Big Breath...It's Almost Time to Go Back to School

I know lots of moms celebrate the day their kids go back to school.  But I have to be honest, I don't.  Now that's not because I love and adore every moment I spend with them and I'm a super fabulous mom.  That's because my kids go to fun camps all summer - they are happy, I am happy, and life is less stressful.  But going back to school means getting up early, stressful mornings, hectic schedules, and the holidays are coming.  I almost break into a sweat thinking about it.  And I for the record, have historically loved fall!  I love that it's gets cool outside.  I love the holidays.  I love birthdays (every significant date in our family occurs in fall and early winter).  I love football season.  But with kids, all of these exciting things come with mom-to-do lists.  Ughhh.

So I had to assess my anxiety and figure out how to conquer back-to-school without panic attacks.  If you too are panicked about sending the kids back-to-school, here are my tips to fall into school and fall with ease and maybe even excitement!

1.  Shop for everything online!  School supplies, backpacks, lunch boxes, and clothes can all be purchased in a matter of minutes online.  Just spend an hour during your favorite guilty pleasure TV show shopping and you have all of that taken care of.  Even if your kids are old enough to pick out their own clothes, they can still pick out what they want online and then you edit and order their shopping cart.

2.  Get kids signed up for fall activities now.  Some kids know what they love and stick to it every year, so this is easy.  But my kids are young and still trying out new things, so this can be a little stressful.  There's research, signing up, figuring out the schedule, buying the gear, etc.  So get it done now and then that's one less thing to worry about when the school year gets hectic.

3.  Make a list of your typical Fall to-dos and just add them to your calendar now.  Then you know you have set aside time for your to-dos and you don't have to keep these to-dos stored in your head.  To get you started, here was my list of fall to-dos:

• Order Halloween costumes
• Plan Halloween and Christmas outings
• Buy tickets for holiday events
• Finish photo albums/gifts for Christmas presents
• Make and order Christmas card
• Book birthday party locations
• Order birthday party invites
• Buy birthday present for day
• Buy anniversary gift for my husband
• Buy birthday gifts for son
• Order Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner (thank you Whole Foods)
• Update holiday pictures at Piece of Cake Parties
• Christmas shopping

4.  If you have spare time now, start doing your fall to-do list now before life gets hectic!  For example, I make photo albums of our kids art work and lives each year to give for holiday gifts.  They are definitely a labor of love.  I love having them, but they are time-consuming.  So getting those done this summer, is a big stress relief for fall.

5.  Put all of the back-to-school events on your calendar now, so you aren't caught off guard.  You know the year always starts out with a bang - Meet the Teacher night, Curriculum night, Back to School bashes, etc.  And if you are lucky like us, you get to do all of these at multiple schools.

6.  Start sending the kids to bed early now.  Let's face it, you could use the extra time at night to take care of your to-dos.  And if the kids get used to going to bed earlier and waking up earlier now, the first week of school will be a little less painful.

7.  If you have kids with anxiety, start talking to them about what to expect in the new school year.  My daughter will be going into first grade, which she's excited about.  But first grade will come with homework and real school work.  So I can help her be less stressed, less emotional, and less anxious by talking about how first grade will be different now.  That will make the whole family happier in September!

Hopefully, this list helps you and makes you fall into fall with excitement!

Is Your Child Developing Asynchronously?

If you can pronounce "asynchronously," there's a good chance you do have a child developing that way.  But before I tell you what that big word means, I want to explain how I came to discover it.

If you follow my blog, you might know that I've written about our daughter's sensitivities and anxiety.  I've written about our son's sensory issues and odd quirks like cleaning constantly, running into walls, and touching everything.  I've also written a lot about parenting ideas to make your house run more smoothly.  But I didn't realize that all of these quirks and struggles were pieces of a bigger puzzle.  I knew that we have two highly demanding, sensitive, bright and picky children.  I knew that our house often dissolves into chaos because of our children's intense demands and intense emotions.  And I knew that even with our kids being 6 and 3.5, we still feel like we have to prepare for battle everyday in our house.  We wake up optimistic that a peace treaty will be put in place, but we are prepared for D-Day.

