Parenting

Post modern parenting

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Last week I had the opportunity to go a really nice indoor waterpark in WI Dells, the waterpark capital of the world. Why the supposed waterpark capital of the world is in a cold climate is beyond me. They only keep the outdoor parks open 3 months of the year. I absolutely love waterparks so I decided to tag along with my husband while he went to a conference. The first body slide I went down, I banged, bruised, and scraped up my elbow. By the end of the day I had a matching bruise on my other elbow and another on my back. Seems like I can no longer have fun without somehow hurting myself.

That day I ate lunch by myself at the waterpark. By MYSELF! That hasn’t happened since at least 1994. It gave me time to people watch, one of those hobbies that I don’t seem to have time for anymore. As I was waiting for my lunch alone at the table, I became surrounded by babies. There were strollers everywhere. I had to go through a maze to get back to my table with my food. As I watched the young parents, I noticed something. As soon as the babies fussed at all, the parents handed over iphones to pacify the infants. The babies watched music videos of some sort. It didn’t sound like baby music, but had more of a dance beat. Gone were all of the ridiculous toys to pacify babies like the plastic keys that I used to use. Gone also was the parental entertaining of infants. Gone was the opportunity to ask the babies how to set up parental controls for my teens.

What is going to happen to these device pacified babies? Will they be texting and getting their own phones at 3? Carpal tunnel at 4?  I remember being told that it was bad parenting to have your infants and toddlers watch TV or movies. What about cell phones, ipads, and/or kindles as babysitters? Who knows? When my kids were little I would have given anything to sleep to 8 AM. I was thankful if I could get a shower in. I wasn’t going to get up at 4:30 in the morning to take my shower before they got up. During the day, I would sometimes pop in a movie and take a shower with the door slightly ajar. That didn’t keep one from escaping. Little Arabella when she was around 2 took off for the road while I was in the shower. I remember running down the driveway after her wrapped in a towel with soap in my hair screaming at her to stop. Those were the crazy days of parenting. Now I wake up at 6 AM regardless of how late I stay up. I would give anything to go to bed by 10PM, but have to wait for my teens to get home. Oh, how parenting changes. Pity the poor parents with babies and teens. Do you actually sleep?

As I was sitting at the waterpark eating, writing blogs in my mind, and reflecting on the life cycle of parenting, I was also scrolling though facebook. That is when I found out from a post by Paul’s cousin that my mother-in-law was in the hospital. It is always great to find out things through social media, isn’t it? Especially when my husband was in meeting and I had no way of contacting him. I certainly was NOT going to wander around the conference hall sobbing and sopping wet in my swimming suit blubbering around with waterpark bruises all over my body.

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. It is great to be able to be in contact with anyone anywhere. But you can never truly get away from life’s problems and busyness unless you put your phone away. I long for the solitude of a phoneless weekend. Someday I will do that, until then my phone is two inches away still waiting for test results for Paul’s mom. We are hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

Life, goals, and dead plants

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I woke up this morning in a strange place, a different bed. I killed another house plant this week, my last living one. I justify that by saying that I spent one third of the month in hotel rooms like the one I am in now. Five different hotels, two states. Some for business, some for pleasure. My mind searches for the perfect excuse. I couldn’t provide proper care for the plant. Hey, at least I managed to feed my kids and pets. 

When my daughter gave me the plant for Mother’s Day, I inwardly cringed. I have to manage to keep this alive!  Once I got a chia pet for Christmas, I felt it was way too much pressure. So I took the plant to my office. I developed a watering routine. I watered it every Monday morning and every Friday afternoon. I put it in the sun like it said on the little tag it came with. It did thrive until the sunny days were gone. I didn’t achieve my seemingly easy goal. 

It made me think of other goals I have had. It seems like finishing a marathon is an easier goal than keeping plants alive for me. Crazy!?!  A few days ago, my husband asked me what my goal is for writing. That had me stumped. A goal? Was I supposed to have one? I started this blog right after I got my house plant. I am still going. It is still active and alive. But where is it going? 

I like to write for fun, to share unexpressed emotions, to help others. I want others to know what it was like growing up with an autistic brother back when no one had autism. I want to share my own struggles and joys of parenting teens. I want to share goals and experiences as a runner. I want to make people laugh. I want to share life and all of its woven intricacies. But where am I going?? As a goal oriented person, do I need goals to write?

My husband said that I am a gifted writer, but he is very biased. He said that maybe I should consider chasing my own dreams. He started his own successful business. We work together. He said that I was riding his dream. He said he would support me if I decided to start a career in writing. He suggested that since I have a love for photography and writing that I should think about writing marina reviews or write a book. His words overwhelmed me. What are my goals? I have no structure, I just write about what I want to write about. Where do I go from here? Is this just another time consuming hobby? All I can tell you for sure right now is that my future does not involve gardening or house plants. 

