Sunday, April 13, 2014
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Kindergarten Kids - What to Do about the Damn Phone
Problem:
Your kids could be silently behaving for hours on end, playing nicely, giggling, leaving you in utter peace and quiet, giving you the most idyllic of days.
Then their Spidey sense activates. You've taken out the phone and put it to your ear somewhere in the house.
Tantrum Engage! Suddenly, the only thing they can think to do is maul each other, screaming and crying the whole time. There's toy throwing, there's inconsolable sobbing, there's the inevitable child following you around looking for justice... "MOM, SHE _______ ME!"
Meanwhile, you just wish you had a kid-sized fly swatter. Why do they do this? Not only is it annoying to the tech person, teacher, interviewee (I'm a journalist), or anyone on the other end, it's mortifying.
I mean, is it their main goal in life to make me look like the worst parent ever at all times?!
Solution:
There are a couple different ways you can go.
First, you can try telling them to stop. It won't work (probably) but you've got to keep that hope alive, right? I mean, maybe today's the day!
When that doesn't work, put yourself in another room. Lock the door if you must (my kids are five, so that's okay for me to do). Usually, of course, they'll hang right outside the door, screaming into it.
If that is the case, tell the person on the other end to hold on. Put them on mute to spare them as you go into the battlefield. Discipline your kids in the manner of a crazy person who's just been humiliated in front of some stranger they need help from. Put kids in room. Go outside. Walk a bit away from the house. Apologize to other party on the phone and quickly finish up.
The most important part of this happens after the phone call. My kids are actually finally getting better about phone calls after months of me doing this.
After it's over, go and talk to your kids calmly. Tell them the behavior is unacceptable and sometimes you are going to be on the phone and that you expect them to act appropriately when you are. This isn't going to work, of course, but after millions of repetitions of the same thing, it seems the kids are starting to get an inkling that the phone is not their enemy and they can just chill out when you're on it.
If you always do the same thing (I always go outside to the front porch when the call is important and verbally cue them that I am on a phone call and I'll be back in a minute) they get used to it via pattern recognition and do even better at laying off.
Alternately, never use the phone again.
GOOD LUCK.
Your kids could be silently behaving for hours on end, playing nicely, giggling, leaving you in utter peace and quiet, giving you the most idyllic of days.
Then their Spidey sense activates. You've taken out the phone and put it to your ear somewhere in the house.
Tantrum Engage! Suddenly, the only thing they can think to do is maul each other, screaming and crying the whole time. There's toy throwing, there's inconsolable sobbing, there's the inevitable child following you around looking for justice... "MOM, SHE _______ ME!"
Meanwhile, you just wish you had a kid-sized fly swatter. Why do they do this? Not only is it annoying to the tech person, teacher, interviewee (I'm a journalist), or anyone on the other end, it's mortifying.
I mean, is it their main goal in life to make me look like the worst parent ever at all times?!
Solution:
There are a couple different ways you can go.
First, you can try telling them to stop. It won't work (probably) but you've got to keep that hope alive, right? I mean, maybe today's the day!
When that doesn't work, put yourself in another room. Lock the door if you must (my kids are five, so that's okay for me to do). Usually, of course, they'll hang right outside the door, screaming into it.
If that is the case, tell the person on the other end to hold on. Put them on mute to spare them as you go into the battlefield. Discipline your kids in the manner of a crazy person who's just been humiliated in front of some stranger they need help from. Put kids in room. Go outside. Walk a bit away from the house. Apologize to other party on the phone and quickly finish up.
The most important part of this happens after the phone call. My kids are actually finally getting better about phone calls after months of me doing this.
After it's over, go and talk to your kids calmly. Tell them the behavior is unacceptable and sometimes you are going to be on the phone and that you expect them to act appropriately when you are. This isn't going to work, of course, but after millions of repetitions of the same thing, it seems the kids are starting to get an inkling that the phone is not their enemy and they can just chill out when you're on it.
If you always do the same thing (I always go outside to the front porch when the call is important and verbally cue them that I am on a phone call and I'll be back in a minute) they get used to it via pattern recognition and do even better at laying off.
Alternately, never use the phone again.
GOOD LUCK.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Equal Pay Day Controversy
So, Tuesday was equal pay day. For those of you who somehow don't know about this, it represents the day women have to work up to before they've made as much as men made the previous year.
At 77 cents to the dollar, we have to work an extra 98 days.
