by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Every now and then, I reach this mysterious place where parenting feels really easy. The boys are behaving perfectly (as if that’s the measure of easy parenting), and everyone is loving each other well and, most importantly, no one is complaining about what I just put on the table for dinner before they’ve even tasted it. We are all a happy family. I like them. They like me.
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, watch out. They wake up different people the next day, and I find I’ve told myself a whole parcel of lies like this one:
I have really easy kids because I’m a really good parent.
Fortunately, this one gets knocked off-kilter quite regularly by my oldest, who is a practiced diplomat who never lets an answer stay an answer until he’s rolled it all over on the ground and wrestled it to near death.
After nine years of parenting this kid, I know better than to believe this lie. I don’t have really easy kids because I’m a really good parent. I have really easy kids because they were born easy. I have a few of those in the mix, and they’re delightful. They’re also easily forgotten, because they don’t require as much work. I could leave the 6-year-old home all day alone, and the only thing I’ve have to worry about is the state of the refrigerator when I get back (this kid once ate three pounds of red grapes when I raced upstairs to take a record-breaking shower). The others, well. They’ll argue with a sock, if it told them them to put it on.
There are a lot of other lies we tell ourselves, too. Like:
It’s going to get easier.
This is your lifeline when you’re the parents of twins. You spend the first year telling yourself it’s going to get easier, because they’ll be able to feed themselves, and then you spend the next year saying it’ll get easier when they’re 3, because they’ll understand things like “Don’t take the cover off that baby-proofed light socket. It will kill you,” and then you spend the whole third year dying, because you have not known fear until you see 3-year-old twins with their guilty faces on standing outside a bathroom door they just closed, saying they did “Nuffing.”
Crap. It’s not ever going to get easier. I’m just going to tell myself that, and then maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised (but probably not).
The other day I found myself thinking of another lie while I was scrubbing the dish that had somebody’s sour ranch dressing caked on it.
Eventually they’ll do the chores to my standards.
Eventually they’ll do the chores, that much is true. But it will probably not be up to my standards. I know, because I remember myself as a child. My mom had a rotating dish schedule, and after my shift, the sink was always splattered with water, and my mom told me over and over and over again that part of the dishwasher’s job was wiping up all the excess water, but yeah, yeah, I just wanted to get on to the part where I got to sit on the couch and read a book. They didn’t have streamed audio books back then. If they had, it would have been a different story, Mom.
And then, the other night, when I’d finished a dinner of sautéed pork chops with mushrooms and garlic sliced infinitesimally small so no one would complain about the unknown grossness caking their otherwise perfect meat, somebody, before he’d even tasted it, said he didn’t like what we were having and he wasn’t going to eat, and I discovered another big, fat lie.
One day they’ll stop complaining.
It’s a lie, too. I know, because the other day, when something was taking too long on my computer I started complaining about how you’d think we’d have faster computers in this century and how it was taking SO MUCH TIME and how I didn’t have all this extra time at my disposal and how I wished I could jut hire someone to do this part and blah blah blah blah blah.
The only way my kids will stop complaining is if I magically somehow stop complaining, which is probably not going to happen anytime soon, because have you seen the mess kids can make in two seconds of inattention? Complaining is my feel-better.
On Christmas morning this year, I found myself agreeing with the lie flipping through my head when my kids emptied their stockings and asked to eat a peanut butter cup.
It’s just a little sugar. Just this once.
“Just a little sugar” is like saying, “It’s just a few broken pieces of furniture and a few more holes in the wall and a few whiny kids at the end of this day. Giving kids sugar is like rubbing yourself with raw meat and walking out into the African bush. You’re going to die.
And, of course, we decided to have our first Family Fun Day on the first day of the new year, because our word for this year is “play,” and we wanted to end the boys’ Christmas vacation on a good note, on a day when we would all be able to enjoy each other and play, and twenty minutes into that day I found another lie sneaking in, like maybe I wasn’t paying attention:
One day it’ll take us less than 30 minutes to pack up and get in the car.
