My Children's 238 Favorite Toys

In June I made a Christmas wreath out of my kids’ old toys. (Yes, in June. Shut up. Between homework and holidays there’s no way I can do anything that even remotely resembles a holiday craft after October first.) I bought a wreath form, wide red ribbon, and a tube of pretty strong adhesive at Michael’s and brought it all home. After wrapping the form in ribbon (if you try this, be warned—you will need a longer length of ribbon than you could ever conceive of, and Styrofoam sheds like a motherfucker, so wherever you’re working will end up looking like an outpost of Santaland at the Macy’s in Herald Square) I tripped down to the basement to check out the toy situation.

Like many families, we have relegated old toys to plastic storage boxes in the basement. Once upon a time my super-organized nanny printed out pictures of things like Matchbox cars, toy people, and Mr. Potato Head parts and stuck them on the front of the boxes so my children would know what toys they were supposed to put in the bins, assuming they actually put toys away when they were done playing with them, which HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Of course they don’t do that. So now I have all these plastic bins with pictures of what’s supposed to be in them, but what’s really in them is a huge mishmash of plastic toys from the past ten years of accumulating child-related shit.

I dragged three or four of the boxes upstairs with me, and began rooting through them. I found some very big toys to use as anchors, lots of medium and small toys to cover the majority of the surface area, and a bunch of small stuff like marbles and dice to fill the gaps. On the dining room table, I grouped them and started experimenting with positioning. Kids started drifting in, and asked what I was doing. I explained, and continued with my task. As my kids started poking at my piles, I got down to the business of attaching toys to the wreath form. I was interrupted by what sounded like the wail of a wounded wild animal whose favorite toy is about to be glued onto a Christmas wreath for all eternity.

"What? You're gluing that to the wreath? NO! I want to play with that! I want that!"

Um, no, that is a McDonald's Happy Meal toy that has been kicking around in a plastic storage bin in our basement for three years. You don't give a crap about it. You just see it now and think you want it. If I let you keep it, you will play with it for another twelve minutes before you abandon it in the living room, where it will stay for four days until I get sick of stepping over it, and pick it up and put it back in this bin. Then it will be returned to the storage area in the basement, where it will stay until your father goes on one of his quarterly cleaning jags and weeds out a bunch of stuff to sell at a yard sale, and makes up a few bags for Goodwill, which is where this will end up. To save us all time and effort, and contribute to our festive holiday spirit later this year, this is going on the wreath!

I mean, Jesus, AMIRITE? The only thing worse than “OMG I haven’t seen that toy in forever but it’s totally my favorite toy that I ever got and I will die if you get rid of it” is the one where it’s a completely undesirable toy that they have zero interest in until a sibling expresses an interest in it at which point it becomes the best toy ever which they must have or they will simply curl up and blow away from the unbearable devastation of their loss. After all, the best toy to have is a toy that someone else wants, and by preventing them from having it you are inflicting a sadistic and strangely pleasurable form of torture on them. Kids can be such assholes.

I managed to make the wreath without having them absorb any of those toys back into their orbit, although there were a couple that were highly coveted. The remaining toys are back in the basement, never given a second thought once they were out of sight again. Just as I predicted.

Head Games

One of my boys ended up in Urgent Care last week. He had a gash across his forehead that required three stitches. He’s fine. This is not our first head wound rodeo. I have three boys, so head wounds are kind of a trend. All three of them have now had one, and the one last week was round two for that kid. Right now we’re two for two on a plain old accident versus a really stupid choice.

The very first one was an accident. One kid slipped and hit the back of his head on the corner of the wall. That was my first experience with a head wound, and holy shit. In case you’re not aware, when you gash your head, it bleeds like a stuck pig. It’s incredible. My husband was standing patiently over me while I sat with the kid in my lap, bathing in his blood, completely freaking out.

“You have to calm down,” he kept saying.

“Are you kidding me? This kid looks like he’s going to need a transfusion in about three minutes, and you want me to calm down??”

Since my husband is a) a boy, and b) an Eagle Scout, he knew about the bleeding. He’s also far less inclined to flip out over things that have to do with the kids than I am. He told me later he was prepared to take the kid to Urgent Care if it hadn’t stopped bleeding when it did.

The next time someone came to me gushing blood from his head I managed to keep my cool. We were at the softball field watching my husband’s men’s league game. The kids were off playing. My oldest was about six, and I turned around to see him walking toward me with a wave of blood flowing down his face and dripping off his nose. Because he knew there was something going on, but couldn’t tell what, he had his brow furrowed in a way that made it appear that he had a six inch gash across his forehead. As calmly as I could, I grabbed a napkin and a bottle of water, and wiped the blood off so I could see the actual injury.

There were three small nicks, the largest of which was the size of the head of a pin along his hair line. When I asked him how it happened, he said they were throwing rocks up in the air, and watching them fall back down again.

“Next time maybe take a step to the left after you throw them up,” I suggested.

Honestly.

The next accident occurred at a family Christmas celebration. It was about three days after Christmas, and we were at my aunt’s house. The kids were out back playing, running races back and forth across her patio. One of the twins got to the “finish line” and his brother somehow managed to shove him, causing him to sit down hard and whack his head against a concrete planter. The result was the expected fountain of blood. He got a staple and some ice cream.

All of which brings us to the other night. Again, the scene of the crisis was the same softball field, and again, there was a rock involved. This time, however, it was one of the twins and his sister, playing with one of their friends. They were playing War. And throwing rocks at each other. Because of course they were. I got a call from my husband to come get my daughter so he could take our son to Urgent Care. The result was three stitches. And ice cream, of course.

I’m sure this isn’t the end of our relationship with Urgent Care. I think we have a few more years before they’re past the point where they’ll throw rocks and end up with head wounds. Yes, I’d like to think they’ve learned that throwing rocks = blood = stitches, but these are boys. Lessons like these are learned slowly.

Wrong.

A few weeks ago I saw someone on Twitter asking at what point kids go from asking a million questions to thinking you’re an idiot who knows nothing, therefore not asking questions at all. My own experience is limited to children up to age twelve, but so far, he still asks me a million questions. The difference between age four and now is that now when I answer him, he tells me I’m wrong.

At this point he’ll argue about anything at all. The temperature, how long it takes to fly to Disneyland, or what kind of bird that is in our yard. A month or so ago, we had this exchange:

Him: “What’s the date?”

Me: “The 17^th”

Him: “No it isn’t.”

Really? I thought, really? You want to fight about this?

