More Cabin Fever Cures

I'm a little late with this - sorry to anyone who's been checking for it. Had to help my daughter and her friends run the snack bar for the high school wrestling match last night, and I was just too whupped when I got home to get this up.

BUT, as promised, here is the "LE" of my SMILE strategies for no-fuss parenting. My six-year-old nephew Geoff, above, is demonstrating the "E" - Empowerment - as he tackles washing up all by himself after cooking his own scrambled eggs for breakfast (with only a little help with the hot stove). During my time as a toddler day care teacher and a preschool teacher I learned how much kids can do themselves with a little support and supervision - lessons that my own kids have re-taught me many times over the years.

LOOK! OVER THERE! Hah! Distracted you, didn't I? Refocus your child’s attention (or your own) to end battles. Distraction remains one of my favorite parenting strategies, even with teens.

• Kids melting down? Instead of getting caught up in a squabble, circumvent it with an activity. To get small fry involved, try the teacher tested-technique of "Plop and Do." Just gather the supplies to build a block tower, or set up a blanket and pillow fort, or whatever, and start doing it. Little guys will be attracted to it like fruit flies to those aging bananas on the counter. Bonus: as soon as the kiddies are engaged, you can slip away to do something else (as long as it's not something even more appealing to your kids, like mushing up the gross bananas to make muffins).


• You'll get more mileage out of your kids' toys during the long winter if you follow the strategies used in schools and childcare centers: stick to toys with many, many uses, like dolls, plastic animals and action figures, a dress up box, classic building toys, art supplies; avoid like the plague any toys that make electronic noises (these should be "accidentally" broken as quickly as possible and put out in the trash, or else you can just forget over and over to buy new batteries); keep most toys stashed out of kid reach and rotate what's available for play on a regular basis - this keeps the mess to a minimum, interest high, and prevents kids from getting overwhelmed by too many choices; and shift activities often, alternating a quiet activity with a rowdier one, a do-alone activity with a do-together one.


• You can check out some specific activity ideas on the list I provided to KDKA before my appearance at this link to their website.
  

EMPOWER YOUR CHILD Give him the tools to grow and to be an important member of the family - life will be easier and more satisfying for everyone.

• Set the stage by doing your job as parent. I know, it can be hard to act mature when you've spent the last 12 hours scraping playdough out of the carpet, playing 75 straight games of Candyland (and losing every one), and cutting the crusts off PB&J, but if you don't meet your kid's basic needs for good nutrition, adequate sleep, and plenty of exercise, nothing else will work.


• Set up a “Yes, I can” environment with child-sized equipment. Stock up on step stools and sturdy chairs, buy unbreakable dishes, choose safe cleaning supplies (it's amazing how well baby wipes clean things), and invest in real but small-sized tools (like a tiny snow shovel, kid-sized kitchen utensils, a little broom and dustpan).


• Assign chores (like making the bed – yes, it will look like crap, but that's okay; setting the table - make placemats showing the positions of utensils; and emptying waste baskets - provide a box with a wide "mouth" that your child can push room to room). Also invite kids to participate in family decisions whenever possible (like what to do for fun on the weekend, menu-planning, which choice for the summer vacation is best).


• Teach emotional control strategies like "spitting out grumpies" (take a cup of water in the bathroom, swish water and grumpies around, spit out in sink) or "holding in hitting" (with a tight self-inflicted bear hug if necessary) to manage strong feelings.


• Let your kid experience frustration – and learn he can try again; let her be bored and discover how to be resourceful. Teach problem-solving approaches, like asking, “What if..?” and “What else could I do?”


• Finally, get each kid a Power Rangers outfit (or Spiderman suit, Incredibles costume, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle get-up, etc.) and whenever your kids whine that they can't do something, say, "But a Power Ranger can! And you're a Power Ranger, right?" (When they get older, this strategy can switch to: "But someone mature enough to drive a car can do that! And you're mature enough to drive, right?")
  
  Here are links to my FussBuster books on amazon, if you're searching for more detailed, specific ideas: FussBusters at Home and FussBusters on the Go.

Oh! One last thing. I'm planning to make Tuesdays my day for posting general parenting tips, and as well as tips for reading with your kids and/or reviews of kids' books - I'll use the title "Tuesday Tip Day" when I do. I'm not promising every week or anything, but I'll try to make it fairly regular!

Cabin Fever Cures

Tomorrow morning I'm putting on my parenting expert hat and doing a spot on Pittsburgh Today Live (KDKA - the CBS affiliate) with Kristine Sorensen on helping parents survive the short winter days when trapped indoors with a mess of little kids. I remember those days well, even though the White Power Ranger in the above photo of my kids just celebrated his 2oth birthday, a fact which kind of freaks me out.


