Month: February 2013

babies · grandparents · humor · preschoolers

10 Reasons the Elderly Are Not Like Little Kids (from the Momplex Blog archives)

Jenny3 Comments

I’ve heard it my whole life, the notion that elderly people are a lot like little kids. I know regression takes place over the final years. I’ve seen firsthand how Father Time eventually subtracts some of the most basic skills, leaving behind a storeroom of Depends and the impulse control of—well, a preschooler. But having spent much of today with my nearly 90-year-old grandfather and my 4-year-old son, I’m not convinced the analogy holds much water. Here’s why I don’t think the elderly are much like little kids:

  1. Although my grandpa did fall and get a rug burn on his forehead just before I arrived to take him out, he did not start screaming, “BAND-AID! BAND-AID! I NEED A BAND-AID! I’M BLOODING!”
  2. While my grandpa has indeed reached the stage where incontinence is an issue, he never wiggles around pinching his wiener through his pants and swearing to God that he really does not have to go.
  3. Although my grandpa did shout, “WAITER!!!” loud enough to cast a spell of startled silence over every single patron in the IHOP where we ate today, he came off like a regular Emily Post next to my son, who at that moment was creeping out from under the table with something balanced on his index finger while saying, “Mom! People wipe boogers under this table!”
  4. My grandpa requires naps and can fall asleep anywhere, but he does not sprout horns and devolve into a blubbering, fit-throwing devil during the 20 minutes prior. He also does not demand any particular bedding be present, and although he does like a good reclining chair for the deed, I’ve never once seen him pitch a fit if he doesn’t get one.
  5. My grandpa carries a handkerchief with him everywhere and deposits his boogers in it instead of on walls, in his hair, or worst of all, in his mouth. He also does not spend time marveling at each specimen he removes.
  6. My grandpa’s jokes don’t all end somehow with someone pooping or falling into poop or smelling like poop or eating poop or being poopy. They pretty much never involve poop.
  7. My grandpa never shows up to the dinner table nude.
  8. My grandpa may hoard things that clearly belong in the trash, but at least they’re remnants of things that were once used by him and might possibly serve some purpose in the future. They are not someone else’s rubbish plucked up from playgrounds, parking lots, grocery store floors, or worst of all, the mall play area.
  9. No matter what he’s served, my grandpa eats every…single…thing…on…his…plate….right down to the last nanoparticle of butter. Then he licks his fingers. Enough said.
  10. Once he goes to bed, my grandpa is down for the night. He does not call out requests for water, back scratches, hangnail doctoring, different speeds on the ceiling fan, lights dimmed or brightened, another trip to the toilet, or answers to random questions about God, death, or private parts.

Think about it. Can’t you name way more differences than likenesses between little kids and the elderly, too?

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Not always bad to have things in common
daughters · humor · motherhood · speed-posts

Rose-Colored Glasses on a Someday Badass (from the Momplex Blog archives)

Jenny5 Comments

My daughter wants to be Angelina Jolie when she grows up. That’s not how she puts it. She doesn’t even know who Angelina is. But she’s been telling me for years that she wants to “adopt nine or ten kids someday, from all over the world.” I guess that as long as she doesn’t take up any other Angelina tendencies, like making out with a cousin or blowing up her lips to look like two boffing slugs, I think it’s pretty cool.

I’m happy when my daughter tells me she aspires to having kids. It makes me feel like I’m making this gig look easy, which it isn’t, and rewarding, which it is. Interestingly enough, a Living Social psychic tried to tell me a couple of months ago that my daughter was “going to have kids at an early age.” I pressed the woman for details, and she said, “Not too young, maybe around 19.” Excuse me? Because this woman feels that 19 is a reasonable age to have babies—and because she had to ask if I had kids in the first place—it was easy to laugh her off.

The great and wise man-child Justin Bieber tells us we should never say never, but I feel pretty good that my daughter’s not going to fulfill that psychic’s prophecies. However, she might just fulfill her own. I see the kind of sister, daughter, and friend she is, and I just know she’s going to be damn good at motherhood when it’s her turn. And, hey, just look at this list of “Possible Jobs” she made last week:

possiblejobs

The last item on that list has “motherhood internship” written all over it. Being a mom to a deserted baby penguin seems like a half-okay set of training wheels for actual motherhood, right? I love my girl’s optimism, her bold vision. Part rose-colored glasses, part bad-ass, I’d say she’s totally on the right track to fulfilling her dream.

