're the coach. Have you ever in your life heard a coach talk like Margie? No. Coaches are no-bs kinda people. I think Mom's should be, too. Otherwise, you're just a bit Joan Crawford, aren't you? Yes, my sweetie, you are.

Weekly Family Prayer: The Prayer for Protection

2007-01-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

I used to be a member of a Unity Christianity church, which many people confuse with Unitarians, even though they're very different. This prayer was written by Unity poet James Dillet Freeman and was supposedly left on the moon by one of the shuttles.

I prayed this prayer over my Little Bit every night when she was a Wee Bit and it remains one of my favorites.

The Prayer of Protection
The Light of God surrounds us.
The Love of God enfolds us.
The Power of God protects us.
The Presence of God watches over us.
Wherever we are, God is.
And all is well!

How to Pray as a Family

2007-01-06T22:08:00.000-05:00

Prayer doesn't always come easily, especially in front of others. In fact, I'd rather give a speech before 100 than pray before 10, I find it that intimidating. What do you say to your creator that speaks for yourself and those present without sounding like you're trying to impress everyone?

That's one of the reasons we shy away from family prayers, and it's something I'd like to change. I do not come from a tradition that allows for formal, written prayers - but at this point, I figure it's a starting point for us. What does it matter who wrote the prayer if it conveys what's in our hearts?

If you're also struggling with the idea of family prayer, Beliefnet has a Family Prayer FAQ you might want to read. It covers when to start prayer, when to pray and what to do when your kids "act up" during prayer.

I should note that these tips seemed "bi-partisan" to me in that they could apply across religions.

Family | Prayer

This Month's Family Mission

2007-01-05T11:38:00.000-05:00

You may recall that I'm committed to doing some sort of charitable work as a family each month. It's surprisingly hard to come up with ongoing solutions with a preschooler, so I'm opting for random acts of giving.

Parent Hacks posted about a Corp of Engineers worker who wants gently used toys and school supplies to give to Iraqi children - especially stuffed toys. I think this might be a good option for us this month. Little Bit is too young to want to give many away, but even a few would be good.

Family | Volunteering | Giving | Preschooler

Stop Reinfection after Illness

2007-01-05T11:28:00.000-05:00

Hubby and I have some sort of cold, which reminded me of a favorite tip that will keep your family from catching the same bugs over and over.

Whenever you're sick, as soon as you start to feel better, replace your toothbrush. You can buy toothbrushes for around $1 each - so why not?

If you want to save the money or you really like your toothbrush, you can also microwave it for 10 seconds or, especially if it's electric, let it soak in mouthwash. Either of these options will kill the germs and stop reinfection.

Family | Health

The Pope on Family

2007-01-05T08:50:00.000-05:00

Sunday, the Pope spoke about families and what he sees as the biggest threat to the family unit: Cultural pressure.

I'm not sure he and I would agree on what cultural pressures are dangerous, but I agree in principle that modern culture is chipping away at the family unit. For me, the contemporary hazards faced by the family are materialism, overdemanding work schedules, and the pressures to do and have it all, which leads to overscheduled children and parents. It also seems to be that parents are having to work harder just to hold ground. Who has time for family anymore?

Of course, the Pope defines family a bit differently than I do, so he sees threats where I do not.

Family

A Quick Trick for Building Family

2007-01-04T22:50:00.000-05:00

Much of what's written about building family focuses on rituals, such as family game nights or family meetings. While these are important for building family unity, most family bonding happens in the seemingly insignificant, simple moments of the day.

How simple? Maybe as simple as making eye contact.

In How to Build Family Unity, the author suggests making eye contact for a mere five minutes a day could bond you with your family and even change how your children act.

According to this piece, researchers studied depressed mothers and children while they waited to see the psychiatrists. The women were distant and didn't interact much with the children, who were rowdy and, frankly, horrible. Then, the women were asked to give each child five minutes of eye contact each day. They saw a huge difference in how the children behaved. They started to play quietly in the waiting rooms, and the mothers quit complaining of feeling overwhelmed and fatigued. Here's why this worked:

The explanation for these rewards was that the children were looking to their mothers for a sense of leadership as well as a sense of safety. Prior to eye gazing, the children were lacking cues that would tell them that focused play was safe to do. Their loud tones and frantic bounces were a sign of their distress and a desire on their part to force confrontation in order to be acknowledged.

Similarly, each person in a family desires to be seen and heard by the rest of his/her tribe. Eye gazing for as little as 5 minutes each day is one way to demonstrate a family member's importance.

It also talks about other acts of bonding, such as practical jokes and playing games together. I'd never thought of it, but according to this, the games teach families how to function as a team.