Anyway, if you want more information about how this came about or what it actually measures, click on the link above, because what I'm doing in this post is taking on these two bullshit questions from this post over here.
Question 1:
Do women go into lower-paying sectors because they prefer them, or because employers discriminate against them?
At 77 cents to the dollar, we have to work an extra 98 days.
Anyway, if you want more information about how this came about or what it actually measures, click on the link above, because what I'm doing in this post is taking on these two bullshit questions from this post over here.
Question 1:
Do women go into lower-paying sectors because they prefer them, or because employers discriminate against them?
I don't know about you, but I don't know too many people in general who look at themselves and think, you know what I'm worth? Very little money.
There are more women in teaching and administrative work than men, and you know what, when asking many of them, they'd say they do enjoy the work. They are where they want to be. Great! Let's pay them more.
The women workforce also has a lot more part-time workers, which apparently messes up the average? They're working part time usually because they have a family at home, right? And daycare is incredibly expensive...more expensive than college.
And having families is something that people do, don't you know. And our society is still set up in such a way where the responsibility usually falls on the woman to care for the child, and if alternate care is used, the woman actually has to be making some money. However, since she only makes 77 cents to a man's dollar, she often saves money by not going to work.
Not to mention that we are constantly saying we need more women in science, yet to be in science you need a PhD and to get a PhD plus some experience, you need to not have kids until about your mid-30s.
In fact Freeman Dyson, the world-renowned mathematical physicist who helped found quantum electrodynamics thinks academia is bunk:
"I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all."
Question 2:
Do women stay home with the kids because of cultural norms, or because of the way parental leave policies are set up?
I don't understand this question. I mean, both? First of all, don't kid yourself, we don't have any parental leave in this country so there is no "way it is set up" because it does not exist. Secondly, yeah, there are definitely cultural norms still in place that need to go away because they are annoying and they make people feel bad. Not to mention that they perpetuate stereotypes that women cannot hold positions of power because "they won't give as much to the company" or women "choose not to make as much" because they "chose to have children."
Okay, well, since we're the only ones who can have children, how about you help us out and not put us through those shitty choices.
The long and short of it is that women are still struggling to be seen as a serious force in the workplace because of outmoded ideas of family, cost of childcare, and doucheheads who think if a woman chose to birth a child, she decided she didn't want to work for a lot of money so she should shut up.
We need future people, right? And to get them to the adult stage, we need to feed them. And if we're going to feed them and teach them healthy things about the world, we deserve a livable wage for doing something we have been trained in.
And if a woman works as hard as a man in her profession, she should make as much money as he does. Period.
As my friend on Facebook said:
" If you are too much of a goddamn pithy simple-minded asshole to see the structural problem with putting a tax on working women of as much as $1000/month per child, there's nothing anyone can say to talk you to a place of reason.
I never want another person coming at me about the "personal choice" of mothers to take low-paying jobs who doesn't have a solution to this nightmare of a decision-making process we put women through."
"I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all."
Question 2:
Do women stay home with the kids because of cultural norms, or because of the way parental leave policies are set up?
I don't understand this question. I mean, both? First of all, don't kid yourself, we don't have any parental leave in this country so there is no "way it is set up" because it does not exist. Secondly, yeah, there are definitely cultural norms still in place that need to go away because they are annoying and they make people feel bad. Not to mention that they perpetuate stereotypes that women cannot hold positions of power because "they won't give as much to the company" or women "choose not to make as much" because they "chose to have children."
Okay, well, since we're the only ones who can have children, how about you help us out and not put us through those shitty choices.
The long and short of it is that women are still struggling to be seen as a serious force in the workplace because of outmoded ideas of family, cost of childcare, and doucheheads who think if a woman chose to birth a child, she decided she didn't want to work for a lot of money so she should shut up.
We need future people, right? And to get them to the adult stage, we need to feed them. And if we're going to feed them and teach them healthy things about the world, we deserve a livable wage for doing something we have been trained in.
And if a woman works as hard as a man in her profession, she should make as much money as he does. Period.
As my friend on Facebook said:
" If you are too much of a goddamn pithy simple-minded asshole to see the structural problem with putting a tax on working women of as much as $1000/month per child, there's nothing anyone can say to talk you to a place of reason.
I never want another person coming at me about the "personal choice" of mothers to take low-paying jobs who doesn't have a solution to this nightmare of a decision-making process we put women through."
