In defense of t(w)een trick-or-treaters

Oh hypocrisy, thy name is mother. If parenting has taught me anything, it’s that any righteous judgement I make will promptly or eventually come back to bite me on the ass.

Once upon a year or two ago, I was firmly of the opinion that trick-or-treating was and should remain the domain of young children. The wee-est Harry Potters and Disney Princesses always got an extra treat on my porch, while roving bands of half-costumed teens got whatever my kids had rejected as unsavoury from their own sacks, and maybe a barely concealed scowl as well. Trick or treaters are supposed to be little kids, right?

In which the evil Lord Vader protects the innocent Frog Prince and half-Batmanned Bruce Wayne from the evil Mamarazzi

And then two things happened. First, my elementary school aged son started shaving, sprouted past five and a half feet tall and had his voice drop an octave or two. Second, I read this lovely article in the Huff Post (no, that’s not actually an oxymoron) called What You Need to Know About 6-Foot Trick-or-Treaters. It’s a sweet and insightful article, and you should read the whole thing now, because I’m about to totally spoil it for you by cutting and pasting my favourite bit, the conclusion:

That night I was reminded that parents are not the only ones who regret the passing years. A year earlier, for the first time, my son gave out candy instead of trick-or-treating. It was an OK experience, but not worth repeating. It’s much more fun to go trick-or-treating with a bunch of guys and if the neighbors are grumpy, it’s easier to laugh things off when you’re in a crowd.

So here’s what I can pass on, if you don’t have your own 15-year-old boy.

When a crowd of under-costumed teens shows up on your doorstep, welcome them. It’s a big group because they find strength in numbers. They’re not wearing costumes because they didn’t realize that they’d want to go — nor how badly.

Give them big bars. Don’t tell them they’re too old. They already know that.

Let them pretend it just isn’t so.

I think this is both lovely and 100% true. We’ve been having discussions for the last year or two about how old is too old, and even last Halloween I thought maybe twelve years old might be our family threshold. I’m rethinking that now, though. If the boys want to keep trick or treating for a few more years, I’m not going to stop them.

Not least because then I’d have to buy my own candy stash! 😉

What do you think, bloggy peeps? Should there be an upper age limit on trick or treating?

24 things every Canadian child should do before age 12

When I saw this, I knew I had to share it. What perfect timing! ParticipAction is calling on Canadian families to celebrate June 21, the first day of summer, as the Longest Day of Play by encouraging kids to get out and get active.

Here’s their list of 24 things every Canadian child should do before the age of 12:

Experience total weightlessness at the top of a swing
Skip stones across water
Play leap frog
Hang upside down from a tree limb
Jump into water cold enough that it almost takes your breath away
Throw rocks or snowballs at a post from a distance until they get a bulls eye
Ride a bike with no hands
Paddle a canoe
Piggyback someone
Roll down a big hill
Try a sport that requires a helmet
Collect something in a forest
Make up a dance routine
Slide down something on a piece of cardboard*
Build a fort
Hike somewhere for a picnic
Bury someone in the sand
Play outside in the rain
Jump in a pile of leaves
Make a snow angel
Fly a kite
Create an obstacle course
Swim in a lake or an ocean
Make up a game involving a ball

(*As long as that something is not the stairs to the basement, as I learned from my friend Paul in high school. Fun, but painful when you veer off course if you happen to be going down face first.)

Although I do see merit in simply shoving the kids out the door and letting them use their own creativity to keep them occupied, I also think this is a wonderful checklist of FUN things to do this summer. And who says you have to be less than 12? I think this reads like a bucket list for a summer full of family fun. I’m pretty sure we’ve done a lot of these things with the boys, but I’m still going to print this list out and stick it to the fridge. Or better yet, the wall of the tree house!

Family photos at Britannia Beach

What would you add to the list of active experiences Canadian kids should have by the age of 12? I’d add play hockey or baseball in the street, play hide and seek outdoors at twilight, have a watergun fight, jump through the sprinkler, and do the “Nestea Plunge” backwards into the pool.