It seems like it’s taken longer the older the boys get, mostly because now they have wills of their own. There is always another shoe to be found. There is always a drink someone forgot. There is always something they need to “pack up real quick” because they want to take a billion art supplies to the zoo.
Another lie that happens to me often, when I’m posting a picture of my boys and I’m disappointed that only 157 people liked it is:
Everybody thinks our kids are as adorable as we think they are.
Nope. People think kids are cute, generally, but no one thinks they’re as cute as we do (except twins—other people think they’re cuter than they really are.). I’m speaking generally, of course. That’s not the case for my boys. Everyone in the world thinks they’re cute.
Some lies knock us right off our parenting pedestal, like this one:
Not giving in to bad behavior makes bad behavior magically disappear.
I remember the first time this illusion was shattered, when my oldest threw a major fit because he wanted the green plate instead of the blue one. But the blue plate was the only one clean. And thus began the oft repeated phrase in our home, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.” I didn’t give in. Of course not. That meant the tantrums would go away.
Not what happened. In fact, I suspect he tried harder. And I stuck to my boundary harder. And we danced again the next time. And the next time and the next time. Now he’s 9. We don’t fight about the green plate instead of the blue plate anymore. We fight about things like how he needs five more minutes of technology time to finish this one thing, even though his time’s up.
Not giving in never solved anything in my house.
Every now and then, when a kid is talking about how they want to run away and how they wish they had different parents, I find myself thinking:
One day they’ll understand.
One day they’ll understand the boundaries we set, and one day they’ll understand why we said no, their friend can’t come over today because we want to spend some time together as a family, and one day they’ll understand why we limit that technology time and require creative time every day. But even if they don’t, that doesn’t change the fact that:
One day they will know just how much they were loved.
I’ve gone over and over this one, examined it inside and out, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this one is not a lie. They may not understand the love of it all right now, but one day they will. I’m certain of it.
Now, excuse me while I go fish out of the toilet a stuffed animal that wanted to “take a mud bath” in the present someone forgot to flush. It’s going to get easier.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
I recently made a few waves with an essay I’d written in response to a friend venting to me about how her girlfriends kept saying that their husbands were going to babysit their kids so they could have a girls’ night out. Apparently, it struck a deep nerve.
I feel like there’s something more that needs saying, so indulge me for a moment while I work it all out.
My husband is not a babysitter because he’s a parent. We’ve already established that. But how about we break this down a little, so, at its simplest, it looks something like this:
A parent knows what he’s doing.
It seems that not only have we, as a society, gotten so used to seeing mom as the sole caretaker of her children, but we have also gotten used to believing dad is an incompetent caretaker.
We see this everywhere. We see it in the public men’s restrooms that have no changing station included, because men, of course, would not know how to change a diaper. We see it in the lack of paternity leave at most businesses (maternity leave’s not much better, but that’s another subject for another day), as if no father in his right mind would want to spend those early weeks helping his partner and acclimating himself to this new dynamic of family. We see it in our TV shows and our movies and our commentary on clueless celebrity dads who carry their children all wrong (who of us really knows what we’re doing the first time out of the gate, anyway?).
So maybe this is where the real problem lies, why both men and women express outrage at seeing men put on pedestals for taking responsibility as a parent—because, the truth is, men don’t want to be there. They don’t want to be held up as an exception when they’re just loving their kids the best way they know how, and some days that’s taking care of the explosion that happened in their six-month-old’s pants, and some days that’s mopping up the puke that happened in the hall, and some days that’s teaching a kid to ride a bike or roller blade or drive.
Of course we want to thank them for their contribution. Of course we want to acknowledge that they’re doing a great job as a parent, same as we are. Of course we want to make sure they know how beautiful it is to see a dad loving their kids with his time.
