Latest Chart: For those interested in a new parenting program!

November 15, 2019

By Ekta R. Garg

Are you tired of your current career? Do you feel like your friends are moving up the ladder faster than you are? Have you ever wondered what it’s like to spend time with contentious middle schoolers?

Introducing our brand new training program called “Parenting Tweens!”

In this program, you’ll learn how to spread yourself thin pursuing your own professional pursuits while also keeping track of laundry, groceries, and navigating after-school schedules that leave you driving all over town. Find out just how far you can stretch the contents of your fridge before needing to go to the store and when is the best time to cross that yellow light (or not.) Discover how many different ways you can explain the same point and how you ignore the eyeroll every single time.

But wait—there’s more!

This training program also confers upon you a degree in psychology! That’s right, after completing the program, you’ll be able to counsel any tweens, teens, or young adults on the tough situations of life. Advise your young person through unexpected challenges that they should have totally anticipated, and find out what it’s like to get responses like the classic, “I know, Mom.”

Not convinced yet? Let’s examine a sample case study:

*****

Mom (on Sunday night at bedtime): Sweetheart, I got an email from your teacher, Mr. A. He said he’s looking forward to your project being turned in tomorrow morning first thing.

Eleven-year-old (sits up in dark): What?!

Mom: Yeah, I guess he must have sent it this morning, but I just saw it. What project is this?

Eleven: Mamma, it’s the Lilies of the Field project. Where I’m drawing the church and the pews.

Mom: Oh, yeah, you showed it to me. I think it looks great.

Eleven: It’s not done yet.

Mom: What do you mean, it’s not done yet? Mr. A. is saying you’re supposed to turn it in tomorrow.

Eleven: That was my rough draft, what I showed you.

Mom: Your rough draft? But you’ve been working on it for a while.

Eleven: Well, it’s not my first one.

Mom: Well, why can’t you just turn in the latest draft that you have? It looks so good.

Eleven: Because it doesn’t work like that. Maybe…I can get up and do it now.

Mom (looks at clock): It’s almost 8:45. If you get up to work on it now, you’ll be up really late and it probably won’t turn out well. I don’t understand why you can’t turn in what you have.

Eleven: Because it’s on lined paper, and he said it had to be on unlined paper.

Mom (thinks for a minute): I know, but what you’ve done looks so good. And you’ve worked so hard on it for all these weeks now.

Eleven (dropping back onto her pillow): If you would just let me stay up, I can redo it.

Mom: If you stay up late now, there’s no way you’d be able to do a good job on it. Why don’t you go to Mr. A. tomorrow and explain what happened? Show him your rough drafts. It’s not like you were slacking off all this time. Just tell him that you got mixed up on the due date, and see what he has to say.

Eleven (in a sullen voice): Okay.

*****

On the surface, this seems like the end of the scenario, right? It might be, for the amateur parent. Those enrolled in the “Parenting Tweens” program will learn how to handle this situation with rock-solid, meme-worthy advice.

Want to know more? Here’s the next section of this case study. It’s called “Following Up After School the Next Day”:

*****

Mom pulls into the car pickup line and sees Eleven-year-old laughing and talking with friends. Maybe everything went well this morning when she talked to Mr. A., Mom thinks. Maybe Eleven will be able to bounce back from this without too much stress.

Mom (as Eleven-year-old sits in car): How was the day today?

Eleven: It was humiliating.

Mom (puzzled): Why, what happened? Did you talk to Mr. A.?

Eleven: Yeah, I told him what happened.

Mom: Was he mad?

Eleven (in agitated tone): Well, he wasn’t happy about it.

Mom: What did he say?

Eleven: He said I could turn it in on Thursday.

Mom: That’s good. At least he’s giving you a little extra time to work on it. Is he going to take points off for it being late?

Eleven (with disappointment): Yes.

Mom: Did you show him your rough drafts so that he knows you weren’t just goofing off all this time and remembered at the last minute?

Eleven: He said he didn’t want to see all that. He just wants me to turn in my final project.

Mom: So then why was the day humiliating?

Eleven: Because during class, he was calling on all of us one by one to talk about our projects, and I was sitting between J. and M. After J. finished talking about his project, Mr. A. looked at me and said, “Uh…okay, M., why don’t you tell us about what you did?”

Mom (waits for the “humiliating” part): Is that all?

Eleven: Yeah, but it was so embarrassing!

Mom: He probably just needed a minute, because he might have remembered right then that you hadn’t turned yours in yet. Just think, it would have been even more embarrassing if he’d called on you and then said, “Oh, no, wait, you didn’t turn yours in.”

Eleven (miffed that she can’t ignore this logic): Yeah, well…

*****

Here’s where the beauty of the “Parenting Tweens” program comes in! You learn to turn ordinary moments in the car like this into inspirational speeches. You find out how to take situations primed for defeat and disheartenment and attempt to convince the young people in your life that there’s no need to feel that way! Best of all, as you work on your psychology degree, you’ll learn to develop a thick skin even when your advice and encouragement are rebuffed over and over.

