Siblings-why must you try so hard to irritate one another?

Only children are notoriously and stereotypically self centered and full of emotional issues. But honestly, why do some of us feel a desire to have more than one child? I mean, I love my kids and wouldn't trade them for the world, but what was I thinking, having more than one? Did I have some fantasy that the constant bickering that can occur between siblings would not happen in my household? Did I somehow believe that my children would be from some perfect universe where they never insulted or hurt or angered one another? Honestly, I think I didn't even contemplate it. When I decided to have more than one child, I do not remember even entertaining thoughts about how they would be to each other. Except when I was pregnant with one and tried to educate the older one(s) on what to expect with a baby in the house and how I may need their help with some things, I didn't spend time considering how the children would get along. When, as a mother of 3, I met my current husband, who had 2 of his own already, I did not think much about those children not forming bonds or relationships. We gave them time to spend together and helped them work out issues when they arose and hoped for the best outcome, I suppose.

Here I am, eight children later, all but my youngest two out of the home during the school days, being driven to the brink of insanity by kids who aren't old enough to tie their own shoes. I am perpetually astonished by my toddler's desire and ability to annoy my pre-schooler. Its like she lives for it. Is he playing with legos or dinosaurs? She wants to interrupt, ruin or otherwise interfere or take over the play session. Is he drawing or coloring or making a craft? She wants to take all of his supplies and run to the other room, throwing them about along the way. She doesn't seem to have a desire to copy what he is doing, leading her to this unending need to be involved in it all, she just seems to want to mess it up. 

He's not much better. Whatever she is doing, if he's not already so heavily involved in his own play that he doesn't notice her, he will go over and climb onto her or knock the toys out of her hand. How do most of us grow up to be decent adults after having started out having such intense focus to ruin others' happiness? 

Siblings require a lot of patience. Patience I didn't realize I possessed until I had more than one child. When I added a second child, it changed everything. When I added a third child and therefore had outnumbered myself as far as ratio of hands to children, it changed things even more. Adding more children to the mix after that didn't really change my parenting that much, but having these youngest two and especially tolerating them within the constraints of fighting an often fatal disease like breast cancer, has certainly tested my ability to stay sane. I'm not really sure that I am sane most days. There are times when I have absolutely no patience for the constant chatter of my four year old or the constant "mommy, mommy" of my nearly two year old. There's barely ever a day I have enough patience to tolerate the non-stop urges my youngest children have to make each other's lives a living hell. All I can do is try my best to teach them not to find joy in getting on each other's nerves and how not to let the need to compare themselves consume everything they do. 

Parents don't get a sick day

Everyone gets ill sometimes. Usually its because some little kid (yours or someone else's) brought some of their nasty little germs over to you and gave them to you as a prize for being the closest person to them at the time. If you work for a good employer, you have a set number of sick days at your disposal or even some vacation time that you can use to cover your absence from work for a day or more while you vomit, sneeze, cough, shake, seize or have whatever symptoms (real or imaginary) you are having associated with the virus or bacteria (or stress induced boss avoidance) that has invaded the home you call a body.
Parents do not get paid for the job they do. Perhaps if they did, some of them would choose to take it more seriously and do a better job at it. Parents aren't offered a benefits package when they sign on  for being the caretaker of a child. If we get sick, and we are not a single parent (or we are a single parent with helpful family and/or friends), we might be able to get enough help from our spouse or others to make it possible to rest and take care of ourselves in order to recover faster. However, this is not always an available option even with the most caring and supportive family or partner because it often means they have to take a day off as well and sometimes that's just not possible or doesn't make sense financially. Very often, as parents, we have to deal with being sick, or having a headache or backache or a twisted ankle or sore kee and still have to parent our kids. Even with tons of help, we don't truly get a day off from parenting. We still have to be there for our kids. Being a parent means sucking it up and trudging through the day with our kids whether we feel up to the job or not.
You can take herbs, vitamins or other natural remedies to get you over stuff faster, you can take conventional medicine to hide your symptoms, you can do a combination of both or you can take nothing at all. No matter what you choose to do, you do not get the option of pretending you are not a parent and have no responsibility to the offspring you have. Parents do not get a sick day. If you are really lucky, what you get is a cute little drawing from one or more of your children wishing you to get well soon so you can get back to making them dinner and helping them clean up the mess from that craft project you told them not make right now. Oh well....maybe you can sleep extra tomorrow. Good luck with that.

