Monthly Archives: May 2012

Mommy Break

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When it comes to children and pets, I can be extremely patient, and I confess to being rather proud of this trait. A lot of people tire of my daughter M’s 5+ minute monologues, but I can stay tuned in. J and M’s father has declared the car a quiet zone when he’s driving, but I relished our 45-minute commute discussions when the girls were 3 and 4 years old. I’m glad that my friends consider me to be someone who can step in with their kids when they’re feeling overwhelmed by poor behaviour or neediness.

Still, I have my limits. Yesterday afternoon, after returning from school, M was in rare form. She was frustrated, it seemed, with everything. She whined about having to put her school bag away, about my choice of snack, about the heat of the day, and about our cats choosing to play with a toy other than the one she had selected. She forgot all her basic responsibilities: washing her hands; picking up her dishes after snack; putting her dirty clothes in the laundry hamper; clearing her desk after homework. Every time I reminded her, she had some excuse for not having done what she was supposed, and I was a “meanie mama” for asking her to do it.

She may very well have been mirroring my own general sense of annoyance; the previous evening had brought an extremely unpleasant obligation I had hoped to put off until the weekend. I tried to shield the kids from my mood, but they’re observant souls.

J loves to dance, so it’s not unusual to find her twirling around the living room. Today, though, M decided that J was no longer allowed to dance, simply because she found it irritating. When I reminded M of our mantra, “Not your body, not your business,” she turned on me, screaming that she just didn’t want J to dance. That earned M a time out, which she spent kicking the door to my bedroom. Once she was done with time out, I told M to take a rag and clean her shoe marks off the door.

It was when M insisted that she had not kicked the door and that the very visible shoe marks didn’t exist that I felt my face get hot and heart beat harder. I knew that anger was seconds away, so I placed the girls’ dinner on the dining table and told them I was taking a time out “to calm my body down.”

It’s been so long since I took a mommy time out that J and M were thoroughly confused. Why did they need to go to time out? I explained, quickly, that I was feeling very angry, so I was going to take some quiet time to calm down. I was going to lie down, drink some water, and take deep breaths, just as I’d taught them to do.

Fortunately, my daughters, at 6, are old enough to be left alone in the dining room at dinner time. When they were little, when the screaming and whining got to be too much, I would place them in their cribs and make myself a cup of peppermint tea, telling them that mommy needed a time out. When they were 4, I once asked a neighbour to sit with the girls while I went for a walk, because I knew I had reached the end of my rope, and my husband wasn’t expected back from Afghanistan for several months more.

I love my kids. We generally have a fantastic time together, and are usually excellent at negotiating solutions to high-stress problems. Still, there are moments where I need to be human for a moment before I return to being mommy. I’d much rather step away from the situation than give in to the urge to yell. I yelled at M once earlier in the week after she ignored repeated requests to pick her dirty panties off the floor, and I’ve felt horrible ever since. It was just one sentence: “I said, put your panties in the laundry!” There are, however, better ways to engage the children’s attention.

What do you do to keep your cool when your kids are acting up? Are you a yeller?

Sadia’s identical twin daughters, M and J, turned 6 years old just last week.

Identical Identity

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My identical twin boys are now 22 months. It has been in the last few months that we have really begun to see their verbal language develop. I have always loved this stage of development as you can begin to see what is going on in the minds of your children.

It seems to me that both A and J have a good sense of who they are as individuals. They both respond to their names being called and will also call each other by name. Recently, there was something that made me wonder how much they do actually know about their individuality. J was looking in the mirror and pointed to his reflection and called himself by A’s name. He did this several times and then would turn around to see A and point again and call him by name. I thought this was a little strange until it happened again the other day. We were outside and J caught his reflection in my sunglasses. Again, he pointed to his reflection and called himself by A’s name.

Having no experience with identical twins before these two came along, it made me wonder if this is a process that all identical twins go through. I had three singletons before the twins and so far, I haven’t really observed anything different about having twins up to this point. I have heard about twin behavior and am wondering if this is my first taste of it.

For you Mom’s of identical twins, what has your experience been with this development?

