Things I want to teach my children

I honestly can’t believe it’s August 1^st. Where is the time going? What the heck happened to July? Partly, I’m sure, it’s the weather’s fault. Seriously, it was 26°C (78.8°F) outside yesterday afternoon and it felt hot, that’s how cool it’s been lately, so no wonder it doesn’t feel like summer’s halfway over, it practically hasn’t even started yet. Anyway, since we must base ourselves on the calendar, it is once again time for me to impart some wisdom to my kids. So here we go, this time I only have one piece of advice for each child, based on their personalities.

For the Girl:

Life doesn’t always need to be so dramatic. I understand that sometimes your feelings are so big that you need to physically display them to release some of the tension, but seriously, can’t we just agree that I do things for your own good and not out of spite or meanness. For example, if I tell you that no, you can’t climb up on the table via the chair and do a little jig up there it’s because it’s dangerous and you don’t need to flop to the ground with your hands on your face wailing. Or even more simply, when I decide that bath time is over because you’re so pruney you look like a shriveled up old lady and I go to pick you up, you don’t need to start crying like I just killed your lovey and go all jelly-legs and jelly-arms on me because the likelihood that I accidently drop you is very high.

A little drama is good, it makes life more exciting and keeps those around you on their toes. I’m sure we can channel your penchant for the dramatic into something productive and not annoying to me, like a career in the arts?

For the Boy:

Some things are scary, I know they are, but if you don’t try them how will you know what you can do? When we come up against something new I see you, looking, taking your measure, sussing things out. Sometimes you really want to do something but you don’t, because you’re scared. I get it, doing new things is difficult, I promise, I get it. What I really want you to learn is that trying something new that you really want to do and failing, is infinitely, undeniably better than not trying at all. Especially since the likelihood of failure is very, very small. There are a lot of new things still to come in your life, and I will hold your hand, go with you, encourage you, and push you for as long as I can, but I want you to learn to take that first step on your own. I want you to always take the first step because I see the joy on your face every time we’ve done something new and conquered it.

I want to teach you that not trying something new, that not taking that first step is not an option, and that there’s no shame in failure if you’ve tried.

Every month when I take a moment to think about this post and what to write I realize that being a parent is hard, but being the kind of parent we want to be is even harder.

5 Things I want to teach my daughter

It’s the first of the month again so per custom I’m posting a few more things I want to teach my kids. This month we’re focusing back on the Girl, but most of these things are valid for the boy as well. So here goes, five more things I believe my daughter should know to grow into a happy, healthy, well-adjusted adult.

1. Learn to change a flat tire. Getting a flat is a monumental pain in the patootie, and changing said flat is man’s work as far as I’m concerned. Buuuuut, unfortunately in today’s world finding a man who will stop to help you change a tire is nothing short of miraculous, as, incidentally, is finding a man who can actually change a tire. I’m absolutely not advocating for my daughter to get her cute clothes and dainty hands dirty if there’s another alternative, but in the unlikely event that she find herself with a flat on an isolated road, at night, in the rain with no cell phone reception well, better she change her tire herself than wait around like a sitting duck for the bloodthirsty mass murderer she is likely to run into in this scenario, right?

2. Learn how to sew basics. I can’t sew, whereas my mother accurately reproduced a 16^th century velvet with gold embroidery Italian lady’s gown for my Halloween costume when I was nine and had decided I wanted to be Juliet. I’m hoping she’ll take after her Nana, but if she doesn’t then she must at least learn to sew on a button, hem her pants, fix a broken strap… I’m not proposing she become a seamstress for Valentino, but there’s no good reason for her not to learn how to thread a needle.

3.Parallel park. When I was 16 years old my Dad took me to the DMV (back then it had another name, can’t remember what it was though and it’s driving me nuts, if anyone from Texas wants to volunteer the info I’d appreciate it!). Anyway, the first thing you did was parallel park, if you couldn’t do that you may as well go home cause no way you were getting your driver’s license. I was understandably nervous about the whole process, especially since neither of my parents have the teaching gene. So I get in my little Nissan with the huge and menacing DMV guy and I get into position to park, (all the while signaling like crazy, repeatedly checking my mirrors and keeping my hands firmly in the ten to two position) I start the maneuver and in the rearview mirror see my dad, who was standing on the sidewalk behind me, whack himself on the forehead with an open palm and shake his head disconsolately as his shoulders are shaking with laughter. Thanks Dad.

