Mid-CenturyModernMoms

Arguing over food

My twins are very very different. Like Patty Duke, they're different as night and day. My son is a big galoot of a guy, tall, big boned, a bit chunky, blond hair and blue eyes. He's kinda geeky, introverted, a bit socially awkward, smart as a whip, and so freaking obnoxious he could win prizes.

My daughter is petite, sweet and loving, with such a potty mouth you could just keel over. She's very social, but not adept socially. She has tons of friends, is an extrovert of grand proportions, can't stand to not be doing SOMETHING fun every second of the day, and she's a bit of a dim bulb sometimes. With dark hair and dark eyes, her olive skin makes people assume she's from another culture quite a bit.

The one thing that really sets them apart, and makes them argue more than any other topic is food. OMG you would think they were starving African refugees they way the act around food. My son eats anything that is not nailed down. He is relentless in his ability to eat and eat and eat. Even when he knows that the food he's eating is earmarked for a celebration (say the bowl of potato salad for today's picnic for July 4th) or something that was purchased just for me or the Girl. He will eat anything, even when he knows there will be consequences. He just doesn't care. He is an eating machine. Plus he has no interest in setting something aside if he wants to eat it. His impulsivity around food makes for more trouble than anything else.

His sister is not a big eater, nor does she like most foods. What she does like, she protects viciously. She labels things, she hides food, she will do anything to reserve food for herself. Unfortunately, her brother has no respect for her and will search her room if he's on the lookout for candy or sweets. She always has candy or sweets hidden.

My daughter has taken to counting food. If you ever wanted to live with a really annoying person, find a food counter. It could drive you right into the gin bottle. She knows how much there is of everything, and if there is one morsel missing, she's sure to comment upon it. If she's out, when she returns the first thing she does is take inventory of what he's eaten. She counts everything and nothing escapes her eagle eye.

Now, try and imagine living with this pair. She knows if one crumb of pie is missing and he will eat an entire pie if he can possibly not get caught. It's like living in a constant battle zone. I try to make both sides a bit more respectful of each other, but in truth my son is not going to stop eating like every hour is his last meal and she's not going to accept that he's in this huge growth spurt and needs the food intake. They're not nice to each other. They say hurtful things and in honestly, cannot understand the other's position at all. Or even want to. They're content to keep fighting over food. It gives them something to do.

If truth be told, I'm very concerned about my son's lack of sensitivity regarding food. It drives me absolutely bonkers that he will eat things that he KNOWS are earmarked for a celebration or a special occasion. In our house, he will eat all the leftovers knowing that I might want them for lunch. He'll eat all the ice cream in the house, leaving none for anyone else. Whole containers of cookies disappear. Whole loaves of bread vanish without a trace. He takes food up to his room and leaves the dishes up there until I go ballistic because we have no dishes, glasses or silverware left. The kid is that rude and insensitive.

I can't force him to stop. He doesn't really care that this bothers me and his sister. Stuffing his face is way more important than trying not to take what isn't his. So I have no clue as to how to get them to make peace over food. She's furious that everything she wants to eat disappears before she has a chance to even get a taste. He's furious that we're always pissed at him for taking food and eating it all.

Is there any way to solve this? I can't think of one.

Parental support

We're all parents of teenagers here at MCMM. But some of us are parents of very special teenagers. By that I don't mean the academically perfect MIT bound volunteer for the summer in Kenya building schools special teenager. More like the "lazy, emotionally immature, neurologically impaired, psychologically tweaked" kind of special. My kids are certainly in that category and many of our writers also have kids who fit in that strange mix of labels as well.

Today I'm going to skip talking about the kids and talk about parenting. It's hard enough parenting a neurotypical teenager. What with the mood swings and the opinions and the foul mouths, it cam be challenging just getting through the day with a really cool and neurologically fine kid. But parenting these other kids, these 'special' kids can rob an adult of their ability to be congnatively awake at any given moment. When your brain is working overtime just trying to stay one step ahead of the kid that is manipulative, dishonest, and has little control over implusivity, you're gonna flatline if you don't seek a bit of help yourself. It's just too darn hard to do this stuff alone.

Many couples rely on each other and don't think they need outside support. Or get psychological help for their child but eschew family therapy. If you want to burn out quickly and affect the other NT members of your family, that's certainly a way to go. But I don't believe that it's necessarily the right way, nor the only way. What I want to talk about is the support services that are out there for families with these special kids.

