Middle School Sartorial Choice

Summer vacation is in full swing, my daughter is away at camp (she hasn’t written home yet, so I must assume she’s having too much fun to write Mom) and her final report card arrived today. She did terrific, earning a place on the honor roll.

Middle school (or as some call it, Junior High) is admittedly tough, and I can honestly say that the rites and rituals really haven’t significantly changed since I was of the age not quite a quarter century ago (in the mid-80s). This was the first academic year where my daughter was told flat out by her teachers that her academic performance would influence her choices in high school and college. What was interesting and at times, worrying, was that there were subjects she loved and others she didn’t hold as much affection for. This was the first year I worried about her performance in math, as it’s in middle school where girls start to lag behind their male counterparts. And I can say we’ve come a long way in encouraging our girls to participate in sports – I was a two sport Mom this year, but I think she may try private leagues next year to develop skills and more intensive coaching.

Socially, I can tell you that this was the year when it seemed nearly all of the girls she was friends with the year prior became…catty, although thankfully by the end of the year, she did find a few strong girlfriends. Oh. The. Socializing. With boys, in fact. Weekend evenings of driving since (rather unfortunately) our school district is geographically expansive, so sometimes my hot Friday nights included ~40 minutes of driving. (Which is exactly what you want to do after a long week. I’ll miss these days when she goes off to college, right?) This was the first year where I had to ask before social events “Will there be boys there?” Or “Will you be meeting them somewhere?” and “Where are the other parents?” To which I get a bewildered response of “So how do you know?” (I was your age once too, you know.) For the parents of my daughter’s best friend, a boy she liked who morphed into a friend, we each have our phone numbers on speed dial. For other parents, there’s been the awkward introductory emails or even more awkward greetings.

It was a year of (seemingly) hours in the bathroom getting ready for events, a few grumpy morning drives to school, the “Mommmm can I chat for a few more minutes before doing my homework?”, the “I don’t want to go to bed, I’m not tired” and the cross generational favorite, “But Mom, my friends are ALL going there/doing that/jumping off a bridge.” Some things never change, apparently, as I remember having more than a few of these exchanges back in the day. Mine were usually over long calls on the house phone (anybody remember the star code to interrupt a caller on a landline?), while these days it’s the cell phone, the text messaging, the Facebooking and the other forms of electronic communication.

It was a year of dealing with style and body image. “Mom I don’t look good at all!” I’d sometimes hear. Clothes weren’t that much of a problem, as there is a school dress code and pretty much all the kids shop at the same stores. Rather, the bigger problems were of finding shorts long enough (the girls learned to wear spandex underneath, which I thought ingenious), jeans that were reasonably in one piece and shirts that were stylish yet not that grown up. (Bra shopping, however, is a entirely different story.) It seems that the girls of today don’t wear as much makeup – some coverup, mascara, eyeliner and maybe some eyeshadow and gloss if it’s really special. On the other hand, back in the day, we only got tan if we went outside. I was asked permission to bleach and then color hair green and turquoise and about piercings. (Yes to the hair coloring, only after having my daughter talk to a stylist about the procedure and a no to the piercings, because you don’t want to alter your body now do you?) Of course, after I let my daughter bleach and color a few streaks of her hair a few times, the enthusiasm waned.

But boy, oh boy – this was the first school year did I ever feel I earned the grades on the report card I held in my hands…or perhaps I really did earn the encroaching gray hairs on my head.

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photo credit: Gilles San Martin

A few years ago, when my daughter was in elementary school and came home one day with a note from the school nurse, declaring a lice outbreak. No sharing of hairbrushes or of hats, all bookbags and coats needed to be stored in plastic bags at school. Not long after that note, I get a call from the nurse, my daughter had lice and she couldn’t come back to school until the lice and nits were removed.

I was horrified. Lice?!? Isn’t that a problem for other people? To other families whose kids don’t wash their hair? Or a dirty household? What does this say about me as a mom? As a kid growing up in suburbia in the 80s, my classmates and I got the cursory lice check but we never had an outbreak.

In fact, until my daughter had lice, I never even knew what a louse or a nit (louse eggs) even looked like, nevermind try to stop an infestation.

