by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
We can learn a lot from kids. But sometimes their teaching is hit or miss. Like in the example below, which are all lessons I’ve learned from my kids.
How to put on your shoes:
1. Try for 10 seconds.
2. Cry.
3. Throw the shoe.
4. Ask your mom.
Lesson learned from: a 3-year-old in velcro shoes.
How to break your camera
1. Take it to the zoo.
2. Don’t listen when your parents say, “You should put it in your pocket.”
3. Drop it.
Lesson learned from: the 9-year-old who likes to do things his own way…and reap the consequences (well, he doesn’t like that part so much.)
How to sweep a floor
1. Get the broom.
2. Wave it around at the ceiling.
3. Hit a light.
4. Done. (Now your dad has to sweep up the glass.)
Lesson learned from: the 9-year-old who either didn’t hear us telling him to stop swinging the broom or who thought it really wouldn’t hurt to defy our instructions.
How to drive someone crazy
1. Tell them to “guess what.”
2. Make them actually guess.
3. Seriously, don’t tell them the answer until they guess.
Lesson learned from: the 7-year-old, who is a master at the guessing game, because there are no clues.
How to have a serious conversation:
1. Look at the person.
2. Pretend you’re listening.
3. Do whatever you want anyway.
Lesson learned from: a stubborn 4-year-old.
How to find a missing shoe
1. Stand in your room.
2. Look at the walls.
3. Complain that you don’t see them anywhere.
4. Ask a parent.
Lesson learned from: the 5-year-old who must have something wrong with his eyes.
How to flush a toilet:
1. Unload your bowels.
2. Forget to flush.
3. Tell your parent it smells gross in the house.
4. Totally don’t get the irony.
Lesson learned from: five potty-trained boys.
How to talk quietly
1. Yell.
2. Keep yelling until someone says use your inside voice.
3. Use your “inside voice” to yell and tell them this is your inside voice.
4. Keep yelling.
Lesson learned from: both 4-year-olds. Their whisper is also a yell. I’ve never heard anyone whisper so loudly.
How to read a book
1. Open.
2. Read.
3. Remember you’re hungry.
4. Put the book down.
5. Eat five pounds of bananas.
6. Forget about the book.
Lesson learned from: the 7-year-old who doesn’t know when to stop.
How to cook a dinner they’ll all like
1. Just order pizza.
Lesson learned from: six boys complaining about what’s for dinner before they’ve even tried it.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Every now and then Husband and I will treat our boys with a Family Movie Night. Usually this happens on a Friday, because boys don’t have to get up for school the next morning, and we can all take our time getting to bed once the movie’s done.
Sometimes Husband and I will sit on the couch and snuggle with our boys during the movie. Sometimes we’ll take the opportunity to catch up on a bit of work that needs doing, while the boys laugh their way through the newest Pixar or DeamWorks release. This means that sometimes our boys get to watch a movie before we do.
The most recent movie our boys watched without us was The Good Dinosaur. Husband and I were trying to get ready for a book launch, so we sat in the kitchen while our boys crowded on the couch and asked for popcorn. By the way they laughed through much of the movie, I knew it was one I wanted to see.
So, another week, we sat down to watch it with them.
We settled onto our couch, and I tired to ignore the elbow that was jabbing into my side, but it didn’t take me long to forget that annoyance in light of another. It soon became quite clear that I would not be able to watch The Good Dinosaur without a running commentary from all three of our older boys.
“Don’t worry. This isn’t where he dies, Mama,” one of the boys said early on in the movie, in a particularly tense part where a dinosaur is trying to outrun a storm. “He dies in another place.”
Well, thanks for letting me know he dies at all. I appreciate the spoiler.
Not only would they spoil just about every tense scene in the movie, but they would also insert things like, “Watch this,” as if we weren’t already watching the screen, and “This is a funny part,” as if we wouldn’t know we were supposed to laugh, and “he’s not very nice,” as if we couldn’t figure it out for ourselves.
[Tweet “Watching a movie with kids is like having your own personal narrator, complete with spoilers.”]
