Category Archives: Raising Children

Modern Day Lemonade Stand

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Did you have a lemonade stand growing up? Has your child? What memories do you have of making money when you were growing up?

A friend recently shared that their children had a lemonade stand and served cookies to neighbors who were heading out to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July. They had had mild success in years past, and were rethinking what they might sell. It has been hotter than normal temps, and they were inspired. In addition to the lemonade and cookies they decided to make and sell water balloons. The water balloons ended up being a big money maker for them (when I heard about this I had two reactions: 1) what a great idea, how fun!, and 2) yikes! I hope no one got an unexpected water balloon thrown at them). It was fun to hear about how entrepreneurial the kids had gotten, and how excited they were by their financial success.

My son recently found yet another Lego set he ‘has to’ have. It’s clearly a discontinued model, because so far we’ve only found it on eBay and Amazon and the price has been upwards of $450 (I know, for a Lego set???).  Anyhow, my husband and I are working to teach our kids the value of a dollar and the reward of hard work. Our son knows he can only get the set if he has the money, and based on his allowance, he’d have enough money for the set in a couple of years (and only if he never spent a dime of his allowance and saved birthday and Christmas money), and clearly wants to do whatever he can to accelerate the timeline. He’s too young to mow lawns or get a job, and a lemonade stand (even with water balloons) isn’t practical in the part of town we live in, so it’s been a bit of a struggle to come up with ways he can earn some extra cash. My husband though had a great idea. We have a fruit tree that, based on the weather, can produce a significant number of small plums. So many, in fact, that some years if we don’t stay on top of picking them up the plums daily our yard can easily turn into an ooey-gooey (not to mention rotten fruit-smelling, bug-attracting) mess (yuck!). My husband made my son an offer, “We’ll pay you one cent for each plum you pick up.” My son jumped at the idea. He grabbed his shoes and headed out the door.

The tree is providing quite a yield this year and I wouldn’t be surprised if my son makes upwards of $10-20 (yes, there are that many plums) when all is said and done. I told my son one night after he picked up the plums, “I guess it’s true what they say–money does (or can) grow on trees.” We couldn’t help but laugh. My son won’t make enough money from picking up the plums to buy the Lego set, but he is learning what it takes to earn money–you have to work hard, and often for a long time, to get to what you want. He’s learning this lesson one plum at a time.

How are you teaching your child about money (earning, saving, donating or spending it)? What creative alternatives to a lemonade stand have your and your child come up with to make money?

I’ll be taking some vacation time and will return in August.

Our Town?

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Have you experienced a moment where your child made you rethink or appreciate life a little more after seeing it through their eyes?

My husband and I went to pick my son up from a lesson. He finished his lesson early and had free time prior to our arrival, and had decided to build a town with multi-colored triangular blocks. Some buildings were tall and round. Others were short and flat. One stood out. It was encased in a plastic holder that lifted it off the ground a few inches. I asked my son to explain all the things in his town. He pointed to the tall and round buildings. “This is a movie theater and this is a grocery store.” He moved over to the short and flat buildings. “This is where the poor people live.” And then he moved to the building that was on the plastic base off the ground. “This is where the rich people live.” I asked him what made the rich people live off the ground vs. the poor people. He replied, “The rich people have a force field around them to keep the poor people out.” He paused, probably because my mouth had dropped open in disbelief at his sage observation. “You know, so people can’t get their stuff. They really don’t like people to get their stuff.” I asked, “And where do we live?” He pointed back over to the poor section. “We’re over here. This is the poor to medium section. We live in the medium section house.” “Okay,” I said, “Where do you want to live?” He said, without hesitation, “Over here.” He pointed to the same poor-medium section but one house over. “I would be close to the movie theater and grocery store, and, I’d be close to you.” It made me smile, but also made me think. How would I have answered the same questions when I was his age? Did I have the same awareness of the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have-not’s’ back then? Where did he get this insight from? He seemed wise beyond his years.