The design is a bit confusing. There's a headline, then you'll have to scroll past some ads to read the actual article. Unfortunately, it doesn't include a citation for the study. I'd love to confirm this research.

For the next seven days, I'm going to experiment with a family bonding tip I recently stumbled across. I'll report back on my efforts.

Family Bonding | Family

Schedules and Family

2007-01-04T08:24:00.000-05:00

Shortly after setting my New Year's Resolutions, I realized if I wanted to achieve any of them, I need to be a bit less random in how I go about my life. So, this month, I'm focusing on creating schedules and routines, both for myself and my family.

The problem is, I don't like a regimented life. I tend to rebel against any imposed schedule after the first week. But sometimes, we need schedules to bring order to our lives. My challenge will be to create routines that aren't overly rigid, but short and manageable.

So, even though I'm coming down with a cold and felt horrible today, I drug myself out of bed at 7 to write this morning. I didn't get a ton done, but I did get something done. That's one thing less I'll have to do while Little Bit is up and about or after my husband comes home.

Then, when my Little Bit awoke an hour later - after our standard cuddle time - I made her breakfast and coaxed her into eating. She wants to wait to eat breakfast - most of us do - but it's important to jump start your metabolism to eat as soon as you're up, according to my weight loss doctor. Plus, if we eat together, I can make sure we eat within 2-4 hours. By timing our food, I can make sure we don't get so hungry we will eat anything we can grab.

Now for the laundry...

Family | Family Routines |
Healthy Eating

My Decision: Bring Daughter to Visitation

2007-01-03T22:25:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, you need to do what's right for you, even if it means going against the grain of tradition and ceremony.

But what we forget in our culture is that "sometimes" doesn't mean always. Many times, the situation isn't about you at all. It's about what's appropriate if you love or respect another person.

Funerals are a prime example.

I grew up in small towns, and everybody went to the funeral home. You could count on at least one person from every family in your church, most of your school mates and all of your neighbors for two square miles to be at the funeral of your family members. Generally, couples came and left the kids at home, but sometimes, everyone came. Occasionally, people slipped in, signed the registry and left. But you could generally count on a large showing.

Extended family and close friends brought food and people ate at the funeral home, which contributed to a bit of a carnival atmosphere. When my grandfather died abruptly of a heart attack, this was hard on the immediate family, who were in shock and deep grieving. But, they took comfort for years in knowing he'd attracted one of the bigger showings in the county's history, because people respected and liked him so much. When my other grandfather died, it was after a long illness. Then, the food and crowds seemed more appropriate. And we were still glad that so many came.

My point is this: Funerals aren't about your individual grief or even the immediate family's grief. This is an important part, certainly, but the real reason for funerals is for everyone who knew the deceased to honor, celebrate and mourn their life. That's why we respect their wishes in terms of how the funeral is arranged - otherwise, you'd hear more about what the spouse or children wanted.

Obviously, if you're on the verge of a nervous breakdown, you should do what you need to stay functional. But if you're just uncomfortable with visitations or funerals, if you just don't like being sad, if you "just didn't know the person," but are good friends with someone in the family - well, then, suck it up and go to the funeral. It's the right thing to do.

That's why I decided to bring my daughter to the visitation. I wanted her to be there, with and for her father. I wanted her to know that death is part of life. I want her to know that it's important to show up when there's joy or pain. And, I wanted her to come because I knew she'd be a comfort to her father.

As it turned out, she was a ray of sunshine for many family members and visitors. She wore a crown to the night visitation that sparkled and gave everyone reason to smile. Her youthful happiness couldn't be contained. She was life in the face of death.

My decision was also based upon the fact that everything I read said she was old enough.

She asked to see "great grandma" - the body - several times, but wasn't sad or frightened. We just told her that she was gone from her body because her body wasn't working anymore. This seemed to make sense to her. We did tell her she was with God and that had made her feel better, but we wouldn't be able to see her because she was with God. She seemed to accept this, although there were questions and we had to go over the whole body-not-working question several times.

We also weren't confined to the funeral parlor. Thankfully, this funeral home had a children's lounge with toys, puzzles, videos and even video games. We spent a great deal of time there and it was truly a blessing for us to be on site without having to sit quietly near the casket the whole time. I hope more funeral homes offer children's lounges.

I did not bring her to the funeral. Why? There were several reasons. First, I knew it would be a ceremony and she's not old enough to sit still for long without disrupting the service. I also knew it would be more emotional and potentially confusing for her. Finally, I felt after several days of being around adults non-stop, she deserved the normalcy of returning to her Mom's Day Out program.

I think I made the right decision, but only time will tell. I'll keep you posted.

Preschoolers | Death in the Family | Funeral |

When You Don't Feel Like Being Family

2007-01-01T22:04:00.000-05:00

Writing a blog on family causes you to spend a lot more time thinking about, reading about, and being involved with family.