My favorite argument is the one we have about whether or not he argues about everything. That one always makes me feel like I’m in the middle of some kind of Dada-inspired performance art piece.

So far I haven’t gotten too many dismissive gestures, although I am proud to tell you that over the weekend my instructions regarding some  chore or other were met with an eye roll and a “blah blah” puppet hand. So that’s quite a milestone. I have always maintained that while Tweens have embraced eye rolling as their own, they learned it from their mothers

The fact is, I can’t really be too surprised that he’d argue with a stop sign. One of my own earliest memories is standing in my crib, leaning on the railing while I jumped up and down on the mattress. My mother saw me doing it, and cautioned me against it.

“You’ll fall out and crack your bean,” she said.

I remember looking down at the floor next to my crib and seeing the soft fluffy blue oval  rug with the white lamb on it—my “lambie” rug, as I called it, that was on the floor, and thinking, “No I won’t—my lambie rug is there. I’ll land on that and be fine.” I didn’t say it, but I remember thinking it. I was about two years old.

So with that kind of genetics it’s no wonder he looks at every verbal exchange as an opportunity for debate.

I’ve heard when they get to be teens they clam up. Instead of telling you you’re wrong and arguing about it, they just roll their eyes and turn up their iPods. I’m not sure which is the better choice. The silent treatment is probably more maddening (“You could at least answer when I speak to you!”), but I have to tell you that spending every waking minute of every day having my responses challenged by someone who can’t tell when his shirt is on backwards is pretty exhausting.

Vocabulary Lessons

My sixth grader is struggling to catch up on some missing assignments these days, which is causing me to have flashbacks about my own grisly academic experiences. I’m doing what I can to help him get the work done by providing a quiet environment, structured time—20 minutes of work, 5 minute break—and the tools he needs (a compass and ruler, mostly). At this point if I could do the exercises myself and turn them in for him, I probably would, because I’m so sick of having to nag him.

I told him the story about how I learned the hard lesson that it’s easier to do the assignments when they’re given than try to catch up after the fact: In the fourth grade we had a vocabulary building workbook called Wordly Wise. It was a fairly common tool in use at the time, and still exists today. I’ll even admit it was a good tool, and thanks to it I know things like what “scruple” means.

Wordly Wise lessons all followed the same pattern: they presented a list of featured words, then used the same three or four exercises to teach the definitions and correct usage. They tried to make it fun, but it’s hard to inject a lot of charm and appeal into what’s essentially rote memorization. The last activity in each section was a sort of crossword or acrostic through which ran the answer to a riddle or the punch line to a joke. I’m sure that like most things for kids at that time, they were fairly lame. The bar was pretty low—after all, most of our humor came from bubble gum wrappers or Dixie cups, and consisted of knock knock jokes and puns—but even with that pitiful standard, Worldy Wise managed to undercut it.

I loathed Wordly Wise.

So much so that at some point in about February of fourth grade, I made an executive decision and declined to engage further with Wordly Wise. My rebellion was discovered sometime around May, and my decision was overturned. The upshot was that I had to do an extra Wordly Wise chapter each week in addition to completing the one that was actually due.

You’d think I’d be smart enough to just do it and get it over with, but you don’t know what a stubborn little asshole I could be. While I did the other two or three activities more or less according to their rules, the acrostic was not anything I wanted to have anything to do with. Instead of using the vocabulary words given, I read the clues and thought of other random words that would fit the definition and used them. If that meant I needed to draw a few extra boxes on the end, or that all the boxes weren’t filled, well, the world wasn’t always a perfect place, was it?

Naturally this second flouting of the rules didn’t go over well with any of the authorities involved. I was given a pink pearl eraser and told to fix that shit, and fix it fast. I probably had some other pentaly that most likely involved a suspension of television viewing privileges. Clearly that punishment made little impression on me, but the lesson I learned from dicking around and not doing the work did.

I guess the conclusion I can draw is that while the loss of permission to watch “Donny & Marie” or whatever may have encouraged me to avoid a similar situation in the short term, the memory of how unpleasant the whole experience was is what has inspired me to keep myself caught up (more or less) over the last 35+ years. 

My intention in telling this story to my son was to help him avoid the same mistake I made, which clearly didn't happen. Secondary to that, I hope the same lesson I learned will translate to him and he'll avoid getting into this predicament in the future, because I’m really over this shit.

Socks

Parenting has many unanswered questions, but I think the one I ask the most, and for which experts are unable to formulate a satisfactory answer is: WHY THE HELL CAN’T YOU KEEP YOUR SOCKS ON YOUR FEET?             

My four tween children seem incapable of keeping their socks on their feet. I find socks everywhere—under the coffee table, on the coffee table, on the stair landing, in between couch cushions. In short, almost anywhere except the three places I would expect to find them: in their drawers, in the laundry hamper, or on their feet. I think I spend more time yelling about socks than all my other parenting activities combined. OK, maybe socks are second to cheese stick wrappers, but they may edge ahead depending on the day.

I know I’m not alone. Over the holidays I was talking with my cousin, whose two boys are right around the same age as mine (13 and 11), and the subject of socks came up. She was equally mystified as to why her children won’t actually wear their socks. Like mine, they put them on first thing in the morning, then spend the day removing them, and hunting for them to put them back on if they’re going out somewhere. My friend Cassandra has a 6^th grade son and faces the same challenge. I offer this quote from her, which could have come from my own lips:“…[he has] abandoned every left sock he owns in a different room of the house…” Also, this is not a gender-based issue. My daughter is just as inclined to leave her socks scattered from Hell to breakfast as her brothers.

Half the time they’re complaining that they’re cold. In addition to pointing out to them that long sleeve shirts and long pants are warmer than t-shirts and shorts, I also add that putting socks on their feet would help keep the body heat in. Instead of following their mother’s astute advice, advice based on 40+ years of successfully not freezing to death in residential structures, they go drag the blankets off their beds to wrap themselves in. Then they get the why-are-your-socks-all-over-the-floor lecture, plus a lecture about why the blankets from their beds don’t belong in the living room. It’s good times, I tell you.

The exception to this rule is if they’ve decided to go out and walk around in the yard, in which case you would assume their socks were surgically attached to their feet, so reluctant are they to remove them. Also that they are a critical part of their respiratory system, and can’t be stifled by shoes or boots. I spend all winter ranting about the socks inside the house, and all summer demanding that people either take their socks off, or put shoes on.

