by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test Parents
There are many things you don’t ever think about before you become a parent—things no one will find it necessary to mention to you, either (even though there are many things they will mention to you unnecessarily).
I read so many books before I became a parent, but I was still ill-prepared for all the things I would have to give up.
You give up so much. You give up things like:
Long phone calls.
Every time I start to dial the number of a doctor or someone I need to talk to (because I hardly ever call the people I actually want to talk to), it doesn’t take my children long to realize what’s happening. In fact, I usually have to tell the hold music to hold on—because one of my twins has taken out the rake from his daddy’s shed and is running toward the other twin with said rake raised above his head and a guttural yell straight from the pages of Lord of the Flies tripping along ahead of him. It’s always my luck that the hold music stops and a person actually answers the phone when I’m in mid-yell—“Cut it out, or you’ll have to come sit with me for the duration of this call!” I don’t apologize. Instead, I usually pretend they didn’t hear anything.
They probably didn’t. Their “How can I help you?” didn’t sound worried at all. It was my imagination.
Real dates.
If you have as many kids as I have, a date can seem like a luxury. Husband and I haven’t had a real date in four months—and by real date, I mean a date that actually gets you out of the house. It’s not because there are no babysitters willing to sit on a Friday night and watch my kids sleep but because we’d have no money left, after paying a sitter (or two), to actually have a date. I suppose we could ride around in the car looking at Christmas lights (for a three-week span during the year) or walk through a park (the temperate climate of South Texas is limited to the same three-week span; who wants to sweat on a date or freeze half to death?) or recline the van seats and take a long, uninterrupted nap.
But I’d like, for once, to have a restaurant-cooked dinner where kids weren’t hanging around outside the door, peering through the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor, whispering that they’d like to have some French fries once in a while, too. A dinner out would be nice now and then.
Extended conversations.
We try really hard to teach our children not to interrupt, unless there’s an emergency. The problem is that kids have a very hard time defining “emergency.” They will interrupt us to tell us the computer froze while they were playing Minecraft (this was unauthorized play, an observation that will come with a whole half hour of argument). They’ll interrupt us to ask why rain tastes like dirt mixed with sky mixed with musty fart (they’re the kids of a poet; what do you expect?). They’ll interrupt us to tell us all about the cut they just got on their finger—the middle one, of course—that you’d need a microscope to see but for which they need a Band-Aid—maybe two. Seriously, they do. They’re bleeding! All this while unintentionally flipping us off.
Husband and I have gotten really good at leaving sentences unfinished and assuming the other knows what we were going to say. We have been married thirteen years, after all.
I won’t go into all the trouble this can cause. Arguments are good for marriages.
Trips to the store together.
The last time we all went to the store together, two kids fought over who was going to push the cart and nearly tore off my toe in the process, another kid slipped three packages of chocolate chips into the basket when we weren’t looking, another kid flattened himself on the bottom of the cart so he could fly and ended up smashing his finger (which I told him would likely happen), and another kid disappeared for half an hour while all the frozen fruit and vegetables defrosted because of a very hastily-organized search party. We almost left without the last kid, who was charged with watching the defrost process so he could report about it later, keeping the secret about the chocolate chips, and not moving the cart. (I dare you to guess which one of those instructions was mine.)
Never again.
Confidence.
Kids will say anything—and everything—to other people. They will tell another person how old you are (and be way off), how much you weigh (and also be way off), and how hard you cried while watching Pete’s Dragon last Friday. They’ll tell all your secrets, especially to their favorite teacher.
Good luck keeping a healthy sense of confidence with a kid who hugs you, hugs you again, and then asks you if you’re having another baby because your belly sure is poking out.
The most basic form of self-care.
I’m an introvert living with six wild, loud, rambunctious boys, which means I need a daily moment—or a hundred of them—to care for myself. Reading is my favorite way to do this.
Not that I have the opportunity to do it often. When I try to put my feet up for any amount of time, someone decides it’s time to open up the game closet and take out all the games that have no less than ten thousand pieces; someone else decides it’s the perfect opportunity to steal into my room, where all the devices are stashed in hiding places (we’re running out of unknown places, apparently), and spend some extra minutes doing the forbidden: playing with tech; and still another takes a pair of scissors to his shoelaces, his shirt, his underwear (he wants us to believe he blew out that hole with a massive fart), and, regrettably, his hair.