In yet another effort to try to problem-solve some of the challenges in our house, I came across a term I had never heard of before - Asynchronous Development.  And bam - it explained so much about my two kids.  It gave me language to describe the development and parenting challenges we are facing.  And I think it's so unknown that I wanted to share it with you.  Not because it's unknown and rare, but because it's unknown and not rare...not rare at all.

So what is it?  Technically speaking, "asynchronous development occurs when advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm." Translated into English it means that a child's brain and central nervous system may develop different parts of the child's cognitive and motor skills at different rates.  Therefore, you can have a child who may appear intellectually to be 6 but emotionally to be 4.  You can have a child who can quarterback a football team and play football like they are 12 but is struggling to read at a 3rd grade level.  You can have a child who has ADHD and whose impulse-control is that of a 5 year old, but they have expert knowledge of theoretical physics.  A 3 year old could know every construction vehicle and dinosaur ever documented but not be able to keep himself from running into walls and falling down the stairs.

Unfortunately, in our traditional school system and quite frankly, in our American value system, we tend to think the ideal student and child is calm, compliant, studious, goal-oriented, and matches his/her peers on the typical physical and emotional development path.  However, this idea of asynchronous development suggests that kids who have gifts in specific areas might not fit into this mold at all.  Due to their heightened intensity, they are likely to be very sensitive to fairness and causality.  Thus, they will challenge authority a lot - not because they are rude, but because they perceive things aren't fair or because they need to understand the why in order to comply.

These kids may read at age 4 but they also might not read until age 7.  Well, by our standards, if it takes until age 7, we assume the child isn't that bright.  Not true.  It could be that the child is very gifted in analytics/math, and that part of the brain has been working overtime and hasn't had the capacity to develop the reading cognitive ability yet.  One of the most famous cases of this is Einstein - he didn't read until he was 7, and no one thought he was a genius.

They can be intellectually aware of worldly concerns and fears but not have the emotions to cope and thus, they develop anxiety at a young age.  Anyone who has been around a child with anxiety, knows they are anything but calm.  They are often 10 seconds away from a meltdown at any time.  For example, at age 4 when our daughter started having chronic sleeping issues at night.  I asked her why.  She said she was scared.  I instinctively and foolishly said, "Are you afraid there are monsters in your room?"  She looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "No.  There's no such thing as monsters.  I'm afraid someone is going to break into our house and kidnap me or there is going to be a tornado and I'm going to die." Huh.  "Why do you think you can die?" I naively asked.  "If a bug can die, I can die."  Huh.  Didn't see that one coming.  But I could definitely understand how a 4 year old would not be emotionally prepared to cope with those types of fears.

These kids also often have overexcitabilities.  That means they often seem to "bounce off the walls."  But really, their brains are very sensitive to stimuli, so it might not take much to get them emotionally and physically excited.  An emotionally and physically excited kid could appear to have ADHD or at the very least look hyper and non-compliant.  Again, something we oddly associate with lack of intelligence.  But this very same kid might have the same knowledge of sharks or dinosaurs that your could expect from a child 3 years their senior while their "bouncing off the walls behavior" looks more like a child 3 years their junior.

These kids may also be chronic liars, because to them, lying is an obvious way to problem-solve and meet their intense emotional or physical needs.   They might be smart enough to tell great lies but socially immature enough to not realize the social consequences to lying.  Of course lying is wrong, and they have to be taught that is not appropriate problem-solving...BUT it's an indication of intelligence not evil or stupidity.

So you get an idea of what asynchronous development is.  The other reason I like this term is because it is a better descriptor than "giftedness."  Giftedness (which for the record, neither of my kids have been tested yet for giftedness) has a lot of negative connotations.  People either use it to brag or they are afraid to use it because they fear they will be perceived as bragging.  Why?  Because everyone perceives that having a "gifted" child means having a perfect and easy child who will do amazing things.  Not true. Truly gifted kids (which is not the same as kids who make good grades and have good standardized test scores) are likely not easy to raise.  They are definitely not perfect.  And if not parented and guided well, they could end up doing far less than amazing things.  They are susceptible to not only low achievement but also mental disorders like anxiety and depression.

