Wayne & I have this feeling that we are not quite finished with parenting. For what it's worth, his own children choose not to soak in the opportunities that our parenting could provide. Their birth mother, Wayne's ex, has given them some information about how to be an adult, that conflicts with the information we've given to them. I'm astounded at the things they come up with from time to time, more astounded by the stuff they've come up with after a recent visit from her, but I've learned to live with the fact that they will always think we're pretty stupid and boring for thinking that a J-O-B is an important thing, and a TRIP TO EUROPE is something that comes after years of working, planning and saving up for it. We will never convince them that the summer before a last year of college is NOT their last chance for fun in life before the drudgery starts, but...
We hope they will eventually all be happily employed, and that the drudgery they anticipate will not be as bad as they fear. At this point, we have more energy to provide information than they have willingness to take.
So what does a parent do when they have more parenting in them than children available? They consider adoption. Well, not all do, some just consider waiting for the opportunity to be a grandparent, but we think grandparenting is the proper moment to spoil a child, and we hope that our older children will be launched, at least further than they are at the moment, before grandchildren arrive.
Before I met Wayne, I was considering adoption as a single parent, and several years ago, when I mentioned it to him, he thought it was nutty, until I mentioned that I had no intention of starting from scratch, at day one. I do NOT want to adopt an infant. I am selfish enough that I want to be able to retire someday. And I would like to have the kids finished with college before social security sets in... or at least close to finished. I don't want to be attending undergraduate graduation parties at age 75! Once he hear that, and realized how many young people are stranded without families at very vulnerable ages, he decided that it was a good idea.
We started with foster care, and got a home study for foster-adoption. With the groups of kids (some sibling groups) that have come through our house, we've developed a feel for how to manage certain issues with children who have come from a chaotic environment. If normal parents need to be pretty organized in order to maintain a sense of security in their household, then foster parents need to be extremely organized. Certain forms of discipline are not permitted... frankly, forms of discipline that I had never considered are on the "unpermitted" list, so that's not much of a problem, but when you see the "unpermitted" list, you start to think... so.. if not that, then HOW?...
In most cases, anticipating the issues and resolving them before they become issues is a big tactic. First, it's tough for kids to just take whatever shows up on their plate at dinner time. It's a whole lot easier if they have time to anticipate and think through the dinner plans. So we have a basic plan for every week. Tacos on Tuesdays, for example, and Pizza on Fridays. When we're just on our own, we are a little loose about the schedule But if we have kids in the house, we post the schedule on a calendar and teach it to them. Knowing what's going to be on the plate solves a ton of tantrums when it's not the mac & cheese that they were hoping for.
Another food-related rule... we have the kids help us prepare the vegetables. Usually in the form of a salad. Since vegetables tend to be a challenging thing for children to eat, we get their hands involved in the making of it. They get to taste the dressings and put a few nuts or raisins on the lettuce. They get to taste the little popcorn tomatoes and feel how they pop in their mouth, and choose whether to put them on the salad or maybe try the on the side with some dressing to dip in. We find that if they help make the salads and we all eat it around the breakfast bar while we're cooking up the rest of the dinner, they get a whole lot more vegetables into their tummies before they even know what hit them!
And then dessert only happens after they've eaten enough of what is on their plate. They don't need to save space for dessert, they can have it an hour after dinner, but they don't get dessert until they have eaten at least an appropriate amount of the nutritious dinner that we have made. Whether or not they are allowed to eat the sweets is entirely their choice. If they whine that they're hungry, they can finish their dinner (we can warm it up for them), and if they whine that they want their dessert, we tell them that they can have dessert as soon as dinner is finished. It's as simple as that, and while it does not entirely cut out all whining, we have effectively cut down on it by a giant step. Given that the kids we get in our house are children who have been raised on diets that are often VERY MUCH NOT LIKE what we usually eat. Maybe they eat potatoes for every meal, or McDonald's happy meals 7 dinners a week... or mac & cheese as a staple. The fact that they will not get exactly what their chaotic previous home gave them, makes mealtime difficult from the start, so every little step we can make in helping the kids understand and be more comfortable and willing to eat and participate, the better.