They would explain jokes to us and tell us what was happening or would happen and introduce the characters before they’d introduced themselves on the screen, and it was like having my own personal narrator, which would have been nice if I were visually impaired, but I could see the screen just fine, and the only thing my kids’ commentary did was make it really hard to hear what was said during the movie.
I get it. The boys had already seen the movie, and they remembered every part where they felt a little afraid or a little sad or a little concerned. They didn’t want us to go through the discomfort of all that. They didn’t want us to feel as shocked as they did when someone died or as sad as they did when someone remembers the someone who died. It’s sweet, when you think about it.
It’s just that I’d like to watch a movie, please. I’d like to enjoy the tension of not really knowing what’s going to happen. I’d like to hear the dialogue the first time it’s executed. I’d like to be surprised now and then.
But I guess I do sort of get to be surprised, because I remember that, at one point, a boy said, “There’s another storm coming,” so I was waiting, on the edge of my seat, to see if someone else gets hurt in a storm, and it turns out the storm wasn’t coming for another forty-five minutes. So I got to sit on the edge of my seat for forty-five minutes. There’s nothing like sitting on the edge of your seat for forty-five minutes, let me tell you. I got a ridge line in my cheeks I was clenching so hard.
Still, at the end of the day, I have to admit that watching a movie with my boys is one of the best things about being a family. To have a seventy-five-pound kid crawl into your lap because this part makes him a little nervous is priceless. To have a 4-year-old snot your leg when he doesn’t want to get up to get a tissue because he doesn’t “want to miss this part” is priceless. To have a 5-year-old whisper in your ear that the dinosaur makes it back to his family in the end (whoops. Sorry about that. Spoiler alert!) is priceless.
If anyone needs an aid for the visually impaired, I learned that my boys are quite proficient a play-by-plays. They’re so good at it, in fact, that by the end of the movie, I became good at something, too: The Art of Not Listening to My Children. For those of you who haven’t learned how to do this yet, I just sort of turned off the ear that was facing a boy sitting next to me. They didn’t seem to notice, because the drone in my right ear kept right on buzzing.
I also figured out that this is the very same skill I use when the 9-year-old starts talking about Pokemon.
The things you learn during Family Movie Night. Priceless.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
The other afternoon I was sitting in our library reading a book, because it has a direct line to my 3-year-old twins’ room, and they’re not traditionally great nappers.
I guess they didn’t know I was watching, because one of them was hanging from his top bunk like a monkey, trying to swing into his brother’s bottom bunk. The other was laughing hysterically.
“Get back in your bed,” I said, startling him so much he lost his grip and crashed to the floor.
“You scared me,” he shouted as he was climbing back up the steps to his bed.
I didn’t feel sorry for him, though, because how many times have I told him not to hang off the side of the bed like that? At least twenty billion.
There is something I’ve noticed about my boys. When they think they can get away with something—not because they’ve gotten away with it before, ever, but because they think someone’s just not paying attention—they will do it.
It’s easy to understand in a house with so many kids and so few parent eyes, but there’s something they haven’t quite figured out.
This mom sees and knows everything.
So, in the interest of helping them out with this hard-to-understand mystery, I’ve compiled an easy-to-read list of everything a mom knows.
1. I know what you’re doing, even if I can’t see you.
Call it eyes on the back of my head, call it intuition, call it whatever you want. I know. I know that when you go to the bathroom, you are probably going to play with the plunger because you’ve done it six thousand times before. I know that when you go upstairs (and I know when you do), you will head straight for Daddy’s forbidden computer and that your inexperienced fingers will close out PhotoShop, along with the latest project your daddy forgot to save, on your way to Cool Math.
I know that when you think you escaped unnoticed from the house, you will immediately run toward the neighbor’s rock path you’ve been told not to touch. I know that when you disappear into the pantry, you are looking for the raisins, because they’re still spilled on the floor from the last time you tried, unsuccessfully, to sneak a snack three minutes after you’d eaten your lunch—which included your weight in watermelon. I know that if you beat me to the library by half a second there will already be fifty books scattered on the floor that you’ll try to hide by shoving them all under the couch.