If you have a child that is using drugs, stealing cars, lying and stealing, or doing a lot of illegal activites but has yet not been caught by the police, you can ask for court involvement without getting your child a record. Did you know this? It's a way of taking the onus off of you, the parents, and putting it onto the Judge that oversees your child's case. To do this, you have to go to your local courthouse where there is a Youth Probation Officer and file a CHINS. This means a "Child in Need of Services" petition. A CHINS essentially sets up a relationship between your child and the court, and will write up a contract with your child telling them exactly what they may NOT do. A lawyer is assigned to your child. It is NOT your attorney, it is your child's attorney, and their discussion is priviledged, just like a therapists. But, like a therapist, if there is any notion of harm to self or others, they will tell you and they will seek a hospitalization.  When a child has a CHINS, they have to appear in front of the Judge regularly. The Judge gets the child's report cards and reports from the school regarding attendance and behavior. They also confer with the child's therapist and psychiatrist, as well as the Attorney and, if needed, a guardian ad litem.  If the child has NOT followed the CHINS, the Judge can make decisions regarding the consequences. This might be further court involvement, Department of Social Services (CPS) or Department of Youth Services involvement, or might just involve tweaking the CHINS.

The CHINS is your first line of defense when illegal activity or behavior you cannot control, such as running away or setting fires, has you really needing outside help. When you have filed a CHINS, you are able to get VOLUNTARY DSS services. Scary? You betcha. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the scariest decision a parent has to make when dealing with a child whose impulsivity is dangerous to himself or others. But so many of us HAVE faced it, and made the decision to ask for this type of help. And after it's over, we're all pretty darn grateful considering how much help you can get this way.

If you ask for Voluntary DSS/CPS involvement, you'll be assigned a caseworker, and with this caseworker you'll determine what the family needs entail. They will pay for therapy, ensure that you have medical insurance for this child, they'll get you an in-home social worker for family therapy, they can assign the child a mentor, they can get your child hospitalized, into Acute Residential Treatment  programs, and even into residential schools. Your caseworker can help you with special parenting skills classes, respite care, and even some financial help. Once your child is involved in DSS Voluntary services, you are going to get help. Sometimes more help than you wanted or think you needed. It might be a couple of years of some very difficult work with your family, but it IS worth it in the long run.

Another road, if you have a child with a mental illness, is to contact your state's Department of Mental Health (DMH). Yeah, that one is a hard call to make. Nobody wants to admit that they are dealing with a mental illness that is making it too difficult for the family to function normally. It takes some families years to ask for this one, but again, once the call is made, if you are accepted into their program, it is going to make a huge difference. Most of what DMH can and will do for you is similar to what DSS does. Only DMH works with different agencies that specialize in mental health issues. You'll still get a caseworker, you'll still get the hospitalizations, insurance, ARTs and residential schools pair for, only by DMH. They offer MORE in the way of financial help, ensuring that you won't get evicted from your apartment because of mental health issues, and will assign you an in-home therapist as well.

Asking for this type of help is extremely difficult. But it is there for you. It's just waiting for you to make the first step and call. As a parent who has made these phone calls more than once, I know that the decision to admit you need outside help feels like you're failing as a parent. But it isn't that at all. In fact, I believe that to be a GOOD parent of kids like this, we do need to ask for help in order to offer our children the best of the best.

If you have questions about the process or about my own experience with these various agencies, please email me. I'm happy to answer any questions I can.

Where school seems to go on forever

Unlike most of the rest of the country, my kids are still in school. I know... it seems to last forever and yet it's never long enough! We've got one more week before they're out for the summer. This is the week of final exams. They go in at weird times, and leave at weird times. I have no clue when they should be where. I figure that it's their responsibility to get to their final exams on their own.  Once the exams are over, they're both going to be home all summer long. Yup, all summer long. Gulp!

I'm of mixed emotions. I have to admit, I love tossing the alarm clock and knowing that I won't have to see 6:30 am again until September.  Sleep is very important to teenagers and for a couple of months they'll get enough to keep them on a fairly even keel. I hope.