Ashley is a stay-at-home, homeschooling Mom to five kids aged 6 and under. She loves her busy, chaotic, and always unexpected days!

Dentist Visit

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I don’t like to go to see a dentist. I used to start crying as I walked in to the office. I think I got traumatized when I got my 2 wisdom teeth pulled twenty some years ago. But because of the awesome mom I try to be I was determined to make sure the word ‘dentist’ did not mean ‘time to freak out’ in my childrends’ minds. I took it upon me to brush their teeth twice a day, train them to love carrots and apples as snacks (which they totally do) and feed them 100% xylitol after meals.

I was going to do things right but when I heard the recommendation is to take a child in when they turn 1 I rolled my eyes. So we skipped that first year. When Nathan turned 2 I also decided to skip the dentist because it still seemed very unnecessary. The next year I took him, actually all three of them.

I had found a pediatric dentist office with a train table, DVD player and all kinds of other fancy toys that we didn’t have at home. I imagined the kids would play while I took them one by one to the back room for a ‘quick and easy’ check up. Oh boy was I wrong..

Nathan refused to open his mouth. I tried prying it open with my fingers until the dentist lady kindly suggested that it was probably enough and I should consider taking him to a place where they can ‘knock him out’. In the mean time Beth and Joshua were running between the play room to the back room and then back, completely ignoring my ‘stop running at this minute or there will be trouble’ looks. When it was their turn to have a turn they had seen enough example from Nathan and knew what to do. No one was going to count their teeth either.

When I lurked my way out of the office I was sweaty, frustrated and decided this was the last time they’d see me. I was going to wait until my kids understood what was expected and I was going to find a place where ‘knocking them out’ wasn’t the first recommendation.

Last month I took Nathan to see a dentist again. This time to an office with no train table and only a few toys to play with in a corner.
I had started to talk to him about going to a dentist few months back saying ‘when you turn 5 it’s time to go and see a dentist’. During the weeks we talked what the dentist would do this his teeth: count them, clean them, tickle and poke them. He’d sit in a chair that moved like Daddy’s machines and there would be a bright light and he’d get to wear some awesome looking protection glasses. He was excited.

The day came and he did great! Slightly nervous but no refusal to co-operate, even if he wasn’t ‘knocked out’ ;) . I was very nervous of what they’d find because I had *gasp* not followed the recommended dentist schedule and I was certain if they talked to me sternly about its importance I’d break down in tears. At the end there were no cavities (or tears), the dentist lady was sweet to tell me I had done a great job brushing and flossing his teeth and to keep up the good work. Beth and Joshua did great waiting in the ‘kid corner’ and were devastated when they realized they didn’t get a turn (or at least the cool sticker that Nathan got). Afterwards we all went for ice cream and talked about the sugar bugs we were going to brush away as soon as we got home.

Now that’s a visit I look forward to duplicating!

How did you go about the ‘schedule’ and how did you get your kids to behave?

Mothers' Day

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Happy Mothers’ Day (belated) to all mothers, experienced, expecting, both, or otherwise.

Yesterday was Mothers’ Day here in the US, as is the second Sunday of May every year. Mothers, grandmothers, godmothers and mother figures are celebrated in all sorts of ways, from children’s handprints to breakfast in bed, cards to vacations. Like many holidays, this one is highly commercialized, but I have yet to meet the person who considers this celebration of motherhood to be a burden or chore.

My family doesn’t do a whole lot for Mothers’ Day. Our twin daughters, J and M, have their birthdays this second week of May. We’re usually still working our way through their birthday cake leftovers through Mothers’ Day until my birthday rolls around a few days later. As you might imagine, Mothers’ Day gets a little lost in the middle of three birthdays.

My mum lives in the United Kingdom, and British Mothering Day falls two weeks before Easter for her. We do make a point of doing something for my mother-in-law for American Mothers’ Day. This year, however, some fantastic medical news eclipsed Mothers’ Day altogether, and the flowers and pampering headed her way turned out to be more a celebration of her good news than of the annual holiday. I confess that in my giddiness over my mother-in-law’s news, I failed to call my grandmothers-in-law yesterday, which I usually would do. Oops.

