Proof that My Kids Are Turning Out Cooler Than I’d Ever Dared to Hope

Overheard in the car this morning: Me: “Science plus optimism equals… what?” Aodán: “Huh?” Me: “That MAX car over there has ‘Science Plus Optimism’ but you can’t see the rest because of the station awning. So I am thinking delusion, right?” Aodán: “Yeah, it could cloud your objectivity. The microbe attacks the cell, no, that’s too dark, let’s just say the microbe and the cell become friends.” Me: “I’m an optimistic person, I just don’t think that the place for it is science…” Aodán, in fawning assistant voice: “Sir, I am afraid there is no Happy Bunny Flower Organ.”

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 23, 2008 | 3 comments

In Which I Am Taken Too Literally

So about a week ago, my five year old son complained bitterly of something I had done and I cannot even remember what it was, just that I offered up in my flippant way: “What you need, kid, is a t-shirt that says ‘It’s All My Mom’s Fault.’” He really perked up, “Yeah, I do!” And I promptly forgot about it.Until tonight. when I was folding his laundry. And found this.In case you cannot read five year old phonetics: It is all my mom’s fault.Or maybe he was giving me laundry instructions, and it is all my mom’s to fold.

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Posted by Mara Collins on Dec 3, 2007 | 7 comments

The Good Enough Education

This first week of kindergarten has been exhausting, the long day leaves Søren just ragged, I drive him home and he gets irrational and sob-y over things that wouldn’t normally throw his little extroverted self for a loop, like not being able to sit next to his only friend in the class — in the world! — at the lunch table. I suspect that it’s exhaustion, that the long days and the overwhelming new schedule, this huge place and the inability to guess what’s going to happen next, thehundreds of faces he’s never seen before, the teacher he doesn’t yet have a relationship or trust with — they’re all just getting to him. That it will get easier, soon. I mean I know that, but of course I second-guess myself because...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Sep 13, 2007 | 4 comments

Co-Written

So my lovely and talented best friend is doing all sorts of cool stuff towards getting a graphic design degree and she emailed last night asking for help with the text of a pamphlet; she’d just gotten back from a road trip, and that inspired the theme of the project, surviving the family vacation.  And so we spent an hour on the phone deciding what to include, and I sat down and typed it up, this is what we came up with… Perhaps you have run with the bulls in Pamplona, maybe you’ve hunted the rhinoceros in Borneo, participated in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, scaled Mt. Kilimanjaro, trekked to the source of the Nile, or seen the glaciers of Patagonia, but no matter how tough, how adventurous you think you are, we want to prepare you for the...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Sep 7, 2007 | 2 comments

Conspiracy

Dear Person Who Has Been Slipping My Children Behaviorist Theory, Please stop! I don’t know who you are, but there is clear evidence that someone has, behind my back, been spoon-feeding the precocious darlings some B.F. Skinner. I expect any day, to be rifling through their backpacks and find a pamphlet “Training Your Parents in 10 Easy Steps” with beginner level steps like: 1. Wait for the moment when the parental unit is clearly relaxed and not thinking about you and choose that moment to torture your brother until he screams loud enough for the neighbors to surely contemplating calling Child Welfare. 2. Make it clear that the person who does most of the picking up in the house understands that the inevitable consequence of time spent with a...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 27, 2007 | 0 comments

Children as Status Symbols

Listened to this lovely story on NPR about how having four children — and being able to send them to expensive private schools, hire consultants for potty training and teaching them to ride bicycles and buy fancy vehicles in which to transport them — is a symbol of status in some communities. I tried to keep it in mind as I sent my husband off to San Francisco for a conference on Linux, and spent the day trying to pack and ready the house so I could take my little status symbols camping for five days and not come home to a house where my feet stick to the floor from those same status symbols pouring their own orange juice. I tried to keep it in mind when I found myself having a full scale temper tantrum because the older status symbols wouldn’t...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 6, 2007 | 2 comments