As mentioned before in this blog, I sometimes play the game "when my Mother was my age" to remind myself of how different my life would be if I was a young Mom like she was when she had my brother and me.
This usually makes me appreciate my life as I know I don't have the emotional maturity at my age to handle a teenager.
But, I would like to think that I have the emotional maturity to handle a seven year old. (At least on most days.) And it is interesting to think about what that emotional maturity does for children overall.
There is some preliminary research to indicate that older Moms (at least Danish ones) have more emotionally mature children, due to the fact that they mellowed out a lot before they had babies. Factors like economic stability and emotional behaviors settling down in the mid-thirties played a role in mothers creating more stability for their children: They yelled at them less often and gave them more balanced information than their younger mother counterparts.
This got me thinking about how the media portrays young mothers - even those in their early 20s. It's always that cheesy picture of a woman with a briefcase in one hand and a baby in the other, or the frazzled woman who looks exhausted. I'm not saying that is the case for all young women, but it is telling that the media doesn't show us many images of older Moms. If they did, would it be of women who seem more settled?
Do you consider yourself to be an older or a younger Mom? Tell me in the comments.
You are in the grocery store.
In front of you is a Mom and her son. He is jumping up and down, repeatedly saying her name, grabbing items off the impulse rack that she then has to wordlessly return, and genuinely showing some bratty behaviors. And she is calmly ignoring it all.
Of course she is ignoring it all: She is a pro at that. Parents have to develop a way to drown out their children's annoying behaviors or they will drive themselves crazy responding to them.
I like to think of this as Parental Blindness Syndrome. I know my child is a good person and working on certain behaviors, so I will turn a blind eye to the less desirable ones and not nitpick at him for every little thing.
But there are times when PBS can get us into trouble: Like when it comes to our child's health.
In a small study, which should be expanded for verification, doctors found that grandparents and other family members were better than parents at identifying the symptoms of autism at a very early age. It's true: Those family members one-step removed from the parental relationship were able to see the symptoms that parents did not.
Since one of the keys to fighting autism is early intervention, this is pretty big news.
It can be hard to listen to anyone criticize your children (if not downright impossible). But since we already have a blind eye; we should work to make sure we don't have a deaf ear as well.
Do you have family members who point out flaws in your children? Tell me how you feel about that in the comments.
I'm going to tell you a secret:
I've mentioned before that I am a morning person, and it is true: I am usually at my best in the morning. My alarm goes off, I get out of bed and my brain starts buzzing about the day I am going to have.
But let's focus on the first part of that sentence: My alarm goes off. I do not wake up naturally at 5 am (it has happened, but it is rare.) And a lot of times, I do not want to get out of bed, but I do it anyway. I have found that the secret is for me to just push myself out of bed and tell myself that returning to sleep is not an option.
My son's alarm goes off with mixed results: Sometimes he is awake and productive, other times he needs to be frog-marched through his morning routine. It depends on where he was in his sleep cycle when he woke and it depends on if it is a weekend or a school day.
The bad part of this is that I know I could actually let my son wake up naturally. His school doesn't start until 9 am, which means we are in the fortunate position of him catching the bus at 8:42 am...I should let him sleep. But there are several reasons why I wake him early:
- We all need our routines in life. He is lucky that school starts late now, but that is not going to always be the case. Better to get him used to a standard wake up time now.
- He is getting enough sleep - a little more than 9 hours per night, which is good for his age.
- I want to spend time with him before I go to work. I know this is selfish.
We are lucky. We are lucky at the late start time of our school, as more and more schools are actually starting earlier, causing their students to be sleep deprived. And now researchers are taking a look at the effects of the too early start of the day for students. It sounds like most people agree that our children should be allowed to sleep in.
What time does your child need to get up to catch the bus? Tell me in the comments.
I adore my son. I think he is brilliant, funny, quirky, sweet and kind. I love the way he wants to read on the couch next to me when he sees me reading, and the way he throws his whole body around mine in a big hug when I come home from work. He amazes me with how quickly he learns new concepts and the way he digs deep into subjects that fascinate him.
And, of course, there are times when he drives me crazy.
I do my best to take those moments with a grain of salt. I know that I must have driven my parents crazy, too (sorry, Mom). But, to their credit, they don't talk about those times. Instead, they tell me how wonderful I was.
And that is the type of parent I want to be: One who focuses on the good times.
Hopefully, all those positive thoughts will pay off in the future: I want my son to hang out with us after he reaches adulthood, because having frequent interactions with family may help add years to my life. The emotional support and contact of having your children nearby has a profound impact on you as you get older, although researchers are only now cracking the surface of what all those wonderful benefits are.
I must be doing something right so far as he has announced plans to buy the lot next door to us and build his home there. That works for me!
How far away from your parents do you live? Give me the rough estimate in the comments.
My son has an ever-rotating list of people whom he calls his best friend. One week it is a certain child in his class, the next week it is the kid who waits at the bus stop with him and then the week after that it will be someone in his scouts pack. For the most part, I am fine with this: As long as he is nice to everyone that is enough basis for a friendship for a seven-year-old.