But what our “Dad’s babysitting tonight” and our “Your wife is so fortunate to have a helper like you” does is it unconsciously undermines who men are as parents. Babysitters and helpers don’t know their children. Babysitters and helpers don’t have to stick around. Babysitters and helpers don’t make decisions about what to do with the kid who’s getting beat up in school or how to handle the not-turning-in-homework conundrum and where to put the baby until he’s sleeping through the night.
Husband and I are fortunate enough to split our days down the middle (Not everyone is able to do this. That’s okay. Our schedule is not the point of this essay, so don’t get lost here.). We do things differently as parents, though we share the same core philosophies. The kids know what to expect when a parent takes over the parenting shift. They know that I don’t like a lot of noise, so if they want to wrestle or play freeze tag, they better do it out back. They know their daddy doesn’t care about noise as much as I do, so they know they can play music through the loudspeakers and try to talk over the music if they want. They know their daddy makes them read stories in the home library while I prefer they read in their rooms with me, on my lap. They know they can probably get away with some things when Husband’s on duty that I would never tolerate, and vice versa. We have different preferences because we’re different people. Our kids adjust accordingly.
But just because we do things differently doesn’t mean I’m a better parent than he is. It doesn’t mean he has no idea what he’s doing. In my house, Daddy knows what to do when a kid stubs his toe on the curb, and he knows where the school papers belong (recycling or keep-it-forever?), and he knows how to read a story so a 3-year-old will pay attention. He knows how to teach kids about multiplication tables and metaphors and the proper way to dance “Whip It Nae Nae,” and the deeper things, like love and honor and respect and grit and perseverance and identity.
It seems that we’ve traveled a little too far down this path of Dad as the joke, Dad as little more than useless, Dad as a bungling idiot. It’s time to change this perception, too.
I know men who don’t have sole custody of their kids, and they want nothing more than to be more than a babysitter for their kids. I know men who stay at home while their wives work full-time, and they want nothing more than to be seen as competent caregivers. I know men who are serious about their parenting and just want to be seen as responsible dads.
DADS KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING, SOCIETY. We should let them do it.
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
3-year-old: The sun broke in half, and now it’s a moon.
Me:
3-year-old:
Me: Are you a poet?
3-year-old: No, I’m a boy.
Me: I’m bringing the veggies over.
3-year-old: Those aren’t beggies. They’re bitchables.”
Me:
3-year-old:
Me: Just don’t say that in public, ‘kay?
9-year-old: No one in this family has a disability.
All the other kids: I do!
Me:
Husband:
Kids:
6-year-old: I do. I can’t climb up the shed door.
Husband [coming in from getting a haircut]: How do I look?
3-year-old: Daddy, you look like weird.
Husband: What’s your favorite thing about being in this family?
6-year-old: Nothing.
Husband: The cool parents?
6-year-old: Definitely not. There is nothing fun about this family, especially the parents.
9-year-old: More beans, please. I want to get really gassy tonight.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
We all make wishes and we all have dreams. It’s the most hopeful part of the human condition, to wish and dream. But when those wishes and dreams land in the hands of children, well, we have a different animal entirely.
My kids make wishes and dreams all the time. But do they make sense? Are they noble? Would they change the state of the world, for the better, I mean? Meh. It’s arguable.
If the dreams of my children came true, we would all weigh one thousand pounds.
This is because one of the recurring dreams of my children is to live in a world where breakfast is chocolate and lunch is chocolate and their afternoon snack is chocolate and dinner is chocolate and their nighttime nibble is chocolate. In their world, every meal, every drink, every single thing on earth would be made of chocolate. Now. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to live in this fantasy world, too, but I also happen to care about a little thing called health, and if all my kids eat is chocolate, the top floor of our house will no longer hold us. Also, have you seen my kids on sugar? No thanks. Find a kid on sugar and you find a parent far too close to crazy. Give my kids limitless chocolate and they’ll pull me right over the edge of madness, and I’d rather believe I have at least a small grip on sanity still. (It’s highly improbable, I know. I do have six kids.)