Everyone needs a little bullying sometimes

I knew that title would catch people's attention since bullying has been such a hot topic these last few years. I think the term "bullying" has been used a little too loosely, though. According to Merriam-Webster, bullying is defined as "to frighten, hurt, or threaten (a smaller or weaker person)" or "to cause (someone) to do something by making threats or insults or by using force". According to most school systems and many parents, I think the definition is probably more along the lines of this: "to hurt the feelings of or potentially upset any person, no matter how immature or weak-minded the bully or 'victim' is and no matter the intention or result of the statement(s) or action(s)".
Now don't get me wrong, I don't support physical bullying or even a threat of physical violence. No child, or adult, should be physically attacked in any manner, nor should anyone be threatening anyone else with that, or other behavior that could cause harm, to get what they want from that person (take note, Chris Christie). Parents and the family unit should be teaching children to get what they want by working for it and using good etiquette and manners through life, not by forcing other people to do things for them. The golden rule, which is not just a christian biblical rule, is present in some form in nearly all religious texts' as well as the teachings of non-religious people and should be taught as an overall rule for anyone to follow.
Also don't get me wrong that I'm saying its okay for kids to go around picking on other kids at will and for just anything, Children should be taught more tolerance and to care for their fellow citizens (that's the parents' job), but as most parents don't hold those traits, it becomes nearly impossible for the offspring to learn them. I do, however, fully support the positive influence that peer pressure can have that cannot be matched by any amount of good or bad parenting. Peer pressure, as we all know, thanks to decades of Saturday morning commercials about it, can lead kids to drugs, alcohol and criminal behavior. It can also push kids to study more, stay in school, eat right, excercise and go to college.
Peer pressure has such a bad connotation, it seems, but people forget that when my generation, and those before me, were children, peer pressure (the positive kind) tended to be what people nowadays refer to as bullying. When I was a kid, if you were too lazy to shower at least every other day, and you began to stink, your classmates didn't get in trouble for saying, "you stink" and not wanting to sit near you at lunch. It only took one or two times of that kind of teasing before you started showering every day and wearing deodorant.
Years ago, at a much younger age, my stepson went through a phase where, when he went to the bathroom, at home or in public, he stood at the urinal, or toilet, and pulled his pants completely down to pee. He never seemed to have a good reason, but my husband and I often thought maybe it was because he wasn't holding himself well and if he only pulled his pants down a little, he'd pee on them. No matter how many times my husband tried to teach him how to "pee like a man" so to speak, he didn't take any tips to heart until, when he went to middle school, kids began to tease him for wearing "tighty whities". We never could understand the problem these youngsters had with white underwear, but for whatever reason, they teased my stepson for this and when he told us about it, among other things we discussed, we pointed out to him that the boys would never know he was wearing white underwear if he didn't pull his pants all the way down to his ankles at the urinal. Suddenly, he stopped that behavior, Nothing we had done previously had gotten him to use the urinal like everyone else was, in a way that didn't creep people out when they walked in to see his bare ass in the public bathroom, but "bullying" did.
There are a great number of personal experiences I can name for me, and those of my children, where behavior that's often seen as bullying, has caused hurt feelings and been a negative experience, but I can name just as many that resulted in a positive behavior change. Additionally, as a depressed teen and young adult, I went through some really dark times, but none of them were ever related to being teased about my weight or my clothes, or anything else. The way I felt about myself back then was poor, but it wasn't because of the negative experiences I'd had with some kids my own age. However, many of the positive changes I made in those years, had very much to do with pressure I felt from or words directed at me by friends, my peers and society in general.
Unfortunately, for lazy parents everywhere, it takes a lot more effort to talk to your child about their feelings if they've been teased, to tell them to take it with a grain of salt, remind them to think of all the wonderful qualities they do have and that they don't need to change for anyone but themselves.
The easy way out is to blame another child, whose parents probably didn't teach him or her that picking on other kids isn't nice and who may or may not have a crappier life than your kid that is causing the "bully" to take it out on others. Instead of making sure that kid "pays for" making your child feel like dirt for five minutes, make it your job to make sure your child feels good about themselves for the other one thousand, four hundred and thirty five minutes of the day. And rather than calling your child's principal and asking for some kind of disciplinary action to be taken against the so called bully, contact your school's counselor to ask if they can help the other child and yours learn to get along or, at the very least, tolerate each other. Remember, tolerance-it's what's for dinner, and breakfast and lunch and snack and ....well, you get the point. Next time your child comes home complaining that someone "bullied" them because they didn't like the adrogenous colored shirt they were wearing to school that day, read to them the definition of bullying and then go out and buy them four more shirts of the same color. Eventually, even bullies get tired of making the same joke.
As competely the opposite of uplifting this may sound, make sure your kids know that the actions of people who don't know better or don't care, will continue into adulthood and that they better get used to not being able to please everyone all the time or they won't make it to middle age with their sanity. That, I think, is the other great disservice to children caused by schools and parents trying to prevent so much of this teasing by referring to it as the more aggressive sounding "bullying". Children are basically taught that everyone should like each other all the time, no matter what and you should never say anything that might possibly offend anyone. Then they grow up and enter the real world, where college professors, bosses and other adults, critcize them and these now grown up children aren't emotionally prepared to handle it all. This is one of the same reasons I detest the uniform policy that many schools have adopted in the last ten years, but that's a blog for another day.
Finally, what ever happened to it being okay that everyone isn't exactly alike and what happened to it being okay that not everyone likes the same things? Turning bullying into a catch-all term to cover anything that any kid doesn't like at any time, that's what.