But sometimes, I just don't feel like being with family. Or even in a family. I want to bury my head in YouTube and forget my obligations. I'm all out of care and just want to be left alone.

I get burned out - and not just from being a mom. I get tired of being a wife, tired of being a sibling, a friend, an in-law - tired of being anything. I just want to be my selfish self.

Most people feel this way and push through it. But I'm horribly self-indulgent when I get in these moods. I really do need to be selfish for at least a day - sometimes more. I need people to understand I'm out of give. Sometimes, relationships don't even seem worth the effort.

When it's really bad, I feel like I'm out of love and I can't see how I'll ever find it again. There's too much heartbreak and too little benefit. I think, "This is just unhealthy and messed up. What am I doing wasting my time here?"

And I start looking for the nearest exit.

It's not always a bad idea. Just because saber tooth tigers don't exist any more doesn't mean our flight or fight response is useless. I'd do better in life to listen to mine more often rather than second-guessing it with my over-developed sense of obligation.

But more often than not, I'm wrong. The truth is, my best memories are of time with family and the deepest happiness I've felt have been because of family.

I need to remember that I'm dealing with real humans, not actors playing roles they've been assigned in my life story.

Just because someone should act a certain way doesn't mean they will or even that they can. And maybe, just maybe, my expectations are too high.

Then I remember love isn't just a feeling. Love is a commitment, a promise. We may not always feel the love, but we have a commitment to love. Eventually, the feeling returns. But in the meantime, the commitment is what pulls us through the rough patches.

During these times, I need to be patient with myself and those I love. I don't have to do extra ordinary shows of affection or go that extra mile - I just have to be there and be committed to staying there.

Eventually, the love always returns.

Family | Family Problems

Death and Young Children

2007-01-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow will not be a good day for my family. Tomorrow is the first day of visitation for my husband's grandmother, my daughter's great-grandmother and a truly wonderful, gentle soul.

Even though she died last Wednesday, we haven't seen the body yet. Apparently, the holiday got in the way.

As a mother, my first question is should I bring Little Bit, who's not quite four. Currently, my plan is to bring her for some of the visitation and then take her home. She will not go to the funeral because, frankly, she can't even sit through a church service yet.

I suspect we'll get a lot of questions, so I've sent a bit of time researching how to handle preschooler questions.

My favorite article on the topic thus far comes from Preschooler Today. Grievance counsellors suggest you expose children to the grieving process so they can learn about it and because when you hide your emotions from them, they sense it.

Here are some other articles that were helpful, should any other parents of preschoolers face this issue:

Family | Preschoolers | Death in the Family

Celebrating Family in the Middle East

2007-01-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

We're in the third day of Eid Al Adha, a Islamic holiday celebrating Ibrahim's (Abraham) willingess to sacrifice his son, Ismael, for God. Yes, for you Christians and Jews out there, that's a different version of the story. In the Jewish tradition, Abraham is spared from sacrificing Isaac.

Anyway, the first day of the holiday is spent with family and children are honored. Everybody eats too much food and catches up with each other. It seems the whole world over, very few people have time to see family anymore. And this year, the holiday was marked by Saddam's execution, which distracted many in Dubai.

Family | Holidays | Eid Al Adha

Next Year at New Year's

2007-01-01T10:49:00.000-05:00

We rung in the New Year with friends - but without our Little Bit. When the clock struck, I realized that what I really wanted was to be with her.

The superstition of ringing in the New Year is that you spend the year with whomever you ring it in with. So, symbolically, I made a choice that put friends over family. And I felt pretty sad about it.

Of course, I'll spend most of my year with Little Bit. But for some reason, it made me very sad not to be able to peak in on her, sleeping peacefully, after midnight.

So next year, we'll make a choice that includes her, even if it means just staying home.

My New Year's Resolutions

2006-12-31T13:23:00.000-05:00

During December, I talked about setting family goals, and I set five. But after giving it further thought, I realized these goals were actually small things I wanted to do to achieve overarching changes in our family's life.