I look at my daughter, who I fully believe will grow up to be smarter than me, but I assure you our life is anything but perfect and easy.  It's hard...some days devastatingly hard.  I feel emotionally exhausted regularly.  And I see so many challenges that she faces because of her emotional intensity and sensitivities.  I worry a lot that she won't reach her full potential because I won't know how to properly parent her through all of the challenges of asynchronous development.  And some days I feel judged because I don't have a child (particularly a girl) who is calm and compliant.  I don't have a child who happily eats vegetables.  (I mean she can go bananas over chicken tenders at a new restaurant because they don't look like chicken tenders at Fuddrucker's.)  I don't have a child who can sit quietly and entertain herself.  I have a children who feels things so intensely and believes everyone can see things as clearly as she does.  So when she feels "wronged", she can unleash extreme anger.  And by "wronged", I mean I gave them her the green fork at dinner instead of the blue fork.  Or I told her we would stop at HEB to get groceries but we stopped at Randall's instead.  She is not calm and compliant.  In fact, because she loves order and structure so much, she is often bossy and dominant, because she can see exactly how people should be behaving, playing or organizing...and she feels it's her place to notify them of the correct way to do things.

On the flip side, because our son is experiencing delayed motor skill development and because we are often too preoccupied with our daughter's emotions, I have weirdly (embarrassingly) assumed our son wasn't as smart as our daughter.  Once he started going to therapy, I realized he could do so much more than I knew he could.  Now I'm also starting to wonder if his sensory processing issues are just a part of asynchronous development.  Because as he gets older, his emotional intensity has increased, his sensitivities have increased, and his moments of 3 year old smartness have started to show through.  For example, we were at the San Diego Zoo recently where they had a play area.  There was a shell of a construction vehicle)that kids could climb on.  It obviously wasn't real, nor was it a complete replica.  It just had the left side, right side, and top.  Me, not caring about construction vehicles, was having a hard time recalling which vehicle this was.  So I asked our son, "Is this a bulldozer?  Is this a front loader?  Is this an excavator?"  He just looked at me with a very uninterested look and kept replying "No."  I really thought he wasn't actually paying much attention to me and was bored by this line of questioning.  Finally, with a tone of disgust in his voice he says, "Mom, it's a Bobcat."  And then, he walked away.  Huh.  It wasn't so much that he knew it was a Bobcat that surprised me.  It was that he clearly thought I was an idiot for NOT knowing it was a Bobcat that surprised me.

Anyway, I'm sharing this idea of asynchronous development with you, not because I'm an expert, but because if you think it applies to your kids, it gives you something to go research yourself and learn more about.  It's so important to see the gifts in all of our kids.  And some of the most amazing kids out there may not always fit into a nice little box of even development.  But it's also important for parents of these kids to know they are not alone.  It is challenging and exhausting and you might have to wait 25 years before you see the return on your investment (okay, hopefully not that long, but it might indeed be very delayed gratification).  And if your child is developing evenly and as expected, don't judge other parents whose kids may be on a different development path.  We are all in this together.

This Product Is Like the Miracle Blanket for Big Kids!

Whew Summer is here!  Spring time was rough at our house.  Largely, because spring brought lots of thunderstorms, which terrify both of our children.  That of course, resulted in sleep deprivation for mom and dad and for the kids.  A double whammy.  But in addition to just the typical thunderstorm issue, our 3 year old son (who had historically been a fantastic sleeper) decided he couldn't stay in his bed to save his life.  It didn't matter what was going on in the atmosphere, it was taking us 1-2 hours every night to get him to stay in his bed.  This literally drove mom (referring to myself in 3rd person here) to the brink of insanity.  No amount of Super Nanny tactics worked.  No amount of comforting, checking in, etc. worked.  He repeatedly said he was scared, but we couldn't identify a cause of what was making him scared...so to be honest, I didn't believe him.  I thought that was an excuse to get out of bed.  He didn't act scared.  He acted like he wanted to party.  But just like other challenging periods in our life, "necessity is the mother of invention."