Four letter word is a four letter word

I have a foul mouth. If you've read even part of any one of my blog postings, this information is not a surprise to you. I also have kids (obviously) which means there is a portion of time during which I have to edit myself more, so that I don't end up with toddlers running around asking people "what the fuck are you doing?".
Some people are horrified that I would cuss around any of my children, as if it's the worst thing I could do. My husband's ex-wife and the mother of his two oldest children is one of these people. I could make a long list of things she does wrong concerning her children, but I won't publicly front her out. Instead, let me just say that I'd have to make up some Eddie Murphy worthy cuss words just to match her bad parenting.
This is always an interesting argument to me, when other parents, aka people-who-think-they-know-everything mention that adults shouldn't say "foul words" around kids. I can't help but ask several questions:
#1 Who decided which words are considered "foul"?
#2 Aren't there other rules that apply to children yet don't apply to adults?
#3 If you answered yes to #2, why are children expected to refrain from doing other things that adults do, but can't even be present when their parents are using the predetermined "foul language"?
I mean, think about those questions and your own answers to them. Do they make sense?
My six year old daughter's school considers "butt" an inappropriate word in their setting so they use "bottom". In my house, butt is short for buttocks, which is the proper term for that thing you sit on during too many hours of the school day. Bottom is the underside of something, which for a human, is the soles of their feet. My kids are allowed to say "crap" though it's not allowed in many homes and many public places.
Then there's the issue about rules. My kids don't get to cross the street or go to the movies with an adult until they reach a certain age. I'm guessing that, even though the age at which you allow this for your children may differ from mine, you have these same rules in your home. There are tons of things kids can't do until they're older, or adults. I don't drink alcohol, but many adults do, and they don't necessarily do it out of sight of their offspring. Cursing is one of the few rules that seems to fall on the wrong end of the double standard spectrum.
See, this is the way my husband and I look at it: I don't let my kids use the words that are fairly universally frowned upon in this country until they are old enough to know how to restrict that usage to situations and settings where they won't get in trouble for it. For example, my 15 year old daughter is about to be told, for her sixteenth birthday, that she can start "swearing" now, if she wants. My seventeen and a half year old son did not get the same privilege. It's been less then a year since he was told he could use those kinds of words because he has less self control. He would have used that kind of language and gotten detention, or worse, in school and probably offended people out in public by letting his mouth run free. He eventually earned the right to use bad language without us punishing him.
Like I said, I do have to calm my mouth sometimes. While a four year old understands when you tell them they're not allowed to say certain words they heard mommy say, a two year old does not. And it is not my preference to offend my more prudish friends with my language, so just as I don't talk religion, or rather my distaste for it, with my catholic friends, nor do I say certain words around certain people. However, when I'm hanging out with close and like minded buddies, you might want to cover your ears!

