Tag Archives: childcare

Motivation

Sometimes we all just need a little push from a big supporter.

“I don’t want to do it” she said. “ I have been too busy”.

“but you love to do it!” I exclaimed!

I told her to think about how much she loves to do it. If you love something you will work hard to do it. It teaches us a lesson to do what you love and work towards that. If there is something you love to do, your life should include that in it.

Even if things aren’t working out for you in this thing, you love it. You will work hard for it even when you are busy. It is so important! No matter how hard it is, it is important to your life. Think about this thing in your life, Just think.

This was a recent conversation with my mom. She has been behind on blogging. I helped her stay motivated.

- Levi Rich Gettleman (Age 12)

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Do we mom’s deserve a right to privacy?

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Would a warning like this keep my computer files safe from children’s eyes???

“Get off my computer!” I impatiently bark at my 12-year-old son, Levi. He raised his guilty paws from the keyboard as if a masked robber had surprisingly cornered him and yelled, “Put up your hands!” I moved into his place and started pounding away at an e-mail I had neglected to send earlier in the day.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” I later apologized. “It’s just frustrating that you’re always on my laptop. After all, you have your own.”

With that rebuke, Levi slunk away without a word. I felt badly. Mothers are supposed to be selfless and giving. Why am I so irritated and resentful about sharing an electronic device with my kid.

I checked my e-mail as I pondered this maternal quandary. That’s when I saw it; an e-mail from the practice coordinator at our Orthodontic office. It was an introductory sales letter inviting us to meet Dr. Sams and tour the office. This would have been a lovely invitation had we not been already been seeing this Doctor for over two years. I was livid.

My fingers snapped to attention and without effort I typed back a snarky response. “Dear Jenny,” I wrote, “It might behoove you to pay better attention to whom you are sending an introductory letter like this so that you do not inadvertently send it to people who are already patients. Trust me, it makes us feel insignificant.” Then, a captive of my momentary rage, I deliberately hit “send” and watched my haughty response disappear into cyberspace.

Levi was still sulking across the room. “I’m sorry, buddy,” I told him, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. What were you doing on my computer anyway?”

“Oh, I was just looking back through all of your old e-mails,” he explained. “There are e-mails from like three years ago. Don’t you ever throw stuff in the trash?”

Suddenly a horrifying realization overtook me. “Oh no,” I thought. Yet another Debra moment of leaping to the erroneous conclusion. I re-opened my e-mail and saw the appalling truth. That e-mail from Jenny was in fact from 2010. It was her warm invitation to us to meet Dr. Sams and visit his office. I did it again! I’m like a an emotional Tourette’s patient. I just emote at people randomly, without a shred of rationale for my outbursts. Shit. This is soooooo embarrassing.

“Levi,” I calmly pronounced, “Why would you look up my old e-mails? That’s weird and kind of…creepy.”

“I like to learn stuff about myself when I was younger. Plus now I can read e-mails you wouldn’t let me read back then.”

That actually sounded kind of reasonable. It wasn’t until I was in bed a few hours later that I started to feel like his behavior was completely inappropriate and uncomfortably invasive. I nudged my husband, Mark, who was snoring next to me.

“Huh? What’s wrong?” He bolted upright.

“Do you think it’s okay for me to tell Levi he can’t use my computer and that he is never allowed to read my e-mails? I just feel like I should have some semblance of privacy in my own home. I mean before we had internet and e-mail it wouldn’t have been okay for a kid to rifle through his mom’s mementos hidden away in a box in her closet, would it? So just because everything is electronic these days that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have clear boundaries and restrictions. Right?

A loud snore wafted through the room. He had immediately fallen back to sleep, which seemed to be a fairly common response to my pontificating. I was on my own with this one.

The following morning on the ride to school I told Levi that my computer and email were off limits, that I needed to have some privacy, that not everything about parents should be accessible to their children.

He said he understood and apologized. “But you know, mom,” he said, “There is something really cool about reading all your old blogs and plays and e-mails. I get to really know you, in a way most kids never know their moms. That’s pretty awesome.”