A nice and tidy home.
It doesn’t matter how many times you remind them where hampers are, where shoe baskets are, where their school things go, kids will walk out of their clothes, kick off their shoes, and drop their school things in the hall and forget all about the after-school procedures they’ve done for the last four years (ironically, the oldest is the most consistently forgetful).
And by the time you’ve solved this problem, they’ve decided it’s time to examine all the pencils in the pencil holder—and by examine, they mean dump them out—because anything’s better than mental math.
Scissors, glue, permanent markers, paints.
Do you know what can happen if you leave a child unattended with any of the fun art supplies listed above? You will end up with a four-year-old who looks like he has mange, another four-year-old who’s no longer hungry because his snack was Elmer’s glue, a four-year-old (previously mentioned—yes, the same one) with permanent whiskers on his face, and another four-year-old (also previously mentioned) with an acrylic mural on his shirt (he didn’t like the one that was already there.).
It’s easier to get rid of them. The supplies, I mean.
Stylish clothes.
My closet has not been updated since 2006, which coincides with the year I became a mother. I am constantly buying clothes—but not for me. No, I buy clothes for the kids who walk on their kneecaps and blow out their jeans within a month of receiving them. I buy clothes for the kids who use the toes of their tennis shoes as makeshift brakes—even when they’re running. I buy clothes for the kids who think “shirt” is synonymous with “napkin.”
The only thing even remotely consistent about my children (besides their complaining about what’s for dinner before we’ve sat down to eat it) is that they will require our entire clothes budget for themselves.
I’m down to my last pair of jeans. Not because they’ve worn out (I hardly ever wear them, to tell the truth), but because, well, things are expanding. If you know what I mean.
Sleeping in.
The beginning of parenthood had me fooled. When Husband and I only had one kid, he slept so late we could wake at a decent hour and still get things done. As the years passed and the kid-count increased, that rise-and-shine time became earlier and earlier and earlier. Now, on a school day, my kids sleep until 6:30 a.m. On weekends they sleep until 5:30 a.m., if we’re lucky. We’re usually not.
Sleeping in is overrated anyway.
We may give up a lot to have kids, but on our best days, we’ll agree that it’s worth it. On the worst days, we’ll still agree it’s worth it—hard but worth it. Because what we get in return—sweet kisses that miss their mark but hit the bull’s-eye, hugs that hold on, a voice that whispers in your ear how much they love you—is what dreams are made of.
At least until you get on the phone with your health insurance and realize it’s going to be a long afternoon in more ways than one.
This is an excerpt from Hills I’ll Probably Lie Down On, the fourth book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by This is Now Photography.)
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test Parents
I never thought I’d be a mom of all boys. When I first started my parenting journey, I thought for sure that I would have one or two girls in the mix, because everyone I know does. But then we had boy after boy after boy, and I realized, soon enough, that I was not meant to be a girl mom.
I was meant to be a boy mom. And there’s something really special about boy moms.
1. You’re the prettiest girl they’ve ever seen.
You’ll always be the prettiest girl they’ve ever seen. You are the standard to which they will hold every other girl, at least for a while. They think you’re beautiful when you’ve been wearing the same workout pants for three days in a row and when your hair hasn’t been washed in a couple of days and when you don’t even have makeup on. They think you’re beautiful when you’re in a bad mood and a silly mood and an I-don’t-really-want-to-be-a-mother-today mood. They think you’re beautiful because they see through a lens of love.
2. You will get grossed out daily.
Most kids are pretty gross, but boys are the worst. They don’t care about the snot running all the way down to their chin; they’ll just reach their little tongues up to “wipe” it away. They don’t care that if they hug you, they’re going to get a big slimy glob on your shoulder. They don’t care that when they poop, they probably need at least three good wipes. They’ll leave it at one and then stripe the toilet with the rest. Boys are pretty gross. Just get used to it.
3. You’re a flower repository.
Every time you pass a wildflower field, boys will want to go pick as many flowers as they can and bring them back to you. They will want you to try to put those centimeter-long stems in your hair, even though they’re too short to wrap around your ear. They will want you to put the pink ones in a vase so they can show off the bouquet to whomever may come to visit today, which is usually no one, because when you’re a mom of boys, you’re not often entertaining anyone else. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one afraid of social contact after being slimed all day by boys.