The conversation made my husband and I realize that once again our children are noticing things–even things we think they shouldn’t until they are much older. We were reminded that when we’re fortunate enough to have our kids share their insights with us, it’s an opportunity for us to teach them (explain our take on the situation, or how others might think); and get their ideas for what can be done to make things better. I always learn when my children share their ideas–either about them (how they think, what’s important to them, etc.) or from them (sometimes their simple yet smart ideas come are way better than anything I (or I dare say most adults) could come up with). I see things in a new, fresh way.

What have you learned from, or about, your child from their observations?

Anger Management

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Have you experienced your child having an angry outburst? How did you handle it?

Our son had an angry outburst during a Pokemon game at his after school care program. He was playing with one of his classmates who was beating him soundly continuing to use the same card to do “damage” (a Pokemon term that refers to an ability to weaken/damage another character). My son didn’t like it. Another classmate who was observing the game decide to goad my son. “You’re gonna lose. You’re gonna lose.” Well, my son lost it. He took his opponents’s card and attempted to destroy it, and slapped his classmate who was goading him on. It all happened very fast. He reached his boiling point and lashed out. Caregivers descended to attend to each child and my son was lead to the office to cool down and later apologize.  When he got home, my husband and I talked with him about what happened. It was clear he understood he did something he shouldn’t have, and there would be consequences (we made him write apology notes to both boys). What he was struggling with was figuring out how he could better control his anger to avoid situations like this in the future.

My husband and I worked with our son, both on the letters (prompting him to think through what he’d done, how the other boys might feel and what he would like to hear/know from a classmate if they did something similar to him), and how we needed to continue to work with him on developing his thinking brain. His feeling brain currently had way too much power and control over his actions that were leading to the situation he was presently in.

We went back to school the next morning and I spoke to his teachers about what my husband and I had asked him to do (e.g. write the letters to the boys). I shared he was struggling with the task, and might need some help or guidance. If my son was angry at his classmates he played Pokemon with, he was doubly angry with my husband and I. After talking to his teachers, I went to my son. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I hate you!” In that moment, I knew that he meant it to his core. And I can relate to the feeling, I felt it myself many times with my own parents–you don’t like the consequence you are getting, you don’t think it’s fair or just, and you don’t like or appreciate the lesson you are being taught. I told him, “Your feeling brain is in control and your thinking brain is taking a time-out in a chair off to the side observing what’s going on. We have to work together to build up your thinking brain, so you can make choices that help you get what you want without hurting others, and we can avoid these situations in the future.” I continued, “My job as a parent is to teach you things and keep you safe. This is part of me teaching you. It’s hard. No parent wants to hear that their kid hates them, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay if it helps you learn and grow.” My son didn’t say anything. I knew it was time for me to go. He needed to think about what I had said, and I needed to think about how he was feeling and what he was going through. It wasn’t an easy time for either of us.

The teacher later reached out and said my son cooled off after a while and gotten back to his old self. When I picked him up in the afternoon, he was happier than I’d seen him in days. I didn’t broach the subject right away, but gave us some time to enjoy being happy together. After a while, I asked, “you were pretty unhappy with me this morning, how are you doing now?” He looked at me and replied, “Okay.” Our eyes met and I could tell he no longer was carrying that I-hate-you inside him towards me. I hugged him and commented that growing up can be tough sometimes, and left it at that. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening enjoying each other’s company.

Raising kids is challenging. It can be painful when you see your child struggle or lash out at you in anger of frustration. But that’s part of being a parent. Every time my son learns something new, so do I.

How do you handle your own anger? How do you help your child handle their’s?

I’ll be off next week for Memorial Day weekend fun with the family and will return following. Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend.

Parenting is a Team Sport

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Have you ever felt like parenting is a competition?