I also love having them around much of the time. Despite what you might have heard, I like my kids and I enjoy their personalities and their wit. Most of the time. I like doing things together with them, I like when their friends come over and I can eavesdrop on conversations and find out what the heck is going on in their lives. I like when they come up with bizarre ways to entertain themselves.

However, they eat like starving grizzly bears, they are the messiest human beings on earth, and they tend to argue. A lot. It's never nice and peaceful for very long around here. My son tends to entertain his friends here more than he ever goes anywhere else. There will be 2 or 3 day marathons of video games, shouting, eating the shelves bare, and taking over my house. I think it's better that they are here than if they were unsupervised someplace else. But OMG, the noise, the mess!

My daughter leaves school and the second she is off the property, every single thing she has learned all year empties out of her head. I've never seen anything like it. It's as if she does this brain dump in the parking lot. As summer progresses she gets dumber and dumber. By the end of summer I'm ready to scream in frustration. I must say "THINK" about 3 million times a day. She totally loses the ability to think, read, or write come summer.

Additionally, the school still have no clue of what they are going to do with her next year. It's her junior year. They want her to transfer to the other high school so they can wash their hands of her and not spend a penny on her special education needs. She has refused the transfer. I have refused the transfer. The school has no alternative. She is not registered anywhere for next year. Legally, the school has to follow her last signed IEP, which says she's enrolled in their school. So far they're refusing to do that. Which is against the law. To make matters worse? The social worker who has been working with her, and who we both like, just lost her job due to budget cuts. Today was her last day. So my kid doesn't have anyone to represent her best interests. She gave me the name of some other person whom I've never met and is male, who will be taking over for the social worker. I'm so unhappy about this.

Thus this will be, for me, the summer of lawyers and lawsuits. So looking forward to this. Not. But it has to be done. She has to be in school. We've been homeschooling and it's not the best option for my ultra-social kid. If we have to, we'll continue to do so, but I'm going to make the school let her do math and science there. I can't teach either math or science at home.

Summer is also the time when I become a professional chauffer for my kids. "Mom, take me here." "Mom, I need it NOW". This will be the last summer, because they'll finally turn 16 at the end of August and then the fun really begins.

Driving lessons.

Oh lord, kill me  now.

So maybe I shouldn't be so anxious for school to be over after all. I can't even imagine what kind of hell it will be once they learn to drive.

A total bust

Crossposted at What Was I THINKING?

Today's IEP meeting for the Girl was one of the most frustrating moments of my life. The school...well, they certainly made it clear that they have nothing to offer her. They want her to go to the other high school. She is refusing. We're at a total impasse. She won't even go to visit the program they're recommending. She feels like the high school is rejecting her and refusing her desire to come back to school. They feel that she needs supports they can't (or won't) offer.

I'm so upset. She's angry and stubborn and won't even consider alternatives.

They're angry and stubborn and won't even consider alternatives.

I can't make anyone move towards a compromise.

I honestly don't know what to do. She really has good points. She doesn't want to change schools. She wants to stay where she's emotionally happy. She knows plenty of kids at the other high school, but she also knows that the drug problem is much more severe there, and that the kids she knows in the other program will only lead her into more trouble. She's cognizent of the social issues but she's also so freaking stubborn that she just will not even make an effort. Not even to go visit the program. She's stated that if she's forced to go into this program she will drop out of school, and since she'll be 16, it's going to be hard to stop her.

She's totally blown math for this semester, but after meeting her math teacher, I now get why. He's an arrogant SOB who really had nothing pleasant to say about her. I mean nothing. After the meeting I sat down with her and she reveals to me why her math teacher was complaining about her. He said that she's the smartest person in the class and has the ability to do good work in a Curriculum 1 class. Well no shit, Sherlock. She WAS in a Curriculum 1 math class and the school, in it's infinite wisdom, changed her schedule and the only math class available that period was one about 5 levels below what she was in before she went to the hospital. Aarrrghhh.

Plus, she has complained ever since she got back to school about this teacher. Some of her issues: he sits at his desk and talks about his camping and hiking instead of teaching math. He doesn't wear shoes or socks in class and puts his feet up on the desk (she has an issue with feet and is totally grossed out by this). He allows kids to wear Ipods in class. He doesn't care if kids are late or leave early. He has totally checked out of teaching because he only teaches the burnout kids in the special programs. While I get his burnout status, having taught some of those kids myself, I'm sorry, but he has no right to not even TRY to teach, and then to sit at the meeting and make it sound like she's totally at fault that she isn't doing anything.

