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I will post four weeks of columns here. In October 2008, I will put a years worth in book form and make them available for purchase.

November 11, 2007

What’s in a Name?

“Stop jumping on the sofa,” I warn from the kitchen. The child continues hopping merrily on her way from one end of the sofa to the other.

“Maggie . . . No, Jamie . . . No . . . you!” The child points to herself with a dramatic flourish. “Yes, you. Do you see anyone else jumping on the sofa? Now get down!!”

“But you didn’t say me, Mom. How was I supposed to know?” she says looking at me with big, falsely-innocent eyes.

Poor old what’s her name. You’d think after all the time and effort my husband and I spent deciding on the perfect names for our beloved children, I could keep them straight. Hours slipped by as we poured over the names-for-baby books.

Actually, we spent hours of, “How about this?” and “You’re kidding, right?” I have this theory. You don’t really know your mate until you try to find a name you both can agree on for your anticipated little bundle of joy. It’s amazing what comes out in those sessions.

You think he’s level-headed and conservative and he comes up with names like Sundance or Delight. Positive he’s calm and non-violent, he suggests Rambo or Brutus. “For a girl, dear?” You think he’s a modern kind of guy and he wants Myrtle or Abigail for a girl and Fitzwilliam or Heathcliff for a boy. The man doesn’t even read Victorian novels for goodness sake. Go figure!

So why can’t I remember their names? I try, but though I know their faces even better than my own, their names became a jumble. This malady seems to affect all parents at one time or another and grandparents can be a lost cause with children’s names in multiple families to commit to memory.

All a kid can do is grin and bear it – and maybe hope to get someone else in trouble somewhere down the line. “You said Johnny is supposed to take out the trash and I’m Joe.” I remember my parents calling me by my sister’s name. It was when they confused me with my brother that I drew the line. Even parents of adult children occasionally stumble over the name of the offspring they are talking to or about.

Parents have devised various schemes in an attempt to overcome this problem. I’ve known parents who named their children in alphabetical order but then they had to remember who was oldest and youngest in order to put the right name with the right child. Other parents have created posters listing their children’s names and photos and tacked them up around the house but to no avail.

I once read about a family who had so many children they didn’t know what to do, so they named them all Charlie – from one to twelve for birth certificate purposes but for everyday use, it was just Charlie. Despite flirting with disaster, this plan has certain advantages.

Calling them in for dinner would be a snap and you wouldn’t have to remember who should do which chore, the first Charlie to show up would do just fine. But I’d sure hate to be the one to answer the phone when they are teenagers, then try to sort out which Charlie was who.

However, after listening to the experiences of a friend of mine, I’m convinced the situation is hopeless. She was an only child and her parents still called her by the wrong name, usually one of her aunts or uncles.

Honestly, it’s not that I don’t know which name belongs to which child; it’s just that sometimes on the spur of the moment, certain details are hard to drag kicking and screaming from my memory. Oddly enough, I can usually manage to quickly answer questions like how many tablespoons in a cup – 16 – or the capital of Nevada – Carson City – or how many feet in a mile – 5280 – but my children’s names continue to elude me when I’m put on the spot.

October 28, 2007

Phone Friend or Foe

Why do my children always wait until I am on the phone to play mommy-tug-of-war? Does the ringing set off some primitive urge to launch a sneak attack? There is probably an unspoken competition taking place entitled “who can be the most obnoxious and get away the greatest number of otherwise forbidden activities.”

They know I’m not going to show them the error of their ways while I am on the phone. Heaven forbid my friends or business associates should learn my household is not the model of efficiency that exists in my fantasy. Appearances must be maintained, after all.

There’s no way I’d get an everyday phone system that makes it possible for the person on the other end of the conversation to see what I am doing. The occasional webcam, maybe – provided I can figure out how to ensure my children’s cooperation.

I’m not ready for the world see the glare in my eye and the shaking fist as the children burst into the room, “Mom, he hit me. . . The dog just barfed on the carpet. . . Make her give me back my doll.” I blithely try to pretend they do not exist, these children who are both seen and heard.

Thankfully the look of horror on my face cannot be seen as the jelly jar hits the floor and mingles with the previously spilt juice to form a lovely quagmire of glass and goop. No one can see as I frantically motion for the guilty party to stay out of the mess and try to carry on the conversation as though my attention is entirely focused.

You know you are a true friend when I let loose and give the children *?&*#, without trying to cover up what I am saying. “Would you guys get out of here! Try not to kill each other but if you do, wait until I’m off the phone to tell me about it.” I’m sure they know I don’t mean that – it’s just frustration speaking – because they are back within 10 seconds full of breaking news.

Another popular ploy is to do something they think I might object to if I weren’t otherwise occupied. On the way out the door, they yell, “I’m going over to Jimmy’s,” even though they suspect I may have something else for them to do – like clean their rooms, do their homework, clean up the doggy treasures in the backyard. In fact, that’s probably the main motivation behind their escape.

Is this phone my friend or foe? I can’t imagine life without it. Not only has my ear taken on the shape of the receiver but my cell phone follows me everywhere. It’s an addition and a security blanket all rolled into one.