A clutter rule... anything not put away properly (after warnings) goes to jail. It simply disappears. If they ask for it, then they don't get it back until 24 hours passes. This works well for a favorite jacket that didn't get hung up, or a toy they were playing with and didn't put away. If they let it drop where it landed and did not put it away despite my reminders, it will disappear. After they ask if I know where it is, I tell them that it's went to our jail for being out of place, and now that they're noticed it and want it back, they need to wait until the next day. "This time tomorrow, you can have it back." It becomes a little game. But they know they'll get it back and can anticipate the fun of having it again. And we can discuss where it lives so that they won't it again.
Yes, this kind of parenting is more intensive, requires more work, more listening to whining... cooking for ourselves, making whatever we have ingredients for, putting it on the table without having to supervise them doing the cooking... yelling about stuff that's not put away or putting it away to avoid the yelling... it all makes the chores easier to accomplish, but these things do not teach the children how to manage things... how to eat what is fixed for them by someone who is not a short-order cook... how to clean up after themselves.
The theory is that if you do this enough, they'll eventually require less supervision. The reality is that as they learn these lessons, there are others that we need to impart, other labor-intensive parenting tasks that will help the kids get a step closer towards adulthood, independence, success. If we do it right, it's labor intensive. But we've done it with a few kids so far, in relatively short term (1-3 months long), and so far it's successful. No need to do all the "no-nos" when you parent like this. No withholding of food or sending them to bed without their dinner, if you avoid the food struggle before it starts, you know?
Showing posts with label organizing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organizing. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
What foster kids miss
In many states, children whose parents are unable to care for them, are allowed to make the decision on whether to continue to be wards of the state, or allow the foster care social workers to find an adoptive family match for them. Some get discouraged by previous attempts to find a placement, in what we would think of as the traditional "Li'l Orphan Annie" style... where all the orphans clamour for the opportunity for a new home.
In more situations, the children choose to remain without a permanent family for much more complex emotional reasons. Perhaps they cannot contemplate breaking the connection between themselves and their birth parents. And then there is the typical teen belief that adults are a mere inconvenience. Teens in a normal nuclear family that is not falling apart, want to find ways to separate. They want to ignore us. We are an embarrassment, old fashioned, stupid. After all, we think texting is unnecessary and that the posting of too much personal information on Facebook is a bad idea. We are holding them back. In a few short years they'll be allowed to drive, then vote, then drink. They will be on their own and supporting themselves soon. So we are excess baggage that they have to figure out how to work around until they can push their way forward into adulthood.
Like baby chicks working furiously to crack the egg and burst out on the scene, they wish we'd just get up, release them from the incubator, and let them get on with life.
In an intact family, however, the parents work hard to hold the kids back. The kids are not allowed to say "no" to family time, they are forced to sit through family meals and watch their favorite TV shows with Mom & Dad. They are given chores and not allowed to use Mom & Dad's money to buy too many treats for themselves. It does not matter how much Mom & Dad have given to them, the moment when the gravy train stops, they try to angle to get more. It's their job. To see how much they can get from us without working too hard for it. If they were offered the opportunity to live with minimal supervision, with no adult holding them back, or the promise of quicker entry into adulthood, many would choose it.
It is a shame that our government allows children in it's care to make these choices. Most competent parents do not allow their kids to have this opportunity. Our government is being negligent in allowing this.
What do the foster kids miss, when they shove aside that opportunity for permanency?
Most obviously, they lose the soft place to land when they become adults. They lose the home that they will boomerang back to when jobs are hard to find or marriages fail. They lose the connection and tradition to come home for during the holidays. The lines from the songs, "I'll be HOME for Christmas", and "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go"... and similar sweet, holiday memories... they become meaningless for a young adult who has no home base.