The whole purpose of creating this blog was to document my efforts and research on building family. In reviewing what I've written so far, I realize I have six goals for my life and my family:
1. Show the Love. I want to show my family how much I love them. Too often, the small acts get lost in the daily grind. For me, showing the love means making family a priority, as well as little acts of love and physical expressions such as hugs and kisses. My family growing up was never much for physical expressions of love, so this is a bit of a challenge for me. Since I work from home, another challenge for me will be more focused and structured about when I work so it doesn't interfere with family time or my sleep. When I'm sleepy, I tend to be grumpy, and that's NOT showing the Love.
2. Build Family Identity. This means doing things together as a family, such as chores and family dinners. It also includes shaping our family identity by taking actions that reflect the values we, as parents, want to give our child. Obviously, the other goals support this goal.
3. Become a Healthy Family. I mentioned taking a family walk once a week as a goal. It's a good one, but my real goal is for us to simply be more active, eat better, sleep more and take care of ourselves. As the mother, I feel I set the pace here, and frankly, I'm not setting a very good one.
4. Widen Our Family Circle. This means inviting friends and family into our home more, finding more family friends and reaching out into the community as a family.
5. Be a Financially Responsible Family. Financial health can be an overwhelming topic, but there are standard guidelines you should follow: Build an emergency fund, eliminate debt, build savings, buy a home, make sure you have a will, make sure you have life insurance for both parents, make sure you have disability insurance, save for retirement, and so on. For our family, we need to rebuild our saving by curtailing eating out and frivolous spending. That means a budget. I also want to make sure we write a will in the next four months.
6. Create a Family-Friendly Home. My house is pretty kid friendly, but there are things I neglect that would make it more comfortable and more functional for the whole family.

So those are my final resolutions for the New Year and an outline for what I'll be discussing on this blog.
Family | Family Resolutions

Prayer for December 31

2006-12-31T00:00:00.001-05:00

Each Sunday, my goal is to share a prayer that focuses on family. This week, I've found a list of resolutions for parents on Beliefnet.com. It could easily be a prayer - and, truthfully, it is my prayer to become a person who practices these resolutions. Here's a few lines from the list:

In 2007, I resolve not to teach my children to have a happy, productive life, but rather to help them choose a happy, productive day. ...

I resolve to relax, while remembering that relaxing does not mean resigning. ...

I resolve to make my approach to parenting reflect the notion that raising a child is more about drawing out what already exists in a youngster rather than about putting in to fill perceived deficiencies. ...

I resolve to make myself dispensable and assist my children in becoming increasingly in charge of themselves and their own lives. ...

I resolve to recognize that my children are in my life as much so I can learn from them as they are so they can learn from me. I will be open to the lessons my children offer me and honor them for helping me learn and grow.

Amen.

Parenting | Prayer | Family | Resolutions

Feast of the Holy Family Day

2006-12-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not Catholic, but all my friends are. Except for one, who's Jewish. I'm not sure how I wound up with all Catholic friends, particularly when you consider that growing up I knew a grand total of one Catholic, plus my uncle and aunt who had only recently converted and so didn't seem to really count. But that's what happened.

Still, I'd never heard of the Feast of the Holy Family Day, which happens to be the Sunday between the New Year and Christmas. In other words: Today. What do you do on the Feast of the Holy Family Day? Here's what the Manila Bulletin says:

Today is a good time to remember our family and pray for our human and spiritual lives. The festivity also gives us time to reflect on the value and sanctity of the family unit. ...As parents, we must be thankful that we are blessed with children. ...The feast also reminds children to obey and respect their parents at all times. It is a good opportunity for us to forgive those who wronged us and ask the forgiveness of those we offended. We must avoid behavior which is contrary to God’s Divine plan for the family. We must also address conditions which have negative effects on the family, like poverty, lack of health care, hunger, and other political and social justice concerns.

There's a lot more to it, but these were the parts with more universal appeal. I like the idea of having a day after Christmas and before the New Year to focus on the family.

Family | Family Holidays | Religion

Kitten Saves Family of Four

2006-12-30T15:58:00.000-05:00

Well. I guess I'm wrong about cats not being very caring pets. A family picked up a "free to good home" kitten, who reciprocated by saving their lives when a fire broke out. Amazing.

Family | Family News | Kitten

Caring for Elderly Family Members

2006-12-29T13:54:00.001-05:00

The recent death of my husband's grandmother has me thinking about caring for elderly family members. His grandmother had been ill off and on for two years, and most of the care fell to her husband, who, thankfully, is a bit younger and in good health.

He's not alone. A study by the Urban Institute found that people 75 and older provide more hours of caregiving than people in any other age group.

She had two daughters in the area and another daughter that lives away, but teaches and is off summers. She also has a son who lives in another region, but travels a lot with his job. Neither of the two children who live away had been in recently. I suspect late summer was the last time she saw them. Of course, this had been going on for two years, so maybe they thought she'd recover. I'm not sure. It's not my place to judge.

But the situation did make me wonder what role my Hubby and I would play in caring for our parents. My grandmother lived with us for a time after my grandfather's death. Near the end of her life, she lived with my aunt, who had a huge house and could more easily accommodate her. My mother took a leave of absence from her job to be with her during her final month. She also lived nearby and saw her several times a week. Her other children also visited weekly and would spend the day sitting with her. She was never alone. Even before the end, she saw her children regularly.