Is my children’s tendency to take advantage of someone when they are down the result of my busy life or have children always behaved this way? I don’t recall acting this way when I was young, but perhaps my mother either spent less time on the phone or was better at catching us before we committed a family felony. Of course, there is the possibility that in my dotage I may have blocked this youthful trait from my memory. I was an angel, right?

I suppose the dye was cast years ago when I should have begun the process of training my darlings to respond to the bell by sitting quietly. If Pavloff could train rats to run a maze, surely it shouldn’t have been too difficult to train my children not to interrupt. Obviously, my children are more advanced than rats. Maybe that’s where the problem lies! Copyright © 2007

October 22, 2007

Nothing To Eat

They pounce on me as I carry the groceries into the house. I feel like the hapless rabbit that missed the signs and wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time and now finds itself surrounded by wolves. Snarling and snapping, ripping and tearing, circling and jostling, in a matter of minutes, the contents of the ten bags are strewn from one end of the kitchen to the other.

They look at me reproachfully and mutter, “Why didn’t you get anything to eat?”

“Excuse me,” I splutter! “What you see before you is equal to the per capita income of many people in this world. There’s plenty here to eat.” Naively I say, “Look at these nice shiny apples, multi-grain crackers, organic cheese, popcorn, lovely raw carrots and celery,” I hold them temptingly in front of my brood, “and you can dip them in humus with roasted red peppers or spinach dip. Yum!!”

“But Mom,” they wail, “we want chocolate Do Dongs, soda, cookies, ice cream, potato chips – not all this healthy stuff. You never bring home anything good!” (For the uninformed, good means at least 100 calories per bite and is sure to send your glucose levels off the scale.)

“Hey,” I chirp, “I heard on TV that it’s the ‘in’ thing to eat healthy, nutritious food. The more gourmet, the cooler you are.”

“Mom, people don’t say ‘in’ and ‘cool’ anymore.” I could tell that mutiny was afoot, “and Jimmy always gets to eat super-sugared cereal for breakfast. You give us oatmeal with apples and honey or cold cereal with hardly any sugar or worse – something with lots of fiber.”

Oh, dear! How could I? I’ve failed as a mother. I’ve apparently deprived my children of a major right of passage by limiting the amount of these epicurean delights they are allowed to consume. How could I be so shallow as to provide them with three – and often made from scratch – nourishing meals a day?

Will they grow up warped, unable to compete with all those junk-food addicts? Will they be left behind in the caffeine and sugar induced dust of their nutritionally challenged peers. When they reach the age of discretion (I’m not sure when that is, but based on my secret candy bar stash, I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten there) will their system be able to handle the opportunity to eat as much of that stuff as they want?

I do let them have those teeth-rotting delicacies from time-to-time and do make that obligatory, weekly run to one of those fast food palaces, so I know there systems are at least partially prepared.

October 14, 2007

Nagging is in My Contract

Mothers are supposed to nag. Every time my children give me that long-suffering, here-she-goes-again look, I assure them it was in the contract I had to sign before I was allowed to take them home from the hospital.

If I don’t nag, that big “they” in the sky will probably come and take them back. There are days – truth be told – when for some fraction of a second, a pleasure center in the far reaches of my brain flickers at the thought. Peace. Quiet. Hmmm?

Kids are born without any concept of organization or tidiness. Years of parental persuasion are required to change these natural inclinations. Some children never quite get it.

When removing a towel from the linen closet, would it ever occur to a child to take the towel from the top of the pile instead of the bottom? Not in my experience. Now I realize eye level is much closer to the bottom than the top, but once they’ve dumped all the other towels on the floor, do they bother to pick them up and put them back? No, they got what they came for, the heap on the floor in now invisible.

What’s the first thing a toddler does when faced with a full drawer? Empty it, of course, methodically and completely.

For a while I thought laziness was the problem, at least for my older children, but that notion has since been dispelled. For instance, one of my children decides to have a bowl of soup. Sometime later, that same child decides she wants more. Logic dictates that it would be easier to carry that same bowl back to the stove for a refill. Instead, she pulls out the step stool and gets a clean bowl from the cupboard and a new spoon from the drawer.

And where are those bowls once the child is finished? On the floor or sofa where she was sitting, in her room, in the backyard – basically where ever she happened to be when she finished it. If I’m very lucky and the child has absorbed the subliminal tapes I have been playing while she sleeps, I may find it stacked amongst its mates on the sink. Dishwasher doors do not open for anyone under the age of 20.

Articles of clothing are left wherever they happen to be discarded. Visualize a sexy movie without the anticipated conclusion. Toys, books, homework all seem to have phantom sticky glue that is activated once the child is finished with it and thus cannot move the object from that spot. Like a trail of bread crumbs, I know where my children have been.

I try to use positive reinforcement as much as the next parent. The catch is, that to use positive reinforcement, one must actually encounter the child doing something you are trying to reinforce.

Like a perpetually broken record my voice recalls the culprits to the scenes of their crimes. Relentlessly I repeat, “Pick it up and put it away. Pick it up and put it away.”