Anyway, here is "SMI," or the first three parts of my SMILE system - five easy parenting strategies that work in almost any tough situation, even snow days! (For that matter, they work pretty well for people of any age, with or without kids.) I've included some practical examples of how to implement them, with a focus on ideas that work well this time of year. I promise to add the last two strategies - the "LE" - tomorrow. (I'd put everything up today, but I need some time tonight to do something about my hair and figure out what I'm going to wear, especially since I have to sit next to the skinny and lovely Ms. Sorensen tomorrow morning. And I know for a fact she has two kids, so I can't just blame the difference in our looks on my motherhood status. Drat. Well, I am a lot older than she is.)

STICK TO SAME AND SIMPLE Routines, rituals and clear rules keep your child secure and happy.

• Develop a schedule and easy routines for each day's Big Events like meals and bedtime. (Visit www.flylady.net if you need help with family life routines, or if you're like me and are prone to a certain, well, slobbiness.)


• Ease post-holiday blues with a few fun traditions as you transition back into normal routines, like letting everyone eat a little of the now-stale gingerbread house on the day you put the holiday decorations away.


• Teach the Golden Rule (over and over and over), and use catchphrases (like “Use your words not your body” or “Inside voices please”) to remind your child that punching and screeching are more than you can bear at the moment.

MAKE THE MOST OF MUSIC AND ART These soothe the savage beast – and help civilize her too.

• For some reason, kids are more likely to comply with demands if you sing them. Singing in an opera voice will even make my husband do what I want, as long as I agree to stop the minute he cooperates. Adapt the lyrics to familiar all-purpose tunes like “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush” or just make up a chant that kind of has rhythm.


• Know why movies always seem better than real life? Soundtracks. (And professional make-up artists help too.) Put on music to create or change the mood in your home. It doesn't have to be kid music. In fact, on a blizzardy, cranky day - it's probably best to avoid anything sung by purple dinosaurs or by adults acting like freakishly cheerful little kids.


• Use arts and crafts to bust stress and teach kids to follow directions. I highly recommend my friend Judy Press's arts and crafts books if you need ideas. Try The Little Hands Big Fun Craft Book (Williamson).

• Here's a quick and easy "craft" or "science project" (depending on which your kid prefers). Pour about an inch of milk into a shallow plastic container. Drop dots of food coloring over the surface (they should kind of sit tight where you drip them). Pour a small amount of dishwashing liquid into another small container and give your child a toothpick. Show him how to dip the tip into the soap and then lightly into the center of one of the food coloring drops. WOW! If you go easy on the soap, you can repeat this for quite a long time before there's just too much soap in the milk. Just be nice and don't hog this activity just because it's so much fun.
  

INVOKE IMAGINATION AND HUMOR They’re great tools to prevent rebellion and create warmth.

• To make your child stop pinching her little brother, ask her to fly like a dragon or trot like a pony to the other room and fetch something for you.


• To encourage hat-wearing, put a mirror at kid-height by the winter clothes hooks - and allow considerable vamping and silliness. Get boots on reluctant tootsies by pretending to be Prince Charming outfitting Cinderella with her glass galoshes.


• Stock up on funny books, silly CDs, outlandish dress-up clothes, and anything else that gets your gang giggling.

Need more ideas than this and can't wait for me to post more of them? Check out my award-winning parenting books, FussBusters at Home and FussBusters on the Go (Peachtree).

Happy New Year!

Ah! Having done my part of my middle son's finish-the-last-few-college-applications frenzy (i.e., cracking the whip, editing, and forking over the credit card), I'm free to enjoy this new year... at least for a few minutes before I crash and fall asleep, anyway. A new year always feels to me like a fresh snow (which we're getting as I type) - pristine and clean and full of promise. I know my cheer will fade in a few days, as the slush turns gray and I break my resolutions, but I'm relishing this peaceful, hopeful moment for now.

Anyhow, this year my main resolution is to make resolutions I can actually keep. The challenge is thus to come up with some keepable ones that don't involve eating more chocolate and reading more books. Hmm.

Okay, this year I resolve to:

• Draw every morning for 10 minutes.
• Post on my blog at least once a week.
• Finally get around to adding the list of blogs I read and update the list of 3-D artists I admire.
• Finish my website and get it online. I HAVE to do this. SOON.
• Learn something new every day (actually an easy one to keep - between kids, NPR, and my internet addiction, I can hardly fail to get my brain stirred daily).
• Walk the dog at least twice a day, even when the weather stinks and we'd both rather hunker down by the fire.
• Do jumping jacks and have a drink of water instead of (or at least before) I dig into my chocolate stash when stress-cravings hit.
• Procrastinate less.
• Send my holiday cards. Soon. Really, really soon.
• Write thank you notes. Real ones. On paper. And affix stamps to the envelopes and mail them. At least some of the time.
• Spend 15 minutes tidying my studio and/or the kitchen table before bed.
• Eat more chocolate.