A wee ramble on decency, school rules, dress codes and photoshop

Much has been made of the perennial warm-weather debate about school dress codes recently. I’ve pretty much stayed out of the debates not because I don’t find it an interesting topic – I do! – but because I’m pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. I think the schools do have a right to establish and enforce a dress code, but I think they have to be consistent, fair and proactive in both communicating and enforcing it. I personally don’t see this as an issue of girl shaming, but if I were a girl again, I’d probably fight against it.

My (Catholic) high school had a dress code, and breaking that dress code was one of my favourite and only expressions of outright defiance as a teenager. The dress code called for navy blue pants or skirts, or a kilt in the school’s plaid, and a white or navy blue shirt with a collar. The hem of my kilt, I remember, fell closer to my hip bone than my knee bone, but no mention was ever made of skirt length. I don’t remember being allowed to wear shorts, and denim was strictly forbidden. My main source of miscreance was the collar – it was the 80s, and polos with collars were not hard to come by, but I abhorred them.

All this to say, we were all aware of the dress code and while we occasionally played fast and loose with it and rebelled against it and spent endless hours railing against the injustice of it, we knew if we got caught breaking it we would be paying a visit to the vice principal. With the perspective of 30+ years, I can imagine that Mr Fekete thought enforcing the dress code was just as much a waste of his time as an eduator and administrator as we did – but the rules and consequences were never in question.

My boys don’t seem to run afoul of their school’s dress code, so I don’t have a horse in this race. I’d be ticked if I were told my shorts were too short, and my bra strap is as we speak peeking rather disrespectfully out on my shoulder. In fact, on the day a young teen’s story appeared in the Citizen about how she and her mother were challenging her school’s policy against spaghetti straps, I walked through the business district of downtown Ottawa at lunch time and counted the number of visible bra straps I could see. It only took me about 15 minutes to get to a dozen. I’m not sympathetic to the argument that school teaches kids how to comport themselves for their future careers in the sartorial sense.

Speaking of sartorial sense and lack of it, I thought this was an interesting extention of that debate. Apparently a school in Utah decided to photoshop clothing extensions onto the yearbook photos of students who showed more skin than the school administration was happy with. Sleeves were added, tattoos were cloned out and necklines crept up to collarbones, all in the name of decency. And the school is apparently unapologetic, according to the article on PetaPixel: “For their part, the school does not apologize for editing the photos. They posted signs warning that this might be the case, and claim the students should have been expecting it. The only thing they apologize for is the fact that they weren’t more consistent with the edits.”

If this were my kid’s yearbook and her photo was edited, I’d hit the roof. Can you imagine? What’s next, we’ll just use the liquefy tool to thin out Mary’s pudgy face a bit, and oh we’d better airbrush out the worst of John’s acne. And poor Sally’s teeth are rather dull, don’t you think? We’ll just polish them up – and while we’re at it, maybe reduce the size of those buck teeth too.

I. Would. Flip.

I’ve seen great arguments on both sides of the dress code debate on Twitter and Facebook recently, and it reflects back to the question I asked not too long ago – what DO you do when you disagree with your child’s school’s policies? Is there merit in rebelling to bring attention to a policy you don’t like, or do you take a more concilliatory approach? Or maybe you think rules are made to be obeyed at all costs? And would you hit the roof if you saw your child’s yearbook photo had been edited for “decency” or other reasons?

McDonald’s finally does away with “girl” and “boy” toy question

I started to rant about this on Facebook, but the ensuing conversation in my kitchen inspired me to bring it back to the blog.

Waaaaaaaaay back in 2006, I ranted my displeasure at being offered the choice between a “boy” toy and a “girl” toy happy meal at McDonald’s. I’d asked for a Polly Pockets toy and a Hummer toy, and the cashier repeated back to me “one girl happy meal and one boy happy meal”. At the time, I was at the counter with my two boys standing there at my elbow watching me order. Infuriated, I pointedly re-ordered my meals with toys by type, not gender. In the intervening eight years, I have ordered more than a few happy meals, and each time I have been careful to correct the order taker, who invariably specifies boy or girl toy instead of the actual type of toy on offer.

