The Yelling Mommy

There is a trend running the social media circuit right now of not yelling at your kids.  

“Take the 365-day challenge!  Have your children hold you accountable!”  Seriously??

Sorry, this one isn’t for me.  As if the “no spanking” trend isn’t bad enough.

I just can’t see myself sweetly saying, “Cooper, honey, don’t run into the street when a car is coming.”  Or for the fourth time, “Don’t dump your milk on the floor, Darling.”  Or, “That’s okay that you just threw a block and hit me in the head.  I’m sure you didn’t mean to.”

Or, with this challenge, if I do forget and yell accidentally, he can say, “Mommy, you’re not supposed to yell.”  Then I’m the bad guy and he’s the victim, even though he just ate a cookie after I told him he couldn’t have one, or came up to me and deliberately turned my computer off while I was using it.

God gave us the ability to raise our voices.  It’s a very effective tool for getting our children's attention and showing them that we mean business.  It works for me, anyway.

This is not to say that I enjoy yelling at my son, but sometimes the situation warrants it.  It’s a tool I save for when I need it.  I can’t say I never use it when I shouldn’t.  Sometimes I get frustrated more easily than I should and take it out on him.  We all make mistakes as parents, but I believe that yelling when I maybe shouldn’t have is a small one.  I can always apologize, with minimal consequences.

So, if you’re taking on this no-yelling challenge, then good for you!  I wish you the best.  May peace and quiet prevail in your home.  And may your children turn out perfect.  Mine may be scarred for life, but I have a hard time believing it will be because I yelled at him every now and then.

The Marble Jar

I realized a few months ago that Cooper was taking longer and longer to obey us when we told him to do something.  It wasn't defiance, really, just a bad habit he was getting into, which we were more or less reinforcing by repeating the same thing over and over, counting to three, etc.

It needed to improve.  If he was ever running into the path of an oncoming car, I wouldn't have time to count to three when I told him to stop.  Plus, it was irritating.

I couldn't really start punishing him for it all of a sudden.  So a friend gave me an idea: use positive reinforcement.

So, I created "The Marble Jar," a very inexpensive little project, which has been very effective.  I took a jar (in this case an old, plastic peanut butter jar) and got enough marbles to fill it, and then dumped them into a plastic bag.

I waited for him to do something the first time I asked him, no matter how small.  When he did it, I gave him a marble and explained what we were going to do.  I told him that when the jar got full, we would do something special.  It didn't take him long to catch on.

I never bribe him with it.  I never threaten him or take marbles back out of the jar.  I just make a point to recognize when he obeys me the first time and give him a marble.  Now he often informs me when he thinks he deserves one, but I make the ultimate decisions about it.

So now the jar is almost full.  And Cooper wants to go to the Wilson County Fair, a local fair that we went to last year and he still remembers.  So we are trying to get all the marbles moved to the jar by Saturday so we can go, and maybe get a few treats while we're there.  He's working hard for it.

Will we start over when the jar is full?  I haven't decided yet.  We have definitely made great strides in his obedience.  It is so refreshing to tell him to go sit down at the table for dinner and have him do it right away.  At some point, though, it needs to become second nature, not something that gets rewarded every time.  Maybe we will try it for a time without the jar, and if we need a refresher, we will get it back out.

At any rate, I think this is a great tool for teaching kids to obey.  It's a win-win for everyone.

Being an Old Mom

A friend who is in her mid-30's and still hoping to marry and have a family was asking me recently about having a child later in life.  I am definitely well-qualified to answer that question, since I had my son at 44.

Of course there are pros and cons.  The main thing to consider if you are deliberately delaying having children is that your fertility decreases as you get older.  Essentially, you start running out of eggs, and, since you use your good eggs first, those that are left are more likely to be defective.  So, besides having a harder time getting pregnant, you are also at increased risk for miscarriage (which I experienced with my second pregnancy at age 45, and it SUCKED), as well as certain birth defects such as Down's Syndrome or Trisomy 13. 

