Taking Back Father's Day

When I was a kid, Father's Day was all about making a craft out of popsicle sticks and  a special card  expressing all the ways in which I loved my dad. He would, of course, read every misspelled word incorrectly that started down a 20 year path of him calling it Fat-hers day. It was simple, it was important.

Then.... I became an adult. I began to see just how complicated a holiday like Father's Day became.

When my husband became a dad, I started to see just how heated the debate became about how to celebrate it. Instead of taking time out of a church service to recognize all of the dads out in the congregation, it became a solemn, reflection time out of respect for those who had lost a father.
Instead of my facebook feed being full of best wishes to dads out there, it became flooded with blog after blog of reasons why, out of respect for those who have lost a dad, we shouldn't celebrate it so loudly.

There are a lot of reasons why celebrating Father's Day to some people is hard. Some people's Fathers were not great, some left too soon, others never got the opportunity to be fathers at all. I do respect that. But I think it's all the more reason to celebrate the dads out there that are just doing their best.

There are so many dad jobs in this world that get overlooked. So many moments in a dad's life when they scrub vomit out of the carpet, or work tirelessly on that science project. There are a million serious talks they must have, and pick ups and drop offs they have to remember. Some dads have to miss the big game because they're at work, and feel that guilt of wanting to make it up to their kids. Some of them work ridiculous hours and still find the time to read to their kids, or tickle them before they go to sleep. Even as their children grow up and leave their house and only remember to call them when they need help or money, they're still there, doing those silent jobs that they seldom get appreciated for. The world would be an awfully crummy place without dads in it.

I lost my dad 3 years ago, in my opinion way too soon. I will always miss him. I will always be sad that he's gone. But I don't ever want that to get in the way of celebrating Father's Day.
 I can still remember that he was my dad for 30 years. I can still be thankful for the time he was my dad. I don't need a look of sympathy or for people to hide the fact that they still have incredible dads in their lives. In fact  I don't want them to. I don't want for people to take away the honor that so many hard working dads out their deserve because of my grief. Dads are important, they should be honored.

Now in my household, Father's Day belongs solely to one man in my life. A man who works 40 plus hours a week and goes to school full time and still manages to make my kids feel loved and appreciated. A man who takes the time to have the hard discussions with his kids and to balance that with ridiculous amounts of kisses and cuddles and wrestles and tickles. A man who goes to every performance, every game, every special moment in my kid's lives because he knows how important it is not to miss.

So.. I'm taking back Father's Day. For Tim, and every other dad out there who's just doing the best they can. I salute you. I respect you. I honor you. Your kids...treasure you. This is your day, nobody can or should take that away from you.

Raising music nerds: how I choose to musically educate.

You open the doors, you strap everyone in and by the time you hit reverse your kids are already happily chattering and debating over one thing: The soundtrack.

I guess I never thought about how controversial a car's soundtrack would be as a parent, or how much it would differ from family to family. I got on the subject with a friend a few weeks back and it got me thinking. She had said that she tried to always play christian radio while the kids are in the car but after a while, her kids get tired of it and ask for pop music.

I have to admit, I'm with the kids on this one. Christian radio stations can get so daunting for me. I think it's the fact that the music is mass-produced and lacking dynamics (highs and lows). It all just starts to run together to me and even though the messages are positive, I lose them sometimes in the monotonous 4 chord progressions that fill hours of the christian airwaves. 

I sat in a car with another friend who had classical music on and her two year old was incredibly content and calm. She smiled at me and said "This is the only station we agree on. He HATES it when I play country, but he tolerates this." 

All of these conversations going around in my head made me think: What do I do with my kids? When they were babies, I tried to expose them to the most amounts of different kinds of music that I could. I found that they gravitated more towards certain bands and certain albums. They don't particularly care for the jazz that I sometimes make them listen to, but they oblige it simply because introducing them to new music is something that they've done since they were inutero. It's as normal as breathing.