My mother nagged me about my socks in the house, but from the other perspective. She wanted me to either take them off and go barefoot, or put on slippers. She swore that walking around in my socks in the house would lead to holes. I have no idea if she was right, or if this was just the hosiery version of, “If you keep doing that, your face will freeze that way.” I don’t think my socks were any more or less holey than my kids’ (although, let’s face it, it’s been 35 years since that time in my life, so odds are I’ve blocked out anything that doesn’t match up to my version of the facts).

The sock battle is a losing battle. It’s been several years now and I’ve yet to come up with a creative way to get them to either wear their socks, or put them in an appropriate place if they choose not to. The situation will resolve itself when they all move out, I guess. In the meantime, if you’re a fellow inmate in the Sock Asylum, I offer this advice—if you have multiple children, buy them each a different style of sock. That way when you happen on a pair of socks under the dining room table, you’ll know exactly to whom they belong, negating asking the question (while trying to suppress an apoplectic fit), “WHO left their SOCKS under the dining room table?!” Because as we all know, the answer to that is, “I dunno. Not me.” And studies show that “I dunno. Not me,” is the second leading cause of alcohol consumption in parents. The leading cause being children, of course.

My Shopping Fantasy

Years ago when I had four small children I used to dream about a time when I could easily take all of them out with me—to the grocery store, the post office, the bank. They would be old enough, I thought, to follow directions, wait patiently for a few minutes while I conducted my business, and not beg constantly to have things bought for them.

My youngest child is now 8, and I’m still waiting for this.

I have heard taking a toddler to the grocery store compared to the experience of taking a herd of goats with you. While taking older children is easier in some ways, in some ways it’s just as challenging. Instead of trying to keep them rounded up, you’re trying to get through the store while they pretend the cart is their Siamese twin. It’s more like taking along a very old, mostly blind dog who refuses to leave your side, while it constantly asks for everything on the shelves.

Older children seem to have an uncanny ability to walk directly in front of your cart as you try to push it along. And like tourists in the Piazza San Marco, they tend to stop every twenty feet in front of something that catches their eye so they can inspect it. You find yourself not only dodging other shoppers, but constantly telling your offspring to “MOVE!” giving a trip to the market the feeling of navigating a carnival midway on demolition derby night, only without the games and funnel cakes.

Once you get to checkout things don’t necessarily improve. They’re still in front of the cart, and don’t seem to realize that in order for the transaction to be completed, you, the holder of the credit card, need to be able to get to the payment station. Not just be able to push the cart all the way through the checkout, although that is necessary, but actually reach the card reader without a four foot tall impediment between you and it. It’s gotten so bad with my kids that I’ve started telling them that if they don’t get out of the way, I’m taking the cost of the groceries out of their savings accounts. Unless you’re paying, move it, kid.

Another phenomenon that baffles me is when it became impossible to run an errand without them acquiring something. There is no destination, no retail or service establishment, at which my children don’t expect to get some kind of thing. The bank, the dry cleaner, the post office—we can’t get out of any of them without some financial transaction, however small, that awards them with a gumball,  or even just a mint. Lord help us if we go to a real store, because then the expectation is something of significance—a toy, a stuffed animal, a cookie.

As a child I can remember getting a lollypop at the bank, but it seems that my children hear the jingle of car keys and start trying to decide which unfulfilled material dream will be realized on this excursion. We can’t set foot out of the house without the expectation that we will return richer in goods than when we left. When they were smaller I could deflect this, telling them we needed to stick to our list, or that I had no change. Now that they’re older, they understand how these processes work, and that most of the time my denial to acquiesce to their wish is because clearly I’m just mean.

I’m still waiting for that magic moment when I can go to the store and have it be easy. In my fantasy I’ll be able to transact my business without anyone whining for a quarter to buy a gumball, or nag me for some four dollar and ninety nine cent wad of synthetic with enormous black plastic doe eyes. I’ll be able to reach the payment terminal without obstruction. I’ll be able to push the grocery cart up and down the aisles without an extra 65 pounds of weight hanging off one side. I guess in my fantasy, my kids all wanted to stay home while I ran errands.

Selective Hearing

What I say: “Go get dressed. Be sure to change your underwear, and brush your teeth.”

What they hear: “Run around in your underwear screaming like a lunatic, punching your brother repeatedly.”

What I say: “It’s almost time for dinner.”

What they hear: “It’s time for another four cheese sticks.”

What I say: “Be sure to take all your stuff out of the car into the house.”

What they hear: “The car is a great place for the backpack you’ll need to take with you on the school bus tomorrow morning.”

What I say: “Put the remote back on the shelf so we can find it.”

What they hear: “Shove the remote down in the couch cushions so your father and I can spend half of the little time we have to watch TV after you go to bed hunting for it.”

What I say: “Take this upstairs and put it in your room.”

What they hear: “Go up to the fifth step from the top and toss this on the floor above you.”

What I say: “Stop whining.”

What they hear: “Can you go up an octave?”

What I say: “Put your clothes in the hamper in the laundry room so they can get washed.”

What they hear: “Clean clothes are overrated.”

What I say: “Don’t blow that straw wrapper at your brother”

What they hear: “Bet you can’t nail him in the eye with that.”

What I say: “Time to take a bath.”

What they hear: “Time to take off all your clothes and dance around in the hallway like a stripper in front of a customer waving a hundred dollar bill.”

What I say: “Take those cheese stick wrappers to the trash can.”

What they hear: “Take those cheese stick wrappers into the kitchen and leave them on the counter.”

What I say: “Keep your hands to yourself!”
What they hear: “Humans thrive on physical contact.”

What I say: “Hang up your coat and backpack.”

What they hear: “Those hooks are very fragile—stay away from them.”

What I say: “Pick up your room.”

What they hear: “Shove everything on the floor under the bed and spend 45 minutes screwing around in your room.”

What I say: “Time to do your reading.”
What they hear: “Time to come up with two hundred new names to call your brother, all of which must include the word ‘butt’ in some way.”

What I say: “Stop yelling!”

What they hear: “I’ve been in louder sensory deprivation chambers. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

What I say: “Pick up your socks!”

What they hear: “…”

How to Humiliate Your Tween or Teen

Parents have been unintentionally humiliating their kids since the first time Cain said to Eve, “You’re not really going to wear that outside are you?” Sometimes, however, even the best parent feels an urge to take the opportunity to inflict a little of the searing shame they felt at their own parents’ behavior. I offer here some insight into the best way to do that.

As sensitive as kids are to what they label “weirdness,” just by being yourself you’re likely to succeed. But with very little extra effort, you can really knock it out of the park. This extra effort takes the form of perceived nonconformity. If your kid thinks you’re not like the other parents, it’s sufficient to cause him or her to want to dry up and blow away with embarrassment.