The great school day vacation from parenting

If you don't homeschool your kids (which is just fine if that's what you want), you send them off to school at around age 5, for anywhere from 3-7 or more hours per day. If you're like a lot of selfish, shitty parents, you assume that everything happening to your child between those hours is not your problem.
Many of today's parents expect that their children will not just be educated in english (or some other language), math, science and perhaps a little social studies (and the arts, if they're REALLY lucky), but will also have their morality education needs met, along with being taught everything from wiping their little snotty noses to wiping their little filthy asses. However, all of this has to be done by people who aren't allowed to say "butt", can't teach your child about sex or orgasm or their period, nor give them a simple and loving hug without fear of someone accusing them of being a pervert. And heaven forbid a teacher discipline your child.
We hand our kids over to a system that we expect to do all of the parenting for us during school hours as well as much of the parenting that takes place during the child's time at home. We end up creating this vast and idiotic circle where schools feel the need to fill in the gaps that so many parents leave around their offspring and then more gaps form from the laziness that is the product of the schools filling in so many gaps. Its like one person standing at the edge of a sinkhole with a plastic spoon, trying to refill it, while it's still being created.
The average public school teacher, in the United States, makes around $40K a year. Not a very good salary for someone who is being entrusted with the education of our most important, moldable and easily influenced little minds. And yet, many parents expect those lowly paid individuals to not only care as much about their children as the parents pretend to, but also to educate them on everything they need to know to grow up and be productive adults without any assistance from the family they should be spending more time with. Many teachers not only spend their day following lesson plans and state rules on what your kid is supposed to learn, but also stay after school, offering their time, likely without pay, to make sure your youngster actually understands and grasps the material.
Too many parents act as if they should have no role in their child's education, even though almost as many will become perturbed with the school system for not teaching their child what they think they should be learning. Some parental units even act as if the sky is about to fall simply because their child might have work that has to be done outside of school hours. Even worse, apparently, is that the parent(s) might be expected to help if there is something the child does not understand. I've known a parent or two who think that having access to the teacher's email address means they should be able to expect a response any time day or night, school day or not, just in case there's something their child didn't responsibly pay attention to regarding their homework or an assigned project.
It's just not possible for kids to learn everything they need to know in the limited time they spend at school, even if they attend before or after school tutoring or Saturday school (where available). If you want your child to be prepared for college and/or the real world, you need to be prepared to step in and get involved with their education. Reading with your child, not just falsely signing a reading log that says you did, might be a difficult thing to fit into your schedule, but if you don't find a way, you're not putting your children's needs before your own. Don't understand math or science? Find a tutor, if your child isn't getting enough help from school. Most schools have contacts to refer you to of local college students or teachers who also tutor in their free time (ha ha) for rates as low as $10-20 per hour. For people on a strict budget (like us), this can be a stretch, but your child should be worth the effort and maybe just an hour or three over the course of a few weeks could be enough.
My point is this: not all teachers do their job well, not all students learn the way the school system is set up to teach them, not all that your kid needs to know to grow and be a productive, well mannered and helpful member of society is taught in schools.
Stop getting pissed off at the schools because your child refuses to behave him or herself in school and start figuring out what YOU can do to help. Stop making teachers feel like they can't touch your child in appropriate and loving ways, as long as the contact wasn't refused by the student (kids have a right to not want a hug from anyone). Start pushing your local school system to pay their staff better so that all the really good teachers end up at private schools. If you want your child to succeed in school and in life, realize that choosing not to homeschool and allowing your child to attend public or private school does not mean no schooling needs to occur at home. You are still your child's first and most important teacher. Good parenting does not allow for one to be lazy. So quit bitching about all the time you don't have and making your kid feel guilty for "bothering" you and start putting your child first-ALL THE TIME.

But when do I get a life?

Kids lie. If you've ever had any or been around any for more than a couple of hours that were older than 4, you should be completely aware of this fact. I mean, many adults lie too, but I don't think a single kid went from birth to age 18 without ever lying once. Its just not possible. I think the heavens would fall if it happened.
The thing about lying kids though is that it means you have to be an involved parent. Because kids lie, you can't assume that your kid is actually doing their schoolwork. You have to check. Many parents seem astounded on open house night to find out from their kid's teachers that they're beautiful, precious, genius child isn't doing so hot in some of their classes. With many of today's school systems having online grade viewing applications, that your child isn't getting good grades may not be so much of a surprise on open house night, but its still probably a shock to see that they didn't turn in an assignment or two or they failed a test they told you they studied for if you are the type of parent who just doesn't bother to pay attention to your kid outside of the times you're yelling at them to stop inconveniencing your life by making you run late or getting in your way around the house.
We have an open binder policy in our house, which means that whenever we parents feel like it, we will open your binder and verify that your work is all done. We also have very open and frequent email communication with many of our children's teachers to make sure they are on top of their shit by assuring we are on top of ours (aka being parents by paying attention to our kids).
It annoys me to no end to see parents taken by surprise by things they should have known. This is not to say that my kids never get away with stuff (at least for awhile) or that my husband and I are never caught off guard by one or another kid's actions. That's just not a possibility. However, when it comes to things like grades, school stuff, where they are at a given moment, their plans for the evening, etc, we pretty much know what's going on, sometimes even more so than they do. Its not uncommon for me to inform one of the kids that they failed a test and need to remediate it when they haven't even received it back from their teacher yet.
Its very inconvenient some evenings to take the time to look through everyone's stuff and/or talk to them all about what's going on with school and other things since the day is only so long and there are anywhere from 4-6 children in our home at a time (my step-kids aren't usually over here these days), but its a priority. Sometimes things slip through the cracks and we beat ourselves up about that, but we get over it, and try to do better in the future. We know that we're gonna miss things occasionally, but that doesn't give us an excuse not to try.
If your going to have children, whether by impregnating someone or by becoming impregnated (a lecture for another time is that surrounding sex) or by adopting a child or however you became the parental figure for a minor, you automatically give up your right to be selfish, unmotivated and inattentive. Despite the inconvenience of it, despite how difficult it is, despite how much you have to push yourself and your wants and needs aside for a period of 18 or so years, you stuck yourself in this situation and you can either be a shitty parent by maintaining the right to be those things I just listed or you can be a good parent. And part of being a good parent is not only being attentive and motivated and selfless, and loving, but also to have a good attitude about it.
Children are not children forever. Whether your decision to become a parent was conscious or unconscious (see comment above about a lecture for another time), if you are going to be a good one, you might as well realize that, though you must give up much of yourself for quite awhile to help your child (or children) grow to their maximum potential, this phase will not consume your entire life. You will have time to be what you want and if your parents were good parents as well then you already had some of that opportunity, to be your best, when you were growing up. Keep a positive attitude and hope for a long life so that you'll have more time to do what you want once your kids are grown. And most of all, get over yourself, in every sense of that phrase, Your kids need you to do exactly that.