The thing about the radio is... they don't care that children are listening. When you turn the dials and start to hear the adult content that is in most songs it can make your stomach churn. So, as my kids have become more self aware, I've started to just make large playlists that I put on my phone for them. The playlists offer a wide-range of sounds. Some of them are songs from movies they love, some of them are (clean) pop songs. I also have a few albums of christian pop songs that they like equally and, of course, some new indie songs that I deem worthy enough for my kids to listen to.

One of my favorite things to do while listening is teaching my kids about the music. I challenge them sometimes to tell me what instruments they hear, or if they can feel a build up or a slow down. We can just as easily belt out the lyrics to Frozen as we can to Radiohead. I love immersing them in the world of music that is out there. I don't want them to get stuck in that 4 pop song loop just because it's what people are listening to. I want them to be music pioneers; to know all kinds of different music and where it comes from and, eventually, how to play it.

Maybe it's controlling of me to meticulously spend hours creating playlists of music on my phone. But you spend so much of your day in the car, it might as well be a positive and educational experience. If I don't teach them about music, then who will? Miley Cyrus? Lady Gaga? No thanks I got this one ladies. 

The funny thing about being a music nerd is... it's actually kind of cool to be a music nerd.

We don't negotiate with terrorists: how to deal with picky eaters

Every family has got one. There's that rogue eater, the straggler, the last one to finish their food, or rather the last one to push their food around their plate enough for it to look like it was semi-eaten. And no matter what you do, it is a struggle at every meal to get protein and vegetables or something unfamiliar into their stomachs. So how do you deal with a picky eater?

I wish the answer was a simple one. The truth is.... it takes work! Here are a few methods:

Consistency

I think if there was one thing that I could say I've learned in parenting, it's that consistency is key. If you aren't consistent, you might as well give up now because they will wear you DOWN. It's their job to push limits and test boundaries and to make you feel like maybe you've gone mad. The only way to win this war is to tow the party line.

With our three-year-old, consistency is proving to be the mountain we have to die on. Every. Single. Night we put a well-balanced (okay sometimes it's not always well-balanced but hey, nobody's perfect) meal on the table. And every single night she goes through various stages of whining, complaining, crying and screaming all through dinner. I have to say, it's not a pleasant experience. She tests our patience until it is as thin is a spaghetti noodle. Tim often asks "Why do we even make her dinner? We know it's just going to go straight into the garbage." 

Tim speaks truth. Most of the time, I question the sanity in even making a meal for her. But there are those shining moments, those little glimmers of hope when she reaches for that fork and takes a big, heaping bite of something she's never tried before that I feel that all those other nights have paid off.


Sticking to the Rules

This one  is a tough one for me. In our house, we have hard and fast dinnertime rules. No dessert, or bread or anything "extra" until the meal on your plate is consumed. This one is a challenge because we have three kids and only one picky eater. It often feels to our daughter that we are singling her out when her older brothers get a cookie or a snack. She watches them laugh and enjoy the chocolatey goodness as she pushes around her green beans and whines about how unfair life is. There was a time when I would give into this and hand her dessert- big mistake HUGE! Don't do it guys. Put down the cookie, just say no. The consequences are not worth it.


Don't Negotiate with Terrorists

Now there are lots of different kinds of dinner negotiations. I'm not talking about the "eat 2 more bites and you can be done" negotiations. No, those compromises are the only things that give me the will to live sometimes. I'm talking about, the dinner terrorists. The ones who decide they will give you their terms and you will submit.... or else.
"Ok mama, if I eat 3 more bites of rice, I can have a cookie" Hmmmm..... Nope. Those are not the rules. (Wild fits of rage ensue) "Ok, 4 bites!" Uh, still no.
I counter with an "How about all of it?"
"Ok... fine."
Yes!! I'm thinking about joining the United Nations.