I should mention that during this time period, we decided to get our son evaluated for Sensory Processing Disorder.  He had shown signs of this in the past, but it wasn't clear to me if he was just a typical boy or if there was something else going on.  (I'll write more about this in the future.) More specifically, we learned in his diagnosis that his vestibular system isn't functioning and developing properly.  What's a vestibular system you might ask?  The vestibular system is the sensory system that provides the leading contribution about sense of balance and spatial orientation for the purpose of coordinating movement with balance.  As the occupational therapist describes it, he doesn't have a good sense of where his body is in space.  Therefore, he always feels off balance.

Well, this explained so many things!  Why he runs into walls and furniture, why he is scared to walk down stairs by himself, why he can't sit still in a chair (he feels like he's falling out), and it turns out...why he can't stay in his bed.  When he lays down in a big kid bed (not a crib or toddler bed), he feels like he could fall out of the bed.  He's 3.5, so he's really too old for baby beds, so how do I solve this problem?  Therapists typically recommend using weighted blankets.  We have a weighted blanket but have been unsuccessful getting our son to use it.  He prefers his fuzzy blanket, and he understandably thinks using both blankets is too hot.  So I was at a loss.

One afternoon after trying to get him to nap for over an hour, he asked me to lay down with him.  I said, "Your twin bed is too small for both of us and all of your pillows (which he prefers to line the wall on the side of his bed.)"  He insisted.  I was exhausted, so I agreed.  We squished into the bed and in 30 seconds, he was asleep.  Interesting.

So I pondered how could I replicate this "squished" feeling for him.  That evening I suggested he sleep in his sleeping bag on his bed.  He loved the idea!  Bedtime was significantly easier.  However, his sleeping bag fell out of the bed in the middle of the night, which was not good for a child who is afraid of falling out of the bed.  So the next day, I took his bed sheet and flipped it.  I tucked it into the mattress around the sleeping bag to hold the sleeping bag in the bed.  Our son loved the idea!  Bed time again was easier, not great but better.  It only took 30 minutes instead of 1-2 hours to keep him in his bed.

But the perfectionist in me said surely, I can improve this some more.  Low and behold I found the SnugBug.  A mom in North Carolina makes these, and it's genius.  It's a spandex sheet/sleeve that fits around the mattress.  The result is basically a swaddle for child.  Our son LOVES this thing!  He is so happy to get in bed.  He stays in bed.  AND he goes to sleep in 20 minutes.  He has literally never done that in his life.  It has always taken him at least 30-60 minutes to go to sleep even when he was a baby.  He's sleeping 11-11.5 hours a night instead of the 10 hours he was getting previously.

This isn't the bedtime solution for every child who doesn't want to go to bed.  But if you have a "clumsy" child or a child with SPD or vestibular issues, this might be an idea you want to consider.  Totally life changing!

What ONE Thing Do You Want To Teach Your Children?

You always hear people say things like, "My mother always told me..." or "The one thing I learned from my dad is..."  That has always stuck with me for some reason.  While I learned a lot from my parents, I really can't think of one thing that my parents told me repeatedly.  So maybe that's why I have found the idea that some people have sort of a life motto to fall back on to be interesting and kind of comforting.

Now that I'm a parent, I have given this idea of a "life motto" more and more thought.  As a marketer, I can certainly appreciate the value of communicating one clear, concise message.  Humans aren't good at remembering much more than that.  So if I had just one thing I wanted my kids to learn from me what would it be?  Obviously, there are so many things to consider - be kind, give back, follow your heart, never give up.  The list goes on.  But oddly, it was watching The Martian that finally gave me my A-ha.

Have you seen The Martian?  If you're like us, you either haven't seen it or you saw it two years after it came out.  Either way, it's about an astronaut (Matt Damon) who is in an accident during a mission to Mars.  His team believes he's dead and leaves him behind on Mars as they make their miraculous escape.  But Matt Damon is not dead.  He awakes, realizes he's alone on Mars, and it will take months if not years for anyone to rescue him...so he has to figure out how to live on Mars.  After that, it's basically a series of problems occurring which Matt Damon must continue to solve in order to live another day.  During which he says some great lines like, "Yes, of course duct tape works in a vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere.  Duct tape is magic and should be worshipped."  And "I don't want to come off arrogant here, but I'm the best botanist on the planet (planet being Mars)." LOL.