So that's my model. I know I would do anything to care for my parents - get a bigger house, not work, move in, whatever I can do. But it's easier, of course, when you live nearby. So many families are so spread out and disconnected, I wonder what will happen in these families as their parents die.

My hubby's family is a different matter. He doesn't get along with his stepfather, who never really embraced him as family. Plus, his stepfather has his own son, and I'd assume he'd take care of his father. His mother and he are in touch, but the relationship between our family and her is rocky.

Which makes me wonder what role children should play in their parents care. In cases where the family isn't close - where there have been very real problems, such as abuse, addiction or detachment - should parents count on them to drop their lives and run to help?

Are we as humans obligated to care for family members who didn't care for us when we needed it? And if we don't, who will?

And what about siblings who don't have children? Will I be able to care for my younger brother if he outlives his wife and doesn't have kids? If I don't, then who?

Incredibly, that's what 101-year-old Clarice Morant does. She cares for both her 89-year-old sister and her 95-year-old brother, with limited assistance. Incredibly, there are younger family members - but they live far away and have only stepped in when Morant was hospitalized and too sick to do the job. She recovered and took up the role as lead caretaker.

Most people don't have a Clarice Morant in their lives. And so, many elderly people live alone - apparently without family, such as this woman, who was found strangled after a neighbor missed her.

My friend thinks we are. That's what family does, she says. But I'm not so sure. Yes, in a perfect world, we should forgive one another and love one another and basically be just like Jesus or Mother Theresa or Gandhi. But I'm no saint. And sometimes I like to see karma collect. If my conscious will let me. Something tells me even now that it will not.

I do wonder, though: If this person wanted nothing to do with you while they were of sound mind and body, why do you think they want you rooting around in their life now?

I guess some bridges you just have to cross when you get to them.

Family | Elderly | Extended Family

Working Advice for Working Parents

2006-12-29T10:33:00.000-05:00

We have a work-hybrid family. Both of us work, but my work is more flexible and less demanding. It's still a struggle to find family time, but I hope it's a bit easier than it would be if I worked 40 hours.

But both parents working full-time is more the norm than not. That means family time is competing with time for errands, housekeeping, the personal pursuits and friends that make life worthwhile, and keeping up with Lost, which in my house is considered an unbreakable weekly commitment.

How do you make it all work?

This article from the BBC suggests that if you want a close family, you must schedule time to spend together and make it a top priority. As the piece points out, it's too easy to take "just one phone call" from your mother or watch "just one show" until you've whittled away the time you would've spent together.

The advice is obviously simple - but it's also completely on the mark. You have to ignore the phone, turn off the TV and focus on each other. You also have to be creative about incorporating family time into your errands, chores and hobbies.

You'll find more articles on how parents can create balance family life with careers under the Work-Get a Better Balance tab.

Family | Family Time | Work/Life Balance | Working Parents

Review: The Book of New Family Traditions

2006-12-28T20:15:00.001-05:00

This week's book is The Book of new Family Traditions: How to Create Great Rituals for Holidays and Everyday, by Meg Cox.

Cox breaks rituals into holidays, family festivals and ceremonies (such as birthdays, first day of school), daily, weekly and monthly rituals, (such as bed time stories, family game nights, monthly pizza parties), and rites of passage rituals. For the most part, these are collections of "here's a neat idea this one family did" that may or may not work for you. For instance, while I love the idea of marking a young girl's first period in some positive way, I really don't see me hosting a dinner for my pre-teen daughter with a group of women who share stories about their periods.

However, I might let her take the day off or buy her a special ring - two of the other suggestions in the book.

What struck me about many of the rituals in the book is they did not start out as conscious efforts to create tradition - and I think that's true of most rituals. You do something once, and it creates memories, so you do it again because your family liked it. Or you do something because your family did it. Rituals evolve, and anytime I've tried to just create one, it's backfired on me.

But rituals are important. Cox lists 10 good things rituals do for hildren - and I would add families. Among the list is impart a sense of identity - a pressing issue for families in a society that favors the individual's pursuit over the family. Rituals can also help heal from a loss or trauma, teach values, help us natigate change and provide comfort and security, according to Cox. But more than this, I think traditions and rituals bind us as a family.

There are certainly some ideas I plan to try. For instance, one of my goals is to widen my family circle by inviting friends and family into our home for dinners and board games. I've been struggling with how to do this - we're always too busy or the house is too messy or we're too exhausted. The book mentioned that one woman held Soup Dinners, where she issued an invitation to family and friends to stop by on a specific day from fall until spring for soup. She used paper bowls and plastic spoons and people could come and go as they pleased. She offered hospitality, a warm home, conversation and soup.

