Domestic Psychology

First world problems – clothing

// October 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // children

Living in the shadow of the mountains, our seasons are a month of winter and a month of summer separated by several months of beautiful spring and fall. The transition to our brief spell of winter causes mornings of shivering and afternoons of sweating. I’m sorry. I mean glowing.

Every morning this week, I’ve dressed the youngest children in jeans, long sleeves and coats. Every afternoon this week, I’ve been subjected to complaints about me “making” them wear coats. Amy comes home from school daily missing her socks and wearing her jeans rolled up above her knees. I caught Evan with my scissors just seconds before he cut the sleeves off of his shirt.

This morning, the children left for school in shorts, hoodies and coats. I thought it would make the afternoons less miserable for them. Instead, they spent the wait for the bus complaining because I “made” them wear shorts.

Tomorrow, I’m sending them to school in jammies and bathrobes.

TCAPs: No jolts here

// September 21st, 2010 // 5 Comments » // parenting, school

The front page of yesterday’s paper warned parents to be prepared for a shock to the system when their child brings home last year’s TCAP scores. It comes after MONTHS of notes, e-mails, articles and parent meetings saying the exact same thing. The TCAPs have been so hyped that I can’t believe anyone is going to be surprised by good OR bad results. I’m even willing to go out on a limb and predict our family’s results.

First, is the middle child who was in the eighth grade last year. At last year’s TCAP meeting, the test booklet was distributed with the scores to help parents understand the areas of concern to their child. Ideally, it was to be used to create very individualized tutoring plans. My child’s scores were excellent, but when I asked him how he felt about the test without showing him the scores, he replied that he felt pressured by the time limits. So, I had him sit at the kitchen table and take the test again. He was told that there were no time limits, but in less than the allotted time, he scored perfectly. In every area of the test, he missed zero problems. The TCAP is a useless measure for my middle child. I may have him take the ACT this summer just so I have a better idea of his educational needs. I am certain of one thing that he needs. Because he spends every free moment with his nose in a book, he has an excellent vocabulary on paper, but an inability to correctly pronunciate the words he has read, but not heard. We need to figure out how to work out the kinks in his speech before he starts college. I expect his TCAPs to have mistakes based on time limit anxiety and not ability.

The other TCAP results in our family will be for the youngest girl. She will take her first TCAP this year and I will still make a prediction on her results for next year. Based on her lip quiver and manipulative “Math is haaaard” attempts to get an older sibling to give her the answers to homework, I expect terrible math scores and good language scores. This is not the school’s fault. This is just a red flag that she needs to do more math until she gains the skills to confidently tackle new concepts. Her brain doesn’t have an operating system yet and WE have to help her download one.

Now, I wait. Not in anticipation of a jolt, but for the confirmation of what every parent already knows based on the level of work their child is doing. The work you see at the kitchen table every afternoon. The work you see when they take online quizzes and play with educational software. The work you hear when you read together in the evenings. TCAPs are tools that schools should use to measure the curriculum. They should not be a surprise to parents.

Everyone’s children

// September 4th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // newspapers, parenting

I have been uncharacteristically quiet about a local tragedy for several reasons. First, better writers are giving it the attention it deserves. Second, I don’t see any good or bad guys. I see teenagers. Everyone involved in this is connected in far less than six degrees from every other teenager in Knoxville. When I did try to connect dots, I was scolded by a parent who didn’t want to consider any connection between her child and someone else’s child. Third, I have spent enough time with this population to know that their experiences are not something anyone’s child should ever endure. They detach emotionally and behave in very primal ways to survive. Once you have looked in the soul-less eyes of a 14-y-o as they explain that their acts as a drug whore didn’t count as sex, the world looks a little bleaker than it should. There will never be justice for this child. It will always be an injustice.

That said, I am angry about the article in today’s newspaper. It reads like a PR piece for the Sheriff’s department and calls a grieving mother a liar. Everything that was written by that mother was her personal experience. She is living a walking nightmare right now. The author of the article has no right to judge or deny someone their very raw feelings. The comments that are being allowed on the newspaper website are vile. I have some very specific thoughts for the article’s author that I won’t post here. I do hope that nobody makes the mistake of granting Don Jacobs an interview in the future.

need more Calgon

// July 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // parenting, teenagers

We have a pile of old, rusty paint cans that have too much leftover paint to waste. After seeing it day after day for several years, I decided to find a purpose for the paint. This week, the leftover paint from 2002′s staircase railing project became the new color of some kitchen shelves that have stored my food since before Tommy was born. That’s a long way of saying that I painted some shelves.

