©Lisa Barker
My five-year old is learning to read. This is NOT a good thing. He’s reading Calvin and Hobbes.
You may recall that this is the child that recently took a ride on the back bumper of the UPS truck. This is also the child that escaped from home for most of his third and fourth years of life; the same child that once scaled bookcases and dressers; the one who now thinks he’s old enough to drive.
“Momma, you just passed a stop sign.”
“Yes, I did but...”
“Stop! You have to stop!”
“I did stop! You’re supposed to stop and then you go!” Now I’m screaming, too. It doesn’t faze him. He points out that I just ran a red light. Er....
So now he reads Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin is a very imaginative little boy and Hobbes is his stuffed tiger. Calvin is Dennis the Menace to the 100th power. My son worships Calvin. Can you see where I am going with this?
He walked by me the other day on his way out the door with a pair of pants on his head and a shirt on his legs. “Uh, son?”
He very succinctly explained that he had done that on purpose. “I WANT TO DRESS THIS WAY!”
“Okay, fine.” I figured the neighbors could use a good laugh and sooner or later my son’s gene for embarrassment will kick in.
Then, he wanted to take all my pots and pans outside and bang on them. Next he had on a cape and a pair of underwear on his head and was headed for the fence to jump off. It finally donned on me that I might have to censor his reading material.
So we read Calvin and Hobbes together and I point out how the pictures change to show silly things that Calvin is pretending. I thought maybe he wouldn’t take Calvin so literally if he understood that it was just pretend. Ha.
Now he springs off the sofa and tackles his brother just like Hobbes the tiger tackles Calvin. This causes three things to happen. His brother goes into histrionics, I start yelling, and he bursts into a fit of laughter...because he just loves it when Calvin and Hobbes get in trouble like that.
So now I’m stuck. I don’t want to kill his love for reading, but he’s memorizing Calvin’s every move. Like how to lock the babysitter out of the house, how to destroy the furniture as if he were a dinosaur and how to cause tidal waves in the bathtub.
I’m pretty sure Bill Watterson didn’t intend to make delinquents out of kindergartners, but Aiden is studying Calvin and Hobbes and I’m afraid. Very afraid.
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Jelly Mom™ is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five and author of "Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane...Doesn't Mean You Are A Bad Parent!" and is syndicated through Parent To Parent™. To publish Jelly Mom, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http://www.jellymom.com. Sign up for the complimentary Jelly Mom™ weekly newsletter and receive a BONUS GIFT!
Monday, October 20, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
It Gets Their Attention
©Lisa Barker
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. If you want your kids’ attention either sit down with a good book, make a phone call or put on some headphones. Sure enough, they’ll be at your elbow hollering at the top of their lungs in no time.
It never fails. I’m on the phone and calamity strikes.
“Is this a good time for you to talk?” the caller asks, as what sounds like a stack of dishes dropped on the floor thunders through the house.
“Just as good as any,” I reply. She proceeds while I interrupt several times asking her to repeat what she said.
Finally, I bark, “Go to your room now!” right into her ear. I wonder why so many people hang up on me.
Recently I discovered a new way to get my kids’ attention. Try sleeping in. It’s still summer vacation so I don’t have to get up early and rouse everyone out of bed. You would think they’d appreciate an extra hour in bed, but no.
From the first week or two the two boys were up at the crack of dawn, drawing swords and launching right into the battle they’d suspended the night before when I sent them to bed bickering and screaming at each other.
“QUIET!” I yell down the hall. I might as well be a substitute teacher in an band class. It ain’t happening.
Finally, I trod down the hall and read them the riot act. I go back to bed. There is no way I am going to get up to that noise so I pray for just twenty minutes of quiet. Five minutes later they’re at it again.
Did you know that cussing in children is proportionate to sleep deprivation for their parents? I just don’t know where they get their potty mouths.
At last they learn what I mean by reading quietly until I tell them they can get up. It’s a new morning and no one has uttered one word. Then the door slams open and my oldest son screeches in his nasally high-pitched pre-pubescent voice, “Momma, am I doing a good job today?”
The odds in favor of spontaneous human combustion are directly related to the number of kids one has, especially if they have kids that are prime candidates for the Darwin award. Even the teens have had enough. What’s worse? Hearing your little brothers shouting at each other like they’re in a wind tunnel or your mother going off like a sonic boom?
I’ll tell you what’s worse. It’s finally getting that extra twenty minutes I wanted and the phone rings. The bedroom door slams open again. “Momma, it’s for you!”
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Jelly Mom™ is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five and author of "Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane...Doesn't Mean You Are A Bad Parent!" and is syndicated through Parent To Parent™. To publish Jelly Mom, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http://www.jellymom.com. Sign up for the complimentary Jelly Mom™ weekly newsletter and receive a BONUS GIFT!
