parenting Archives - Page 5 of 6

12 things I don’t do as a parent

August 19, 2014 by Jana 46 Comments

This week’s confessions are inspired by this post from Babble and this post from Amber at Airing My Dirty Laundry.

I will most likely never win Mother of the Year.

Here’s a small sample of why.

I lose my temper, I feed my daughter Chick Fil A probably more than I should, I’ve been known to curse in front of her, and occasionally, I’ll tell her to talk to Siri when I want to stop answering her incessant and endless questions. I admit to looking forward to a few hours silence when she has cheer practice or school or a play date and I definitely will run errands in the evening and pretend it’s a vacation.

I’m not even remotely ashamed. In fact, I’ve written a whole post confessing that some things I do might make me a terrible parent.

Consider these confessions a balance to those. Or maybe not a balance but an accompaniment. Depends on how you want to look at it. I think there might even be an overlap or two.

That’s fine.

Let’s get to it. As a parent, I don’t:

Have a panic attack if she gets hurt. Cuts, bruises, scrapes and their ilk are all part of childhood. Not every injury is cause for a freak out session and if I’m panicking, how can I expect her to calm down? Right. I can’t. So I stay calm and put a band aid on it. She’ll heal.
Lose my shit if she stains her clothes or gets too dirty. Like getting hurt, it’s a part of childhood. Kids are messy, filthy little things and my child is no exception. Watching her eat certain foods is revolting, and it’s no wonder her clothes eat, too. I also don’t buy her such expensive clothes that if they get a stain, it’s worth getting angry. I just throw some Shout on it and move along.
Let her win. Losing is a part of life and she needs to learn to do that graciously, too. It’s all part of good sportsmanship, especially now that she’s older and needs to learn those lessons. Lest you think I am a heartless bitch of a mother rather than just a terrible one, there are plenty of times she legit kicks my ass. I am seriously overmatched in Birthday Party Monopoly.
Play Barbies. Or have tea parties or play dress up or create elaborate scavenger hunts or do a whole lot of playing in general. I’ll do crafts, play board games, take her places, and once, I let her give me a makeover. But I am not a get on the floor, play Barbies kind of mom. I did it once and it was terrible. I don’t care to do it again.
Watch everything she does. If I spent my days responding to all the “Mom, watch this!” shouts, I’d get even less done. Which is hard to imagine. But I can’t stop my life every time she wants to show me how she can spin in a circle or do a cartwheel. I know that shit. I’ve seen it eleventy billion times. I watch the important stuff. But sometimes I just have to say no to the little stuff.
Give her control of the radio in the car. Or the TV in the living room. We all live in this house. We all drive in the car. She is not the only one, and quite frankly, most of her taste in entertainment sucks a fat one. She has a few gems (seriously, iCarly is freaking funny) but for the most part, it’s all terrible. It’s hurts my ears, eyes, and soul to watch or listen to it. So I make her share. She needs to be more well rounded anyway.
Keep an immaculate house. I’ve confessed all my dirty housekeeping secrets before but it bears repeating. And while we’re at it, my house doesn’t look Pinterest worthy. Or even ready for company. But it’s comfortable and clean enough and I’d rather spend time and money on trips, days at the beach, and making memories than cleaning. Having a clean, perfect house is not a priority and quite frankly, it is too damn stressful. Plus I have a kid and pets and a husband and cleaning up after them is about as sensical as shredding cheese with a nail file.
Wait on her, hand and foot. Last time I checked, she wasn’t royalty and I wasn’t hired help. As such, she can clean up after herself, put her laundry away, get her own snacks and drinks, and do chores. Without being bribed.
Like all of her friends. Have you met some people’s kids? Yes? Then you know that some of them are huge assholes. I cringe when my child is friends with one of those kids, and I cringe even more when she hangs out with them. The thing is this, though. They’re not my friends. I don’t have to like them. And I will tolerate them. Until they do something I can’t tolerate. Then the gloves come off (not literally. I will simply forbid my kid from seeing whenever possible).
Live vicariously through her. This is her childhood, not mine. It is not my place to force her to make up for all my shortcomings or unfulfilled dreams and wishes. It would be wrong for me to do that, and would take away all of her independence and ability to make her own choices. She needs to figure out for herself what she likes and doesn’t like.
Think she’s perfect. I am the first one to admit that my child fucks up. She cops an attitude, she doesn’t listen, she makes mistakes, and things are sometimes her fault. She is not free from blame during fights with friends, she messes up in school, and she’s not always the superstar. Does she do the best she can? Most of the time. Is she amazing in her own way? Absolutely. But is she perfect? Nope.
Call her my BFF. Remember when Steph wrote about how she didn’t marry her best friend? Well, I didn’t give birth to mine. I am her mother and that trumps being her friend. It is a role that needs no other definition. Quite frankly, it creeps me out when a parent says her school aged child is her BFF. Really?! That can’t possibly be healthy. I love my daughter and would do anything for her. Except call her my best friend. Because in addition to the creepy dynamic, it puts way too much pressure on her. Which isn’t fair.