Doh! Well, I had to put that last one in because my list was getting less and less keepable as I went on. I guess I'll have to think about these some more.

So what resolutions are the rest of you planning? Any I have a prayer of keeping too?

More Signings for Merry Christmas, Cheeps!

I have two more signings coming up for Merry Christmas, Cheeps. The first is tomorrow, Saturday, December 8th at the Barnes & Noble at the Waterfront in Pittsburgh, PA from 11 to noon. I'll be doing a story time with Judy Press, a good buddy and fellow local children's book author. She's promoting

Big Fun Christmas Crafts and Activities (Williamson) which features literally hundreds of easy, attractive holiday projects to do with your kids. We'll read the Cheeps book (with props and maybe a little singing) and Judy has a paper bag snowman project for kids to do. There will also be treats in the children's area. I think the store also has copies of other titles by me and Judy, and we'd be happy to sign those too.

Then next weekend (December 15th), I'll be joining Judy and lots of other Pittsburgh authors and illustrators at Joseph-Beth, Southside, for a benefit for one of my favorite nonprofits, Beginning with Books, whose mission is to help all children become capable and enthusiastic lifelong readers. There will be authors there signing, reading, and even wrapping the gifts you choose from noon to six. My shift is from 2 to 4, but I'm going to try to hang around later as a wrapper. A portion of the sales will go to Beginning with Books, and I think you can also purchase books for them to donate to needy kids.

Thanks to my Cheeps author, Julie Stiegemeyer, and her experience at a signing in Fort Wayne, IN last night, I now know one more thing to be prepared for at the upcoming signings: gorillas in Santa hats who scare little tykes. You can read about her author adventure on her blog.

Reading for Pleasure, Part I

Sara Reading; cut paper; Copyright, 2007

According to a recent NEA report, (read about it in the Boston Globe) almost 20% of teens never read for pleasure, and, even worse, almost half of Americans aged 18 to 24 never read a book for pleasure. While many smart people have since debated both the report's accuracy and the significance of the results, I am nonetheless convinced that pleasure reading at any age has many benefits, not the least of which is pleasure, and I know there are too many people who haven't discovered how wonderful books (and other reading materials) can be. This is important to me because people who read for pleasure tend to be better educated, more successful, happier, thinner, etc. than people who don't. Also, most importantly, they are more likely to buy the books I write and illustrate.

I'm lucky enough to have three teen/young adult kids (daughter age 15, sons 17 and 19) who love to read. I'm also wise and humble enough to realize that genes, the influences of other people, and of course, luck have probably played as big a role in making them readers as I have. Nonetheless, from watching the development of pleasure readers and nonreaders among my kids and their friends, and from encouraging readers during my past life as a child therapist and teacher, I have gleaned some tips that might increase the odds of making your older child a reader. I'm mostly skipping the standard, well-supported ideas and going with my family's quirky strategies. Here are my first five tips -- I'll try to follow up with more soon.

1. Lower your standards By all means, stock your kids' bookshelves with some award-winners and great literature -- but also provide plenty of series books, collections of favorite comic strips, books that are too young for your kids, books featuring fart/gross humor, action-adventure stories, romance novels -- whatever floats your kids' boats. There's actually research supporting the unique ability of "formula fiction" (code expression for junky series books, whether Nancy Drew or Janet Evanovich) to build kids' reading fluency and comprehension skills. And my own experience is that junk books are the literary equivalent of marijuana; they're a gateway substance to trying and getting hooked on more serious stuff.

2. Cherish books with cracked spines and dog ears It means they've been read rather than preserved on the shelf, and it means your kids aren't growing up so afraid of damaging a book that they're afraid to touch one. There's nothing wrong, of course, with encouraging your kids to use book marks and to refrain from leaving their books in the puddle of milk next to the cereal bowl, but don't go so overboard that you make books the equivalent of fragile heirlooms (and if you have books in that category, lock them up until your kids are older. Well, grown.) Contrary to what the school librarian may have led you to believe, treating a book with less than perfect respect will not turn you into a pervert or worse. Heck, I used to color in my favorite books, and I'm not yet a mass murderer.

3. Keep books in the bathroom The tub in our first floor bathroom is so small that no one uses it for bathing anymore -- and over the last few years, it has slowly but surely filled up with books that people enjoy reading while on the john. (It's probably a good idea to grab the Purell after handling one of them...) This tip is not a good idea if you have too few bathrooms -- since one of the main side effects of keeping books in the bathroom is that people spend way more time in there.

One of my own favorite rituals as a teenager was soaking for hours in the clawfoot tub on our third floor while reading one of the "bathtub" books stored in the bookcase across from it (that was a wonderfully big bathroom). Our bathtub books were mostly tear jerkers like Love Story by Erich Segal, "outgrown" favorite middle grade novels like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken , and humorous memoirs like My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson -- but depending on your kids' reading tastes and gender, you might need a very different selection. Such was the power of those books and that experience that I can quote long passages from most of them, and my sisters and I still squabble over custody of the original water-stained copies.

