And speaking of House Rules...

I've also been thinking a lot lately about House Rules of a different sort--or, namely, about how they are often not followed at our house, despite having many of them. We had a lot more success with House Rules when the kids were toddlers. Rules like don't touch the outlets, or no climbing on the tables, or don't walk out the front door without a grown-up, orno chewing on toys that don't fit into the end of a toilet paper tube. Those rules were all easier to enforce in the old days, when the kids wore diapers and listened to us. The rules were all concrete and there were pretty clear cause-and-effect outcomes to not following them. But something happens to House Rules when your kids get older. Not only are they more difficult to enforce, but they begin to deal with behaviors and issues that are more ambiguous than the toddler transgressions--things like "talking back" and "being ugly," or violating people's need for privacy, or fibbing to get out of a consequence. These nuanced changes to parents' expectations of how kids should or shouldn't behave can be difficult for kids to understand; hence the need for House Rules.

Our House Rules can be divided up into several categories. There are the House Rules that are basic and fairly simple to understand, like these:

I don't often rant about a book I don't like because, as a writer, a part of me is always sensitive to the feelings of the person who wrote the book, even if I will never meet them, and they will never read my rant.  But I've been bothered by a book I finished this past weekend and sometimes when things bother me, they stay with me longer then they should--writing about them is often the only way to send them packing.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me whether I'd read this book by Jodi Picoult. I hadn't read any book by Picoult, actually, so I told her no. The particular book my friend asked about is about a young man with Asperger's, who ends up charged with a murder. I just wondered what you'd think about it, my friend said casually, in a way that implied that there would be something to think about.

So last week I stopped by the library and checked out the book. I read it in only a few sittings, but I found my desire to keep reading it waning each time I opened the book. 

My son loves Star Wars so for a fun read and spell lesson we did this!

You will need some small poker chips ( dollar store! ), puffy paint , velcro dots, a marker and sentence strips.

Write out character names and other words for the theme you are doing. I actually spelled Anakin wrong and my 5 year old caught it.  Place a velcro dot under each letter.

Puffy paint is tricky so use a little pressure to write the letters on the poker chips. I Also made a letter match element by making all the chips uppercase and the words on the sentence strips lowercase. That way there are a number of challenges and letter recognition reinforcements build it.

Add velcro to the chips once they are dry.

Play!

My daughter eats everything. Well she tries to eat everything- we have a lot of things put up high, in locked cabinets and my son's Lego is behind a big door she can't get open. So crafting with her has been limited to big , non toxic things... until we turned her favorite snack " FEESH FEESH!"  into a lesson in color recognition.

For a similar activity for older kids check out this fun graphing using goldfish over at Oopsey Daisy .

You will need some multi colored goldfish crackers or you could use multi colored cereal too. Also some coordinating construction paper, a marker and scissors. I am also using a cookie sheet to keep the activity all in one place .

Cut out some fish bowls from the construction paper. I added some waves .

Place them on the cookie sheet and start.

I had my daughter on my lap to help her as she is just starting these more structured activities ( and very infrequently at that she is only 18 months) - we talked about colors. Ate some of the fish and matched a few too! The goal is to play and get familiar with the colors not to drill a toddler into "learning" because that won't do anything but frustrate and harm their natural desire to explore and learn.

Staying active in cold rainy weather isn't easy, well not is you want to stay dry. Here are a few family favorites of ours to get some energy out while keeping your house in one piece.

Bubble Wrap Jumping.

Tape some bubble wrap to the floor, set a timer and see how many pops you hear in a minute. Jumping non stop for a minute even for little kids full of energy is really tiring. This is my favorite burn off some energy trick .

Hide and Seek - spy variation.

I am sure you know how to play hide and seek. In this variation as soon as the seeker says "ready or not" you need to start moving too. If you get back to the home base before they do you win.

Timed Hunts

Just like a regular shape or color hunt when your children go off to find something yellow to bring back, this one is timed. They need to run. If your house is not conducive to running you might want to wait until nicer weather and try it out side but if you can make a clear path this will burn off the " I am bored..." whining in a snap.

Block Basketball

This is far from original but wow is it fun to throw blocks in a basket. I use painter's tape to have different start line for my kids who are 3 years apart and one even further for me. Trash talking is expected ( although respectfully doled out) and more before dinner energy is burned.

Pretend play is a great way to teach lessons and I love using any sort of buying or selling for teaching about money or math.

We had some extra lollipops after a party and so we made a lollipop shop!