“How is this possible?” you’re probably saying in amazement. Check out our case study one last time to find out:

*****

Mom: Here’s the thing. There are going to be times when you do incredible, amazing things. You’re a smart kid, and in the future you’ll say stuff and accomplish goals and feel great about yourself. There are going to be other times when you mess up, when you make a mistake or forget about deadlines or something else. It’s not the end of the world.  You should be grateful for the fact that Mr. A. is letting you turn your project in late and not giving you a bad grade automatically just because you didn’t get the deadline right. He didn’t have to give you the extra time, but he did. He’s giving you a chance. So you should be grateful for that chance, okay?

Eleven (begrudgingly): Okay.

Mom: The most important thing is that you do your best. You’re not always going to be perfect. You’re not going to remember everything all the time. That’s why you have your planner, right?

Eleven (begrudging tone still evident): Yeah.

Mom (in bright, encouraging voice): Well, there you go! Maybe you can break down projects like this on a monthly and then weekly basis.

Thirteen-year-old sister speaks up in a quiet tone: You can even set up alerts on you iPad to remind you that stuff is coming up. That’s what I do, and it really helps.

Mom (grateful for teen’s input and simultaneously groaning inside because tween will probably react badly to “advice” from big sister; encouraging voice continues): See, there’s an idea. Between alerts on your iPad and writing things down, you’ll be able to make sure you don’t miss another deadline. If you work hard, you will do well overall. One project isn’t going to break your grade. I know it bothers you, but you’ll bounce back from this.

Eleven (begrudging tone still evident): Okay.

*****

Don’t waste time! Act today to take advantage of this incredible program. And if you contact us within the next 30 minutes, we’ll throw in a free copy of our workbook, “Sarcastic Things I Can Think In Response to My Tween’s Snarkiness”! Learn to take the high road and counsel your tween while getting in the last word, even if the tween doesn’t hear it.

Be the expert parent on the block. Enroll in “Parenting Tweens” today!

*****

*Some restrictions apply. See Life for details. Program requires a 10-year lead time—that is, you cannot enroll until you are the parent of at least one tween, defined as a child between the ages of 10 and 12. 

**Program facilitators are not responsible for any stretch marks, parental crying, clothes dirtied from spit-up or poopy diapers as participants prepare to enroll in program 10 years from now. Thereafter, program facilitators are not responsible for fights with partners, sleepless nights, hurt feelings, extreme anxiety, or other negative effects from parenting tweens.

***The psychology degree is not recognized by any medical body but certainly honored by other program graduates. Sometimes, years after they’re no longer tweens, the degree is also honored by the children.

****Seriously, why can’t parents just walk into any university of their choice and just demand a psych degree?

 

 

Latest Spurts: Aspiring to chicken tortellini alfredo and enjoying bribes

November 1, 2019

By Ekta R. Garg

Enjoy these Spurts from the last few weeks, readers!

Since the start of the school year, the girls, along with a handful of their schoolmates, have helped their drama teacher prepare for this year’s performances. They’ve built sets for the elementary kids and talked through blocking for middle school shows.

Typically this happens after school on Tuesdays, but with the sheer amount of work the teacher has asked the kids to come in a few Saturdays. On one or two Saturdays, the teacher has waited for us or left the door propped open around the time she knew we’d arrive. Two weeks ago, however, when we arrived at school at the meeting time, we found the school doors locked.

I sat in the car and watched Thirteen and Eleven peer through the glass doors leading to the hallway outside the gym. They both turned to me with a “Now what?” look, so I motioned for them to go down the sidewalk to the main entrance. Those doors were locked too.

Of course, on a morning like this, I forgot my cell phone. I huffed and sighed and drove home to grab my phone so I could text the teacher. Within minutes, she texted back that she would be at the door to open it for the kids. We turned around and went back to school.

“Can you imagine doing this without cell phones?” Eleven asked.

“We did,” I said. “We didn’t have cell phones when I was a kid.”

“So what would you do?” she asked. “I mean, if you went there and found that the doors were locked.”

“You’d just…go home, I guess,” I said. “You’d wait by the landline for the other person to call you back and ask where they were. Then you just set up another time to meet.”

She considered this—a world without cell phones, in which we had to just wait on one another without instant confirmation about who was going where and when—and I thought for a moment about my own childhood. I remember life without the internet and smart devices, of course; anyone my age does. I guess, maybe, that’s why I’m still a little in awe of them.

*****

The girls go to art lessons straight after school on Wednesdays, but weeks after school started they started talking about quitting art. The level of homework Thirteen in particular is getting makes it hard for her to get it done on Wednesdays. After some back and forth, we finally agreed. At the end of this semester, they’ll get their Wednesday afternoons back.