It’s a topic I often cover when speaking to parenting groups–being a parent can feel like many things including a rite of passage to see how we (as parents) can out do each other, or how our kids can. It starts when our child is very young — whose sleeping better through the night, eating better, rolling over first, standing up, walking, etc. We are proud of our child hitting a developmental milestone, and want to believe their success is largely due to our parenting skills, but in reality it is more a mixture of our child’s innate capabilities and disposition, which may or may not have been influenced by us.

While we may feel like competition is only between other parents, a topic that isn’t often spoken of is competition between the parents themselves. Competition between parents can be just as common, and is not limited to couples who are divorced. Competition between a couple can be more subtle in how it shows up: a child feels they can confide in one parent more than they can another and the parent who is left out feels sadness the child doesn’t have (or maybe want) to have the same relationship with them, or competition can arise when one parent connects/relates easily with their child, while the other struggles. There are many different ways the feeling of competition can arise, but parenting is not a competition; it’s about doing what’s right for our child, not us. This can be hard to keep front and center when we have our competitive juices flowing.

My husband took our oldest to his flag football game over the weekend. My younger son and I were going to meet them there closer to game time and were just about to head out the door when my husband called and said, “Don’t go anywhere, we’re coming home.” When they got home I asked what happened. I found out that our son was getting frustrated with what the coach was asking him to do. He was struggling to do the practice drill and was showing his frustration. Instead of being respectful to the coach and listening to what the coach was saying, he was getting more and more angry, and talking back. My husband told my son to calm down and be respectful, or we’re going home. My son jumped at the chance and said, “Fine, let’s go home.” I could tell by the look in my husband’s eyes when he told me that he hadn’t thought his threat would turn out the way it did. He had thought our son would calm down, and listen to the coach, because he wanted to play in the game. But he was stuck, like many of us when we may threats and are kids call us on it (anyone have to leave the restaurant or theatre — places you wanted to go, and then your child starts misbehaving or act up, and you threaten you’ll leave if they don’t calm down and they say basically indicate they never wanted to be there in the first place? Ugh!). I said, “Oh no, you are going to the game. That’s not fair to your team, but you’re not playing. You have to earn the right to play and you lost that right in the way you acted.  You are going to go there and support them — you are going to be their #1 cheerleader today, and you’re going to apologize to the coach for your behavior.” My son looked at me like he couldn’t believe this hadn’t happened earlier, and said, “Okay.” We got in the car and went to the field. He didn’t play, he did cheer and he apologized to the coach — not once, but twice. My hope was that he would understand you can never walk away when things get tough, you can’t let your actions let down a larger group (your team), and there are consequences, sometimes uncomfortable ones like apologizing to a coach, when you behave a certain way.

Later that night my husband and I were talking about what happened. Without discussing it, we easily could have been filed this incident in the competition file, where one parent did the “right” thing and the other did the “wrong” thing (one is a better parent than the other — see how easy situations can have that competitive feel?)…but that’s not the way we viewed it. Instead, one of us experienced, with the best intentions, a misstep and the other helped them recover. We are a team, and need each other’s help. Parenting is a team sport, not an individual one. We have certainly had scenarios where my husband helped bail me out of a misfired threat. We learn each time we experience this together, and allow ourselves the chance to discuss, reflect, and think about how we would handle the situation differently in the future. We get better together.

Have you ever felt like you were competing with another parent or your spouse? How do you parent as a team, versus as an individual?

Go Team!

The Great Outdoors

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What is your favorite part of being in the great outdoors?

Growing up I loved swimming in the pool, riding bikes and swinging on our swing set. The times that stay with me about being outdoors are the times when I did something different: having a water balloon fight; or playing baseball on a diamond that sat upon freshly mowed grass; or running through a rain storm to get back to our house after school–it was a bit of miserable (from getting wet) and exhilarating (can we get home before the real downpour hits?).