Since the school district had a no-nit policy, I ended up taking a few days off of work, but thankfully my then boss who had no kids was understanding. Let’s just say that my initial attempts to rid the lice were unsuccessful and I failed the no-nit check by the school nurse the first time I tried bringing my daughter back to school. I should also note that my daughter – at the time – had long hair and hated getting her hair combed. Trust me, I had more than a few fantasies of cutting her hair short.

The first lesson I learned about removing lice and nits and this, while there are all sorts of lice removal preparations on the market, the only way to remove an infestation is to soak the hair in olive oil or mayo (as the pediatrician’s office recommended) and comb the hair thoroughly. Soaking the hair overwhelms the lice and combing removes the attached nits. Comb comb comb. And comb some more. Procure a shower cap if you don’t have one already handy and let your child’s hair soak for an hour or so.

The other unsaid, but very very useful tip is to trash the commercial nitcombs that and go for dog flea comb. You’ll get over the ick factor quickly after you realize that these combs are not only sturdier, but they are easier to use.

I can’t say enough about Tea Tree Oil shampoo, which is a natural lice repellent. Once I heard about it’s use, I went straight to the natural foods store in town and got the biggest bottle and used it until it was gone. We didn’t have an re-infestation.

Also while vacuuming the house entirely 3 or 4 times may make you feel better, lice are unable to jump. You should wash in hot water any clothing, hats or linens that your child comes in contact with. It’s recommended that you purchase new hairbrushes and combs to stop a re-infestation.

And what reminded me of that now long ago lice outbreak? I just heard that my former boss, who was understanding (ok, a few nitpicking jokes) during those stressful few days, is now dealing with a lice outbreak at his child’s school.

Update 1: After we published our story, a representative from Lice Treatment Center LLC a company which provides in home and organizational lice removal services reached out to us via Twitter letting us know that they are here to help and are available nationwide in the US.

Update 2: Cozy Friedman CEO of Cozy’s Cuts For Kids reached out to via Twitter to let us know that Tea tree oil shampoo is available outside health food stores now. Brands like Boo! are in salons & drug stores.

Update 3: Wouldn’t you know it? A few months after writing this post, my daughter got lice again…this time from her summer sleepaway camp. Here we go again.

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The latest game among my group of friends?

Rating each other on a scale of zero, a pushover, to Tiger Mom, a fierce mom like Amy Chua, who sprung to fame via The Wall Street Journal about her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

“Oh yeah, she’s tough. She’s a tiger mom, we whisper.”

One friend was relieved to find another mother who she knew was tougher than her.

How do you rate your parenting style? Take the survey at SkinnyScoop.

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Arizona victim Christina Taylor Green was nine years old

I want my kids to have the right to call you a slime bag or an idiot and not get shot. I want them to be able to attend a political debate as nine-year old Christina Taylor Green (see photo to left) did on Saturday morning in Arizona when she was shot dead along with five others. I want them to be able to engage in debate over the most vexed of issues:  abortion, gun control, health care, etc., and still feel safe.

Is that the case here? Is our freedom of speech being whittled away by other people’s freedom to carry arms, even semi-automatic weapons?

After more than 15 years living in the United States, we are returning to live in Australia later this year although we are all  U.S. citizens.

We’d already made our minds to leave before Saturday’s shooting, which left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford in a medically-induced coma after an innocent meet and greet outside a local Safeway in Tucson, Arizona.

But somehow the shooting has added fear to my long list of why it is  really time to go.

• I do not want my children to grow up with the right to carry semi automatic weapons.
• I do not want them to grow up thinking that this is a reasonable right.
• I don’t want them living near people who want to exercise that right.
• I don’t want them near people who think that it is their right to carry a concealed weapon as they go about their shopping at Safeway, Walmart, pick up their kids from childcare or borrow books from the college library.

I fear for my children’s safety in a land where the response of many politicians to Saturday’s massacre in Arizona is to carry their own concealed weapons.

I fear for their lives if they attend an American college, where random shootings seem to have become routine.

I do want them growing up in a society with a lively debate. And I don’t want them thinking that if they call someone “brain damaged,” “a slime bag,” “a pig” or “a gutless spiv”  —- some of the least offensive words used in the Australian Parliament by former Prime Minister, Paul Keating —- they could get shot. See Keating Insults Archive.