Apparently I wasn’t the only person rankled by this distinction. In a Slate.com article, high school junior Antonia Ayres-Brown tells the story of how she took her complaint about the boy/girl gender discrimination all the way to the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and not one but two CEOs of McDonald’s. The current CEO finally listened (although her complaint to the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities was dismissed as “absurd”) and Antonia received a letter back from McDonald’s with the following promise:

It is McDonald’s intention and goal that each customer who desires a Happy Meal toy be provided the toy of his or her choice, without any classification of the toy as a ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ toy and without any reference to the customer’s gender. We have recently reexamined our internal guidelines, communications and practices and are making improvements to better ensure that our toys are distributed consistent with our policy.

It’s about bloody damn time, McDonald’s. But let’s go that final step down the road to righteousness, shall we? Why not simply offer one kind of happy meal toy at a time, and offer it to everyone? Some girls like Skylanders, some boys like Polly Pockets. Wendy’s and Harvey’s have been offering a single “flavour” of kid meal toys for years and there has been no anarchy, no fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, no rivers and seas boiling, no dogs and cats living together. I’m pretty sure they bypassed the mass hysteria, too, although the blogger hysteria is clearly still on the table.

You might ask why I think this is important. As I said, it’s the conversation in my very own kitchen that got me all worked up again. In seeing the reference to Antonia’s victory on Facebook, I mentioned it aloud to Beloved. My 12 year old mentioned that there have been “girl” toys through the years that he had liked, and I asked him if he would ever hesitate to order a happy meal with a toy he liked if it was labelled as a girl toy. “Not really,” he replied with a shrug, but that didn’t particularly surprise me. He’s not terribly concerned with rules and norms and what other people think on the best of days.

It was the six year old’s reaction that made me sad. “Would you order a happy meal with a girl toy if you thought the toy was really cool?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied with a tinge of regretful sigh. “I can’t play with toys that are for girls.”

Sigh.

Manotick families – have your say about George McLean park

This blog post is part PSA and part rant.

The PSA part is that the city is planning to update the play structures at George McLean park in Manotick. (Thanks to the Manotick Village and Community Association for the notification on this one!) According to the MVCA parks and recreation page:

The City is replacing aging play structures in George McLean Park, and would like community input as to the type of new play structures it would like to have.

The city has advised of the following mandatory play equipment changes:

1. The sand will be removed and replaced with wood chips
2. The little merry-go-round/roundabout will be removed for safety reasons.

The city has asked residents to provide their comments on replacement options and if possible to also complete this questionnaire..

Comments and completed questionnaires should be sent to secretary@manotickvca.org.

The deadline for feedback to the City is April 11; removal and replacement of the structures is expected to begin in August.

(I know the deadline was last Friday – I’m hoping we can get a bit of an extension for comments.) So families, if you are interested in what happens to George McLean park, please take a moment to express your opinions.

Here comes the rant.

The city wants to remove the roundabout for “safety” reasons. This makes me crazy. That roundabout was our hands-down favourite feature of that park. Look!

Easter family fun

It’s old, I know. My attachment may be purely nostalgic. Maybe there is a perfectly good reason for this gorgeous retro roundabout to be removed – but I suspect there is not. I fear the safety issue is not in its construction or durability but in its inherent design. I fear that what we are facing is not a safety issue but a liability issue. We are not protecting the kids, we are protecting the city.

Yes, kids will go flying off the roundabout- remember how much FUN that was? Did you ever get one of those metal bars to the cheekbone? I did – and I learned to keep my face out of the way the next time. And I learned about centrifugal force at the same time. Fun + learning = learning that stays with you!

I’m not the only one ranting about disappearing roundabouts. Check out these articles from Free Range Kids and KATU media in Portland, Oregon, both published within the last few months on this subject.

I fear, however, that I am waging a lost battle.