Here are a few steps that I promise will reap results:

Step 1: Acquire a tween or teen
This isn’t hard to do. The simplest (and by “simplest” I really mean “most common”) way is to have a baby and wait ten years.

Step 2: Expose yourself to their music and deem a couple of their songs “kinda catchy"
If it were up to your tween, you wouldn’t listen to any music. You would be someone who reached adulthood, and ceased to consume any form of melodic sound. Why? Because then you would have no opinion on what they’re listening to, nor would you have a bunch of weird old people stuff that you liked to listen to.

The music our kids listen to isn't that far removed from what we ourselves listened to (although I will say it sort of disgruntles me when a popular song starts off with the opening riff from "Tainted Love" but turns into a rap song), so it's not hard to find at least a couple of songs you like among theirs. Then, in spite of the fact that clearly every other parent likes Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off," your kid will be mortified that you know the words and can sing along.

A car seat butt dance to any song is tween humiliation gold.

Step 3: Get dressed
There will come a time when nothing you put on your body will satisfy your teen. Everything you don will be deemed “weird.” Asking, “And just what do you want me to wear?” after you have changed three times to try to find something satisfactory to wear to an event with them will illicit only the very frustrating response, "Just, like, what all the other moms wear!” Pointing out that your wardrobe is almost identical to every other mother of every other eighth grader will be futile. You will need to stop trying to pacify, and use this as an opportunity to disgrace your child.

Obviously you don’t want to make a spectacle of yourself either, but picking a single thing—unusual earrings, a slightly wacky scarf, unconventional shoes—and wearing that with a simple pair of jeans and t-shirt will suffice. Your teen will be convinced that everyone in a two mile radius has noticed this aberration, and is tittering behind their hands about it with everyone else within the two mile radius. You win.

Step 4: Talk to them
It’s bad enough that you exist, but then you want to, like, communicate with them. And sometimes you try to use their vocabulary. Translate it into their native tongue, as it were. Remember how ghastly it was the first time your own mother declared herself “grossed out to the max”? 

So it is with your own teen or tween if you tell him or her you want to take a selfie to post on Facebook, end a sentence with “BOOM!” or use a “verbal hashtag” (ex. “I was singing along to ‘Shake It Off’ and my friend Jennifer said, ‘I totes love that song!’ and I was like ‘hashtag Swiftyrules’!”) they will be appalled and disgraced at your unseemly behavior. Kids are convinced that their language is unique and cool long after it’s become mainstream. The reason kids are constantly coming up with new slang terms is to try to keep grownups from using their vocabulary.

In closing I want to assure you that while it’s nice to make the effort to humiliate your child, you don’t really have to try that hard. As I said, parents have been unintentionally mortifying their children since the dawn of time, simply by having the audacity to exist. Sometimes your presence will be sufficiently awful for them that you may even find yourself feeling sorry for them. Those feelings are likely to evaporate as soon as they say, “Do you have to play those dorky ‘Purple Rain’ songs all the time?” so it’s always good to have a few retaliatory strategies in mind.

7 Things My Kids Refuse to Do

Kids are often reluctant to do things that to adults are very basic and instinctive—we hang up jackets, take glasses to the kitchen, and recycle cans. We’ve learned that these are things inanimate objects won’t do by themselves, and no one else will do for us. While kids haven’t yet learned that coats do not spontaneously find hooks from which to suspend themselves, they also have a high tolerance for crap on the floor. My kids would rather step over something a thousand times than pick it up. While this isn’t unique to my children, nor is it likely to be the lead story on the ten o’clock news, it did make me think about some other things my kids refuse to do, which completely baffle me.

Loosen their shoe laces
A couple of my boys wear high top sneakers fairly regularly. It’s not a carefully guarded secret that the easiest way to get one’s foot into a high top—or really, any sneaker—is to loosen the laces so that the opening is wide enough to accommodate more of the foot as it slides in. And yet, my children seem to see this as an irreversible act. They insist on trying to jam their foot in with the laces as tight as they were when the shoe was taken off the last time, then declare that there’s something wrong with the shoe, because they can’t get their foot in. News flash, boys: it’s not the shoe.

Keep their socks on
Seriously, if I have to ask, “Oh for god’s sake, who left their socks on the coffee table?” one more time, I will probably spontaneously combust.

Put on shirts or long pants
I’m the first to admit that my husband is a bit of a miser when it comes to the heat. He’s from New England, and all that stoically enduring hardships shit combined with the penny-saved-is-a-penny-earned Benjamin Franklin crap means that he likes to keep the house at a setting that feels a lot like “meat locker.”

My boys, for reasons that haven’t ever been explained, prefer to sleep in just pajama bottoms, in spite of the fact that all their pajamas are sets, and I have no problem with them sleeping in regular t-shirts. They get up and feel a slight chill, so they grab the blankets from their beds and wear them downstairs looking like the Duke of Linens & Things. This drives me to a point just beyond insane, because eventually they warm up, or go get dressed, but naturally they leave the blankets draped all over the living room furniture. Or on the floor of the mudroom (which is what happened this morning—true story).

Take things all the way upstairs
Although usually related to the blankets from their beds, this problem is not exclusively confined to that. I hand them something and say, “Take this upstairs.” Half an hour later I go up to find whatever it is on the floor, in the place they could reach when they were about five steps from the top.

Put shit in their backpacks so they don’t forget it in the morning
They will spend upwards of ten minutes finding a spot for something so they won’t forget it in the morning instead of just going to the mudroom, opening their backpack, and sticking whatever it is in there. They’ll move the item around three or four times, usually because I say, “You can’t leave that there—I’m going to have to make dinner on that part of the counter, and it will be in my way.”

Naturally they move it around so many times that the next morning they almost automatically forget to take it with them.

Dry their hair before bed
This one makes me physically uncomfortable. It’s so cold to go to bed with wet hair, and I tell them that. Occasionally the boys will let me dry theirs, but my daughter almost never will. The problem is that they wake up the next morning looking like they got the worst end of a deal involving a fork and an electrical outlet. And of course they won’t…

Let me brush their hair
You think this would be confined to my daughter, but my sons are just as bad about clutching their scalps and howling, “Nooooooooo!” when they see me pick up a hairbrush. Guys, it’s a hairbrush, not a cattle prod.

I know that my job as a parent is to raise them to be thoughtful, polite, disciplined adults (bonus points if they don’t use the word “apropos” as an abbreviation for “appropriate”). But honestly I’ll just consider myself a success if I can raise them to put their socks in the dirty clothes instead of leaving them in the living room.

