Parenting

A Comedian Is Born

June 4, 2014 by Lori Leave a Comment

Dinner time in our house is family time. Gathering around the table at the end of the day, it’s a chance for everyone to talk about their day, discuss current events, and share a laugh.

Tonight was started out no different from any other night. Then, a comedian was born.

Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final is playing in the background. Yes, I allow this. Why? Because, it’s the cup!

A beer commercial comes on the television. Teenage son is triggered to tell us what he learned today in sex-ed class. He tells us how they learned alcohol impairs sexual performance. I am not old enough to have this conversation. I could be 100 years old and not be old enough to have this conversation with my son.

Somehow we move on to monkeys, which leads to Michael Jackson having Bubbles the chimp. Don’t ask. We have strange conversations. Teenager makes a comment about not making fun of Michael Jackson. Husband replies about not liking him.

Kiddo is insulted, “how can you not like him?”

Husband replies back, “well, he liked little boys.”

Without missing a beat, and with perfect timing and voice inflection, kiddo retorts “was he catholic?”

Wonder if the kid needs an agent?

I’ll be right back, I promise

June 28, 2012 by Lori Leave a Comment

I saw this picture on Facebook and laughed. These days if a mother did that, well, can you say Division of Child and Family Services?

What parent hasn’t had that thought run through their brain at least once (or 3,000 times)? Even as a mother of an only child I can say with absolute certainty, I have and at least once a day. That is usually when I have just carved out 10 whole minutes to myself, or so I thought.

You know the drill. The image staring back at you in the mirror is a reminder to make that waxing appointment soon or you will have an official uni-brow. The doctor said after your last physical 6 months ago to come back in a month for a follow-up. Your best friend has started to think you lost her phone number as you haven’t called her back the last 4 times she called.

You just need 5 minutes to yourself.

So, why is this not okay to do? Yeah yeah, I know, they could wiggle the clothes-pins loose and they would fall to the ground. And? It only hurts for a moment, right?

I have it, Mommy-Multitasking! Fully clothed baths then hang them on the clothes line! The clothes get dry and the kids stay clean for 5 whole minutes!

<doorbell chime>
<knocking sounds>
Me: Who is it?
Voice from other side of the door: Ma’am it is the police. Did you know there is a child hanging from your clothesline while singing the new Lady Gaga song? Your neighbors would like to know if he knows any Madonna, they prefer the original?

I make jokes, heck, my son doesn’t even like Lady Gaga!

Okay, so really, who would it hurt to get a few minutes of sanity in an otherwise hectic day? As long as I teach him how to carry a tune, even the neighbors won’t mind.

Everything is a teaching moment when it comes to our kids

June 27, 2012 by Lori Leave a Comment

Last week when the story broke of the bullied school bus monitor, I was working from home. While I made a post on Google+, I never posted here. I have to be more diligent about cross posting.

From June 21, 2012:

Everything is a teaching moment when it comes to our kids

I was lucky enough to be working from home this morning, so I was able to grab the kiddo so we could watch together. An interesting discussion followed about the kinds of bullying they don’t teach in school. To say he was angry about how those kids treated a lady who could have been his grandmother, is putting it mildly.

Once that point was made, we turned it toward teachers and how he and his classmates speak to their teachers. Well, what do you know, suddenly we were hanging our head, saying we had to do a better job in being respectful ALL the time when dealing with teachers and teacher’s aides.

Lesson learned.

Stuff My Son Says

June 11, 2012 by Lori Leave a Comment

Out of the mouths of babes. How can the young be so much smarter than their years? I know that I do know the answer to that, and it is usually the result of having to endure what they should not have to at an early age.

We were out, doing our usual errands and chatting away in the car. He asks, “Mom, do you want to hear a saying I made up?” How do I not want to hear this? “Of course I do”, I answer. With that, he utters the phrase above, “Those who insult, are weak themselves.”

We talk about what he means by this, and he tells me had figured out that bullies and mean people are just mean to make people stop looking at them. He goes on and gives me examples of bullying statements and how to counter act them with one liners to end it right then and there.

It is my fervent hope he doesn’t have to put this in to practice any time soon. I fear for him, that entering Junior High School next year, will have more than its fair share of pitfalls.