I know.
2. I know you don’t think I’m paying attention, but I am. Always.
When that phone call comes through and you think my attention is split, you should know that I’m still paying attention.
I know what you’re doing on the stairs because I can hear the footfalls leading up to the baby gate you’ll dismantle in three seconds. I know the sound of the closet door opening means you think you can sneak Battleship from its hiding place and dump out those red and white pieces without getting caught.
I know that because it seems like I’m paying full attention to the phone conversation and not at all to you, you will try to get a cup out of the dishwasher and fill it with water you’ll spill three steps from the water dispenser, even though I gave you milk in your Thermos sixty seconds ago.
I know.
3. I know as soon as I leave the room you will think about doing what you’ve been told not to do.
I know that if I go upstairs to get your baby brother, you will try to take the lid off that LEGO container Daddy left on the counter so you can scatter the pieces into a land mine before I get back (and if you can’t get the lid off you will destroy the container).
I know that as soon as I go to the bathroom you will climb onto the table and steal that crayon you wanted from your brother. I know that as soon as I disappear to put your baby brother down for a nap you will open the refrigerator and try to stuff as many grapes as you can get into your mouth before I get back.
I know what’s in your mouth and the toy you snuck up to your bed for some naptime fun and the thing you’re thinking about right this minute.
4. I know quiet doesn’t always (hardly ever?) mean good.
I know that sometimes it means you’re coloring your carpet red with a crayon you found hidden in the cushions of the couch. I know it means you have unraveled the whole roll of eco-friendly paper towels because you wanted to make a paper bag for your cars. I know it means you’re probably trying to fit into a shirt for a six-month-old, even though you’re 3. Your quiet isn’t fooling me at all.
I know all of this mostly because
5. I know you.
I know your adventurous spirit that catapults you out the door and halfway down the road before your daddy and I can even get out of the kitchen. I know your creativity that turns a door into a canvas. I know your curiosity that puts a cup with a car submerged in water into the freezer to see what happens.
I know your playful nature that sees everything—a plunger, a roll of paper towels, butter knives—like it’s a new toy. I know how hard it is to tame the strong will that sees a challenge in every don’t-do-it.
I know you, all the wild and all the crazy and all the most beautiful pieces, too.
And guess what? I love it all.
But next time you decide to see what happens when you put a balloon in the toilet and try to pee on it, just remember, you will be caught. I promise.
A mom always knows.
So don’t even think about it.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
It’s the fourteenth time he’s come to our room tonight, and we still have to get up at 5 in the morning to get anything done, so his daddy leads him out and says, “It’s time for you to go to bed, for the last time.”
“But I don’t have school,” he says, as if we didn’t just have this conversation fifteen minutes ago. “It’s my summer break.”
Oh, well, in that case, why don’t you stay up all night, and, while you’re at it, go ahead and disregard all the rules, because IT’S SUMMER VACATION!
When I tilt my head and squint my eyes just so, I can almost understand why they would equate summer vacation with do-whatever-I-want time, because summer means they are no longer trapped at school for seven whole hours, listening to someone else giving instructions. They don’t have to write their name on fifty math or reading or science worksheets, and they don’t have a half-hour time limit on lunch and they don’t have to finish all their work before they get to do the fun stuff like reading and drawing and playing.
But what’s getting old in my house is that every day there’s another fight—not because we’re coming up against new territory. No. We’re coming up against the same old territory that the boys have forgotten because apparently summertime is synonymous with short-term memory loss.
Dang summertime.
Sometimes I wish summertime meant exactly what they think it means—relaxation of the rules. I really do.
But last time I relaxed the rules and let them have a little more freedom, they pulled out the economy-sized glitter I didn’t even know we had for some horrifying glitter projects we’re still cleaning up, a year later. Also, the 8-year-old somehow climbed to the top of the bathroom door, where he positioned a cup of water so it would fall on someone’s head when they opened the door. And someone else put thumbtacks in the twins’ booster seats.
So no. Rules still intact.
I wrote a note for my boys, reminding them of the most-frequently-forgotten rules. Feel free to use this letter as many times as you need. I’ve already read it to them twenty-six times today, because that’s how often they’ve forgotten.