Since my husband and I told the kids they could drop art in December, every Wednesday after school Thirteen has gotten into the car and said, “I just want to go home.”

I tried to make things better by counting down the Wednesdays left every week. Somehow that doesn’t seem to be helping. I just end up with two kids glaring at me.

This week, when I put their snacks together for the car ride to art class, I decided to make hot chocolate and put it in two travel mugs. The temperatures have dropped close to winter levels, and it’s cold outside. So I boiled milk, added cocoa mix, and poured steaming hot chocolate into the mugs. Then I packed up their snacks, the mugs, and their art supplies, and headed to school.

Thirteen got into the front seat and gasped with pleasure.

“It’s hot chocolate, isn’t it?” she asked with a grin of delight.

I smiled back and greeted Eleven as she got in the car too.

“Hot chocolate, [Eleven],” Thirteen said.

“Well, it’s cold out, so I thought you might like something warm to drink,” I said.

“And it’s Wednesday,” Eleven said in a resigned voice.

“Oh, don’t worry, the hot chocolate’s a bribe for going to art class,” Thirteen said.

“It’s not a bribe!” I said in an affronted manner.

(It was totally a bribe.)

“Sure,” Thirteen said with a gleam in her eye.

What can I say? These kids definitely have my number. I guess I’ll have to get better at, um, cold-weather treats. Yeah. ‘Cause that’s what I was doing.

*****

The girls had a half day today, so we made plans to go to Panera for lunch. As we sat and waited for their dad to join us, the girls dug into their meals. Thirteen scooped a spoonful of Panera’s turkey chili and devoured it.

“One day, I’m going to come to Panera and order the chicken tortellini alfredo,” she said.

“Well, it’s a huge portion,” I said, “but you can always share it.”

She paused over her bowl. “I can?”

“Sure.”

“But who would split it with me?”

“I’ll split it,” Eleven said.

“You will?”

“Yeah.”

Her entire lunch experience, I could see in her eyes, had just changed.

“The next time I come to Panera, I’m going to order the chicken tortellini alfredo.”

“One day I’ll come to Panera and order a whole bunch of sweets,” Eleven said.

“And get a stomachache,” I said.

“I’ll have a party and invite all my friends,” she said.

“You wouldn’t invite me?” I asked, feigning shock.

“No,” Thirteen said, “you’d probably tell us, ‘That’s way too much sugar.’”

Eleven broke into a laugh, and I couldn’t help laughing at Thirteen’s imitation of me. I probably would tell them it was too much sugar. Then I’d beg for a scone.

 

Latest Chart: Words that hurt

October 18, 2019

By Ekta R. Garg

Every phase of parenting, I’m discovering, has its deepest joys.

When they’re newborns, you just want to hold them all day (well, when they’re not spitting up on you or screaming at 3 a.m.), and they’re content to be held. In the midst of the Terrible Twos, there are the adorable pronunciations of words and the innocuous questions that make a parent shake her head. Kindergarten brings the wide-eyed wonder phase; every day allows for a new discovery, a new breakthrough, and those all-important steps toward independent thinking and behavior.

I’m currently the mom of two middle schoolers, and the biggest perk of this phase is the conversation. The girls are smart and funny. They’ve often made me break into laughter so hard, tears spill from my eyes and I can’t draw a steady breath. They’ve also challenged me with questions that leave me stuttering for a moment as my carefully-laid plans start to hydroplane and I need to gain traction again.

My husband and I encourage the girls to talk, about everything, and at times it’s truly a pleasure. Other times, it can turn into a little bit of a hurtful conversation. At times like that, I can’t help but wonder whether that’s a weakness in my child that I have to help turn into a strength or whether it’s a weakness in my parenting that I need to fix.

Last weekend we went to Chicago for a little getaway. My husband, the girls, and I shared a hotel room, which means one bathroom between the four of us. Eleven had already showered and dressed; Thirteen was in the bathroom, and I was on deck to go next.

To pass the time, my husband pulled up soccer videos. He and Eleven watched a video of world-class Brazilian player Ronaldinho (now retired). After watching for a little bit, my husband handed me his tablet and said, “You have to see this guy!”

I’m not an athlete, but Eleven plays soccer for the park district so I do take an avid interest in the game. This also stems from my own days as captain of the cheerleaders in high school. The first sport of the season for our school used to be boys’ soccer, and our team was strong. Add that to the fact that I was buddies with many of the guys on the team, and all that creates an equation where I really do enjoy watching the sport when I can.

I’d never seen Ronaldinho play, and his handling of the ball blew me away. The no-look passes combined with the way he kept faking out his opponents made him a legend in the sport. As I watched, my husband explained how, because the Brazilians are so good at samba dancing, Ronaldinho used many of the same moves in the way he played. He was so quick—as all Latin dancing requires a person to be—that other players had trouble tracking the ball.