Covered in splatters of paint and with hands aching from gripping a paint roller for hours, I indulged in a hot bath. I leaned back to relax in the steamy water as the dogs curled up against each other for a nap on the cool bathroom floor. The heartsick teen walked in and sat down between the dogs. Then, the middle child and the two littles squeezed into the crowded room.

“<- sob -> Well, I don’t have anything to lose, so I’m just going to do what I want. I’m not a child any more. I’m seventeen! <- sniffle, sob ->
“You just got yourself grounded. Noah! Please come get this spider.”
“What? What spider?”
“There’s a spider above the bathtub. Please get it before it falls in the water.”
“<- sniffle -> I’ll never give up. You can’t hold me back any more.”
“I hold you back? You hold yourself back by eliminating every single college in the state of Tennessee. Noah, please don’t just grab it. You know it will jump and fall and then there will be spider legs floating in my bath, so put your other hand under the spider.”
“You want me stuck in Tennessee forever!”
<- badeep, badoop ... badeep, badoop ->
“No. You can leave the state once you are 18. It’s in the water! Get it out! Get it out!”
<- badeep, badoop ... badeep, badoop ->
“I hear a phone ringing! Can I answer it?”
“Get what out? What’s in the water?”
<- badeep, badoop ... badeep, badoop ->
“I dropped a spider in the bathtub.”
“A spider? I wanna hold it!”
“Eeeeeverybody thinks you are being completely irrational. <-sob ->”
<- badeep, badoop ... badeep, badoop ->
“The spider is dead. You can’t hold it.”
“Everybody is not your parent. I am. Ew, yuck! There’s a spider leg in here! Everybody needs to clear out of this room so I can get dressed.”

<- badeep, badoop ... badeep, badoop ->
“Hello.”
“D and W have been trying to call you. Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

small people, big phones

// May 19th, 2010 // 5 Comments » // parenting, technology, teenagers

My children have cell phones. Their friends have cell phones. Cell phones serve a purpose and I don’t want to argue about what others have said so clearly. I do want to point out two things.

First, parents need to have identifying information in their child’s phone so that it can be returned to the rightful owner if it is misplaced. I have “ICE” listed in the address book on all the cell phones in our house. The original purpose of ICE was to let emergency personnel know who to contact in case of an emergency, but it would have made returning the phone that someone left in the elementary school’s lost and found easier and quicker.

Second and more importantly, even though American Tourister needs to make cell phones for tweens/teens, breakage is not the worst thing that can happen to your child’s phone. Insurance accommodates phones soaked in pockets while practicing marching band in the pouring rain. It’s not even the dreaded cell phone thieves that are absolutely everywhere. Remember how upset Marsha was about the possibility of someone else reading her diary? Cell phones are the new diary. They are filled with facebook posts, text messages and pictures. Middle school boys have learned that “borrowing” a girl’s cell can reveal all kinds of embarrassing details. Nobody wants the entire school to know that, “if u lk me pls lt me knw cuz i lk u.” Aside from the embarrassing lack of English comprehension glimpses into your soul, there is the very real possibility that a girl’s phone has pictures you wouldn’t find published in the school yearbook.

There were more tears shed over a single missing cell phone at the middle school dance than all the histrionic drama about boys. Eventually the phone was found on a counter in the boys’ bathroom. It wasn’t stolen. It was used for espionage. Putting ICE in the phone is easy. Teaching hormonal teens that anything they write, type, text or photo is potentially public is much, much more complicated. It’s not just teens that struggle to understand this. Full grown adults are still whining about facebook not respecting their privacy.

not a stranger if you sit and talk

// April 15th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // parenting, people

While sitting cross legged on the floor, a toddler spontaneously sat down in my lap. A tiny, non-verbal, little person who didn’t weigh a thing thought I looked like a comfy chair. I didn’t even get to say hello before his mother snatched him up and screeched, “Stranger!” She dragged him away lecturing about strangers being “bad, very bad” while the small child looked at me.