Suddenly the privacy invasion felt a little less irksome. The haunting truth that at any moment adolescence could rear its ugly head and make me the least fascinating creature on the planet, was a reality too ominous to ignore. I felt badly, again. Maybe I had over-reacted.

But I didn’t turn back. I should have a right to my privacy, right? I’m an adult woman who doesn’t want to share every detail of my life with my 12-year-old son. That’s reasonable.

This is one of those issues on which I wish I could take a poll. Do you have personal boundaries in your home that protect your privacy or is everything fair game? I really need some good old fashioned girl-talk on this issue so please, share!

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Lockdown

imgres-6My 12 year old son, Levi, has anxiety issues. This isn’t a secret. So to those of you who might suggest that I’m exposing some kind of family skeleton, I want you to know that I always check with my family first before airing our dirty laundry in public. As long as they’re okay with it, I figure it’s fair game for public consumption.

That being said, the other day at school his math teacher sent him to his homeroom classroom to make copies for her during class. He happily complied and set off to do so. Apparently, only seconds after leaving the classroom, word got out about a ponytailed, pistol carrying stranger at a school a few blocks away. Our school went into immediate lockdown. I’m not talking “drill.” I’m talking serious, “we’re in a different kind of world after Newtown” lock down. So while Levi haplessly skipped across campus, everyone else bolted their doors, pinned up paper to cover the windows and huddled in bathrooms, closets and corners.

Levi thought it was more than strange when the door to his classroom was locked. Even more odd were the darkened windows that left no view to the inside of the room. He looked around and noted that no one else was anywhere within sight. Hmmm? He remained calm and clear-headed though and knocked softly on the door. Luckily, his teacher slyly squinted through a side gap in the papered window. Then, like an episode of “The Munsters,” the classroom door opened a crack and a hand emerged, grabbed my son, and dragged him into the room. It wasn’t until after he was safe that he felt the anxiety of the situation catching up to him. But to his amazing credit, he held it together and was able to talk himself down and maintain control of his emotions.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me. But I find the irony of this inane confluence of events staggeringly comical. I mean how is it possible that my kid, the one with severe anxiety issues, ends up on the wrong side of a lock-down, only days after the most gut-wrenching massacre in our nation’s history? I guess it’s okay to find humor in the irony since no one was hurt and nothing bad really transpired. I can’t even contemplate the real devastation that could have occurred had a copy-cat ventured onto ours or a nearby campus. Maybe the humor is simply survivor’s guilt or some kind of defense mechanism to protect myself from the overwhelming pain etched into our souls by last week’s horrific destruction.

Sometimes it’s just too painful to contemplate the very real risks we endure every day as we try to live our lives, watch over our families, and protect our precious children. And so to all who suffered a loss in Connecticut, our hearts ache over your pain. The nation grieves along with you and sends love, strength and healing to you.

May you all be blessed with a sense of peace and may God bring comfort to those in mourning who must now learn to accept the unfairness of life as they struggle to live without the earthly presence of someone so deeply cherished.

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So, what do YOU do?

Political correctness has paralyzed me! Last night we were at a party. I was excited to meet a slew of new and interesting people. It was a family event at someone’s home so kids were happily racing around, playing Wii, watching videos, etc… Someone asked my husband what he did? “I’m a Pediatrician,” Mark responded. Then I piped up and asked the inquiring man what kind of work he did. He answered with a complex I.T./consulting/mathematical response that left me speechless. Then I looked at his wife and wanted desperately to know what she did “for a living.” But something inside me said, “no. That’s not an okay question to ask.” But I wanted to know. The potential to meet a new friend who might have similar interests, might share a common language, might connect to me at a deeper level was impelling me forward.

“Do you work outside the home?” I thought about asking. But her children were older and of course she worked outside the home at this point in her parenting career. Something must be wrong with her if she didn’t work outside the home I surmised. But I couldn’t be sure. “And what kind of work do you do?” I toyed with asking. This way I could leave her the out to say she chose to volunteer or offered aide at her children’s school instead of punching a clock at some corporate warehouse or laboring menially in a cubicle under fluorescents.