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. If you want your kids’ attention either sit down with a good book, make a phone call or put on some headphones. Sure enough, they’ll be at your elbow hollering at the top of their lungs in no time.
It never fails. I’m on the phone and calamity strikes.
“Is this a good time for you to talk?” the caller asks, as what sounds like a stack of dishes dropped on the floor thunders through the house.
“Just as good as any,” I reply. She proceeds while I interrupt several times asking her to repeat what she said.
Finally, I bark, “Go to your room now!” right into her ear. I wonder why so many people hang up on me.
Recently I discovered a new way to get my kids’ attention. Try sleeping in. It’s still summer vacation so I don’t have to get up early and rouse everyone out of bed. You would think they’d appreciate an extra hour in bed, but no.
From the first week or two the two boys were up at the crack of dawn, drawing swords and launching right into the battle they’d suspended the night before when I sent them to bed bickering and screaming at each other.
“QUIET!” I yell down the hall. I might as well be a substitute teacher in an band class. It ain’t happening.
Finally, I trod down the hall and read them the riot act. I go back to bed. There is no way I am going to get up to that noise so I pray for just twenty minutes of quiet. Five minutes later they’re at it again.
Did you know that cussing in children is proportionate to sleep deprivation for their parents? I just don’t know where they get their potty mouths.
At last they learn what I mean by reading quietly until I tell them they can get up. It’s a new morning and no one has uttered one word. Then the door slams open and my oldest son screeches in his nasally high-pitched pre-pubescent voice, “Momma, am I doing a good job today?”
The odds in favor of spontaneous human combustion are directly related to the number of kids one has, especially if they have kids that are prime candidates for the Darwin award. Even the teens have had enough. What’s worse? Hearing your little brothers shouting at each other like they’re in a wind tunnel or your mother going off like a sonic boom?
I’ll tell you what’s worse. It’s finally getting that extra twenty minutes I wanted and the phone rings. The bedroom door slams open again. “Momma, it’s for you!”
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Jelly Mom™ is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five and author of "Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane...Doesn't Mean You Are A Bad Parent!" and is syndicated through Parent To Parent™. To publish Jelly Mom, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http://www.jellymom.com. Sign up for the complimentary Jelly Mom™ weekly newsletter and receive a BONUS GIFT!
Friday, October 10, 2008
Weird Eats
©Lisa Barker
Have you ever wondered who the first person was to eat a certain food...and why? Like chicken eggs. Think about where they come from. Who thought that would be a good thing to taste? What about fish eggs? How does one even find fish eggs to begin with? Oh, look, something gelatinous and sticky. Let me put it in my mouth.
I know the answer. It was a toddler. Just follow one around. June bugs look pretty fascinating - crunchy on the outside with a soft center.
Crayons are another favorite. My youngest is five and he still ends up with green and purple teeth whenever he colors.
Little ones are scientists when it comes to discovering the world around them and one of the best ways to experience something is to taste it. My twins waited with great anticipation for their first little brother to arrive. Five months after his birth one of them asked if we could take him back to the hospital.
“Why?” I asked, thinking that perhaps it was a case of sibling rivalry. “Don’t you like your little brother?”
“He slobbers on everything!”
It’s true. Everything from the waist down belongs to those who crawl and toddle. Once an item is slimed up, who really wants to reclaim it?
“Hey, that’s my ball! Oh, yuck! Here. You can have it.”
The only other way I can imagine that man discovered certain foods was when he watched what the dog ate. If the dog didn’t die, it was a good sign.
If you have a toddler and a dog, then you’ve witnessed them in action, both of them on all fours sampling various odd objects around the house and sharing each other’s treats.
With the first child, you’re horrified when the dog licks his Popsicle. You throw that one out and get a new one. When it happens to the second child, you cut off the tainted portion. You quickly rinse it for the third child, but when it comes to the fourth child...well, the dog drinks clean water, right? There can’t be that many germs on his tongue.
They might sample the dog food, repeatedly, no matter how many times you try to discourage them, but make a mess of one Hamburger Helper meal and blurt out that it looks like dog food and they won’t touch it.
“Girls, what’s wrong? Don’t you like your pasta?”
They burst into tears. “We don’t want to eat dog food!”
Now, they get it.
Might as well set up a video camera in your kitchen and go live and call it Weird Eats. Have bowls of bugs, burnt matches and boogers on hand. Just don’t make a real dinner. You’ll turn people’s stomachs.
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Jelly Mom™ is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five and author of "Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane...Doesn't Mean You Are A Bad Parent!" and is syndicated through Parent To Parent™. To publish Jelly Mom, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http://www.jellymom.com. Sign up for the complimentary Jelly Mom™ weekly newsletter and receive a BONUS GIFT!
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