Don't Push It

No matter how hard we try, there are just going to be those nights when nothing gets eaten. It happens to everyone. And on those nights, we allow a little bit of water, but we stress that nothing else is coming until breakfast (which they are always STARVING for in the morning). In order to ensure confidence in your picky eater, it's important not to berate them. Ok, so you may feel like another culinary masterpiece has gone to waste. Hang up that apron and surrender the dinner bell, nobody ever died of an over consumption of peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches.


In short, it's important to stick to your guns and remember that it won't always be like this. But if you can stick to it there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

How to deal with a bully: kill me with kindness

Lately in our house, we've been asking ourselves a very tough question:  
                            HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH A BULLY?

2 months ago, Elijah came home after school crying. He told us that on the playground, a kid had been making fun of his hands and calling him "a very mean name" repeatedly. We talked it through and assured him he was much more than that name. And we thought we dealt with it. But he came home the next day, and the next week and the next 2 months after that saying the exact same thing.

We told him to tell a teacher, or the person on lunch duty. He did and still.... nothing changed. I read books, sought wise council and talked endlessly to my husband about how to deal with this bully. I mean, I know what I WANTED to do. I wanted to put my mama bear shoes on and have a meeting with everyone I could find about it. I wanted to walk right into the playground and give that kid a piece of my mind.

I wanted to storm in there and save the day because nothing, and I mean NOTHING gets me more angry-crazy-protective-kungfu-mama-mad than when someone has hurt my baby, especially someone who does it repeatedly.

It was agony listening to my sweet, caring little boy explain how he would tell the kid that these things hurt his feelings and how the kid just laughed at him. The thing that would just break me is when he would look up at me, tears welling in his eyes and say "Mama, I know if he just got to know me, he would like me." How do you console that kind of a broken heart? How do you send him off to school each day knowing he will continue to get knocked down?

If I had gone in there guns a blazing, with my angry face on causing a big stink, it might actually have worked. I might have gotten that kid to stop calling him a name, raise awareness about the bullying, and maybe even made my boy feel better. But the question I had to ask myself was
 
"But what would that teach him?"

The scary, sad, gut wrenching reality is: in my little boy's life, he will face a mountain of bullies. There will be the outright mean ones, there will be the relentless ones, there will even be the ones who mean well, but still somehow prevent him from doing things he dreams of simply because they will not think he is capable.

And facing that giant mountain of bullies, he will not always be able to rely on his mama bear to fight his battles for him, nor will he want it. No, these will be the battles that he will fight alone. But how can he fight them, if we do not equip him? How will he know how to handle things if we don't teach him that he IS capable?

So we made a very tough decision to not go in with canons lit. Instead we would pour into him what to say, who to talk to, how to handle things. He would ask questions and give us what if scenarios and we would answer his questions as best we could and let him know that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the way he looked, it was the kid who was wrong. Every morning on his way to school, his daddy would talk him through it, and everyday when I would pick him up I would hear how it went.

 Elijah went to school and talked to the lunch duty officer, he even worked up the courage to tell his principle about it. They all encouraged Elijah to ignore it. But, he simply couldn't. For 3 weeks, everyday he saw the kid he would come up to him and tell him that what he said hurt his feelings and asked him to apologize. He was relentless.

 Finally yesterday, Elijah came home grinning from ear to ear.  "Mama, guess what? The mean kid apologized to me!!" he said. I responded with an, "Oh my words Elijah that's awesome, how did you get him to do it?"

"I just went up to him and said what I say everyday, that what he said hurt my feelings and that he should apologize and not call me that name anymore. And the kid said 'okay! I will apologize and promise not to call you that name again if you will just please, please stop bothering me.' "

I had to laugh. He handled it, and he did it all on his own. He was persistent and in the end, it worked out for him. I don't know that every bully story will have a happy ending, but I saw the confidence and self worth radiating from my son and I knew that teaching a man to fish was far more rewarding than giving him a fish for a day. In his own way, he had defeated his bully by killing him with kindness.