If the dreams of my children came true, they would own all the things.
It’s appalling how many things my kids want. You’d think we had taught them better than this, but, alas, it seems they have not learned the lesson of “be grateful for what you already have, because there are children starving in other countries.” If one were to ask them what they dream of most, you would hear things like “All the newest Beanie Boos” or “All the Pokemon cards in the whole world” (If you haven’t had the pleasure of being introduced to Pokemon, allow me to say you are really missing out. There are more than a billion of these cards in existence, and if it were up to my 9-year-old, he would own them all.) or “Legoland right in our house.” While it would be wildly impressive to live in a house completely made of LEGOs, I’m not quite sure that any kind of living structure made of plastic would even remotely stand up to the abuse of six boys. Also, Pokemon cards.
If the dreams of my children came true, the only music we would ever listen to is Kidz Bop or Minecraft music (Take popular songs! Add Minecraft lyrics! It’s delightful!).
If we tried listening to our 1990s Pandora station, which the 9-year-old calls “the worst music ever. It’s so bad it’s killing my ears,” all systems would shut down. And if all we listened to was Minecraft music all the time, I can guarantee I’d become one of those zombies you’re supposed to kill. Might as well shoot me now.
If the dreams of my children came true, they would never have homework.
Huh. You know what? That’s one of my dreams, too.
If the dreams of my children came true, the 3-year-olds would be allowed to do everything and anything for themselves.
This means it would take fifteen years to leave the house, because not only would we have to wait for them to button their jeans but we’d also be waiting for them to figure out how to turn the sleeves of their jackets right side out. They would be allowed to cross streets on their own and run through parking lots without holding a parent’s hand and ride the elevator whenever they chose, because they wouldn’t have the annoying rule about “staying within sight.” They would be allowed to jump in the river after the bread they just threw at the ducks, and they would be allowed to chase geese down a hill where a whole flock of them is waiting and they would be allowed to climb over the rails at the zoo so they could go wading with the black bear. They would, essentially, be able to kill themselves at will.
If the dreams of my children came true, they would be able to use some kind of screen all hours of the day, every day.
They would be able to watch so many hours of the boob tube that their brains would cave in. They would be able to play video games until their brains start frying in the oil of inactivity and overstimulation (“This is your brain. This is your brain on screens.”). They would be able dive into their phones without talking to anyone around them for years.
On second thought, that sounds almost…nice. Hang on while I rethink this one.
If the dreams of my children came true, we would never have such things as naps and quiet time and, God help us, bedtime.
There would never be such things as naps or quiet time, because children like to squeeze as much good out of a day as they can. Me? I just want to get two seconds alone where I can think a coherent thought without someone interrupting me with a crisis like “My brother peed in the trash can.”
And bedtime? If it were up to my kids, they would be able to stay up all hours of the night. They would not need sleep at all. They would walk around trying to remember where they last put down the baby, whining about how untidy the house is and how they’re too exhausted to do anything about it.
Oh, wait. That’s me.
I’m sure their dreams will become more refined over the years. Maybe they’ll even get to hang right up there with Martin Luther King Jr., inspiring people to dream for themselves and make change and dare to love. Or maybe I’m just kidding myself and the only thing they’ll ever want is the newest model Apple product.
So much for dreams.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Today is a day we celebrate a great man of history who envisioned a lofty dream for America, one of peace and love and equality, spread to every corner of the world. While I love the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. I have to admit that I’d forgotten it was a holiday until I woke up at 4 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I thought I’d check my email and then happened to read the note from my kids’ principal reminding me that school was out for the day. Yay! My favorite.