Ow, my arms are killing me

Many mammalian species bear young who can walk or move about in some way right from birth. Not us stupid humans. I tried to get my newborn to walk to the kitchen to fetch me a glass of water when I was thirsty right after his homebirth and that little floppy baby didn't even so much as make an attempt. It's almost like he didn't even understand me. I had to carry him around or find someplace safe to lay him (like a cradle or a rocker infant seat) for something like 7 months before he started to really move around any significant amount. Even then, it was about a year before I could expect him to fetch me things and he still sucks at it at the age of 18 months. All of my kids were like this. Inconvenient, right from the start.
This is how it seems a lot of people feel about their kids. This is part of the reason that the average baby registry kills 37,000 trees to print off at the store. Parents assume they need all this stuff to care for their infant, when in reality its just all crap that makes their lives easier and babies more "convenient". They bring their precious little packages home from the insane asylum, I mean hospital, in well padded, crash tested, appropriately color coordinated for the gender infant safety seats with convenient carrying handles that can also be rocked. They sit on a base in the car, a base in the stroller and a base in your home so that you don't have to touch your needy, helpless baby unless it has pissed or shit itself, and even that's debatable depending on how absorbent his or her landfill occupier, I mean disposable diaper, is.
It unnerves me to no end that some parents will go from home to a restaurant or store or several stores and back home again without ever having touched their beautiful little child. Touch stimulates growth and nurturing stimulates development and yet some parents cannot be inconvenienced by doing either of those. Breastfeeding, babywearing and co-sleeping are, when done responsibly, all safe and effective ways to insure that your child grows up feeling your love, knowing their self-worth and maturing in adequate time. Giving your child the impression that he or she is too much trouble for any of those things, or your time, is the surest way to help them grow up to be detached, uncaring adults.
Personally, I know that when my arms are sore, I've done something good today, and not because its the result of weight training all afternoon. In my grounded, well adjusted young children, I see the benefits of my efforts. As for the teenagers, well, they are a completely different story...

18+ does not equal "grown up"