In honor of Earth Day, we took our boys to help do some weeding and planting in a community garden. It was the first time, in a long time, I had done ‘real’ gardening, outside of clipping back some branches and doing light weeding at home. It was fun to do it with our boys. They, along with the other kids who participated, loved finding earth worms, centipedes, and daddy long-leg spiders all around. Our youngest, who along with another boy, even found a forgotten potato patch in the overgrown garden. They were thrilled every time they found something new: potato, bug, broken piece of pottery or piece of wood. The particular patch of Earth we worked on was ideal — the soil was mainly soft and we someone were lucky enough to be in the shade. It made for hard, yet very comfortable and satisfying work.

What surprised me most while gardening was how far the weeds went down. Several times, I would find a little sprout of the green invasive species that had taken over our patch, and give it a light tug, thinking the roots could only go so deep. But they almost always went deeper, and deeper and deeper. An inch of green above ground could turn into several feet of root underneath. It was amazing. I was also struck with how good the weeds were at hiding. If a wooden board was in place to help separate the sections of the garden, the weeds were almost always thicker, deeper and stronger near that piece of wood. It reminded me of how many of us have our own personal weeds, and how we only like to show so much of ourselves ‘above ground’ (to most), and do whatever we can to protect the weeds or hide we really are beneath the surface. This realization helped me appreciate another benefit of the great outdoors — there are analogies all around in nature for how we live our lives, and how we can (I like the idea of my life being weeded out or weed-free).

We might think we were giving back to the Earth that Saturday, but the Earth was giving my family and I more in return.

What has the great outdoors given to you?

Secrets

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Secrets can be heavy, and are something a child learns to keep.

When I was six, I was playing restaurant with a friend. We were seated at the play table and decided we need to create a menu to make the game more fun. My friend asked, “what should we put on the menu?” I was feeling gutsy, so instead of saying what I normally would have said–pizza, fries, pie–I decided to try out a new word I’d heard a neighborhood teen say–a word that sounded bad, but I wasn’t sure. I decided my friend would be a safe place to try it out. I said, “why don’t we put f***ing cake on the menu.” My friend’s face went pale. I giggled nervously, thinking I was somehow cool for having the nerve to try it out. My friend said, “you just said a bad word. I’m going to go tell your mom.” Oh no, I thought…I hadn’t thought about my mom finding out as a possibility. I panicked and begged my friend not to tell. They did tell, and I got into big trouble. My punishment was soap in the mouth — needless to say I didn’t say another bad word out loud for a long time, but I picked up another habit…learning how to keep a secret. Instead of asking my parents or a trusted adult what something I didn’t understand, or was confused by, meant I kept it to myself, trying to figure out the meaning on my own, or relying on my peers or older kids in the neighborhood. It was a recipe for a lot of misinformation and even more confusion about how the world worked.

As an adult, I learned keeping secrets can become an overwhelming burden; weighing you down lot a ton of bricks. It can hinder your ability to enjoy your life controlling your thoughts and actions. Speaking your truth–whether it’s ignorance about how something works, or something you did, or something you didn’t do but should have, etc.–can set you free, or certainly start to lift you from the weight of the burden.

My son recently asked if he could talk to me in private. He asks me to do this occasionally, and I always reassure him that I will listen to what he has to say, and he doesn’t need to worry about being embarrassed or ashamed about whatever he wants to talk to me about. He shared that he had seen a picture that made him feel excited, nervous and sick. Despite having the computer in an open space in our home, with parental control filters on, he came across a picture that was too grown up for him to see (the pic was of a woman scantily clad in a provocative pose–it was an ad next to a YouTube video (the YouTube video was appropriate for kids, the ad clearly was not)). My heart dropped a bit when he told me this, partly because I recognized he was losing some of his innocence, and partly because I was hopeful we wouldn’t cross this bridge with him until he was much older. The upside of learning this information was that my son had the courage to tell me, and trusted me to help him deal with it.

While I would love to take away screen time forever and protect my son from being exposed to inappropriate matter, it isn’t realistic, and wouldn’t solve the problem. Instead, my husband and I needed to come up with a plan to help our son. I sat down and talked with him about what he saw (my husband had a separate conversation with him as well), and we came up with a plan for what to do when you come across inappropriate pictures. Like many parental firsts, I felt like we were treading new ground. I’d never had a conversation like this with my parents, and can only hope we’re handling this in a way that will truly help him.

