Sep 30 2008
Virginia Linn/Sept. 30, 2008
My department at the Post-Gazette was coordinating a series of vignettes today about how regular Pittsburghers were handling the near-collapse of the markets this week. We picked out people from different demographics who might be feeling the anxiety more than others -- retirees, homeowners trying to sell their homes, social service agencies and parents with kids going off to college.
We found one Mt. Lebanon mom who had two kids in college with another, her 17-year-old son, heading to college next year -- Yikes!
I, too, have a 17-year-old heading to college next year. We've been socking money away for years in a 529, but who knows what's going to be left by the time she's ready to go? All the same, she's going to continue to move forward to send out a few applications (just the application fees can be pricey!) and hope for the best. We've got probably nine months before we have to start writing those BIG checks, so I'm hoping the market will rebound by then, and not take the 10 years that some eonomics predict it will take to get back on track.
Are you in the same boat? How are you preparing for your child's college?
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/09/30/college-on-the-horizon-amid-financial-chaos.aspx
Sep 26 2008
Virginia Linn/ Sept. 26, 2008
You may not think your kids are paying attention to what's going on around them when they've got their ears plugged with iPod earbuds or their eyes focused on a video game. But they're much more aware than you think.
My husband and I have found this out when our kids have overheard our hushed mentions of "We don't have money to go to a restaurant tonight" or "We're not traveling there because it's too expensive."
As kids do, they over react and worry that "Are we going to have food for dinner?"
Clearly the current economic crisis (let's hope it gets resolved tonight!) presents great challenges around any household these days.
So what do you tell the kids?
Earlier this week, both the Wall Street Journal and KidsHealth offered some suggestions.
According to the Wall Street Journal, here are some guidelines by ages:
-- Ages 5-9: "Daddy (or Mommy) is a little worried about things at work, but we're taking care of it and our family is going to be OK.
-- Ages 10 - 13: "You've seen the news about how the economy is having some troubles. I'm working hard to help us get through this."
-- Ages 14 - 17: "The weak economy has hurt our business, but we've been through this before. I'm working hard on some new possibilities.""
And consider this from KidsHealth:
-- Discuss current events with your child regularly. It's important to help kids think through stories they hear about. Ask questions: What do you think about these events? How do you think these things happen? These questions can encourage conversation about non-news topics too.
-- Talk about what you can do to help. In the case of a news event like a natural disaster, kids may gain a sense of control and feel more secure if you find ways to help those who have been affected.
What are telling your kids? Do you have any tips?
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/09/26/economic-crisis-what-to-tell-the-kids.aspx
Sep 12 2008
Virginia Linn / Sept. 12, 2008
My husband travels a lot. When he leaves, he gives me the name of his hotel, the phone number and the days he's returning.
I'm heading out for a weeklong girl getaway today. I've been preparing for the departure for more than a week - no not packing, Heck I throw things in the suitcase the morning I'm leaving. No, I mean all the writing of game schedules, pickups, piano and guitar lessons, tennis lessons, food share pickups, trash collection details, senior portrait appointments -- the whole shebang.
I've created a huge poster that's on the wall of my dining room, with schedules outlined day by day. By the front door, I've got written checks in envelopes, a reminder "DO YOU HAVE YOUR HOUSE KEY" and other notes.
Obsessive? Maybe. But I'm just anticipating a disaster since my hubby has to ask me every week - Is this recycling week? Why I'm the keeper of that info, I don't know, but he can never remember the biweekly schedule.
When I leave today, I'll still be worrying, obsessing. But I also know that when I return my kids -- and husband -- will be extra nice to me because they do realize how much I do around the house. And I think they will genuinely miss me.
That will last about an hour. Then it will go back to the same whining...... Sigh
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/09/12/travails-of-travel.aspx
Sep 10 2008
Virginia Linn / Sept. 10, 2008
The nation's colleges and universities could benefit from a lesson in "green" marketing.
My high school senior, since the middle of her sophomore year, has been buried under piles of college pitch letters, pamphlets, slick flyers, campus booklets and DVDs mailed to our home.
Somewhere down the line we obviously checked a box -- or didn't check a box -- that allowed her high school or a testing service to release her name and address to college recruiters.
One letter from an assortment of colleges wouldn't be so bad. But we've probably gotten 20 packets from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., multiple mailings from New York University, and a zillion letters from Timbuk U's we've never heard of.
