This week’s guest blogger is Stacey. She is the mastermind behind the humor blog, OneFunnyMotha.com. Stacey is also a freelance writer whose award-winningwork has appeared on such parenting sites as The Huffington Post, Mamalode, Mamapedia, and Today’s Mama. Predicated on the belief that parenting is not nor ever should be an extreme sport, her blog provides incisive cultural commentary on modern motherhood. Otherwise known as common sense. Find her running her mouth over on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, too.
I’m Only Trying to Help
Parenting is a strange endeavor. Without any instruction or testing we are thrust into a foreign role and expected to take on the most challenging and consequential work of our lives. As a young mother, I was prepared for many of the job requirements and lessons that lay ahead, but there are a few things for which no amount of training or experience can prepare you. There are things that just never enter the realm of consciousness because they are so far beyond all logical sense and reason. And, as I raised my daughter this is where I found myself most of the time.
For months, years, a lifetime? The Kid—who is now almost a full-fledged teenager—and I have engaged in battle over what constitutes proper hygiene, and I’ve grown weary from the fight. When she was a toddler, I found the only means of encouraging regular bathing while avoiding hysterics was by proclaiming certain days “Bath Days.” As The Kid grew older the arguments evolved into the proper number of times per week one needs to change one’s underwear. Seven. The answer would be seven. When she entered fifth grade I bought her deodorant, and after a string of sweltering days told her, in no uncertain terms, she must use said deodorant. And when her feet began to stink like no kid’s feet should ever stink, I instituted a Daily Fresh Socks mandate. This policy was violated often, but I was being attacked from all sides, and although I called for reinforcements, they never came.
I suspected these issues would eventually resolve themselves as I figured no one, no matter how lazy, actually wanted to smell. But things came to a unavoidable head when The Kid started wearing the same outfit multiple times a week. That I just couldn’t have. That was an outward and obvious sign of filth and moral decay. The other transgressions had been somewhat hidden and, I’d hoped, unnoticed. But this, this, was blatant. This was asking for trouble.
“Didn’t you just wear that?” I probed one morning before school.
“No,” she lied.
“Yes, you did. You wore it on Monday. You have to change.” After protesting, she stormed off and begrudgingly slipped into a nearly identical outfit.
The Kid had always been partial to the hobo chic look, which really was more hobo than chic, but now things were getting out of hand, and when the limited few “chosen” outfits continued to reappear with alarming frequency, I tried various tactics to get her to see why this might not be such a good idea. Sadly, nothing got through, and her opposition left me wondering what exactly she had against cleanliness. Or a good reputation. I was just trying to help because by this point, 7th grade, things like appearances, reputations and fear of mortification by peers should’ve been kicking in.
They weren’t. So when she again came down to breakfast dressed in the same outfit from the day before, I did the only thing left to do. I said:
There, I said it. I didn’t want to. I never thought I’d have to. But she made me.
YOUR TURN:
Where do your kids (or where did you as a kid) fit
on the sliding scale of hygiene?
This made me chuckle. On one front, my 3-year old wants to wear the same Nike outfit every day. It’s short sleeves and shorts. And it’s a record-cold winter out there. He had major fits whenever I spirited the outfit away to the washing machine. After a couple months of this, I just ‘disappeared’ the outfit, and now he only wants to wear his life-jacket infused swim shirt and shorts. Again. It’s winter.
My daughter just flat-out refuses to wear most of the clothes I buy her. Then, she chews on her hair, or her clothes, or on left-over food she’s squirreled away in her mouth. She’s 8, and yeah, I’ve also had to employ the peer-acceptance angle. She’s unmoved.
Darn Kids. So individualistic with their insane preferences.
You said it sister. What’s with these damn kids?
We’ve uttered that exact same phrase. And I was horrified to realize our oldest only changed his underwear when the spirit moved him – not often enough!
I have taught many grades in my years as a teacher- 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, &8th. (No, I don’t have commitment issues. Yes, I CAN hold down a job;) I taught middle school the longest. I’ve seen and smelled the gamut in my years in front of the class. But nothing horrified me (and her mother) quite like “Jane.” Jane was brilliant and hysterical and quirky. But by God she would not brush her hair if you payed her in Harry Potter trading cards. Her mom, a BEAUTIFUL always put together woman tried everything. She struggled wit to pressuring her child to focus on her appearance while trying to revert small rodents from taking up residency on her dajghter’s rat’s nest on her head. The battles. The tears. The arguments. The missing pencils thati swear hid in there. Nothing worked except time. Eventually Jane grew up a bit, and later than her friends in this department. She finally looked in the mirror and realized that she looked more like Belatrix than Ginny Weasly and t was time to buy a brush and some conditioner. Of course her first response was, Mom! How could you let me go out like this?!