Friendships have plenty of time to get more complicated as we get older. In fact, friendships mean so much to our lives that the lack of them could seriously affect our health. In this great first-person article, the author confronts the fact that parenthood has taken away all his time for friendships and he has had to figure out a way to get them back.
I think the story on that link is incredibly common - most parents (including me) seem to disappear from their friends' lives as they figure out the parenting thing. Then as the children get older, we have to figure out if we are going to find friends again or continue on as though our children are our friends. (Hint: you should find your own friends.)
The trouble with this is making the time to do it, but evidently, it can be done. One secret (especially for men) is to have a shared activity.
So, the question becomes: What do you and your friends do to make time for each other? Tell me your secret formula in the comments.
Inexplicably, my son wakes up early on the weekends. I don't know how he does this. I know why he does it, as he proudly tells me that he gets himself up early so he can have "the most amount of fun on his days off as possible." But this still doesn't explain how he will not move a muscle when his alarm goes off on school mornings yet wake himself up a good half-hour earlier than his alarm on weekends.
I have to keep a close eye on him when he wakes up early because usually he will start getting a little cranky as the day wears on.
You see, my son doesn't believe me when I tell him that he needs nine hours of sleep every night. He complains that he isn't tired at bedtime and that it is unfair that I stay up later than he does. He doesn't think it is true that he really needs that much sleep, which is why I show him articles like this one.
He read the article, and here were his takeaways:
- Did I really used to get 10 hours of sleep every nights? (Yes.)
- I think it would really be OK if you let me stay up late every weekend. (No.)
- You know I really don't sleep, right? I just look at the stars all night and take a short nap. (Sure you do.)
- I'm not really grumpy ever. (Uh-huh.)
For me, the key takeaway was a little different - we've been skipping that calming activity at bedtime. We used to read books together to relax, but lately, it has been him going straight to bed after rushing him through his nighttime routine. Having that calming activity might be something that needs to make a comeback in our household.
What do you do to help calm your children down for bedtime? Tell me in the comments.
I know what my son's homework is: I know about the spelling assignments and the online math homework and the reading comprehension sheets and all the additional projects. I know all of this, of course, because my son's teacher sends notes - both physical and over email - on a very regular basis.
But I also recognize that it is easy for me to keep up with all of his assignments because he is only in first grade, and part of the assignment is getting him used to the process of doing homework. The goal is that he will be able to keep track of it all on his own one day, because homework is his responsibility. (Side note: He doesn't seem very accepting of the idea when I tell him how long he may have homework in his life, even after he has a job, but I am pretty sure that is normal.)
We struggle a bit, but we make homework one of our son's priorities. But there are lots of families who aren't able to get their child into the homework groove, which, by the teenage years, can be detrimental. So, researchers have been experimenting with various ways to get parents more involved in their student's academic lives. It turns out that texts may work. By linking student's performance to an online teacher workbook, one school was able to alert parents to missed assignments, skipped classes and other notes from teachers.
The results included more parental interaction in the school and their child's academic life, so that is promising news. But then, my question becomes whether or not parents should still be checking up on their student's work by high school. The teams haven't moved the test to middle schools yet to see what the results are, but it would make sense to me to tackle the homework/schoolwork problem as early as possible.
Would you want to get a text if your child missed an assignment? Tell me in the comments.
A few months ago we took our son to the local high school to watch a robotics competition. In addition to the robotics, he loved seeing the older students and spent some time talking about how large the school was and what he would learn there.
He asked a lot of questions about high school that day, which made me have to think long and hard about my high school experience. It struck me how quickly the memories came back to me, especially considering that most days I can't vividly recall what I did the previous week. And while I will admit that high school was not the best time of my life, it was also not the worst.
But here's the thing about high school: We are all haunted by it. In that long-form article from Quartz, an evolutionary psychologist breaks down that time of our lives and how it can help shape the person we are today. It also explains how this developmental phase is so important in our lives, it causes our brains to pay more attention to it, resulting in our ability to recall those memories much more vividly later on in life.
When you combine all of that with the time in your life when you are going through puberty, trying to break away from your parents and figure out who you are as a person...it seems like a lot of pressure (and we haven't even considered the academics yet).
I can't say that I'll remember all of this when my son is in high school. I will probably slip up and put too much pressure on him and forget that he is trying to navigate a sea of social groups and learn who he is. But maybe, just maybe, I'll remember to tell him to slow down and savor a part of his life that is important but doesn't have to define him.
Do you have fond memories of high school? Tell me in the comments.
I have made two key points very clear to my son over the past year:
- Mommy is not an octopus.
- Mommy does not know everything.
The first concept is an acknowledgement that I can't do everything at once, so if he sees me already in the middle of a task, he should not try to add to my workload (most things can wait).
The second point lets him know that it is OK to say "I don't know," but then we should look up the answers so we learn what they are.
And for the most part, we have fun looking up answers, like the time I couldn't remember enough from my 10th grade anatomy class to answer all his questions about how the intestines function, so we found a kid-appropriate video to explain it.
But, I wonder how much longer we will look things up together and when he will realize that he can ask questions of our electronic devices.
