Last night, I wrote about my struggles to set up a good work-at-home routine around here, because of all the random urgent tasks that pop up during a day. Here are two days worth of routine busters:
Today
1. Call from Ian's school to say that Jonah's homework is in Ian's backpack. Weigh going to Ian's school and getting the homework to Jonah. But decide it's not worth a 45 minute drive. Decide to let Jonah take his lumps.
2. See Jonah's lunch box on the kitchen floor. Decide to take it to him, since he doesn't have any money on his lunch card. Can't let the kid starve. 10 minute distraction.
3. Half day at Ian's school; home at 12:20. He just got off the bus complaining of a sore throat. Add 15 minutes onto all tasks for the rest of the day.
Yesterday
1. Call from Ian's school. He forgot his library book. They want me to bring it in, so he won't cry. We work it out on the phone and he's fine. 8 minute distraction.
2. Call from Ian's school. The therapist wants to discuss the horrible side affects of his ADHD meds. She promises to push the Speech Therapist to teach him to swallow pills, so we can try something else. 30 minute conversation with a 40 minute recovery time.
3. Go to the mall to buy a dress for a baptism this weekend. (A chore that would be unthinkable with a kid in tow. Husband doesn't get home early enough to go in the evenings.) 2 hours. (Yay! Pretty dress.)
4. Can't remember where I parked the car, so I walk around aimlessly, while pushing the panic button on the key chain over and over until I find it. 15 minutes.
Despite all that, I did manage to write 466 (non-bloggy, non-twittery) words so far this morning. If I pop in a movie for the sick kid, I might be able to double it.
Apt. 11d 
My day was going very productively until I read that Pittsburgh is one of nine finalists for the 2011 Siemens Sustainable Community Award for mid-size communities. Now I’m too giddy to do any work.
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“Decide to take it to him, since he doesn’t have any money on his lunch card. Can’t let the kid starve.”
Would the school really let him go hungry? Wait, don’t answer that.
I think it’s hilarious that J’s HW was in Ian’s backpack. That would never happen here because of sibling cooties.
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At our kids’ school, they’d give the kid a sandwich and send us a bill for $3.
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That’s not a bad deal. You should just do the $3 sandwich every day.
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That’s roughly how much the school lunch is per kid, and it’s better (it’s not federal–they have a different local place provide lunch each day). I’ve been saving the $60 or $70 a month by making lunches every morning the past couple months, but it’s been brutal both making lunches and inspiring everybody into their school clothes. Next month, I think we’ll go back to school lunch.
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I think there’s a some sort of law requiring that schools feed children with no lunch or lunch money, so you can at least not have to worry about that next time.
I was a forgetful and high strung child, and had many a meltdown over forgetting lunches, library books, etc. My parents held firm on making me deal with the consequences, and I probably grew up a better person because of it. Certainly, a the very least my mother not bringing lunch to me didn’t scar me for life, even if I did once spend an entire lunch break sobbing about it in first grade.
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This is marginally related, in the sense that it is about children eating. Our son was eating pork and calling it beef. I told him it was pork, adding that pork is from a pig. This triggered something in his head. He asks why we are eating “one of God’s creatures”, and how would we feel if somebody ate us, and so on. Then, without pausing his PETA-thing, he ate another piece of pork.
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A friend of mine swears by the book Parenting with Consequences.Essentially the idea is that kids learn through consequences. So, if your child forgets his lunch he goes hungry. I was shocked (note: I have no children) when she told me this. Now somethings I can understand, but others I was rather shocked. That said, now that I think about it, the approach is probably pretty doable. *If* I had a kid, I might not be able to drop off said missing lunch if I wanted because I work. Hmm….stuff to ponder in the abstract.
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Essentially the idea is that kids learn through consequences.
Adults, not so much.
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The sick kid is the ultimate routine buster. A sick kid throws our lives in a tailspin.
More than a few days of illness has me searching both job & real estate listings to see if we could relocate our lives back to the east coast, near my parents. (Of course, perhaps it is just an unrealistic fantasy that family members chip in if a contagious virus is involved?) I hope Ian is feeling better!
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It is an unrealistic fantasy (in my experience) Kristen. My mother in law is more in need of help than she is help. At least I knew that would be the case when I convinced her to move here.
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“(Of course, perhaps it is just an unrealistic fantasy that family members chip in if a contagious virus is involved?) ”
Not in our lives, where grandparents are healthy enough to care for the children, and are happy and willing to do so. But, what I’ve heard is that one should talk about expectations with one’s family. I can’t remember whose blog it was (might be one of the folks who posts here) who wrote of moving miles and miles with the goal of having family nearby, and finding that family didn’t real change the dynamic. People’s lives fill with other activities when you’re not there, and might not open to find time for you (not just for help, but also just time).
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I’ve got a ton of sick days, so now the sick kid isn’t a huge logistical problem. Cleaning puke at 3:00 a.m. sucks, but you can’t really farm that out to relatives.
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With family, the obligation to reciprocate as possible means that there isn’t a free lunch (at least not as an able bodied, healthy family member). We’re thousands of miles from our families, but by the same token, we don’t have the same duties that would come with living in easy range. Of course, if the time came, I can imagine moving parents here (the local housing stock contains an amazing number of garage apartments and MIL units). Also, one occasionally runs into grandparents that haven’t figured out the gig and who don’t have the energy or interest to engage grandchildren.
“Essentially the idea is that kids learn through consequences.”
I think you actually have to be pretty sophisticated to learn through consequences. My kids were willing to deal with the consequences of not being toilet trained for a very, very long time. Likewise, at least some older children get into negative ruts, and they need a lot of the old heave ho to push them out. There’s a guy named Daniel Willingham who talks about related issues in his book Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. Willingham says that what we describe as thinking is often just remembering. We remember how we dealt with similar problems in the past, and we repeat what we did before (I’d add here that that’s true even if what we did before failed miserably–think of all the multiply divorced, multiply fired, multiply bankrupt people there are). Actually thinking from scratch is very hard, and we do it rarely. It takes too much effort.
So, I would have to disagree with the “kids learn from consequences,” or at least suggest that it’ not a cure-all. I have learned from consequences that cookies make me fat, but simply knowing that is not making me thinner. Likewise with my kids the late potty trainers, they knew all about potty theory (why it’s nice to use the potty, how we use the potty, etc.), but they hadn’t learned it as a habit.
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