Confirmed, part 3

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Even though my son’s confirmation went great, there was still something missing. To start out at the very beginning of my time, I was raised as a Lutheran. After many years of seeking and trying many different denominations, I came back full circle to being a Lutheran. Will I always be a Lutheran? Who knows. I am very open to other possibilities. Let’s put it this way, I agree and disagree with just about every denomination out there.

Our previous church to the Lutheran one was rather far away. As the kids were getting older, it became more difficult to be there multiple times a week. Our oldest was getting to the age where she wanted to join youth group on Sunday night which meant almost 2 hours of driving on Sunday. After a series of snowstorms every Sunday for a month and a half, we ended up going to the Lutheran church down the road. We liked it so much that we decided to stay. This involved getting our non infants baptized. At the time we chose family to be the sponsors of our daughters and a friend to be the sponsor of our son. That friend is no longer involved in our life.

My husband has always been a Fred Flintstone kind of guy. He is outgoing and makes friends with quieter types of guys. He typically finds Barney’s that are single and lonely or guys that have gone through hard breakups. He befriends them and gets them obsessed with fishing or as of recently sailing. My son’s godfather Gary was one of those guys. Then Gary found a woman. He brought her over one night for supper and conversation. I feel really bad about the next part, while they were over I fell asleep. Honestly, she was that boring. No sense of humor, nothing. I tolerate stupidity better than boring, or lazy, for that matter. If your life lacks luster, make it shine! I do feel bad though. This woman was perfect for Gary though. They decided to marry and my husband was the best man.

After the wedding, we got together a few times. Gary and Paul still went fishing together. Then Gary’s wife had a miscarriage one day while they were out fishing. I really think that she was upset that her husband wasn’t home. A few months later, she got pregnant again. She did not invite me to her baby shower although she invited other mutual friends. It was all over facebook. Okay, whatever. That December, Gary called us to tell us that he was a father. We wanted to see the baby, but were too busy at the time. My mom was recovering from surgery due to cancer. It was a very scary time. I took off of work to help her out. To make matters harder, our family was involved in a community theater production the first two weekends in December. Then came Christmas, so we never made it out to see the baby. It wasn’t long after that that Gary’s wife unfriended me on facebook. Gary dropped out of our life too. But about once a year, Gary stops by our house out of the blue by himself to visit.

Friends come and go, I don’t harbor any resentment. Although, it is time for Gary’s yearly visit.

Confirmed, part 1 

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I am sitting inside watching the rain fall like little tears from heaven. I sit and think. Thinking again. I am waiting. Waiting for the rain to stop. Waiting for a large Saturday morning cup of coffee out in my hot tub. It is my tradition. 

When I think of church, I think of traditions. Rituals always done the same way. But what if it rains? What if things change? I have been to many different denominations. Even non traditional churches have their routines. The same similar structures every week. The way it starts, the way things end. The time it ends always the same. Ritualistic, though intending not to be. 

Tomorrow my son is being confirmed in the church we have chosen. It almost didn’t happen. Remember a couple of weeks back when I still wished my grandpa was here with us? He still is here. I see him reflected every day in my son. My son didn’t want to just go along with the rest of the group. He has so many questions, more than answers. Like his great grandpa, he is so full of piss and vinegar to be agreeable to conform. He felt too imperfect to be a Christian. He is honest and I respect that. 

We ended up having a long conversation with our pastor. It came down to my son having to make a decision. Are you with us or not? My husband talked to my son about leaving the door open for God. Faith is not a perfect all or nothing compartment that my son wanted to put it in. He struggles, don’t we all? He questions, shouldn’t we all? 

He decided to get confirmed. He is leaving the God door open. He made a drawing of Jesus carrying a cross through an open door. He also picked the verse of Revelation 3:20. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. 

Whether we choose to believe or not, shouldn’t we always be seeking to answer the questions we have in life. To not be stagnant. To not just go with the flow. Life is meaningless without having meaning in it. 

The rain clouds parted, time for my Saturday morning ritual. Then I will put on my Martha apron, cooking and cleaning for the party tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I will be Mary. Always a work in progress….