Okay, I digressed.  So back to my point.  At the end of the movie, he is rescued and returns to earth to become a teacher at NASA.  And at the end he tells his students who are training to be astronauts his one piece of advice,

"At some point, everything's going to go south on you.  You're going to say, 'This is it.  This is how I end.'  Now, you can either accept that, or you can get to work.  You solve one problem, and then you solve the next problem, and the next, and if you solve enough problems, you get to go home."

It occurred to me that if I could only teach my kids one thing it's that the secret to navigating life is to look at life as a series of challenges.  The more challenges you overcome, the better you will do.  

Growing up, I certainly dealt with perfectionism and the fear of failure.  This approach to life made me fear problems and challenges.  Problems were a sign of failure.  This fear really held me back.  There were so many things I didn't try or do, because I feared not having immediate success.  I didn't think I could handle the feelings of disappointment or failure.  If I had just looked at life the other way - That of course problems occur.  Everyone faces challenges, problems and failure.  Even with the best planning and future-thinking in the world, you will still encounter problems.  Therefore, just expect problems, expect challenges.  And when the problems occur (because they will), you aren't defeated, helpless or angry.  You just see it as the next challenge the world or God or whatever you believe in has presented to you.  And when you solve the problem, you will be better and more successful than you were yesterday.  And if you are goal oriented (which my daughter is), consider that the person who solves the most problems is the winner!:)

In fact, we had our motto printed on a canvas and it hangs on the wall where we walk into our house, so we can see it and be reminded of it everyday.

This life approach might not speak to you or be your family's philosophy.  But just my two cents as a mom and a marketer - I think a life motto is a pretty cool gift to give your kids.  We want to teach our kids lots of things, but during confusing and hard times when they are older, our kids may lose track of the 1,236 things we've taught them through the years.  But if they have a life motto, it gives your child an easy-to-remember philosophy to fall back on.  It lets your voice be heard in their heads even when you aren't there.  And what parent of an 18 year old doesn't want that?

8 Things Mom Is Taking a Vaca From This Summer

I never thought I would look forward to summers, especially in Texas.  It's hot.  It's hot.  Oh, and did I mention it's hot.  But now that I have a child in school who has to be at school everyday by 7:45 or mom faces the embarrassment of walking into the school office to fill out a tardy slip, I have finally reached the day where I appreciate the point of summer vacation.  Yes, I'm sure the kids like having a break from school but let's face it MOM likes having a break from school...and activities...and strict schedules.  You know the drill.  So to celebrate, I made a list of the 8 (surprisingly, I couldn't swear off 10 things) things I'm not going to do for the next 2.5 months -

1.  Set the alarm - Yes, I still have to work, so it's not like I'm totally on vacation.  BUT my kids are still early risers, so if we get up at 7:15 instead of 6:45, we will all survive.  In fact, hopefully we will do more than survive.  It's amazing how much happier 30 minutes of extra sleep can make a 3 year old.

2.   Be a drill sergeant in the morning - Oh, I hate this role.  Every morning, I'm in constant motion getting breakfast on the table, giving kids time warnings, getting tooth brushes prepared, brushing hair, giving more time warnings, cleaning syrup out of hair, giving one more time warning....all before we hurriedly hop in the car with quick kisses and I love yous...mostly in hopes that they forgive me for being a drill sergeant every morning.

3.  Be at every practice or class - For the most part, we don't do lots of activities during the summer.  But my daughter wanted to take gymnastics this summer, and our son is taking swimming lessons.  During the school year, I'm a stickler for going to every practice or class and being on time.  I feel like it's a commitment the child made, and they need to keep it unless they are sick or it's a special circumstance.  But you know what?  If we don't make to everything this summer, I just don't care.  Wasting my money hurts a bit, but the freedom it allows us more than makes up for it.