Remember when you couldn't wait to turn 18 and basically run away from the control of your "horrible, overbearing parents". Yea, me too. Then I moved out and realized "Oh shit, I can't afford all these bills and juggle work and college too". No, I didn't move back home and continue on with my degree-that's for smart people! Instead I quit college, married an abusive a-hole and proceeded to royally 'F' up the next 10 or so years of my life. Then, newly single again, with 3 young kids and no real way to make a living, I went back to school and got my nursing degree. I sacrificed a lot of sleep for a few years so that my children still felt like a priority in my life by doing all my homework exclusively after they went to bed and I also did all my errand running on my only real day off, Friday, so that by the time I picked my kids up after school, we had all weekend free to play and hang out and cook and eat and watch tv and be silly.
I wanted more for my kids than they're getting now. Not that their lives are horrible, by any means. They certainly have a lot more than some kids. But I still didn't want them to have to struggle for things. I know, it makes them appreciate it more, or rather its supposed to. It actually just seems to turn them into whiny, immature brats, but that's beside the point, sort of. Anyway, I wanted more for them. I didn't want my kids to have to work their way through college or to end up with a ton of debt from it, like I did. Unfortunately, that's the way it's happening with my oldest son, at least. He was a straight A student, headed for Merry Scholarship Land, before he screwed around during his last couple of years of high school and blew his chances of getting said scholarships. Because I was still working part of last year, our tax return shows us as being "too rich" to not provide all this money to him for college. Funny, because with seven kids, what my husband makes does not put us anywhere near the "wealthy" category, and I made a lot less than him when I was working.
Because of all that, my son's working and paying for his own college. I feel a lot of guilt about that. Guilt I probably shouldn't have, but when I'm not laying it on myself, he's laying it on me, mainly because, as much as it pains me to admit it (since I'm the one who raised him almost exclusively) he's a selfish ass most of the time anymore. He's also reckless, inconsiderate, dishonest, immature and irresponsible with everything, though less so with regards to his jobs and his love interest.
The amount of stress I feel, daily, from having to continue raising my now 19 year old, rebellious son, is beyond words. He has the right to vote (and says he did in our most recent election), the potential to be drafted into the military, and the requirement of being legally responsible for himself. Yet, he lives at home, does no chores, spends all of his time either out of the house or holed up in his room, does not socialize with his family, has no regard for his overuse of electric and water supplies, pays no rent, pays for no food (other than what he chooses to buy) or utilities, has a free cell phone, leaves his room in a complete mess, and reminds me often that I said in September that I hoped to give him another $100 on top of the $250 we already gave him for his birthday even though I have not been able to pay for more than one treatment so far for the cancer I have been diagnosed with since July. My husband (who's been helping parent since my oldest son was 12) and I have spoken with him on numerous occasions. We've tried grounding him-that's fun, by the way, grounding a person who legally can walk away from you. However, most recently, we've had to speak with him about his plans to move out of the family home. He might possibly go live with my aunt, nearby, or he might live with my parents or a friend. I don't really wish his presence on anyone at this moment because even if he behaves in a considerate manner initially, he will eventually begin to treat them like shit too. Unless something in him snaps and he changes, and I would be glad for that. At this point, however, the only real solution is probably going to be him moving out of the house, and his slightly younger brother finally getting a room to himself.
He was given sixty days to prove, with his behavior, that he wanted to continue to live in our home. Its been about a month and he's cleaned his bathroom once and loaded the dishwasher a time or two. Meanwhile, there are empty containers of to-go food spread across his floor and desk. Many of my baking dishes sit, unwashed, in bags in his room because he "borrowed" (borrowing without permission equals stealing, yes, I know, Mom) them for one reason or another and did not put them back yet. Our home has become a hotel of sorts, except that we are not making any money off of our messy, disrespectful tenant. Unfortunately, its time to end his 'lease'.
Parenting is a huge inconvenience, the biggest one you'll ever know. The whole reason I began writing this blog is because the world is surrounded with people who seem to expect that parenting would be simple or convenient or that it even should be. It seems however, that beyond parenting being so drastically inconvenient, sometimes the most difficult thing about parenting is to stop doing it. I will always worry about my son and so will my husband. We will always feel a loss at not having him here, the same loss we would have felt had he moved to go to a college far away, the same loss we already feel since he has not, in most ways, been a member of this household for a long time, through his own choosing. We will always be there to emotionally support him and be his back up as much as possible, but with 6 other children in our home, it is unfair for us to allow him to be here, bringing so much negativity and anger into the home. Sometimes the best relationship you can hope for with your adult child is a long distance one. And that, my dears, is the most inconvenient part of parenting: you almost never get what you want from your child. And "grown up" legally almost never means "grown up" mentally and emotionally.

Tantrums are so inconvenient

Kids cry, we’ve all seen it-get over it

It’s a wonder that we aren’t all completely screwed up as adults. We live in a society that is embarrassed by our feelings, be those good or bad. We spend years trying to get our kids to express themselves vocally and then we squash their ability to do so by becoming disgusted with them whenever they do just that.

A five year old subjected to a 45 minute grocery store trip might whine and cry because she is frustrated, bored and tired, but though we, as the parents, force them along for these outings (often out of necessity and/or convenience to ourselves), we blame the child for their feelings and ask or oftentimes demand they reign those in, instead of accepting responbility and their emotions.

Groups of teenage boys often hoot and holler during sporting events and it is widely accepted, but put that cheering inside a hospital for a diagnosis of freedom from cancer and all of the sudden its not appreciated. Why couldn't you cheer along with them instead since obviously grandma kicking cancer's butt should be seen as a victory worth celebrating.

A fourteen year old who’s boyfriend just dumped her for her best friend walks in during a card game with your friends, sniffling with tears streaming down her cheeks. You’ve repeatedly told her you’ll be there for her and she can tell you anything, but instead of welcoming her into your arms for the hug you know she needs, you escort her to another room and attempt to clean her up so that she’s “presentable” to your guests. You then tell her you’ll talk to her when your company leaves.

Why are our emotions so subject to time and place? Why must we participate in being citizens of a society that sees unadulterated shows of emotion as unacceptable or taboo? Who says we need to hide our faces in embarrassment at the public displays of our children's (or our own) emotions?

We made these idiotic rules as a society and we can unmake them. We can choose to decide that a child's emotional wellbeing is much more important than any inconvenience caused by dealing with possibly private matters in a public place. You should not choose to only love your children at home, when you are alone with only them and other family, therefore you should not only accept their feelings as a perfect part of them only when you are home alone with them. 