I lay in bed, trying desperately to get back to sleep, while Husband clearly didn’t have any trouble ignoring my insomnia, judging by the noises coming from his mouth and nose. So, naturally, I started thinking about my own dreams. I ran through them, writing dreams, book dreams, music dreams, dreams for my kids, dreams for Husband, and when I’d listed them all in my much-too-busy-for-4-a.m.-head, I thought about the one I want most right now. It’s a little sad and simple, but it’s a big one all the same: Get a decent nights’ sleep for once.
You might say I’ll probably never have a decent nights’ sleep, because I have six kids, and kids become teenagers and teenagers become adults and I’ll never stop worrying about them until the day I die. Okay. That’s fair. But let me just explain here that it’s not often that worry or anxiety, thankfully, keeps me up at night. Usually because I’m so exhausted by the time I get to fall into bed that sleep comes easily. That old saying “asleep before your head hit the pillow?” That’s me.
Also, our kids have always been champion sleepers, ever since they were tiny babies. It was unusual for a Toalson baby not to sleep all the way through the night by, at the latest, eight weeks of age. It’s rare that any of the boys will wake in the middle of the night with nightmares or feeling sick, although it does happen on occasion. Besides, I’m not even talking about that kind of decent nights’ sleep. Because the truth is, those are more the exception than the rule, and of course I’m going to rub a boy’s back when he’s not feeling well, and of course I’m going to make sure they feel safe until they fall asleep, and of course I’ll hold that baby if his gums are hurting too much.
I’m talking about the nights I’m woken up for no other reason than the fact that I sleep with a lawnmower.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve woken in the middle of the night and thought one of the neighbors had mistakenly set their yard guy as their alarm clock and then, when reason climbed back to its rightful place and I looked over at Husband, I saw the culprit.
There are nights when Husband will roll over and put his arm around me, and it’s one of my favorite things to momentarily wake up and feel his warmth. But woe to me if I don’t find sleep before he starts revving his motor, because I will have no hope of finding it for the rest of the night. Sometimes he’ll turn over on his stomach, which he says is better for the snoring thing, but I’d like to report that no, it’s not. It muffles the sound just a tad, but it definitely does not eliminate it.
That is one magnificent yard he’s mowing.
So, as we remember the contribution to history that Martin Luther King Jr. made, I’d like to ask the powers that be, to please, please, solve this snoring problem, because I did not sign up for a John Deere tractor chime on my alarm.
And then, just before pushing Husband onto his belly, I remembered that I’d recorded last night’s one-man performance, because Husband didn’t believe he could possibly be snoring as badly as he is. I stuck a headphone in my ear and played the recording. I was surprised to find that there were two lawn mowers in our room last night. I have no idea who the other one was.
I was too afraid to investigate. Instead, I just rolled over and went back to sleep.
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
5-year-old: Knock knock
Me: Who’s there
5-year-old: How do you get germs on your fingers?
Me: How do you get germs on your fingers who?
5-year-old: How you get germs on your fingers is you lick all over them.
Me:
5-year-old: you didn’t laugh.
Me. Oh, right. Hahaha
6-yearold: What do you call a witch that’s on the beach?
Me: I don’t know.
6-year-old: A sand-witch.
6-year-old: What happens when a banana is playing in the sun?
Me: I don’t know.
6-year-old: The banana peels
6-year-old: What do you call a singing cat?
Me: Um…
6-year-old: A cat singing.
Me:
6-year-old:
Me: I think I saw that one coming.
6-year-old: What do you call a car that’s not moving?
Me: A stationary car.
6-year-old: No. A stopped car.
Me: Same thing.
6-year-old: No it’s not.
Me: Actually it is. Stationary means not moving.
6-year-old: But this car was stopped.
Me:
6-year-old:
Me:
6-year-old: It’s not the same thing. Trust me.
6-year-old: What do you call a penguin who doesn’t win?
Husband: I don’t know.
6-year-old: A peng-in. Get it?
Husband:
6-year-old:
Husband: No.
6-year-old: A peng-in. He doesn’t win, so you take out the w.
Husband:
6-year-old:
Husband:
6-year-old: Never mind.
