Domestic Psychology

Girls v Boys – Stomach Bug

// November 29th, 2011 // No Comments » // children, health

Girls –
At the first hint of digestive difficulties, girls stop eating to avoid vomit. They would rather sleep on the bathroom floor than have an accident in their bedroom. Girls will quietly play or watch a cartoon between naps. The first sign of recovery is the girl changing from pitiful to cranky. Even when they feel better, girls have to be enticed to start eating again.

Boys -
Boys never stop eating. They don’t care if they just puked. They still want to keep eating. When that food gets rejected, boys just explode like a volcano with little or no attempt made to get to the bathroom. Boys won’t settle down for a nap, they just crumble in a heap on the floor for a few minutes before bouncing back up again. At the first hint of recovery, boys will eat the entire contents of the fridge.

rocks in the pocket

// August 30th, 2011 // No Comments » // children

Last year, I was constantly digging rocks out of the smallest child’s pockets, the washing machine and the dryer. Then, summer arrived and although said child spent large parts of each day outside, there were no rocks in my laundry. School began two weeks ago and the rocks have returned. I am perplexed by the connection between school and rocks in the pocket. I have tried to formulate a hypothesis.

Psychology Hypothesis: The playground is the pinnacle of fun and keeping a bit of playground in your pocket allows the illusion that the playground is wherever the child is and not a fixed geographic location on the school property that is only allowed for twenty minutes a school day.

Monetary hypothesis: The school is a prison environment and valuable commodities like a lunch dessert, pencil with some remaining eraser and choice of best friend for the moment are bought and sold using cigarettes rocks as currency.

Gravitational hypothesis: Very small children enter school and are reminded of basic science information like, gravity. Aware of their size and weight, children fill their pockets with pieces of the Earth in an effort to avoid floating up to the ceiling that is heavily spiked with dangerous pencils.

Worksheet hypothesis: Faced with the prospect of another day trapped in a chair, filling in the circles on TCAP practice tests, children keep rocks in their pockets to roll between fingers, stare at and imagine as spaceships whenever the teacher is too busy grading the mountains of multiple choice worksheets to notice what the students are doing.

I don’t think I’ve formulated a hypothesis worthy of further exploration. Yet.

Packing for camp

// July 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // children

The aisles at the big, red, bullseye store might be decorated for back-to-school, but the shopping carts revealed that there was a lot of summer camp purchasing happening. Two women in the soap/body wash aisle discussed the quantity of body wash their children would need at camp. “If they shower after every swim, they’ll need two bottles of body wash.” “They’re gonna need lotion so their skin isn’t dry from all that bathing.” I did the smile nod as I grabbed the smallest bottle of hair and body wash.

A woman in the boys’ department carefully picked out an assortment of shorts and shirts that would have had matching Garanimal tags, if that still existed. I stepped across the aisle and tossed a pair of small men’s swim trunks in my basket.

On my way to the checkout, I grabbed a box of ziploc bags as a grandmother gently put half a dozen refillable water bottles on the new pillow, blanket and matching towels in her cart.

Both of the shoppers in front of me at the check-out had large rolling suitcases balanced delicately on the top of their piles of summer camp supplies. The woman directly in front of me added almost $350 at the big, red, bullseye store to the cost of sending her child to summer camp for a week.

After years of summer camp, I have learned a few things.
1. Instead of luggage, use storage buckets with lids and stow them under camp cots.
2. Pack clothing and other fabric items in ziploc bags. At the end of camp, unused clothing will be clean, dry and still inside the bag.
3. Most children will wear swimsuits and t-shirts all day, every day. Some children will wear the SAME suit and shirt the entire week.
4. Unless the camp counselors are extraordinary, your children will consider swimming a suitable substitute for bathing, even if they were swimming in a lake.
5. Children will also fail to properly use sunscreen and bug spray. Combined with poor hygiene while at camp, you should go ahead and schedule an appointment with the pediatrician the day after camp is over for infected bug bite treatment.
6. Don’t send anything to camp that you aren’t willing to never see again. I once had a child return without a single item because a freak storm blew everything into the abyss.
7. Every moment that you spend worrying and fretting about your child’s safety, your child is having a wonderful time being dirty, stinky, loud and silly. You’ll worry anyway.