She looked at me inquisitively. She’s probably wanting to ask me the same thing, I mused. Finally I came up with, “So do you exercise?” Why I asked that I have no idea. She smiled genuinely and shared that she was training for the Komen three day breast cancer walk. She walked nearly 20 miles a day she told me. Hmmm? I thought to myself. That takes an awful lot of time. Must not work outside the home. Good thing I didn’t embarrass myself by asking. Later I followed up on a clue she let slip about working with children.Turned out she was a preschool teacher. But by the time I realized that, it was too late to delve into the details.

Throughout the night I found myself in similar situations with numerous women. No one asked me what I did. I asked no one what she did. It was as if we had all signed a tacit agreement upon entering. We will not ask about careers, professions, or achievements because somehow the mere asking about these things suggested some type of judgement. But in failing to ask, I failed to find a path inside these women’s souls. I left at the end of the night feeling as if I hadn’t really met anyone, hadn’t really shared any part of myself, hadn’t really explored or revealed anything to anyone.

Sometimes I wonder if we, as women, miss out on genuine connection because we are working so desperately to avoid offending one another. I have met very few women who actually do nothing all day long. But the delicacy required to inquire about a woman’s daily activities seems almost paralyzing. The fear of insulting or sounding judgmental freezes us and renders us completely inept at conversing. It keeps us locked up inside ourselves and isolated.

Does anyone know the right way to forge ahead in these types of situations?

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Tell the truth dammit!

Truth search

It’s cold! It’s finally cold outside! Open up the windows! Swing open the French doors! Rattlesnakes be damned! I feel invincible. I can actually breathe again. I needed a sweatshirt this morning to walk with the dogs. Nothing can bring me down.

I love the desert in fall. I love the desert in winter. I love the desert until about April. And then I don’t. Then it turns into a hellish furnace that sucks the life out of me, my family and everything around us. Let’s be honest, April, May, June, July, August, September…that’s six whole months. When I first moved here, people systematically perpetuated the three month conspiracy theory. It went something like this, “Oh, you’ll love living here. The weather is perfect 9 months of the year. Then it gets a little hot. But you get used to it. Besides, it’s a dry heat.” OK, let’s look at this fabrication. No matter how you slice it, it gets unbearably hot in April and stays over 100 degrees well into October. Unless my math is frightfully mistaken, that only leaves 50% of the year where people can reasonably function outdoors.

So why does everyone lie about this? Why not just be honest and tell newcomers, “Here’s the thing, you’ll probably want to kill yourself by the time July rolls around. That’s totally normal. Everyone feels that way. But try to hang in there. October isn’t all that far off.” I would have been much better prepared to face the fiery reality if someone somewhere had told me what to expect.

It’s just like pregnancy. Nobody tells you that you’re gonna have unbearable acid reflux for 9 months, projectile vomit in the car on your way to prenatal yoga, and think seriously about downing an entire bottle of Vicodin at least three times a day to put yourself out of your misery. Instead, books like “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” describe pregnancy’s healthy glow and emotional euphoria. Come on. Wouldn’t it be better to fess up to the ugly reality awaiting expectant mommies than to set them up for failure by making them feel isolated, detached and forsaken?

We lie about everything! We tell people they look great when they look like crap. We swear up and down that we’re not angry when we’re literally fuming inside. We tell our kids that a big, jolly fat man is gonna come down the chimney on Christmas Eve and leave loads of presents for them. Why do we do this? Is reality truly that bleak?

What would life look like if we just started telling the truth?

“Sorry, Junior. No presents this Christmas. The economy’s in the toilet and we’re barely able to put food on the table. Now go do your homework.”

“You don’t really look fat in those jeans. But you do kind of resemble a sausage that’s been over-stuffed into too small of a skin. Maybe trousers would serve you better.”

“Wow, you must have spent a small fortune to decorate your house and make it look exactly the same as every other ‘contemporary’ Southwestern abode in the neighborhood. So much for individuality.”