I’d prefer they keep their cursing to a minimum, or at least to the car .when they’re old enough to drive .. and respond to people with civility.

But we shouldn’t have to fear that if you get angry or call someone a name, you’ll get shot.

That’s a fear I’ve known since arriving in the U.S.

I remember a time in Philadelphia when my husband and the driver of another car came to a dead stop in the middle of an intersection.  Neither could agree on who had right of way.

Both men got out of their cars, and started yelling at each other.

My biggest fear was that the other man had a gun. When I looked over at the other man’s girlfriend, she was trembling. She was equally afraid that my husband was carrying a weapon. We both begged them to get back in the car.

No matter what someone calls you, or you call them, it doesn’t warrant picking up a gun and shooting that person.

As mothers don’t we tell our kids that? At least we do. “It doesn’t matter who called you stupid, or an idiot, you can’t hit back.”

As Gail Collins said yesterday in The New York Times, “A Right to Bear Glocks?”:

“The amazing thing about the reaction to the Giffords shooting is that virtually all the discussion about how to prevent a recurrence has been focusing on improving the tone of our political discourse. That would certainly be great. But you do not hear much about the fact that Jared Loughner came to Giffords’s sweet gathering with a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their sale expired in 2004 and Congress did not have the guts to face up to the National Rifle Association and extend it. ”

It frightens me that anyone can walk into a gun shop or a supermarket, in some parts of this country, and pick up a gun and kill six people easily as Loughner shot nine- year old girl, Christina Taylor Green.

I love living in the United States, and am terribly sad to be leaving, but the high incidence of gun violence (the U.S. is just behind Brazil, Mexico and Estonia) makes me fear for my children’s safety.

Australia isn’t perfect.  Far from it. It has shootings, too. But the gun controls are much tougher. The stats show that gun related deaths in the U.S. are nearly six to seven times as great as in Australia and New Zealand, and about 12 times higher than Japan.

I know many foreign-born U.S. citizens like me just don’t get the Second Amendment.  I could tolerate the right to bear arms — although I’d disagree with it — but I agree totally with Gail Collins. The right to bear semi-automatic weapons is ludicrous.

Don’t we value the lives of the people who lost their lives  in Arizona more than that?

Photo credit: CNN

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Thanks to our virtual friends …

What do you do when you and your kids go off the rails?

It happens to me as regularly as the trains that run on those cliched rails, but I never seem to get the schedule ahead of time. Usually about every six months something goes badly wrong and a happy  family becomes, for a week or so, a horror show.

Angels by day, devils by night

I am steaming through life, and BAM!, it starts.  Like a month or so ago when my kids wouldn’t shut up or go to sleep or listen or go into time out, or do anything because I am apparently a stupid mother!

“We hate you, mom! You are so MEAN!!!! And by the way, you are just a weird Australian who doesn’t get us Americans and you talk funny. Really funny. MOM!”

To start the week, we had one of those nightmare bedtimes that were inches away from a weirdly enough headline like, “Fan chops boys hand off” or “Mom swats boy’s shoulder in half with amazing karate chop.”

I heard a whirring noise from their bedroom, only to discover one of my twin boys trying to stop the fan on the ceiling with his hand.  He said he was trying to reach for the cord. I swatted his hand away from imminent amputation, and got his shoulder instead.

He started crying, accusing me of hitting him, yelling how much he hated me.  With his twin egging him on, he cried and laughed, mocking me for everything I said and did.

It was a swat rather than a karate chop.

For the three hours, or so it felt, both of my twins ranted and raved, jumped up and down, asked for water, milk, gin and tonics (joking … that was me) and screamed and acted nothing like the sweet little boys who had come from school that day. They wanted snacks, they were hungry, they needed to go to the bathroom AGAIN, they hated me, they loved me, they were too hot, too cold, they were scared, he hit me, get him out of my bed and did I mention they were hungry and needed food, milk, water and snacks and more food?

Their poor behavior and mine … I yelled plenty and threatened loss of privileges for a lifetime … shamed me. Made me feel like the worst failure of a parent in the world.

So I sought help from MomstoWork’s growing pearl of a community on Facebook.

