As a parent of a toddler and a baby, it’s hard to imagine a time when they will ever be independent.  For the parents of my eighth graders, it may be hard to remember a time when dressing, feeding, bathing, and rocking their kids took up most of their free time.  While the days of brushing your kids’ teeth may be far behind parents of teens, let me stress, your kids still need you!

Here’s how:

Hygiene

Luckily, your teen can now bathe him or herself, but that doesn’t mean he or she has hygiene down.  I can attest to this as I have eighth graders after lunch; the boys come in red faced and dripping with sweat.  Some of them are so pungent, I have to hold my breath when working with them.

Remind your teen to shower daily as well as to apply deodorant.  If my boys were middle schoolers, I’d definitely buy them something like NASTY Cleansing Face & Body Wipes, Post Workout & After Sports, Extra Large (10″ x 12″) Individually Wrapped, 10-Count.  They look pretty manly, and I could imagine slipping a few packets in their backpacks.

My other eighth grade boy pet peeve is their LONG NAILS!!! Even though my boys are still shrimps, it drives me crazy when their nails get long or dirty.  Buying your boys a nice nail trimmer and checking their nail status every once in awhile will help them to avoid being my pet peeve.

Time Unplugged

My then superintendent called school the day after the 2011 Southwest Blackout.  To make up for lost instructional time, she assigned every student to write a page about their blackout experience.  The woman was serious about education.  When the power resumed and we made it back to school, I read through my students’ contributions.

I was struck by how much the experience had mattered to middle school students.  They said things like “my family talked for the first time in a long time.”  They named experiences such as playing board games, swimming in their pools, barbecuing, sitting around a fire, etc.  I thought a night without technology would have destroyed my students, but instead, it seemed to be what they craved because it offered uninterrupted time with their families.

Someone to Listen

I know that oftentimes I’m the first to share my students’ triumphs and failures with their parents.  Most teens do not contribute a lot of information voluntarily.  However, I think they still want to share but are uncomfortable with a one-on-one conversation.

I suggest finding something you can do together that takes the focus off of talking.  It could be something as active as walking, hiking, kayaking, etc.  or it could be something like baking, working on a puzzle, or making a craft.  The key is that when we’re distracted and busy with our hands, conversation just seems to flow.  A bonus would be if you were able to create something together that served others.  For example, putting together bags to hand out to the homeless in your community could be a cool way to do good with your teen while talking through some of the issues on his or her mind.

Involvement

It’s easy to take a back seat in your kids’ academic lives once they hit middle school, and it’s largely a good time to do it.  They need to own communicating with their teachers, organizing their time, and completing their work.  However, I would definitely recommend having a weekly check-in to go through their scores, grades, and comments.  Almost without exception, schools are offering live grade reports that allow for a transparency that just didn’t exist when you and I were in school.  I remember periodically begging my high school English teacher to tell me my grade; she would then manually calculate a number based on all my scores.  Seriously!

Go through the reports for each class with your teen.  Try to keep your language neutral and stick to exploratory questions: what do you think earned you that particular score?  how might you do a similar assignment differently in the future?  what was your strategy for studying for that quiz?

If they see this time as a means for you to support them, they won’t dread the weekly check-ins and they can serve to diffuse academic situations that could blow up later.  However, if the sessions are just a means for you to vent your frustration with their choices, they’ll be sure to shut down and will be deaf to your coaching.

So, there you have it.  What do you do to connect with your teen?  In what ways does he or she still need you?

Real Complicated Magazine August 2017

How to Make Children the Star of Your Home

 

For one fatigued couple from San Diego, kids take center stage in their Spanish- inspired dwelling.

Stepping into Lacharmedlife’s family home, you have the sense of being enveloped in a cyclone of toys.  It’s as though the motley shelves of Toys ‘R’ Us have wrapped around you in a display reminiscent of Christmas morning.  The look reflects Darcy Lacharmedlife’s general outlook: “My head is really, really cluttered,” says Lacharmedlife, who teaches middle school language arts when she’s not chasing two boys under three.  “I don’t think I’ve slept in three years, and I really wanted this space to capture that.”

