Category: Mothering without a licence

Anybody want to compare notes on kid bedtimes? I’m starting to get the “Awwww, we have the earliest bedtimes in our whole class” whine from my big boys, and I thought I could thwart the complaint with a little ammunition from the bloggy peeps. “Sorry boys, the interwebs say that 6:30 is an entirely appropriate bedtime, and you know that everything on the Internet is true.”

Okay, so I don’t really put them to bed at 6:30, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do have an earlier bedtime than a lot of their classmates. Right now, the call for jammies and teeth-brushing usually goes out between 7:15 and 7:30 pm, and it takes about 20 minutes from that to get everyone under the covers.

Beloved and I take a divide-and-conquer approach — one of us shepherds the big boys while the other puts Lucas down. Bedtime stories for Lucas (age 3) usually takes another 15 minutes, so he’s lights-out at around 8 pm every night. It usually takes a little bit longer to read to the big boys (ages 7 and 9) especially if we’re reading from one book for each of them. Most nights, it’s a single book for both. (Pending blog post: book club for boys. Stay tuned for that one later this week!)

Regardless, they’re usually lights-out around 8:15 or so, and they chat and giggle for another 15 to 45 minutes, depending on the day. Simon usually conks out first (he’s like his mother that way) and I often find Tristan reading to himself by the light of his nightlight after 9 pm.

(This picture is from the archives, circa 2005. Oh how I miss the afternoon car naps!)

The routine seems pretty reasonable to me, but their bedtimes haven’t changed in years and they’re getting to the point now where they think they should be able to stay up later. And of course, the nine-year-old thinks he deserves a later bedtime than the three-year-old — and I can’t say that I blame him. But honestly, I simply can’t imagine letting them stay up any later at this point. I get up most days between 5:30 and 6:00 am, and I am done for the day sometime in the middle of the afternoon. It’s only thanks to a continuous flow of coffee that I manage to stay vertical until 9:30 pm or so, and I simply can’t end the day without reading for another 30 minutes in bed.

If we let the boys stay up any later, Beloved and I would never have any quiet time together. And really, do we need the nine-year-old watching Glee or Survivor with us? Even the Amazing Race is a little, um, racy some weeks, and I think the Big Bang Theory is still a little beyond their comprehension. I don’t watch a huge amount of TV anymore, but I do value the nightly hour or so Beloved and I watch together.

And yet, I can’t keep putting them down for 8 pm forever. The weather may not be signalling that summer is nigh, but the days are unquestionably getting longer, and nobody likes to go to bed when it’s daylight out. And of course, there is a time in the not-too-distant future when they’ll be keeping their teenaged selves up until midnight, hours after I’ve crawled into my own bed. At least Beloved is a night owl, so someone will be able to keep an eye on them if we ever do let them stay up.

So let’s compare notes. Am I really a bedtime ogre, or does this schedule roughly match yours? Do you have summer versus winter bedtime rules, or weekend versus school night, or are you as resistant to change in the routine as I am? Speak up, bloggy peeps, and save my kids from yet another potential humiliation from their peers!

I am standing at the fence as I do every day, waiting for the bell to ring and the tsunami of energetic children to come spilling out of the school. I brace myself, as I do every day, for Simon’s enthusiastic hug that will one day knock me clear off my feet. Tristan too still hugs me, but in a more reserved and shy way that leads me to believe that while third graders still bestow public hugs upon parents, I’d best be prepared in case fourth graders do not.

We’re headed toward the car together when Tristan stops. “Mom, can I walk home by myself?” he asks. We’ve talked about this a few times before. We live exactly 0.9 km away from the school, down one reasonably quiet and safe street with a sidewalk and two very quiet streets with no sidewalks. We’ve walked it together on many occasions, and I know Tristan prefers to walk. Most days, however, we have to drive as I make it to the school from work with barely a few minutes to spare, and we still have to drive over to pick up Lucas from daycare a couple of blocks in the opposite direction.

I take a searching look at his face, weighing in my mind the walk, the traffic, the buses, the snow, his relative trustworthiness, how long it will take me to pick up Lucas and make it home, and my mother’s reaction if and when she ever hears that I’d let him walk by himself. Another part of my mind is busy admiring the fat snowflakes caught in his gorgeous eyelashes and how his gray-green eyes mimic the stormy clouds above us. He looks so grown up to me in that heartbeat of a minute, pleading his case not with words but by simply returning my gaze. It’s the briefest of exchanges, and yet it resonates with me as a milestone in progress. I can trust him or not, trust the world or not. The choice is mine.