I actually crave the opportunity to tell someone the truth. But no one wants to hear it. It’s too mean, too hurtful. We’re programmed to sugar-coat reality. Especially out here in the West. I remember when I first moved to California and everyone was so nice to me all the time. They’d promise me things to my face that would never come to fruition and say things behind my back that were completely opposed to what they’d sworn in a face to face encounter. I got into the habit of brazenly cutting people off mid compliment. “Look, I’m from Chicago,” I’d sneer, “Just tell me the truth.”

I’d like to tell you that I’m gonna go forth honestly from this point forward, that I’m gonna turn over a new leaf, that I’m committed to speak my mind, voice my inner truth, and stop perpetuating the falsehoods that abound. But I can’t. Because that would be…a lie.

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Defiance!

Doesn’t he look like a challenge?

“Going my way home?” my impish 8 year old son, Eli, asked as he leaned thru the passenger side window of my car after happily bounding off the school bus yesterday afternoon. His grin warmed my heart.

“No silly,” I chirped, “We have to go pick up your brother at school. Hop in.”

Then he flashed a mischievous smile, turned tail and ran away from me at lightning speed.

OK, I was stunned. And I mean stunned like a deer who had just been shot in the chest by a tranquilizer gun. All the other moms at the bus stop looked at me with embarrassing glances, trying not to actually meet my gaze. Inside my head, I heard them snickering about my parental ineptitude. I tried to make light of the situation. “Ha ha,” I chuckled, “He just loves to race me home.” The awkwardness was palpable.

I drove away and as soon as I was out of their view, I pulled over and tried to catch my breath. I rationally weighed my options. I could go immediately home to rant, rave and revile my youngster for publicly disobeying and humiliating me. Then I could physically imbed him into his car seat and embark upon the trek to his brother, Levi’s, school to retrieve him. But I gotta tell you, that didn’t sound all that appealing to me.

Instead, I began driving slowly away from my home where I imagined Eli victoriously awaiting my arrival for our scream fest. No, I was not going to play the scene out like that. I carefully considered what potential perils Eli might possibly encounter as he sat locked outside our house for the next 45 minutes. I admit I had visions of an errant mountain lion meandering past and eating him, or a band of gypsies kidnapping him at gun-point, but I figured that the odds of either of those things happening in our well-patrolled, gated community with plenty of neighbors within ear shot, was more than unlikely. Besides, when is the last time you saw gypsies packing heat? The greater threat seemed to me to be withholding the valuable lesson that this opportunity presented for my child to learn about natural consequences, responsibility and respect.

Sitting outside the house alone was a small price to pay if it taught my boy that it is not okay to run away from me or directly defy me like that. Sure he might be scared. He might cry. He might even fear abandonment for his impulsive behavior. But as a staunch believer in behavior modification and “Love and Logic,” this negative consequence naturally follows the poor choice he made. The only way for him to internalize that lesson is to truly experience an unpleasant outcome that naturally emerges out of his rash and impulsive behavior.

I picked up Levi and raced home nervously. When I pulled up to the house, I expected to see my tear-stained youngest son regretfully pouting outside the front door. But he wasn’t there. It was either the gypsies or he’d figured out where the spare key was hidden. I began to panic and ran inside the house. I hurried down the hall towards his room but slowed my pace and nonchalantly passed his doorway to see if he was there. I spotted him peripherally and continued walking. He was hiding under his covers awaiting some horrific consequence, I imagine. I said nothing.

Later that night he came to me and apologized. We talked about it briefly and I let him think that it was over and all was well. Unfortunately this weekend is the Diamond Back game he’s been waiting for months to attend. When it comes time to head to the ballpark, the babysitter is arriving and we’re going to have to explain to Eli that we love him too much to risk losing him at such a busy stadium. Since we can’t trust him to not run away from us, he’ll just have to stay home with a sitter while the rest of us enjoy our peanuts, popcorn and crackerjack.

I don’t look forward to his reaction. He’ll be angry. He’ll be crest-fallen. But I believe in my heart that he will learn how to better control his urges, how to respect his parents, and that his actions have very direct and relevant consequences.

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Coyote smorgasbord

Have you ever done something so completely idiotic that you even surprise yourself by your total lack of judgement? Well, welcome to yesterday morning.