No one ever really died of embarrassment and if they did, wow...that's just sad. I personally am going to welcome every emotional outburst, be it positive or negative and simply be happy that my children are capable of feeling. I promise to let them be who they are as I guide them toward how to be sensitive, productive, caring, helpful, wonderful members of this F'ed up world in which we live. I challenge you to do the same. You're children will one day thank you for it.

I'm a troublemaker. Come be one with me.

The Era of Lawsuits: That's what this time period will probably become known as when the history books review it period hundreds of years from now. How did we get to a point where we are so interested in making money off of the stupidity or simplicity of others and care so little about fellow human beings. 

You might be thinking, "Okay, that's a valid question, but what does it have to do with parenting?" Well, lucky for you, I'm going to tell you. 

The media poisons everything we know about our environment, our society, parenting, food, health, any subject at all really. Sometimes that poison is actually beneficial to us, as humans, other times it brings us to our knees. Parenting is one of the most hit victims of media poison in this day and age. Everywhere you turn, some commercial or magazine ad or billboard or television show or movie is giving its portrayal of how parenting "is" or how it should be and whether you feel the opinion shown is a good one or not, it is attempting to influence you. 

What To Expect When You're Expecting is the most recent in a string of movies where parents are portrayed as selfish asses who want nothing more than to fit their pregnancies and soon to be children into their schedules and plans. Its as if society wants us to veer so far away from the "barefoot and pregnant" female oppressive structure of the 50's and prior that we are willing to risk injury to our children-both physical and psychological-to get there. 

We vaccinate out children supposedly to keep them healthy even though numerous studies are showing that this has the opposite effect and yet we think nothing of pushing babies out on our own timeline without regard for how this can impact them. Doctors don't tell women everything, and nurses don't do any better after they walk into a room, hand a patient a consent form and stand there waiting for the mother to sign away her rights to keep herself and her baby safe. Why? Because we might offend the doctor or nurse? Because we think we don't know what's right? Because its simply too inconvenient to fight the system that we already allowed to become such a huge and dangerous part of our culture?

F**k that. Be inconvenient. The doctor is put out because he might have to stick around a few hours more waiting on your baby to come out? Oh well. That's his or her problem. You certainly didn't tell them to choose this career. Have your baby at home and you'll likely not inconvenience anyone. You'll rarely find a midwife (especially one doing home births) who will say that the labor is not progressing fast enough when they really mean "I'm late for dinner". If the midwife wants to leave, they'll either get someone in to replace them or they'll just suck it up and deal with it. 

That's right, I am telling you to be inconvenient in your birthing process. I don't mean inconvenience people by making sure that your baby is born with physical problems that require being solved because you convenienced yourself and the medical staff by consenting to that epidural or induction. I'm talking about being inconvenient by asking for what you have fully researched to be the best for birth and for your child. Not blindly listening to the medical staff who have their own agenda. Having worked previously with nurses who have less than adequate ethics, I've seen women be given sleeping medications so that their contractions lighten up and those births don't end up happening on the night shift. Understand that many medical personnel do not care about you or your baby (I'm sure this will raise eyebrows as well as voices, but notice I said "many" not "all") and are primarily interested in doing as little as they possibly can to get through their shift and get closer to another payday. Why? Because they don't want you to inconvenience them. Do it anyway.

I'm also telling you to be inconvenient in your parenting.Other adults are inconvenienced because they might get a glimpse of your breast while you attempt to latch on your screaming infant at a bookstore during the rare occasion you actually made it out of your house? Screw 'em. Besides, everyone will be a whole lot more inconvenienced by the continuous and subsequently louder crying that will occur if you don't feed your child right then and there. In fact, while you're nursing your baby, change their diaper too. Be as inconvenient as possible to those around you so they'll get used to life not revolving around them. The people who are smiling at you as you do this, or who offer to help when you drop said diaper two feet away and can't reach it without unlatching your child are the ones who might be inconveniencing those people again later.

As long as it is what is best for your child, be as inconvenient as possible to yourself and to those who live with you or are ever in the same location as you. The well-being of your child depends on it being inconvenient to others. Join in the inconvenience movement. Let's be inconvenient together!