So in the New Year, my family will have Soup Sundays. Sundays are perfect because the house is usually clean and we're well rested. Soup is perfect because I can make it in a crockpot. But for now, I think I'll reduce the guest list from 60 to a few families, but invite different people each week.

I also loved her ideas for family prayers, since this is an issue for us. She suggests a moment of silence or a very simple, Quaker prayer: "Us and this: God bless."

There are some great puberty rituals, but you need to be pretty New Age or free spirited to try them.

For example, the book offers advice on going on a vision quest. The suggestions are great - have your teens do community service and discuss what it means to be a man or woman in society - but I just can't see ritualizing that. It seems like your results might be better if these discussions were more informal.

The book also seems to miss several opportunities, such as a ritual for marking family deaths or remembering loved ones, a ritual for a new baby, or a ritual for moving to a new home.

And some ideas are just silly to me. For instance, the book tells you how to make a talking stick for family meetings. Anybody who's seen Absolutely Fabulous will never be able to take that idea seriously. I also hated her section on chore rituals, which largely involve you distracting your children instead of them pitching in.

I liked this book - I really did. And I'd love to recommend you buy this boo through this blog so I can get credit from Amazon. But, to be honest, you should probably just check it out at the library and skim through it. Or, you can sign up for a free newsletter on family rituals through Cox's website. You can also view a sample newsletter online.

Family | Family Traditions | Book Review | Family Rituals

My Family Tries It: Cariboo

2006-12-28T09:12:00.000-05:00

Last night, my family pulled out all the games Little Bit got for Christmas and gave them a spin. It was our first game night and last about an hour - maybe a little less - before the adults gave out.

The thing about playing games with Little Ones is you're always a little bored. If they're frustrated, it's no fun for anyone because you sure aren't in it for the challenge. What's fun for adults is to see them get excited about the game - so you want a game that's really exciting.

Enter Cariboo, a game by Cranium.

From it's very design, Cariboo appeals to children. It's brigth and colorful, of course, but what really sells it is there are little doors that you use a key to open. They pop open and either reveal a blank space or a neon ball - sort of like those rubber balls you can buy for a quarter. Then, you put the ball in a little hole and when you have all the balls, it forces open a treasure chest with a big, gleaming, purple jewel in it.

Heck, even the adults get excited about finding one of the balls - who doesn't love a neon surprise now and then.

But for my daughter, this is nothing short of Pure Gold. Keys? Balls? Gems? Treasure! Are you kidding me? The only thing missing is a princess crown and candy.

And the game does all of this without batteries or noise, which is nice for adults who want a quiet evening after a long day.

Cariboo comes with two set of cards, beginner and advanced. The beginner has shapes, colors and numbers. The advanced offers letters, which you must find somewhere in the word on the little doors to open it. It also has numbers, but you must count objects and find a door with the matching number of objects on it.

My Little One had already outgrown the beginner set, but the advanced is a bit of a challenge - just enough to keep her interested. Plus, she's learning that letters work together to create words and to read a word, you have to look at each letter. Surprisingly, this is hard. Children are trained by alphabet books to only look at the FIRST letter of a word. This game forces them to move into the word.

It'll be interesting to see what her nearly-five friend thinks of the game. But for the three to four set and parents, it's a winner.

Technorati | Family Game Night | Cariboo

'When Parents Are Deployed' Airs Tonight

2006-12-28T08:50:00.000-05:00

It's easy to talk about war and 'supporting the troops,' but how many people really appreciate the sacrifice made by military families? For instance, did you know that an estimated 700,000 children under five are separated from a parent overseas in the U.S. military? I didn't. That's a lot of children missing at least one parent - and keep in mind, for many of those children, there may only be one parent.

PBS is spotlighting this issue today in a special program called, "When Parents Are Deployed." It's hosted by Cuba Gooding, Junior and will feature the Sesame Street cast, so it should be appropriate for the whole family.

The point isn't to be pro- or anti-war, but to educate people about the needs of these families. Still, war is a fact of life and children are often introduced to it via the nightly news, which can be just frightening or too inhuman. This show could offer a wonderful opportunity to explain war and the issues that surround it with little ones.

The show also discusses how families stay in contact. If you're a military family - or a family who has someone who travels extensively for business - this show will give you some ideas about how to stay connected. I particularly love the ritual where the father and son both say goodnight to the moon, knowing the other is doing the same thing halfway around the world.

You can check your local PBS affiliate online for times.

PBS | Military Families | war

When a Family Member Dies

2006-12-28T00:16:00.000-05:00

Late Wednesday evening, we received word that my husband's grandmother had passed away. She was frail and in ill health - they'd been feeding her via a tube for a week now after she broke the bone under the gum area and couldn't swallow. She was already quite thin and weak, so we weren't expecting much in the way of recovery.