As is often the case, I walked my 8 year old son, Eli, to the bus stop about two blocks from our house. I also chose to take our two dogs, Maggie and S’more along with us. Not surprisingly, I’ve never managed to leash train the two canines, so a “walk” with them is more like an amateur wake boarding competition.

We were the first to arrive at the bus stop. But we were quickly joined by several of the usual grade school suspects. I was the only parent. Suddenly, I looked up and spotted a vicious predatory mountain lion aggressively racing towards us. Well OK, it wasn’t exactly vicious, and it wasn’t actually a mountain lion. It was a…coyote, a mean looking, mangy coyote. But mangy means hungry, doesn’t it? And on second glance, it wasn’t really racing towards us, it might have been minding its own business. But it was like 20 feet away from us and didn’t seem at all put off by me, my dogs or the little folk beside me.

I grabbed both leashes tightly as my dogs yelped and pulled towards the wild beast. Clearly they weren’t afraid. But I was. It felt like a situation on the verge of going horribly wrong. I struggled to hold the dogs back and avoid a wildlife confrontation. The coyote passed us without incident and turned the corner a few houses down. “Eli,” I said, my voice still shaking, “I have to get the dogs home so they’ll be safe. I can hardly hold them back.”

Then I corralled my two pups and headed off in the opposite direction. As I approached our house, I breathed a sigh of relief realizing we were out of harms way. But then it hit me. I had just left a cadre of elementary school children unarmed and unprotected with a rabid coyote on the prowl. What the heck is wrong with me? Sure the dogs were safe. But Eli might have been served up as Wile E’s second breakfast.
I dropped the dogs at home and turned tail to head back to the bus stop. But a few yards down the block I caught sight of the yellow school bus leaving the neighborhood.
“Phew,” I relaxed knowing that the children were safe and on route to school. Unless of course one had been eaten prior to the bus’s arrival. I heard my therapist’s voice in my head insisting I employ logic when “worry brain” starts to take over. “Nonsense,” I reasoned, “I’ve never heard of a single case where a lone coyote chowed down on a school child.”

Just in case, I drove by the bus stop on my way to work. There weren’t any entrails or blood stained concrete. I was relatively certain that no child had met with an untimely fate. But I will confess that I felt a whole lot better at 3:30 when Eli bounded off the bus surrounded by his entire posse of bus stop buddies.

Well, you know what they say, parenting is one third knowledge, one third judgement and one third luck. So in those instances when you come up a little short in the judgement arena, just pray that you’ve got a surplus of luck to fall back on.
p.s. To those of you feeling the urge to report me to child protective services and write chastising letters to the magazine: no children were actually endangered in the writing of this article. Our local coyotes are as timid as mice and as vicious as common house plants.

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Classroom Socialism

“It’s totally unfair!” my nearly twelve year old son, Levi, railed. “Mrs. Y teaches advanced math and sixth grade science. She gives out these tickets for good behavior that can be redeemed for the most amazing prizes; like dinner and a movie or board games, stuff everybody really wants. But some people have her for both classes. I only have her for science since I’m not in advanced math. So it’s totally unfair. Don’t you think so?”

“Well, not really,” I tentatively began, “What’s unfair about it?”

“Mom,” he rolls his eyes at the sheer inanity of my question, “ The people who only have her for one class can’t earn as many tickets. That’s what’s unfair.”

“But it doesn’t hurt you or take away from your chance to earn tickets that some other people earn more, does it?” I ask, knowing I’m treading on thin ice. “I mean, it may take you longer to earn the prize you want. But that’s how life works. Some people are better at some things than others. Some people earn more money or drive nicer cars or live in fancier houses. Everything isn’t equal. Plus if you really wanted to, you could work harder and be in the advanced math class. But you don’t seem to want to spend the time or effort to do that.”

“Well mom,” my son reasoned, “I am trying to be happy with myself at the level I’m at and not put undo pressure on myself.” I suddenly flashed back to a book a colleague of mine wrote several years ago entitled, “What to Do When Your Kid Is Smarter Than You.” I’ll have to reread that.