And now you know all my dirty parenting secrets.

My parenting style isn’t for everyone and it certainly isn’t trendy. But my kid knows that she’s loved, safe, and well cared for.

And it works for me.

So I’m clearly doing something right.

Linking up with Kathy and Liz

Confessions of a reluctant cheer mom

August 13, 2014 by Jana 34 Comments

Confession time. My daughter? Is a cheerleader.

Take a moment and let that sink in. Especially if you’ve been a longtime (or longish time) reader. Because you know that I’m not about pep and team spirit or even wearing skirts. Glitter I can handle. The rest, though? Not so much.

But approximately 2 years ago, when we were offering her choices for activities, she said no to all of them. Every. Last. One. And then, out of the blue, she says she wants to cheer. Naturally I was confused as fuck because really? Cheerleading? How on earth did that come up and more specifically, where did she get the idea? Certainly not from me. Or her father. I wanted to say no because what. The. Hell. How can I, of all people, raise a cheerleader. But I love my kid more than I love my stereotypes so I tried to be open minded and signed her up for the introductory classes at the Y and she loved it and showed an aptitude and now, here we are, parents of a competitive cheerleader.

It’s truly not something I ever thought I’d be. And throughout her first year, I didn’t warm up to it quickly. At all. There were some external reasons I won’t get into but some of it did come from me. But the more we got into it, the more I gave in. And now? You guessed it. I’m a cheer mom.

And I am learning things I never thought I’d learn. Like cheerleading vernacular. Yup. It’s its own thing. Herky and high V and liberty and basket toss and teddy bear and pike jump and all the other words that are now tossed around like a flyer at my house (see what I did there? Flyer? Cheer humor at its finest). While I’m still learning some of the vocabulary, I’m now mostly fluent in cheer. We can put that in the “never thought that’d happen” bucket.

You know what else I know now? How to do cheer hair, which, incidentally, is its own thing (I also know where to buy cheer hair. So if you ever need it, just ask). I was unaware of this and, now that I am, I have a clear understanding of how the hairspray industry stays afloat. Competitive cheerleaders. My daughter used more hairspray during her first season of competition cheer than I have in 37 years of life. And I lived through the 80s and early 90s. That’s a lot of hairspray, folks.

I can totally see my daughter saying this to someone one day.

As if that’s not enough, I now find myself encouraging her cheering. I look for cheer quotes and crafts on Pinterest. I buy her clothes with cheer stuff on them. I’ve talked to the other moms about buying specifically designed cheer mom t-shirts (and if we can’t get those, I plan to buy the sparkliest shirt I can find). I have opinions on the routines and I make her practice at home. I even find myself volunteering (okay, fine, I’m going to my first volunteer meeting tonight). When my daughter got kicked in the face by her flyer the other night at practice, I told her I was proud that she got her first injury (I have never admitted that I will win mother of the year). But the bottom line is that I’ve become immersed in cheer because I’d be a shitty parent if I didn’t. I love my kid and I support her, even if, deep down in place I don’t talk about at parties, I still don’t get it.

