When YOUNG LADY was having a hard time separating from me at preschool drop off, her teachers would try (hopelessly) to distract her.  As she screamed “Mommy! Don’t GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”, three rattled, twenty-something Masters of Early Childhood Ed candidates would attempt to steal my little girl’s focus with books, toys, activities and even a netted cage full of caterpillars.  Nothing would divert YOUNG LADY from her goal: To keep a panicked Mommy in the room.

Time and a few tough love moments got us over that bump, and YOUNG LADY eventually learned to enjoy school, safe in the knowledge that (say it with me) “Mommy Always Comes Back”.  But one thing never changed: YOUNG LADY has never been a kid you could distract.

Then along came LITTLE GUY, in every way the opposite of his older sister.  Where YOUNG LADY would spend an hour inspecting a single toy, discovering twenty new ways to play with a single object, LITTLE GUY moves from toy to toy like a hopping bunny, throwing things around the floor, making a mess and never pausing.  Anything can steal his focus, because he’s never really focused in the first place.  No matter how interesting the toy in his hands, “Look at that!” is usually enough to get him to drop whatever he’s holding….even if you’re just pointing at a bare wall.  He’ll stop, inspect the wall, see that it’s nothing to look at, and then go back to….wait, what was he doing before Mommy…..where was…..hey, what’s THAT?  And he’s off to the next thing, never having remembered what he just put down.

It’s almost too easy.  Preschool drop off, sneaking in that extra forkful of dinner, getting a stolen toy out of his hands in the playground.  All of it accomplished simply by suggesting that something else might be equally if not more entertaining.  And if you read my post entitled “The TV Dinner”, you’ll remember that this NY Mama has no problem getting a healthy meal into a resistant child….just turn on the TV (The ultimate distraction)!

But am I doing LITTLE GUY a big disservice by encouraging his tendency to lack focus?  Am I missing the early signs of ADD?  Does that sound as ridiculous to you as it does to me?  I mean, it’s normal for a three year old boy to be easily distracted, isn’t it?  Maybe I’m just noticing it because my first child was so calm and focused….but am I making a bad choice by taking advantage of an opportunity to make parenting LITTLE GUY a little bit easier?  Or is that how moms do it?

What do YOU think?

Mornings are a bit nutty around here. HUSBAND leaves early for work (lucky!) and it’s my job to get YOUNG LADY and LITTLE GUY off and running.  I am charged with the seemingly simple task of getting two fairly cooperative children fed, dressed, and down to YOUNG LADY’s school for morning drop-off no later than 8:00 am.  Since we start the whole routine at 6:30 am, you’d think this was easy.  A whole hour and a half to put on clothing that was set out the night before, eat a simple breakfast and travel ten city blocks.  We have plenty of time.  So can someone PLEASE tell me why we are always stressed out and running late in the morning?

It starts at 6:30 am when I wake up.  In fifteen minutes flat, I’ve gotten myself dressed (Shower? Me? Have we met?) and YOUNG LADY’s breakfast is on the table.  I’ve got a mug of coffee in my hand, the dog has had his morning treat, and I’m about to start making the bed. At 6:45 I hear my daughter’s alarm go off, and that’s when all the momentum grinds to a halt.  We begin to play the hokey pokey. With a giant emphasis on POKEY.

We always start with such high hopes. We’ve been through this before, and this morning we’ve both decided it’s going to be different.  But YOUNG LADY is tired, and she requires time to acclimate to the whole “being awake and functioning” concept. (For a giant “I TOLD YOU SO” moment, see last week’s post on sleep).  By 7:00, she’s beginning to consider the long-term ramifications of removing her PJ’s and getting dressed, and by 7:40, Mommy is once again stressing out and raising her voice because we are going to be late for school.

I’ve tried yelling, but it raised my stress level and took too much time out of our morning.  Plus it made YOUNG LADY really upset and then I had to send her off to school feeling like the worst mom ever.  I tried writing down a schedule for YOUNG LADY to follow, but when she couldn’t manage to eat breakfast in under fifteen minutes, she spent ten minutes making excuses and checking to see if I was mad, making us even later for school.  I even tried waking her up earlier, but somehow we just naturally adjusted our speed and wound up exactly as late as we were the morning before.