They are not blank slates

// April 4th, 2011 // No Comments » // school

I went to eat lunch in the elementary cafeteria and the 8-year-olds told me where to sit. “There’s always an empty seat next to the end, cause that girl doesn’t sit beside the rest of us.” The horde of girls chattered away with a predictability that made me wonder if they have the same conversations every day.

As the sing-song voices got sillier and louder, the girl on the end spoke for the first time. “How long has your coffee cup been empty and why are you still holding it?” It was the most perceptive thing I have heard in ages. We chatted while the rest of the table sang a Lady GaGa song.

She asked me if I am the kind of mom who works or stays at home. I told her I do both and we talked about websites and writing. “How do you know what to write about?” “I write about everything. I might write about you.” “That sounds boring.”

If I was wealthy, I would put a writing device in that child’s hands today and encourage her to journal her thoughts. The only thing worse than wasting such a natural curiosity and talent for observation, would be that little girl going through life thinking that she is boring.

Girls v Boys – Valentine’s Day

// February 11th, 2011 // No Comments » // children, holidays

8-year-old Amy carefully wrote the name of each classmate on a valentine. Some of the i’s were dotted with hearts. She signed her name to each one with extraneous swirls on her y’s. The list of names was doubled checked and the cards were tucked gently in a ziploc bag until Monday.

5-year-old Evan grumbled and complained that he could pass the valentines out to classmates easier without names on the cards. Two adults took turns hovering over Evan to keep him focused on the task of addressing his cards. Amy helped Evan slide the heart shaped lollipops in the slots on each card. She frowned at one of the candies. “This one is broken. You can eat it Evan.” Evan raised one eyebrow and for a moment, I thought I was looking at John Belushi. His face returned to normal impishness and he picked up one of the Lego figurines that he always keeps within his reach. The Lego man became a hammer to smash the lollipop. Smash, smash, smash. “I can eat this one, too.”

Who needs alarm clocks

// November 19th, 2010 // No Comments » // children, parenting

Best ways to wake up:
Amy insisting that I feel her socks. “They’re so fluffy!”
Evan singing a Turkey song. “Gobble, gobble, gobble.”
The smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen.”

Worst ways to wake up:
“I think I swallowed my loose tooth.”
“Noah’s having a nosebleed.”
The smell of urine.

Best snooze button:
A small child snuggled up against me because they know I won’t interrupt the snuggle time for any numbers on a clock.

getting from point a to point b

// November 12th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // children, Doug, me, travel

Let’s be completely honest. We drive to get anywhere. Sure, the teens might walk for ice cream once in a blue moon and the children roam the cove heavily, but anytime we need to go somewhere or do something, there is a car involved. Once we parked the car in the airport garage, the rules changed.

Airplanes –
The very first time the plane left the ground, the children were glued to the window with giant smiles on their faces while I clawed the arm rest. The noise that the landing gear makes when raised and lowered is one of the most unnerving things I have ever heard. If I accidentally let out a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty scream when the wheels ka-chunked in or out of the plane, Doug giggled like a preteen girl. The children were oblivious. After the initial takeoff, they acted like flying was something they do every day. They behaved exactly like they do in the car. They played and chatted. Doug went one step beyond chatting. He got to know every single person anywhere near him on the plane and they talked the entire flight. We are terrible at going through security without creating a scene, but we are great at riding on the airplane. Wait. My husband and children are great on planes. I’m entertainment for the other passengers.

Taxis -
This should be just like riding in a car. It isn’t. There are no built in 5-point harnesses for the smallest children. The children don’t understand why the driver doesn’t want to chat and Evan has the same social disorder as his father. They both imitate accents when they are near them. While Doug quickly realizes what he is doing and stops, Evan ups the ante by making up words. Friends tolerate this behavior. Based on the way the hair on his arms was standing up, our taxi driver was not amused. He ignored my questioning his route instead of pulling out his phone to prove me wrong like Doug would do. When he dumped us and our mountain of luggage two blocks from our destination in total darkness in DC’s Columbia Heights, I decided I don’t like taxis.