But despite the fact that I don’t get it, I need to say this: I now realize that cheerleaders truly are athletes who deserve respect rather than mockery. They train and condition their bodies and do shit that really shouldn’t be humanly possible. Even at a young age, they’re lifting their flyers, doing basket tosses, tumbling, jumping, spraining, bruising, and hurting themselves all for the sake of being the best. Cheerleading isn’t just bows, sparkly makeup, and silly chants at football games (and it’s certainly not the crap you see at NFL and NBA games. That shit is simply ridiculous). It’s physically demanding, hours of practice and, at times, emotionally draining, and what impresses me the most is that when those girls get hurt, they keep going. They are badasses to a degree that only gets associated with sports like hockey and football.

I will be the first to say the bitchiness is real. I’ve seen it but typically more from the parents than the cheerleaders (parents are bad sports. Some of the worst I’ve ever seen), which is nice. And there are definitely some stage moms (including me at times. Yeah, I admit it. But if I’m spending all this money, she better work hard). And it does get frustrating when people mock you for having a cheerleader. But to see the look on my daughter’s face, and the happiness she gets at practice, football games, and competitions makes the early morning hours, the seemingly endless competitions filled with painfully loud, nearly identical cheer mixes, the loss of any social life for 6 months, and the constantly having to fend off negative comments and stereotypes about cheerleaders worth it.

So there you have it. I confess that I’m a cheer mom. My 16 year old self would be shocked. But my 37 year old self is proud.

Linking up with Kathy for the first time in a few weeks.

Promises to my friends without kids

July 27, 2014 by Jana 29 Comments

About a year ago, I wrote a post detailing the frustrations I felt towards some of the statements moms with multiple children make to me, the mom of an only child. It was a ranty post, with shades of anger, but I stand by it. It drives me crazy that motherhood has basically become a competition; competing for the smartest, most accomplished children who are impeccably dressed with perfectly healthy, organic, balanced, and nutritious lunches cut into all sorts of fun shapes that they eat before they spend hours of crafting and playing in their perfectly clean, Pinterest worthy home.

(Which begs the question, who are these mothers? How do they do it? Because I can’t keep up with that, y’all, but I’d really like their secrets.)

And in this game, the more kids you have, the more points you get, effectively making you a better mother. I say that’s all horseshit and not simply because by those standards, I am an epic failure of a mother. I am about as far from a perfect mother as one can get but my kid is happy, healthy, mostly well adjusted (would I really be doing my job if I didn’t give her at least a little bit to talk to a therapist about?), and creative. She also know she is loved. Which is really what matters most.

It makes me sad that we still see our worth in terms of our kids’ successes and accomplishments, and we, as women and mothers, are so competitive about it. And let’s not even discuss how poorly we collectively treat women who don’t have kids (I can’t stand the word “childless” and refrain from using it whenever possible).

And I’d like to change that. Starting with this post.

While I can’t guarantee I’ll be perfect, here are some promises I’m making to my friends without kids:

I will not ask you, ever, why you don’t have kids. It’s none of my business, it’s your choice, and I don’t feel that you need to explain yourself to me. We can be friends even if you’re not a parent. I’m a mom but that’s not all I am and we can bond and connect on that level.
I will never ask you when you plan to have them. Same justification as #1. Also, maybe you never plan to have them or you can’t or you simply don’t want them. Actually, you know what? If you don’t want them, and you know you don’t, I commend you for not bowing to any sort of pressure.
I will never tell you your life is incomplete without children. While my life is certainly better because of my daughter, that doesn’t hold true for everyone (well, with their own kids. Not my kid. I’m pretty sure your life is just fine without her). There are plenty of people with fulfilled lives that don’t involve children.
I will do my best not to shove too many pictures of my daughter down your throat. I love her and I think she’s the cutest thing ever but I’m pretty sure you don’t. So if you’ll indulge me for a few minutes, we can put that behind us.
I will do my best not to talk about her all the time and/or bring her up in every conversation. I get that it’s a boring subject. I have other topics to discuss. Like what’s going to happen on the next season of Sons of Anarchy or the amazing recipe for buffalo meatballs I made over the weekend (with buffalo sauce. Not actual buffalo) or the books you’ve been reading. So we can talk about that instead.
I will not judge you for treating your pets like they are your kids. Because I get it. I have pets, too, and they do become your furkids. I will not mock you for dressing them up, sending them to daycare, or taking 84792 pictures and posting them to Instagram. Maybe even though I have a human child, I still do that with my dogs (my cat is another story. She can be kind of an asshole sometimes).
I will try really hard not to be jealous of the fact that you don’t know who Sam and Cat are. Or that you don’t have the theme song to The Haunted Hathaways stuck in your head for days. Or the fact that you have no clue about the “plots” of kids’ shows.
I will try to refrain from using my kid as an excuse for why I can’t do things with you. Unless I truly don’t want to do something but can’t think of another reason not to do it, in which case using her is fair game.
And, finally, I will support any and all decisions you make regarding children. I will not offer unsolicited advice on this topic, I will be an ear to listen, and I will completely understand if you choose not to throw (or attend) kid friendly parties.