Modern parenting

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I remember growing up in the 1980’s. As teenagers, our parents thought we were the worst of all generations before us. They did not understand our music, rock ‘n roll and hair bands. Talking about hair, they did not like the way we dressed. Our hair was too poofy our makeup too wild. We spent countless hours at the mall trying to be material girls. We wasted gobs of time trying to get to the next level in Pong, Space Invaders, and Frogger on our Atari’s. We traded in our records for a large boom box with a tape deck. We dubbed tapes off of other friends tapes off of other friends tapes instead of listening to what our parents listened to on the record player or radio in the living room. Kids were rebellious, times were changing, and parenthood was hard.

As a parent of teenagers, I look back and wish times were a little simpler. We have less control and no guidelines. How much computer time should we allow our teens to have? How do we enforce that? How do we implement parental controls when we need our teens to help set them up? How do we monitor what they are doing when they know more about computers than us? I think that this is probably one of the biggest generation technology parenting gaps that has ever been and probably will ever be. At least our children will know what to do with their children because they grew up with the internet. From experience they will know from their childhood all the things that we don’t know now.

How do we know what to do? How much computer time is too much? My teens now do their homework on their computers. Taking away their computers is like taking away their pencils and paper. Is it good for them to spend all the time that they can on computers so they are prepared to use them in future careers? It is extremely hard to be hypervigelent with our teens use of the Internet without sitting next to them the whole time they are on it. This also is hard when they are at the stage in life where they want to be independent more than anything. If we have no reason not to trust them should we treat them like they are untrustworthy??

I remember as a young child finding my dad’s girlie magazines and showing them to my friends. They were in our house. We don’t have that option of keeping it out of our house if we don’t want it there anymore. My oldest daughter was exposed to porn in middle school when our previous pastor’s daughter showed it to her on a computer in our own house. Who would have thought?

What about cell phones? Back in my day, we had to talk on a phone tethered by a cord on the wall. There was no privacy. Now teens can talk anywhere with complete privacy about anything they want. If they wanted to send or receive naked pictures of someone, it is a click away. Who would ever know?

Now as far as music goes, the options are limitless there as well. If I wanted to buy a parental advisory CD as a teen I would have to go to the music store and show them my id. Once again, anything can be downloaded or listened to and I wouldn’t even know. How do you become proactive in monitoring that?

What about school shootings and violence? Back in my time there were a few kids that would call in bomb threats when they wanted the day off. I assume that doesn’t happen all that much anymore with caller id. Instead there are school shootings. Do you know how scary it is to send your child off to school after something like that happens?? Yesterday I received a letter from the principal of my children’s high school stating that there was an incident where a student was talking about bringing a gun to school. The authorities were called into the school to investigate. So, I sit here and worry. Worry about the things I can’t control. I wonder if I am doing a good job as a parent. Is anyone really? I don’t know what the hell I am doing parenting the modern teen. Does anyone? We are dealing with issues that our experienced parents wouldn’t even be able to give us advice about. 

On the flip side, it is a great time to be a parent. We have webmd for every bump, scratch, and sniffle. There are online support groups for any parenting issue. There is countless free advice for practically any parenting problem from getting stains out of clothes, potty training, to extra math tutorials at the tips of our fingers. Maybe it would have helped my parents raise us when they had 4 teens in the house at the same time. My brother could’ve gotten diagnosed with autism earlier, maybe would have had early intervention therapy. My mom could’ve joined online support groups and wouldn’t have had to parent an autistic child totally alone finding out what worked through trial and error.  

Ah, these are the best of times and worst of times for parenting. I am doing the best I can. 

Sheerly not cut out for it

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I really suck at cutting hair. I could use the left handed excuse of having to learn how to cut with my right hand, but I don’t even think that would cut it. I didn’t always think that I sucked at it. As a teen, I got sick of my autistic brother constantly pulling my hair. It hurt. I noticed that my younger brothers didn’t get their hair pulled, probably because it was too short to pull. Just my mom and I got our long hair pulled. I got really sick of it so one day I took a scissors in my right hand and hacked off around 6 inches of long tresses and lot of stress. People commented. They liked my new hair cut. I thought that I wasn’t terribly bad at it.

Then I got married and had kids. My oldest daughter needed her bangs trimmed as a toddler and I was on it. I cut her bangs, but they were crooked. So I kept cutting until they were straight and about a quarter of an inch long. I didn’t really suck. She wasn’t sitting still. People commented. Ah, your daughter decided to cut her own hair. Poor thing. She wasn’t talking too much yet, so I didn’t argue that I was the one who hacked her hair. It wasn’t too long after that when she started to cut her own hair. She was better at it then I was.

