Adventures In Parenting

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Adventures In Parenting

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How to avoid zombie children and juvenile delinquency this summer

Raise your hand if you fear that your child’s honest answer to 'What I did on my summer vacation' will be: slept a lot; did most of my socializing on-line; spent countless afternoons moping around and fighting with my siblings; played hundreds of hours of video games; lost a huge chunk of the previous year's learning - or worse yet - got into lots of trouble in the world when no one was looking.

Most tweens and pre-working teens love the thought of summer vacation. But once it gets going the sheer number of hours to fill can lead to 10+ hour, zombie-induced, video game marathons interspersed with wandering the world under the radar and getting into trouble.

World's Greatest Mom - NOT

I remember the morning I realized it. My sons were 6, 4 1/2 and 18 months old and had done something that had gotten me upset. What they did completely escapes me now which tells you how bad it must not have been, but for whatever reason I went beyond my usual aggravation to a crazy place.

Even now I can recall the rush of heat rising to my face. And then the roar. It was a furious, excruciating explosion of a person going insane. The tirade went on for at least several minutes as I exhausted my frustration and despair at this latest infraction. On and on I went, like a hurricane slowing down only to gather new force.

Giving Kids The Gift of Time

A million Christmases ago, when my now-teenagers were little, besides the special wishlist items we put under the tree, I added a fairly simple gift of my own. I gave each of my sons a coupon for a 45 minute block of one-on-one time with me each week.

I don't recall thinking that this was THE gift, but I hoped it would help me carve out time to give each of my very different children what they needed.

Teaching Kids About Rationalization

Several years ago, when my son tried to convince me that he had no choice but to hit his brother, I took the opportunity to teach my kids the word "rationalization."

Kids use it to sell a story about how life should go in a particular way - like two desserts today because they didn't have any yesterday, or to justify why life went the way it did - like how they couldn't do their homework because it didn't make sense or how they HAD to hit their brother because "he hit me first."