Brag about your moments of parental brilliance

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

A little backstory. All treats from Easter/Halloweeen/Christmas/etc go into treat bags for my two kids. One for the son, one for the daughter. It’s a good system as whenever there’s more treat than bag, we have to toss out the excess. Anyway…

After meals, when they remember it, they are able to have a treat each out of their treat bags. If they choose to share a treat out of their bag with their sibling, they are able to have two treats. Sharing is optional, but if you don’t share, you don’t get a second treat. Works like a charm. They are able to share everything very willingly.

22

We got a very large stainless steel stock pot plunked next to us. Hurl in the pot, no mess on the floor. I still keep a big stock pot in my bedroom I normally use it as a wastebasket, but when I get nauseated, it gets dragged out from under the desk very quickly just in case.

That is a neat idea. Have it set up so you plug in a thumb drive and the address gets loaded onto it would be better, no need to type anything in.

23

My little woo hoo go me parenting moment I only had to enforce twice, and it never happened again. The kids are now 17 and 14( X 2) but when they were at the 8 and 5 year old stages the annoying little sister situations really came into play and they started physically fighting. So the rule is this, since you love to lay a heavy hand on each other so much, if you physically fight you will be forced to hold hands for the duration of what your ages add up to, which at that time 8 + 5= 13 minutes of publicly holding your little sisters hand. And any squirming, pinching or squeezing hands during this time started the hand holding minutes all over. Like I said, I only had to do it twice and they were quick to warn their visiting cousins and friends of the consequences of giving a well deserved smack!

24

The ones I know tend to display old toys, not in production any more, but… howzabout this hotel?

Not quite a moment of brilliance, but you’re stuck with it anyway. My niece is quite the little princess, a model of girl that I have never been truly comfortable around. She just turned 5; today the whole family went out to lunch to celebrate Grandma’s 100th birthday. My niece was wearing a very classical dress, deep maroon with a white lacy collar, and when she came over after dessert I noticed her nails were painted the same color. I said “oh, I like that your nails are painted the same shade as your dress, very pretty!” She beamed at me, bounced back to her chair, and Mom confided that had been the same argument used by the niece to get her nails painted, after my sister in law had said “no, because the only shade I have here is very dark, it is not appropriate for a little girl” “It is the same shade as my dress! If it’s all right for my dress, it’s all right for my nails”.

So first, my brother and his wife appear to have learned that with their kids it’s generally best to reason than use Authority (excuse me, my eyes just tried to do a sommersault here - I’ve always had “problems with Authority”) even if that means conceding when they reason better, and second, I might learn to properly speak the Princess dialect in just a couple more decades of working at it…

25

I have to admit, I looked up asparagus truck trying to see what you were talking about. I found this.

I don’t remember if someone said it here or I heard it on the radio, but I heard someone somewhere saying that they told their kids the ice cream truck only plays music when it’s out of ice cream.

26

My grandson had a problem with nightmares. There was a monster he’d seen in a commercial at a movie theater, and it was attacking him every night in his sleep. I told him the story of the Zduhacz, where Serbian soldier brothers went into the dreamworld and fought a monster that was troubling the village. I made sure to point out that the brothers took with them wooden swords, the only weapons that can be taken into the dreamworld. My grandson has a wooden sword. That night he killed his monster, and has been sleeping well ever since.

27

My daughter asked me what porn was. I thought about it and said, “It’s usually either videos or photos of people having sex or doing sexual things.” then she asked by “What do you think of it?” I said, “There are lots of different opinions, mom thinks that as long as it’s between adults and no one is getting hurt, then it’s fine. I think the only problem with it is that it’s not real and it can change the way you think about sex if you spend a lot of time looking at it before you are ready. There is a LOT of it on the internet, and you’ll probably find it without looking for it, if you haven’t already. I’d like you to talk to me about it if you see something that you are not sure about, okay?”

The next day the next day we were out for lunch and an (obviously male) cross-dresser sat beside us. She looked at him, looked at me, looked at him very pointedly. I said, “Don’t stare, we’ll talk about it in the car.”