“Are you sure you know the way?” I ask. I make him describe it to me, each corner and turn. We’ve walked it a dozen times and driven it a hundred — I’m pretty sure we could both do it blindfolded. I briefly wonder if we should ponder this more, hold a family council and debate the pros and cons, but in this moment I trust my instincts and acquiesce.

“Okay, but you go straight home,” I tell him. “And if you get lost, I want you to step back from the road and just sit down on someone’s lawn, okay? No wandering around. If you make a wrong turn, stop moving and I will come and find you.” It’s less than a 10 minute walk with three intersections. There is really so little chance of him being lost that I can only laugh at myself and the lasting impressions of the time I got lost the first time I walked home by myself from a new school back in 1975. Remember that one, Mom?

As expected, Simon also wants a piece of the deal once it’s brokered, but I’m having none of that. First, being older must come with some privileges, and second, I think walking home is enough of a test without being responsible for minding your little brother at the same time. Simon, who generally prefers driving to school over walking anyway, is easily persuaded that walking alone is more of a second or third grade sort of activity.

As we pull out of the parking lot, I scan my rearview mirror for signs of Tristan and can see him bobbing along in the stream of children burbling down the sidewalk. It takes me only a few minutes to retrieve Lucas, and although respect all traffic laws regarding speed and full stops, I do forgo the usual end of day chat with his caregiver in my haste to pack him up and get him out.

We pass by the school, and I begin scanning the sidewalk and snowbanks for Tristan’s blue snowsuit and black watch cap. There’s no sign of him on the way home and as I pull in to the driveway I catch sight of him, swinging gently and patiently on the porch swing, with not even a self-satisfied grin on his face.

The next day when I meet them at the fence, I expect Tristan to ask to walk home by himself again. I’m secretly pleased when he does not. He may have trod a few more snowy footprints on the road to independence, but I’m glad he still knows I’ve got a warm car standing by for those most bitter and blustery days.

So here’s an interesting situation that I did not see coming. The boys have been discouraged from playing together in the school yard. Apparently, a Grade 1 student is not supposed to play with a Grade 3 student at recess, even if they are siblings.

In their old school, we would have been facing a similar sort of problem had the boys stayed. Tristan’s best friend was in a grade ahead of him, and when they were in Grades 2 and 3, they were allowed to play together at recess. However, the school has a rule that forbids primary kids from playing with junior kids, and even allocates separate parts of the yard for them. While it was fine in Grades 2 and 3 when they were both in the primary grades, once they reached Grades 3 and 4 they’d have an invisible wall between them. Seemed rather silly to me at the time, and I’d been steeling myself for an argument with the school to allow it.

Well, I solved that problem rather unintentionally by yanking the boys out of their comfortable friendships and dumping them into a new school. I was very surprised, though, to hear that brothers were being discouraged from playing with each other. In fact, I ended up speaking to both their teachers this week on a separate issue, and both teachers emphasized the importance of each of them playing with their same-grade peers.

On one hand, I get it. They’re new to the school, and it’s important that they make friends with their classmates. They need to be open to the other kids of their own age groups. On the other hand, I’m concerned about the idea that they are not “allowed” to play with each other, and that cross-grade friendships are discouraged.

It’s the elder who seems to be having the most trouble settling in, and the one whom I think would most benefit from making an extra effort to make his own friends. And it’s the younger who is most resistant to the idea. Just in the past week or so, the elder has found a little niche of friends and I’ve heard happy reports of recess shenanigans revolving around playing characters out of Super Mario Bros. The youngest is desperate to be included, and in fact has always seen himself as his brother’s peer.

For all I know, this rule is universal and would have been the same at the old school, and we just never encountered it because Simon was only in afternoon SK the year we left. I’m curious as to whether any of you have experienced a bias against cross-grade friendships in your kids’ schools? What do you think of the idea of kids being discouraged from playing with kids outside of their grade? Should exceptions be made for siblings? Is it healthier to encourage them to form separate peer groups, or to let them rely on each other? While it might not seem it at the time, elementary school is really just a tiny portion of a child’s life — but siblings last forever.