Still, there was no definitive warning. She had just been released from the hospital to a therapy nursing home, where she was supposed to learn how to swallow and walk again. Apparently, she'd just finished a therapy session and returned to bed, where she died without any warning signs.

I fear she died alone, but am unsure. She was something of a mother to my Hubby - she apparently raised him during his preschool years. I'm not sure how to handle this with my Little Bit. We saw her Christmas Day, and Little Bit was afraid of her condition and confused by what was going on. She wanted to know if she'd be all better. I told her maybe - sometimes people did get better. But sometimes, when people got really old and sick, they had to go to God to feel better. And if they did that, we wouldn't be able to see her again.

I don't know if that was a good answer or not. Today, we told her she'd went to God to be better. Little Bit seems to feel this means she'll return. I'm afraid with what we told her after our miscarriage, she's going to be very confused about this whole God/death thing. I want her to feel good about God. I want her to be okay with death - at least until she's old enough to work through it for herself. Some sites I've read suggest not bringing God into it at all, since Little Ones can misunderstand and develop fears about God taking them away. I don't want that.

I guess there isn't a right answer. But I feel like I'm farther away from a good answer than I want to be. Maybe that's because I'm so ambivalent about death and God myself. I wish I felt more certain. I hope she doesn't think I've sold her a bill of goods on God one day. I want her to have more faith than I do, or than her father does. I think it would make life - and death - much easier to take if she did.

Today, I'd planned to report on a book called "New Family Traditions," which presents rituals for the family. There are a lot of good ideas, but I notice there is nothing on dealing with a family member's death. There is a chapter on pets and some ideas for rituals to perform when pets die - but nothing about humans. I find that very odd and, frankly, a disturbing indication about modern values. It's more important to have ceremonies for pets than people.

True, children will lose many pets during their life and there aren't rituals for this. But it's also true that there are a lot of human losses - miscarriages, deaths - among family and friends and even your children's friends' families. Shouldn't there be a small ritual for these losses that looks beyond the normal funeral home visit?

This has come up a lot for us this year. A good friend lost her four-month-old to SIDS this year, and she's struggled to redefine her family, to establish new rituals to remember her son and to help the family heal. Her preschooler is the hardest to deal with, because she simply can't grasp the idea her baby brother isn't going to "finish being dead."

As I mentioned, we had the miscarriage this year. Because I was so sick during the first trimester, I'd told Little One about the baby. She was very disappointed when she learned the baby wouldn't be coming and she still asks me sometimes, "Did we have our baby yet?" We did attend a Walk to Remember, held to remember babies lost in miscarriage and infancy. They had a very nice ceremony where Little Ones could make signs commemorating the lost child and wear them during the walk. Then we walked around a downtown park. We gathered to hear each child's name read - even if it was only Baby Lastname - while a cello played softly. We were given a small silver token with an angle on it and then we all released white balloons into the air.

It was so sad, watching all those white balloons rise and float away like little souls. But it was very healing and I was grateful that they'd taken steps to involve siblings.

Once again, we're faced with questions about handling death in our family. Do we bring Little Bit to the funeral home? The funeral? She can't even be quiet for a church service - and what will she make of so many people being upset? I don't want to hide our emotions from her, but I also don't want to overwhelm and scare her.

I'll be posting more about this in the days to come and welcome any input from readers about handling deaths within the family.

Technorati | Death in the Family

YMCA Offers Family Resolution Help

2006-12-27T18:39:00.000-05:00

The YMCA is doing a huge push to build families - probably because this is their competitive edge over other gyms, which seem to view children as incidential. I guess it could be because the Y has a sense of mission....

Anyway, the Y issued a press release about family resolutions. I'm taking it verbatim, because you're allowed to do that with press releases, but I've cut out all the obvious tips like hold a family meeting:

Make "well-rounded" resolutions. The YMCA suggests developing lifestyle resolutions that balance spirit, mind and body. Consider areas including physical activity, nutrition, community service/volunteerism, worship, learning and fun.
Make resolutions specific, realistic and measurable. Develop resolutions that are inclusive for the whole family and consider each person's starting point. Choose goals that are simple, measurable and put the family on the road toward a healthier lifestyle.
Accentuate the positive. Make more resolutions which focus on adding healthy activities rather than restricting unhealthy ones -- adding afresh fruit snack every afternoon will naturally help replace the afternoon candy bar.
Don't "over resolve." Consider what's realistic given realities of your family current daily life that cannot be changed, or at least not changed overnight.
Track progress in a fun, interactive and visual way. Put resolutions in writing and display them on the refrigerator where every familymember will see them regularly. Be creative; make resolution posters and charts for mapping progress.
Celebrate with positive, healthy rewards. Honor each small successwith positive, fun and healthy rewards that meet the needs of the entire family. Schedule regular check-ins, such as a monthly family dinner discussion, and celebrate your achievements, both big and small.
Prepare for setbacks and work together to overcome barriers as a team. Setbacks aren't failure; they are times to call in the troops for reinforcement. If a family member is having trouble meeting a goal, brainstorm together to develop a new strategy.