I explained that some men and women wear clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex because they either like how it feels or like how it looks. She asked if that meant he was gay, I said, “Not always. One of Mom’s best friends likes to wear some women’s stuff, and he is married with kids.” and she left it.

It was a weird week, but I think we came out of it okay.

28

When the unaccompanied minor next to me was fussing about how much longer we would be in the air, I pulled out Delta’s flight magazine, turned to the aircraft page, and helped her estimate how many miles we had traveled in the MD-80 (yes, its maximum speed is 452 miles per hour, but your Mom doesn’t drive her car at its maximum speed all the time, does she?) since taking off. Then we turned to the flight routes page and using the distance key estimated that we were probably over Dallas.

Miss Unaccompanied was still not thrilled, since Dallas was only about halfway to Atlanta. She fussed that she wanted to get off, so I asked if she had brought her parachute. She admitted she hadn’t. Together we nixed the debarking over Dallas idea.

29

Only if people go in on bags of weed on Sesame Street. Or so I’ve heard. As practiced by other people. A long time ago. Who totally were never me.

30

When we first started letting the kid have treats, I’d start him off with a very small portion. Then, when he would try to bargain with me, I’d put on a big show of reluctance and finally “agree” to a slightly-larger-but-still-very-small portion. “Can I have jellybeans?” “Sure! Here you go: two jellybeans.” “Can I have three?” (I heave a big sigh, slowly nod my head.) “Okay. You’ve been really good today, so… I guess it’s okay if you have three.” He got to feel like he won, and now he blithely accepts that the typical serving of m&m’s, jellybeans, potato chips, etc. is two. Five is a veritable bonanza.

I recently talked to a dad who does something similar, but with a twist. They only keep a tiny amount of a treat where the kid can see it; the rest is hidden away. So when the kid asks for some, they say, “Sure! You can have all of it!” Score!

We also called it the “music truck” for a while, but it didn’t last long. We were at the playground one day, and a truck came by and parked just a few yards away. Kiddo watched as some kids ran to the truck and walked away with their ice cream, and a door opened in his mind. He looked at them, then back at the truck, then back at the kids, then at me, as if to say, “Did you see that?!” Then he stared hard at the truck again and, with a solemn and passionate resolve I would not have thought a 2-1/2-year-old capable of, the sort that is usually employed only in phrases beginning with, “As God is my witness…”, he said, “I want them to give me ice cream.” “Oh, sorry, honey. They don’t just give it away; you have to give them money.” He looked back at me: “Give them money.” He was so intensely serious that I couldn’t help but laugh, and it was all over.

A little thing, that made a big difference to me: when he was learning to walk, I realized that holding his hand in the normal way wasn’t very secure. My hand was too broad for him to grip, and it was too easy for him to slip his fingers away from me when crossing a street, in a parking lot, etc. Instead, I have him hold onto my index finger, but I then wrap the rest of my fingers around his wrist - something like this, but with a much tighter grip. It’s easier for him to hold onto me, and much harder for him to slip away.

One that I came up with when babysitting for friends, but it works on my kid, too: they had been told to clean up their playroom, which had a dense carpet of toys, and they weren’t making much headway. So I said, “How fast can you find all the red toys? Who can find the most?” They ran around grabbing up armfuls of toys - “Does this count? It’s got red stripes!” - and when they were done, we threw them all in the bin. Immediately, they said, “What about blue? Can we do blue next?” “Okay, blue… go!” And so on. The room was tidy in ten minutes, tops. It was a thing of beauty.

And one I learned from those same friends: when a kid sees something in a store and says, “Oh, this is so cool!” instead of jumping directly to, “No, you can’t have it,” just agree with them. “Yeah! That is cool! I love the way it [does whatever].” Then go on your merry way. Also, make a point of admiring things for yourself that you don’t buy. “Isn’t this a cool hat? How does it look on me? Okay, let’s put it back, and we’ll go buy you some new socks.” Internalizing the idea that you can enjoy, appreciate, and even desire something without having to own it goes a long way toward combating the “gimmies”.