4.  Making lunches that embody health everyday - My son goes to Montessori school, so I can only slide on his lunch a little or it's frowned upon.  And I hate to be frowned upon.  But my daughter's summer camp won't give a flying flip.  So if Lunchables (which she loves) go to camp this summer, we will all survive.

5.  Live by our routine and schedule everyday - This is a tough one, because kids behave better when they have routine and schedule.  Our children (a toddler and a child with anxiety) definitely behave better with a routine, so often, we live by the same schedule for purely selfish motives.  We don't want to deal with tantrums and arguments.  But I will be the first to admit that mom and dad get woefully tired of living in Ground Hog Day.  We want to say, "Screw it.  Let's go get ice cream for dinner."  Well, we are going to do a lot more of that this summer!

6.  Check school folders - Okay.  This is a given.  Kids don't have school folders and homework during the summer, but I just wanted to highlight and celebrate that it's one less thing mom has to do everyday.  Woohoo!

7.  Do the same stuff over and over again - Refer to my comment about Ground Hog Day above.  We are usually so tired from the week that we tend to do the same things over and over again on the weekend.  This summer we are going to new restaurants (ones that don't have play grounds) and new places.  There may not be napping every weekend, but my 3 year old will live.

8.  Read the news - Okay, I may not swear it off completely.  But let's face it, almost everything in the news is sad, scary, or useless.  And in an era where the biggest news cycle centers around Donald Trump, I think my happiness could be at least 5% happier everyday by not knowing what's going on in the world.  I'll take that 5% for the summer.

So that's my plan, and I'm sticking to it.  Here's to enjoying a more carefree few months!  Hope you enjoy your summer, too.

I Don't Want to Be a Helicopter Parent...But Sometimes I Am

When we were kids, we rode our bike to our friends' houses...to the store...maybe even further.  I rode my bike on a busy street.  I walked down a busy street to go to the dime store (remember that?)...and I bought candy, not organic juice.  I would go to multiple friends' houses and all my mom knew was that I promised to be home by dinner time.  Oh the sacrilege.  But I have to admit, when I think about letting my child do those things now, I get nervous.  I get very nervous.

Our daughter is 6 now, and she is definitely spreading her independence wings.  And so it has made me question myself and how much freedom I should give her, how much she needs, and how to deal with my discomfort of letting go.

We live in a very safe neighborhood.  If you look at the sex offender website, there isn't a sex offender within 5 miles of us.  I think we have prepared our child for interacting with strangers.  We have taught her how to cross the street.  She is very mature and cautious for her age, and yet, I still feel nervous about letting her go out in to the world (the world being...our street).

Why is this?  I think it comes down to two things - too much information and too much judgment.  I'm not sure the world is really more dangerous today than it was 25 years ago.  I think we just have way more knowledge than we used to.  And we judge those who don't have the same knowledge.  For example, a couple of weeks ago, there was a post by the police on a local Facebook page letting everyone know an adult in a truck and attempted (albeit unsuccessfully) to lure a child into his truck after getting off the bus.  There's one part of me who says, "Awesome!  Thank you for letting me know.  Now my child is safer."   Then, there's the other part of me that thinks, "25 years ago I would have never had that piece of information and thus, ignorance would have given me peace of mind today."

Now let's just say I chose to let my daughter walk over to her friend's house after school by herself even though I knew there might be a creep in a 10 mile radius of our home.  And then, let's assume she did encounter the creep.  I am to blame, right?  Because I was made aware of the creep via my Facebook news feed, and I chose to still allow her to walk by herself in our neighborhood.

As parents, we all try to reassure each other that we should parent the best way we know how and not worry about judgment.  That's very easy to say when we are talking about kids throwing tantrums or watching TV or eating organic vs. non-organic.  When we start talking about child safety, judgment is a whole different ballgame.  You see as humans, when we see danger, we instinctively want to be able to rule out the possibility of that danger affecting us.  "My child would never have been approached by that creep, because I'm member of the right FB page, and I monitor that page, and I would have driven my child to her friend's house to ensure she was protected."  Whew.  I'm a better mom, and my child is safe.  But really what I also did there was say that any other mom who would have done it differently (and thus put her child at risk) is not a good mom.  And we all want to be a "good mom."