Adventures in Parenting – The Shots

May 23, 2012 by Lori Leave a Comment

How many adults does it take to give an immunization?

I love my son, unconditionally. He has irrational fears that are part of his condition and as a mother it is heartbreaking. Spiders, clowns, insects with wings, and getting shots. When it is time to get shots, we have to plan, for weeks.

Today was our yearly physicals and we knew that there were going to be shots today. So we have been planning. They say plan your work and work your plan. That works when dealing rationally.

For a month we have been talking about how we needed to get shots to be prepared for 7^th grade. Breakfast table talk this morning was about manning-up. I picked him up from school today and the talk in the car on the way over was in preparation and repeating our manning-up mantra.

Preparation is for fools.

My appointment is over, I go in to his exam room, and he is already shaking in his paper shorts. As the exam wears on he is vibrating. I leave the room for the personal part of the exam. I barge back in when he starts screaming. The doctor mentioned the shots.

As an hour woefully passed, I tried the soft touch, the mean mommy, the reasoning parent, the I’m going to call your father threats, all to no avail. At points he was so loud and wailed so badly, other doctors and nurses came in, worried I was abusing a child in their building.

In the end, it took me and a very large, strong nurse to hold him down in my lap, while our nurse gave him three shots in his arm. Once done, he was calm, stopped crying, and picked up his things to leave as if nothing happened.

I’m sorry Mrs. Friedrich, we really don’t know why you have severe G.E.R.D. issues. No, we can’t up your medication any higher.

Another Adventure on the Short Bus

May 2, 2012 by Lori Leave a Comment

A while back I wrote about the adventures we experienced when the regular morning driver had to take a leave of absence and they couldn’t seem to back fill the spot without making the kids miss the first hour of school.

Today’s adventure was with the new morning driver. I don’t think we will be seeing him much longer. It takes a special kind of patience to work with kids with extra-ordinary needs. He doesn’t have it, or at least, enough of it.

At 12:10 today I get a phone call from kiddo’s school therapist. During today’s scheduled session he related a story to her about this morning’s bus ride in to school and he has told her the story. He wants to speak to me directly, because he has been upset all morning, has had trouble concentrating, and no one has listened to the story.

Seems that an altercation erupted between his seat-mate and the younger girl sitting behind them. She was hitting the other boy with a Barbie, a piece fell in to his lap, he retaliated by throwing the broken piece to the back of the bus and she whacked him with her hand. It was at this point the bus driver finally noticed.

This may have been the bus driver’s first time handling something like this, who knows. In any case, he took sides instead of diffusing and allowing teachers to settle when they arrived at school.

My son, not one to see an injustice be done, chimes in with his observations on what the girl did. At this point the bus driver made a critical error in judgement.

He turned to my son and said, “shut up, I’m not talking to you!” I’ll take “Can I have my pink slip now?” for 200, Alex.

The driver proceeds to keep arguing with the other boy. My son chimes in again. Driver tells him to butt out and why was he still talking? The other boy answers, “well, you told him to shut up and that was wrong!”

Did I mention this is all going on while he is still driving down the street, not pulled over to the side of the road?

Driver turns to the other kid and says, “I’m the bus driver, I can do anything I want!” Game, set, match.

Therapist gets back on the phone, says she is on it, will question the driver when he returns for afternoon pick-up, but that a classroom aide has offered to drive both boys home today until we can get all the facts. We agree to have the aide drive him home and we will speak again once she gets more information.

She calls me back to relate his side of the story, which to his credit, matches the boys’ story.

I wish I could call the bus company just one time for a good reason. Today wasn’t it.

I get a call back from the supervisor after he gets all the facts and has a meeting with the driver. We agree everyone is human and makes mistakes. Driver will be giving the whole bus an apology, has reprimand in file, and there are no third strikes in their system.

Everyone is human, everyone makes mistakes, but no one talks to my son that way. A lesson we teach in our house, and reinforce all the time is that we all have a right to be mad, but we don’t have a right to be angry. We all have a right to respect, and that we all have a responsibility for our actions and our words. If he has to abide by them, so does the driver.

I don’t think the driver realizes he has to face me tomorrow morning. I promise not to say one word. There is no need for words when you possess the look.