If you have a few extra minutes to spare, please read this brilliant article from the March 2014 edition of The Atlantic entitled The Overprotected Kid. This is exactly what I am afraid we are denying our children when we coddle and overprotect them:

[Ellen Sandseter, a professor of early-childhood education at Queen Maud University College in Trondheim] began observing and interviewing children on playgrounds in Norway. In 2011, she published her results in a paper called “Children’s Risky Play From an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences.” Children, she concluded, have a sensory need to taste danger and excitement; this doesn’t mean that what they do has to actually be dangerous, only that they feel they are taking a great risk. That scares them, but then they overcome the fear. In the paper, Sandseter identifies six kinds of risky play: (1) Exploring heights, or getting the “bird’s perspective,” as she calls it—“high enough to evoke the sensation of fear.” (2) Handling dangerous tools—using sharp scissors or knives, or heavy hammers that at first seem unmanageable but that kids learn to master. (3) Being near dangerous elements—playing near vast bodies of water, or near a fire, so kids are aware that there is danger nearby. (4) Rough-and-tumble play—wrestling, play-fighting—so kids learn to negotiate aggression and cooperation. (5) Speed—cycling or skiing at a pace that feels too fast. (6) Exploring on one’s own.

This last one Sandseter describes as “the most important for the children.” She told me, “When they are left alone and can take full responsibility for their actions, and the consequences of their decisions, it’s a thrilling experience.”

And here’s a fascinating and relevant set of statistics about just how little of a difference our endless safety standards are having:

According to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which monitors hospital visits, the frequency of emergency-room visits related to playground equipment, including home equipment, in 1980 was 156,000, or one visit per 1,452 Americans. In 2012, it was 271,475, or one per 1,156 Americans. The number of deaths hasn’t changed much either. From 2001 through 2008, the Consumer Product Safety Commission reported 100 deaths associated with playground equipment—an average of 13 a year, or 10 fewer than were reported in 1980.

In other words, we’ve taken away all the fun, all the learning, all the exploration and adventure, and in exchange we’ve gained — nothing.

Speaking of statistics, check out this link from the Royal Society on the Prevention of Accidents. The leading causes of accidents on children’s playgrounds are swings (40%), climbers (23%) and slides (20%). Roundabouts come in at a measly 5%! And nobody is talking about taking away the slides or the swing. (Thanks to Jane at the MVCA for the link!)

If you’d like to have your say about what happens to the George McLean park play structures, please complete this PDF questionnaire from the city. (If I can get my hands on an electronic version, I will share it.)

And while you’re at it, please put in a kind word for our roundabout. Some things are worth saving!

Got anything to say on the subject of the modernization of retro playground equipment? You know I’d love to hear from you!

Encouraging risk-taking on the playground

The boys and I were in the car, on the way to swimming lessons in a snowstorm (seminal Canadian childhood experience, right?) and we’re listening to Michael Enright on CBC Sunday Morning. He’s talking about this National Post article by Sarah Boesveld, about a New Zealand school that “had stopped reprimanding students who whipped around on their scooters or wielded sticks in play sword fights” in the playground, giving kids more freedom to play in an active, creative, energetic way. The article goes on to say,

[The principal] knew children might get hurt, and that was exactly the point — perhaps if they were freed from the “cotton-wool” in which their 21st century parents had them swaddled, his students may develop some resilience, use their imaginations, solve problems on their own.

It’s such a good article. Go read about what happened when a boy broke his arm on the new “unsafetied” playground. Wait, I’ll save you the click. The parent of the boy who broke his arm on the playground confronted the principal and said, “I just wanted to make sure you don’t change this play environment, because kids break their arms.”

533:1000 A tire swing is more fun when shared with a brother

I love this idea. LOVE it. And what I loved even more was that it gave me a chance to talk about it with my boys.

DISCLAIMER: this is not a criticism of any school in particular. This is defintely not a criticism of our school. This is just a discussion of a topic that I find interesting, and relevant, and important. Please don’t bother reporting me to the principal over this blog post. Again.

Ahem, as I was saying, this gave me a terrific opportunity to discuss this issue with the boys. I knew they had been listening, and we have talked about this very issue before.

