Waking mama bear

You know how parents always tell their teens "if you're ever in situation where you feel uncomfortable, call me and I'll come get you, no matter what"?  Yep, I got that call last week. Lauren had headed out with some friends to go to an amusement park a couple of hours away.  Within an hour, she started texting me:  

whoa, he's driving 115 mph. 

he won't slow down.  

wait, he slowed down to 100.

now they're making fun of me for wanting to go slower.

(at this point I want their phone numbers so I can give them a good verbal shaking but then I don't want them to talk on the phone AND drive over 100)

(or to call the highway patrol and get them pulled over)

(or--better yet--to actually shake some sense into them)

This is scary. But we're almost there. 

Will you come and get me so I don't have to drive home with them?

Well, of course. The mama bear in me roared and I went and got her, adrenaline surging. Glad she told me (and it was actually even worse than she had let on), relieved she was okay, and peeeeeeved with the risk-taking crazy boys who will--rest assured--never chauffeur my girl again.  I was so angry at their stupidity.  (And also? I have never had to retrieve her from anywhere when she was with her friends from school.  These were church friends. Sheesh.)

L kept apologizing on the way home.  I assured her that we would go ANYWHERE to make sure she was safe.  That's why there's a little mama bear cave in the heart of every mom, holding a protective and fierce creature whose first words upon waking from her hibernating slumber are DON'T MESS WITH MY CHILD.

Then I told her about the time I jumped out of a moving Volkswagen van when I was 16 (something about wanting to get out but the boy wouldn't pull over).  Silly teenage brains.

The enforcer

 

Oh, boy, am I unpopular with my kids right now.

You know, way back when I thought about what kind of mom I would be when the time came, I had rosy visions of reading together, making meals together, listening well, giving big warm hugs, bedtime routines, birthday parties.  I didn't really dream of being the bad guy.  The enforcer. (Ba ba BUUM.)

But, sure enough, that's what's called for sometimes.  I'm a parent not a pal, as the lady on the morning talk show said a while back (although, really, I'd love to be a Lorelei, Gilmore Girls-type mom. She seemed to pull off the pal+parent thing, plus witty banter. I know, it's just a tv show.)

We've had some chronic problems with technology use and rule breaking around here and it reached a boiling point this weekend so we held a grand Family Summit on Technology OverUse (you know, the FSoTOU). We ended up with: 

Consequence A: one child* can't use the computer nor stay home alone with the computer for a week (broke house rule about not going on the computer when you're home alone, sneaked on and then tried to cover it up.  Good try attempting to fool The Enforcer!).

Consequence B: one child* will have certain "texting hours" every evening/afternoon but put away the phone the rest of the time (had banked a shocking 8000 texts in one month. Yikes. I'm not sure I could think of 8000 things to say in one month. Moderation, anyone?)

Consequence C: one child* has lost cell phone privileges altogether for two weeks and will gradually be able to get it back (chronically texting after hours/lights out and throughout the school day. I mean, really. How can you listen in class if you are texting every few minutes? Come on. Plus it's against school rules. Those cell phone bills are fantastic aids for this kind of sleuthing, I found out this weekend.) 

Here's the thing. I had no idea until I checked the phone bill. Surprise! (Not in a good way.)  So we enforced. There were tears and some cold shoulders for a bit. Now I'm mostly noticing more book reading, more conversations, more presence, more of how we want to be (or at least how I want us to be). 

And in the meantime I'm looking more closely at my own technology habits (+ knowing I am being watched carefully for slip-ups). How does your family manage the technology pull? How do you?

*may or may not be same child in more than one scenario.

Notes on a Monday morning

Or: Hindsight is 20/20. And less grumpy.

5:00 a.m. G leaves for the airport for a business trip. Bye, babe.

5:22 a.m. I am the early seminary driver. I have had less than three hours of sleep due to very fun visitors. I don't do early mornings very well. Drag myself up for the 5:35 departure time.

5:30 a.m. I remind daughter (who is eating breakfast) that we have to leave soon to pick up E. and drive the 20 minutes to the church. Forget to use "good morning, Mary Sunshine, voice"

5:35 a.m. I wait in the car, watching through the windows while the daughter dashes upstairs to find something, then down, then to the kitchen, then back to the upstairs. My pet peevery feelings activate, with the assistance of early morning grumpiness.