Of course she's flattered to get all of this attention. But these days we can barely open the front door when we arrive home each day because of all the letters stuffed into the mail slot. We've already filled three large document files (the giant ones that lawyers use) and have started a fourth.
She does receive some info via e-mail, but it's usually from the schools that she's contacted herself.
Not sure if it's this way for your high-schoolers, but there must be a better way that's kinder to the environment. We don't even want to think about all the trees that have bitten the dust for these campus mailings.
If you're a parent in the same boat, what do you do with all the mailings?
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/09/10/the-waste-in-college-recruiting.aspx
Sep 07 2008
My first wife and I separated 12 years ago. For two of the intervening years, I lived in a tiny little box of a house down the street, so the two kids I share with her could actually walk back and forth between the two homes. For the other 10 I have lived at least 20 minutes away.
Making some rough estimates, that means I have driven some 62,400 miles over those years going back and forth to see them or bring them to my home (figuring four 30-mile round trips weekly for 10 years, which does not account for the ever-increasing numbers of extra trips to take them to parties and football games and play practices).
As those years were adding up and those numbers were mounting, I began pondering how different life would be when my daughter could drive.
"Ah!" I thought to myself, "how nice that will be! They will just show up at my door! They'll be able to come and go as they please! And no wrangling over needing rides to parties!"
At first, I was just zeroed in on that 16th birthday. I knew it wasn't that simple, but when your kid's, like, nine, the details surrounding 16 don't seem too relevant.
As it got closer, I had to accept the fact that it takes six months to get a license after that magic 16th birthday. So OK, I could wait.
And now 16 has come and gone. The six-month mark has come and gone. In another month she'll be 17 (!!!!!!!!!!!). She's had her permit forever; she's been driving all along. She's good to go.
But no license.
I've lived in my current home for more than four years now. I have two primary routes I take to go get the kids, and a couple of other alternatives that make for amusing drives if I'm not in a hurry. Still, I am bored to death of the en route scenery, and with $3.59 gas (and that looks good compared to a month ago) I face the maddening reality that I burn twice as much going to get them as they would coming to me (since it would be one-way for them, you see).
I am really REALLY ready to depart the chauffeuring business. So why? Why no license?
Because it costs $100 A MONTH TO INSURE A TEENAGER! $100 a month! I was shocked by that -- who can afford an extra $100 a month? Not me. And not my ex-wife. My daughter's working, but $100 a month would be most of her earnings and she also pays for her cell plan.
Now, I could be the tough-love type, tell her that if she wants to drive she needs to at least share the insurance cost. But you know what? She doesn't care all that much if she drives or not; most of the places she wants to go are around town.
In essence, what I'd be telling her is that if she wants to come visit me, she's going to have to pay to do it. What kind of father does that? And even if I were that kind of father, what do I do when she says, "OK, I'll just hang around Mother's house and spend time with my friends." What then?
To add to the stress, I can't help aknowledging an irritating truth, that my parents paid for my car insurance when I was a teenager. I feel like I should somehow do this for my own daughter.
But $100 a month? That's what it costs to insure both my wife and me, and we drive a bazillion miles a year.
Meanwhile, my stepson will turn 16 in January. Buy insurance for one, ya kinda hafta buy it for the other. That's $200 a month -- more than the rent for my first apartment in 1986. And my son just turned 14. Two more years, that's $300 a month -- almost the mortgage on the house my ex-wife and I lived in when these pricey little people were born.
I don't know how other parents do it. I really don't.
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/burghdad/archive/2008/09/07/why-kids-don-t-drive.aspx
Sep 05 2008
I was sitting on the couch. Sam was on my lap.
I had my right arm around his chest, firm but not too tight. My left arm was coming up from underneath, controlling his legs so he couldn't whack a heel into my groin (something we dads have to think about, and yes, it has happened, several times).
Sam was in a full-blown, howling, Linda-Blair-spitting-pea-soup rage. He was fighting me with every muscle in his little toddler body, kicking my thighs, pushing at my hands, straining, growling, snarling and spitting out "Mommy! Mommy!" in a demanding shriek.
"Mommy's right there, Sweetie," I kept murmuring in his ear. "She is ready to love you, but we need you to calm down."
When he paused for breath I could feel his little heart rabbiting along, pittery-pittery-pittery. Then, sensing some slack in my grip, he'd throw himself back into battle, like an animal attacking the wire of the cage.
"It's not going to work, Sam," I would murmur. "You're very strong, but I have 200 pounds on you. You're not going to win. But we love you, and if you calm down you can get down."