4. You will have regular exposure to potty humor or humor related to bodily functions.
Boys think all bodily humor is hilarious. And I mean all of it. If you make a farting sound between the lyrics to “Happy Birthday” while you’re singing to their brother, they will fall apart giggling. If you end your prayers with an arm fart, or try to pretend like you’re arm farting the ABC song, they will laugh until they’re crying. If you say anything about “penis” or “naked booty,” or “burp-farts,” they will shriek with delight.
5. They’re obsessed with their body parts. One in particular.
Not only do my boys love streaking through the house naked, even though they’ve been instructed to put on their pajamas directly after their bath so that we can get along to story time, they are fascinated by their body parts—well, one body part. They will play with their penises and compare penises and try to smack each other’s penises just for the fun of it. They are uncivilized and untamable.
6. When you burp at the table, you feel like you’ve just won an award.
Boys will be contagiously delighted when their mom burps at the table. They think it’s the funniest thing ever. Which is great, because holding in gas was never really my strong point. I always thought it was a flaw. Turns out it’s not, because, that’s right. Boys. I win the table every night, after the last bite. They’ll laugh and applaud and I’ll feel on top of the world, because I’ve never won anything in my life.
7. You get used to naked people.
As soon as the 6-year-old gets home from school, he likes to strip down to his boxers or underwear, whichever it is he’s wearing for the day. He knows, of course, that he has to put on clothes to go outside, but that doesn’t even matter. He’ll choose a whole new ensemble if he goes outside, because those other clothes were the slightest bit damp from the walk home, and he “doesn’t like to sweat.”
The time just after baths in our house is a constant chorus of “Go put on your pajamas” and “Here are your pajamas. Put them on.” and “You can’t sit on my lap naked,” because, well, boys just like the feeling of running free.
8. You don’t get to hold them for long.
A few days after my youngest turned 1, he started coming over to give me a hug and then immediately squirming out of my arms before I was ready to let him go. Boys are active and rambunctious and prefer, always, to move. Every now and then I can entice this littlest one to stay a while, if I’m bouncing around or doing a ridiculous dance, or if I start running through the house, but if I’m not doing any of those things, he’s not going to make an effort to stay.
Boys want to be moving at all times. I, on the other hand, don’t. But I do want to snuggle with my boys every now and then, so sometimes I’ll pick myself up off the floor, with great, sighing effort, and run around, too. Sometimes it’s the only way I can steal a quick hug.
9. Disgusting smells become everyday smells.
My upstairs smells like a swamp, because there’s a bathroom with a toilet up there that the boys always, always, always forget to flush. Their room smells like a locker room, because not only do they need to start wearing deodorant right about now, but they also like to wear their soccer socks for three days in a row, and, believe me, you haven’t smelled disgusting until you’ve smelled worn-three-days-in-a-row soccer socks (or the shoes that have embraced them all day). Not only that, but whenever a boy is sitting on my lap, a cloud of fumes inevitably forms around us, because they’re really, really good at SBDs (silent but deadlies—it’s a type of fart you probably don’t ever want to experience, in a class of its own). I can usually tell who’s the culprit because of the self-satisfied smirk on his face while he looks around to see if anyone noticed. Of course we noticed. It smells like a sulfur plant in here. My nose hairs are singed.
Boys aren’t easy. They’re a whole lot of work. They require more energy than we’ll probably ever have, because they never, ever stop. They’re always getting into things, especially the food, and they’re always making a mess, especially with the clothes they stripped off and left on the floor, and they’re always asking us if we smelled that or if we want to see what they just did to the toilet (forever and ever answer: Nope.).
But the most amazing thing I’ve learned about boys is that they will love the insecurities right off a mama. They will love her doubts to disintegration. They will love away all that has come before and infuse hope into all that comes after.
I know, because that’s what my boys have done for me.
And I’m so very glad.
This is an excerpt from This Life With Boys, the third book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by This is Now Photography)
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test Parents
Every new year I sit down to make parenting goals, in addition to my professional goals. Some years are better than others—I end the year on a laughing note and so can make humorous parenting goals that will continue to launch the laughter into the brand new year.