Rolling in Dough

My high school was on what was referred to in the brochure as an “urban campus.” That sounds hip and kind of gritty, but all it meant was that the school was in the city, and not on a very large lot. Because it would have been impossible to constantly track the locations of 250 kids from 8:30 to 3 every day, we were given the freedom to leave “campus” (read: the building) during our free periods and at lunch.

There were several places we used to go, with the closest being a small liquor store on the ground floor of a nearby office building. The school brochure always reinforced that our patronage was for the purpose of purchasing chips and sodas. There was a Roy Rogers and a Burger King where we could get (comparatively) real food, although in later years the Burger King was deemed too far away for a single free period or lunchtime visit. Technically it was completely off limits, but if you had two free periods in a row they couldn’t very well stop you from venturing down there. However, if you did go, it was wise to keep it on the down low and not come back to school wearing one of the paper crowns they gave out to little kids, but that big kids always asked for, advertising your misbehavior. The frequency with which this happened might surprise you. Or not.

There were a few other sandwich shops—a Vie de France, a sub place—and then there was a Giant Food store. The Giant had what was then an exciting new feature: a salad bar. In a little round foil pan with a plastic lid you could, if you were me, drown a pile of unsuspecting iceberg lettuce in Ranch dressing, and pelt it with fake smoke flavored “bacon” bits and croutons that tasted of herbs, salt, and dust. Then you could wander over to the bakery and buy a cupcake festively decorated for the next major holiday with lavish amounts of shortening-based frosting.

There were a few kids who engaged in a more repulsive dietary ritual. They would buy an economy size tube of chocolate chip cookie dough, and eat it all day long. I confess I did this at least once that I can recall.

On the way to school, you’d stop at Giant and buy the roll. Then you’d risk enraging your orthodontist by using your teeth to rip off the little metal crimp that closed the plastic tube. The dough was cold, so you’d start out breaking it off in chunks, eating it on your walk the rest of the way to school.

Once at school, you were forbidden to take it into the classroom, so you’d leave it in your locker, where it would slowly soften to a goopy paste. Any time you visited your locker between classes, you’d squeeze out a mouthful. At lunch you’d polish off a bit more, although rarely did anyone finish a whole tube.

This is because eating nothing but cookie dough for five or six hours straight is one of the most repulsive things you can do as a human being. By about third period (around 10 a.m.), you felt faintly ill. Just before lunch period you were sort of regretting your decision to spend your entire lunch stipend on cookie dough. By the time lunch was over, you would swear this was the last time you’d consume cookie dough for the rest of your life, even though that meant you were ostensibly eschewing cookie dough for the next 70 years, give or take.

Kids generally only did this about once a year, because gross. Somehow we’d forget from one year to the next how revolting the whole experience was, and we’d do it again, only to recall that it was completely vile. We were kind of stupid that way.

Unfortunately, it’s not like the lunches I consumed on other days were so much more balanced and nutritious. I think there was a period of about four years when my lunch budget was a dollar a day. A dollar would buy you a 16 ounce soda, a bag of potato chips (or Nacho Cheese Flavor Doritos, which were a hot newcomer to the snack chip world), and a candy bar. Later I could afford to eat more lavishly when I started supplementing my allowance with babysitting money. I’m kind of surprised that prior to that time I didn’t develop some vitamin deficiency-related disease normally associated with seventeenth century sailors on long voyages, or third world inhabitants.

I will say that knowing what I ate when I was away from my parents during high school makes me a little scared for the period of their lives when my kids have control over their culinary selections when they’re away from home. I think you can understand why.

Have you ever overindulged is something and regretted it? Were your eating habits in your youth when you were away from your parents sketchy at best? Have you ever asked for a Burger King crown, even though you were at least a decade too old to wear one without the possibility of ridicule?

No Punch Backs

About three years ago when we were driving someplace my oldest, who was then about 8, reached over, punched my upper arm, and said, “Red one, no punch backs.”

I had completely forgotten about the game called either Slug Bug or Punch Buggy, depending on where you grew up. I guess it’s sort of like soda/pop/coke. Anyway, I played this a little bit as a child, although as an only child I didn’t really have anyone to play with and my parents weren’t much for the game. Plus we actually drove a Bug for the first sixteen years of my life, so there would have been a lot of punching if we’d been really active participants. If you’re not familiar with the rules, the first person to see a VW Bug announces “[Color of car] one, no punch backs,” and punches the people in his or her immediate vicinity in the arm. There are some variations, depending on who introduced you to this game. Some people say it’s not really a slug bug unless it’s an old one, not the new ones that have been produced in the last decade or so. In our family we have no such restrictions. Bugs are bugs and we punch. Because we’re all intellectual and shit.

This should be a fairly straight forward game. I see it, I gently punch you in the arm while announcing the color and that there are “no punch backs.” You are then forbidden to punch me until the next time a slug bug comes into sight, and you see it first. Well, that’s what should happen, of course, but in the hands of my children, this game takes on a number of additional rules and nuances that of course are all in the favor of the individual creating the rule.

The first is the color quibble. If one of them says “Grey one, no punch backs” when the vehicle sighted is a sort of graphite, another one will announce, “SILVER one, no punch backs” and punch everyone again. Whereupon the child who announced the grey one throws back their head and howls in outrage, “You can’t punch me again. I already punched you on that one!”  Groups of people who have been denied basic civil rights by the governments of overbearing dictators react with less venom than my kids if they feel they’re being punched unjustly.

Of course, they’re all playing, unless they’re not the first one to see the car. Then a sibling will announce, “Green one, no punch backs.” Immediately, sometimes in mid-punch, at least one of them will announce, “NOT PLAYING.” And if the puncher has the temerity to punch anyway, they will announce in a loud, angry voice, “I said ‘NOT PLAYING.’ Are you totally stupid?” And indeed they are not playing, until they sight the next one and have the punching advantage, in which case you better believe they’re fucking playing, bruh.



 

picture credit

The most controversial punching is that which is done on a few outlier “types” of Bugs. Every now and then, just because they haven’t been involved in a verbal altercation with one of their siblings within the previous four minutes, one kid will announce something like, “Invisible one, no punch backs,” or “Imaginary one, no punch backs,” and distribute slugs all around. Naturally this is intolerable, and at least one of them becomes vehemently angry and lashes out with something like, “You can’t punch on invisible ones!” What they overlook is that fact that clearly, they just did get punched on an invisible one, and there’s not really any way to undo it or “take it back.” As you may imagine, this in no way deters them from defending their position on “invisible” or “imaginary” slug bugs, and their sibling’s unforgiveable transgression in punching them.