I was amazed by how generous people were with their time. One discussed my children’s behavior over lunch with a pediatrician friend, and reported back with tips. Another mom with two kids checked in a few times on the Facebook discussion to see whether things had improved.

Valerie’s pediatrician friend advised:

“Absolutely no snacks after bedtime. It stimulates kids, encourages them to stay awake and is disruptive to sleep. To quote her: “If somebody brought you a snack in bed, wouldn’t that encourage you to stay awake and alert?”"

The kitchen is closed! Really

Kerry told me to be firm, not give in and close the kitchen.

The poor behavior continued that week.

Everyone checked back in. Others encouraged me to urge their dad to stick to the same lines. (Our ongoing argument is over his bedtime technique of rewarding the kids for being still and quiet in bed by saying, “You can have a glass of milk if you are still and quiet for 30 minutes.” I feel that’s encouraging them to stay awake.)

It did improve. And I felt better. And it reminded me that these periodical patches of poor parenting and crazy kids are often a great way to step back and reflect on what’s changed.

In my case, I hadn’t given full credit to the fact that it was Week Four of the new school year. Everyone was tired after getting up earlier for several weeks and the excitement of the new school year had dissipated. And I don’t know about you, but there are days when getting the kids into bed by 8 p.m. is unrealistic.

I pick them up at 6 p.m. from childcare two days a week, often discover the homework not done, despite promises to the contrary, then it is home to cook dinner, eat, finish homework, discuss the day’s news … Some nights it is closer to 9 p.m by the time the teeth, story and bed show gets under way.

I figure it is like this for many working families at the end of the day. Sometimes we all get too tired, give in to inconsistent behavior and we all go to bed way too late.

The following weeks have been much better.

But it made me feel very grateful to my circle of virtual friends and the many friends who email and call to catch up, give support, and just gossip, when there’s  no time to see each other.

I think that’s something us moms do well.

My question: What do you do when you have a bad parenting moment?

I promise if you want to ask a question on our Facebook page, we’ll cheer you on and come to your virtual rescue.

In the meantime, for all the criticism of the time we spend online, it is also worth remembering the upside … the virtual friends who spare a moment to send a supportive tweet although they may be living in a different time zone. The women and men who share a joke on Facebook that makes you smile after a crap day at work. The people on sites like TheSkinnyScoop who make you realize you are not as crazy as you may have thought.

So dear readers, please accept my thanks for being so nice to us at MomstoWork.

Come back again, and hey, remember, we love your guest posts!!!

MomstoWork cofounder,

Julie Power

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If your kids aren’t back at school already (if that’s the case, you have my sympathy), they soon will be.

Today I am listening to the Go Back-to-school without the Back-to-Crazy Webinar presented by Laura Vanderkam of 168 hours book and blog fame and Current Mom’s Katherine Lewis.

And I am going to attempt to update this post as it happens, aka live blogging. A first for me so be kind and feel free to add corrections or comments below.

The hashtag if you want to follow the discussion is #168hours on Twitter.

Now for Laura Vanderkam’s presentation …

“Going back to school is a momentous time for all of us,” says Laura. “We often think of September as a return to craziness, but there are some real upsides to back to school,”  says Laura.

“It is a return to reliable schedules and a return to pursuing your professional goals. Others are going back to school yourself, and that’s very exciting, looking to balance class time and balance your life. Time management is a universal topic. By end of session, hope you’ll have more techniques to manage your time. Learn where the time goes, and decide as a family where to focus your attention: How to have bits of joy and other important things.

“Make space for the things that really matter.”

What is 168 hours?

What is 168 hours? It is what you get when you multiply 24 hours times seven.

It is a better way to think about time. It gives us a fuller picture. In any given day, we may not achieve balance … kids may miss bus, we may be late to work, but we do have other time during the week to make up.

If you work 40, and sleep X amount, you’ll still have 52 hours or more to do other things.

Why the disconnect? Who do we think we have so little time?

One narrative is the time crunch. That goes: Between two jobs, etc., we barely have time to sleep. When the National Sleep Federation calls to survey,  most people claim to sleep only six or seven hours a night.

When you probe deeper, the fundamental problem is people lie.

Oh do we lie!

Not on purpose. But I’ve found the American Time Use Survey, which required thousands of respondents to log data, paints a different picture of American life.

