We spent the day at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. They had a kite making festival, with all sorts of amazing things to do. Story time. Make your own kites. Watch Japanese masters make their own kites. Eat popcorn and ride the carousel. Tumble home into bed, exhausted and happy and full of questions about lift, drag, and all those other miracle things that make flight possible.

These are the days that make it alllllll worthwhile.

Tags: Air and Space Museum, kite festival, make your own kite, children, kids, kid, motherhood, mothering, mommy, mama

There’s nothing quite like Sunday. The alarm clocks are off, the street is quiet, there’s one more day of leisure before the weekday grind begins again…

the kid is still up at 6:30AM.

As he was on Saturday morning, and as he will be again on Monday morning. Now, I actually knew a woman who was quite proud of the fact that she locked the door to her sons’ room every night, and the toddlers were not allowed out until 7AM. Yes. Locked it. From the outside. With a key. And while I can appreciate that such measures take care of such inconveniences as Grown Up Time and deep, philosophical conversations about what killed the dinosaurs (at 3AM), I just don’t think that such a drastic measure is the right thing for my little family. We don’t have a television, so I can’t just tell him to go watch cartoons. He’s a crafty little bug, too; he’ll clamber in the big bed, pretending to want to snuggle and go back to sleep. What he does, however, is toss. Turn. Kick. Squirm. Wriggle. Talk. Pat.

Drive. Mom. Nuts.

I am a grumpy, grumpy mama today. Did I mention, I’m grumpy? grouchy? cranky? and four other dwarves that Disney never told you about. Now, I could take it out on the little guy and be grumpy. Not fair to him. I could pretend to be light and airy and happy. Not fair to me, honestly, cause I feel like kaka, and I don’t feel like faking it. So I’ve got a compromise that seems to work wonders around the house. It’s called Grumpy Mama. She’s a close cousin to Cranky Mama and Boring Mama, two characters that seem to make the kid crack up every time either of them show up. It’s a technique from Playful Parenting guides the world over, and let me tell you, it works, even when, like me, you don’t have a sense of humor left and all you want to do is shut the door and lock yourself in. What am I babbling about? It goes like this.

I growl. I groan. I tell the kid, in all seriousness, that he kept me up all night/woke me up too early/pushed my buttons/yanked my chain, and so now I’m Grumpy Mama. I frown. I make Mean Angry Faces. I tell him to Leave Me Alone, I’m GRUMPY. He laughs. I tell him I mean it, I’m serious. I growl again for good effect. I might even throw in a scowl or two, just to make sure he knows I mean business. He giggles some more. Invariably, he asks me if I’m making fun of myself, which always makes me laugh because yes, I’m making fun of myself. And then I start to feel better.

This kind of thing works when your kid is in a certain kind of rotten mood. If I get Annoying Whining Boy, there’s nothing better than a blanked declaration: “No happy children are allowed in this house. Nope. I mean it. Not one. NO SMILING ALLOWED! Nope. No laughing. Nope. NO way. Not a peep. I don’t want to see one smile in this house, we’re all grumpy whiny people here.” He’ll begin to smile. “AUGH! No! Did you smile? That Is Not Allowed!” He’ll laugh. He’ll insist on trying to whine again, but it’s no use. Once the Silly Rules are declared, there’s nothing to do but laugh about them.

That’s a Good Thing.

Photo Credits: Felt clown on Flickr

discipline, funny discipline, humor, love, parenting, playful parenting, positive parenting

You know, if most little boys pick up a Barbie doll, they will bend her legs perpendicular to her body and start shooting with her. My kid, almost four, has a very intricate fantasy world full of super heroes, policemen, Jedi Knights and Medaeval Knights, all rolled into one huge ball of mini-testosterone. I don’t know where it came from, though I’m not so happy about the fact that his father let the kid watch Star Wars movies when he was just three. He doesn’t watch regular TV (at least, not at my house) and none of the toys in his toy box are gunlike in any way. Except, when they are in the hands of a determined four year old.

