Ruminations of an "Old" Mom (for the new parents here)

[SoCalDem]

edited due to poor math skills:evilgrin:


(posted this in the parenting forum a while back..but thought it was apropos what with the baby boomlet in the lounge)

SoCalDem (1000+ posts) Tue Mar-08-05 04:13 PM
Original message

Ruminations of an "Old" Mom...
My "boys" are 31,27 and 26.

There was a time when they were 7, 3 & 2, though, and during that same time frame we moved to 5 states (7 houses), so Erma Bombeck was definitely my favorite author (as if I ever I had time to read much)..

Mothers (and Dads too).. Please lighten up a bit. Your kids are small for only a while, and then they are gone. I am glad they are grown, and happily out on their own, but while they are young, give them memories..

Hunt lizards in the yard with them instead of folding laundry, you will always have laundry but lizards are transient..

If they do not have the bath at 7 PM sharp, they will not self-destruct..

Dirt is not fatal.

With our first, we would pick up his toys or pacifier and wash it every time he dropped it.. by the time the 3rd one came along, we would pick the cat hair off it, and hand it back to him.

Don't "schedule" little kids.. Let them sleep when they want, play when they want, do nothing when they want. There will be a lifetime of regimentation awaiting them..

Do 3 yr olds really "want" gymnastics classes??

Kids are very forgiving people, and some of the things we agonize over are not even on their radar screens..

Messy rooms have doors that can be closed

Clean clothes in a basket are wearable

When I listen to my grown ups talk about their childhoods, it amazes me. The 3 of them have such a vivid recollection of all the places we lived, and a lot of it is just a blur to me. They remember all the silly stuff, and very little of the "tough" stuff.

Give your kids "silly stuff" to remember..Some of the worst vacation disasters were their "funnest"..

Like the "beach front" hotel in Mexico, that was actually on a CLIFF that I was sure someone would plummet to their death from .. Those prepubescent boys climbed up and down that rickety staircase many times a day, and no one died..

and the hotel we were actually almost evicted from when my "boys" left the room and 3 am and went a mile out on a sandbar to shoot fireworks (that we did NOT know they had bought).. We did get to meet the mexican police at 3 am on that one

As we get older, they become the "keepers" of memories. We forget a lot of the things that make them who they are.. Let them remember you riding horses on a beach with them, instead of perched on a couch folding clothes and barking orders

[LynzM]

1. Some good advice in there, SCD

Especially the bit about there always being more laundry, and less lizards! :)

Go out and play in the rain with your kids. They will love you for it, and it will make you forget to be a grownup, at least for a while. Jump in the puddles, and march in the streams!

[SoCalDem]

2. I left out the part where Mom (me) tumbled headfirst into a ditch

on a lizard hunt.. dad came home for lunch, and all the boys and Mom were covered in red new mexico dirt.. he lost his appetite and went to a diner near his office.. by the time we cleaned up, his lunch hour would have been over anyway:)

[LynzM]

14. LOL

Oops! At least you had fun, right? ;)

[SoCalDem]

15. We had no fence, so I HAD to go out and play with them

or go look for them.. It was easier to go outside:)

[Wabbajack]

3. 31,27 and 26.

6, 4 and 3?

Math error?

[SoCalDem]

4. Probably.. I hated math :)

11/11/73...12/5/77 & 12/15/78

YOU do the math :evilgrin:

[grace0418]

5. Beautifully written. Thank you.

I don't have kids but this is something I talk about with my husband all the time because I'm afraid he'll slip into some of those parenting traps.

I see it all the time with his brother's two girls. Their mother is even worse. We went on a family vacation (me and my husband, his brother's family, his sister's family and his parents) last year and this woman was like a drill sargeant. She constantly barked orders at her two kids about stuff that didn't matter one bit. She also drove everyone else nuts by getting up at the crack of dawn to cook a huge meal no one wanted, clean the whole house, then complain that she had to do all the work. The other two kids (my husband's sister's two daughters) are totally afraid of their aunt. They say she's mean and she yells all the time. I would be devastated if my nieces said that about me.

The last day of the vacation really made me sad. We had rented a beautiful house on the ocean in California. So we spent our last day splashing around in the surf and enjoying every minute. What was my sister-in-law doing? The laundry. Yes, the DAY before they went home she spent the entire time doing laundry so she "wouldn't have to deal with it" when she got home. She also was loudly complaining that her husband and two kids weren't helping do it. Seriously. So rather than spend a little time making memories with her two adorable little girls, she chose to be a martyr. And for what? To have clean clothes?

I swear as soon as those girls are adults I am going to try to convince them to get a lot of therapy so they don't turn into her.

