Saturday, April 29, 2017

The Mom of Many Things

Recently, I was asked why I am the Mom of No.  Why not the Mom of Yes, or the Mom of Kindness, or the Mom of Because I Said So?  I realized then that maybe it's time for a refresher course on how the Mom of No became the Mom of No.

This is what happened: The Son of Never Stops Eating was sitting in the living room one night, and he decided to hit me up to buy something, probably a Lego set.  He asked me, and I said no, so his response was "Mom, don't be the Mom of No! Be the Mom of Yes!" I posted that on Facebook, and the Mom of No thing just kind of took off.

When I was a teenager, and my own parents were being the Parents of Not Letting the Teenager Do Anything Fun, I would sit in my room, sulking and writing in my diary statements like "When I have kids I am going to be the nicest  mom ever and let them do whatever they want instead of making them follow stupid made up rules that make no sense!"

(Brief pause here to allow people to stop laughing so they can get back to reading)

I went through my twenties having blissfully forgotten that promise to myself about not making my kids follow stupid made up rules and then I became a parent myself. For the first 18 months or so of the Teenager's life I was the Mom of I have Never Been This Tired In My Entire Life as well as the Mom of Didn't We Just Buy A Package of Diapers? I discovered that there were all these different parenting "styles": Free Range. Helicopter. I even saw a book about something called "Dolphin Parenting".  My parenting style was more along the lines of "I have no idea what I'm doing, but I don't want anyone to know this".   I suspect now that most of the other mothers I knew at the time felt the same way, but none of us wanted to admit it.

Then my sweet little infants became toddlers, and I then discovered that you have to have rules otherwise the devious little darlings would overthrow the parents and reign over the household like little tyrants. 

That's when I became the Mom of Mean, because I wouldn't buy M&Ms every time we went to the grocery store, and I had rules that probably seemed arbitrary and silly to 4 year olds: for example, we do not flush toys down the toilet to see what will happen (answer: plumber, $250),  and a rule about how just because we are driving past a McDonald's does not mean we are going INTO the McDonald's, and a rule about how it is not nice to scream at the top of your lungs and throw goldfish crackers in the car when Mommy is sitting in a traffic jam on the interstate.

I could also be the Mom of Fun: I took the kids to the park and the zoo, and in the summer we went to the spray park. To be honest, some of this was because I was actually being sneaky and was in reality the Mom of Ulterior Motives because nothing wears out a 6 year old like spending five hours at a spray park. 

As the kids got older, I became the Mom of I'm Sorry You Have the Mean Teacher, but I'm Not Calling the School and the Mom of I am Not Doing Your Homework Because I Already Graduated.  But I'll also admit that when it came down to a choice between making the kids clean their rooms or going to the park on a beautiful, sunny day- I was the Mom of Who Cares if The House is Messy?

Now I have teenagers, and I am the Mom of I Don't Want You to Leave Me but I'm also the Mom of When You Move Out, I'm Turning Your Bedroom Into a Library.  I'm getting notices about "Class of 2018 Parent Meetings" and friends of mine are starting to talk about senior pictures.  The Teenager has her own part-time job and the Son of Never Stops Eating spends his free time talking on the phone to his friend about something called Minecraft.  On that one, I am the Mom of I Have No Idea What You are Talking About. 

So sometimes I am the Mom of Suck it Up, or the Mom of I am NOT Paying for That, and sometimes I am the Mom of Yes, Donuts for Breakfast! or the Mom of Letting the Teenagers Sleep In Instead of Waking Them Up to Do Chores.  When it comes to buying Legos, I am always the Mom of No- that is what his allowance money is for.  But like many other mothers out there, I am in reality the Mom of Many Things. 

Saturday, April 22, 2017

The Low Bar Easter

Yes, I know.  You're reading this, thinking, hasn't Easter already happened? Yes, it has.  However, I couldn't write about this before, because then I'd be giving away the Household of No Easter Bunny secrets, and also because I didn't actually get around to doing any Easter stuff because I was busy doing other things, and all of a sudden it was the week before Easter and at that point, why bother to put up any decorations? I'd just have to take them down again.  I still actually have my Valentine's Day decorations up. (Side note: by decorations, what I am really referring to is a decorative plate on my fireplace mantel).

What happened was that I never got around to buying stuff for the adolescents' Easter baskets.  In past years I would get organized before Ash Wednesday, slowly buying little gifts and treats that I knew they would really like. This parenting tradition involved going to several stores and some creative thinking on my part.  This year, I just never got around to it.  Also, there was this little voice inside my brain that had started saying. "Um, aren't your kids getting a little old for the Easter Bunny?" 