Clearly this game leads to lots of squabbles that help to pass the time on long, boring trips between the Safeway and our house, seven minutes away. And they’re squabbles that are both interesting and amusing to listen to, because they’re logical, rational, and the subject is one of global relevance and utmost importance, of course. Often I see a VW Bug and think, “Please don’t let them notice it please don’t let them notice it please don’t let them notice it.” About once every 324 times, my prayers are answered. It always kind of surprises me how popular VW Bugs are where we live.

They’ve tried to “punch” on other things, like cars that sort of look like Bugs but aren’t—Fiats and a few Toyotas have a similar profile, or occasionally they’ll pick something like Minis. I have to draw the line there. Bugs are bad enough, but if they were punching (and arguing, and “not playing,” and inventing mythical ones, and arguing—did I mention arguing?) for multiple types of vehicles, I would lose my shit in the car faster than I already do. As it is I spend half the time I’m driving as a feral hell beast, shrieking at them to stop arguing about the stupid cars and pipe down so I don’t run us off the road, so I don’t really need anything else that will set me off, thanks.

A Parent's Dilemma

What do you do when you really can’t stand one of your kids’ friends? My kids have this friend that all four of them adore. I’m so sick of hearing his name, I can’t even tell you. We were pretty free of him this summer, because he wasn’t at their camps, but now that school is about ready to begin again, they’re starting to invoke his name. Repeatedly. It’s like they say his name over and over, just to remind themselves that he exists. All during the school year they talk about him incessantly. Since one of the four people who reads my blog might be his mother (she isn’t), I’ll just use an initial to identify him.

All day while we were doing back to school shopping and organizing, all I heard were things like:

“I bet Z will be surprised I was able to get all my school stuff into my backpack!” Why does my son think the kid gives a shit that he was able to get two containers of Clorox wipes, a box of tissues, a binder, and three packs of pencils into a backpack? I’m his mother, and I’m not even that interested in the fact that he was able to do that.

“Mommy, is Z in my class?” I have no fucking idea, but I sincerely hope not. They’re hepped up because I was able to find out a few people who were in their classes through Facebook friends, but I am most decidedly not Facebook friends with this kid’s parents. (More on that in a minute.)

“I bet Z will get a blue binder like this one, so I’m going to get this one!” Well, it frankly doesn’t matter what Z does—you should do what you want. Please yourself, not your friend. He doesn’t have to use the binder all year, you do.

The kind of sad thing is it’s not really the kid I dislike. He’s not really a bad kid. I just get tired of hearing his name fourteen thousand times a day. It’s actually his parents that are the real problem. Z, age 9, is their oldest, and they’re on the young side--I’d be surprised if they were 35 yet--and they’re young for being young, if you know what I mean (and if you don’t, what I’m saying is they’re kind of fucking immature). I’m not sure what the dad’s deal is but at some point it was communicated to me, by my kids, that the dad thought my oldest was “a bad influence” on his kid, and that Z “shouldn’t listen” to what my kid said. I believe they were talking about something of tremendous global significance and far reaching consequence, like Pokemon.

Well right there I think this guy’s an asshole, right? Does he remember the kind of smack he talked when he was 10 or 11? Kids that age--especially boys--are always instructing each other on matters of importance (to them) and slinging shit because they really don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. The first rule of tween is, “If you’re not sure, make some shit up that sounds plausible and say it with conviction.” It’s where we get urban legends like the couple out parking and the guy with the claw hand, and the bug infested beehive hairdo. If it weren’t for pre-adolescent kids (and gullible morons, of course), Snopes.com would be out of business.

The other unforgivable sin they’ve committed is that they haven’t RSVP’d to my kid’s birthday parties.

I’ll admit, I’m a real asshole about RSVPs. Even back when they were paper invitations, and we had to pick up the phone and call to respond, I found it unforgiveable when people didn’t. They’re busy, I’m busy, but I took the time out of my schedule to mail them an invitation, now they can take 90 seconds and call me back to tell me if they’re coming. The fastest way to get on my shit list is to not let me know if you’re coming to my functions. You didn’t bring a hostess present? No problem. I don’t get a thank you note after? I could care less. If you told me you enjoyed it as you were leaving, and said thank you, we’re good. But if you couldn’t bother yourself to acknowledge that I extended an invitation, and let me know if you were coming or not, then honestly? Fuck you (not you-reading-this, but you know, the collective non-RSVPers).

And today it’s even less forgivable. Evite means that you open it, you read it, you decide if you can come, and you click a fucking button yes or no. If people can’t even be bothered to do that (and some, it would seem, cannot), then it’s not just fuck you, it’s fuck you with mustard and every time I see you know that I am judging you in the judgiest way.

 

See those buttons? You click them. Not fucking hard.

Oh calm down, I hear people saying. Aren’t you getting a tad worked up about something that’s really a little thing that you should just let go? You know, don’t sweat the small stuff, right?

Well, on the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, no. I have to buy food and provide beverages. If I don’t know how many people to expect, I have to overbuy on the off chance that the rude non-RSVPers decide to show, and then I may end up throwing out food. Really not something I can afford to do, you know?

But then there’s the specific situation with this kid. My twin boys are 9, and as different as they can possibly be in every way. One of them is outgoing, the class clown, everyone’s best friend. He has a million friends, and everyone who meets him loves him. The other one is shyer, more reserved, has fewer friends, and feels things much more deeply. This is the kid I found at age seven crying in bed with a picture of one of our cats two months after it had been put to sleep. A cat, I should point out, who had lived entirely in our basement for four years previously, and was ten years old when this child was born. In short, a cat with whom he’d had very little interaction over the years, and yet, there he was, sobbing his eyes out because he missed the cat. Sweet Jesus.

For the past two years this kid has invited Z to his birthday parties. He generally has a guest list of about four kids. The first year it was a sleepover, and I sent out the Evite comfortably in advance. No response. Finally I saw the parents at a community event and flat out asked if he’d be attending. Naturally they had no plausible way out of it, so he came. It was fine—like I said, it’s not really the kid that bothers me.

This year it was a party at the rock climbing gym. Again, Evite sent, again no response. This year I put my foot down. If his mother was too self-involved and generally rude to even respond, then frankly she could go fuck herself. Where I come from it’s basic manners to let someone know you’re attending a party. But I’ve covered that rant.