Then my husband got the idea of buying a hair cutting kit to shave some money. He liked to cut his hair short so it really wasn’t that complicated. I could almost handle that. I decided to take on bigger things, my dad’s hair. First, let me tell you that he looks exactly like Santa Claus. He has a humongous stomach, everything else is flat. He has long gray hair with an equally long beard that children could try to yank off and find it to be real. He has the glasses that he looks over, worn on the lower part of his nose. He would be a perfect Santa Claus in appearance. He would just have to work on being jolly. He would have to smile and tolerate little children. He would have to give them candy instead of hiding it to eat himself. Darn, it would have been so perfect otherwise.

I made the mistake of offering to cut my dad’s hair. This is a job that my mom always did, but for some reason didn’t have time for. At one point in her life, my mom wanted to be a hairdresser. During her senior year, the high school had a career day. They brought in someone that worked with the disabled doing what she does now. That person probably never knew that by telling high school kids about his career changed my mother’s whole career and life path. I don’t see her being happy as a beautician. She loves her career and finds it very fulfilling.

The day came for my dad’s hair cut. He came over to my house. I realized quickly that I was in a little too deep. My dad’s hair was long. My husband’s hair was short. I decided to buzz my dad’s hair using the longest setting. It really wasn’t going very well. As I was buzzing the back of my dad’s head, the guard came off. I gave him a very noticeable bald spot down the back of his head. Thankfully, he just laughed the whole thing off. After that incident, things such as scissors and hair cutting kits mysteriously vanished from my house. My mom made time to cut my dad’s hair. My husband stopped complaining about $20 hair cuts.

I realized that cutting hair was sheerly not my thing.

Grounded for life, part 5

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A few days later, Randy showed up with a car full of friends in his old boat of a car wanting to go for a ride. But I was grounded. Sometimes if I knew that my mom would say “no”, I would ask my dad. He always said “yes”. I suspect that if I asked my dad if I could go out for a wild drunken night of debauchery he would still say “yes”. But no such luck, my mom was home. Plus she got pretty angry if I went past her and asked my dad. Anyway, there was no getting around it, I was grounded.

Randy drove off leaving us behind. That was not all he left behind. As Randy drove off, the guys noticed that Randy’s car was leaking fluid of some sort. Brake fluid! Back in the day, we couldn’t just call him on his cell phone to tell him. I will liken it to my parents stories of walking to school uphill both ways. How did we survive? Sometimes it is amazing that we did. Instead we worried. Randy never came back to pick up my friends. Later that afternoon, we received a call that Randy got in a car accident and was in the hospital. He was going 65 on a back road. As he approached the stop sign he didn’t have any brakes, lost control, and ended up hitting a tree head on. Luckily he walked away with a few bumps, bruises, and glass imbedded in his face and body. It was a miracle that he survived a head on collision with a tree without wearing a seat belt. He remembered wandering around aimlessly in confusion. His Def Leppard tape still playing but the front end of the car was gone.

The next day, my friends and I went to the junk yard to see the remains of his car. It was a pretty dismal sight. We wondered what our fate would have been if I hadn’t been grounded. Would some of us be underground?? I remember getting the call that night and driving my parent’s car to get to the hospital. I was afraid and crying. We were all pretty shook up. I think that God was watching out for us that day. If I wasn’t grounded there is no way we would have all survived that crash.

It has been over two decades since I saw Randy. I don’t think of him all that often anymore. To be honest, if I saw him walking down the street I would turn around and walk away. Some doors are meant to stay closed.

Grounded for life, part 4

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It was the summer right before my 17th birthday that I got grounded. It was the first and last time that I got grounded. I remember being pretty upset about it at the time. I just wanted to hang out with my friends. I never thought on that 4th of July that a spark would set off a chain reaction that ended up saving my life. At the time, all I saw was red from the fireworks exploding in loud angry cracks. 

My mom told me that I needed to come home right after the fireworks. Randy showed up that night in his 1970’s big boat of a car with my new boyfriend and a friend of his. Perfect, I set up my boyfriend’s friend with my friend Connie who I invited to come live with me that night. Connie had a rough life. Connie and her younger siblings spent the summer living with whatever friends would take them in. She never had many clothes to wear, no winter jacket, and her mom would leave the kids for days at time with only cough drops to eat. She never called to look for Connie when she didn’t come home. Eventually, the kids ended up in foster care but for those couple of weeks I took Connie in like a stray cat. Connie had a horrendous upbringing, but that is her story to share. Growing up the way I did, I had a hard time relating to kids whose biggest problem was a bad hair day. 

After the fireworks that night, Randy had every intention of taking us right home. However, he decided to take the guys home first and then drop Connie and I off last as we were on the way home for him. It would be a half an hour out of the way to take the guys home, not really a problem. The problem was that Randy said that he knew a shortcut to get back home. After taking some back country roads, it was apparent that we were lost. We wandered around aimlessly for over an hour, turned around, stopped when the road dead ended in a field, turned around again, and eventually ended up in a town over an hour away from my house. I wish I could say we had a map in the car or a cell phone to call home.

