The Phone Call

Since I highlighted a parenting success in my last post, it seems only fair to follow with a parenting failure.  This one was pretty spectacular, so please, go back and read the success story again after this, and promise to be kind in your thoughts toward me!


This story begins with my attempt to make a phone call.  So many of my terrible parenting moments have to do with phone calls.  I go to great lengths, in fact, to never make phone calls when the children are awake.  Occasionally, an exception has to be made. 

(Now at some point in this story, you are going to be asking yourself “Shouldn’t she have just put the phone on hold for a moment while she dealt with the children?”  The answer is yes. Yes, she should have.  But all of these events took place in approximately 90 seconds, and there was no time for rational thought.)


On this particular day, I needed to call the Aquatic Center to confirm whether our swimming lessons were still taking place that afternoon.  The kids were at the dining room table snacking.  I gave them strict instructions to please be quiet for one minute while I was on the phone, and then went into our family room to make the call.  I dialed the first 9 digits, and then let my finger hover over the last button for a moment, confirming silence from the other room before executing the call.


Less than a split-second after I finished dialing, Ben came barreling into the room pushing his two noisiest toy cars across the floor.  As the phone rang once, I put my finger over the microphone and told Benjamin in my firmest voice to stop immediately or he would go to time out.  Before I had even finished my sentence, the Aquatic Center staff person (we’ll call him AC) had picked up and issued a greeting.


As I tried to put together a coherent sentence to explain my question to AC, my other two children came running into the room.  I walked to the opposite side of the room.  They followed.  Benjamin then turned around and raced the same super-loud cars back across the room, causing loud eruptions of glee from Sophie (age 6).  I couldn’t hear a word AC was saying.  Benjamin was out of my reach, facing away from me, and I was desperate to get his attention.  My large exercise ball was next to me, and I quickly kicked it in Ben’s direction, expecting it would bump him in the back and cause him to turn and look at me.  Instead, the ball flew into the air, ricocheted off of Sophie’s forehead, bounced into my computer monitor, and knocked half the contents of my desk over before landing back on the ground.


I was HORRIFIED!  Sophie started crying and ran out of the room.  I was still trying to wrap up my conversation with AC (what he was thinking on the other end, I’ll never know), and Benjamin still had those cars in his hands.  I ran over, swept up the cars, ran to the back door, and dropped them outside into the mulch.  I said a quick thank you and goodbye to AC while Ben cried “DON’T PUT MY CARS OUTSIDE!” in the background.


After I hung up the phone, I ran to find Sophie.  She was in Andrew’s room, sitting on the rocking elephant and crying.  She was startled, but luckily uninjured.  (The exercise ball is really very light…probably why it has such great lift-off.)  I gave her a big hug, told her how sorry I was, and asked if she was okay.  “Yeah…” she said, “but…did you mean to hit Ben?”  


I cringed.  “No, honey, I didn’t mean to hit anybody!”  (I mean, not really.  I certainly thought about bouncing that ball off of his head, but that wasn’t actually my intention!  I only meant to get his attention - not to injure him – I swear!)


Ben was still crying, too, supposedly over the cars, although with some prodding he admitted that Mommy had scared him with the ball.  Apologies were issued all around.  I vowed to never kick an exercise ball again.


There was one thing I wouldn’t apologize for…the cars.  They stayed in the mulch for the rest of the afternoon.  My puzzled husband got to find them on his way in from work later.


So, my dear friends and family, if you ever wonder why I rely too heavily on email and never pick up a phone to call you…this is why.  You’re welcome.  

More Yogurt

Apparently this week’s adventures were sponsored by Yoplait.  (Note:  I have received no compensation for this endorsement, but I will accept any if offered.)  Remember my last reflection on yogurt involved me pondering how self-sufficient my children are?  Apparently that thought stuck with me…

After lunch the other day, I was in the kitchen cleaning up when I heard Benjamin (age 4) starting to cry in the dining room.  (Not the “I’m really sad” or “I’m hurt” cry…the “I’m upset about something” cry.)  I glanced into the dining room and saw Ben standing next to the table, holding onto the plate and cup that he was clearing.  I couldn’t determine the problem, so I said, “Ben, what’s wrong?”  He immediately cried, “I dropped my yogurt cup and it spilled on the floor!”  

I looked down by his feet and, sure enough, there was his yogurt cup lying on the floor.  He had eaten only a few spoonfuls of it at lunch, and there was now yogurt pooled at his feet, sprayed across the floor, and splattered on the baseboards on the wall.  I sighed internally.  I am not one to get mad over spilled milk, but I can get frustrated when my lunch cleanup suddenly doubles in magnitude.  This is when I had a sudden and rare moment of mothering clarity.  I put on a smile and said cheerfully, “No problem, Ben!  I’ll tell you how to clean it up.”  