Pay equity. Because we're effing worth it. And so are our kids.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Find Out Who You Are
We are all broken. But we are all beautiful. And no one in the world is better than you are. Who you are, right now, in this very moment, as you read this, is beautiful. You belong here. And you deserve things. Good things. Even if you hate yourself right now, or hate what you've have done in the past, or hate what you will do in the future, or hate what you are doing right now, that does not mean you do not deserve the best of everything in this world, and the sooner you recognize that you are special, unique and giving this world a great gift just by existing, the sooner you'll be able to walk away from the Land Of Bad Decisions (tm).
Everyone has been there. The intensity of the situations are different, and our ability to withstand different intensities are different. But we are, in essence, very similar. We all fall, we all feel like fakes, we all struggle with hidden demons.
Your demons are just as important as that guy's over there. And you are just as deserving as he is.
You can't keep on keeping on if you feel like you are undeserving of life, love and happiness. It's not you. It's a thing. It's a thing that's near you. It's a thing that's not you. You are not your failures. You are not even your actions. You are defined by you and you alone. You get to make up that definition. Make it good. You are strong. A warrior just like me, just like everyone. You will not let your loved ones down. They are more forgiving than you are. You are not the past. The past is not real. It is shadows. Shadows we must confront and conquer, but not our reality this day, this moment. You are not what happened to you. You don't owe anyone anything, especially at the expense of yourself. You are beautiful and you can let that show. Those who would disparage it are wrong. You can, day by day, moment by moment, take control of your life. And you deserve it.
Here are some things to do:
1) Accept blame for what is yours. But don't wallow in it. Don't allow your past to become you. Own up to your actions, understand your motivations for them, and from there, make changes so that you don't find yourself in that position again.
2) Allow yourself mistakes. You are going to mess up. A lot. This doesn't prove that you are a bad person. It just proves that you are a person. It doesn't prove that you can't change. It proves that change is a journey, not a destination.
3) Forgive yourself. I don't care how bad it is, if you can't forgive yourself, you stop yourself from moving forward. Forcing yourself to live in your old shoes as punishments for your misdeeds is poisoning. You have control over this moment, and the next one, and then the next, but only one moment at a time. And when you mess up, if you dwell on it, taking it as indicative of your nature, you are missing out on all the next moments you could control. You are worth forgiveness.
4) Forgive others. Some people have hurt you worse than others. Some people have tortured you, some knowingly, some unknowingly. Some people are still trying to hurt you now. Forgive them so that you can walk away from them. Because emotion binds us. And you don't want to be a part of that.
5) Walk away. Cut ties with toxic people. You do not owe them anything. You forgave them for you. Forgiveness doesn't mean willingness to subject yourself to more pain.
6) Be proud. Sometimes it will be hard to do this. So look outside yourself if you must. Just find one little thing each day that you did that you can be proud of. And when you find it, do not find a way to displace ownership of that thing. Do not assign yourself ulterior motives. Do not doubt that one tiny thing you chose to be proud of. Start very small. Move to bigger things from there. You must accept that you are worthy of praise.
7) Stop hiding. I know it's scary. Try showing yourself for just a few minutes at a time until you can build your resistance up.
8) Be kind to yourself. That thing in you that hates you? That likes to tell you you're a piece of shit. It's wrong. Experiment with telling it to shut the hell up. It will feel silly at first, but it separates your masochistic tendencies from who you are in a way nonverbal communication doesn't quite reach. Realize that sometimes you do things just so you can tell yourself 'I told you so.' Experiment with not telling yourself 'I told you so' when you make a bad decision. Remember, the only one around to police you is yourself. Be a good cop.
9) Own it. You are who you are and you can do what you can do. You do not owe anyone anything. Practice being direct. It is scary. You don't want to displease people. But, in all reality, they don't care as much as you think they do. And even if they think they care at the time, you are only a minor player in their life movie. They'll adjust. They'll figure it out. You are only the main character in your own book. Read your book.
10) Do it. Branching off of number 9, be honest in everything you do. When everything mounts against you, and you want to hide, or lie, or couch the truth, or spare yourself what you feel certain will be other people's scorn and hate, try to buck that instead and simply state the truth. Don't allow yourself to be paralyzed on the cliff of anxiety where action is impossible and going back is equally impossible. Go forward. The sooner you move, the sooner it will all be over.
Be your authentic self. That person is awesome. Give her a chance. Hell, no one else did, right? Doesn't she deserve it? You be the first. Give you a chance.
You are worth everything.