This year has been a difficult year for us, though. I’ve struggled through some severe depression, one of my sons is currently struggling with severe depression, and we are constantly trying to reconnect and spend time together during an especially busy season.
So this year I decided to make some more serious goals for my 2019 parenting life. Here’s a look at those goals.
1. I will eat mostly healthy.
Kids sometimes make it difficult to make healthy choices—not just because by the time the locusts have finished with our fridge there isn’t much left to choose from but also because parenting is so difficult that sometimes I just want to eat all my feelings. So this year I’ve decided to be more intentional and make better choices on a minute-by-minute basis, one day at a time (we eat mostly healthy already, so it shouldn’t be terribly hard). And the days I reach for a handful of Annie’s bunny grahams or my leftover Trader Joe’s peppermint patties, well, that’s where the next goal comes into play.
2. I will cut myself some slack.
Though I laugh at myself in retrospect—mostly through the humor essays I write—I want to laugh at myself more in the moment. Despite how I might come across in the humor writing you’ve read, I very often take things too seriously. I’m hard on myself. I chastise myself for eating those Annie bunny grahams or leftover Trader Joe’s peppermint patties. In the new year, I want to be nicer and more accepting of my weaknesses.
3. I will get out of the house more.
Even if it’s just for a short walk in our neighborhood, I want to get out more. I walk my sons to school every day and I go to the grocery store and church once a week, but other than that, I’m a hermit, particularly when I’m going through a tough time. I withdraw, huddle inside myself, build my walls. Getting out of the house more will help me in multiple ways, I think.
4. I will hug my kids more.
Our days are so busy that sometimes I get to the end of them and realize I haven’t even hugged a couple of my sons. Some of them act like they don’t want hugs anymore, but they still need them. Even if my hugs are not reciprocated, I will still give them lavishly.
5. I will let them see me cry and open a conversation about it.
This year one of my sons voiced suicidal thoughts. We’ve been on the lookout for depression, because it runs in both our families and was passed to both my husband and me. My sons feel when I’m sad, but they don’t always see it—because I don’t like to let them see it. But the more conversations we can have around this sadness—which sometimes doesn’t have a specific cause and sometimes has an abundance of them—the greater understanding and acceptance they will have of their own sadness. What lives in the dark always seems scary, so we’ll shine the light on it and talk.
I’ll be working hard this year to make sure I take greater steps toward accomplishing these goals. And on the days I fail? Well, there’s always goal number two to keep me trying again and again and again.
I’ve never been one to give up.
(Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash)
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test Parents
It’s good to feel needed as human beings. We need to feel needed, at least some of the time. It’s how we recognize our value in our specific worlds.
Kids need parents for practically everything—at least for a while. They need us for crossing the street, even though they’re nine and have done it a thousand times before (they probably just got lucky there were no cars coming all those other times). They need us to tie their shoes, or, if they’re not feeling lazy today, to at least stand there and watch them do it on their own. They need us to watch when they’re flipping over the side of the couch in what looks like a professionally-trained gymnast move, because if no one sees them, did they really just do it?
When kids start growing up and doing things for themselves, it can feel a little disorienting to suddenly have so much more time on your hands in the mornings. You no longer have to make their breakfast because they popped a slice of toast in the toaster oven and spread half the stick of butter on it when it was done. If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel a little sad that they’re not whining about how you’re not pouring their glass of milk fast enough because they just did it for themselves. You might even feel a little sad when they don’t forget their lunch as they’re walking out the door to school because they’ve finally learned the routine, after four years of practicing.
It sounds crazy to think that kids’ independence would cause a parent sadness. Isn’t independence what we crave when our three-year-old follows us around the house scream-crying for the toy his brother took away or our five-year-old bursts into the bathroom because he didn’t “want us to be scared while we were going pee?”
Well, it happens. Trust me. Now that my nine-year-old takes a shower in the morning and I don’t have to check behind his ears to make sure he actually used soap, I feel a little sad that I have three extra seconds on my hands.
But if you ever start feeling too sad about your kids’ emerging independence, all you have to do is get on the phone. This will provide the perfect opportunity for them to engage in a heated argument about the red LEGO piece one of them took from another—because none of the other five billion red LEGO pieces in their collection will work—and, even though you’ve taught them effective methods of conflict resolution, they won’t be able to resolve this argument with anything but a good old-fashioned fist fight. And the person who will most likely be on the other end of the line is a receptionist for your kids’ pediatrician’s office, who will politely try to ignore what’s going on in the background even while you’re asking her to please repeat the confirmation for that appointment, for the fourth time.