After the meeting, I got a phone call from her support person, and she confirmed what the Girl said about the math teacher. I mean, she went as far as telling me to talk to the head of the math department to express my concerns. So I know that what the Girl said is at least accurate. And I will be calling the math head.

Her biology teacher, OTOH, recommended that she go into Curriculum 1 chemistry next year, and said she was doing well. So did her tutor who is helping her in English. But it didn't matter. The school had NO alternative plan. It was go to this program, in which they have already made space for her, or tough noogies. Soooo unacceptable.

She's so upset. She doesn't understand why the school is 'kicking her out.' She feels that it's all her fault and she just won't acknowledge that they are also to blame. She doesn't get that adults can be so uncooperative. I'm not that way ever with her, and she expects other people to listen to her and work with her the way I do. Fat Chance! It's a very hard lesson to learn, and she's resisting learning it on all fronts.

She's just been so disappointed lately. Her therapist is irresponsible and misses about half her appointments. Her tutor came 3 times in 3 weeks due to other commitments. People let her down all the time and she feels like they are rejecting her when they're just acting like asshats.

I feel so sorry for her. I'm so angry and so upset and so horribly sad. It is ridiculous that we're in this place.

Next step, reporting school to the state for non-compliance.

Oh, and I have GOT to tell you this one. Because it just about made my head explode. The reason I have refused to sign the IEP all year is that her latest IEP didn't include her diagnosis of NVLD. It was like she was cured or something. So today I bring the private psychologist's report showing her obvious NVLD diagnosis as Axis II. The school psychologist says that the new WISC doesn't test for many of the NVLD subtests. So, voila. If you don't test for it, it no longer exists. Um, I think not. I did not let them get away with that one. The schmucks.

Two different stories, one hurting kid

I attend a support group for parents of 'difficult' adolescents. Which isn't really what it is at all, incidentally. All of the parents who attend this group have kids with some type of mental or emotional disorder. We have depressed kids, suicidal kids, bipolar kids, kids with rare genetic disorders, kids who just don't fit any mold. The thing all these kids have in common is that they've been hospitalized, many multiple times, because they were either a danger to themselves or a danger to others. Oh, and they all have parents who are tearing their hair out in frustration trying to figure out just what to do.

We're a fairly tight knit group of moms. We not only support each other in our quest to find the best care for each of our respective kids, we attend each other's school meetings, visits to special programs, and just to hang out and give each other hugs. In the short time I've been part of this group, I've made a good friend, and I've gotten a lot of great advice. It's really a fabulous support group.

So what's the but?

Today, for the first time, we had a dad come to our meeting. It wasn't a big deal that he was male, as we're all grown ups. He is a single dad and he introduced us to his daughter (figuratively) who is a hurting buckaroo for a variety of reasons. We all encouraged him to take certain types of actions, we listened to his story, we were more than supportive to him, we didn't scare him off, and he promised to return.

And the problem is?

Oy! Privacy. My favorite issue. His daughter and my son were in a program together. A program that encourages the kids to share their issues with the small group. What my son knows of this girl is not essentially what the father reported to our group. This makes me VERY uncomfortable. Because I know things about her that her father doesn't, from the things my son reported. But it gets even more uncomfortable. While my son was in this program, another friend of his who we'll call Dirty (because he is) was also at the program. Dirty and my son have known each other for years. Dirty and this man's daughter evidentially had it in for each other, and when Dirty came over during this time, he talked a lot about this particular girl. Now, I had no clue I'd EVER meet this girl's parent. They live hours away from us. Who would have thunk it? But damn... the girl who was a big topic of conversation in our house for weeks is this guy's daughter. Doesn't that suck?

I know I need to keep my mouth shut. I'm not completely idiotic. But I feel incredibly uncomfortable knowing some things that her father SHOULD know, but apparently doesn't. His daughter is in a lot of emotional pain for reasons totally unknown to him. But not to me. And if that doesn't bite, I don't know what does.