Everyone has been there. The intensity of the situations are different, and our ability to withstand different intensities are different. But we are, in essence, very similar. We all fall, we all feel like fakes, we all struggle with hidden demons.
Your demons are just as important as that guy's over there. And you are just as deserving as he is.
You can't keep on keeping on if you feel like you are undeserving of life, love and happiness. It's not you. It's a thing. It's a thing that's near you. It's a thing that's not you. You are not your failures. You are not even your actions. You are defined by you and you alone. You get to make up that definition. Make it good. You are strong. A warrior just like me, just like everyone. You will not let your loved ones down. They are more forgiving than you are. You are not the past. The past is not real. It is shadows. Shadows we must confront and conquer, but not our reality this day, this moment. You are not what happened to you. You don't owe anyone anything, especially at the expense of yourself. You are beautiful and you can let that show. Those who would disparage it are wrong. You can, day by day, moment by moment, take control of your life. And you deserve it.
Here are some things to do:
1) Accept blame for what is yours. But don't wallow in it. Don't allow your past to become you. Own up to your actions, understand your motivations for them, and from there, make changes so that you don't find yourself in that position again.
2) Allow yourself mistakes. You are going to mess up. A lot. This doesn't prove that you are a bad person. It just proves that you are a person. It doesn't prove that you can't change. It proves that change is a journey, not a destination.
3) Forgive yourself. I don't care how bad it is, if you can't forgive yourself, you stop yourself from moving forward. Forcing yourself to live in your old shoes as punishments for your misdeeds is poisoning. You have control over this moment, and the next one, and then the next, but only one moment at a time. And when you mess up, if you dwell on it, taking it as indicative of your nature, you are missing out on all the next moments you could control. You are worth forgiveness.
4) Forgive others. Some people have hurt you worse than others. Some people have tortured you, some knowingly, some unknowingly. Some people are still trying to hurt you now. Forgive them so that you can walk away from them. Because emotion binds us. And you don't want to be a part of that.
5) Walk away. Cut ties with toxic people. You do not owe them anything. You forgave them for you. Forgiveness doesn't mean willingness to subject yourself to more pain.
6) Be proud. Sometimes it will be hard to do this. So look outside yourself if you must. Just find one little thing each day that you did that you can be proud of. And when you find it, do not find a way to displace ownership of that thing. Do not assign yourself ulterior motives. Do not doubt that one tiny thing you chose to be proud of. Start very small. Move to bigger things from there. You must accept that you are worthy of praise.
7) Stop hiding. I know it's scary. Try showing yourself for just a few minutes at a time until you can build your resistance up.
8) Be kind to yourself. That thing in you that hates you? That likes to tell you you're a piece of shit. It's wrong. Experiment with telling it to shut the hell up. It will feel silly at first, but it separates your masochistic tendencies from who you are in a way nonverbal communication doesn't quite reach. Realize that sometimes you do things just so you can tell yourself 'I told you so.' Experiment with not telling yourself 'I told you so' when you make a bad decision. Remember, the only one around to police you is yourself. Be a good cop.
9) Own it. You are who you are and you can do what you can do. You do not owe anyone anything. Practice being direct. It is scary. You don't want to displease people. But, in all reality, they don't care as much as you think they do. And even if they think they care at the time, you are only a minor player in their life movie. They'll adjust. They'll figure it out. You are only the main character in your own book. Read your book.
10) Do it. Branching off of number 9, be honest in everything you do. When everything mounts against you, and you want to hide, or lie, or couch the truth, or spare yourself what you feel certain will be other people's scorn and hate, try to buck that instead and simply state the truth. Don't allow yourself to be paralyzed on the cliff of anxiety where action is impossible and going back is equally impossible. Go forward. The sooner you move, the sooner it will all be over.
Be your authentic self. That person is awesome. Give her a chance. Hell, no one else did, right? Doesn't she deserve it? You be the first. Give you a chance.
You are worth everything.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
The Twin Continuum
I don't know if this happens to anyone else or if it's just our family, but my twins operate on a continuum. Or maybe a more accurate description is a scale. I don't know. All I do know is that they are convinced that the other twin's behavior is a reflection of themselves in the opposite way.
So that, the worse one twin behaves, the better the other one feels. They're caught in this weird reality where behaving is good, but the other one misbehaving is better. It makes them more good than regular behaving would have.
And they follow strict rules in regard to this.