You could also press play on an audiobook or a podcast you’ve been meaning to listen to or (bless you) sit down to actually read a book while your boys are outside, entertaining themselves with sidewalk chalk. You can be sure that as soon as your finger hits the play button or your backside hits a chair, one of your children will come screaming into the house because he tried to smash the blue stick of chalk under a giant rock and he accidentally missed and smashed his toe instead and now it’s probably going to fall off and he actually wishes it would, because he can feel his heartbeat in his pinkie toe.
Well. At least you read a whole sentence this time.
You could sit down on the toilet. That’s when your kids will need you to get something down from a cabinet they can’t reach—like a cup, which they’ll use, as soon as you disappear back into the bathroom, to fill with water, submerge twelve LEGO pieces and the house keys (without mentioning this to you), and stick in the freezer just to “see what happens.”
Or you could sit down to eat at the same time everybody else in your family sits down to eat. What a luxury, right? You no longer have to eat cold dinners. Unfortunately, this is probably the time when your kid, who’s been drinking out of a regular cup for three years now, will accidentally knock over a brimming-with-milk Iron Man cup, because he was trying to reach across the table for more spaghetti before he’s even inhaled his first helping. And you’ll have to do what you’ve always done. Hand him the paper towels, watch him mop it up (not much more skillfully than when he was three), and then mop up behind his mopping, because perfection is the name of your game.
Or maybe just start talking to your partner, assuming that, because the kids are capable of caring for themselves now, they won’t need you and you can actually finish a whole conversation in one sitting. But this is when they’ll remember that they forgot to tell you an entire minute-by-minute narrative of how their day went, and even though they’ll politely wait for you to finish before they’ll start their story, they’ll also stare at you the whole time they’re waiting, and you can actually feel that wide-eyed gaze burning holes in your head, stealing your thoughts. You’ll look at your partner, shrug, and listen to the random observations of a six-year-old before trying to remember what it was you needed to say to the other adult in the room (it will take you three days to remember).
Or you could try to go to sleep. And then they’ll knock on your door with such urgency that you think this must surely be an emergency, and you’ll fly out of bed, fling the door open, and see before you no one who is bleeding, passed out, or dying, or any kind of fire anywhere to be found—all emergencies as defined by your Family Playbook. No, sorry, baby, your stuffed animal losing a back leg because you and your brothers were playing tug-of-war with him is not an emergency. Go back to bed.
Get used to your kids doing anything on their own, and actually start missing the times when you were needed, and almost without fail, they will make sure you feel needed again. Think I’m kidding? Start missing changing your baby’s diaper. Someone in your house will wet their pants in no time.
It’s no easy thing to pass from the I-need-you-all-the-time stage to the I-need-you-sometimes stage and then, inevitably, to the I-don’t-need-you-at-all-anymore stage. It’s also hard not to wish for an easier stage when you seem to be stuck in the I-need-you-all-the-time stage. I’ve been stranded there for almost ten years. I’d like to sit down for five minutes, please.
Also, stop growing up so fast, kids.
Just five minutes where you don’t need me? Five seconds?
But here, let me do that for you, baby.
This is an excerpt from Hills I’ll Probably Lie Down On, the fourth book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test Parents
I have a favorite child today.
It’s the boy who carried my laptop down the stairs because his mama’s foot is broken and he knows she needs a free hand to hold onto the stair rail so she doesn’t fall again. He carries it so carefully his eyes are opened wide in concentration, and he places it exactly in the right place on the couch where he knows I always sit at this time to feed the baby.
He’s my favorite until it’s nap time and he won’t put away the LEGO pieces he wanted to play with and then, when my back is turned because I’m putting the littlest one down, he smuggles that (quite impressive) creation under the covers and thinks I can’t hear him snapping and unsnapping pieces.
Then my favorite is the one who stacks his books into a neat little pile at the foot of his bed instead of scattered all over the floor like a book carpet, who fell asleep right away and didn’t need any reminders that right now is nap time and not play time.