[SoCalDem]

7. We are very unothodox. we once had Christmas in february

our oldest was in the hospital from 11/1 until 2/1, so we bought a fake tree and had presents in Feb..:)

we also take kamikaze vacations.. I once woke the boys up at 11:30 at night and headed for Lake tahoe (Dad was working up there & I decided to surprise him).. That was the TRIP from HELL.. I made a wrong turn and instead of going the easy way through Reno, we went OVER THE DAMN mountain on a gravel forest service road...in a stretch van at the end of an 8 hour drive...Took FOUR HOURS to go 24 miles..

My girlfriend called my husband to tell him that we were on our way (everybody knows me!), and when we did not arrive, he called the highway patrol..HA!..Like they would look for us on a fire road:)

[TNDemo]

6. I wish mine could remember anything.

They are 24, 21 and 14 now. They seem to remember zip from their childhood! I would add to all the above to take lots of pictures, write explanations on them, journal, etc. to reinforce the memories.

[SoCalDem]

8. SHIT.. you reminded me.. I have to do a baby book for my youngest

Once they found their books and the first one's is LOADED, the 2nd's is pretty full, and the baby's is pretty much blank.. he asked where HIS stuff was.. I told him that was not the REAL book...BUSTED!!

[grace0418]

9. Well I am the youngest of eleven so you can imagine how overlooked

I was. Baby book? Ha! I'm lucky to have a few pictures of me, mostly taken by my siblings.

[SoCalDem]

10. You are probably lucky they remembered your name

:evilgrin:

[grace0418]

11. You're so right, I have five older sisters so I was generally referred

to as "Peggymarylorrieeileenlouisegrace."

[TNDemo]

19. My baby book looks like I died in the hospital.

There were three of us in four years. The oldest has a book documenting every possible thing - Jackie burps, Jackie puts his finger in his mouth, Jackie poops, etc. The second one has the baby book filled out pretty well. Mine has my height, weight and name. That's it. I told my mother she could have at least put my high school diploma on the next page.

What everyone remembers about my fabulous grandmother is that she never lost the gift of play. If she was in the middle of dinner or anything else and a kid wanted to go make mud pies, the stove was turned off and she was there. She made tents and played in them and played every game. This was with her own kids as well as grandkids. She was very compunctuous about the house being perfect and dinner on the table and everyone dressed when her husband came home from work but while he was gone the furniture was pulled out, carpet draped over it, etc. I miss her!

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

12. Great advice.

One DIL told me she would never cook the big, traditional Christmas dinner because she didn't want to be one of those moms who's in the kitchen the entire day while everyone else is having fun. I think she is right on!

best

[SoCalDem]

13. One year we had spaghetti, because I overslept

and said.. Hell with it.. I fixed the turkey that evening, and we had it the next day..warmed up:)

[Love Bug]

16. Well said!

My daughter is now 28 and even though I do have some regrets I did try to have fun with her and not sweat the small stuff. Like clothes. I really didn't care what she wore as a teen as long as she was decently covered. Every generation has their clothes the parents hate but so what? Let them wear what they want.

[SoCalDem]

17. We had rough spots too, but as they age, they seem to remember

the good stuff more than the bad. i guess when the parents are long gone, they can sit around and trash us:)

[davsand]

18. AMEN to all of it, SoCal!

I have one kid. Material Girl had been a gift to us from the very beginning and yet there never seems to be enough time with her... She's 8 now and the entire baby thing is done. How much of it will she remember? I dunno. Probably not a lot of it.

RIGHT NOW is the time when she is making memories of her childhood. THIS is the time for me to go out to the park with her and dance to music. THIS is the time for me to catch lightening bugs and "accidentally" let them loose in the house. We play with glow sticks after dark in our back yard. We play softball. We play in the hose. We go mall crawling. We are taking drumming lessons.

There is a lot of the time when the clean clothes don't even make it into the basket, and my house is pretty much always looking like a disaster area. We eat family meals every night and sometimes we even have stuff like Mac and Cheese and chicken nuggets. My logic is that there is a lot of time later to clean and cook gourmet food. I'll never be able to chase her with a garden hose again...

It does my heart good to be reminded sometimes that I am not strange for spending time enjoying my kid. Thanks.



Laura

[SoCalDem]

20. It will amaze you what she will remember

My kids come up with some of the craziest stuff that ONLY they remember..Maybe they are "gaslighting" us, but their memories are so vivid, and we don;t remember any of it :)

I guess kids do have a secret life:)

One morning when we lived in NM, a hot air balloon landed in our back yard.. My youngest woke us up yelling "Aliens are in the back yard"..He heard the whooooooooosh shoooooosh nopise, peeked out and saw the basket part right next to the window, and could only see their legs..

The balloons would take off in Albuquerque, and then land whevere they could...the cahse team showed up later to collect them, and we had coffee with balloonists on the aptio until they got there to pick them up. The kids LOVED that experience..