Vicky
wwww.thepursuitofnormal.blogspot.com
So that’s what I have to look forward to? My daughter wouldn’t brush her hair for the longest time either so she kept it short so it wouldn’t turn into a rat’s nest.
As a seventh-grade teacher, I had to laugh. My fifth grader is just like your daughter. My wife and she get into constant fights about what she wears. I just shrug and realize that it will work itself out on it’s own and so she’ll figure it out. Gotta laugh. It’s easy to forget the things that we went through as kids ourselves. When I was in seventh grade I convinced my dad I didn’t need to take a shower because I took one after football practice – I am sure I didn’t smell so good 🙂 – you just gotta laugh and let em learn on their own!
Sometimes you just need to make them, encourage them or say the things you never thought you’d say. Good on you! I think she’ll appreciate it when she is no longer a teenager but a twenty-something woman who realizes she had the best childhood ever 🙂
Aww, ouidepuis1, I think I love you.
*blush*
Hey Leanne…. This week did make me laugh… and made me want to share.
Although I don’t have kids of my own, I borrow a few for a week each year in the summer (So far returned non-the-worse for wear). The day my niece and nephew were to be returned was grey, the kind of Ontario grey that you just KNOW bodes ill. It WILL rain, the question is when. Of course it started when the first bags were being lugged up the hill from the cottage to the car. Just a bit of spitting rain, but it told me “Hurry!” So, in the service of “Work fast” I sent my nephew up the hill with the recycling box to plant by the driveway for the recycling truck that always comes later than expected. He made it 3/4 of the way there before the deluge began and we could no longer see him. Poor kid (but at least it wasn’t ME out there in that rain). He came back, with a resigned look on his face saying “Sorry, I got a little wet.”
So, Practical Aunt that I am, I sent him out again, with a load of luggage to the car (Where my husband – who was also rather wet by this point was loading things). Wet is wet after all. he couldn’t get much wett-er. Nephew did not complain at all. He was a trouper. ( Sidebar – as we don’t own kids, we don’t own a mini-van. These kids came with a minivan load of equipment for one week. The tetris like abilities it takes to load all this into a regular car is a real skill. Packing was taking a while.)
What I did not expect was the tantrum. From younger sister. Why? Apparently is was not at all fair that Brother was the one who get to get his travel clothes soaking wet and got to be uncomfortable and chilly as he drip-dried in the car later. She wanted to be soaking wet too. This was patently “Aunty being MEAN!”
I just ignored her. After all, I do teach middle and high school students. I’ve seen worse than a first graders tantrum. I probably didn’t help matters by not being able to restrain my laughter in front of niece.
It was a pretty funny tantrum, even at the time. Even funnier when I think back on it. I’m hoping to be able to share this story at her wedding, in a few decades.
Again, thanks for the laugh,
Allison… who knew you in Bahrain before the twins.
Awesome story, Allison. Bahrain feels like yesterday. Sounds like you’re an awesome auntie…
Thanks Leanne, and Happy Holidays… These are times where kids are usually more naughty than nice (no matter how hard they try), so I’m sure are good fodder for more tales.
Bahrain does feel like just a little while ago, though China at the moment still feels like the ‘home’ I’d like to return to – at least for a good meal – if I had my chances. Living as I do now in a dark Scandinavian country, I miss sunlight and spicy food.
Very amusing post. As a child I don’t really think I cared very much about cleanliness, but I loved water so I liked to take baths. What I put on was indiferent to me, so whatever my mum put out for me I wore. Thats probably the only reason I had clean clothes. Luckily this changed as I became a teenager.
Hobo chic?
Can you find that at the Gap Kids?
Gap kids is too upscale for that. It’s really more of an individualized, stained, rumpled, unwashed look.
Oh, I know that look!
I think I perfected it in the70s.
Stacey, you poor thing. Didn’t the parenting fairy visit you after you gave birth? The one that visited me in hospital waved her wand and soon after I had the parenting gig down pat.
Don’t worry about stinky kids. They will catch on soon after they have their first crush. Lovely post.
My kids have the same style: “self-styled uniform.” It consists of black pants (usually some type of athletic or stretchy material) and t-shirts. They rotate between about 6 different outfits per week. No, not twins. No, not both boys. Sigh.
Hang in there. We’ll get through this together.
My 5th grader’s teacher told us on one of the parent nights that she sometimes has to have a little chat with them about deodorant when spring comes along and they play outside and get rather fragrant. Bless her, she said she doesn’t get embarrassed about it, but sometimes they do! I have heard from parents of slightly older children that when the boys discover Axe, we will rue the day. One person said she had to limit her son to two squirts because she was going to work with a headache ever day.
And I am SO relieved that your daughter’s feet stink too. My daughter’s feet smell like they’ve been in a gym bag in the trunk of a Toyota parked in Tucson for the entire month of August. Dear GOD.