He’s my favorite until he decides to wake all his napping brothers, because he fell asleep first—which means he’s logically the first one awake again—and he looks at the hangers in his closet and thinks they might be a perfect tool to use in his wake-up plan, so he craftily removes all the clothing from the hangers, arranging shirts and pants and even shoes in what looks like crime scene positions all over the floor and then rains the hangers all over the faces of his sleeping brothers.
Then my favorite is the one who remembers to go potty before we get in the car to go pick up his older brothers from school and isn’t hysterically whining about how badly he needs to go potty and how he really, really, really doesn’t want to go in his pants, which makes panic close off the back of my throat, because I really, really, really don’t want to clean up a toddler’s feces, but there’s a school zone and kids running everywhere and no accessible bathroom that doesn’t require unpacking everyone and at least fifteen minutes of wasted time, judging by the school pick-up line.
He’s my favorite until we get back home and I’m helping his older brother put some things away and he decides he wants a cup instead of a thermos, even though, to date, he’s only ever spilled a cup of anything and we’ve told him he needs to be a little bit older before he drinks from a lidless cup, and he does exactly what he nearly always does: spills it, and two boys slip in the water he didn’t tell anyone was there.
Then my favorite is the boy who goes outside to play and comes back in with a wildflower he found in the yard that reminds him of me because it’s so beautiful and he just had to pick it so I could put it in my hair and match beauty with beauty.
He’s my favorite until he comes back downstairs in his third new outfit since he got home from school half an hour ago and proudly tells me he put both the previously worn shirts and shorts—worn for a collective ten minutes—in the dirty clothes hamper and not on his floor, and, also, he’s wearing twelve pairs of socks.
Then my favorite is the one who lopes downstairs to ask if I want to listen to an audio book with him, because he knows I love reading while I’m cooking dinner and setting out plates, so I say, yes, of course, and we share a story while he sits at the table building LEGO creations and I brown some meat for tacos.
He’s my favorite until he mentions casually over dinner that I might have thought he was doing homework in his room after school but what he was really doing was drawing his new comic book and he’ll have to do his homework tomorrow morning (which will never happen. He and I both know this.).
When I was a kid, I was convinced that my mother had a favorite child. Now I understand that her favorite was always changing. Each one of my children can be my favorite in these snapshots of time when they do something or say something unexpectedly sweet or when they follow instructions to the letter or do what was asked without arguing or sassing.
Parents do have favorites. It’s just that the favorite is always changing, constantly rotating through the inventory.
Except the baby, of course. He’ll always be my favorite. At least until he hits age 3.
This is an excerpt from This Life With Boys, the third book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by This is Now Photography)
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test Parents
How about I let you in on a secret that will save you so much time: When we take on a tidying, throwing-out project, we cannot—I repeat, cannot—let our children know about it, or, worse, witness it.
You probably already know this, but in case you don’t, you’ve been warned.
The problem, you see, is that when kids notice you’re cleaning out a room, stacking up all those “beloved” stuffed animals they don’t use anymore or clearing out space in their closet for the next year’s clothes or setting all those toys they never play with anymore in the pile labeled “garage sale” (Wait. I don’t do that anymore. I get rid of it.) or throwing away the puzzles missing half their pieces that will, by all accurate estimations, never be found, they freak out. And I mean FREAK OUT.
But then, if you take heed of the danger that is letting kids know you’re on a tidying rampage and keep it a secret operation, the problem then becomes, how is this possible?
Kids are like ninjas, breaking into a locked and barricaded room to look through and dismantle a discard pile you don’t even remember leaving there. They sneak into your bedroom at night while you’re already sleeping, as if they can sense what’s in that trash bag stashed in your closet, and they’ll pull out all those books with missing pages and torn covers. They can slip into a room while you’re looking the other direction and undo your we’re-throwing-all-this-away work in 2.5 seconds, and the whole room will look like a crayon volcano exploded.
It’s impossible to keep kids from seeing and sensing. In fact, I’m convinced they have a sixth sense called “What my parents are throwing away today.”
They can sense when a parent gets a wild hair and convinces herself that she could probably organize this whole room in a morning, while they’re drawing happily at the table (never happens. It’s just wishful thinking.). Kids inherently know when something of theirs is being discussed, even if it’s silently in your own head. They will barge into a room that you were sure you locked behind you, at the least opportune moment, when you’re standing in the middle of the room with that “art piece” they did at the kitchen table without asking to use paper, and they will see the trash bag open and ready in front of your feet, and they will ask you, quite frankly, what you’re doing. And you will either have to lie, or you will have to tell them you’re keeping this forever and ever (and they will remember).