I may no longer cheer with a squad, but I still get excited about amazing sports. Every time Ronaldinho did something I thought really cool, I would let out a, “Oh, wow!” or a “Beautiful! That was incredible!”

“Okay, Mamma, that’s enough,” Eleven said, sarcasm tinging her voice.

I ignored her. She’s a soccer player and can appreciate, with first-hand experience, the difficulty of what Ronaldinho was doing, but, as I said, I’ve spent some time with the sport myself. In high school, I took time out to understand how it was played so that I could lead the other girls to cheer for the guys at the right times. Plus, what Ronaldinho did just looked so freaky cool (seriously, Google this guy.)

I kept cheering him on over cyberspace during matches that were years old, and she kept exclaiming about my exclamations.

“Jeez, get excited much?” Eleven said a few times, this time in a snarky manner. “We get it, Mamma. You think he’s cool.”

My cheeks got warm, and I stopped talking. For a moment, I considered shutting the tablet off together, but I didn’t want to look like I was throwing a tantrum. And I really did like the highlights.

Thirteen came out of the bathroom, and I put the tablet on the bed, gathered my clothes, and went in for my own shower. As I stood there, I considered several responses to Eleven. They ranged from the mundane—It’s not nice to make fun of your parents—to the profound—a philosophical treatise on what it means to be able to participate in a sport without actually being on a team.

More than anything, I tried to soothe away my hurt with a good shampoo and rinse. Because it did hurt. Yes, I’m Thirteen and Eleven’s mother, but I’m also a person. I have likes and dislikes as much as anyone else. I have thoughts and opinions, hobbies and interests.

I have feelings.

When I came out of the bathroom, I still hadn’t decided on what to say. Fortunately, I didn’t have to say anything at all. My husband had done the talking for me.

“Go talk to her,” he told Eleven in a stern voice.

She came to my shoulder as I put my items back in the suitcase.

“Sorry for being all sarcastic and snarky,” she said in a flat tone.

I drew a quiet breath.

“I know I’m not an athlete,” I said, “but I still do enjoy soccer. When I was in school, I knew I wasn’t good enough to play so I became a cheerleader. That was my way to support the team and the school. It was my way to enjoy the game.”

She just stared at me with a neutral expression.

I didn’t go into lecture mode. My husband had already played “bad cop” and done that for me, so I took a different tack. While in the shower, I’d spent a little time thinking of my cheerleading days and remembered something.

“You know,” I told Eleven, evening out my tone to let her know the conversation would ease away from her getting into trouble, “when I was a cheerleader, I kept little journals about my experiences. Our team went to state, but we lost. It might be interesting for you to read those journals so you can get a sense for how it felt for me to cheer on the boys.”

I turned to Thirteen who had, no doubt, witnessed the whole lecture Eleven received. “You might get a kick out of reading them too. Next time we go to [South Carolina], I’ll show them to you.”

Eleven didn’t say yea or nay to reading my cheerleading journals, and I didn’t push the issue. Instead, I started talking about something else, giving Eleven the out she needed at the moment to nurse her wounded ego. I know it probably hurt to get lectured, to get into trouble for being impulsive with her words.

It’s a habit of hers, and I’m trying to teach her to think about what comes out of her mouth before it actually does so. She has improved, but at times like these, it reminds me we still have work to do. She definitely has a ways to go. Does that mean I have a ways to go as a parent?

I don’t know, but maybe being aware of all this is a good start.

Brand new Spurts: The boomerang effect and driving fast

October 4, 2019

By Ekta R. Garg

Enjoy these Spurts from the last two weeks, readers!

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I had to switch cars for the day. I drive a Honda Odyssey, which I absolutely adore. He drives a BMW. Which I love and hate all at the same time.

The BMW needed to go to the dealership for service, and I’ve had bad experiences with the dealership here in town. So any time it needs any oil change or anything else, I take the car to another dealership about 45 minutes away. With the drive there and back and the actual service time, that means the car has to stay with me for the whole day.

On this particular Friday, the kids loaded into the BMW before school and I fumbled for a minute with some of the controls.

“I don’t like driving this car,” I muttered.

“Why?” Thirteen asked.

“It just makes me a little nervous,” I said. “It’s an expensive car, and I’m always a little worried about doing something to it. And…”

“And?” Eleven prompted.

“Well,” I said sheepishly, “it goes from zero to sixty in, like, three seconds. And that’s really fun to do. So…”

We turned onto the main road outside our neighborhood, and I revved the engine just enough to pick up speed.

“You want to drive faster right now, don’t you?” Thirteen asked.

I grinned. “Little bit.”

“Yeah, here’s Mommy getting pulled over for speeding on the way to school,” Eleven joked, which would be quite the accomplishment considering we live a total of 1.1 miles away.

“That’s why I don’t like driving this car,” I said.

The girls continued to rib me all the way to the main entrance of the school. As they got out, Eleven called out a reprimand to drive properly. I pulled the car onto the main road again, revved the engine just a little more, and smiled.