No, what really raises my blood pressure is that this is the sensitive kid. This is the kid who will take it most to heart that his friend, or really, his friend’s fucking mother doesn’t care enough, and doesn’t have sufficient social graces to let us know that they won’t be attending, for whatever reason. Until the day of the party he kept asking me if Z’s mom had replied. Every time I said, “No, sweetheart, I’m sorry, she hasn’t,” I felt like I was killing a little piece of his heart. My son even mentioned it to Z several times in school, and I know Z mentioned it to her, and still this bitch couldn’t get off her rude, lazy ass and say yes or no.

I flat out told my kids that this was the last time this child was invited to any function sponsored by our family. I explained that it wasn’t Z, but his rude fucking mother (I’m summarizing) that I objected to, and that I was done with her bad manners. I explained that if you’re blatantly rude often enough, people stop inviting you to things. Clearly Z and his family don’t care, but I want my children to understand that people will treat them the way they treat others. You’re invited to parties and completely ignore the invitations? Expect them to stop. I guess the next time I see an Evite that says “Z’s Birthday Party!” (Z did invite them to his birthday party earlier this year—I RSVP’d and even clarified how many of my four children she was expecting, because I have manners, bitch; I was hoping that modeling the behavior for her would be a hint. I should have known better), I will delete it without opening it. And you can bet your ass that’s what’s going to happen. Vindictive, and maybe a little juvenile? I won’t argue. But you don’t fuck with my kid. You make him sad, you hurt him, you fucking deal with me, and I’ll play on your childish level if that’s what it takes to get my message across to you.

Caution: Children At Play

I was an only child and I hated it. Actually I hated it. Even though I probably got more in the way of experiences (like getting to go on vacation in places like England and Ireland) and toys (although not some of the ones I wanted most), I still hated it. I was lonely a lot of the time. My dad developed Parkinson’s disease when he was fairly young (he was 32, I was 2), and my mom ended up having to work to support us. She worked long hours, he wasn’t always mobile or feeling well, so I ended up on my own a lot. I used to long for someone to play with. I knew kids with siblings, and I knew their relationships with them weren’t always Connect Four championships and let’s play pretend, but there were times when they played nicely together, and I envied them those times. As a result, I swore I’d never have an only child, and I have four that are all fairly close together (the widest gap is four years, between the oldest and the youngest). Now I expect them to play together, and sometimes they even do. And when they do, I’ve noticed that they go through an interesting series of phases.

 

Phase 1: "There’s No One To Play With!"

This one always gets me. Dude. I endured three pregnancies just so I would never have to hear anyone say that. Morning sickness, the world’s itchiest fucking stretch marks, and feet that got just big enough that my kick ass cowboy boots I’d had since college didn’t fit anymore. All so you would never know the feeling of being lonely, and wanting the companionship of someone your own age on a rainy day when there seemed to be nothing to do. There are three other children in this household. Go find one of them and engage him or her in play. Because guess what? I am not going to play with you. Not Clue, not War, not Monopoly. Go find a sibling and ask them to play Clue or War or Monopoly with you. There’s no one to play with, my ass.  And no, you may not watch TV.

Phase 2: "UGGGGGHHHH I Don’t Want To Play With My Brother"

Yeah, see above. This gets a pretty high rating on my Tough Shit-O-Meter. Go find him and STFU. Of course, this is the phase that includes the most declarations that there’s nothing to do, and that they are so booooooooorrrrrred. They are never amused to hear my stories about being an only child and not even having anyone to not want to play with. It’s usually these stories that drive them away and push them into the next phase.  

Phase 3: The Picking Stage

Having been thrown together in an unwelcome partnership, one child decides that, fine, I will amuse myself with this sibling. He generally begins by picking at, pestering, or otherwise bugging the child he’s been sent to play with. (I’m using the male pronoun across the board here, because with three boys and a girl, in every combination of my children, at least one of them has to be a boy.)  It might be toy taking, teasing, or poking/prodding type behavior, but whatever it is, it causes the other child to become highly agitated. It’s not quite what I had in mind, but it occupies one of them. The other one spends the whole time yelling “STOOOOOOPPPPPPPUUUUUHHHHH!” This phase lasts for anywhere from ten minutes to forever.

Phase 4: The Playing Stage

At some point, they make a peace of sorts, and work out an activity that’s amenable to both parties. Lots of times the poking/prodding behavior becomes more mutual, and they end up in wrestling matches, usually in my living room. This does not thrill me for many reasons—the fireplace/hearth in the living room being a perfect surface for head smashing, the lamps being perfect for knocking over and breaking, the fact that they’re so fucking loud about it—and I end up banishing them to the basement or outside. Still, playing is playing and I am grateful for the consensual interaction. The only downside is that this phase has an uncertain duration. They may play together nicely for an hour or more. Or it may last only six minutes. In either case, it’s inevitably followed by…

Phase 5: The Attempted Murder Stage

Sooner or later, someone takes a liberty in the game. Someone oversteps their bounds, usually physically. These are boys (and one girl with three older brothers) after all—it’s almost always a push or a shove or a trip or some other form of perceived physical abuse. The victim always swears it was, “on purpose!” and, “for no reason whatsoever!” the abuser always claims repeatedly that it was, “on accident!” Either way, the victim inevitably accuses his sibling of trying to kill him. Oh yes, that’s right—he was hoping that he’d step on your foot, injure a toenail that would become infected, and cause your death by sepsis. Give me a fucking break. I’d say 90% of the time, the initial injury inflicted is in fact an accident. It’s a seven- or nine- or eleven-year-old who gets too enthusiastic in his play and accidently hurts the other person. But that doesn’t stop them from moving to the next phase.

Phase 6: The Revenge + Tattling Phase

Now that one person feels they’ve been abused, the gloves are off. They do what they can to harm one another, each feeling that they’re entitled to retribution for the wrongs done them by the other. They never try to hurt each other seriously (I would assume if they really wanted to cause serious harm that they’d just beat each other with one of our many baseball bats). It’s always small, stupid things. But with each offense comes a tattle. “He hit me!” “He threw the airplane right at my face!” “She pushed me off the chair!” Oh for fuck’s sake. My reaction to this is usually to dismiss them initially, then when they start getting to a point when they’re mad enough that they might genuinely hurt one another, I’m forced to separate them. And so, we transition to another phase.