We eventually found our way back and rolled in the driveway after 2 AM. So much for coming right home. How do you explain getting lost for hours when you know the route home like the back of your hand? Oh, and by the way, I brought a new friend home that is going to stay with us for a couple of weeks. I almost felt sorry for Connie, it probably wasn’t the best time to have a new friend live with us. Being grounded that night stopped Connie, our boyfriends, and me from what happened next. It would have been tragic. 

Grounded for life, part 3

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Sometimes I sit and wonder about the things that I haven’t thought about in a long time. Sometimes that bothers me. I wonder why if Randy did some bad things, things that he ended up in prison for, why he never hurt me. He had the opportunity to hurt me, but didn’t. Why was I spared that pain? Was it simply because God knew that would put me over the tipping point of more than I could handle. Randy did some very bad things, but never did anything wrong, illegal, or immoral with my friends or I. Nothing beyond his vandalism of signs and driving fast on country roads without seat belts. Mainly we just joked around and laughed.

One of the last times I saw Randy was right around his 18th birthday. He told Shelly and I that some friends were throwing him a party. He wanted us to come out to celebrate with him. At the time, Shelly was living with me at my parents house. She wasn’t the first friend to live with me for several months. The minute Shelly turned 18, she lived with us until graduation. Her parents weren’t bad per se. They were smothering her with their overprotectiveness. Shelly never really did anything wrong, they never let her.

We showed up to Randy’s party at his friends’ house. It was the first time and thankfully the last time that I saw these friends of his. His friends were in their 30’s, seemed kind of strange but ok. We sat in the living room with the 3 teenage children of his friends. The six of us sat in awkward silence ready for the party to start. The couple throwing the party were in the kitchen behind a closed door. Something was wrong, there was yelling. It sounded like plates were being thrown and smashing against the wall. There was a struggle of some sort, a banging against the wall. Randy went to check things out. The screams continued. Randy came back and said that we were getting the hell out of there, something about someone chasing someone around with a butcher knife.

The three of us jumped into my car and as we were trying to leave the cops showed up. The cops said that we couldn’t leave the scene of a crime. They took us inside and threatened us with blood tests to test our alcohol levels. Our course we said that we didn’t mind because we hadn’t been drinking. I didn’t even see the domestic dispute so I was little help answering questions. Eventually they let us go. We dropped Randy off at another friends house. Happy birthday, it sure was memorable.

When Shelly and I got back to my house her parents called and chewed her out for being at a wild party. Guess they just hung around their house listening to the police scanner until eventually they could tell her what crappy kids Shelly and I were. A big part of me felt bad that day knowing that sometimes life doesn’t turn out like it should.

Grounded for life, part 1

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The first time I met Randy was on the school bus. The bus was full when Randy got on except for one seat, my seat. He sat down next to me, jumped back up looking for another seat, and after finding none sat down next to me again. He nervously explained that he couldn’t sit by me because I was too beautiful, but there was nowhere else for him to go. He stuttered, chuckled, and wiped sweaty palms on his jeans. It was a couple weeks later in the middle of May that he asked me out. It snowed 6 inches on that day. My first relationship lasted as long as it took the May snow to melt away. But a friendship was struck since that first day. 

It was later that I learned more about the real Randy, but I will never know for sure. He never told the same story more than once. He loved to laugh and have fun. That was part of the problem. I learned later that he was in foster care for stealing a car for joy riding. Randy never caused me any harm, however trouble seemed to follow him everywhere he went. 

As a teen, I never had any boundaries. I was treated as an adult at a young age. I guess it was a benefit for having many adult responsibilities. For the most part I was trustworthy. There were times, however, that I wished I was grounded. Like the time Randy came over with a couple of friends to go out. For some reason, I was afraid of Randy’s friend. He was downright shady. There was something bad about him. My mom told me to go out and have a fun time when I really wanted her to say that I was grounded for life. I remember sitting in the back of this guy’s car. The floor was rusted out in the back seat. If you sat in the middle, you could see the ground. I was afraid that a bump would cause the whole back seat to fall out. 

There were other outings with Randy. He went to meet up with someone to talk about things that future felons probably discuss. I was offered a beer. Being the goodie two shoes that I was, I did not drink it but put it in my trunk. My dad found the beer. He told me I could get in a lot of trouble for that so I took the can and smashed it against some rocks. But I didn’t get grounded. 

The time I did get grounded though probably saved my life…