But then there are the subtle things. Things that are much more important to the young person's eventual success or failure as an adult. The Friday evenings watching "Say Yes to the Dress" and "Bridezilla" with Mom making comments about the wastefulness and budget issues brought up in those TV shows. The weekends spent renovating the rec room with Dad, where he shows the importance of maintaining safety in using tools. The dinners where Mom & Dad discuss maintaining a balance between work and home, choosing vacation destinations for that year's time off, and budgeting appropriately. The moments when either parent is chauffeuring the kids to their various events, coaching them about how to approach the event, how to be a good loser and a humble winner. There is something that a kid gets, almost by osmosis, from watching and listening to their parents talking about how to conduct their lives. Some people might not present the most perfect example of decisionmaking, but the fact that they are presenting SOME example is important. The effects of a complete absence of that opportunity is clear.
Foster kids who age out of the foster system are more likely to lose opportunities for post-secondary education, to become homeless, or to go to jail, than children who found a "forever home". Children from intact two parent families, are the most likely to go to college, have a career, stay out of jail. And the infamous "single family home", where the parents are estranged from each other, whether or not the co-parent has tried to remain in the picture, puts out children who fall, statistically, somewhere in the middle.
Whoever in our system has decided that foster children should be allowed to decline to be adopted, needs to be held accountable for the results. It's nice, in theory, to say that teens should not be forced to do something they don't want to do, but in NORMAL families, that happens all the time. Teens from intact families are not allowed to skip the visit to grandma, they are required to go to church with the family, they must negotiate their relationships with friends and romances, with their parents' supervision. They may rebel against it, but the teachable moments that arise every day, where teens learn the most basic skills that will guide their success in life, are necessary. Our system should not allow the children who are in the system, to succeed in avoiding these moments where other teens would not be permitted to avoid them. Our system has been negligent.
To that end, if we are going to allow kids to choose whether or not to have parents, then we need to figure out how to give them the information necessary to make an informed decision on that issue. We need to find a way to explain to them what they will miss. Not some statistic-filled boring lecture, but a real, visceral understanding... We need our foster kids to be a little more like the orphans of yester-year... clamouring to find parents, not rejecting them.
Any ideas would be welcome!
In more situations, the children choose to remain without a permanent family for much more complex emotional reasons. Perhaps they cannot contemplate breaking the connection between themselves and their birth parents. And then there is the typical teen belief that adults are a mere inconvenience. Teens in a normal nuclear family that is not falling apart, want to find ways to separate. They want to ignore us. We are an embarrassment, old fashioned, stupid. After all, we think texting is unnecessary and that the posting of too much personal information on Facebook is a bad idea. We are holding them back. In a few short years they'll be allowed to drive, then vote, then drink. They will be on their own and supporting themselves soon. So we are excess baggage that they have to figure out how to work around until they can push their way forward into adulthood.
Like baby chicks working furiously to crack the egg and burst out on the scene, they wish we'd just get up, release them from the incubator, and let them get on with life.
In an intact family, however, the parents work hard to hold the kids back. The kids are not allowed to say "no" to family time, they are forced to sit through family meals and watch their favorite TV shows with Mom & Dad. They are given chores and not allowed to use Mom & Dad's money to buy too many treats for themselves. It does not matter how much Mom & Dad have given to them, the moment when the gravy train stops, they try to angle to get more. It's their job. To see how much they can get from us without working too hard for it. If they were offered the opportunity to live with minimal supervision, with no adult holding them back, or the promise of quicker entry into adulthood, many would choose it.
It is a shame that our government allows children in it's care to make these choices. Most competent parents do not allow their kids to have this opportunity. Our government is being negligent in allowing this.
What do the foster kids miss, when they shove aside that opportunity for permanency?
Most obviously, they lose the soft place to land when they become adults. They lose the home that they will boomerang back to when jobs are hard to find or marriages fail. They lose the connection and tradition to come home for during the holidays. The lines from the songs, "I'll be HOME for Christmas", and "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go"... and similar sweet, holiday memories... they become meaningless for a young adult who has no home base.