That's one of the problems with your kids being in programs. So much is shared, some of it the truth, some of it false, but a lot of it just plain painful. They're encouraged to get their pain out their, to acknowledge it and then move on. The groups help these kids to learn coping mechanisms, to recognize where their behavior comes from, and to be able to grow from their problems. Those are all good things. But the problem is that the kids gossip both amongst themselves, and they often come home and bitch about the other kids in the program. Which is exactly what happened here. My kid and Dirty weren't outing this girl. They were talking about how tough she was to deal with, and during those discussions, personal things were revealed.

So, here I am, brimming with information I wish I didn't have and not knowing what to do with it. Any advice?

Curfews?

My twins are not yet 16, but they both have very active social lives. More active than I can ever remember having at their age, but that was when dinosaurs roamed the earth and really, who wants to hang out with dinosaurs?

Tonight both kids were out with their respective sets of friends. They were both 'hanging' at someone else's house, both told to be home at midnight, as it isn't a school night, and both got home at a reasonable time. One was 15 minutes early, one was 15 minutes late. I'm not thrilled with the late kid, but he's relying on someone else's driving so it is a bit harder for him to get home than my daughter, who got a ride home from a mom. Moms are more reliable than kids, for the most part.

We haven't had a lot of trouble with curfews in the past. They're pretty solid, 12 on weekends, 11 on weeknights IF their schoolwork and chores are done. Since it's very rare that anything is done, they don't go out much on school nights. Another brilliant ploy from Mom!

But we're reaching a new situation. Summer vacation. Ugh.

My kids absolutely positively refuse to do anything over the summer. My daughter will be in summer school due to some incredible screw ups at her school, but that's during the morning. She'll be home most of the day. My son will be doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. He will not do any type of program. Nor will he consider camp, something he's failed at spectacularly in the past. This will be his 3rd summer home with nothing to do.

Now summer schedules are very lax around here. I work from  home, mostly at night. The kids sleep in till fairly late, and their friends sleep even later. Most social activity doesn't even start until 3 or 4 in the afternoons, sometimes even later.

So planning curfews becomes more difficult. Our town has a curfew that I plan to follow, not that it's enforced or anything, but it makes my kids much more limited than the other kids. Since my kids don't drive yet (or ever if I have my wish!) they have to rely on either me, friends, or other parents. So I'm now sure what a reasonable curfew is for almost 16 yr-old kids who are just 'hanging out'. If they have someplace to go, then they have a half-hour after the movie or concert or whatever is done to be home. That's easy. It's the 'hanging out' that I'm not sure of.

Anyone have any great suggestions? What curfew have you set for your kids?

Mixed Messages

So much is going on at our house that I feel the need to unburden myself or I'm gonna 'splode from all the information overload. There's good news, there's bad news, there's insanity, and there is relative calm. Oh, and there are two nutty teenagers that live to change the equilibrium at any given moment. Because, you know, they're teens!

So what's new?

The Boy made high honor roll in school. HIGH HONOR ROLL. You have no idea of the nachas this gives me. I'm so very proud of him for finally, after 11 years in school, buckling down and deciding to maybe, perhaps, um...do his work. Because that's a good idea if you're trying to get into college, isn't it?

But is he happy? Why no, because I'm a bitch to him and I never do anything nice for him and he hates me and hopes I have a heart attack and die. He's just a bundle of joy these days. I'm so sick of being screamed at I just want to duct tape his mouth shut. I won't, but don't think I don't fantasize about it. And just what is it that he's so angry about? Oh, I had the unmitigated gall to ask him to dig up some weeds in the garden. Last week. And then again every freaking day. But he won't do it, and he says that he gets no pleasure from gardening, so why should he do it? Um, maybe because you eat the food I grow from my garden? Could that be a good reason? Evidentially not.

And then there was that party. The one my darling son held while I was out of town. The one he was told not to even THINK about. But he did it anyways, and there was alcohol and probably pot and a whole bunch of kids spread all over our front hill. How did I find out about the party? Well, first I found an empty liter bottle of gin in his closet. That was a fun discussion. And because I am the suspicious type (do you wonder why?), I checked his Facebook page. Facebook is awesome for catching kids doing bad things. They're so dumb they leave up photos of the parties. All you have to do is follow the photos. I did, and lo and behold, that was our porch with my son holding a beer can looking particularly wasted on a friends photo set. Ahem. I could probably get a job with Scotland Yard. I'm that good.

Consequently, things are up and down with him. School = good. Home = bad.