*****

For anyone who hasn’t listened to the radio lately, collaborations seem to be the new thing. Ed Sheeran’s doing it with everyone under the sun. Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber—they’re all singing in all sorts of combinations with different artists.

One day as we were driving home, we were listening to the song called Eastside that features the talents of Benny Blanco, Khalid, and Halsey. (And the fact that I had to Google the song to get all three singers’ names right tells you how up to date I am with the singers of today.) Thirteen and Eleven didn’t seem to mind it all too much, although Thirteen kept talking about how creepy Halsey’s voice sounded.

“Who wants to go to the east side with her anyway?” Eleven said in a huff.

“Yeah, and why the east side?” Thirteen murmured. “What’s wrong with the west side?”

“Well, they’ve got their own story,” I quipped.

Thirteen groaned loud and long.

“That’s a terrible joke,” she said.

“Hey, I think it was pretty clever,” I replied.

She just shook her head at me. I thought she’d appreciate it more, being a theater kid and all. I’m still pretty proud of it myself, actually.

*****

Last week the entire middle school went on an overnight camping trip together. In the weeks leading up to the trip, the grades spent time preparing skits to perform for everyone. Eleven came home more than once expressing her frustration with the lack of seriousness on the part of the other sixth graders. They didn’t seem to spend too much time worrying about their lines, it seemed, and it didn’t help that it felt like they never had enough time to practice.

“If they’re not taking responsibility for it, then do something,” Thirteen suggested one morning before school. “You can rehearse before school, at recess, in advisory. Do something about not getting enough time to practice.”

Eleven rolled her eyes at her sister’s advice. Part of her, I know, appreciated it. Part of her wished that her big sister didn’t seem to have the answer to everything.

The refrain I’ve drummed into the kids’ heads is, “Smart girls find a way to fix the problem.” It’s nice to know that Thirteen has taken that to heart. Now if only Eleven wouldn’t scoff every time her big sister reminded her of it.

*****

They say that a person only fully understands the difficulties of parenting when s/he becomes a parent. The longer I’m a parent myself, the more I appreciate my own mom and dad. I often think about the kinds of challenges they navigated with my sister and me. There’s the issue of parenting in general, and then they had the added challenge of steering us in a culture and country that they adopted as home but that wasn’t their birthplace.

My husband and I talk occasionally about how people without kids can’t fully grasp the speed bumps that trip us up. And certainly the kids can’t grasp them either. How can they, when they’re the cause of those speed bumps?

Occasionally, though, the boomerang comes back around sooner than anyone expects.

Eleven is the notorious early riser of the two girls, taking after her father and grandfather. Thirteen doesn’t get out of bed with ease; it generally takes her a little longer in the morning. I can commiserate, because I know exactly how she feels. While adulting requires early mornings sometimes, they’re not my most favorite.

In an interesting twist, though, once Thirteen is awake she moves fast. Eleven will wake up early, shower, get dressed, and come downstairs by 7:30. We aim to leave every morning by 8 a.m. for school. She can still find a way to be late.

Eleven’s freshest first thing in the morning, and she loves to chat. Her train of thought skips along from one subject to the next at lightning speed, and because she has a lot to say she’ll often just stand in the kitchen and talk. And talk. And talk. I have to remind her to keep moving on her way to get her breakfast or to keep eating it.

Yesterday morning, Thirteen came down after Eleven, as she often does, ate her breakfast, went back upstairs to brush her teeth, and came back down to see her sister still eating. At that point, Eleven decided she had to go pee. She left her breakfast and went to the bathroom.

“She gets down here before me,” Thirteen said, “and yet we’re still late for school.”

I suppressed a knowing grin. “This is exactly what it was like when you were in sixth grade. That’s why I yelled so much. And then I stopped yelling.”

“Yeah,” she said in that half-teasing voice of hers, “because now your favorite child’s in sixth grade.”

“No, I stopped yelling when you were halfway through sixth grade, because I realized it didn’t accomplish anything,” I said honestly.

She pondered this for a bit, and I smiled into my mug of tea. I don’t know if she remembers the yelling; she didn’t say one way or the other. But I know she understands now why I did it.

Gotta love that boomerang. Looking for it to swing back around again soon. Maybe this time on just how much we spend on the kids.

Newest Chart: When parenting boomerangs

September 20, 2019

By Ekta R. Garg

Two weeks ago, on the day after Labor Day, I woke up with a sore throat. No problem, I thought. When the seasons change here in Central Illinois, we expect a day or two of scratchiness.

On Wednesday of that week the scratchiness had disappeared, and congestion had arrived. Again, I didn’t bat an eye. Okay, so I would come down with a cold. Not fun but certainly nothing to worry about.

Then came Thursday. The day I woke up feeling like a truck had run over me. Twice.

