The book on parenting
Do I look like a Complete Idiot?

by Terri Mauro

Driven to distraction
Stunt-driving, parent-style.

by Terri Mauro

Snow job
The schools are closed, and Mom's on duty.

by Terri Mauro

When I was growing up in southern California, I dreamed of what it might be like to live where it snowed. Sledding every day. Armies of snowmen. Snow forts. Snowshoes. Snowball fights. And, on days when the snow blocked the door and cars couldn't make it on the road and the world was all in white, that most wonderful of childhood events--a snow day. You don't miss a lot of days of school for snow in southern California. How magical, I thought, to be given a day to revel in frozen bliss.

Ha! As fate would have it, I did eventually come to live where it snowed, in a place where snow days are not uncommon. But I'm no longer able to enjoy them. I'm a mom now. And I say: As long as the planet still has atmosphere and gravity, I want those kids in school.

It doesn't help that where I've settled, in New Jersey, they'll call a snow day on the rumor of snow. Actual flakes cause a virtual panic. Store shelves are stripped. People refuse to venture outdoors. School buses cannot be expected to navigate streets with even so much as a dusting. Insurance, I hear. Now, isn't that magical?

There was a time in my life when I would have loved to frolic in the snow all day long. This is not it. Yet my kids can't wait to get good and cold and wet. They'll attempt to make snowmen out of the light coating of white that passes for a crippling blizzard hereabouts. On days when snow actually accumulates, they'll delight in playing with the snow shovel--making big mountains in the driveway, packing the snow down on the sidewalk, dumping shovelfuls of icy crystals on each other's heads.

This is the job of children on snowy days. The job of moms is to sit
inside and watch them through the window while sipping hot chocolate
and reading magazines. And yet, perhaps to fill some need from my
own childhood, I find myself out in the snow with them, receiving snowballs to the head, adjusting little gloves and tying little bootlaces
and wiping snotty little noses, screaming for them not to eat the salty
snow in the street, whining to go inside. Oh, to be a kid again. Then,
I might actually enjoy this.

And maybe I'd enjoy a snow day, too. Now, it means calling strangers
on the snow chain at 5 a.m. to break the bad no-school news. It means
an endless succession of putting on dry layers of clothing, taking off wet layers of clothing, putting on dry layers. It means arguing with children who are blue but swear that they are n-n-n-not c-c-c-cold and can't they just play for five more minutes? It means a disruption in routine, and I don't handle that any better than my neurologically impaired children do. I'd rather hike across frozen tundra pulling them on a sled to get them to school than let them stay home.

Because once they're safely in class, I can indulge in my own version of a perfect snow day: sitting inside a warm house and watching the flakes
pile up prettily. Not playing in it, driving in it, walking in it, sliding in
it, shoveling it, brushing it from cars or clothing. Just watching it. Preferably with hot chocolate and a magazine close at hand.

Play's the thing
Aren't kids just supposed to know how to have fun?

by Terri Mauro

My daughter doesn't know how to play.

Bad habits
My son sucks his fingers. Got a problem with that?

by Terri Mauro

Some people smoke. Some people gamble. Some eat too much or drink too much or shop too much. My son sucks his fingers. This behavior, harmless in a smaller child but socially unacceptable at six, earns him outspoken disapproval from those who feel he should know better. Yet he clings to those digits with the tenacity of a smoker standing outside in the rain to grab a puff or two. He doesn't care about disapproval or tooth damage or hygeine or drool. He needs to suck. And no parental tantrums or teacher edicts or two-bit behavior modification is gonna stop him.

Consequently, you rarely see him without his hand hanging out of his mouth. The two middle digits of his left hand seem to have magical qualities of comfort that the other fingers and even his thumbs cannot match. Oh, sometimes he'll suck on his shirt collar, or his cuffs, or his toys, but they're just placeholders. The fingers are his favorites, and he sucks them with the unbridled pleasure that some people reserve for fine cigars.

And so, of course, if it brings pleasure, it's got to stop. His teacher has put finger-sucking on her list of behaviors that must not be allowed. Also on that list are screaming in class and shouting out meaningless phrases repetitively at the top of his lungs. Now, it seems to me that on a scale of disruptiveness ranging from loud and hysterical noises to, I don't know, sitting comatose in the corner, finger-sucking skews far toward the latter. But the sight of it just drives some people crazy. Everybody knows of a child who was cured of this by tricks or threats or Tabasco, and so they think he should just cut it out already. "Fingers out!" "Fingers out!" is their refrain. This is like telling a smoker "Hey, cigarette out! I mean it! No more!"

If he's in a mellow mood, he might humor you and stop sucking until you stop watching. If he's in a mischievous mood, he'll take them out and put them in immediately, making a game out of your attempts to set him straight. If he's stressed, he will cling to those fingers for dear life, and you'd be surprised how hard it is to pry fingers from the mouth of a 35-pound boy who does not want them removed. It is a mighty struggle.

And one in which I am reluctant to engage. Frankly, this child has such an elaborate collection of issues--fetal alcohol effect, sensory integration disorder, autistic behaviors, developmental delays, and of course, the dreaded extreme stubborness syndrome--that I'm willing to let him have a little comfort. His array of comfort activities used to be much broader; they included banging his head against the floor, rocking in his bed so hard that he burned some hair off, and whipping his head back and forth like a spectator at some sort of turbo tennis game. Finger-sucking would have been my pick of that litter too, and I'm happy that that's the one that stuck.

The naysayers think this is a sign of lazy parenting, and so be it. We had these same arguments a couple of years ago when he still wasn't toilet trained at age five. Late mastery of this skill isn't uncommon in kids with his neurological makeup, yet there was a fair amount of zealotry on the part of some school personnel about making him get with the program. One therapist even suggested I use suppositories to get him to do the deed on demand. I passed on that proposal. I had tried before to force the issue, and found that this child will do things when he's good and ready, and not before. Any attempts to rush developmental milestones ended with me screaming at a calm child who held all the cards. Life is too short.

In the end, when the time was right, he was toilet-trained in a day. Dry during the day, dry at night, no problemo. And the same thing will happen with the finger-sucking. One day, he'll just pop them out and never pop them back in. I trust this will be sometime before his wedding day.

If not, then it's his wife's problem.

Alphabet soup
Letters, we get letters.

by Terri Mauro

Anyone whose child has special needs can tell you about "alphabet soup," that string of diagnoses that follows the child around like a toy train made out of blocks. ADD, PDD, PTSD, OCD, FAS, FAE, RAD, SID, LLD--I always expect to see LMNOP in there somewhere, and now I've figured out what it should stand for: Labels of a Meaningless Nature Obscuring the Person.

The letters are good for something, usually getting services or getting medication or getting a grip, but they rarely present a complete picture of a child. Which means, of course, that there's always room for more labels, and we parents, those of us on the front lines, might as well come up with them ourselves. In that spirit, Mothers with Attitude humbly submits a dozen brand-spanking-new syndromes, suitable for use with balky Child Study Teams, disapproving tantrum witnesses, know-it-all in-laws, and clueless pediatricians. Read them, study them, memorize them, and soon you'll be saying: "His MTED is really acting up today. I wish I could stop the behavior, but between the ESS, SD, and OPPB it's impossible for me to get anywhere. I swear, sometimes I think this kid is PBD, but the doctor suspects MRTM."

copyright © 2000 by Terri Mauro