But then there are the subtle things. Things that are much more important to the young person's eventual success or failure as an adult. The Friday evenings watching "Say Yes to the Dress" and "Bridezilla" with Mom making comments about the wastefulness and budget issues brought up in those TV shows. The weekends spent renovating the rec room with Dad, where he shows the importance of maintaining safety in using tools. The dinners where Mom & Dad discuss maintaining a balance between work and home, choosing vacation destinations for that year's time off, and budgeting appropriately. The moments when either parent is chauffeuring the kids to their various events, coaching them about how to approach the event, how to be a good loser and a humble winner. There is something that a kid gets, almost by osmosis, from watching and listening to their parents talking about how to conduct their lives. Some people might not present the most perfect example of decisionmaking, but the fact that they are presenting SOME example is important. The effects of a complete absence of that opportunity is clear.
Foster kids who age out of the foster system are more likely to lose opportunities for post-secondary education, to become homeless, or to go to jail, than children who found a "forever home". Children from intact two parent families, are the most likely to go to college, have a career, stay out of jail. And the infamous "single family home", where the parents are estranged from each other, whether or not the co-parent has tried to remain in the picture, puts out children who fall, statistically, somewhere in the middle.
Whoever in our system has decided that foster children should be allowed to decline to be adopted, needs to be held accountable for the results. It's nice, in theory, to say that teens should not be forced to do something they don't want to do, but in NORMAL families, that happens all the time. Teens from intact families are not allowed to skip the visit to grandma, they are required to go to church with the family, they must negotiate their relationships with friends and romances, with their parents' supervision. They may rebel against it, but the teachable moments that arise every day, where teens learn the most basic skills that will guide their success in life, are necessary. Our system should not allow the children who are in the system, to succeed in avoiding these moments where other teens would not be permitted to avoid them. Our system has been negligent.
To that end, if we are going to allow kids to choose whether or not to have parents, then we need to figure out how to give them the information necessary to make an informed decision on that issue. We need to find a way to explain to them what they will miss. Not some statistic-filled boring lecture, but a real, visceral understanding... We need our foster kids to be a little more like the orphans of yester-year... clamouring to find parents, not rejecting them.
Any ideas would be welcome!
Monday, December 10, 2012
Our Daily salad
I didn't get to Costco last Friday as planned. But we went over the weekend. It's a whole lot easier shopping during the Christmas season if you go during the workweek, preferably on a morning when the kids are in school. The stores are SOOOO much easier! And the traffic.
Oh well, we did it the hard way.
But I was desperate. In my quest to get healthier, we are eating salads every day if we can, and we were running out of our favorite lettuce. Getting lettuce from Costco is a commitment. It means you have to EAT that lettuce before it starts to go bad. We will get a package of 6 romaine hearts and spend the week eating them, one a day, before dinner. It's good to have some extra refrigerator space downstairs in the rec room!
To make the salad something to look forward to, we also use mandarin orange sections... a product that would be unreasonably expensive if we weren't ALSO buying these at Costco. And we add a sprinkle of slivered almonds. Unfortunately, not available at Costco, but I can get them in bulk at Wegman's (we also put them on yogurt, so we keep lots of them around). And a dollop of honey-mustard dressing. I've not yet looked to see if we could get the dressing at Costco. I fear that the bottle of dressing I'd get from there might be bigger than would fit the fridge, and to make a green, leafy salad a daily habit, it's got to be EASY. Running up & down stairs for the salad dressing might be a step further than I'd be willing to do.
There's a principle of management... these days it's called "process management", and they have various ways of enforcing it... you may have heard of "Lean Six Sigma"... which is the process of taking a manufacturing process that is working well, and slowly identifying issues that are causing variation (variation is considered inappropriate in a manufacturing situation, if they are creating widgets, they want every widget to match)... you spent your time nibbling away at the pieces of the process that cause the widgets to fall outside of the standard deviation (a statistics term, the standard deviation is considered "sigma"... and in any grouping of objects, nearly all of the objects fall within six "sigmas"...). To reduce the size of the six sigmas that the grouping of objects falls within, to make that variation smaller, is the goal.