The other one? The Girl? She's gonna drive me absolutely bonkers writing a paper on a book she read for school. She hated the book. So what else is new? She hates reading of all kinds. Sort of a disappointment for a serious book lover and writer like myself, but what can I do? Her father is an engineer. Say no more.

The deal is, if she persists in whining and nagging and complaining, at some point I'll come to her rescue just to shut her up. Guilty as sin, I am. But gosh, how much whining can one person take? My tolerance is low, apparently.

Her schooling is coming along despite the fact that her tutor is dyslexic (I know!) and not overly bright. Sweet as sugar and helpful as can be, but OMG, I eventually insert myself in the tutoring sessions in English because otherwise my kid would be learning the wrong stuff. Math and science, I'm not that worried about. The kid is doing fine in school.

However, the school. Well, as nice as they are about my son, they're nasty and unpleasant and totally unhelpful to my daughter. They do not like her. They do not like green eggs and ham either. Well, the feeling is mutual. Not about the green eggs, although I doubt I'd like those either. About the school administration. They are not nice to me, to her, and they're driving me beserko.

And then there's me. I'm doing ok, hanging in there. We're going as a family to Chicago in a couple of days for an event sponsored by Ford Motor Company. You would think that traveling with teenagers would be a piece of cake compared to toddlers and infants. Well... you would probably be wrong. The preparation before the trip is exhausting. We're being feted at a fancy restaurant for a Mother's Day dinner, which meant that we had some shopping to do.

The Boy has outgrown every single piece of clothing he owns, so we had to get him pants and shirts and a pair of shorts just in case the weather ever cleared up in Chicago. Apparently the weather will never clear up in Chicago. Sigh.

The Girl only owns summer dresses that fit well. And no decent pants. More shopping. Like the Girl, my only dress that is currently in style and that fits after a major weight loss is a strapless summer frock. Off to another store to get me something springy but with sleeves and a bit of skin coverage. I hate to shop, I hate to spend money on clothes, and I hate to take my kids shopping. So this week was really swell. 

Oh, and the allergies. The allergies! We all are suffering. The sniffles, the nosebleeds, the itchy eyes, the rashes.

All in all, a jolly good time at our house! So what's going on with you?

Finding my muse

Months age, our own Melanie Lynne Hauser wrote a post about how, once her elder son went off to college, she realized that she didn't belong to a group anymore. She no longer was in the PTA or the church moms groups, in fact she was floundering around trying to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones that are in the same space she is in. Hence the founding of this blog. And thank you Melanie for your honest outcry, because it raised up in so many of us just how lonely it can be parenting teenagers and young adults.

Right now, I feel like my muse has been called into question. Living with teenagers is, as we all know, stressful and filled with negativity. Although your kids do positive things, the fact is that they're dismissive, rude, angry, and sarcastic a lot more of the time than they're adorable. Sometimes adorable just doesn't happen for weeks. You might get a glimpse here and there between the eye-rolls, the shrugs and sighs, and the cursing invectives about your ability to parent.

I'm just not feeling the love right now. My son, when caught with a big empty rum bottle in his room, calls me names, tells me what a moron I am, gives me a song and dance that is ridiculous and well beyond belief, and then tries the tried and true method of blaming ME for not punishing his sister enough. Like that is going to change my mind about the fact that he had an alcohol receptor in his closet. A kid on a whole pharmacy of prescription drugs, ALL of which must never been mixed with alcohol. And he wonders why I'm upset.

My daughter, who has been grounded all of this vacation, is driving me nuts with her boredom and her inability to find anything to do. Believe me when I say there is plenty to do. She just doesn't want to do any of it, she wants to be waited on hand and foot and gets pretty damn angry every time I ask her to do something anyhow.

I've been spending a lot of my time hiding in my room.

My muse is spending time in the Caribbean getting herself built up for the last term of the school year, evidently, because she's lost around here and all I'm feeling right now is annoyance, irritation, and exhaustion.  I had hoped that we would be able to visit a couple of local colleges and start on the 'what's college like' process, but honestly, I don't want to spend 5 minutes with these kids right now. YKWIM?

So when will my muse return? When will the kids stop lying, sneaking illegal substances, and being total jerks? And when will I perk up and start liking them again? I have no clue, but stay tuned, because we're taking a trip in a couple of weeks and I'll be a captive with them in a HOTEL. God help me!

