Tag Archives: Moms

Teachable Moments

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Ever since I read about “Teachable Moments” I’ve believed they’re the easiest and most enjoyable way to teach a child anything. And grandparents, have more teachable moments with their grandchildren, than even their parents do, because they have the time and the desire to pass on snippets of information.

Grandparents like to take advantage of every opportunity to explain something to your grandchildren it might be an idea, how something works, why something is important, how we do things, and answer to a question, pointing out something interesting a new word, a new sensation, a new feeling.

A teachable moment arises out of an ordinary everyday activity or situation where you feel that there’s an opportunity to explain something. Unsurprisingly children love those moments. The setting is informal, it doesn’t feel like teaching, and best of all its piecemeal, which is how children learn anyway. It’s appealing to a chid because a teachable moment has it own logic. Here are some teachable moments that I’ve experienced with my children when they were growing up or even more recently with my grandchildren.

  • You’re “Gardening” together and you see a worm. You can talk about how worms aerate the soil and turn it over (as worm casts), and how a worm  has no eyes because it’s always in the dark.
  • You’re crossing a street with traffic lights. Hers’s a good opportunity to talk about the light sequence and how RED means STOP and Green means Go. Extend this to talking about how you should look left, then right, then left again, then cross.
  • It’s bath time, and as your grandchild gets into the bath the water rises, then when she stands up, the level drops. You explain why and you could mention Archimedes and “Eureka”. You explain how some things float and some things sink.
  • You use a word that might be difficult for a toddler or young child to understand, for instance, words such as recognize, reflection (in the mirror), camouflage and immediately explain what it means and give examples of how to use it.
  • Use every opportunity to explain a concept this is hard, but this is soft; a cat meows but a dog barks; birds fly and so do airplanes.

You are an expert as a grandparent, because of your experiences, the life you’ve led, and your range of interests and hobbies, you can stimulate your grandchild in a way that a parent can’t. Your grandchildren will learn very easily from you, and I’m sure that. like me, you will get huge satisfaction from the hours you spend playing and learning together.

You have a caring interest in him or her, which they can sense because it makes them feel special, the perfect setting for new games and skills. You have the time to play until your grandchildren get bored. You take obvious delight in their tiniest achievement and make them feel confident. Nothing is too much trouble for you so games can extend his concentration and foster his curiosity.

You are endlessly patient and show him how to try, try, try again until he succeeds, and then praise them. You love him them enough to let them fail on their way to their success’. Remember to let your children and grandchildren fail instead of trying to rescue them from failure all the time.

Take a moment and think about a time that you failed and turned that failure into a success. Would you have conquered it if your parents, teachers, mentors, or grandparents had rescued you out of it? I remember when my son was learning to ride a bike I can’t tell you how many times he fell down and we just ignored him and he got right back up on that bike and finally mastered riding it. Later in life when he learned to drive a motorcycle there was no room for failing.  He had to do it right the first time and he did.

I remember when I started playing baseball at first I couldn’t hit the ball and my teams mates were not happy about that. But I can tell you no one told the couch to rescue me or even how to handle it. All my mom said, was you’ll figure it out just pay more attention to the way you are holding the bat. I kept trying and then one day I hit a home run. It’s good thing too because girls didn’t play baseball back then. Enjoy all those teachable moments and let the kids learn to turn their failures into success’.

Mom Knows Everything

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Last summer I was performing one of my favorite grandmotherly duties, which is spoiling my grandson’s rotten!

 Their names are Jeremy and Jesse. This particular time we were eating ice cream on a hot summer day. It was a special treat, and they were enjoying it thoroughly.

 Suddenly, Jeremy scrunched up his little five-year-old face and started pounding his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Jeremy, what are you doing?” I wanted to know. “I’ve got brain freeze!” he wailed.

It was obvious that he had experienced brain freeze before, since he knew exactly how to identify it. I smiled on the inside, and jumped up to pour him a glass of water hoping that it would ease the freeze. Then he asked me a question that stumped me. “Why did God make brain freeze when it hurts so bad?”  “Well, ummmm…well,” I stammered in response.

How on earth do you explain the problem of pain and suffering to a five-year-old? Do you go back to the Garden of Eden and explain how perfect things were before Adam and Eve took a bite out of forbidden fruit? (You don’t dare identify it as an apple when you’re talking to a five-year-old, or he might never eat another one again.)

 And if you start your answer with an explanation of Adam and Eve in the perfect paradise, then the next time your grandchild comes over, he’s going to want you to take him to the Garden of Eden to play. And he’s going to want to know, “Is it kind of like Disney World?”

And when you explain that it didn’t have any rides or pirate shows, he’ll wonder why on earth God wasted his time building it and why wasn’t there a pirate ship there?  I realized that I could try a different approach to explain how only Gods knows why but all my possible answers were triggering red flags.

Then as I sat there stumped, I realized that Jeremy wasn’t the only one with brain freeze. I was suffering a terrible case of it myself!  Even though I had answered this question many times throughout the years. I couldn’t come up with an appropriate explanation for a five-year old to save my life!

 Finally as he stared at me, waiting for my response, I replied, “Hey, that’s a great question, Jeremy. We’ll have to ask God when we get to heaven.” “Okay,” he replied.

Then he said or we can wait until my mom comes home and ask her cause she knows everything. I said, that’s a great idea Jeremy! 

 He finished scraping the bottom of his dessert dish, took one last sip of water, and jumped down from his seat. He ran to play cars with his brother, his brain was sufficiently thawed and so was mine.

 Apparently, it seems the best answers are the simple ones. By the time his mom came home we forgot all about the brain freeze.