Yes, I know. You are never really too old for the Easter Bunny. Or is that Santa Claus?  Oh, never mind.  I have no idea if there is a traditional age at which the Easter Bunny stops coming to your house, but whatever it is, my offspring are probably rapidly approaching it.

So the week before Easter, I was at Target with the Son of Never Stops Eating. Of course, they had Easter stuff all over the place, and that's when I realized that (1) Easter was in less than 7 days; (2) Now would be a good time to buy the Easter basket stuff, and (3), I had one of the adolescents with me.  I was going to have to be the Mom of Thinking Fast and Acting Quickly.

Go find something to do, I told the Son of Never Stops Eating.  I don't really care what it is, as long as it doesn't involve me getting paged over the announcement system. 

Can I look at the Legos, he asked me.  Yes, I told him.  Just go.  He gave me a strange look, but he went.

I ran over to the Target Starbucks and bought a gift card, then I grabbed two bags of milk chocolate Easter eggs, one huge bag of Bubble Yum chewing gum (the Teenager's favorite) and a bag of M&M's (the Son of Never Stops Eating is a chocoholic).  Then I went through the checkout line and added a Target gift card to my pile.

Just as the cashier started checking me out, the Son of Never Stops Eating reappeared.  Go away, I told him.  Go out to the front. I'll be there in a minute.

Can I have a Lego City Lego set? He asked me. I gave him a Mom Glare.  He fled the scene, and I continued my top secret Easter Bunny shopping mission.

After having successfully done my Easter Bunny shopping without raising the suspicion of any nosy teenagers, I woke up early on Easter morning, put the Starbucks gift card with the gum and one package of chocolate eggs, the Target gift card with the M&Ms and the other package of chocolate eggs, wrapped rubber bands around the gift card and candy, and put the piles on the kitchen table. Then I went back to bed.  Yes, I could have put the candy in the Easter baskets, but the baskets were actually still in the attic.  Climbing up into the attic at 1 AM seemed like a bad safety practice.

When the Teenagers woke up later that morning (or, it might have been afternoon) they were both thrilled with their loot.  So there you go, the successful Low Bar Parenting Easter Basket. 

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Driving Toward Adulthood

When The Teenager was a newborn, one of the nurses brought her to me while we were still both in the hospital, and left her with me in the room for awhile.  This was when I realized that it had been a long time since I'd changed a diaper, and that it was not as easy as it appeared.  I think it probably took me ten minutes to change that first diaper. The postpartum nurses were likely telling each other in quiet whispers, "The parenting force is not with this one". Every baby-related task seemed to require a substantial amount of time, and forget multitasking.  If Mom Skills are supposed to descend upon you automatically at the birth of your firstborn, the bestowing passed me by.

Then the Son of Never Stops Eating was born, and I could change his diapers or feed him anywhere, anytime, usually while doing something else at the same time, often with his older sister yelling "MOMMY! WANT GO OUTSIDE NOW!" at the top of her lungs while simultaneously trying to climb up my leg. In a speed diaper changing contest, I could have definitely held my own.  The Mom Skills had, somehow, become instinctual.

The Dad of No and I are currently in the process of teaching the Teenager how to drive (prayers and good vibes welcome). It's made me realize how much of an instinctual process driving has become for me, after having had a driver's license for nearly 30 years.  I take knowing things for granted: how much time it will take me to stop my car at a certain rate of speed.  How long that light at the next intersection will stay green.  How long it will take that car barreling towards me from the other direction to reach the intersection I want to turn into.  The Teenager, being new to driving, hasn't acquired this instinctual knowing yet.

This is why we sit at intersections waiting to make turns for a longer period of time than drivers behind us might like, as sometimes indicated by the enthusiastic use of car horns. I tell the Teenager to not let that bother her;  I am the Mom of Please Drive Cautiously to Avoid Collisions With Oncoming Traffic. 

Learning how to drive is essentially the story of learning how to be an adult. As adults, we know things- or, as a friend of my daughter's told me a few weeks ago, adults are just really good at faking that we know things.  However, those of us who have been adults for awhile can sometimes forget that we didn't always know what we know now, because, like driving a car, we have been doing it for so long and it has become so routine that we just take it for granted that everyone knows the same things that we know. 