I really miss sippy cups

My son, for all his faults, is a great kid. Smart, funny, fairly cooperative, and very loving. However, the child is not graceful. Oh, that would be putting it mildly. This is a kid that not only trips on anything in his way, he trips on absolutely nothing. He's the kid that walks into furniture, and occasionally walls. Clumsy would be his middle name.

He don't seem to have an idea of his physical space, I think. He's growing so fast that he doesn't realize how big he is. Big plus clumsy equals disaster.

He is a spiller. I used to say, "Never a meal without a spill." but he seemed to outgrow spilling all day every day. Even when he used sippy cups, he spilled, but then the spills weren't so catastrophic.

They do not seem to make sippy cups for clumsy teens. More's the pity, I say.

Today it was a big class of Kosher for Passover Coke. This is a very valuable commodity because it's made with real cane sugar and not corn syrup. It tastes really good, and I hate Coke. Hate it. So spilling and entire glass on the coffee table and over the side onto the oriental rug, well, not a good thing. He got really upset because he had to clean it up and he lost a whole glass of the special Coke. A double whammy. And of course, Coke is really sticky so just wiping it up isn't enough. Poor kid.

He's blotting and wiping and mopping and he looks up at me and says, "I really need a sippy cup."

I  agreed. He does. But they just don't make them. That's a shame, isn't it?

What happened to my little helpers?

A major Jewish holiday, Passover, is starting on Saturday night. With the onset of Passover comes an amazing amount of household work. Not only does every single corner of the house have to be cleaned to rid every room of possible leavened products, but the dishes, silverware, pots and pans, and utensils all have to be changed. This means emptying out your kitchen and replacing everything with special Passover dishes, etc. Wow, what fun this is. Next comes covering your counters with tin foil or plastic so your Passover dishes don't touch a counter that has touched leavened products. Your kitchen ends up looking like a space ship gone insane with all the tin foil.

Once all that is done, and you're suitably exhausted, it's time to cook two HUGE dinners for large crowds of family and friends. Special foods. Foods that contain no leavening, and are made of odd things like matzah meal and potato starch. Everything cooked from scratch because the prepared products are disgusting. Salty, tasteless, and scary.

Now, when my teens were little, they were great helpers. They would get all excited about turning over the kitchen, especially when they got to the tape. Taping the tin foil down is evidentally a way cool thing for a kid to do. Both of my kids liked to help with the cooking. They weren't all that excited about the cleaning, but they understood that no cleaning meant no cooking and no eating...for a week. Um, yeah. I could always count on them to peel potatoes, carrots and apples. They liked to chop up spices and vegetables. They are both decent cooks, as I have always had them help me with dinners as well as special meals.

But this year? Help? They think not. Both of them have been completely resistant to helping out. When I call them down for a quick job, it's always "five more minutes" or "I"ll do it later". And then they never come down. So of course, the nagging starts, and with the nagging comes the kids yelling back at me and calling me all sorts of delightful names. I get mad, they get madder, I get madder still, and things just don't get done.

I've make everything myself so far, and the rule has always been that nobody eats ANYTHING unless they make sure that it's OK to eat now and not for the Seders. This isn't a new rule, it's the same rule we've always had. But my son... he doesn't follow rules anymore. Rules are made for other people, not for him. He's special, you see. Specially obnoxious. He went through the Passover food bags and helped himself liberally to things that were not for him. Like an entire Passover rainbow layer cake. Oh, and an entire jar of chocolate spread (It's an Israeli thing). But this was the real kicker. He ate a huge bowl of chopped liver. Not only doesn't he like chopped liver, but it wasn't even finished. I hadn't put it thru the blender yet and it was big chunks of liver, onions, and hard-boiled eggs. YUM! He pronounced it disgusting but at the whole bowl anyways, because he was 'hungry.' 

I'm ready to strangle him. I miss my little helpers. Yes, they made huge messes in my kitchen, but sharing the holiday preparations with my kids was delightfully special. I loved watching their kitchen skills progress, their interest in combining ingredients grown, and their ability to change a recipe to suit our tastes take hold. I don't like these snarling teenagers that just want to take, take, take and do little to nothing in return. I know it's a phase, but do I have to like this phase? Because right now, I do not like it at all.