The average American sleeps over 8 hours a night.  Not just retirees. American moms sleep 8 hours.

The average work week is 35 to 40 hours. And the average person claiming to work 80 hours is really only working 60 hours.

Even when it comes to something as simple as estimates of h0w long we spend washing dishes, people exaggerate how much time it takes.

Most of us can’t even recall how we spent weekends. (Ain’t that the truth? something us folk at MomstoWork know.)

First step to understanding how you spend your time is tracking it.

You can download a time log from Laura’s website with instructions. Keep it with you and be specific.

You can write down “work” but more helpful to say, “email” or “meeting.”

Great idea:Think of yourself as a lawyer billing a client. Because time is a currency.

And break down time into categories … working, personal care, etc.

Later, tally it and ask, “Does this reflect my priorities?’

When I did it, I found checking email was taking up more of my time than I thought, and I wasn’t reading to my son as much as I wanted.  Why? I was bored with the books. Solution: I ordered prize winners.

Keeping a time log isn’t easy. It isn’t intuitive. Important to do it because it keeps you accountable.

I am hosting a 168- hour challenge. Posting my time log on my site and you can log with me, in the comments, on your own blog, on the 168 hours Facebook fanpage, or on twitter using the same hashtag #168hours.

Note: Vanderkam will  be doing a time makeover for someone.

Think of your 168 hours as a time makeover.

Quotes a mom of six children, including 8 year old twins, who runs her own business, who says: “Every minute I spend is my choice.”

I don’t do X,Y or Z because it is NOT a priority. Often, this is a perfectly adequate explanation.  For example, sewing Halloween costumes isn’t a priority.

But then you try it on other things, more important things …

I am  not going to read to you because it isn’t a priority … help you with college applications.  Try it  .. yikes ..

Here’s another reason to think of your time as a blank slate. Fill it only with things that deserve to be there.

Recommends doing a  list of 100 dreams exercise. An unedited list of anything you want to do or have in your life, places you want to go, things you can do with your family, etc.

Dreams you have for all of you.

I had on my list write a book, go on family safari, etc.

Suggests everyone get out a pencil and paper.

My list: Get my house better organized, spend more time with my husband without the kids, spend more time with each of the kids by themselves.

(They’re having some technical problems but it is still a good Webinar with good ideas.)

What did others say?

Nancy said: “More time volunteering and doing hospice care.”

Katie said: “I received a car from my dad and I want to get that restored.”

Katherine Lewis: “Wants to learn Chinese, and get down to her college weight and pay for college education, book proposal, etc.”

Stacy: “Learn to play polo and do (something?) crew.”

I’m quoted. Hey! I want to spend more time with each of my kid’s alone.

Laura says many people share my goal.

Denise: “Wants to be a better, more informed teacher with a philosophy I can believe in when I return to work after being a stay at home mom for nine year. ”

Charlotte: “Training for the army 10 miler.”

Back to Laura ..

Great recommendation: Do this 100 dreams exercise with your kids, your spouse, yourself.

One of the things which was on my list. I wanted fresh flowers and nice green plants on my desk. Didn’t take too long. Now I have that.

I also wanted to attend a concert. That didn’t take too long.

The point is to see what you like and who you don’t. And you may not even like the things on the list once you try them.

Start small, and then attack bigger things. I wanted to run longer races, like Big Sur marathon in April, so I broke it down. Now I’ve done it, it is off my list of 100 dreams.

You’ll discover more about yourself and your core competencies.

Companies do this … but core competences are things you do best that others don’t do as well. You want to be spending a lot of your time on those things that you do best, which others don’t do as well.

Usually they fit into three categories:

• Nurturing your career
• Nurturing family and close friends, such as spending one on one time with kids and building a solid marriage, and
• Nurturing yourself, such as a hobby.

If you focus most of your time on these things, you won’t feel busy. If you spend your time working on moving your career forward, or on going back to the workplace, you will be focusing on things you want to do. If you focus on nurturing your spouse or your kids …

Break down things on your list into doable chunks and block them into your schedule.

We live in a distracted world. And Twitter, email, pottering around the house, watching TV, will easily fill the time. So block the calendar, put in blocks of time.

