10 Random Things about Mama Me, Ah...

Image credit: Photo by Lattenwald on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

My friend Mama over at The Elmo Wallpaper riffed on the Facebook "25 Random Things" meme and started her own "10 Things" meme. She did 10 random things about herself as a mama, and while I think she'd be happy with any 10 things, I'm going to stick to mamadom too. I was going to save this for Haiku Friday, but I decided that -- between sleep deprivation and sick kiddos -- this is about all my brain can handle. So, I'm going to bang out a little list as I eat some Pillsbury turtle cookies and wait for the kids to fall asleep.

1. I hate parenting books. I read a few when my son was born. The ones I read espoused philosophies from opposite ends of the parenting spectrum and used what a friend of mine used to call "the friendless alcoholic" technique to support their points (and sell their books): "if you spank/don't spank, wear your baby/let your baby cry, sleep in a family bed/have you child to sleep alone, then your child will grow up to be a friendless alcoholic." There was absolutely no evidence to support any of the claims about what was right for the child other than the author's opinion. I had my own opinions and beliefs, so out the books went.


2. One of my beliefs is that -- short of actively abusing or neglecting kids -- I can't really screw up this whole parenting thing, and I try to remind myself of that when I'm stressing over not getting some relatively minor thing quite right.


3. I think the most important work I do as a parent is to model for my children how I want them to behave and that's what drives me to keep learning, growing, changing and working on myself. If I want my children to show compassion, I need to show compassion. If I want them to have good boundaries and be able to stand up for themselves, I need to have good boundaries and stand up for myself. If I want them to have happy, loving relationships, I need to show them what those relationships look like. I work to be the person I want them to be.


4. I thought I would love pretend play games with my kids, but I can't stand it. Unfortunately, it is my daughter's absolute favorite thing to do. Fortunately, her brother likes playing with her if he's around, and they are super cute together.


5. I love to color in coloring books, but my kids never go for my suggestions that we color together.


6. I love playing video games with my kids, but again I think I like it more than they do because I'm always the one suggesting that we play. Sometimes they play with me, sometimes they turn me down. I want to set up my Wii to be able to play with Jay so I don't have to rely on my kids to beat me at Mario Kart.


7. I used to use video game time to reward my son for eating new things. Now he doesn't care about video games enough for this to work. I'd have to charge him to access playing cards and board games if I really wanted results now.


8. I have no limits on how much TV, video game or computer time the kids have. I didn't have any limits on this as a child either. I mostly chose to read instead. My kids mostly choose to do other things, but when they don't, I'm ok with that.


9. My kids currently participate in zero organized activities outside school, in part because it seems like the thing to do and I tend to not want to do the thing to do. (I don't have problems with authority, shut up.)


10. I'm stealing my last one from Jay: the most important thing I've learned is that my children will show me how to be their mother if I can slow down and really listen to them.