Of course, any pregnancy comes with risks, so having a child at a younger age is definitely not a guarantee that these things won't happen, nor is having one at an older age a guarantee that they will happen; it's just that your odds increase as you get older.

My doctor offered to test me early in my pregnancy to see if Cooper had Down's Syndrome so I could decide what to do about it.  I refused.  I wasn't going to "do" anything about it.  I knew that if God was going to give me a child with Down's Syndrome, then He would give me the strength to love and raise that child.

My doctor also told me that the risk of pregnancy to my health at 40-something is not much greater than it would have been at a younger age, though there were a few things they had to monitor more closely, like my blood pressure, which is often higher in older women.  I didn't have any age-related complications during my pregnancy, and my delivery was also uneventful.  I have heard that statistically, women who give birth later in life, live longer.

I am a big believer that God is in control.  Rarely does a woman give birth past her mid-40's, which means that, in a normal life span, she will live long enough to raise the child into adulthood.  I also believed that, if God didn't want me to get pregnant, if my body couldn't handle pregnancy, He wouldn't have let it happen, though I wasn't going to try to "override" His plan.  I know of two different women who got pregnant through in vitro in their 40's, both with twins.  Both died giving birth.  So I wouldn't have even considered going that route.  But that's just me.

Then there are other issues that I didn't really consider before getting pregnant.  Like, I have no one to relate to.  Friends my age have children in high school and college.  Women with children the age of my child are often young enough to be my daughters.  I have, in fact, had people ask me if Cooper was my grandson.  I try to keep a sense of humor about it.

There's also the energy factor.  You just don't have as much at 40-something as you did when you were 20-something.  And raising a child takes a lot of energy, especially when they're babies and toddlers.  My husband is around my same age, so we both often fall into bed at night, exhausted.  But so far, we have managed.  As people tell me, it keeps us young.

If anyone asks me if I would do it all again, I reply that if my choice was to have Cooper at a younger age or have him at 44, I would choose to have him at a younger age.  But if my choice was to have him at 44 or not at all, I would DEFINITELY have him at 44.  I LOVE being a mom, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.  Yes, I'll be 63 when he graduates high school but, oh well.

When I was pregnant, I came across a scripture that gave me peace about it all.  My pregnancy was something of a surprise, since, after 4-1/2 years of trying we had pretty much given up.  I questioned God, why now, after all this time, did He allow it to happen?  This was the answer He gave me:

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.  Acts 17:26-28

I believe God planned the exact time and place that Cooper should live, that he might seek Him.  God has a plan for all of our lives, and He doesn't make mistakes. 

For those who are thinking of deliberately delaying having children for a career or some other reason, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, and certainly not planning to have one as late as I did, but for those like my friend, who have not had an opportunity earlier in life but would still like to have a baby, if you think you can handle the risks, then I would say . . . go for it!

Fresh Salsa

Our garden is being good to us this year, and we're enjoying all kinds of produce.  I'm not a big fan of tomatoes, but I love this recipe!  It's pretty easy.

5 Roma tomatoes, peeled (other types of tomatoes work too)

5 green onions

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Juice of 1/2 lime
4 small garlic cloves

1 tsp. hot pepper sauce (optional)

1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

1 tsp. salt

You can vary the amounts of the ingredients according to your tastes.  I used more tomatoes this time because mine were really small.

If you cut the tops off of the tomatoes and put them in boiling water for a minute or two, the skins will split and you can peel them right off after they cool a bit.

Cut the veggies up and put everything in your food processor and turn it on.  If you like a chunkier salsa, you can chop them up yourself instead of using a food processor.

Get yourself a bag of tortilla chips, and you're all set!

It doesn't make too much, but it doesn't keep too long either, so I don't make a lot at one time.  I've doubled it before, though, and that works fine too.  Yummy!