Life As A Silly Parent

May 2, 2012 by Lori Leave a Comment

I love being silly, cutting up, and just letting loose. This is especially true when the kiddo is in the same kind of mood. A most endearing quality is that he has inherited my quirky sense of what is funny. We enjoy watching old Marx Brothers movies together and Three Stooges episodes. Anything that will make us have the kinds of giggles that turn in to belly laughs.

Tonight, little man and I had errands to run and while in the car, from the backseat I hear “excuzzzze meeeee, who ahrrre you please?”, in the worst French accent imaginable.

One glance in the rear view mirror and I can see the silly has started and I better catch-up quickly.

I try my best Russian accent, aka Boris and Natasha mashed up in to one person. “Vy, hello dere. I deed not zee you zitting dere.”

We proceed to converse in our horrible broken accents, barely understanding each other for a few blocks, until I am informed that my Russian is starting to sound like French and he is “the onlyeee Freunch per-sonne in za carrre.”

So, I break out my Brooklyn.

“Zo, jus who do uze tink you iz, huh? Who let uze into my cah? You ain’t Americunn, where you from anywayze?”

“Me, oh well my par-ents are from Frannnce and ze brought me heeeere when I was young-er, so I am an Americannnnne.”

“Yeah, well I don’t know no body who talks like dat from America. You must be one of dem French Fries!”

We are giggling and mimicking bad accents all over the East Bay. I am throwing my best Brooklyn/Jersey at him, and he is trying his best to keep up the French accent. He makes false bravado threats in the French kid voice about how he is “ze best American who speaks ze Freunch he knows.”

“Oh yeah! Up ya nose wit a rubba hose!”

I was lucky to keep the car on the road with the guffaws coming from both the front seat and the back seat. He had no clue what it meant, but it was enough of a vivid statement, that his mental picture put him into fits of laughter.

At the dinner table we explained where the phrase originated, but by then it had lost its shine.

Ya hadda be dere ta unnnastand

Stuff My Son Says

April 20, 2012 by Lori Leave a Comment

Him: Mom, why do some women wear so much make-up?

Me: Some women wear it to feel better about themselves, but some really need it.

Him: Hmmm, how do you know the difference?

Me: Whether they use a brush or a spatula.

Him: Huh?

Me: If it looks like them, just better, then it’s a brush. If they look, well, scary, then it’s a spatula.

Him: Clowns are scary. Do they use spatulas?

Me: Oy vey!

Adventures On The Short Bus or How to Tick Off A Special Needs Kid’s Mom

March 7, 2012 by Lori Leave a Comment

It is 5pm, the phone rings and it’s the bus company. We’re very sorry, but the morning bus driver is going to be out tomorrow. We don’t have a substitute driver (thank you California budget crisis). The bus that has room for him will be there to pick up your son at 8:30.

At this point I finally use my words. “Excuse me? You do realize school begins at 8:05, right?” Gal on the phone says, “Well, yes ma’am but we can’t get there any sooner. “ My Jersey comes out front and center. “What you are saying is that kids on THIS route don’t get the same consideration as those going to regular classes. It is okay for THESE kids to be late to school. Obviously you are only going to send someone after the other routes are over. You know what, please don’t trouble yourselves, I will gladly drive my son 25 minutes out-of-the-way to make sure he arrives to school on time tomorrow”, CLICK.

God that felt good. The click makes it, it really does. Especially when dealing with a school system that feels children with any disabilities are second class. Her only saving grace was that she was not standing in front of me at the time. The snarly scowl that accompanies that voice is really the icing on the cake.

This was Tuesday night.

Wednesday morning comes, and the kiddo is happy, he gets extra time in the morning since there isn’t going to be a bus waiting outside our door at 7:05 am. We get ourselves together, drive down to school, I double back north, and get to work about 20 minutes late. It’s only one day, no big deal.

Tonight at 7:30 the phone rings again. You guessed it, it’s the bus company and lo and behold, no driver again tomorrow morning. New plot twist you say, why yes, just for the heck of it, and since life is too dull and boring, let’s announce that the driver won’t be the rest of the week.

Okay, I tell the new gal on the phone (somehow I think yesterday’s gal won’t be calling me again) that while work doesn’t appreciate me being late, thankfully they are human and understand these things happen. I can drive the kiddo in again Thursday morning.