And a bonus promise: I will try to never start a sentence with anything on the variation of “Oh, you don’t have kids, you don’t understand”. That’s just a bitchy thing to say.

Friends without kids, I want you in my life. I like you in my life. And I don’t want the fact that I have a child to interfere with our friendship. I will do my best to uphold these promises and in return, I ask you for one thing.

When we’re out together, no matter where we are, please, please let me pee alone. It’s probably the only moment of solitude I’ll get all week.

Humpday Confessions: I might or might not be a terrible parent

July 2, 2014 by Jana 33 Comments

It’s time for another round of Humpday Confessions with Kathy at Vodka and Soda. This time, I’m admitting all the crappy things I do as a parent. I’ve had this stuff brewing for awhile and it’s about time I let it all out. Or, take it as a way to feel better about yourself if you are a parent. And, if you’re not, you can take notes on what to do, or what not to do.

It’s not that I’m a bad mother. It’s just that, well, maybe sometimes I do, or don’t do, anything I want. Because I can. It’s a beautiful privilege.

Like how when my daughter was about 2 and learning all the animal sounds, I convinced her that every time you see that animal, you have to say hello by making its noise to it. So, if we saw a cow, she’d say “moo”. She’s 7 and still does it and it amuses me. Every. Single. Time.
I totally schedule play dates based on whose parents I can tolerate. The more I like the other kid’s parent, the more play dates we have.

I am not a sit on the floor and play Barbies kind of mom. I’ll play board games, do crafts, bake, read stories. Anything but Barbie.
If I’m really tired and want to nap, I’ll say “let’s watch a movie and you can pick”. Inevitably she’ll pick a terrible, boring movie and I get to nap and she thinks she won because she got extra TV time.
She talks constantly. I think every single thought that pops into her head comes out of her mouth. To give myself some quiet during the day (oh, right. I stay home with her), I tell her she has to do her 20 minutes of daily reading at the point in the day I can’t take it anymore.
Her sport of choice is cheerleading. I love my daughter. I do not love the cheerleading environment and secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, I mock it. I appreciate the athleticism that goes into competitive cheerleading but cheer moms make dance moms look normal and Bring It On? That shit is real, y’all. And then there’s the whole issue of cheer politics. Insanity.

Cheerleading irks me so much sometimes that I try to get her to quit. #noshame
When it comes to her TV shows, I tell her she’s not allowed to watch shows I don’t like. Like Spongebob. That porous, pineapple living motherfucker can kiss my ass.
When people tell me my child is cute or pretty, I never know how to respond. I mean, I respond with “thank you” because what I want to say is “I know” but that seems way too arrogant.
When she does or says something mean or snarky or rude, and it’s funny on top, it’s hard to reprimand her. I do but my laughing probably negates the whole thing. And occasionally, I don’t even try.

I could go on but then you’d probably start to think I really am a terrible mother. And maybe that’s okay. But, despite my quirks, she seems to be turning out just fine. At the very least, she’ll have plenty of fodder for her own blog or book. She’ll probably call it “Everything My Mom Did is Wrong but I’m Still Okay. Mostly.”

So about that time I was almost homeless

August 28, 2013 by Jana 9 Comments

If you are a fan of Jana Says on Facebook, you know that for the last few weeks I’ve been in the process of moving. We sold our house, bought a new one, and moved into the new one at the end of last week.

house_move — Exact depiction of our situation. They took the house, too.