It’s not that YOUNG LADY is chronically pokey.  Twice a week when I announce that it’s time to get ready for NY Kids Club gymnastics, she manages to underdress her leotard and get herself into coat and shoes in under five minutes.  I’m relaxed and YOUNG LADY is on the ball.  I realize that this event happens later in the day, when dew of fresh sleep is no longer evaporating from her bed, and that YOUNG LADY is beyond thrilled to be going to NY Kids Club as opposed to school.  But what gets me is that she’s shown she is capable of getting out the door in a reasonable amount of time.  I know that she WANTS to have successful, stress-free mornings, but somehow we always seem to fail.

Maybe it all comes down to needing an earlier bedtime.  Maybe my expectations are too high: are other almost-eight-year-olds required to make their bed and do their own hair? Maybe it’s all HUSBAND’s fault for leaving me in charge.  Or maybe I should just relax and accept the fact that a less-than-perfect family owes it to the universe to start the day with less than perfection.

What do YOU think?

Ah, the magic S word…..SLEEP!  Parents dream about it.  Kids don’t appreciate it. Nobody gets enough of it.  Especially in my house.

I’ve always tried to be laid back about the S word. My father was an insomniac, and I have spent much of my adult life having trouble falling asleep. I really didn’t want to pass my sleep challenges on to my kids, so I swore to be relaxed about rest.  Sure, we did a little “cry it out” when both kids were old enough to self-soothe, but HUSBAND and I never made a big deal over sleep.  We’ve always had a “relative” bedtime, give or take a half hour, and napping has never been an issue.

Then last year, YOUNG LADY started reading for pleasure.  She’d learned how to read in school the year before, but it was during first grade that she discovered the joy of books.  We’d put her in bed with a book around 8:00 or 8:30, assuming she’d fall asleep reading.  But at 9:00 she was still at it.  And at 9:30.  Finally at 10:00, HUSBAND and I would tell her that we were going to bed and that would finally convince her to put down the Fairy Magic book and turn off the lights.

We didn’t want to make a big deal about it.  I’m ultra-sensitive about creating sleep neuroses for my kids, plus we didn’t want to discourage YOUNG LADY’S new-found love of the written word.  So we tried to be cool about her late nights, and now we find ourselves with a daughter who is about to turn eight and thinks that 10:00 PM is her actual bedtime.

The thing is, YOUNG LADY has been doing just fine sleeping from 10:00 pm to 7:00 am.  She’s growing quicker than I can clothe her, she does great in school, she cleans her plate at dinner, she’s a happy, funny kid…sure she falls asleep on long car rides, but we’re New Yorkers so how often are we in the car?  I’ve always just assumed that YOUNG LADY was a kid who didn’t really need a ton of sleep.

But now LITTLE GUY is giving up his nap.  We have him enrolled in an afternoon preschool program (where he is absolutely THRIVING thanks to the careful preparation he received last year at the New York Kids Club 2s program, thank you very much), and we’ve been trying not to let him doze off at 4:00 PM.  Our plan was to put him to bed at 7:00 and have him sleep through the night.

But every night, at 8:30 PM, LITTLE GUY is still going strong.

I worry that my kids aren’t getting enough rest.  8:30 or 9:00 until 7:00 shouldn’t be enough sleep for a three year old.  And none of my second grader’s friends are allowed to stay up until 10:00.  But on the other hand, neither one of them seem to be suffering.  They are both thriving and growing.  Besides, if I put them in bed and force them to lay there in the dark when they aren’t tired, aren’t I just breeding little insomniacs?

What do YOU think?

Oh Dear, it’s starting.  My YOUNG LADY is only seven, but already she is paying mind to what’s cool, how she looks and how others see her.  After three straight years of refusing any outfit that did not include a skirt, YOUNG LADY has now pronounced all skirts and dresses “Baby Clothes” and has resigned herself to wearing leggings….EVERY SINGLE DAY.