Dear kids,
It’s summertime. Not I’m-a-grownup-now time.
Unfortunately, that means there are still rules in our house. Here are some you seem to have forgotten.
1. No, you may not snack all day.
We just had breakfast, and you ate twelve pancakes and five eggs. How in the world are you still hungry fifteen minutes later? That’s called boredom, son. Boredom is not a good excuse to eat. Get thee outside. Thou shalt dig in some dirt. Or do art (without glitter). Or read one of your books. Or chew on your fingers. Whatever keeps you out of the refrigerator. Because, good Lord. The grocery store only has so much food.
2. Close the door behind you.
This rule has been in place since you were old enough to walk, but you’ve conveniently picked now, when it’s so hot it’s painful to wear clothes, to forget? That’s called irony, kids. It’s ironic that you’ve forgotten how to close a door in the middle of summer.
Here. I’ll help you out. Closing is the opposite of opening. So, if you pull the door to open it, you’ll push the door away from you to close it. Push it away from you. Away from you. Away from you. There. Hear that sound? That’s the sound of a door closing. Amazing, isn’t it?
Now that we’ve had this nice little refresher, next time you leave the door open, I’ll take a portion of the electricity bill out of your college fund. You won’t be laughing when you’re 18 and you don’t have enough money to pay for your first semester of books (because, by the time college rolls around, that’s about what the money we’ve saved will be worth. If you keep forgetting the close the door, it’ll pay for your first dinner out.).
3. No, you may not stay up all night.
Believe it or not, even though you’re not going to school for the time being, we are still concerned that you get enough sleep. Because we love you, and we know sleep is important for you to grow and function well. Also (mostly) because you turn into a horrid monster when you haven’t had enough sleep. So turn out the light. Put away the book.
And for God’s sake, stop coming to our room when we’re almost asleep, asking if we remember where you left your special pencil with the blue eraser. Some people want to get some sleep around here.
4. Things that were not allowed before are also not allowed now.
This would be things like walking across the table with dirty, dirty feet; getting five games out that, all together, have a total of forty-thousand pieces; sneaking onto the computer to play your Cool Math game when a parent is not present and before you’ve earned your technology time.
Nope. Still not allowed in summer.
What? Every other kid gets to do what you can’t? Well, it’s too bad those aren’t your parents. You got stuck with us. It’s a hard knock life.
5. Any mess you make, you still clean it up.
What’s that? You dumped out all the glitter on accident? Well, it’s a good thing you know how to wipe off a table and sweep a floor, so get to it.
Wait, you want to play outside with your friend, but you were playing throw-them-in-the-air-and-see-where-they-fall with the markers? Welp. You know the rules. Clean it up first.
You don’t like this game and want to play a different one? CLEAN IT UP.
6. You may not wear your swimsuit for more than 20 days in a row.
It’s time for a dress code, kids. I know your swimsuits are comfortable and you’re hoping that, by wearing them every hour of every day, we’ll say that, oh, look, it’s time to go to the pool, but no. A swimsuit is not an appropriate choice for 20 consecutive days. I’ll give you five. Maybe even six.
It’s been longer than that, so let me have them. Let me have them. LET ME HAVE THEM. I just need to wash them, and then you can have them for another six days. Now. Go get your underwear on. Remember the other unspoken rule: No skivvies, no service.
7. Pool time is not bath time.
I know, I know. Chlorine, soap, what’s the difference? It’s so fun to play in the pool and pretend it’s a bath, and it’s no fun to come home and get wet again in a tiny little bath tub. But the thing is, chlorine. And kids peeing. And all those other bodies.
A dip in the pool does not qualify for a bath. Get on out. Come home. And wash those smelly armpits (you too, kids.).
8. If you know the rules and break them, there will (still) be consequences.
I know it’s hard to believe that your parents are still enforcing these stupid rules even though it’s summertime and you should really only be experiencing great freedom and wonderful fun, but you see kids? Consistency is important, too. Without consistency, you would feel like you were just trying to navigate life without an anchor tethering you to reality. Living life without an anchor isn’t as much fun as you think. Just ask any kid without a parent.