Because my husband had to go to the clinic later that morning, he volunteered to take the kids to school. I followed the three of them to the mudroom and watched them put on shoes and pick up backpacks. Then I opened my mouth to bid the girls goodbye.

“Have a good—”

“Go sit down,” Thirteen interrupted with full-on teen stubbornness.

“I will, I just—”

“We love you too; go sit,” she repeated.

“I know, but—”

“We love you, we’ll have a good day, see you after school, there,” Eleven piped up behind her sister. “Go, Mamma. Take it easy.”

I looked at my husband.

“What has the world come to?” I asked, feigning shock. “Do you see the way the kids are ordering me around?”

He pecked a kiss on my forehead and reiterated what the kids told me. In essence, all three of them were banishing me to the sofa for the day. Since they outvoted me, I had no choice but to listen and was grateful to do so.

I spent that day catching up on HGTV and a movie or two. When it came time for dinner, we ordered Chinese. My husband and Eleven picked it up on the way home from soccer practice, and I watched them walk in with the takeout containers from the couch.

In a move rare for me, I didn’t get up to serve anyone. Instead, I let Thirteen come to me. She pulled a little side table to me.

“What do you want to eat?” she asked me and filled a plate per my requests then brought it to me.

“When you get all better, I’m sanitizing everything,” she said, picking up the remote a little gingerly. She set it on the coffee table and went to the island counter to join her sister and father for their own dinner. After a few minutes, when she saw my plate empty, she refilled it for me.

On Friday, though I didn’t know it was possible, I felt even worse. I also woke up with a temperature, which the girls monitored with me during the day. That evening when I announced the fever had dropped, they both cheered.

Throughout the weekend and all of last week, the girls went out of their way to take care of me. Eleven asked repeatedly if she could help with household chores not normally her responsibility. Thirteen made sure I stayed comfortable on my sofa spot for the week. Both of them took turns teasing me in the most good-natured fashion, gentle but still funny.

Last Thursday I felt good enough to do some small tasks, which took me to sorting through the mail right around the time the girls would come home from school. As he had done many times, my husband stepped up (despite starting to feel a little icky himself three days earlier) and brought the kids home. I happened to be standing at the small counter close to the mudroom where we drop mail and other items when everyone walked in

“Oh my gosh!” Thirteen exclaimed, taking a dramatic two steps back. “Oh my gosh!”

“What?” I asked, pretending not to know why she was reacting that way.

“What is happening here?” Eleven asked, tacking on to her sister’s performance with her eyes wide. “What’s going on?”

“What?” I asked again.

Thirteen put a hand to her chest in Victorian fashion, and both girls proceeded to go upstairs to their rooms to wash up. I just shook my head at all the silliness and went back to the sofa. By the time they came back down, I felt depleted of the little bit of energy I’d spent during the day. I went back to the sofa.

“What was going on before?” I asked Thirteen.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, our family’s code for taking the Fifth Amendment.

I suppressed a smile, a signal for me that I really was feeling better.

Since Monday we’ve all gone back to our normal routines. My husband recovered from his laryngitis. I’m almost back to a hundred percent after the cough/cold/flu I endured.

This morning, Thirteen came downstairs for breakfast before school.

“My throat feels a little scratchy,” she said.

I held up a finger to her. “No. I forbid it. You can’t.”

She rolled her eyes.

“It’s all you guys’s fault,” she said, glancing at me and her dad.

“What did we do?” my husband asked.

The ribbing continued, and Thirteen took a handful of cough drops to school just in case. I hope it’s just the run-of-the-mill, fall-season throat scratchiness and nothing more serious. From recent experience, I know how miserable the more serious version can make a person. But the girls have shown me that they know exactly what to expect if one of them does get sick, because they took such good care of me.

Sometimes when parents are in the thick of actual act of parenting, we don’t know if what we’re doing is making a difference. If what we’re trying to teach the kids is actually sticking. Weeks like this offer me reassurance that it is.

Latest Spurts: Getting haircuts and achieving world peace with Fruit Loops

August 30, 2019

By Ekta R. Garg

Enjoy these Spurts from the past few weeks, readers!

Last week before school started, I took the girls on an errand run. We had several things to do that day, including haircuts before school started and picking up some groceries. Along the way we chatted about the haircuts in particular.

For the last few years, Thirteen has enjoyed having long hair. She’s styled it a variety of ways, and relished its length halfway down her back. Earlier in the summer, though, she floated the idea of cutting it to her shoulders.

I didn’t say anything at the time. Kids have ideas and then change their minds. Also, between getting ready for our Norway trip and working on my novel, I didn’t want to spend time or energy on anything not crucial to either. I knew we’d have about five days before the kids started school to parse out the details on any potential hairstyle changes.

The girls went to Myrtle Beach to visit their grandparents, and when Thirteen came back she still wanted to get her hair cut. She’d already enlisted her grandmother as moral support for the idea. The only hurdle she had to cross was convincing her father.