After sharing his secret, my son’s demeanor changed: where he had been moody and short tempered, he became happy and couldn’t get the smile off his face. We were out the next day enjoying ourselves, and he came over to me and said, “Mom, I don’t have any more secrets!” I could see the shear joy on his face at this realization. I asked him how not having any secrets felt. He thought for a moment and said, “Pretty good.” Pretty good indeed, I thought.

Keeping a secret is hard. Helping your child navigate growing up is hard. Having open conversations that don’t allow secrets to live is freeing, and it feels great.

How are you helping your child navigate challenging issues?

Bad Dreams

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My oldest is nine. He is starting to want to branch out and watch TV programs on channels other than Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. He understand that the ratings on a TV show are a good guide to help him understand if my husband and I will be okay with him watching it’s content. He asked me to sit with him while he watched a show about the history or legends of strange places. I wasn’t keen on him watching the show, as I felt it could be confusing and potentially give him nightmares, but knew that I couldn’t shield him from such show forever. I sat down with him and proceeded to watch the show.

Part of the episode included a gangster getting killed by other gangsters who were trying to free him. The show did a good job of showing minimal carnage, but you got the idea of what happened: there were Tommy guns, and spatters of blood with people lying on the ground. I told my son we needed to find something else to watch. Later that night after my son had gone to bed, he got up and told me he couldn’t sleep. I knew this would happen, I thought, ugh! I told him to sit down and talk to me about what was keeping him awake. “I can’t get the image out of my head. I keep thinking someone is going to come out of nowhere and shoot me,” he shared. My first attempt to make him feel better was based on facts: gangsters are something we mainly see on TV, not in real life. I proceeded to detail when gangsters were at their height and why gangsters were dangerous. He thought about this for a minute and said, “Thanks, but that doesn’t really help.” Okay, what else can I try? I thought about the technique I use when I get scary images in my head, I try to turn them into something less threatening or scary. I try to turn them into something silly or ridiculous. It’s hard to be afraid when the image makes you smile or laugh. I shared my idea with my son, “what if we could make what’s scary you into something funny?” He smiled at the thought. I said, “What if instead of bullets coming out of the gun, tickets, like you win at the Family Fun Center, came out of the gun; and it made a ding-ding-ding sound instead of a bang-bang-bang sound?” I had him now, he was grinning from ear to ear. “Or what if, instead of pulling a gun out of his coat, he pulled out a butterfly?” my son added with a laugh. “I love it! That’s really good,” I said. I could tell my son was feeling better and had a strategy that was helping him.

It turned out the TV show provided an opportunity to connect with my son and allowed me to give him a tool he could use; it felt good.

How have you helped your child work through a nightmare? What unexpected places provided an opportunity for you to teach, or connect with, your child?

Oscar

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What’s in a name? A name is used to identify people, with distinctive traits that differentiate us from one another. Some names are more common than others, some more unique. Each name has an origin and meaning; it sometimes matches the person or object (car, trophy, stuffed animal, etc.), sometimes it doesn’t.

The Academy Awards got me thinking about those named Oscar.  Some more famous Oscars include:

  • Oscar Wilde – writer and poet
  • Oscar de la Renta – designer
  • Oscar de la Hoya – boxer

And those that use the name fictitiously or more playfully include:

  • Oscar the Grouch: a muppet who lives in a trash can, what’s not to love?
  • Oscar Mayer: bologna, hotdogs, what kid could want more?
  • Oscar: the character from the TV show The Office

And while they are all very different, they have the name, Oscar, in common.

My children have virtually no interest in watching the Academy Awards, but they are very interested in talking about different Oscars. It’s fun to think of such a wide range of accomplished individuals and interesting characters that have your same name. It got my kids and I thinking about our own names and others that share them. We were able to think of at least one notable person that shared each of our respective names. We found the knowledge of knowing someone famous shared our name made each of us happy. Maybe not winning-a-golden-statue-named-Oscar happy, but happy none-the-less.