I’ve always been an Old Navy mom.  I never saw the point in spending more than eight dollars on a shirt for a kid who will grow out of it in three months if she doesn’t destroy it in two.  But suddenly, YOUNG LADY is asking to go to Lester’s (oh, you don’t know about Lester’s? Have a daughter? Just wait….) and wants those feathers in her hair that all the girls on iCarly and Victorious are sporting.

I guess I should have expected it.  I was the same way.  Even in my little, small-town school, far, far away from New York, I remember fighting with my mother over feathered hair (that’s featherED hair, not feathers IN hair) and tight jeans.  But I certainly wasn’t seven years old!

Last weekend it became clear to me that YOUNG LADY needed some back to school clothes.  Between a growth spurt this summer and her refusal to wear a dress, we didn’t have any weather-appropriate attire in her closet.  I tried to pull out the computer for a cyber-trip to Old Navy.com, but YOUNG LADY convinced me to take her to Lester’s where I spent almost twice what I would normally pay for about a week’s worth of school clothes.

Then we headed over to one of those boutique hair salons for kids where I paid $28 to have three fluorescent feathers woven into my baby’s head.  I have to admit…it looks kind of cute!  I was unsure of my actions the entire time, but seeing YOUNG LADY feel good about herself and confident in her appearance was a very satisfying prize.

I’ve read that it’s normal for kids this age to start trying to define themselves, and for some that means getting a sense of their physical selves and perhaps trying to create an identity through personal style.  I’m glad to see YOUNG LADY taking pride in her appearance and I do think she looks awfully cute.  But on the other hand, I’m spending more than I think I should on clothes and I’m worried about the vanity aspect….I mean, does she have to look at herself in EVERY car  or shop window we pass?  This is New York!  You can’t take a step without having a car window on your left and a storefront on your right!  I have to leave five minutes early to get anywhere these days!  But maybe my expectations are out of sync with reality.  I chose to raise my kids in New York. Maybe I should have expected a certain amount of materialism and style obsession.  But shouldn’t strong parenting counteract all of that environmental influence? Am I a good enough mom to win out over iCarly?  And will they take out those $28 feathers when they do a lice check at school?

What do YOU think?

I wish someone had told me back when YOUNG LADY was starting solids: Turn off the TV when you eat.  It was during that blur of a first year when the drone of the TV provided the backdrop to my long, home-bound days, and I hardly realized what I was doing when I parked YOUNG LADY in front of a Baby Einstein video and fed her some rice cereal and banana.

By the time YOUNG LADY was two, she was eating many of her meals in front of the boob tube.  I noticed an interesting phenomenon: If I fed her without TV, a struggle would ensue.  She would spit out her food, refuse her veggies and try to get up from the table.  If the TV was on, I could get her to eat full servings of sautéed tofu, steamed broccoli and apple slices polished off with a glass of milk.  My food anxiety would subside….and it would be replaced with TV anxiety.

This was around the time that the American Academy of Pediatrics had come out with a recommendation that children under the age of two not be exposed to TV of any kind.  I was worried that any glimpse of TV would rot my child’s brain, but more worried that without the proper, perfect nutrition, she would fail to develop and I would be crowned Worst Mother in Manhattan.

Now, with kid number two, I’m a little more relaxed about these things.  I realize that a little TV never killed anyone (seeing YOUNG LADY develop into a perfectly normal, intelligent seven-year-old has helped allay my fears) and I’m a little easier on myself when LITTLE GUY has a meal that does not contain complete, 100% organic servings of each food group.  But that doesn’t mean I’m completely cured of my need to be a perfect mom when it comes to what my kids eat, and I’m still kicking myself over the fact that I repeated my past mistakes: I still feed LITTLE GUY in front of the TV more often than not.

Like most New York families, we don’t have family dinner every night.  HUSBAND usually doesn’t get home in time to eat with us, so I end up feeding the kids round one, saving round two for HUSBAND and picking on bits of each for myself.  All the while, I’m aware that I’m passing my own food anxiety on to my kids and modeling bad habits with my eat-and-run approach.  Putting the TV on during meals is just icing on the bad parenting cake.  But on the other hand, if turning on the TV means getting a nutritious meal into my kids, how can it really be so bad?

What do YOU think?