What do you think?

This blog post was inspired by a conversation on Twitter. Canadian Family asked its followers “On a scale of 1-10 (10=very), how important is it to you that your kids have good table manners?” I replied that while I rate the importance of table manners at a 10+, I rate my actual accomplishment at instilling table manners a rather measly 3 to 3.5, tops.

I try, I really do. Family meal time is incredibly important to me, and we dine together each night. I love the idea of raising polite, respectful, well-mannered little Stepford boys who know which fork applies to which course, and who can carry on a polite mealtime discourse on the use of the Oxford comma. Each meal together brings yet another opportunity for new lessons and gentle correction. And? Horrendous failure on the manners front. Sadly, I am vastly outnumbered, and it is an uphill battle where concessions are made rather gratuitously and despite my best intentions.

I found the following list of North American table manners on Wikipedia. I’ve added our interpretation of each “rule”.

Dip your soup spoon away from you into the soup. Eat soup noiselessly, from the side of the spoon. When there is a small amount left, you may lift the front end of the dish slightly with your free hand to enable collection of more soup with your spoon. We are satisfied when soup is not lapped from the bowl in the manner of a dog.

If you are having difficulty getting food onto your fork, use a small piece of bread or your knife to assist. Never use your fingers. Fork use writ large is the exception rather than the rule. See above re: soup.

There should be no negative comments about the food nor of the offerings available. Vigourous and entertaining if not tedious campaigns are regularly mounted with regard to the consumption of vegetables and other suspicious foods. When relenting to consumption, energies are then expended on bartering required quantities.

Chew with your mouth closed. Do not slurp, talk with food in your mouth, or make loud or unusual noises while eating. I truly believe they are incapable of surviving a 15 minute period without making loud or unusual noises, while eating or otherwise.

Say “Excuse me,” or “Excuse me. I’ll be right back,” before leaving the table. Do not state that you are going to the restroom. Usually, one leaps from the table with a look of panic and darts from the room hollering, “Make way, make way, I gotta go peeeeeeee” as they run down the hallway. As long as no mention is made of draining the main vein or seeing a man about a horse, I’m okay with that.

Do not talk excessively loudly. Give others equal opportunities for conversation. Ha! ’nuff said.

Refrain from blowing your nose at the table. Excuse yourself from the table if you must do so. Frankly, I’m happy if they blow their noses with a tissue at the table. It’s the gratuitous use of sleeve that rankles me. Especially when it’s MY sleeve.

Burping, coughing, yawning, sneezing, or flatulence at the table should be avoided. If you do so, say, “Excuse me.” If you say “Excuse me” in burp language, does that count?

Never slouch or tilt back while seated in your chair. At any given moment of a meal, I am quite sure there are at least four chair legs out of contact with the ground. I’m beginning to believe the house is tilted.

Do not “play with” your food or utensils. Never wave or point silverware. Does stabbing someone in the back of the hand over the last piece of pie count? Because Beloved has done that. To me. More than once. And also? Does playing with someone else’s food count?

You may rest forearms or hands on the table, but not elbows. I’m okay with elbows on the table, not so much elbows or foreheads on the plate itself.

If food must be removed from the mouth for some reason, it should be done using the same method which was used to bring the food to the mouth, i.e. by hand, by fork, etc., with the exception of fish bones, which are removed from the mouth between the fingers. What, simply opening your mouth and letting gravity pull half-masticated food back on to your plate is not an acceptable way to register that a particular taste does not suit your palate?

Gentlemen should stand when a lady leaves or rejoins the table. Yeah, and the whole table would be bouncing up and down like their chairs were pogo sticks. “Mom, I need a drink.” “Mom, can you get the ketchup?” “Mom, I dropped the dipping sauce into my lap!” “Mom, did you forget my drink?” Gah.

The Canadian Family peeps said that on their informal Twitter poll, respondents ranked the importance of table manners at 9.8 out of 10. But here’s what I’d really like to know: how do you rate your own kids’ table manners on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being “My children could teach the Queen a few tidbits on etiquette over tea at Buckingham Palace”?

And really, is it a boy thing? Cuz that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.