4. Teach this equation: Waiting = Reading Before heading off to the dentist's office at my house, the scramble isn't so much to floss for the first time in months (though it should be), but to find where the heck you left your book. I'm actually disappointed if there's not much of a wait.

Last night, when I took my oldest to the airport for his flight back to school, we had to turn around and come home, not because he forgot his ticket or his cell phone, but for something equally essential -- his book. And one of my kids even brings a paperback to Kennywood, the local amusement park, so he can read while he stands in line. As a bonus, my kids are much less impatient about long waits than most kids are.

5. Get audio books rather than DVDs when you head off on a long trip It's much more fair to the driver, who can't (or at least shouldn't) watch the DVD along with everyone else, and it builds listening muscles amazingly well. Choose books wisely - suspense, action, humor, etc. are especially important if you're stuck in a traffic jam or wedged between your annoying little brother and the laundry basket of smelly beach towels. We get most of our selections from the library and always grab more books than it seems like we need, in case one (or more) turns out to be a dud.

Okay, more tips in a few days. Now get busy hanging shelves in the john.

I'm Thankful

copyright, Carol Baicker-McKee, 2007

Hm. Don't really have a great image for this post (though who could fail to be thankful for tasty treats like gingerbread men). But anyway, here's a Top Ten List of things I'm thankful for:

1. Family All of it - my immediate family of husband, three kids, and a dog; my extended family I grew up in, and my husband's extended family who have made me one of their own. It's hard to say something about all of them that's not trite or too general, but here are some of the specific things about them I'm thankful for. I love how my immediate family routinely laughs so hard at the dinner table that we not only have to worry about milk coming out of someone's nose but the occasional spaghetti noodle - which the dog will be happy to eat if it ends up on the floor; I am grateful that my growing-up family never tires of huge annual gatherings at the beach (and grateful that my parents continue to fund these vacations), complete with ritual toad-catching and crab-chasing; and I'm thankful that my husband's family always makes up songs with hilarious lyrics to celebrate special occasions, and especially grateful that they let me sing along with everyone despite my severe tone deafness and complete ignorance of tempo.

2. Friends Having moved a bazillion times over the years and also having lots of friends who have moved (and now having internet-found friends), I'm lucky to have friends wherever I go, and less fortunately, some places I don't go but wish I could. Like my family, I know my friends will do kind things like ooh and ahh kindly over my latest book project (and even buy copies for gifts, even if they have to kind of stretch to pinpoint an appropriate recipient). And when I get a bad haircut, my friends don't say things like, "Oh well, it'll grow out again someday," but more tactful things like, "Doesn't the part look nice!"

3. Child #2 has almost finished his college applications And I'll be really, really grateful when they're well and truly done.

4. Affording college tuition So far at least. Child #3 should probably lie awake worrying a little...

5. Living the creative life How lucky to be working as a writer, illustrator, and kid-advice person! It doesn't get any better than this! (Well, the money part could get better, especially from the points of view of my husband, who would dearly love to be a house husband/amateur athlete and child #3 who doesn't want to lie awake worrying about her college fund.) And some people think it would be better if I didn't live the creative life all over the kitchen table and in big piles in their bedroom that they'd like to use when they come home from college for vacations.

6. That this past year I had one book published, finished one that will be out next year, and got a contract for another And that one's nearing completion. I hope.

7. The disgusting growth on the dog's leg that I've been ignoring for months isn't cancer Phew. The guilt was going to be pretty unbearable.

8. Gas prices that have risen enough that it's cheaper to fly child #1 home from college for breaks like this than to drive 9 hours each direction to fetch him.

9. Dark chocolate is good for you. And so is red wine. Now we just have to work on Fritos.

10. That the world is so full of good books, good people, and the internet, which I'm addicted to.

11. That ending a sentence with a preposition isn't as sinful as it used to be.

12. That this list could be in the 100s or more before I ran out of things to be grateful for, and I had to cheat by 2 even to wrap this up.

Thank you to all the people who have given me so much to be grateful for this past year. I hope I can repay you - and find a way to pay things forward too, in the years to come.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

You're invited!

Grab some buddies and shuffle on over!

Who: You, of course, and Julie Stiegemeyer, author, and me, Carol Baicker-McKee, illustrator
What: A book signing/holiday book fair for Merry Christmas, Cheeps!
When: From 11 to noon on Saturday, November 17, 2007. (I'll actually be there a bit earlier, around 10:30).
Where: The Barnes & Noble at South Hills Village Mall, Pittsburgh PA
Why: Because it will be fun! Plus it's a good chance to acquire a special book for a gift or for your own holiday collection.

Please join us!