In all honesty, I didn’t think he’d agree. Imagine my amazement when he did just that. As we drove to Great Clips last week, we discussed the conversation in the car.

“I still can’t believe Daddy agreed to let you cut your hair,” Eleven remarked.

“Yeah, well,” Thirteen said with a sigh, “he said I can only do it this one time. I can’t ever cut it again after this.”

“Why does it even matter to him?” Eleven said with her trademark bluntness. “I don’t get it. I mean, it’s not like it’s his hair.”

“Yeah,” Thirteen echoed.

“Well, in India, long hair is a sign of beauty,” I said. “Daddy grew up there, and culturally that’s what long hair stands for. It’s normal for him.”

“That’s weird,” Eleven declared.

“Maybe for you,” I said, “but there are so many cultures where people do things that we think are weird but they think are beautiful. In Africa people wear those rings around their necks to make their necks longer. In China people used to think small feet on women were beautiful, and they would break the feet of young girls and bind them so that their feet looked little.”

“Yeah, Mamma, I get it.”

“So, just like that, in India, long hair is a sign of beauty, and we don’t necessarily have to agree with it, but we do have to respect Daddy’s opinions and ideas, even if we don’t like them.”

“Maybe he’s just jealous because he can’t go for a haircut,” Thirteen mused about her father’s minimal hair.

We shared a laugh on that one, but I hope the main message got across.

*****

After the haircuts, we made our way to Sam’s to pick up a few items in bulk for the new school year like Capri Sun and favorite cereals that were running out. Our Sam’s club changed its layout in the last few weeks, so I had to make my way down most of the main aisles to get my bearings. The girls followed along and commented on all the foods we don’t eat.

“It’s so unfair,” Eleven said after the third or fourth item we crossed that we wouldn’t buy, “I don’t understand why we can’t try some of these things just once. Just once, and we’d never ask for them again.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” I said. “Once you’ll have them, you’ll want them again.”

“Yeah, but you’ve had most of them.”

Okay, so maybe not most, but it’s true that when it came to food choices my parents weren’t as stringent on what we did or didn’t eat as my husband. Of course, when I was a kid, food nutrition labels didn’t exist as we know them today. The FDA began mandatory labeling of food packages in 1990; before that time, some foods came labeled but not all did. And because I grew up as the child of immigrants, the kinds of foods we were eating were automatically different than most households.

All that to say that the conversations we have in this country today about protein, fat, and salt didn’t exist when I was growing up. People didn’t have all this information, so we ate with more pleasure and less guilt. Of course, I couldn’t express this last part to the kids, but I did remind them about the food labeling.

“We know, Mamma,” Eleven said in a sullen tone.

For the rest of the shopping trip through Sam’s, she hung back and didn’t say much. When it came time to pay, I directed the cart to the self check-out stand. Thirteen scurried forward to help load groceries into the cart after I scanned them.

“And what is [Eleven] doing?” she asked.

“She’s back here sulking because she can’t have Fruit Loops and Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies,” I said.

I turned to my younger daughter, and she cracked a smile. She couldn’t help it, even though she really wanted to hold onto that grumpiness. After a minute or two, she started helping with the groceries too.

Maybe this is the key to world peace. Forget diplomacy. Just offer everyone Fruit Loops.

*****

The first day of school was a half day, so the kids came home and ate their lunch. On the second day of school, I went to wish Eleven a good morning and found her grinning. I gave her a hug and asked what was making her so happy.

“We get to sit at the middle school tables,” she said, referring to herself and the other sixth graders, “and not because the middle schoolers are gone on the camp-out or a field trip or something. It’s because we are middle schoolers now.”

I couldn’t help grinning back at her myself. I remember what it felt like to cross the threshold from one major part of the school to another. The excitement that we were growing up and like the “big kids” now, although I know Eleven would never quite put it that way. I hope her excitement for middle school stays through these first few weeks.

*****

On Monday as I pulled into the school’s drop-off line in the morning, we spotted one of the new sixth graders.

“There’s A.,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” Thirteen commented. “You know, her mom walked her into advisory on the first day.”

“Yeah,” Eleven added, “and she looked a little embarrassed.”

“Yeah,” Thirteen said, “she did.”

Before I could even open my mouth to tease the girls about walking them in, Thirteen turned to open the car door.

“It’s okay, Mamma, you don’t have to walk us inside,” she said with one foot out of the car.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yeah, really,” she said and got out; Eleven was two steps behind her.

I had just enough time to get in a “Bye, love you!” before she shut the door. Not that I would have walked her in. But since she’s a teenager, I should at least get the pleasure of torturing her with the possibility, right?

Latest Chart: Annoying your kids and finding Dinah

August 16, 2019

By Ekta R. Garg

I stared from the dock at the lake. The placid green-blue water reminded me of the Caribbean, but no Caribbean country featured a collection of tall peaks circling the water. The sweeping mountain range gazed down, offering a vista of a glacier the color of a summer morning peering over the top of the range as if it wanted to play hide-and-seek.