“So, what did you think about that,” I asked them. “Do you guys have a lot of rules about safety on the playground?”

They said they wished they had more freedom to do things like climb trees and play tag. “Yeah,” one sighed. “There’s a lot of rules. I can kinda see the point of some of them. But there are so many rules that all we can do at recess is sort of walk around.”

I totally get that any school administration wants nothing more than to protect kids. I really, really do believe that they have the kids’ best interests in mind, but I also think that in making these policies they have to consider things like litigious parents and school board liability and all sorts of other factors that are in opposition to letting kids be kids. Kids need to play, and as they get older, kids need to take risks – and sometimes, they need to suffer the consequences of those risks. You decide to play pirate swords with that big branch and take a stick to the side of the head, that’s a pretty reasonable consequence to choosing to engage in rough play. And the bump will go down – eventually.

It’s hard, I get it. I drive the kids to the toboggan hill and watch them slide down (albeit with camera in hand) and bite my tongue instead of tutt-tutting when they start going down face first. I walk them to the park and try my best not to look when they sail off the swing when it reaches its apex. I send them out to ride their bikes around the block and restrain myself from peering down the block after them.

I don’t want my kids to get hurt. But I think about the times I visited the ER as a kid (a concussion from flipping over my handlebars and a sprained ankle from standing up on a toboggan come immediately to mind, to say nothing of arriving on the porch after walking home from the park soaked in blood after taking a toboggan to the nose) I realize that those injuries were probably harder on my parents than they were on me. I can tell you this, though – I was a lot more careful racing my bike after that, I never stood up on a toboggan again, and I learned to walk up the side of the toboggan hill instead of across the bit where people were sledding out of control.

The New Zealand school’s experience is fascinating. The principal observes, “The students weren’t hurting themselves — in fact, they were so busy and physically active at recess that they returned to the classroom ready to learn. They came back vibrant and motivated, not agitated or annoyed.”

This story speaks to the core of how I want to parent my children. I don’t want to discourage them from taking risks because *I* am afraid of the consequences. I want them to learn the natural consequences of their actions, and I want them to understand that getting hurt is a natural part of life, not a reason to stop doing fun things. And I would love to see schools in Canada embrace this brave New Zealand principal’s common sense approach to letting kids be kids, even if it sometimes hurts.

What do you think? We all seem to agree that kids are too coddled these days, but how do we break away from that? I know this is something I need to work on personally, too, because I do tend to coddle the boys when there is a risk of physical injury. I think we need to work on our culture of risk aversion at the family level, so we can broaden that into the school community.

I’d love to hear your perspective on this, whether in the context of the playground or just in letting kids take risks in general. How do we help our schools feel more comfortable with this kind of philosophy and how do we get back to letting kids be kids, overlooking the risks in favour of the rewards? And I’d really love to hear your perspective as a teacher or school administrator. What are the challenges from your perspective? What can we all as a community do?

Do you restrict what your kids can read?

Had you told me before I had kids that I’d be reading aloud each night to my kids beyond the age of ten, I’d have laughed. I mean, sure, we’re a bookish family, and reading is sacred – but I would not have imagined that they would still not only enjoy but actively request out-loud reading at the end of every day.

From the Hobbit to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing to Harry Potter, it’s been fun revisiting some of my favourite books with them. We’ve also checked a few off my own “must read” list, including A Wrinkle in Time and most recently, Anne of Green Gables. (I seriously never could have imagined that two 21st century preteen boys could be so engaged by a 100 year old book about a spunky girl as they have. Truly one of my finer parenting moments!)

They are just getting to an age where they are starting to have more sophisticated tastes in their individual reading. They’ve both read two of the three Hunger Games books, and are racing to finish Mocking Jay before the first movie comes out this fall. With the hype about the new Divergent movie and a recommendation from a camp counsellor, Simon now wants to read that. I waffled – he is only 10, and I don’t know how mature the themes in the book are, even though it is purportedly for a young adult audience. There is a lot of ground between 10 and 17!