Phase 7: The Time Out Stage

Usually they get sent to their room in an effort to put an end to Phase 6. It’s not really intended as a time out per se, because a time out in my mind implies a disciplinary measure that forces them to stop everything, sit quietly, and reflect on their choices. Sending them to their room—where, yes, they have toys and books and other amusements—is intended only to redirect them, and physically distance them from one another. Sometimes the tactic will be dividing the four of them among the two parents, separating the most recently acrimonious pair. My husband will take two of them to Home Depot, for instance, and I’ll take two of them to the library. Either way, they find a new focus, and are removed from the presence of the child with whom they were most recently doing battle, even if it’s for only a short time. Eventually the time out or errand comes to an end, and they are once again drifting through the kitchen, pestering me while I’m trying to do important things (like write a goddamned blog post, for the love of biscuits) and they start all over again.

“There’s no one to play with!”

Fuck. Me.

Note: I do play with them sometimes, of course. It’s not that I don’t want to interact with my children. But roughly half the times when they ask me to play, I genuinely can’t because some chore or task that is integral to keeping our household functioning requires my attention.

If the Shirt Fits...

I know teachers aren’t fazed by much that kids come up with. If they’ve been teachers for any length of time, they’ve probably seen just about everything there is to see. Be that as it may, I still feel a twinge when I realize I’ve sent my daughter off to school without brushing her hair. For the third day in a row. To counter this, I’m thinking of coming up with a new line of t-shirts, or possibly stickers that could be stuck on kids without their knowledge, with explanations that will cover for me on days when I’m sure the teacher is compiling notes to pass along to CPS, and it looks like today’s transgressions might seal the deal.

The first one in my line is for my daughter and others like her. It will say “I refuse to let my parents brush my hair.” This will go a long way toward explaining the snarls and mats. Beyond hating to have her hair brushed, my daughter loves hats and hoods. She won a polyester hat (at the fucking carnival) that looks like the face of a cow, with two long flaps that hang down over her ears. She wears this hat day and night. She sleeps in it, she wears it to school. The only reason she takes it off is for baths, and then under protest, so you can bet taking it off so I can brush her hair isn’t a priority. Plus wearing a hat or hood causes hair to snarl up and get ratty, and since she won’t let me brush it, that just makes things worse.

The next one will also be for my daughter, but also for slightly younger kids. We’ve all seen kids in outfits that were clearly of their own design and consist of Ninjago pajamas, a tutu and three winter scarves (and maybe a hat that looks like the face of a cow) or whatever. Or little girls who insist on wearing their Snow White dresses everywhere, including the pool. But not all adults realize that these outfits stem from equal parts stubbornness (on the part of the child), and exhaustion and a reluctant acceptance that defeat is the only option (on the part of the parent). While it might be a challenge to get them to put them on, for these kids I would offer a shirt that reads “My mother thinks this outfit is as strange as you do.” They’d have to be in fantastic patterns or insane colors so that kids would be inclined to include them in their sartorial repertoire. I suspect this would also be a big seller in a large sticker that could be stuck on their backs as they were walking out the door (“Hurry along, little Kyndle, we don’t want to be late” the parent would say, placing a sticker-covered hand gently between their shoulder blades).

Another one for younger kids that I wish I’d had when my children were small will be for those times when their outfit is bizarre or inappropriate, but not because of the ramrod will of a four year old determined to wear his or her “favorite shirt” for the 15^th day in a row. This is for those times when a child is dressed by his or her father, and that father happens to be one of “those” fathers. I don’t want to generalize—not all fathers have strange ideas about what constitutes an “outfit.” Some recognize that a child who is wearing a bathing suit and mittens is not a child who is wearing an ensemble fit for an audience with the Queen (or even a day at preschool), even if they do happen to be wearing matching socks. I’m fairly sure that 80% of the time my husband was in charge of dressing our children they were decently covered in something that didn’t look like he’d upended the dirty clothes hamper over their heads and called it a day. But for those days that missed the mark, I would have liked to be able to have them walk around with the disclaimer, “My daddy dressed me today” somewhere on their person.

Beyond their appearance, I worry about the things that might come out of my kids’ mouths. I am no saint when it comes to my language, I freely admit this. I have been known to describe myself as sounding like a drunk longshoreman with Tourette’s syndrome (note: I am not a longshoreman, and I have not been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome). As you may have noticed, I use the word “fuck” the way the English language uses the letter “e” (which is to say, often, and with enthusiasm). But I don’t talk like that in front of my children. My children might occasionally hear, “What the hell is going on here?” or “Go brush your damn teeth right now!” But these are in extreme circumstances, like when my oldest son knocked out his little sister’s front tooth that wasn’t ready to come out and a Niagara Falls of blood was the result, or when I’ve sent them to brush their teeth five times and they’ve lied to me all five times. Then, yes, I use a mild swear word (mild: damn, hell, bastard; serious: shit, fuck, asshole).

But apparently they hear this sort of thing somewhere. I assume from kids who have older siblings. That’s where I picked up all my cuss words. Thank goodness for Ashely Templeton whose older sister taught her all the bad words, and she taught them to me. As we all know, that’s where that kind of thing often comes from, even when they’re very young. When my daughter was a toddler, there was another girl in her room at daycare who had a 19 year old brother. When nap time rolled around, and she didn’t feel like napping, she was known to sit on her mat and yell, “Fuckin’ bullshit! Fuckin’ bullshit!” in protest. I’m fairly confident her mother wasn’t the source that.

And sometimes it’s not even swear words, but potty stuff or goofy stuff. One of my twins has been calling his siblings “nose hair” in fits of frustration (“No, that’s MINE! Give it back, nose hair!”). My daughter went through a phase where she called everything “suckers.” (“Oh look I dropped those suckers. I better pick those suckers up.”)

However, as a parent, I never want the school staff to think they incorporate those words into their vocabularies because of exposure to them at home. So I would sell a shirt that said, “My mother doesn’t know where I pick these things up either.” An alternative for kids with older siblings would say, “I get my vocabulary from my older brother/sister.” That one’s a little sketchy, I suppose, because the teachers may simply assume that the older sibling is learning from the parents, and passing it on. Still, I’m hoping the teachers assume that the older kid picked this sort of thing up on the streets and taught it to the younger kids, since that's probably the reality.

So that’s my idea for a kids’ clothing line. I think it’s highly functional, and that parents would benefit from it. As I said, a few of them would need to be offered in sticker form as well as on shirts. They’d make great birthday presents (for the parents’ birthdays, of course), and I bet they’d be hot for back to school. Then I could go to parent/teacher conferences and not feel like I need to spend the first ten minutes explaining why my daughter’s hair looks like she was fathered by a reggae singer, and that her gutter mouth is not my fucking fault.