Kids will do everything they can to thwart your discarding efforts.
Even when you think you’ve got it figured out, they will beat you to the winner’s line (disheartening, yes. But at least you’re not the only parent to be beaten by your kids).
This one time we put all kinds of papers in a trash bag, and I cleared out all the old toothbrushes I caught one of the boys using to plunge a toilet with a present in it, and Husband took it directly out to the trash bin in front of the house, where it waited for the trash man to come by first thing in the morning, and when we woke up, those nasty toothbrushes magically reappeared in the cup designated to hold them, waiting for half-asleep children to paint their teeth with sewage.
Another night the 8-year-old was tasked with taking out the trash, and he found the little baby socks that are for a baby younger than three months (his youngest brother was five months old already). He pulled them out, of course, asking, “Why are these here? Why did you throw them away instead of donating them?” The answer is because I know what kind of socks they are. Crappy. They wouldn’t stay on our baby’s feet, and so I didn’t want to give them to any other parents who would feel just as frustrated as I do about socks that don’t work. Then he challenged me to think about how they could be reused. I taped them over his mouth. Perfect.
It doesn’t matter how many locks a door has on it. It doesn’t matter how dark it is inside a room. It doesn’t matter how immediate that trash pick-up is, kids will know.
Trust me. They know everything.
But here are some things you can do, if you can’t possibly keep your discarding project from your kids:
1. When one of your child’s friends comes over, send something you want to discard home with them. It’s like a hostess gift, but in reverse. “Please, take these old socks. You’ll probably throw them in your own trash, because they don’t work at all, but it’s the thought that counts, right?” Encourage your kids to give things away (just not to my kids). Then it’s someone else’s problem. And, bonus, it develops a giving heart in your kid, and gets them used to parting with things they love, like nasty toothbrushes that apparently still really mean a lot to them.
2. Wrap a grandparent’s gift with the art paper that only has one squiggly line on it. That way you can tell your kids you’re just using their works of art to bring joy to another person. You’re not throwing it away. Grandma is.
3. Tell them you will save those tennis shoes they wore in kindergarten with the soles flapping off for their firstborn son, and then, when they have their firstborn son and he asks where those old tennis shoes are (because he’ll remember), pretend there was a fire he never knew about.
4. Wrap a teacher gift with old worksheets. If your kids are anything like mine, they get offended when you try to recycle their school worksheets, even though every day they bring home fifty each (I have three in school. That’s one hundred fifty worksheets every single day). But if you reuse that worksheet to wrap a gift inside, it won’t look cheap. It will look artsy (just consult Pinterest if you don’t believe me). And then it will be on the teacher for throwing away their worksheet. (This isn’t foolproof, of course. If you have a persistently creative child like my 8-year-old, he will come back home with the worksheets, because he wants to “keep them for himself,” which means he wants me to keep them for him. I promise, baby, you’re not going to miss this Reading Comprehension sheet about green toads when you’re 18.)
5. Try to make an art piece out of all those scribble drawings, and massively fail. That’s okay. You can always give it away to a grandparent, who is probably responsible for giving them all those art supplies that are coming out your ears anyway. Pay them back the best way you know how: with paper.
6. Have a stuffed-animal-burying service. For the ones that are looking really bad and aren’t the least bit fixable, dig a hole in the backyard and put them in it (just don’t dig a deep hole, because of what comes later). Have a memorial service, where you talk about what the stuffed animal meant to you. When the kid is sleeping, dig the stuffed animal back up and immediately take it to your friend’s trash bin down the road. They’ll never think to look there (or so we like to tell ourselves). When they try to dig the stuffed animal back up because they “just want to check on him” let them. And then explain about dust to dust and ashes to ashes. It would make a great science lesson on decomposition.
If all else fails, just sell your house and tell your kids you promised the new owners all the toys would come with it. I know it’s not entirely true…or maybe it is. There’s a new revolutionary idea. You’re welcome.
This is an excerpt from The Life-Changing Madness of Tidying Up After Children, the second book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by Ricardo Viana on Unsplash)