At first, I was going to hold him off until I could read the series myself first. At the very least, I thought I would skim the interwebs to see if I could get an idea if there was anything questionable in the books. However, I was nine when I picked up my mom’s copy of Stephen King’s Firestarter and I’ve been reading adult novels just about ever since.

304:365 Antique books

After reflecting on it a bit, I decided that they’re now pretty much okay to read whatever they want. I couldn’t think of anything I wouldn’t want them to read, although I do still want to know what they’re reading so we can talk about it. I think I’d still be careful about what movies we watched together, but there’s something about books and the engagement of your imagination that makes me willing to give them a longer leash.

I tried to think of what would make me restrict a book, and I suppose the violence would be the biggest red flag for me, although they are a little naive for any overt sexuality. Truth be told, if they are smart enough to find that stuff and learn something, more power to them! As if we weren’t all reading everything from Tiger Eyes to Tropic of Capricorn looking for the racy bits back in high school.

What do you think? Are you concerned about what your pre-teen or teen is reading? Do you monitor their reading? Are there some themes that worry you more than others? Are there any books you would forbid outright? (And how long do you think it would be before they found a way to subvert you?)

I’m thinking I may at last soon be able to do something I’ve been waiting years to do: read one of my all-time favourite books out loud to the boys. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, here we come!

(Thanks to Kerry and her family for inspiring this blog post with a random Facebook conversation!)

Part time work, full time mom: five years later

I‘m listening to a call-in show on CBC radio about workplaces making accommodations for parents, and in between grinding my teeth and rolling my eyes I’m repressing the urge to call in myself. Conveniently, I have another medium through which to vent my opinions on this subject, and I’ve been thinking about blogging about this topic for a while now anyway. Every day I count my lucky stars that I have an employer that allows me to work part time, and on the days I do work, allows me to schedule hours early enough in the day that I can be home in time to pick up the kids after school.

"What I dream of is an art of balance." ~ Henri Matisse

It’s been just a wee bit over five years since I made the decision to drop down to part time hours at work. When I came back to work after my maternity leave with Lucas, I switched from working full time to working four days per week. I kid you not when I say it was the best decision I ever made with regard to my career and work-life balance. People often ask me about my experience and how it’s working out, and I am always happy to rave about what a difference it has made in my life.

I love working part time hours. LOVE it! My weeks have a delicious, predictable rhythm. I take most Wednesdays off, which means that no matter whether things are nuts at home or at work, I only have to get through “tomorrow” at latest until there is a change of scene. Kids climbing the walls? No problem, the serenity of my little corner cubicle awaits. Work files overwhelming? Just get through today and tomorrow for a respite.

And best of all, no more of that Sunday evening dread, when you look at all the tasks you never got around to doing on the weekend (I’m eyeballing YOU, teetering pile of unsorted and unfolded laundry!) because you can likely take care of it in a couple of days instead of tripping over it all week. Wednesdays off are when I schedule all the kids’ (and the pets, and my) medical and dental appointments, the day I am free to volunteer in the classroom or on class trips (hello ski trip!) or deal with life’s minutiae, like furnace tune-ups and overdue library books.

I’m lucky to have an employer that respects my need to balance life at work and life outside of work, and a job that allows for it. There are times when I switch off and work a Wednesday to accommodate a meeting, or call in from home for a conference call, and I think flexibility on both sides of the fence has been key to making this work. I do think that maybe I’ve hampered my own progression into a more senior position by working part time, but that’s a sacrifice I’m more than happy to live with – for now, at least. While I love my job, I love my sanity more, and I have never been particularly career ambitious. I just want to be happy, yanno?

There is, of course, a cost to working only 80 per cent of a week – I lost 1/5 of my income. (Worth! Every! Penny!) Conveniently, the same month I dropped down to part time hours was the month I launched my 365 project, which has turned into a nice little photography business on the side. I sometimes wonder if I would have had enough stamina to manage the photo business working five full days a week. While I’m not bringing in the full amount of my lost wages through the blog and the photo business, it’s gone a long way to bridging the gap.