I know these rules seem ridiculous and arbitrary, but we enforce them because we want you to have the best possible family life experience you can. We have them because, more than anything, we love you.
Now. Go play outside so I can have a little quiet time and try to remember why these rules are so important.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
I was done with school long before the year ended.
The early-morning schedule gets old by week #2, because boys like to sleep until at least 8 (unless it’s the weekend, and then they’re up at 5:30), and school starts at 7:45 a.m., and that tardy bell rings strong and fierce, and even though it’s only three who must be there on time, all the others have to get up, too, because the three make enough tornado noise trying to find a backpack he’s sitting on (if you’re the 5-year-old), complaining about what’s for breakfast (if you’re the 7-year-old), and bemoaning the fact that he has no more sweat pants that are clean (if you’re the 9-year-old) that everybody wakes right along with them.
The homework gets old by week #4, because what 7-year-old remembers that he has some math worksheets he has to do when there are LEGOs in the house, and who can even concentrate on reading a passage and answering some silly questions about it when your brothers keep running through the kitchen screeching like spider monkeys dressed in Robin Hood costumes or when they keep exclaiming over the cool fort they constructed from a box or they are, heaven forbid, reading aloud from a book?
Homework at 7 is like adding another line on a parent’s to-do list: Keep boy on task even though he’s used up his on-task capabilities in the seven hours he was at school today.
Believe me, my to-do list was massive enough already without this extra line. I mean, someone has to sit on the couch and read a book every now and then, and it might as well be me.
We were done with all the on-grade reader books by about week #12. All my boys are fantastic readers who read whatever they want all the time here at home. They read Pokemon graphic novels and Bill Watterson comics and the newest Elephant & Piggie books. Which is why we stopped signing those log-their-reading folders right around the beginning of December. It looks like none of them have picked up a book since Dec. 3. They have. I promise. I just can’t always find a pen. Or remember which one read what. Or find the actual folders, because boys are so good at putting things where they belong. The chances of all three of those happening at the same time are very, very rare.
AND THEN THE PAPERS.
So many papers.
There are advertisements for sports camps and karate programs and dance lessons all throughout the year. There are all the worksheets a first-grader and kindergartener and third grader do. There are amazing works of art they paint and draw and color that come home from his art class. There are essays and teacher notes and lunch charge reminders that we owe the school some money.
We did fairly well with all those papers for about the first twenty-four weeks of school. I was actually pretty proud we lasted that long. We had a system: sort them, store them or toss them in the recycling. “Store them” ended up breaking down a bit, because I’d start putting the whole stack of papers in the “store them” pile so I could “look at them later,” except later never really came back around.
And when February swept in, we just stopped caring.
I don’t even know if it was a gradual not-caring or an all-at-once not-caring, but now those papers sit on the bottom shelf of our coffee table or on the library shelves covering up the spines of books or between the beds in the twins’ room (they thought paper might work for insulation and smuggled some in their room without our noticing. The papers are now tiny, tiny little pieces that will have to be hand-picked from the carpet because our vacuum cleaner sucks but doesn’t really. Thanks for the gift guys. I now feel like setting the house on fire.).
The paper hills have become paper mountains. Soon, we’ll be able to repair all the things that are wrong about our house with paper. Hole in the wall? Cover it with paper. Fan is missing a blade? Construct one out of paper. No more toilet paper? WE HAVE PLENTY OF PAPER!
The end of the school year is a bittersweet time, because it holds the sadness of a school year ending and a child getting older, or at least seeming to get older, and the (mostly unspoken) fear of having said child home ALL HOURS OF ALL THE DAYS ALL SUMMER.
But when I weigh the sad and the afraid and the glad, I think I am mostly glad, because the be-an-involved-school-parent pressure and the papers will stay far, far away. Mostly I’m glad because my sons are brilliant and funny and delightful, and I’m going to enjoy their around-all-day presence for all of 2.3 hours on the first day.