And even if the midst of the fray, I couldn't help thinking back to the fall of 2004.
My wife and I were, in early November, a few weeks from getting engaged. I was working election night, and was to meet a candidate near my wife’s home. So I stopped in to say hi to her and her boys.
I could see instantly that her then-eight-year-old was in a dark, steamy mood – a common state for him – so I grabbed him and pulled him onto my lap, trying to tease him out of it. “Give me a hug!” I said, wrestling him around.
I might as well have teased a Michael Vick’s pit bull. His scowl deepened and he immediately tried to yank himself loose. I hung on, still thinking that a smile was just beneath the surface.
I was wrong.
He yanked again, growled when I wouldn’t let go and spat out an order: “LET! ME! GO!”
Now, I don’t know about all of you out there, but I’m not really big on taking orders from kids. Maybe it’s some outsized male pride alpha-dog peeing-on-bushes thing, but, well, it’s just not happening.
“Ask me nicely, and I’ll let you go.”
There was a problem with that, though. My eight-year-old eventual stepson had a rather sizable male pride alpha-dog peeing-on-bushes thing himself. He emerged from the womb that way, so my wife tells me, furious from birth. To ask nicely would be to lose, to yield, and yielding… well, it was just not happening.
So we sat there. He moaned, snarled, argued, fought, then started back at moaning again. I kept telling him, over and over, that I was not trying to offend him by hugging him, was not being mean to him or hurting him, and that he had had no reason to be angry in the first place. I deserved better treatment, I said, and I insisted that he ask nicely.
I was quiet. I was polite. I was not emotional. But I told him that not only was I bigger and stronger than him, I was also more stubborn.
My wife, meanwhile, sat at the table with a troubled look. I could tell she hated what was going on, and was not entirely sure she was in support of what I was doing. She took my back, though, telling her son that he should, indeed, simply be polite.
After an hour – long enough that I was getting worried that I would have to give in or miss my assignment – he finally complied, mumbled a begrudged “would you please put me down?”
I’d like to say that it was a seminal moment, that from that moment he acknowledged my leadership and didn’t try to fight me anymore. It would be a lie, though. He is stubborn and tempestuous still, and that night was not the last time we engaged in such a battle of wills. But on some level, I think he does know that he’s not in charge, and cannot control his mother and me through the force of his anger. And I think that is a very good thing.
And what of my wife? “I was going to let you do what you thought you had to,” she said – a lukewarm endorsement at best. “I hated seeing him so frustrated, and I don’t him to hate you.”
So as I sat with Sam – frustrated for sure, and in his toddler way probably hating me with great fury – I wondered what her thoughts were. I had a strong sense that I was doing the right thing, but would she approve? Would she agree?
Finally Sam either gave up or simply ran out of energy. I kept my standard for “calming down” relatively low – five deep breaths and down he went.
My wife answered my questions a few minutes later, over coffee at the kitchen table.
“I love what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re being firm, but gentle, not getting upset. You’re showing him that he’s not in charge, and this his anger will not do him any good. It was wonderful.”
Made my day, that did.
So much of what we do as parents is by instinct – it certainly is for me, anyway, even after almost 17 years in the business. And sometimes I don’t know if my instincts are right.
But I think about that moment, and it seems like what was coming through to Sam was a very simple message: That I love him but he’s not in charge, and that nothing he does will change either.
And that, I would submit, is not a bad general statement of what parenting is all about.
Brian David can be reached at bdavid@post-gazette.com or at 412-722-0086.
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/burghdad/archive/2008/09/05/winning-fights-by-not-fighting.aspx
Sep 05 2008
This has certainly been a week of teachable moments.
My oldest daughter just turned 17 and we've been watching developments regarding another 17-year-old who's been in the news - Bristol Palin.
I asked my daughter last night what she and her friends had been saying about Bristol, who we learned this week is five months pregnant.
"Stupid. Stupid. Stupid," she said. "And her mother doesn't want sex education in the schools - stupid."
Her mother, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, supports teaching only abstinence in the schools and opposes abortion. In her announcements this week about her daughter she put a positive, almost wholesome spin, on the situation. Bristol will keep the baby, due in December, and will marry her beau.
Perhaps my daughter's negative reaction is shaped by what she sees in the city schools. Not every teenage pregnancy is embraced by supportive parents and not every pregnant teenager finishes high school and goes on to lead an independent, productive life.
She said this is the reality most of the time.
A teachable moment indeed.
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/09/05/a-teachable-moment-for-my-17-year-old.aspx