In any case, I learned my lesson and can now parallel park with the best of them, blindfolded (backwards and in heels as Ginger Rogers used to say). It’s not hard once you get the gist and the look of amazement in the boys’ eyes when you park your car perfectly in the unlikeliest of places is priceless.

4. Read a map. Notice a certain recurring theme in this list?

I have zero sense of direction so effectively learning to read a map is a skill I acquired early. It’s true that in today’s world what with the GPS in the car and on our smartphones and all manner of information at our fingertips map reading seems a bit, well, passé, but this is exactly why it’s now an important skill to have, fewer and fewer people know how to do this, it could set you apart.

5. Mix a martini - or actually any drink. Learn how to mix a couple of drinks and do them well, because, again we’re now surrounded by pre-made martini mixes and margarita mixes and bloody mary mixes and on and on. It’s all premade and prefabricated and ready-to-use so we don’t know how to do the basics for ourselves anymore.

All this because when my daughter comes home after a really crappy day, in which her pant button comes off and she has to mend it, she can’t find a parking spot to save her life, her car gets a flat and her GPS gives out on her, and her fridge is empty but for ice and tonic water, I at least want her to be able to rummage in the liquor cabinet for a minute and make herself a stiff drink to drown her woes in. 

Independence at its best.

p.s. I’ve been recently told by a friend that she can’t seem to comment with Disqus, and as I’ve noticed a certain decrease in the number of comments I was just wondering if Disqus is, in fact, causing problems (in which case I’ll go back to the old blogger comments). If you would like to comment but can’t seem to for some reason could you drop me an email at {moomser at gmail dot com} to let me know, please.

THANKS!

Ten things I want to teach my children RIGHT NOW

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m a little cranky lately due to being sick as a poor, mangy dog all weekend. Incidentally, I don’t get that expression, why “sick as a dog”, are they somehow inherently sicker than other animals? Anyway, since it’s the first of the month once again I’m going to give the meme another shot. If you feel like participating it’s open all week, just click on the linky at the bottom, add your post and if you feel like it add my button at the end of your post - just grab the code on the left side-bar (scroll down!). 

Ok. So, back to me being cranky, evidently it’s reflected in my choice of Ten Things to Teach my Children this week because I’m not so much looking to the future this time as listing things that I wish they’d learn RIGHT NOW.

Most of these are points I make daily, hoping that somehow they will learn them through the sheer force of repetition. It’s not working so far, but I’m hopeful – or deluded, one of the two. These are all meant for both my children, of course.

1. If Mama says she’s sick, don’t whine, get in her face, or make unreasonable demands because that’ll just make her crankier and you’ll get more timeouts.

2. It’s so much more productive to ask for stuff in a happy voice rather than a whiny voice, whiny voices grate on my ears and trigger the timeout reflex immediately.

3. I am not a referee. Am I wearing a whistle?

4. You don’t need to use up half the liquid soap every time you wash your hands, you’re not scrubbing in for surgery. (Although I do appreciate your newfound love for hand washing).

5. Nighttime is for sleeping, if you wake up during the night you turn around and go back to sleep. You don’t need me to help with that. You don’t need milk. You don’t need a diaper change. And if you want water it’s on your bedside table. You don’t need to call me at night. I can’t stress this enough.

6. Water guns outside are good, water guns inside the house are BAD.

7. Negotiating with me is fine until I give you THE LOOK, once I give you THE LOOK negotiations are over and action is in order.

8. The easiest and fastest way to get what you want is with a smile, a hug and a kiss. How hard is that?

9. We no longer watch tv while eating as I’m sick of feeding you because you’re in a Dora-induced trance-like state, you eat your food then you can go watch tv. Get over it.

10. When I scream at you for dumping a bowl-full of water out of the tub onto the bathroom floor and you do it again a minute later, I’m going to take the bowl away. It’s been like this for two years, why do you always look so surprised?

11. And a bonus bath related one that is a point of contention every night: Stop drinking the bath water, it’s dirty, it’s soapy and it’s very likely at least one of you peed in there.

Gosh, it felt good to get those off my chest! Now all I need to do is figure out how to actually teach them these things… NOW!

If you want to read more things I want to teach my kids you can do so here and here.

Thanks for linking up!

Ten things I want to teach my son

Here we are, my first attempt at a meme. Drumroll please!