For instance, yesterday, Dulce coughed on the graham cracker I gave her, and started to tantrum about wanting a new one, even though I told her that her own cough on her own cracker didn't matter. Natalina came by to get her cracker and promptly dropped it on the floor, breaking it into a few pieces. She automatically went beserk, ratcheting up the emotion in the room to 60 from 0, far outstripping Dulce in her attempt at discontent over her own cracker. On Facebook, I said "feeling the quota met, Dulce took her cracker back and ate it quietly."
But that's not quite correct.
In fact, Dulce broke her cracker into pieces and then ate it, just to show everyone (quietly) how cool she was with broken-cracker-eating. Because Natalina was acting out, Dulce felt good, like "the good child."
Now, before we go further, I swear I do not promote this in any way!!!! I'm never like, "why can't you just be like your sister" or "Dulce is behaving right now and you are not." I do everything in my power to treat them separately, and don't think it's purely for them. It's for me. I need them to act like individual people. It's exhausting living this way.
On the opposite end, I cannot give one of them a compliment without the other one feeling like I've insulted them. I've mentioned this before. If I tell one she's done a good job, the other hears, "you did a bad job." If I tell one she's funny, the other one hears "you're not funny at all, why can't you be more like your sister."
They are constantly telling me they feel I love the other one better than them, when I give even the slightest individual attention to either of them. It's infuriating and frustrating and so hard to deal with.
My twins feel like they are sharing the goodness, in a sense. Like there is a limited quality of good and only when one gives up some of her 50 percent can the other grab up that excess. It's fully ridiculous in every way. And it leaves them bitter competitors in everything.
I can't give them different identities. They won't take them. Any difference at all is analyzed. The activity for each kid is taken apart and weighed in every aspect for "goodness" and "badness", "favored stature" and "unfavored stature". And mind you, these are all made up. They make up definitions of good and bad in their own minds, which makes it extra confusing to me, because I never know which twin is going to feel like she got the good deal and which is going to feel short-shifted for completely equal alternatives.
Twins are hard, guys.
Here are some shitty pictures to illustrate what I'm trying to say:
I haven't figured out how to fix this yet (obviously). Suggestions are certainly welcome.
So that, the worse one twin behaves, the better the other one feels. They're caught in this weird reality where behaving is good, but the other one misbehaving is better. It makes them more good than regular behaving would have.
And they follow strict rules in regard to this.
For instance, yesterday, Dulce coughed on the graham cracker I gave her, and started to tantrum about wanting a new one, even though I told her that her own cough on her own cracker didn't matter. Natalina came by to get her cracker and promptly dropped it on the floor, breaking it into a few pieces. She automatically went beserk, ratcheting up the emotion in the room to 60 from 0, far outstripping Dulce in her attempt at discontent over her own cracker. On Facebook, I said "feeling the quota met, Dulce took her cracker back and ate it quietly."
But that's not quite correct.
In fact, Dulce broke her cracker into pieces and then ate it, just to show everyone (quietly) how cool she was with broken-cracker-eating. Because Natalina was acting out, Dulce felt good, like "the good child."
Now, before we go further, I swear I do not promote this in any way!!!! I'm never like, "why can't you just be like your sister" or "Dulce is behaving right now and you are not." I do everything in my power to treat them separately, and don't think it's purely for them. It's for me. I need them to act like individual people. It's exhausting living this way.
On the opposite end, I cannot give one of them a compliment without the other one feeling like I've insulted them. I've mentioned this before. If I tell one she's done a good job, the other hears, "you did a bad job." If I tell one she's funny, the other one hears "you're not funny at all, why can't you be more like your sister."
They are constantly telling me they feel I love the other one better than them, when I give even the slightest individual attention to either of them. It's infuriating and frustrating and so hard to deal with.
My twins feel like they are sharing the goodness, in a sense. Like there is a limited quality of good and only when one gives up some of her 50 percent can the other grab up that excess. It's fully ridiculous in every way. And it leaves them bitter competitors in everything.
I can't give them different identities. They won't take them. Any difference at all is analyzed. The activity for each kid is taken apart and weighed in every aspect for "goodness" and "badness", "favored stature" and "unfavored stature". And mind you, these are all made up. They make up definitions of good and bad in their own minds, which makes it extra confusing to me, because I never know which twin is going to feel like she got the good deal and which is going to feel short-shifted for completely equal alternatives.
Twins are hard, guys.
Here are some shitty pictures to illustrate what I'm trying to say:
I haven't figured out how to fix this yet (obviously). Suggestions are certainly welcome.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
LinkWithin