When I am trying to organize my life, I use the same principles. I find something that works, and reduce the work needed to make it happen. If I can cut down the number of times I have to go to the store to get the ingredients... if I can cut down the number of trips to the refrigerator in the rec room... if I can cut down the amount of product wasted because we don't eat it in time... then I am more likely to do the thing. Cleaning the bathroom is easier if the products used to clean it are stored in the bathroom. Sweeping the floor is easier (and more likely to get done), if the broom and dustpan are nearby. My sewing project is more likely to get done if the sewing machine and equipment are someplace where I can use them easily and not stored away in a closet so that every time I use them is a project in cleaning my closet, just to get access to the equipment. And I am more likely to eat my healthy salad if the ingredients are close at hand and easy to put together.
Wayne likes a variation in the salad. He prefers Craisins or tomato chunks over mandarin orange slices. And he prefers a spicy pepper vinaigrette over my honey mustard flavor... I make sure to keep lots of his favorite ingredients close at hand also. Because if his favorite ingredients are nearby, I can often rely upon him to do the salad-making.
With all the ingredients close at hand, inexpensive, and easy to manage, as well as flavorful... we eat a bowlful of salad every day.
Someday, when we retire, we hope to be able to afford to travel, and we hope to have good enough health that we will not be forced into being one of those little old couples who hobbles on & off of a bus tour through Europe... no, we want to be healthy enough to go off the beaten path, to climb pyramids in Egypt, ride elephants through the jungles of Thailand, and hike up & down the hills & stairways of Assisi.
Our daily salad is one step in the right direction.
Oh well, we did it the hard way.
But I was desperate. In my quest to get healthier, we are eating salads every day if we can, and we were running out of our favorite lettuce. Getting lettuce from Costco is a commitment. It means you have to EAT that lettuce before it starts to go bad. We will get a package of 6 romaine hearts and spend the week eating them, one a day, before dinner. It's good to have some extra refrigerator space downstairs in the rec room!
To make the salad something to look forward to, we also use mandarin orange sections... a product that would be unreasonably expensive if we weren't ALSO buying these at Costco. And we add a sprinkle of slivered almonds. Unfortunately, not available at Costco, but I can get them in bulk at Wegman's (we also put them on yogurt, so we keep lots of them around). And a dollop of honey-mustard dressing. I've not yet looked to see if we could get the dressing at Costco. I fear that the bottle of dressing I'd get from there might be bigger than would fit the fridge, and to make a green, leafy salad a daily habit, it's got to be EASY. Running up & down stairs for the salad dressing might be a step further than I'd be willing to do.
There's a principle of management... these days it's called "process management", and they have various ways of enforcing it... you may have heard of "Lean Six Sigma"... which is the process of taking a manufacturing process that is working well, and slowly identifying issues that are causing variation (variation is considered inappropriate in a manufacturing situation, if they are creating widgets, they want every widget to match)... you spent your time nibbling away at the pieces of the process that cause the widgets to fall outside of the standard deviation (a statistics term, the standard deviation is considered "sigma"... and in any grouping of objects, nearly all of the objects fall within six "sigmas"...). To reduce the size of the six sigmas that the grouping of objects falls within, to make that variation smaller, is the goal.
When I am trying to organize my life, I use the same principles. I find something that works, and reduce the work needed to make it happen. If I can cut down the number of times I have to go to the store to get the ingredients... if I can cut down the number of trips to the refrigerator in the rec room... if I can cut down the amount of product wasted because we don't eat it in time... then I am more likely to do the thing. Cleaning the bathroom is easier if the products used to clean it are stored in the bathroom. Sweeping the floor is easier (and more likely to get done), if the broom and dustpan are nearby. My sewing project is more likely to get done if the sewing machine and equipment are someplace where I can use them easily and not stored away in a closet so that every time I use them is a project in cleaning my closet, just to get access to the equipment. And I am more likely to eat my healthy salad if the ingredients are close at hand and easy to put together.