Does it make a difference that this took place in the hallway of a preschool? How about the fact that this hallway is only accessible by using the chip in your preschool issued ID badge to get through the locked door?

Everything about it made me feel . . . sad, very sad.

leaving them to starve

// March 18th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // food, teenagers

As a rule, I try to always be at *home on school nights and be a part of the evening routines. As frantic as the evenings are, I can’t imagine not getting to tuck my children in bed at night. It’s probably much more important to me than it is to them. Don’t tell the children I still peek at them while they are sleeping every night. Tonight, I am making a rare exception and attending a meeting. Instead of preparing a healthy meal before I leave, since I really hate cooking, I’m leaving two boxes of organic mac ‘n cheese for the babysitter (aka the 16-y-o) to prepare. The question is, will she-who-shuns-organic prepare the mac ‘n cheese or will the children forage the fridge for crusty leftovers? Place your bets now.

*Why, oh, why can’t the social media folks have their gatherings on the weekends?

domestic detective

// March 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // home, parenting

“What is this goo in your hair?”
“Who put a booger here?”
“Where is that smell coming from?”
“When did this get left on the counter?”
Why is that in the bathtub?”
“Which animal threw up?”

If I am going to spend all my time at the schools, maybe they will let me take some of their chemistry and forensic classes to solve the daily mysteries.

you’re my favorite

// February 13th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // kid quotes, parenting

We spent last weekend house sitting for a friend’s beautiful waterfront home. A weekend away from home, cute animals and deer in the front yard made it feel like a vacation. It was probably less fun for my family who had to endure the annoying whining about my knee, but they’re smart enough to ignore my bad behavior.

Evan made sure to touch every single stick in the yard surrounding the house. He climbed up and down the staircases endlessly. He fearlessly scaled the cliff that dropped off into the deep, cold water while Johnny Bartlett squeezed my heart. When Evan saw a boat in the water, he howled in terror. “Noooo!” Getting near a boat? Scary. Dancing on the side of a mountain? Fun. Evan is my favorite.

Amy wandered the house and grounds like they were a museum, ooohing and ahhhing at all the wonders. “Mom! Come look at this!” I followed her voice until I found her staring at the contents of a small table. “Isn’t this the coolest thing EVER? Why can’t we have one of these things?” I looked closer at the object of her desire. “This part is springy. What do you think it does?” “Amy, that’s a telephone.” “Wow! This is the coolest phone I’ve ever seen. When will we get phones with cords at our house?” Amy is my favorite.

Noah surveyed the half a dozen bedroom choices and announced that he would be sleeping on the deck. I dismissed the idea as much too dangerous due to bitter cold, wild animals and unknown environment. “I’ve slept in colder, more dangerous, less familiar situations with scouts and you never complained.” Ten points for Noah. Noah is my favorite.

Sarah spent the weekend doing what she does every day, doing her own thing. She is much more interested in being with her friends than hanging around the house. She’s too independent and social to play SpongeBob Memory by the fireplace. Even though I miss her, I’m tremendously proud of the person she has become. Sarah is my favorite.

Tommy didn’t go near the house by the water. “I don’t go to strangers’ houses.” Tommy has sorted an emotional and random world into a logical, but amusing book of rules. Sheldon Tommy is my favorite.

Doug: “Tommy’s not a B & B person.” Doug is my favorite.

Can I have a fill-in-the-blank?

// January 25th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // parenting, play

“Mom, can I have a clubhouse.”
<- insert tape #492 -> “Well, maybe this summer your dad can build something…”
“No, I mean a real clubhouse. Like in Up.”
<- blink, blink -> “Where?”
“Me and C are gonna make the empty house down the street our clubhouse.”
“No, you’re not. That house belongs to someone. You can’t go in there.”
“Nobody lives there. Nobody has ever lived there.”
“Someone did live there before you were born, but that house is still someone else’s house.”
“Well, they’re not using it. I think they lost it.”
“You might be right, but you still can’t play in it.”
<- sigh -> “Now we hafta find another clubhouse.”