Generational Changes For Women

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If you were to ask my grandmother if she was full filled she would shrug her shoulders and tell you that of course she was full filled.

 My grandmother was not like most of the women of her generation she was a working woman with four children.

However she did have some advantages she only worked while her children were in school and her husband helped with the kids home work and after school activities. He also enjoyed cooking.

My grandparents worked as a team and shared the household chores and the demands that came with raising four children. Wow! they were way a head of their generation.Weren’t they?  Other than grandma’s co-workers, her friends were stay at home moms and homemakers. When I asked her if she felt that her friends resented her or looked down on her for working. She said, Oh Know! Why would they? However they did think that your grandpa was a bit odd for taking care of the kids too but that was it. She said that she resented working and getting paid less than the male school teachers. Sound familiar?

We who are the granddaughters of that generation were taught to believe that kitchen is a confining word. To our contemporaries the words “occupation Housewife” are verboten and we are not permitted to be full or filled with the sounds and smells of the household. This is a generation that came of age during the women’s movement and has had to cope with the greatest sociological changes since man began recording history.

We are the generation that carved a new definition of woman a definition that gave us some excellent middle-management jobs and a strong taste of prejudice, discrimination, and anger. Executives found that women were very good in our jobs, and what made us even better was the fact that women were all willing to do more for less. It was those very virtues that made us the enemy of the working man.

Women helped this low-cost employment force (women began to look like the Far East American help) gain credibility because through our magazines and speeches and leaders, we condoned society that frowned on women who didn’t work and assumed that any dummy (like our mothers) could raise a terrific kid. We looked of equality, and what we got was a new definition of equality: it said that woman was equal to doing man’s work– and her own — and at the same time. We created a beautiful myth about the woman who have it all. She could be thin and rich and powerful. We encouraged our daughters to enroll in women’s study courses, and we talked about their futures and the way they would run their homes in th future.

And then lo and behold our daughters got married and they wondered what we were talking about. They were so tiered they couldn’t even call us to complain. They were so busy running from work to the house that they were each willing—-personally–to march across Helen Gurley Brown‘s desk and tell her that she was full of beans.  

During those years we found ourselves saying that all women who were now thirty-five would want to switch 180 degrees in ten years. That is, we reported to anyone who would listen , all women who are 35 and in the work force on an upwardly mobile path would like to be home with children in ten years, and all women now at home with children in ten years, like to be on an upwardly mobile career path.

The other day my friend Elizabeth made a mistake of saying in front of her daughter you’re wrong she said quickly. All children I have learned are quick to say, you’re wrong, slower to say, you’re right.

She went on to explain,”My friends–except for me — don’t expect to go back to work. They like staying home. They like playing with their children, and some even like cooking and entertaining. They never want to work again.” Her sister agreed (she’s a mother of three boys). “The women in the park where she takes her children don’t want to go back to work. You know, she confided,”it’s not great working when our children are young.  

I would like to think that this generation of women appreciate what the earlier generations women accomplished. It’s possible for women today to be Betty Crocker‘s or Rosie the riveters if you want to work or not. The women of earlier generations helped pioneer the way I wonder what this generation of mothers will be pioneering for their daughters? 

When You’re Young At Heart…

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Fairy Tales, can come true, it can happen to you. If you’re young at heart. For it’s hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind. If you’re young at heart. When you can go to extremes, with impossible schemes. You can laugh, when your dreams fall apart, at the seams. And life, gets more exciting with each passing day. And love is either in your heart, or on its way.  Don’t you know that it’s worth every treasure on earth?  To be young at heart.

And if you survive to 105. Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive! And here is the best part, you have a head start. If you are among the very young at heart.

In a striking turnaround, science now sees optimism and pessimism not as good or bad outlooks you’re born with. But as mind-sets to adopt as situations demand.  Sure, you could look at life purely rationally, but without optimism or pessimism, you might not do much.

I loved it when my children were young. I’ve never been so tired, or had as much fun. Like all women it didn’t matter what I did .Women, never seemed to agree on what made for a “Happy Mom”. I wonder if there was a recipe called “Happy Moms.” What would the ingredients be?   It seems like “Moms” have a million expectations to live up to. Don’t they?  

It doesn’t seem to matter what age we are there are constant reminders of the choices we have to make or have made. When we are young, time seems to pass by slowly. We thought, we had all the answers. Didn’t we? It seems to me. That I knew more at the age of twenty-two, than I do now.

 When we were young it was all about the “when’s.” When they learn to crawl,walk and run. When they start school. When they get a job. When they fall in love. And just wait until they have their own children. Oh! yes, when we were young, it was all  about the future. And it seemed like we have all the time in the world. Didn’t it?  

Then we became grandmothers and the years just seemed like the flew by.  Suddenly the “when s” return. When they learn to crawl, stand, walk and run.  Along with the when’s, the fun and excitement returns. Doesn’t it?  I’m sure that my grandkids feel, that I’m bit odd.

Sometimes it seems like occasionally I catch them giving me a sarcastic glance that seems to say, “Really”  you’re doing that?  And other times their glances seem to say, ” She’s old” we must be the patient with her. Their little legs walk as slowly as my old legs. And their fresh eyes see things, that I have ignored for years.

It’s been said, That being young at heart, is not about your age but it’s a state of mind. I find that’s true. I hope you do too. The recipe for what makes for a “Happy Mom” is still being written. Or did “Betty Crocker” write it?  Maybe! Mom’s get to pretend to be like “Betty” and create their own “Mom” recipe?. Like the lyrics say,  Fairy Tales can come true. It can happen to you!