“That’s fair, Levi,” I conceded. “But life is what you make it. Nobody owes you equality. If you want to earn more tickets, think of a creative way to do that. Maybe you can stay later or earn extra credit somehow. But moping about unfairness is like buying into a socialist doctrine that we, personally, do not believe in.” I gingerly stepped off my soapbox and waited to see how my remarks had landed.

“Would you like to at least hear my solution?” He asked with a hint of arrogance that made me feel embarrassed for my philosophical outburst.

“Of course,” I nodded.

“Well,” he began, “I raised my hand and told Mrs. Y that I thought her system was unfair for the reasons I mentioned. She thought about it, agreed with me, and decided to amend the system. Now everyone can only earn tickets in one class.” He offered a self satisfied smile that landed like a gentle lob into my court.

I was, I’ll admit, speechless. Finally, I gathered my wits and responded. “Well, Levi, what you may lack in mathematical acumen, you more than make up for in ingenuity and boldness. I gotta hand it to you. You spoke up for yourself and were able to affect change. That’s awesome. I’m proud of you.”

“Really?” he asked doubting my authenticity.
“Really,” I answered. “Life will always set up obstacles for you to overcome. You used your intelligence, determination and creativity to do that. It’s like my dad used to say to me, ‘You can do anything if you put your mind to it.’” Then I thought about all the kids who had ostensibly been demoted to single classroom point earners.

“But just to be safe,” I added, “Let me show you how to throw a right hook in case any of those double point people come looking for you.”

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Believe me it hurts me more than it hurts you!

Eli's poem :(

Being a parent sucks! I’m serious. Why can’t we just love our kids, play with them and have fun? Instead we have to teach them lessons, watch them suffer, and worry about them every waking moment. It simply is not fair!

Today is a bad day. I open a big show tonight. It’s been a grueling few months. I’m tired, strung out and full of anxiety about the performance. So my adoring spouse decided to let me sleep in and drove the boys to school this morning. On any other morning I would have been thrilled. But when I awoke around 9am and stumbled into the kitchen for a much needed double espresso, I discovered a sight so horrific, I wanted to crawl back under the covers and never emerge again.

You see, there on the counter, all ready for transport, sat my 8 year old son Eli’s painstakingly created diorama and all the accoutrements of his poetry project that were due today. My heart sank. He has worked so hard on this project it’s unbelievable. This was an injustice I had to make right.

I threw on some clothes, grabbed the diorama and poems and ran out to the car to rescue him. But there was a hint of doubt filtering through my mind that I couldn’t quite shake. Of course I was doing the right thing by bringing him the project. Wasn’t I?

I called my husband at work. “Just wanted to check in on what went down this morning. It looks like with you driving the boys and the change in the routine, Eli forgot his poetry project and I know they’re presenting them today,” I could hear the guilt in my voice even as I tried to sound neutral. “So, I’m just gonna swing by and drop it off for him.”
Silence. “OK?” I added beseechingly.

The icy voice on the other end of the phone chilled me to the core. “No. Don’t bring him the project. He has to learn from this. If you go running to school to save him, this entire painful experience will have been for naught.”

“But it really isn’t his fault,” I clamored. “If I would have taken him, I would have made sure he brought the project. Don’t you think this is an extenuating circumstance?”

“No, I don’t,” my husband cooly replied. “Debra, this is a perfect lesson in taking and owning responsibility for himself. Don’t rob him of it.”

“But…but…but…” I couldn’t get the words out. “But he’s only 8! And he must be devastated,” I could hear my sobs backing up in my throat.

“But he wont forget his school work ever again if we let him learn this lesson,” my husband countered. “Besides, you don’t have to see his broken-hearted expression in your mind every day for the rest of your life. I do. It’s brutal.”

So I came back into the house, replaced the diorama on the counter alongside the poetry book, and tried not to feel like the worst parent on the planet. But it’s hard. I believe so firmly in the “Love and Logic” approach to parenting in which we are engaging. I see my friends with older kids, and I know that the lessons grow ever more complex and challenging as kids grow up. Learning personal responsibility today could very well save a child from making a really bad decision when he’s older; and the truth is that the stakes get incredibly high as kids get older.