advice · government · humor · motherhood · poop · preschoolers

Whack-a-Mole: Parenting in an Intrusive World (from the Momplex Blog archives)

Jenny7 Comments

Poop-slinging is not just for primates. I know, because I experience it as a mom firsthand all the time. I’m not talking about literal poo once flung at me by kicking baby legs—technically, that’s not slung. I’m talking about the endless heaps of crap the world puts on parents, day in and day out:

  • Sexualized monster dolls with anorexic thigh-gap and Kris Jenner eye makeup
  • Vaccination, breastfeeding, and red-shirting debates that outheat the meetings of the Continental Congress
  • Surprise commercials for things like CSI: Cannibal Ear-Rape Unit during family Christmas specials
  • Endless scare campaigns about eating high-fructose corn syrup, GMOs, aerosolized feces, snow, etc.
  • Magazine covers with the lying liars who make babies in Hollywood and the lying liars who help them lie about the baby weight they “melt away” three weeks post-partum through a combo of Pilates, coconut oil, and Acai berries. Liars.
  • Know-it-alls forever saying, “If I were a parent, I would never…” [insert karma’s placeholder here] as if it were as simple as boiling an egg or crate-training a dog
  • YouTube instructional videos for DIY push-up, padded training bras
  • Absurdly expensive athletic programs that require 12 practices a week and a second mortgage, until the third grade, when it all doubles
  • My personal nemesis, the bottomless sea of paper: teachers’ notes, permission slips, school calendars, snack lists, book fair circulars, fundraiser order forms, and really bad artwork that only qualifies as artwork because your child wrote his/her name on it during art class

It’s nothing, really. I’m sure every generation of parents has it’s crap, and I’m not complaining. I do my best to roll with the punches and stay ahead of the whack-a-mole game that is raising kids. But sometimes I just have to laugh at the absurdity of what gets slung at me by our hyper-ridiculous society. Look at the headline of a note I received today from the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health:

Exclamation Point!!!!
An Intervention!!! Exclamation Point!!!!

No pressure there, right? Screw the “happiest kid on the block.” We’re going for global domination! Basic rule of thumb I’ve learned as a writer: Be wary of exclamation marks. They often indicate hysteria, fake excitement, ignorance—or, in this case, all three.

Turns out the university thinks my kid is fat. And they want to do something about his dangerous fatness—as well as mine and his dad’s—through a special web-based program to help us exercise and eat healthier meals: “All parents and children will be weighed and measured at the first visit, and again at 6 month and at 12 months.”

Um. Really?

This letter took me off guard. It explained that an enclosed body mass index (BMI) chart—on which my son’s latest BMI was shown—indicated that my son is heading for heart disease, bone problems, and diabetes. Basically, they called my kid fat, and then very subtly indicated that my husband and I must be fat, too.

Thank God SOMEBODY'S looking out for my kid.
Thank God SOMEBODY’S looking out for my kid.

Most of you don’t personally know my son. Let me just say that I regularly worry he isn’t eating enough. He even has a little preschooler six-pack. You know what I’m talking about, right? I’d kill to have his abs.

The BMI is an arcane tool, and you can Google to your heart’s content to find out why. Basically, it’s an oversimplification and doesn’t really measure what doctors purport it measures. My husband used to always tip the BMI index at “obese” when he was in the military. Then they’d do what’s called a “tape test” to measure his various body parts in proportion to one another (no penises, I promise) and conclude otherwise. In other words, the BMI is flawed.

So, I wrote a harsh letter to the university. It had more to do with my critically anorexic cousin—now in her 20s—than with my son. That the medical community would start imposing diets on 4-year-olds with six packs? Please. Let’s sling some more poop at parents. I’m sure there are kids who will benefit from the program, but I could not help but wonder about the 11-year-old girl who might intercept that form letter, who might be perfectly well proportioned, and who might head up to her bedroom sobbing because the numbers show she’s “fat.” And the doctors want to pay her family a $100 research reimbursement to see if they can un-fat her!

Maybe the medical school undertook this ill-researched project to jump through a funding hoop. I’m certainly not signing up. I don’t aspire to having the “healthiest kid on the planet,” but I don’t think I’m terribly far from just that. I aspire to having normal kids who walk the usual tightrope of living, who aren’t scared to death by all the poop being slung at them and their parents over the course of their sweet little childhoods. I want kids who are prepared to take the reins when it’s their turn to be mommies and daddies. I suspect there will be ever-more poop slung at them. But just as I was there to wipe it off their bums from the start, I want to be there to wipe it off their faces someday so they can still see straight.