Despite my general grinchiness toward Mothers’ Day, my girls always bring some token home from school in recognition of my role in their lives, thanks to their rather less grinchy teachers. J has forgotten to give me hers this year, but I found M’s to be deeply touching.

Dear mom, I hope you like this mother's day. I wish you a lovely mother's day... Love M

“Dear mom,” it read, “I hope you like this mother’s day. I wish you a lovely mother’s day. You are the best mom. I learn lessons from you. Anyways thanks for the cats. I love Sasha. Mom she’s adorabel [sic]! Mom I love you. I miss you so much at school. Love M.”

To clarify, we added two young cats to our family last week. M is usually quite nervous around new animals, but bonded instantly with Sasha, a 13-month-old bundle of purrs and adoration. Fortunately, J and 7-month-old Sookie also hit it off, J giggling helplessly as Sookie attempted to groom her (J’s) toes. I suppose the addition of two new felines for me to mother is a rather decent celebration of motherhood this year.

How are you celebrated on Mothers’ Day? Who do you take this annual opportunity to recognize?

Sadia is currently recovering from her daughters’ sixth birthday party in El Paso, TX. She failed to write this post on Mothers’ Day because she appears to have forgotten to do much eating in the preparation, execution and cleanup phases of the party. Instead, she fell into bed shortly after tucking her daughters in at 8:00 pm, managing only to feed to cats and brush her teeth prior to crashing.

Where My Twins’ IQ Test Results Throw Me Into a Tizzy

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Our identical (we think?) twin boys are in 1st grade now. While their speech issues hinder their spelling, they’re still performing above grade level in language arts. But math is where they really excel. This fall, G’s standardized test scores for math were the highest in the class, well above the 99th percentile threshold. Right now a parent volunteer is running a pull-out group for some of the kids who can do more challenging work, but next year that might not be an option. We wondered if the boys might be able to jump a grade for math. This isn’t something our district does readily, so we knew we’d have to push. We requested that our boys be tested for the district’s gifted program — if they qualified, we’d have the leverage we need to push for differentiation.

We were surprised by our results. G did not qualify for the gifted program, missing the cut-off by 4 IQ points. P did qualify.

Initially, I was upset with myself for even requesting the test. I hadn’t thought about the possibility of one qualifying and the other not.  Now we had this bona fide test result, on paper, saying G was less capable than his brother. And G has always struggled with self-confidence.

We had a conundrum, too. While we agreed it would be devastating to G for us to place P in the gifted program, we didn’t feel good about withholding enrichment opportunities from P just because his brother didn’t qualify. This is similar to the situation HDYDI blogger Sadia faced this year, except she was faced with moving one of her twins to first grade while the other remained in kindergarten. In researching what to do for our boys, I found this study of different twin types and their reactions to having one twin placed in a gifted program, while the co-twin was not. It definitely affirmed our gut feeling that our boys wouldn’t do well in that situation.

The more I’ve thought about it, the less I trust the IQ test results. I consulted with the director of the university speech clinic the boys attend, and she felt his speech issues could have thrown off the results. G is very aware of his articulation errors, and speaks very slowly to strangers so they can understand him. P does not make any effort to slow his speech for the benefit of others. The speech clinic director said G is likely to choose his words based on what will be easy for him to pronounce and for others to understand, rather than choosing the words that best convey his meaning. G is a kid who asks for math work on his days off of school, because he says he feels anxious on days when he doesn’t get to do math. He picked up his sister’s 4th grade math workbook and started completing the pages for fun. My other two kids who do qualify for the gifted program don’t do anything like this.

We will probably have him retested at some point, so we know what all of our options are. Our oldest child attends a charter school for academically gifted students, and our public schools have various levels of differentiation available. For now we won’t retest — G said he didn’t like the test and it was boring, so I hate to put him through the same thing with the same test administrator this school year. In the meantime we’ve decided to home school next year — we can let them work at their own pace, and provide as much enrichment as either of them needs.

What would you do? Have you run into a similar situation? How would your multiples handle one being placed in a gifted program, while the other remained in the regular classroom?


Jen is a work-from-home mom of 7-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 5 and 9. She also blogs at Minivan MacGyver. Once in a while.