For example:

• 6 to 8am could be great time to learn to row with another family member.
• 9 to 12 noon could be a great time for focused work, such as writing a book proposal, and
• in the afternoons, you could schedule things that can be interrupted such as writing a blog post or stopping by a language site to learn.
• 4 to 8 is often time with kids for many of us. You could carve out a time to spend some time alone with one of them.
• after dinner. Good time for studying, learning, time for working on a proposal, etc.

Ignore, minimize or outsource those things that aren’t your core competencies.

For example, I ignore emails! (Me too)

Great option for house work. It isn’t a core competency for many of us.
You can ignore, lower your standards, outsource (I do all of these and keep to my strength, cooking and yapping!) if you can afford it to laundry or house cleaning. Or ask your kids make lunch or buy twice a week and order groceries online.

Don’t over think dinner.

Buy up stocks of underwear so you don’t have to wash.

Get spouse and kids to be more self sufficient.

Sometimes we think we have to do everything.

Little boxes, little boxes, and they’re all made of minutes that turn into hours

Important thing is to free up blocks of time. We have time but we may think we have to do something else. Get those off your plate and honor your core competencies.

Many women want to spend less time organizing being the family social secretary, organizing home work, housework, getting husbands to control calendar.

Housework? Ignore, minimize or outsource.

Lessening the commute? In cases like this, you need to come up with other things to do during your commute. Making waiting a little less stressful or think about alignment, a special form of multitasking.

We have a fair amount of leisure time, but the problem is most of it comes in small chunks. And we can get better than that by carving out small chunks of times.

When you can’t get rid of small chunks, make two lists.

The homework:

Pick some  things that only take 30 to 60 minutes. Take a walk, etc.

And then make a list of things that only take 10 minutes.

For example, one woman had 10 minutes in the car between kids drop off times, so she read Hardy Boys books to her sons in the car.

Doesn’t sound like much, but over a week that added up to 50 minutes to an hour.

Which brings us to the end of the  Webinar  … and questions:

“If you are working somewhere until 6pm, you need to use weekday evenings, what are the strategies for that? ” Time during work where we can build things in. During commute, listen to audio books. Lunch break .. for learning Chinese, writing a book proposal.

Many of us tired at night … so we don’t think about what we want to achieve.

Think of how you want to spend that four-hour block.

For example, I want to do something active with my kids, ride a bike, and read a chapter of my book.  We need to be just as strategic about how we spend our nonworking hours as how we spend our working hours.

Wrapping up … check out Current Mom, etc.

What do you plan to do differently? What do you ignore?  I am notorious for ignoring my expenses. Crazy? Maybe, but they piss me off.

yes, you can do it all without going crazy

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These cards will have pride of place on my fridge. They’re part of a wonderful series by OliveSandwiches.com, matching retro images with modern themes.

I resign as general manager of the universe!

Also loved this one:

Reminded me of our MomstoWork video: Moms say NO!

Can you say no? Do you say no? Or are you always the one who says yes and regrets it later? The old saying, “No good deed goes unpunished,” seems to often ring true for me.

Or does guilt drive you to say yes to your children? Go on, vent in the comments field. If I like what you say, I am going to buy you a card and send it to you in the mail — yes, I will go to the Post Office for YOU.

Psst: I found these at Barnes and Noble in Bethesda.

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No names is best perhaps

How do you protect the anonymity of  your children online? Do you use fake names or nicknames? Or do you use your children’s real names online?

Consumer Reports recently found that among adult social network users, 38% had posted their full birth date, including year. And 45% of those with children had posted their children’s photos. And 8% had posted their own street address.

It also found 26% of adult Facebook users with children posted those children’s photos and names.

It’s hard to blog or use social networks without mentioning those whom we mother and love. But in our rush to show off our child’s latest achievements … those photos of your darling with a bowl upside down on his head … are we putting the ones we love most at risk?  Are we abusing the online privacy of our children in our rush to show off how cute they are?

Please tell us how you handle this by taking the MomsToWork survey here (no names required ) and we’ll post the results online for everyone to see.

Please take the MomsToWork quiz here before you go. You can read our other post on children’s privacy online here.

Cute expat kids by Shermee on Flickr. Available by Creative Commons License

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