At least in the area I live in, there is often reluctance to let older kids and teenagers try on some independence and learn some risk assessment.  It's as if we operate under an assumption that when a kid turns 18, the ability to become an adult is somehow magically imparted to them. This is why, as the Teenager gets closer to that milestone birthday, I have to sometimes stop and take a deep breath and remember, I didn't know everything at her age either, although I thought I did. 

Getting a driver's license might be the first time a teenager is confronted with the reality that actions or mistakes can have serious real life consequences.  Driving a car is a huge responsibility, and a giant step towards adulthood.  The Teenager, much to her credit, is taking this responsibility seriously and proceeding cautiously. So if you are behind our car, and the Teenager is behind the wheel,  have some patience for us.  We're working on driving toward adulthood.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Creating Memories

Very recently, the Teenager joined the ranks of taxpaying citizens by acquiring a part-time job.  She's excited about making some money, which she says she is going to save for some clarinet-related item that she says she needs but that her mother is too frugal to pay for. I suspect that she'll spend a lot of her hard earned bucks on frozen yogurt and Starbucks, but it's her money. She can do what she wants with it, as long as she remembers that Mother's Day is in about a month and her mother really likes coffee. 

On her first day of work, I was really tempted to go over to her workplace with my camera and take  a bunch of pictures for the family photo album (yes, the same one I haven't actually put any photos in since 2010).  The devil was sitting on my shoulder, telling me, "Go over there! She'll love it! You can gush all over her and tell her what a great job she's doing, introduce yourself to her boss, take a lot of pictures, and tell all the customers to be nice to your kid or else you're going to hunt them down!"

After I thought about this for a few minutes, I decided that actually getting in my car and going over to where the Teenager was working and making a spectacle of myself would probably be a bad idea. To start with, the Teenager would probably never speak to me again.  From a teenager point of view, it would probably be highly embarrassing to have your mother show up with a camera while you're trying to work.  Also, no one else (with one exception) seemed to think that going to observe the Teenager at work was a good idea. 

My co-workers said to leave her alone.
My friends said to leave her alone.
The Dad of No said to leave her alone.

The Son of Never Stops Eating, the outlier of the bunch, was enthusiastically ready to go over there with me and assist in the shenanigans. 

It doesn't really matter anyway, that I failed to get a photo of The Teenager On Her First Day of Work.  I haven't done a good job of getting pictures of all the other milestones past kindergarten.  I think I have a photo of her first day of middle school, and I am fairly certain that I have one of the first day of tenth grade, because in it both she and her brother were looking like they were headed off to be audited by the IRS instead of going to school. 

I asked her if I could take a picture of her sitting in the driver's seat of the car after getting her learner's permit and she rolled her eyes and said "Do I have to? I really need to get back to school". That's okay though; after driving around town with a learner driver, I have plenty of gray hair to remember this rite of passage. I don't need pictures.

I think I may actually have more pictures of birds than I do of my own kids, now that I think about it.

This particular milestone on the way to adulthood will have to go undocumented photographically.  I'm sure that there will be plenty of other memories- the pride of getting her first paycheck; the agony of realizing that The Man took some of it (I did warn her). 

I'm also sure that this will probably be just one of many milestones to come that will not be photographed by her mother, probably because her mother won't be there.  I'm fairly certain she will not want me following her around on her first day of college classes, for example.

In the meantime, if you are headed out to your favorite eating establishment, be nice to the people working behind the counter taking your order and making sure you get your food.  One of them may be the Teenager, working hard to earn her clarinet/Starbucks cash, and making her first contributions to Social Security.

Monday, April 3, 2017

Autism Awareness Month

First, a warning.  The Mom of No is about to become The Mom of Making a Political Blog Post. If this troubles you, avert your eyes and read no further. 

April is Autism Awareness Month, and April 2nd was Autism Awareness Day.  This post is actually derived from a post I made on my personal Facebook wall, but people wanted to share it, and I am the Mom of Extreme Security Settings, so I am adapting it here.  If you know me, you know that my posts related to autism awareness tend to be outliers. This one won't be any different.

Several months ago, I was talking to someone about The Son of Never Stop's Eating's life planning, and she advised me to get a diagnosis of intellectual disability (ID) added to his diagnoses of autism and speech impairment.

The reason, in summary, is that a diagnosis of autism itself is evidently not good enough to guarantee access to services as an adult. The ID isn't either, but combined you have a better chance. I took this advice; long story short, the school diagnostician agreed to test him, and lo and behold, I have the ID diagnosis. 

Think about that for a moment. I need not one, not two, but three different disability labels to give my adolescent a chance to qualify for adult services.