Inconvenienced by food and kids

Yesterday as I perused the local mega mart (insert generic, overly large store name here) looking for frozen peas for a dish I am making this week, I was overcome by irritation at the lack of frozen vegetables in my supermarket. Where there once was over half an aisle of various frozen veggies (though, sadly, at this particular grocery store, none were ever organic), there is now little more than what fits behind three glass doors worth.
As I searched for peas, I walked by frozen french fries and other potato products and over an aisle and a half of pre-prepared, frozen meals and this does not include pizza or breakfast stuff. Long gone are the droves of stay at home mommies (and even daddies) who lovingly cook for their offspring. Gone are the days when children learned to make food from their parents instead of a high school class where "cooking" equals taking pre-cut cookies and placing them on a baking sheet and putting them in the oven for eight to ten minutes. Aisles upon aisles of frozen items, pizzas, microwaveable meals, breakfast "foods", desserts, breads. Its even hard now to find frozen vegetables that don't come in a microwave ready, "steamer package". (For more info on why you shouldn't expect anything nutritious to come from a microwave, see here)
I live a busy life. I have seven kids who, all but the littlest, are in school and involved in after school activities. I spend the majority of my week running kids to school or from school or sitting at a dance studio or at voice lessons or running errands or helping kids with homework. I am lucky right now to be staying at home with my kids. Its very tough financially to do this, but necessary because of my breast cancer-for more info see my other blog. Despite being a stay at home mom, I don't have tons of free time to make meals and yet my kids eat pre-processed and fast foods type foods probably twice a month at most. I make use of crockpots and soups/stews that take little time to prepare. I make meal plans for the week so I know what I'm doing ahead of time and I change my mind at the last minute if it turns out I'll only have 30 minutes to cook. Between taking kids to school and picking them up, I am usually only home for about 4 1/2 hours max during the week and dinner has to be ready for me to take at least part of it with me when I get kids from school since some of them go immediately to after-school activities (dance mostly). Our food has to hold up to being kept hot for awhile. It has to travel fairly well.
I manage to cook healthily and almost completely from scratch, for nine people (plus a little because leftovers are great the next day) on very limited time, an extremely limited budget and with a toddler at my feet or on my hip. It is completely worth the inconvenience to make sure my and my family's health are priority.
Apparently not all parents in America feel that their children's nutritional needs are worth it. Heaven forbid you might be inconvenienced by having to feed your kids something that someone else didn't make for them.
School lunches are crap, usually and yet kids eat them because their parents can't be inconvenienced enough to get up in the morning and make them something, or do it the night before, or here's a novel idea...teach the  kids how to make their own!
My fridge is full of fresh fruits, some cut, some whole, cooked pastas and rice (I cooked them), veggies that are easily placed into containers, salad fixings ready to go, boiled eggs and more. The cabinets are full of the small amount of pre-packaged foods I buy: canned salmon and beans, crackers (organic, thank you), fruit leathers and other dried fruits, cereals (no high sugar stuff here), dehydrated veggies and other similar things. Its very easy for all but my kindergartener to fix their own lunch without direction or help.
Good food is one of the best gifts you can give your child and its one that you should require yourself to give them. So get off your ass and cook something. If you don't know how, learn and teach your kids at the same time; that way, when you are out of the house, they can still eat healthfully without your help. Preparing meals for my children is an inconvenience with which I am glad to be stuck.

Some people should have been born sterile

There are people all over this world who have difficulty conceiving children of their own. Many of them are completely ignorant and go on to have expensive and usually truly unnecessary fertility treatments. Many more, the informed ones, go on to adopt, an even more expensive, but necessary option. I never had any real, long term issues with fertility and so with the blended family of my husband and I (his, mine, ours kind of thing), there are seven children we have or are still raising. I do not, by any means, count myself as a parenting expert, I simply have a strong opinion of irritation at people who, often from pregnancy, treat children as if they should fit into their parents' lives as opposed to the reality, which is that you will never be more inconvenienced than by the pitter patter of little, or big, feet in your house.
From the time my first son was born, when I was 21 years old, I knew he would turn my life upside down. I knew he would become my world and everything else would suddenly be less important. I went on to have two more children before I became a single mother for five years and then, with my second marriage, I bore two more beautiful little parasites. I gave up my life, my dreams, sleep, food at times (when times were really hard), money, time, everything so that they could have what they needed. I spared no expense of myself. I knew it was what was right, as a parent.
I see so many other parents who seem to think that children should be brought into the world on their parents' timelines, when it is convenient to the adults in the situation. Doctors want babies to be born on schedule, and will put mom and baby at risk, with inductions and medications, so that they can get home to their families by dinnertime. Parents want babies to come on schedule so that mom can make her sister-in-law's wedding, or so that dad can get back to work before the work load increases. Families want babies to come on schedule so they know when they should come into town. None of this is on the baby's schedule and none of it is for the good of the infant. Babies and children are an inconvenience from the time they are conceived, sometimes from the time you begin to think of conceiving them.
Children will create a huge disruption in your life. A beautiful, wonderful, aggravating, silly, frustrating, embarrassing, inconvenient disruption in your life. Get over it. Decide to love every intolerable minute of it before they grow up and you're left with a huge void that only a huge inconvenience can fill.