Besides the ones on our phones, we've had a digital assistant (Alexa) in our house for a long time now, and although I usually only use it to play music and get a weather report, I know it would be able to answer lots of my son's questions. I'm not sure how I feel about my son going to that device for his questions, or what the long-term repercussions are of having children interact with digital assistants.
For now, I am just happy that he keeps asking Mommy for answers.
Does your family have a digital assistant? How often do your children interact with it? Share with me in the comments.
When my son was a baby, the smoke alarm went off in our home. It was the same ear-piercing alarm that most smoke alarms make, but oddly, he slept right through it. He didn't even flinch. And, he was still sleeping when the firefighters arrived a few minutes later to give us the all clear that the monoxide alarm was malfunctioning.
I have often contributed my son's ability to sleep through that alarm to the fact that he tends to be a deep sleeper. But that may not be the case. It turns out a lot of children are able to sleep through smoke alarms because their bodies are trained to tune out everything that is not a parental voice as they sleep.
My son knows what to do in case of an emergency, but what good does that do him if he isn't able to hear the alarm go off? They do not make smoke detectors that record a parent's voice, but considering how my son is able to tune me out in the morning, I am not sure that is an answer either.
Have you tested your child's reaction to a smoke detector? Tell me in the comments.
Before I go to bed, I check in on my sleeping son. I love to watch him sleep - he is so still and peaceful and quiet. I often wonder what he is dreaming about as he lays there so still, usually with an arm wrapped around a stuffed animal friend.
I also wonder when I will lose the urge to check on him at night. I know this is a habit left over from when he was a baby. But now that he is older, he needs more privacy.
I am able to do my late-night checks without his knowing because he is a heavy sleeper. I am the light sleeper in the family. And it is because I am the light sleeper that I was the one who always woke when he cried out in the middle of the night. It turns out that this is true of most women: Moms lose the most sleep over their children.
I'm OK with this arrangement, however, as my husband once offered to take the teenager late shift: Since he is more of a night owl than I am, he will be the parent to wait up for our son if he should ever choose to come home after curfew.
But, let's be honest: I'll probably be awake then, too.
Who gets up in the middle of the night with your child? Tell me in the comments.
Like many mothers before me, I have always assumed that my son would have a few years of devotedly following me around before deciding that he wanted to be just like his wonderful Daddy, and then he would start following him around all the time. And, for the most part, this has started to happen: My little guy has started to decline time with me in favor of hanging out more frequently with my husband.
However, I am now not sure if this trend will hold. Scientists have been able to identify a gene that causes children prefer one parent over another.
I am not sure how I feel about knowing that information. I wanted my son to prefer spending time with me because I am fun and inventive and smart and great to be around, not because he has a biological imperative to prefer me (if that is indeed the case).
But I don't want to end this post on a negative note, so I will just remind myself that my husband has chosen to spend his time with me, despite having no genes that would influence his decision to do so (at least as far as I know.) I'm glad the three of us make a point of hanging out together.
Does your child seem to prefer your company or your spouse's? Share with me in the comments.
Right before Valentine's Day, I received several brightly colored pieces of paper letting me know that parents were invited into the classroom to secretly decorate their child's desk for February 14.
I know my work schedule. I know that traffic is as much my friend as it is my enemy. So, I took the day off. And, although I was able to accomplish a lot of stuff on that day off, the primary reason was that I could go to my son's school while he was riding the bus home and secretly place hearts all over his desk.
I appreciate when these special school notices are sent well in advance so I can make plans. (They don't balance out all the fundraising notices, but I get it.) I try really hard to participate where I can - signing up to bring items in for parties, attend the concerts when I am able, and let the teachers know that I care.
That last item is especially important, as researchers have found that teachers are willing to do more for children (either through more individual time spent with them or going the extra mile to support them when times are tough) if teachers have a positive view of the parents.
To working parents, who come home to start dinner and check on homework and take children to activities...that is a lot of extra pressure.
So, the question becomes: How do you show your child's teacher that you really care about your child's education? Tell me in the comments.
When my son was only five weeks old, we toured the school we would be sending him to when I returned to work. We walked through each of the brightly lit rooms, starting with the infant room. We ended the tour in the room of three-year-olds. Those children looked massive to me and I could not wrap my head around my little baby being one of those giants one day.
Now, as he approaches seven, I have a hard time imagining what he will look like as a teenager or even as an adult.
But that's just the physical appearance. There is no telling how much he will change personality wise as he continues to grow. You see, there have been some decades-long studies that show we are basically the same person from our childhood years to our middle age or from our middle age to older age, but now there is a study that suggests that our almost 80-year-old self is unrecognizable from our teenage self.
While there is no direct cause for the shift in the personality over a lifetime, I am sure we could speculate. Our personalities can be shaped by what we experience over a lifetime, and some of those shifts can disrupt our entire perspectives on the world.
I have lots of hopes for my son, especially around the values that our family holds most dear - I want him to keep those values at the core of his life and pass them onto his children. But, no one really knows what the future will hold.
Do you think you are the same person now as you were as a teenager? Tell me about it in the comments.