The Dad of No and I have spent some substantial time and resources into doing our best to ensure that our son will be secure for the rest of his life, but unfortunately, even as a middle class family, we lack the means to completely meet his needs.  Therefore, he will be dependent, to some extent, on the "safety net" of government funded services.

I don't do blue ribbons, or puzzle pieces. I'm aware, but I long ago reached the point where I don't think awareness is enough. Even my state representative is aware (or claims to be), but my son (and many others) is still far enough down on the poorly funded waiver wait lists that he won't get to the top until he's in his mid-twenties. He was placed on the lists in 2009. 

What adult services there are for people with autism, or ID, or both, often have long wait lists, or they are private pay.  Imagine paying private college tuition out of pocket not just for four years, but for the rest of your child's life.  Being the parent of someone on the autism spectrum can be exhausting.  Every day is a fight- for school, for therapies, for caregiver respite, for recreational opportunities, even, for many families, access to a community of faith that will accept them.  The struggles don't end when the child turns 18. Once a special needs child exits from the public school system, the challenges continue.

I have come to the conclusion that as long as we are talking about cute little kids, people want to help, at least superficially. When we are talking about adults- people who will require the use of the societal safety net we seem to be willfully dismantling thread by thread-we care enough to give awareness our lip service but we don't care enough to put any skin in the game by committing actual resources to ensure that other people can have their basic needs met.

I'll be clear about this: assisting people with developmental disabilities is not a federal priority. It is not a state priority. It is not an American priority.  I live in a state and in a country where my son needs three disability labels to increase his chances of having access to the services he needs to live life in the community.  This is a country in which people are appalled when a child with a disability has no one show up to a birthday party, but they are absolutely fine with their elected officials cutting services for that child or adult to the bone.

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Rainy Day Slacker

It's early Sunday afternoon here at the Household of No, and rain is pouring steadily from the heavens.  Here's what I'm doing, besides glancing up at the ceiling every five minutes to see if we have any leaks from the hail storm that came through here earlier this week: nothing. 

Ok, that's not entirely accurate.  I'm writing this blog and drinking a cup of coffee.

Since I woke up, it's been raining.  I had plans to hike with a friend, but in addition to the rain it was also thundering and lightning, and while I'm not adverse to a little rain on a hike it seemed to both of us like a bad idea to go outside when the radar on my phone's weather app was showing the nature preserve squarely in the middle of the Zone of Doom.  So I woke up, and started doing nothing.

That's not actually right, either. I did do some stuff.  I put a pot roast in the crockpot (side note: I need to remember to buy carrots and onion powder the next time I go to the grocery store),  sat and thumbed through a Land's End catalog, surfed on Facebook for awhile, answered some e-mails, paid the cell phone bill, updated the iOS on my phone so that it would finally leave me alone about it, ate an English muffin for breakfast, and checked iNaturalist to see if anyone had identified a bird I'd uploaded that had me stumped.

The Son of Never Stops Eating and the Dad of No were at a Special Olympics basketball clinic and the Teenager was asleep, so the house was quiet and no one was asking about breakfast or where the colored pencils were or giving me paperwork for school that was supposed to have been turned in back in February but got "lost" in a backpack and "forgotten".  I was on my own. 

I felt like I should be doing more.

I have an entire list in my head of things that I should be doing: Finishing a crochet project from two years ago.  Going through my closet and culling t-shirts, because they've taken over the bedroom.  Baking bread from scratch.  Cleaning the refrigerator and/or the pantry. Going through the fifty catalogs sitting on the kitchen counter (honestly, I could just take those out to the recycle bin). Returning phone calls. Researching candidates for local office (elections are less than two months away!).  Organizing the binder that has recipes in it that I've cut out from magazines through the years.  Trying to figure out how to pay for college. Taking the Son of Never Stops Eating to buy another pair of shoes, because apparently his feet grew again without checking with me first.

But I don't want to do any of that stuff right now.  So why do I feel like such a slacker?

The second a woman gives birth to her firstborn, it seems like there is an unwritten Mom Rule that requires constant productivity.  If you're slacking, you better also have a temperature of 102.6 from an illness that requires strict quarantine. Otherwise, there's work to be done. 

Today, however, I feel fine.  I just don't want to actually do anything productive, because it's raining outside, I don't actually need to be anywhere, and everyone else in the household is slacking, because they can.  So I'm going to sit here, drink coffee, obsessively check my iNaturalist account, and try to figure out what the heck that iOS upgrade did to my phone.