The home, purchased just last year, is a patchwork of the various hobbies and interests she and her husband have abandoned over the years.  In a nod to her travel days, found objects from South America gather dust on the shelves.  His passion for photography is highlighted by the equipment in the closet, buried under sleeves of size three diapers.

“I’ve always hated the idea of defined living spaces,” says Lacharmedlife, “so I wanted to create places that brought the nursery inside-in every room.”  Which may be why there’s a Pac ‘n’ Play in the corner of the living room, draped with a banner of colorful paper birds or a crib staged under the dramatically high windows in her bedroom.  

At some level, even guests participate in this blending of spaces.  Visitors often move colorful teething toys off of surfaces before sitting down or exchange the plastic potty for the real one in the bathroom.  “We want them to feel a part of things,” shares Lacharmedlife.

Flaunt Closet Contents

With an au pair sleeping in the third bedroom and no remaining closet space for their son Bear’s clothing, Lacharmedlife chose to boldly display his tiny clothes in plastic tubs at the end of the living room.  “Clothes are normally regulated to closets, but by bringing them out into the open, I think we are really warming up a space that would have otherwise been clutter free.”  

Bring the World Home

The spirit of a bazaar suffuses the home, offering rich smells and sounds at every turn: here, a diaper pail, there a mildewing swim suit, from the monitor a wailing cry.  Nowhere is this sensory montage more apparent than in the kitchen where the meaty scent of microwaved hotdogs wafts over the Method counter spray.

Mix Fabrics and Textures

As children of the 80s, the Lacharmedlifes favor plastic in their decorating.  Think Fisher-Price meets Tonka.  Faux fur, wood, and composite playfully intermingle in Target inspired storage bins.  “Your house should feel like a castle, so the moat of toys around the armchair really brings that concept to life,” Lacharmedlife shares.  

Shop the Look

Amazon

“We do most of our shopping here,” Lacharmedlife notes.  “They have these boxes that we upcycle into ramps, airports, and playhouses.  It’s almost a farm to table feel because the boxes are that fresh.”

Target

“We try for a really middle-class feel, and I think we achieve it,” Lacharmedlife says, gazing lovingly at her husband.  “I think people feel good when they can walk into your home, and say, I have the same thing.”

Zulilly

“I’ve bought everything from maternity gowns to monster slippers on Zulilly; what really makes the buying experience special is the animated confetti that rains down when you click ‘buy.'”

I’m a lazy cleaner; just ask my husband.  I try not to be gross, but I don’t have time-or the gene- for being a neat freak.  Here are a few tips for getting things clean, even if you’re as reluctant of a housewife as I am:

 

          Clean the thing that’s bothering you the most.

Just get it done already.  It’ll probably take you ten minutes, and you won’t have to waste any more time thinking about it.

           Do double duty.

If you’re going to wash the bathroom hand towels, dampen one and wipe down the counter and the mirrors before tossing them in the wash.  If you’re already sweeping, hit down the cobwebs with a broom or give those baseboards a once over.  Bonus points if your double duty includes entertaining a kid (e.g. watering the plants while allowing your toddler to live out his fireman fantasy).

             Cheat.

Use hospital corners to anchor your sheet; this will prevent it from getting all tangled on the bed.  In the morning, just pull up the sheet and the comforter when you get out and the bed is half made.  I learned how to fold hospital corners when I worked at a summer camp, but you can learn how in this super short video.  Tip: they don’t even have to be as pretty as hers to work.

              When you dump your trash, dump it all.

You know how you pull out the trash bag in the kitchen bin only to discover there’s a ton of space left in it?  Well, this is prime time to fill it!  Dump all your small wastebaskets into the bag and get all the trash out at once.   Extra credit if you can get your kids to pitch in gathering the auxiliary trash.

               Use a vacuum as a broom.

Turn off the brush roller and just vacuum your tile or hard wood.  No bending, no dust pan, no sweat.

 

My final tip?  Start a blog.  You can use writing for it as justification for not doing any housework.

What hacks do you have for getting cleaning done when there are better things to do??