Except I wish it had been that simple. Over the last 8 weeks, my husband and I encountered every problem possible when buying and selling a house. You already know about the lying liars who lied. That was just the beginning of our problems. I won’t go into all of what happened because there are some of you reading who might want to buy a house someday and I don’t want to scare you out of it. If done properly, it’s a relatively easy procedure. But that’s not how the husband and I roll so of course it had to be as difficult for us as possible.

And it all came to a head last Friday.

We had planned to settle on both our townhouse and our new home on the same day, Friday. Due to some…problems that had nothing to do with us, we found out at 10:00 AM on Friday that we would not, in fact, be settling on our new home at 2:00 PM as scheduled. We were, however, still settling on our townhouse at noon, effectively making us homeless.

I had never been so scared in my entire life. Here we were, people who follow all the rules, pay all our bills on time (early, even!), submit all required paperwork when requested and we weren’t going to have a place to live. I joked for weeks that I’d be living in a cardboard box behind a McDonald’s (you know, because of the free wifi) but on Friday morning, the joke was quickly becoming a reality.

And this was the complete opposite of funny.

What really freaked me out, besides the fact that I HAD NO PLACE TO LIVE, was the fact that this was happening approximately 3 days before my child was starting school. In a new place. With all new people. And she’s terrible with change. The very least we could do for her was have a house to move into.

Clearly no one else thought of, or cared about, that.

I finally broke down. After all that we’d been through during the home buying/selling procedure, I’d kept it together. But getting that phone call was my complete undoing. Already emotional from leaving our house of 9 years, the one that we brought our daughter home to, the one where we started our marriage, I now had to contend with having no where to go. With no clear time frame of how long our impending homelessness would last. So I wept. A lot.

Sensing the urgency and direness of the situation, my very generous parents and in-laws offered to pay for us to stay in a hotel (I should note here that if you do not have an emergency fund, get one immediately. I don’t know what would have happened to us financially if we did not have that emergency fund in place) and while at least a hotel offered shelter, the thought of sending my child to school from a hotel made me feel like a terrible parent. Like I had somehow failed her. Like I was deficient as a parent.

And that made me think about the parents all over the country who are living in hotels. I don’t know why they’re there. It could be for reasons like ours. It could be because they lost their house and this was the only place to go. It could be because they don’t want to be tied down to any one place. It could be for reasons I’m not thinking of. Maybe they’re happy living there. But my guess is that they’re not.

Any parent with even a small amount of concern for her child’s well being doesn’t want her living in that type of unstable environment. Parents want their kids to have the sense of stability that a home brings (in this situation, “home” does not necessarily mean “house”. It can be trailer, apartment or house. “Home” also does not imply ownership; a home can be a rental as well). They want their kids to feel safe and secure. You can’t get that in a hotel, long term, even if you try to jazz the place up to feel more “homey”. You get that from an actual home.

In a hotel, you can’t provide the meals that your kid needs to thrive in school. It’s hard to get them a bus to and from school, and maybe driving them isn’t an option. In a hotel, there are noises and distractions that prevent a good night’s sleep, which also help kids succeed in school. There’s no privacy. There’s no space. There’s nothing except shelter.

Shelter, which includes running water, electricity, beds, and a roof, are, of course, of primary importance. But don’t we all deserve more than that? Don’t we all deserve a home? Don’t all kids deserve that feeling of having somewhere safe to retreat to at the end of the day?

I think they do. So do adults. (Note: I’m not going to launch into a soapbox tirade about safe, affordable housing and/or the causes of homelessness here. I’d like to but then this post would run on for 8000 words).

End rant.

Fortunately for my family, things ended positively. Without going into specifics because I don’t know that I’m allowed to discuss them, we were able to (legally) get into the house on Friday. My daughter had her own bed to sleep in before school started, I was able to pack her lunch, give her a good breakfast and take her to school. But what happened for us doesn’t always happen. We were luckier than most. I know that.

After our experience, I’ll probably think a little differently when I hear about a family living in a less than desirable situation, like in a hotel or with relatives. I might not assume certain things as quickly and I certainly won’t judge them. Because we were almost that family. And I know how I would have wanted to be treated. And they deserve the same.

12 things I don’t do as a parent

Confessions of a reluctant cheer mom

Promises to my friends without kids

Humpday Confessions: I might or might not be a terrible parent

So about that time I was almost homeless

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