I braced myself for the “I don’t want to!” fit, but was pleasantly surprised when he stopped crying and said, “I know how to clean it up, Mommy!”  

“Great!” I said, followed by “Start by picking up your yogurt cup and bringing it over to the counter.”  (I couldn’t stop myself from giving some direction.)

Then I turned back to the dishes.  A minute later, a yogurt cup appeared by my side.  I handed Ben some paper towels, and then watched as he went over to the side of the dining room table opposite the spill.  “Ben…what are you doing over there?”  

“I dropped it again over here, Mommy!”  Right.

But after that, he got right to cleaning up!  I stayed busy with the dishes in the kitchen (sometimes it’s just better not to watch), and Ben mopped up all of the yogurt with paper towels.  

“It’s sticky, Ben.  You’ll probably need to use some wet paper towels to finish wiping it up.”

Back he came and wet a paper towel himself.  I looked over again, and he was trying to clean up massive areas of stickiness with only a single, slightly-damp paper towel.  I suggested a little more water might help, so he came and wet more paper towels.  The next time I looked back, he had done such a good job around the dining room table that it seemed to have sprung a moat.  He was now working on the floor in front of the kitchen.  “What are you doing there, Ben?”  

“I spilled here, too!”  Of course.  “The floor’s all wet!”

“No problem, Ben.  I’ll get you a towel to dry it with.”

I got him a rag towel from the laundry room, and he quickly recovered the dining room floor from beneath the water.  (Mostly, anyway.)

The end result of this whole adventure?  Benjamin was so proud of what he had accomplished.  We were both relaxed and happy.  My lunch dishes got done at the same time that the yogurt cleanup did.  I got out of cleaning up a gigantic mess AND I get to be a good parent for teaching my child how to clean up his own messes.  It doesn’t get any better than that!  Sure, the dining room floor did need a follow-up mopping, but not right away.  (My feet only stuck to it in a few places.)  This is the good life…  

The Yogurt

The other day, I was sitting on the floor of our family room playing with the kids.  My toddler, Andrew, suddenly got up and ran off toward the kitchen.  This is not surprising, as it was five o’clock.  Dinnertime at our house is usually five-thirty or six, since my husband doesn’t get home until then.  But given the choice, Andrew would prefer to eat earlier, and so he starts begging around five.


A moment later, Andrew came back and jabbered several sentences at me that I didn’t understand and then promptly ran back to the kitchen.  I knew that this was my cue to follow and address his request for food, but I stayed, not wanting to deal with the tantrum awaiting me.  However, when he hadn’t returned in a minute or two I decided I had better follow.  He is known for his ability to outsmart baby-proofing devices.  Unfortunately, I have yet to learn how to cut meat and chop vegetables with my bare hands, so there are still sharp knives in our kitchen.


As I walked past our dining room table, I saw something odd.  It was my daughter’s cup of half-eaten yogurt, which I was sure she had returned to the fridge after snack time.  It was sitting on the table, right in front of Andrew’s booster seat.  Oh well…she must have left it out and I failed to notice.  (It seems I fail to notice many things these days…)  I turned and walked into the kitchen.  There was Andrew, standing in front of the open silverware drawer, and in the process of pulling out a large serving-size spoon.  He turned to look at me, and suddenly I put it together…  My little toddler (okay, fine, *giant* toddler) had figured out how to open the fridge, get out his sister’s yogurt, remove the plastic wrap from the top, carry it to the table without spilling it, and he was now getting himself a spoon.


Andrew's face was all innocence, and I realized that there was nothing devious to his actions.  After all, he had first come and “asked” me to help him.  When that didn’t work, he decided to take care of things himself.  He wanted to eat, so he got himself some food.  His self-sufficiency astounded me.  My 20-month-old had just accomplished a feat of self-care that I can’t even get my 6- or 4-year old to perform without coaching.


I couldn’t help but wonder what the implications of this behavior are.  What does this combination of physical capability beyond his years and lack of inhibition mean for me?  Will I be struggling for the next 17+ years to keep ahead of him so that he doesn’t get the best of me?  Or maybe it’s just that my parenting skills have improved so much by the third child that I have cultivated an above-average level of independence in him without even trying.  Yeah, that’s it…it must be the latter.


One thing I do know for sure.  In retrospect, I should have let him eat the yogurt.  Or at least allowed myself to enjoy the sight of watching him try to get that serving-size spoon into the cup of Yoplait.