You will need a tray that will let your child sort the coins, some jars, paper, ribbon, a hole punch, and lollipops.

Start by making tags for the jars denoting the cost of each color of lollipop. We made each color a different price ( 1, 5, 10 and 25) I used the same color marker as the lollipop and attached them to the jars with ribbon.

Then my son sorted the lollipops by color into the jars. 

Then he sorted the coins to familiarize him with the coins.

We set up shop in the hallway and played!

I don't know about you but we got a lot of packages at Christmas that included packing peanuts. Well this easy sensory bin uses them for play.

You will need them, some plastic snowflakes ( look in the craft aisle or Christmas clearance sections) and cotton balls.  A big container and some tongs ( we get ours at the dollar store).

Start by putting in your cotton balls and packing peanuts.

Add the smaller snowflakes.

Play - while your kids are playing talk about how soft the cotton it, squishy the peanuts are and hard the snowflakes are.  Ask older kids why they think the snowflakes fall to the bottom.

Use the tongs to separate the snowflakes from the rest. Tricky and wonderful fine motor practice, kids love challenges!

When you are done pop it in a large ziploc and store for another day.

* please remember that this is not for children who are still mouthing items . Use caution and stay close, these are potential choking hazards.

In my continued efforts to cheer up T. (she stayed home from school on Monday) I came home from work and we made these cupcakes, and T. licked the bowl clean. By 5:15 the kitchen smelled heavenly. At 5:30 a friend came by to check up on us. She sniffed the air. "Your house smells divine," she said. Then,

"How's T.?"

"How's Scott?"

"How's Willa?"

"How are you?"

We're all in recovery mode around here. My bronchitis is almost all cleared up, Willa got her stitches out yesterday, and T. soldiers on, waiting for the hives to dissapear. Scott tells me Willa was very brave at the vet. She has to wear her snazzy special collar for another week, just to make sure she leaves the incision site alone. But she is so much happier now that she's pain-free and on the way to becoming fully mobile again. We didn't have any doubts about whether she needed the surgery, but if we'd had even just one tiny niggling one, it would have vanished now that we see what a difference it has made. 

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On Thursday the kids and I pulled up in the driveway and found a young squirrel dragging its hind feet. I had seen him earlier in the day, but when I went to track down a box to put him in, he had disappeared. When we came home there he was, unnaturally still despite our presence, bright-eyed, but because of fear and pain.

When I posted yesterday's column to my Facebook page I was happy to get quite a bit of feedback/commiseration/perspective back (thank you everyone who posted there, and here, too!). Many parents are struggling with the same issues: trying hard to teach self-motivation to their growing children, making numerous trips up and down stairs to rouse slumbering middle schoolers; cajoling and threatening (and bribing) their kids to get ready on time. I think I was reassured that, for the most part, the type of morning we face with L. seems fairly normal. It also seems that a large part of the self-motivation piece comes from personality. Some kids are inherently self-starters, others need more encouragement. I think it's probably safe to say that most kids L.'s age (and beyond--as I see in my college students) are motivated by the things they like to do, and not by the things they have to do.

Not surprising at all, considering we're dealing with ten- and eleven-year olds.

A couple of weeks ago I ran into an acquaintance/friend who I used to see more often. Her daughter is a year older than L., and an only child. I mentioned to her how rough the mornings are these days, with the early start time now that L. is in middle school. I told her what a battle it was to get him up and out of bed--it's a two-parent job, for certain (three parents would work even better, if we had another one on hand). I expected her to commiserate--I needed her to commiserate--but instead she told me that her daughter gets up on her own at 6:00, fixes herself breakfast, and then spends about thirty minutes downstairs practicing her violin and reviewing for any quizzes or tests that day.

Thanks, I wanted to say to her. Thanks A LOT.

Then I wondered:

Who IS this child of hers? Where did she come from?

I suspect (hope?) that this is not normal behavior for most 12-year olds. But still, it had me wondering about when children begin to become self-motivated to get up and out of bed; fix themselves breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth, etc. We are far, far away from this with L., although T. at 7 has begun to show signs of self-motivation where these daily tasks are concerned. No matter how hard we try, we can't seem to get L. going in the morning without making multiple trips upstairs, and lots of verbal prompting giving way in the end to frantic threats. I know he is only eleven years old, but because we are working very hard on teaching him to be more self-sufficient, it's difficult not to be making any progress in those areas. it doesn't help that L.'s sleep cycles have become more "teenager-like" lately--he'll stay up too late and on weekends sleep and lounge in bed until sometimes 10:00 am.