So what's the solution?  Our children clearly need freedom and independence to grow.  It's required to ensure our children leave home one day and support themselves (that should be motivation!).  I think as a society we need to be more supportive of parents who give their kids independence.  We should reserve judgment for those who abused their children not for those who simply encouraged independence.  And when bad things happen (because they do happen and they will happen), we should focus more on compassion for the parents and less on why it wouldn't happen to us.

But let's face it, changing society is a little out of our control.  So what can we do as parents to overcome this societal trend?  I think the best thing we can do is remember the adage - Don't remove the rocks in their path.  Teach them to navigate the rocks.  Sometimes this is really hard to apply as a parent.  It's easier to protect than to teach in the moment.  But if we are doing the best thing for our children, we really need to take all of our new-found FB knowledge and turn it into ways to prepare our children rather than protect our children.  I will be the first to admit I don't always do this, but I'm making a resolution to focus more on the preparation and less on the protecting.  And to maybe stay off Facebook occasionally too!

Men, Here's What We Really Want for Mother's Day

So it's May 4th and you still have a whole 4 days before Mother's Day, so if you are like my husband, you still have at least 3 days left before you need to think about Mother's Day.  But humor me and pay attention...just in case you want to plan ahead.  If you want to be an amazing husband, here's what you need to do on Mother's Day.  Be Mom.

Yep, that's it.  Now, making her breakfast, buying her flowers, and getting the kids to make something for mom would be amazing, too.  But really, the core of the gift is to be mom for the day.  Many of you may feel confused by what this really entails, so I'll be specific about your duties for the day.

1.  Get up with the kids and take care of them while mom sleeps in.
This step probably needs some additional direction (if you are anything like my husband).  Getting up with the kids doesn't mean getting out of bed, handing the kids a bag of Lucky Charms and then falling asleep again on the couch and secretly hoping the kids forget you are there.  It means you feed them something relatively nutritious (to avoid unnecessary sugar highs).  You make sure they take vitamins, medicines, etc....the things that are a part of the daily routine that you likely believe are mom's job to enforce.  Make sure breakfast is cleaned up - very important part of the process.  And then, supervise.  Yep, that means you referee, manage messes, generally engage with the kids while mom rests.

2.  Take care of the daily chores
This includes unloading the dishwasher, feeding the pets, running a load of laundry, making sure you have food to make lunches for Monday, etc.  These are very thankless jobs that it's easy to assume "someone" will take care of.  But if you want to be mom for the day, you should assume you are the "someone."

3.  Make sure the kids are dressed and ready for the day
Despite popular belief, young children don't usually initiate putting their clothes on or brushing their teeth.  They have to be given clothes, asked (often repeatedly) to put on given clothes, and then, supervised to ensure they complete the hair and teeth brushing process.  One of the favorite parts of moms' days is being the "bad cop" and managing this grueling process.  So dad, you will be a hero by being the "bad cop" for a day.

4.  Plan the day
This one is critical.  We need you to decide what we are doing that day.  Are we going to church?  Are we going to brunch (did you make a reservation)?  Are you cooking?  Are we going somewhere else?  Being the leader and decision maker is a tough job - lots of critics, few helpers.  So dad - give mom the gift of letting her be the critic for the day.

5.  Manage the children
Now this one may sound confusing.  You may be thinking - don't I always do that?  I'm the dad.  But to be specific, this one includes making the kids pick up their toys, enforcing rules about TV and tablets, refereeing sibling fights, making sure children make it through parking lots safely, etc.  Basically, think about what the kids are doing or need all day and worry about what you want to do after the kids are in bed.  That will cover it.

6.  Prepare for the next day
Last but not least, prepare for tomorrow.  A popular misconception is the day is over when the kids are in bed.  But no, Monday morning will come fast and furious and if you aren't prepared, the day could unravel early.  So Sunday night includes making sure homework is complete, backpacks are packed, the right clothes are laid out (is it a PE day?), and lunches are made.

There you go - 6 simple things that require no money or even pre-planning that will make the mom in your house the happiest mom in the neighborhood on Mother's Day!