31

I don’t know if this was brilliant, but it worked:

My youngest was about 10, and fell off his skateboard and hurt his shoulder. He came in the house crying, mainly because he said he couldn’t skateboard anymore with his friends that day. So I did the Mr. Miyagi thing from the Karate Kid. I took a deep breath and blew it out. Clapped my hands together and rubbed them around, them quickly grasped his shoulder. He was stunned, and then said he felt better and ran outside. I knew he was fine to start with and just upset. The flip side was a while later when his brother told him it was just something from a movie, he was mad at me for a little while after that.

32

I really like this, and it fits in my model of parenting with natural consequences.

A couple of things have worked surprisingly well. One was when my daughter was in her terrible twos and would get into meltdowns. We had a Japanese *daruma *doll on a shelf and I’d take her over to talk to the daruma. It would work more or less, but what really surprised me was one day when she was upset but not at meltdown stage yet, and she came over to me and asked to be picked up to talk to the doll. That became a way we both survived the out of control emotions for that period.

For things such as that’s hot or sharp, I would like them touch something which was uncomfortable, but not dangerous. We had a cactus and I let both of them gingerly touch it. Never ran into problems with not touching knives or other things after that. I’d just let them know it was sharp.

Same thing with hot. I let them touch my coffee mug which was hot enough for a toddler to not like, but wouldn’t burn. They didn’t need to learn on stoves.

We did that with spicy food as well. Something which was mildly spicy, so it wouldn’t burn their mouths, but enough to know that something spicy is for mommy or daddy.

Like that spicy stuff from Canada that Daddy puts on his pancakes.

33

This is great! I had one sort of like it, but for aches and pains.

I had some small tubes of body lotion, really clinical looking. For headaches, rub on forehead, for tummy ache rub on tummy and for bumps and scrapes rub either around or on the other side (eg inside the elbow). Make a fuss. Cures headaches and tummy aches and all sorts! The thing is, it really does.

We also had “homesick pills”. Blue smarties or some such in a pill jar.

This is an expression in Dutch: kiezen of delen? - choose or divide? Although it’s meant for that sort of cake dividing situation, it’s used more broadly. For example, if a politician or coworker wants to divide and then be the first to choose in some situation, people will remark: “hey, it’s choosing OR dividing!”

34

We have that rule too. Only it becomes a problem when you have teenagers who are perfectly capable of carrying the huge pumpkins. You should see the monsters my kids brought home this year.

35

The piece of fruit I placed in Bathshebaette’s lunchbox each day would return home every night. So one night, I took a permanent marker and wrote on an orange, “EAT ME OR YOU WILL GET CONSTIPATED AGAIN”. Then I hid it her lunchbox ready for the great reveal at recess the next day.

Result? One embarrassed but no longer bound up seven year old.

36

You guys, these are all great! Keep them coming!

37

This is brilliant! Too late for my kids, but will wait for my grand kids.

My son at three was freaked out by the Sandman. I’m not sure I blame him. Some weird elfin guy who creeps around your room at night and puts sand in your eyes? He didn’t think that sounded too good. So he didn’t want to sleep. Together we made a simple cardboard sign, with ‘Yes’ on one side and ‘No’ on the other. He got to choose whether the Sandman could visit or not, by putting the sign in the window. It was never turned to ‘Yes’, but he went right to sleep.

38

It worked this way for my kids, too! The older one hated having Mom getting all in her stuff, so if her closet or her room or her backpack were starting to get too messy to be workable, all I’d have to do was say, “Here, let me straighten that up for you.” That backfired in a big way with the second one - she was more than happy to have me clean her stuff up for her! She and I are a lot alike, come to think of it.

39

Middle school child and homework problems.

My 13 yr old was getting very lax about remembering and doing homework. He could do it easily, but wasn’t interested enough to take note of assignments in class.

We made arrangements with his teacher to for one of us to sit beside him in class all day long. When we revealed this plan to him, we acted like total dweebs, gushing about how exciting to meet his friends, and we could talk to that girl he liked for him, etc., and that we’d have a desk beside him to help with notes and homework. Our “This will be so much FUN!” attitude worked exactly as planned. Memory and dedication to assignments improved miraculously.

40

I think this is an excellent piece of advice.