Today is the last day of school, the last day we get up early, the day books will no longer come home and homework will stay in a classroom for next year. Which means tomorrow boys will sleep late and they will play together well, because they missed each other so much, and they will spend quiet time in their alone places so I don’t even have to remind them to get “back where you’re supposed to be.”
Well, you know, a mom can always hope.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
“Oh. You must be a stay-at-home mom.”
There we sat, in a doctor’s office for an annual exam, the nurse tapping in all my background information. We’d just established the six kids piece when she said it.
“No,” I said. “Actually, I work full time.”
It came out almost like an apology, like I was ashamed to say I, a mother of six boys, work the equivalent of a full-time job, and I followed it up with a disclaimer about how I work from home in the afternoons and sometimes late at night so I can spend mornings and evenings with my children and work when they’re being cared for by their daddy or asleep.
“Oh. Oh, wow,” she said. “OK.” She turned to put this latest bit of information into the computer with nothing more said.
It’s not the first time I have encountered this assumption or felt the need to apologize for correcting it. It’s usually women who make those comments, “So, obviously, you stay home with them all,” “Wow, you must be way too busy to work a job,” “Isn’t it wonderful to stay home with them while they’re little?” and it baffles me a little, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my seven years of parenting, it’s that we are all different.
Which means that what we think we might do if we had six children doesn’t mean that’s what she chooses to do.
There are moms of one child who choose to stay home with their child, and there are moms of six children who choose to work.
Every afternoon, I hole away in my home office and write essays and chapters of the latest book and a few poems in all the margins, and I thoroughly enjoy what I do. I always have. It’s what I was made to do. Having children did not change that.
I work for myself, but I still choose to work. Because I am passionate about words and language and crafting beauty and truth to release out into the world. Because I believe in what I’m doing. Because I want my boys to know that women have as much to offer the world as they do.
But mostly because I am a better mother for my separate pursuit, for my writing, for the ways I can process through mistakes and circumstances and potential solutions outside of the constant demands of my children, but that is just me.
I have friends who are stay-at-home moms, and I love them dearly. I have friends who are working moms, and I love them dearly, too.
There is no one right way. There is only our right way.
[Tweet “There is no one right way to be a mother. There is only our right way.”]
We get really good at debating what’s best for the children, but sometimes what’s best for the children is what’s best for us. Some of us can be better versions of ourselves with a career to pursue. Some of us are better versions of ourselves away from the stress of an out-of-home job.
We can argue about who has it hardest, too, but it’s all the hardest job in the world, because we are all mothers, and even when we’re in an office, miles away from our children or just a few feet, we are still thinking of them and worrying about them and missing them. We are still loving them, just like any stay-at-home mom.
And when we’re at home with them, meeting all those needs in real time, trying to hold fast to our sanity because all the whining is pulling it rapidly out of our reach, locking ourselves in the pantry for just a minute to breathe or think or eat that piece of chocolate we’ve been hiding, we are still thinking of them and worrying about them and loving them, just like any working mom.
Just because a mom chooses to mother six kids doesn’t mean she chooses to stay at home full time or she has to give up on a career or she cannot pursue a dream for herself. It just means it may look different for her, like working odd hours to get all those tasks done, like trading off with their daddy to avoid childcare costs, like commuting to an office twice a week and working from a home office the other three days.
I don’t work to get promotions or make a lot of money or even to be some super-mom placed on a pedestal as a “she can do it, why can’t I?” I work because it’s enjoyable to me, because without writing and creating and chasing a dream, I am not the best version of myself.
I know that nurse didn’t say those words to try to make me feel bad or guilty or wrong for my choice, and I don’t.
[Tweet “I don’t feel badly that I’m a mom who works. In fact, I feel more fulfilled. But that’s just me.”]
But I do believe that maybe the world could do without all our assumptions, that the next time we see a mama with a whole tribe of kids crowding around her legs, fighting about who’s going to ride her feet across the street this time, we don’t just assume she is one who has chosen kids over a career, because it’s the only way a thing like that would work.
Maybe we just admire those children, pat them on the head with an encouraging smile and leave those assumptions where they lie.
