If your kids think you're cool, you must be doing something wrong…
(an edited version of the following, written by me, was printed in the Dallas Morning News on Jan. 31, 2001.)
“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a really cool fish tank.”
My oldest daughter turned six on Thanksgiving Day, and we surprised her with something she’s wanted for a year: an
aquarium. Only this is no ordinary aquarium. This is the 1.5 gallon Undersea …
Did you know that a lot of women over a certain age never wash their own hair? And they have it “done” only once a week?
“That’s so GROSS!” say my girls. (Hmmm, if I were them, at least some of the time, I wouldn’t be talking…)
I think about “the generation gap of hair” once in awhile, especially lately as my 85-year-old mother has been staying with us for her annual visit. That visit always includes finding her a local “beauty operator” to “do” her hair once a week. Just like she’s been doing ever since she was in her 20’s.
Jim Fay, co-author of Parenting With Love and Logic (one of my favorite parenting books) often says “You can’t make a kid go to sleep, but you can wake him up, so stop trying to control what you can’t and concentrate on what you can.” In other words, let kids stay up as long as they want, but feel free to bang pots and pans and play musical instruments outside their door early in the morning. His experience has been that kids will naturally regulate themselves on their bedtime and eventually go to sleep at a decent time once they see how tired they are from “staying up”. Something tells me this advice was meant for younger kids and not teens. At least, not my teen.
When I was once a part of the 9-5 business world, there was a time I followed the adage, “Don’t dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want.” So lately I’ve been thinking maybe I should start dressing like a jazz dancer. Or an art gallery/gift shop owner…or anything other than a work-at-home mom… š
Ahh, the simple pleasures of being a parent on Halloween– at the end of the evening, we get all the candy rejects our kids donāt want. This year, out of Emmieās massive collection of 130 pieces of candy, I was given 1 mini Almond Joy, 4 mini boxes of Milk Duds, 2 pieces of banana Laffy Taffy (NOT the strawberry, of course, which I really would have enjoyed), 4 packs of Whoppers malted milk balls, 1 butterscotch candy, 1 peppermint, 1 Rolo, and a mini Heath bar. Not a whole lot to get excited about, but it made me laugh on the insideāthis āreject pileā not only looks the same every year for both of my children, it contains the same stuff I rejected when I was a kid. The same stuff about which I always think, āThe adult who bought this doesnāt have a clue what most kids like.ā For example, most kids don’t like coconut– so Mounds is a perennial reject as well. Ditto for “Dots”, Good ‘N Plenty, “Chick O Stix”, any Tootsie Rolls other than the original flavor, red hot Jawbreakers, and black licorice. While I’ve grown to like most of it, I still scratch my head about some of it, like the Milk Duds.