I’ve asked most of my friends whether they think I did the right thing. Most of them say yes, but they add that they would never have done it themselves. That makes their tacit nod of approval feel like condemnation of the highest form. I guess we’ll just have to walk this path alone and stay true to the principles of natural consequence in which we believe.

But, just in case you feel compelled to comment and tell me that I did the right thing, feel free. It might help me sleep a bit easier tonight. But no pressure.

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Overdue

I got an $80 collection notice yesterday from the Scottsdale Public Library. $80! Are you kidding? It was for four books my adorable imps had checked out like a decade ago. I was fuming.

I waited until they were strapped into my car after school to spring the news on them. “Mom, can we go for frozen yogurt?” Levi, my 11-year-old, asked. “No, I’m so sorry sweetie,” I cooed, “We have some things to take care of at home today.” My statement hung in the air like a luminous storm cloud.

“Um…what things?” he asked. Hah! He took the bait. “Well,” I casually started, “We have some things that aren’t ours at home and we need to return them and apologize for their tardiness.” I then let the silence sink slowly into their realities. They perplexedly swore their innocence with the conviction of serial killers on death row.

Finally I dropped the other shoe. “When is the last time you boys went to the library?” “We haven’t been to the library in months,” Eli, my 7-year-old, proudly announced. “Uh oh,” murmured Levi. “We forgot to return our books didn’t we?” I reticently mumbled affirmatively and explained that they would need to find the books, take them back to the library, and personally apologize for their laziness. Then I addressed the matter of the fine.

“I am going to pay the fine because if I don’t we will be turned over to a collection agency who will stalk us, threaten to ruin our credit and torment us to the brink of insanity. Then, each of you will pay me back for your share of the bill. No one may set foot in a library until the fine is 100% paid. Clear?”

After the requisite agreements to my terms, Levi asked how much the fine was anyway. “$80,” I replied. Then, as you might expect, came the tears, the pleas for mercy, the imploring sob stories about how long it took to save up that much money. But I was the picture of perfect maternal moderateness. I never flinched, never wavered, never even suffered a moment of my usual neurotic self-doubting. I knew this was a lesson that would pay off down the road and I was teaching it with aplomb.

We found the books and the boys hesitantly went into the library to explain their plight to the kindly librarian at the checkout desk. She feigned a stern reproach and then thanked the boys for their honesty and courage. At home, I collected $40 from each of them. I will admit to feeling a great deal of shame upon prying open my little one’s basketball bank and scooping out every last nickel and dime he had to cover his loss. Levi, on the other hand, brought me a wad of crunched up singles, a few fives and a twenty dollar bill he’d been saving since his birthday in September.

Now, if you’ve never had to take money from your children, let me tell you, it is not an enjoyable task. You feel low, dirty and basically like you’re some kind of hopped up addict who needs to steal from her kids in order to score her next fix. It’s ugly, even when you’re doing it for the right reasons. But I pushed through because I knew that in the long run, this was a lesson in responsibility I did not want to be teaching with much higher stakes five years in the future.

All of this would have been a great maternal success story had it not been for one thing. I called this morning to give the collection agent at the library my credit card number. But I’d been empowered to beg for financial mercy myself by a friend whose daughter had lost a library book once. She told me that there was actually wiggle room when it came to library fines.

I pleaded my case to the grandmotherly librarian on the phone. She explained that she couldn’t erase my fine. But she offered me a significantly lower option that I immediately agreed to. Without getting into specifics, and I don’t want to encourage other violators to take advantage of the kind-hearted folk who work at our public libraries, but let’s just say that Andrew Jackson was happy to help me out and foot this bill entirely.

So here’s the question; do I tell the kids I only had to pay a fraction of the fine? Or do I keep their hard-earned allowance money to drive home a lesson that will serve them well in the future? This truly is a conundrum. Keeping the money would be like making a profit off my children. That definitely cannot be right. But giving it back makes the consequence too lackluster and teaches them that there are always ways to squirm out of taking responsibility.

Why is it that the one time I’m actually certain about my convictions, someone does something kind and admirable and I’m right back in the midst of self-doubt, confusion and parental anxiety? Somehow this just doesn’t seem fair.

Please, tell me what to do!

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