Now it is my turn to add a plot twist. I tell her that while taking him tomorrow is no issue, we do have a problem if this lingers to Friday. I have to be in early (it is a non-starter, written in concrete), and my husband has a 7 am conference call with Sweden, then I stop talking.

Silence. That is what I hear on the other end of the phone. Not one word comes out of this gal’s mouth. Now in negotiations, the first one to speak is the one who loses the most. The person who wrote that saying, never negotiated with me.

“I don’t know if you are grasping this but, if you cannot make suitable arrangements to pick my son up and get him to school ON TIME Friday, as you are contractually obligated to do, my son will have to miss a day of school. Do you think this is acceptable?”

Now it was my turn to be silent. “No ma’am. That is not good. Let me see what I can work out.”

Dollars to donuts I get a call on Thursday night as if this conversation never took place, but that is fodder for another rant.

Early Adoption Failure

March 27, 2011 by Lori Leave a Comment

I am an early adopter, sometimes. It depends on the product and the platform.

Take for instance new dinner ideas. Working mom arrives home nightly to husband and kid already home for an hour. Kid is busy doing homework, husband has walked the dog and is catching up on news, and everyone is hungry and ready for dinner. Of course the catchy commercial for a product that will help me make dinner in a snap catches my eye, it is supposed to. They made it to speak to me, and millions of women like me all across America. Let us help you make your life easier.

So like millions of other women, on my weekly shopping trip in the mega-supermarket, I go in search of this revolutionary new product. Voila! I find it, not by careful searching, but by the gaggle of women standing there with the product in their hands, reading the label for secrets to making their lives easier.

I walk over nonchalantly, grab a tub of the miracle cure, and just put it in my basket. Don’t want to look like I don’t already know of its properties. This is not my greatest idea. This one comes to backfire on me when I take it out of the chill chest to put into Saturday night’s dinner. I finally read which flavor I grabbed and how it is applied in a recipe. First thought, disaster!

No way is preteen going to eat a dish with this, but we always teach that you have to at least try something before you can say you don’t like it. We also teach that unless I make something completely inedible (which happens on a fair amount of occasions), you need to eat what is put in front of you.

It is in those dinner conversations that one or both of us wind up channeling our parents. Things like,”if I didn’t eat what my mom made for dinner I had to eat it anyway, so will you.” A classic, “don’t you know there are starving children in the world who don’t have a hot meal to eat?” The ever popular, “whatever you don’t eat now will be waiting for you for breakfast.”

That being said, last night’s dinner conversation was one that could have been had in any typical household in America. Any typical household that has children.

We all sit down, I put the experiment on the table, and low and behold from the seat to my right I hear, “WHAT is that, I’m not eating that!” Now, mind you, there are no toxic fumes emanating from the dish in green smoky curls, nothing moving, and certainly nothing with tentacles. With that said, the other half grabs the serving spoons and starts dishing out the concoction.

Small, almost semi-adult takes a look, a sniff, and proclaims he doesn’t like it. Ah, time to interject a classic from the repertoire. “Dude, I had to eat what my mom made for dinner, and so do you, so at least try it before you start to complain.” Fork spears food on plate, fork enters mouth, mouth starts to curl, and mouth opens to wide view of half-macerated food and the sounds of gagging.

At the same time, two adult faces pretty much look like younger third face. This look is quickly replaced with a smile. Two sets of eyes glance in each other’s direction. Non-verbal communication begins. One set says, “ok, so it’s not the best of experiments but it’s made, it’s hot and it’s got good protein.” The other set of eyes replies, “yeah ok, and besides I am not in the mood to go out and get us a pizza.”

“See kiddo, it’s not that bad, let’s eat.” Protestations begin, bargaining and requesting for alternate foods commence. Accepting defeat once again on a failed experiment, but not being in the mood to be reminded of it, the words come out of my mouth before thinking.

“There is more to life than pizza and chicken nuggets, so eat your dinner kiddo. I know it’s not great, but it is all there is. I promise I won’t be making this again, and you are only going to have it eat it this one time, so stop complaining and start eating!”

So much for being an early adopter.

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