As mentioned in my previous post I’d like to do this on the first of every month, so you have plenty of time to think about it! The theme is ten things I want to teach my children, or that I think my children need to learn to be successful (however you define it!) adults. I posted my first list for my daughter, as an example, here. Today’s list is for my son. You can write it any which way you want, for your son or daughter, for your children if you don’t want to genderize it, or for your future kids if you don’t have any yet, hey, you can even write it for your grandkids if you don’t agree with the way your own grown children are doing things:

Here’s mine:

Ten Things I Want To Teach My Son


1. Cherish your sister – so you’ll always have family even after we’re gone

2. Be a gentleman – even though you may grow up in Italy where this seems to be a lost art. Gentlemanly behavior is not outdated, most of the time it simply equals being nice and caring towards others. So hold doors open for people, help someone struggling with their load and for goodness sakes give up your seat on the bus to women and older people.

3. Be generous – if you’re going out with a girl, pay. That’s it, no arguments, no excuses. If you want to date her pay for dinner, if she’s just your friend treat her anyway and she can get it next time, and what the hell, treat your mates to a beer every once in awhile too. Pay it forward, it never hurts to be generous – but no strings attached!

4. Learn to change a tire. Seriously.

5. Tie a proper bow tie – no man has ever looked dapper or dashing in a clip on. Ever.

6. How to fight – resolving conflicts with diplomacy is always best but know how to throw an effective punch because you may need it someday.

7. Sex is great but it needs to be accompanied by respect and discretion, you may not always do it for love but for goodness sakes don’t brag, demean or disrespect the person you are having it with.

8. Think with your brain and not your….

9. Be nice to your in laws, no matter how annoying they may be.

10. Don’t compare your girlfriend to your mother (because mothers always win!)

Ok, your turn! Just write your post and link up here, and be nice and go visit the other bloggers on the list! If you don’t have a blog and want to play anyway send me your ten things via email and I’ll make a special post for you or write them in the comments (if you’ve got the time and patience!).

The linky will be open for a week and since I’m only doing this once a month, I’ll be posting reminders when we get close to the next installment. Thanks for participating!

(Yes, lots of exclamation points in this post, I’m excited about this, ok?!!!)

Ten things I want to teach my daughter

For many years now I’ve been compiling a sort of mental list of the things I want to teach my children, things I feel are important, and I imagine that many, maybe most of you do something similar.  We all have our reasons for engaging in this possibly futile exercise, and today I decided to share mine, just in case you needed another example of my neuroses.

As you may already know, I’m a tiny bit into apocalyptic scenarios (one of my favorite movies is The Day After Tomorrow – no, not joking) and one of my biggest fears is dying, disappearing, getting stranded on a desert island… and not being there to see my kids grow up. So I started keeping journals for them; proper, hand-written journals. But, who am I kidding, they may not manage to glean the really salient information from all of my long-winded ramblings, or possibly by the time they’re grown the hand-written word will be so unfamiliar they won’t be able to make out what I wrote, so I decided to start a list of important things they need to know. This one is for The Girl:

1. Cherish your brother – so you’ll always have family, even after we’re gone.
2. Be nice, respectful and caring – it costs nothing and is worth millions.
3. If your bum is cold, your skirt is too short.
4. You never, ever need to do anything that makes you uncomfortable to prove your love.
5. When you’re old enough you may drink, you may even get tipsy but don’t ever get all out drunk, it’s un-lady-like and you’ll regret it.
6. If you’re unsure whether something you want to say is mean, don’t say it.
7. If your underwear is uncomfortable you’ll have a miserable day.
8. Do whatever you want with your life as long as it makes you genuinely happy.
9. Sing and dance as much as you can, it’ll make you happy on the gloomiest of days.
10. Childbirth is not as bad as everyone says, no matter how badly it hurts it’ll end soon enough and you get a baby out of it.

There you go, I’d like to do one once a month and I’ve decided to put up a linky, both to hold myself accountable and to make it more fun. So if anyone wants to participate write up your list of ten important things you want to teach your child or children and link up! I’ll be doing it the first day of every month, so it’s not too much of a hassle and we’ll see how it goes.

The previous list is just a test run and an example of what I mean, but feel free to write whatever you want whichever way you want (funny, heartfelt, ironic…) after all it’s for your children. I’ll be putting up the linky on Sunday, May 1^st (need to figure out how to do it!). If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments or email me moomser at gmail dot com. Hope to see you Sunday!