The Y also is offering a free New Year's family resolution worksheet, links to other online resources, and ideas for family resolutions.

Technorati | Family Resolutions | New Years Resolution

Resolutions: Why do we do them?

2006-12-27T17:01:00.000-05:00

My Hubby has challenged me about my insistence on making New Year's Resolutions. He referenced this article on Lifehacker about how resolutions promote "deficit thinking."

I'm not going to pretend I'm a better person than I am. I told him where to get off.

But perhaps I was too hasty.

When I was young, everybody made resolutions. It was just what you did. And everyone broke them. That, too, was part of the ritual of the New Year - a sort of life/death cycle that recognizes we all have room for improvement, and yet we're so human, we can't actually do something as drastic as change.

This was back in the old days, when if you had a temper, that was just who you were - it wasn't something you worked on or read self-help books to fix. It was just the way things were with you and everybody knew it and took it into account. Certainly, people crossed you - and then you had to decide whether you were bigger and badder than the person who'd made you angry. For years, people treaded lightly around my Papaw, because that man had a quick temper, a mean streak a county wide, and a tongue that would make the devil blush. So people didn't mess with him.

Call it playground therapy: You could have a temper, but one day there might be a bigger bully who'd make you regret it. Eventually, most people developed temperance about their outbursts.

Now, many people simply refuse to make resolutions, which always strikes me as A. cycnical and B. arrogant. But it's probably neither - most likely people are just responding to the new expectation that they will actually work on their resolutions and, before next year rolls around, change themselves in some fundamental way.

And who wants to do that?

Certainly, it is stressful to always be working on something, to always be trying to fix yourself. And shouldn't your family be the one place where you can relax and be loved for who you are, flaws and all?

Over the years, I've learned you can promise change all you want, but with family, you must simply change. Don't tell them you're going to - they won't believe you. Others might offer support, guideance and hold out hope for your change. But family watch your actions and that is what they will believe.

I have lots of goals for my family. I want us to have great family dinners with long discussions. The reality is I have a three-year-old who seldom wants to eat with us, I usually need a nap and then to work, and Hubby is usually running off - literally: He's a runner. And really, we're all fine with that.

I want us to be more outdoorsy as a family, but often we're too tired to do much at the end of the day and weekends we spend playing catch up. Plus, have you ever tried to get a preschooler to go on a long hike? Our Little One is not particularly athletic and doesn't seem to have any outdoors inclinations at all.

So I think I'll keep it simple. Here are my new New Year's Resolutions:
1. Take a family walk once a week, weather permitting. I'm not going out there in the snow, rain or extreme cold. Little One can take her big wheel.
2. Show the Love to my family. Too often, I'm grumpiest to those I love the most. This year, I am resolved to show the love more. I won't promise not to be grumpy - that ain't happening. But I will promise to show affection more.
3. Write a will by spring. Step one: Try out the software I have that lets you write your own will. This has been on the backburner for some time, but since I like to view myself as a responsible parent, I want to get this done.
4. Do something for someone else as a family once a month. I wanted to do a volunteer project with Little One, but after some research, I think that may be too ambitious for now. So, instead, I'm going to look for opportunities to do good things as a family, even if it's just having friends over for dinner.
5. Do something each week/month that makes my house a home. This may be as simple as buying new towels.

So those are my resolution.

Technorati | Family Resolutions | New Years Resolution

Greetings for Wednesday

2006-12-27T08:29:00.000-05:00

Today is the second day of Kwanzaa and the principle of the day is self-determination.

My favorite family story today is about Virtual Family Dinners. This is a fascinating idea that goes beyond videoconferencing. The system is designed for elderly family members who all-too-often eat alone. It would detect when they sit down to dinner and alert a family member who's available to chat with them. They'd be able to see each other and chat.

According to a doctor interviewed in the story, there are health benefits to eating with others. Potentially, this could increase the health of elderly family members and postpone hospitalization or the need for out of home care.

We're still about two years from seeing this on the shelves, but it's cost is estimated at between $500 and $1,000 per household.

This week, we're talking about family resolutions and other ways to celebrate the New Year as a family. This will be slightly hypocritical of me, as I plan to celebrate with friends after dropping Little Bit off at Grandmas. But before then and New Year's Day, I figure there will be plenty of opportunities for a family celebration.

Stay tuned...
Technorati | Family in the News | Elderly | Family Dinner