With a little help, some gentle coaxing, and minimal instructions from the friendly (and I’d definitely say optimistic) gentleman running the dock, I climbed into a canoe with a paddle. He seemed to have no trouble whatsoever believing that I could not only paddle the small boat but also make it to a destination and back to the dock. On purpose.

Maybe it was the scenery around me that defined “picture-postcard perfect.” Since arriving in Norway, I’d had trouble holding on to the stresses of my life back home. How could I, when the mountains invited me to take a seat by their side and just let myself be? Everywhere we looked, everywhere we walked, the scenery and the people greeted us with a benevolence that seemed to come from a storybook. How would it feel to uncurl my fist and let all my worries slip through my fingers?

“We’re not making any progress.”

I suppressed a sigh. Maybe it wasn’t so hard to find an ounce of that stress. Especially with a tween and a teen in the same boat as me.

After the nice man at the dock pushed us off, we all started to paddle. The first few attempts took us in literal circles. We’d done some mild white water rafting earlier in the week during the first part of our tour, so I tried to remember what the rafting guide told us to do and paddle according to those instructions.

It didn’t work very well. The girls continued to let loose their complaints into the air above us, and it baffled me for a minute whether the valley was the right place for them to do so. The serenity of the Norwegian landscape had muted my daily frustrations. Hadn’t they felt its magic too?

“This is hard.”

“Here, why don’t we paddle on opposite sides?” I suggested from the back of the canoe. “[Eleven], you and I will paddle on the same side, and, [Thirteen], you paddle on the opposite side from [Eleven]. And it’s your job to make sure you paddle in the same rhythm as her.”

The girls fell into a better cadence of paddling. After 10 or 12 strokes, though, they lost it again. Eleven couldn’t see this at all, of course, since she sat at the front. Thirteen either hadn’t seen it or was concentrating too hard on paddling to care.

Without warning, without saying another word, I started to sing.

“I’ve been working on the railroad, all the livelong day! I’ve been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away!”

“What is that?” Eleven asked as if she’d smelled something rotten.

“Where did you learn that song?” Thirteen asked, her tone expressing her eyeroll.

I stopped singing. “In school. It’s a really old song people used to sing for jobs like…well, working on the railroad. You know, when you needed to follow a certain rhythm to do your work. Can’t you hear the whistle blowing, to rise up so early in the morning? Can’t you hear the captain shouting…”

A rut opened in my memory for a moment. I knew the next few words involved a woman’s name, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was. So I fumbled through that part and kept going.

The girls groaned, audibly, but I noticed that their paddling got a little better.

We made it to the miniscule beach about a half mile away from the dock and the boathouse—just far enough to admire our progress but not so far as to exhaust us. We explored the shore for a bit, ducking past a low-hanging tree, following the curve of the short shoreline around to where another member of our tour group had graciously pulled in our boat when we’d arrived. The beach was more like a mini island, explored in a couple of minutes, a small resting spot for anyone who had an inclination to paddle deeper into the valley later.

About 10 minutes after we arrived, one of the tour guides zipped close to us in a motorized boat to let us know that lunch would be served soon and we needed to head back. Once again the girls and I relied on our fellow travelers to push us into the water; they were from Florida and spent as much free time as they could engaging in aquatic outings, so the dad of the family there had no trouble giving the canoe a nudge after we’d all settled with our paddles.

We started paddling, and I started singing.

“I’ve been working on the railroad, all the livelong day! I’ve been working on the railroad…”

“Oh no,” Eleven said with a loud groan.

“Not this again,” her big sister echoed with chagrin. “You know people can hear you, right?”

I broke off my own singing. “So what? I don’t have a bad voice. I can sing in tune.”

My memory clicked into place just then, and the name came back to me.

“Dinah, blow your horn! Dinah, won’t you blow, Dinah, won’t you blow, Dinah, won’t you blow your ho-o-orn!”

“There’s more?” Eleven asked, incredulous at the tempo change.

“This is distracting!” Thirteen said in a loud voice over mine.

“Maybe that’s the point,” I replied in a speaking voice.

Neither of them had a response for that comment.

I started singing again. I kept singing, noticing that the paddling had fallen into sync much faster on our trip back. In fact, we had little trouble keeping ourselves in a fairly straight line as we worked to get back to shore.

I sang through “I’ll Be Working on the Railroad” another time or two just to annoy the kids—yes, I admit it, that was the bigger draw—before dropping my voice to a volume meant more for myself to sing through the title track of “The Sound of Music.” I couldn’t help it: in a moment like this, I understand what would inspire Maria Von Trapp to let loose on those hills. They did feel alive to me.

The glacier, the valley, that lake, and the Caribbean blue-green water made me grateful for music. For the opportunity to travel. And, yes, even for kids who get annoyed with their parents.