Walking -
This seems like it should be the problem-free way to get from here to there. It isn’t. First of all, there is my complete lack of a sense of direction that results in people talking me there all the time. “I can see you. Walk to the end and turn left. No! Your other left!” Besides feeling perpetually lost, by the second day in DC, my feet hurt like they have never hurt before. While the children climbed retaining walls, balanced on curbs and picked up every single piece of trash in the gutter, I hobbled after them as if I was their great-grandmother. The appearance of a crosswalk seemed to be some secret trigger for the children to walk backwards or hop on one foot or twirl with their eyes closed. The crosswalk timer was apparently amused by these dangerous street games and it responded by randomly jumping from 50 to 20 or even 10. I was fairly confident that a cabhole ( © Lucy Jilka, 2010) was going to seriously injure my family for our inability to walk the tempo of the city.

Metro –
I thought the airplane would be the highlight of travel for my children, but I was wrong. My children loooved the Metro (even though they called it the subway). They could have spent the entire day riding the Metro and grinning like Cheshire cats. The girl teen loved the Metro too. She loved that she could go anywhere she wanted to go without her goofy family in tow. If I had anything resembling a signal from AT&T on the metro, I could have sat there and people watched for hours. There were people on the Metro wearing shoes that cost a mortgage payment standing beside people wearing the only shoes they own. Poor Doug had an endless array of problems with the Metro. He got to know the Metro employee with the Samuel Jackson personality really well. “I’m going to write on this ticket, ‘let the man who threw away perfectly good Metro tickets change stations’.” My only problem with the Metro was that traveling underground with no sense of direction is completely disorienting. Evan would like it if they added bathrooms to the trains.

leaving on a jet plane

// September 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Doug, parenting, travel

In a month, we are taking the youngest children on a mini-adventure. The part of the adventure they can’t stop talking about is their first ride in an airplane. As with all things that involve children, there is much behind the scenes planning involved. I’m not an experienced flier, but I think I have the airplane part of the trip mentally organized.

I want to arrive at the airport early enough to let the children watch other people go through security and answer any questions they have before we get in the security line. I’ll dress the children and I in slip-on shoes. I might wear a wireless bra even if it means risking my boobs falling on the ground and getting lost in the airport. The children and I will empty our pockets into the luggage that we are checking and there will be no teeny-tiny toys, toys that roll when dropped or toys without volume control allowed. Everyone will visit the potty just before we enter the security area. Going through security, one parent will be at each end and the children will remain between us.

Doug is planning too. He wants to wear cargo pants and a SeV so that he can carry the Kindle, iPhone, DSi, extra batteries, power cords, tripod, juggling balls, sunglasses, tickets, fidget toys and everything that he usually carries in his manbag (It’s a purse). That will leave his hands free to carry children in crowds.

After pondering Doug’s plan, I have decided that I will be at the front of our family parade and Doug will be the caboose. He can catch a later flight when he finally makes it through security.

Boy doctors

// August 28th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // medical, parenting

Many years ago, I took my oldest daughter for her yearly checkup at the pediatrician. Harmless questions about diet, exercise and television were followed by a question about puberty. In response to the answer, the pediatrician glibly told my pre-adolescent daughter that “periods are nasty, messy things.” I spent the rest of the appointment mentally asking myself why a doctor would plant such a terrible seed in my child’s brain. I am not a ‘gather the women for a ceremony under the full moon’ kind of mom, but the comment was so hale pe’a that I found it completely inappropriate.

Last week, I took my youngest daughter to the pediatrician for her checkup. After the doctor looked in Amy’s eyes with his tiny flashlight and she was putting her glasses on again, the doctor announced that if we get my 8-y-o daughter contacts, her father will be chasing the boys away in droves. I was instantly transported back in time and recognized that this was the same doctor who spoke so insensitively to my oldest daughter. This time, he was worried about a very young child’s love life. Not only is she much too young for this to be a concern, her first innocent crushes had better be on her amazing personality and not her physical appearance. An appearance that is adorable with tiny, little, purple glasses.

While Don Draper might love this particular pediatrician, I do not. I will be requesting anyone EXCEPT him at all future appointments.

everybody likes the UPS truck

// July 2nd, 2010 // 3 Comments » // children, preschoolers

Mail, FedEx and UPS drivers understand small children excitedly competing to be the person who “gets” the mail or package. Whenever possible, they thoughtfully divide the delivery among the small outstretched hands. Today, the “UPS store,” as my children call it, brought two small packages. The driver handed one to each 5-year-old. Evan raced in the house to deliver the package. The other 5-year-old, ran to HIS house with a package. A package addressed to me. A package from Victoria’s Secret. I’ll give the neighbors milk, sugar and eggs, but I really don’t think they need my underwear.