Wayne likes a variation in the salad. He prefers Craisins or tomato chunks over mandarin orange slices. And he prefers a spicy pepper vinaigrette over my honey mustard flavor... I make sure to keep lots of his favorite ingredients close at hand also. Because if his favorite ingredients are nearby, I can often rely upon him to do the salad-making.
With all the ingredients close at hand, inexpensive, and easy to manage, as well as flavorful... we eat a bowlful of salad every day.
Someday, when we retire, we hope to be able to afford to travel, and we hope to have good enough health that we will not be forced into being one of those little old couples who hobbles on & off of a bus tour through Europe... no, we want to be healthy enough to go off the beaten path, to climb pyramids in Egypt, ride elephants through the jungles of Thailand, and hike up & down the hills & stairways of Assisi.
Our daily salad is one step in the right direction.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Timesaver, my new medicine cabinet
My sweetie just installed a new medicine cabinet in my walk-in closet. It's a beautiful thing. The closet had a wall at the far end and the shelves and hanging rods lining either side would have been blocked if I had put much down near that wall, but I had an idea... There's a lot of light in that closet, and I could fix my hair while dressing if I had a mirror there. And a shelf. And I was already keeping a tube of deoderant on one of my sweater shelves. So maybe... hmmm...
A medicine cabinet was the solution. One with a mirrored interior as well as a mirror on the front. He hung it high enough that if I'm wearing heels, I will be able to check my hair and fix my mascara without having to lean over a single inch!
I can open it, keep it open, and stand right there while I choose lip colors to coordinate with my outfit, and brush on my eye shadow. I am closer to the mirror than if I were leaning over the bathroom sink. And I have never been the type to sit down and spend a half hour on makeup at one of those vanities with the little stools tucked under it. For me, if makeup isn't easy and quick, it doesn't get used.
I'm pleased with this addition to my closet! I spent yesterday afternoon moving all of my makeup from the bathroom shelf, into my closet, and reorganizing it. No more walking from bathroom, to closet, back to bathroom, several times whenever I get dressed to go out. I can now do it all right in my closet. Put on deoderant, smooth my hair, and stand right up next to the mirror as I put on my mascara without having to lean over a countertop to do it!
My bathroom cabinet is now totally devoted to toothpaste, cleansers, etc., and my closet cabinet has my finishing touches. Everything is easier to find, and there is no need to dig through stacks of colors to find the right one. I have space to work, without having taken over any more space from someplace else in the house.
What is it about girls and organizing products? I could have been no happier with Wayne if he had bought home a dozen roses...
A medicine cabinet was the solution. One with a mirrored interior as well as a mirror on the front. He hung it high enough that if I'm wearing heels, I will be able to check my hair and fix my mascara without having to lean over a single inch!
I can open it, keep it open, and stand right there while I choose lip colors to coordinate with my outfit, and brush on my eye shadow. I am closer to the mirror than if I were leaning over the bathroom sink. And I have never been the type to sit down and spend a half hour on makeup at one of those vanities with the little stools tucked under it. For me, if makeup isn't easy and quick, it doesn't get used.
I'm pleased with this addition to my closet! I spent yesterday afternoon moving all of my makeup from the bathroom shelf, into my closet, and reorganizing it. No more walking from bathroom, to closet, back to bathroom, several times whenever I get dressed to go out. I can now do it all right in my closet. Put on deoderant, smooth my hair, and stand right up next to the mirror as I put on my mascara without having to lean over a countertop to do it!
My bathroom cabinet is now totally devoted to toothpaste, cleansers, etc., and my closet cabinet has my finishing touches. Everything is easier to find, and there is no need to dig through stacks of colors to find the right one. I have space to work, without having taken over any more space from someplace else in the house.
What is it about girls and organizing products? I could have been no happier with Wayne if he had bought home a dozen roses...
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