There’s a cost beyond 20 per cent of my salary, too. For every five years I work 80 per cent of full time hours, I will have to delay my full-pension retirement by one year. Rather than retiring at age 55, I now have to delay that by a year to account for the last five years of part time work. I may well resent myself at age 55 for the extra years I’ll have to put in before retirement — but I probably won’t. Heck, Lucas will only be in high school by then — I’m probably delusional about the idea of retiring before I pay for three university educations anyway!

The initial plan was for me to work part time until the kids were in school full time, and then hop back into the game full time to maximize my salary for that last decade before I retire. You know what, though? Even though Lucas has been in school full time since September, I feel sick to my stomach when I even think about going back full time. On the rare weeks when I do have to work five days in a row, I am frazzled and exhausted and whine wonder aloud how anybody manages to live life like this. I’ve become accustomed to both the restricted salary and the relaxed pace, and from here an extra couple of years until retirement doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world. I know my bosses would be delighted if I decided to come back full time, but I can’t imagine how I’d make it work.

How do you make your life work for you? Do you work from home or flexible hours, or trade off with a spouse who does? Are you staying at home until the kids are done school – or permanently? Or do you compensate by hiring out menial chores? (I would so love to hire a cleaning service, but just cannot justify it when I am supposed to be cleaning on my day off! Five years later and I’m still waiting to work that one into the schedule!) Would you want to work a lesser work week and if so – what’s keeping you from doing it?

Tips from TELUS for Safer Internet Day

The older the boys get, the more concerned I am about their online safety. The ‘net can be treacherous for savvy adults, let alone kids – will they click on a phishing link and download some malware? Will they be exposed to inappropriate content? Will they be bullied or worse?

And yet, I’d be hypocritical to restrict their access too broadly. I truly believe that the key to keeping kids safe online is constant vigilance on the part of the parent, and open lines of communication. By constant vigilance, I don’t mean spending hours peering over their shoulders – my eyes glaze over at the idea of more than 10 minutes of Minecraft at a time. But there are no closed doors in our house, online or in real life. They know I can and will read all of their e-mails, texts and internet searches. We talk often about the perils of overdisclosure, and how to comport one’s self as a good online citizen. And they know they can always, always come to me if they see something that makes them uncomfortable.

chromebook kitchen

It’s because I am so interested in the topic of online safety for kids that when TELUS sent me a list of tips for parents, I wanted to share it with you. (This is NOT a sponsored post, I am sharing because I think this is important, valuable information.)

Here’s what TELUS said:

Did you know that Tuesday, February 11, 2014 is Safer Internet Day? We will be hosting a live web discussion and Q&A with our partner @MediaSmarts about measures we can take to keep our kids safer online. MediaSmarts has recently revealed the latest findings on what Young Canadians in a Wired World are doing online, which will act as the basis for our discussion. You’ll also have an opportunity to ask the experts any questions you may have on this subject to find out what more you can be doing for you and your family to stay safe on the Internet.

Feel free to invite all your followers to join us too and follow the conversation on @TELUS #TELUSWISE.

You can follow the conversation live on Twitter, or you can dial in to a webinar for more info. Here’s the logistics:

  • To be part of the discussion, you must call into the conference bridge as well as log in to WebEx.
  • If this is your first time using Web Ex, please ensure you log in 10 minutes early as it will take a few minutes for Web Ex to set up on your computer.
  • Go to https://telus.webex.com/telus/j.php?J=925419345
  • Enter the event password: WISE123
  • Click “Join Now”.
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If you can’t tune in to the webinar, here’s ten tips from TELUS on keeping your family safe online:

1. Google yourself – Put a Google Alert on your name so you can track your digital footprint.
2. Set strong passwords – Prevent hackers from getting into your computer, smartphone or online profiles.
3. Turn off geo-tagging – Avoid location details being attached to things like photos when taken on a smartphone.
4. Install security software – Some smartphones come with software to locate your phone when lost; take advantage of these free services.
5. Configure your profile settings – Ensure privacy is set on all your online profiles.
6. Keep your browser updated – and clear your browser history and cache at least once a month.
7. Be cautious using free Wi-Fi – Make sure your device is secure so hackers can access personal information.
8. Choose new aps carefully – Only use your device’s App Store to ensure downloads are safe and virus free.
9. Beware of risks using Bluetooth technology – Only enable connections with trusted devices.
10. Delete personal data when recycling old devices – Use the factory reset to properly remove things like photos, passwords and files.