Everything shoots. The good news is, nothing shoots bullets. My kid’s guns shoot lasers, music, flowers, and any number of creative ways to play the way he wants to without causing anyone pretend bodily harm. I’ve tried everything I know to redirect his play into something less… heroic? violent? weapon-oriented? But I guess, when you grow up in a home that has a real, Damascus sword hanging on the wall, you have a different take on weaponry. I’ve tried ignoring it, I’ve tried explaining to him that guns are bad and they kill people, I’ve tried hollering at him every time he shot something with anything… It’s no use. I think one of our dearest friends is about to stop playing with us because my kid’s a gun-nut, in her eyes.

But the biggest problem we are facing is school. School has a zero tolerance policy for gun play in school; in this day and age, in this city, I don’t blame them one bit. But what am I supposed to do about my son? Apparently, he’s on his third warning. The fact that I never heard about any of the first two warnings irks me to no end, but that’s another post. I’m really at my wit’s end! What can I do to stop this foolish play? I know it’s something he’s just gotta do, but does he gotta do it where he’s going to be punished severely for it? I’m afraid they’re going to ask him to stay home one day. Sigh. He’s not violent about it. He’s just got a big imagination, full of pirates and Spidermen and policemen and Secret Servicemen (thanks, Papa) and space aliens and knights and all the swashbuckling adventure that such a pantheon demands.

What am I going to do?

Jonathan Turley wrote an interesting article in the Outlook section of the Washington Post, and hosted a live chat about it later — transcript here. The article, entitled, My Boys Like Shootouts. What’s Wrong With That?, has some glimmer of hope and sanity for those of us who have decided to allow our sons to process the (sometimes violent) world in which we live through the tool they use best… play:

Still, when their best friend recently invited them to his Army-themed birthday party, it didn’t bother us a bit (though some parents did refuse to let their children attend). In fact, I was struck by how, more than combat fighting, the boys tended to act out scenes involving rescuing comrades or defending the wounded. What I saw was not boys experimenting with carnage and slaughter, but modeling notions of courage and sacrifice. They were trying to experience the emotions at the extremes of human conduct: facing and overcoming fear to remain faithful to their fellow soldiers.

Or, as child psychologist Penny Holland put it in her book, “We Don’t Play with Guns Here,” their make-believe games were “part of . . . making sense of the world [imitating] timeless themes of the struggle between good and evil.” This explanation is probably all the more important in a world filled with violent images of war on television and in the news.

I can only hope my school has a more tolerant opinion of role play and guns than others, or my four year old will be kicked out one day for pointing his finger at the giant caterpillar and shouting, “POW! SPACE ALIEN!”

Tags: children, gun play, guns, Jonathan Turley, motherhood, mothering, My boys like shootouts, self-confidence, Washington Post, What’s wrong with that

At play, Mothering, parenting

A friend of mine’s son was having trouble with the monsters in his room. I sympathise. It seems we had a monster infestation for a while, there. But we got rid of them.

My son would ask if there were any monsters in his room, and I’d always say, “Nope.” Which would be followed by that inevitable toddler question, “Why?”

Well, I kept looking for answers to that question. Sometimes, the monsters had gotten tired of waiting for him to come, and so they’d gone to a friend’s house to play. Sometimes, their monster mothers had called them home to eat supper. Sometimes, the monsters had been rude, so I kicked them out. Sometimes, they’d gotten in the way of my housework, so I vaccumed them up. Once or twice, they had fallen asleep waiting for the kid to come home, and so I’d sent them off to their monster houses to be tucked in.

He stopped being afraid of monsters right quick.

But my friend’s son was more persistent in his monster spotting. So the other night, they stopped by the local Marvelous Market to purchase a rather strategically placed (thanks, Seth!) can of Monster Repellant, which they purchased (parents, get yourself a can of compressed air, used to clean computer components). Once home, they sprayed the Monster Repellant around the room, and then vacuumed up every last bit of monster residue and threw it away. The little guy hasn’t found a monster since.

And a local market just made a very loyal customer out of me.

Mothering, parenting, Toddler tips