What’s in a name? Happiness for now.

 

Jackpot!

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When was the last time you felt like you struck it rich? Whether it was winning money unexpectedly or having an outcome or experience better than expected?

I had one in an unexpected place…a local family fun center. We went to the family fun center to pass the time on a rainy day. My boys were off playing separate games. I was with my younger son and we joined his brother to an atmosphere of excitement. Lights were flashing and the machine was dispensing tickets at a fast rate. My older son exclaimed, “I hit the jackpot!” When he said this, I thought he won maybe 50 tickets or so. But then I looked at the game and saw he indeed hit The Jackpot — 1500 tickets. He was ecstatic, and I was stunned. How often does someone hit a jackpot, I thought.

We can so often think the jackpot is out of our reach in life. While we might not win the lottery or the jackpot at our local family fun center, I’d argue that we’ve all hit the jackpot many times without realizing it. I felt like I hit the jackpot when I met my husband, we bought our first house and when our kids were born. I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot anytime I see a beautiful landscape, hear a song that I love, I connect with others in my writing or speaking, run into a friend in an unexpected place, or get an “I love you” from one of my boys. When I think about it, I’ve hit the ‘jackpot’ many times. It isn’t a rare thing, as much as it is a special thing.

When do you feel like you’ve hit the jackpot?

Puppet Show

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What do you do to jumpstart your activity in the New Year?  No, I don’t mean what exercise regiment have you started, but how do you rebound from all the activity around the holidays and then those few days of calm between Christmas and New Years, where things seem to slow down, things become calmer, and you have some time to breathe?

It’s not uncommon for my ‘jumpstart’ to take place sometime several weeks into the year. I yearn to hold onto the slowness and peaceful state-of-mind I feel those days at the end of the year, and look ahead to the next time I’ll get to experience that feeling again. Thinking of future vacations helps.

My kids are much more eager to get back into the swing of things than I…seeing their friends at school and resuming activities seems to get their energy back up.

On a workday morning not long into the New Year, I was overwhelmed with everything that had to be accomplished in the day ahead. I was eager to get the kids going so I could start getting through my lists of “to-dos”. My youngest son didn’t want to get ready, and was adamant about not getting out of bed.  As I assessed the situation two choices came to mind: 1) I can get frustrated, and start to dole out consequences (potentially ruining my day, and my sons), or 2) do something different.  As I was assessing the situation and deciding what to do next, I happened to notice a puppet on the floor in my son’s room.  Hmmm…could a puppet help me do something different to prompt my son along? 

I picked up the puppet, a fluffy plush cat puppet and brought the cat to life. “Hmmm, I don’t want to get ready, I just want to sit in bed all day long and do nothing,” I said in a cat voice, “I’ll just sit here all day. I don’t care if I get dirty, I don’t care if I don’t learn anything. I’m going to do what I want.” My son was amused. Using the puppet brought a smile to my face. Engaging him in this way was helping me experience a creative energy I hadn’t felt since before the holidays. I continued, “Too bad I’ll only be known as plain old Fluffy, but at least I get to stay in my bed.” I had the cat pause for a moment and then had Fluffy take on a new and improved persona. “Hmmm, maybe I will get dressed after all. I’ll brush my teeth and make my bed. I’ll go to school and I’ll learn and I’ll do BIG things. I’m going to be Fluffy the Fabulous,” I added with gusto. Fluffy was going places, and my son was eager to follow.  I asked my son, “which Fluffy are you going to be today? Plain old Fluffy or Fluffy the Fabulous?” He considered my questions momentarily and replied, “Fluffy the Fabulous, of course.” We both giggled and he finally started to get himself ready.

Sometimes it just takes a moment to wipe away the dreary and get pep back in your step. Who knew a simple puppet could make that happen?

What is giving you energy in the New Year?