It’s my middle child who is pushing me out of my comfort zone with social media. I forbade his Twitter account but allowed Instagram. Now he wants to post Minecraft screen-cap movies to YouTube.

I do this for a living and I’m still not ready for this. How are the rest of you managing it?

In which she has to re-evaluate her entire parenting philosophy

I recently had one of those moments that make you completely rethink everything you’re doing as a parent. Like most world-shaking insights, it was innocuous in its beginnings.

Tristan and I were standing in line at Pet Smart, buying dog food. There’s a Bulk Barn next door, and I’d wanted to pick up a few of Beloved’s favourite candies for him. Time was getting tight, so I contemplated sending Tristan over to Bulk Barn to pick up the candies while I waited in the longish queue for dog food. I was fairly confident he would be able to complete the transaction without any trouble, but I realized as I was pulling a twenty out of my wallet that he might never have gone in to a store to buy something by himself before.

I actually paused in surprise. Could that be possible? Has my eleven-and-a-half year old son never actually been in to a store by himself before? So I explained what I wanted him to do and asked him if he wanted to do it. Ever agreeable, he said, “Sure!” and off he went.

I was done in my queue before he was done in Bulk Barn, so I stood outside between the stores, wanting him to complete the entire transaction by himself. He came out clutching the bag of candy in one hand and my balled-up change and receipt in the other.

I thanked him, then asked if he had ever been in a store by himself before. “Um, nope, I don’t think so.”

I was gobsmacked. How has this happened? Me, who espouses a parenting philosophy of trust until proven otherwise and benign neglect and argues against coddling kids at every turn? I am all about the free-range kids, about letting them walk home from school by themselves and play outside by themselves and letting them earn trust and independence. I’m the mom who was mortified to send a child out to walk over to a friend’s house for a playdate, only to have the other parent walk my child back to the house afterward. How is it possible that a child of mine is almost a teenager and has never been in a store to buy something without a parent or grandparent with him?

My understanding of myself as a parent is seriously compromised here.

Going to the corner store was a huge part of my childhood. I was probably four, maybe five, when I started. It was all of a three block walk, but it was a hella busy road, and we moved when I was six so I know I was doing it before I hit the first grade. I can clearly remember being eight or nine and getting an allowance of 25c. I had to budget two weeks of allowance to accommodate the tax on my favourite treat, a 25c bag of chips. (Remember, the foil and paper ones ones you could split down the fold in the side?) And let’s not even talk about all the times I wandered down to pick up some smokes for my parents. Hey, it was the 1970s, none of us knew any better. And I couldn’t have been much older than 10 or 11 when I walked from my Granny’s house to Kmart on my own for the first time.

I was talking to Beloved about my utter shock at this realization, but he was less perturbed than me. “The store is pretty far from our house, and you hate walking down Bridge Street even when you’re with them because of all those trucks and the traffic. You’d never let him go alone.” It’s true, the traffic on Bridge St gives me a stomach ache, and there’s no stores on the island, but still!

photograph of a boy walking a dog

(I suppose it’s a good thing that I don’t have any pictures of my kids walking by themselves in traffic to illustrate this post, right?)

It makes me sad that so many of the experiences that shaped my childhood will never happen for the boys. I can’t get over the fact that he’s almost a teenager and he’s never been to the store by himself. When I was not much older than him I was taking the bus downtown to check out the book and music stores. There isn’t much in the way of public transit out here either, which makes me wonder whether he’ll be in his thirties by the time he makes it downtown on his own. I’m only being a little bit sarcastic.

Is this just the norm for kids now, or did I miss some essential parenting here?