5:41 a.m. Daughter comes out, juggling folders, toast, glass of water, cell phone. No backpack. Daughter dashes back in to find backpack.

5:47 a.m. Finally we leave the house. My grumpiness breaks the dam and I gush a flash flood/ loud lecture on the benefits of advanced planning, being on time, courtesy, adding a flourish by throwing many other items into my dawn discourse. Daughter sits, silently picking at her toast. I go on far too long. And I don't feel any better afterwards, incidentally.

5:53 a.m. Pick up E.

6:10 a.m. I drop off the girls at church and drive home feeling ashamed of my tirade. Think of how awesome it is that a 16-y-o girl wakes herself up at 4:45 in the morning and goes to daily early morning religious instruction not only willingly but with eagerness. I deflated that over a 10 minute delay? Sheesh.

Can I have a do-over?
{Well, yes I can. Every morning this week.}

I'm going to bed early tonight just to be sure.

Scholar time

How is it that one family can produce such different learners and learning styles?

One of my kids is easily distracted and forgets due dates, another could read and do homework in the middle of a fiesta at Disneyland.

One actually puts together a timeline for big projects with mini steps along the way without any urging (clearly not my genes coming through there), another lives in la-la denial land until the day before it's due and then panics (no comment).

It became clear, halfway through last year, that I needed to figure out a way to help all three have better study skills and planning. (This may or may not have had something to do with the mid-year report of one of the kids where missing homework assignments and such had led to a midterm warning of a very low grade. Measures were needed.)

I've always loved hyggli family routines and cultural traditions. I think I should have been British, given how much I adore the tea time tradition. So I stole the essence of tea time, slapped the title Scholar Time on it, and made it our own new tradition.

Scholar Time is from 3 to 5 at our house in the winter, later in the fall and spring (with a little variation for lessons and sports practices, as needed). It's nothing revolutionary: just a set aside learning time for my kids and me.

Truly, it's all in the spin and marketing, folks! I try to make it more of a nice ritual. Put on some music, light a couple of candles, sometimes add cocoa or a treat.

Basically:

We all unload our homework, books, etc. on the table. If there's homework, they do it (I do mine, too). But it's not just about homework.

I make everyone fess up about looming tests, quizzes, etc. If someone has a project coming up, we map out the small steps to make it feel more manageable. I ask (I learned this from my Aunt Annette) how much support they want: minimal (just reminders about due dates, etc. and putting it on the calendar), some (need materials from the store, want to brainstorm, need a proofreader), or a lot (don't know where to start, help with understanding the concepts, helping organize an outline, field trips [our high school has the freshmen find and catalog 100 different leaf varieties; that's a big one]).

If someone comes upon something really interesting, they share it with the rest of us and we stop and chat about it.

Here are the keys:

1. Keep in mind my kids are 11, 13, 16 and all in middle school and high school. Two hours isn't too much to ask; yours might only need 1/2 hour. We try to do it Monday through Thursday and make Friday afternoons an anything-goes day but usually at least one other day just doesn't work out.
2. I am there to help out. Available. Sitting right there. I think this is the biggest shift.
3. It's quiet as possible (for the easily distracted among us)
4. It's scholar time, not just homework time. So if they don't have homework (or finish early), they go over something they've learned, study for a test, outline an essay for next week, read ahead, go practice their instrument (out of earshot).
5. When they're done, they pack up their backpacks for tomorrow (I'm so over the hurry-before-the-bus-comes-I-can't-find-my-essay-and-math-homework). Celebrate another day of learning, woot!

As I said, nothing revolutionary but a great improvement over our laissez-faire homework-doing of the past. That particular low midterm grade? It sprang back up into the zone of better grades. Like most "programs" sometimes we're better at it than others. But I do look forward to a couple of hours of sitting with my kids + watching them learn. And I get my hyggli ritual.

(Maybe everyone already does something like this and it's just taken me 11 years to catch on! Recently a couple of families we know have asked about it since Sam was talking about "scholar time" so I thought I'd put it out there in case it makes sense for others to do, too.)

Plus, I'd love to hear any suggestions about what you do around your house to help kids stay on top of the academic demands (or what you did as a student). I think my kids have more homework now than I had as a college student!