summer

What Being a Pig Mom Taught Me About Raising Happy Kids

August 23, 2015 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

For the last three years our family has raised 4H hogs for the county fair. What started out as a child activity has quickly become a much-anticipated family tradition. We are suburbanites who’ve graduated from bunny to barnyard, and we are a healthier, happier family for it. My friends tease me about my fake ranch lifestyle, but there are amazing reasons why we enthusiastically animal hoard. I’m taking a few minutes in the middle of fair week to share just a few reasons why I love 4H living. Here’s what being a pig mom has taught me about raising happy kids.

You’re gonna get dirty

Nothing reeks like pig poop. Literally nothing. A pin drops worth pollutes a room in 3.2 seconds and sends me hysterically sniffing shoes and jackets while barking threats. But honestly, if we’re tackling life there are times we’re going to be covered with it and so is our leather camel car interior. Life isn’t all about lemon verbena. Active kids bring stink.

Rules matter and so does hard work

In 4H kids do the work. If parents help, the club loses competition points. This is perhaps the most astounding invention known to parenthood. The first day of pen cleaning my kids pathetically pleaded for instruction, awkwardly fondling and falling over their push brooms like stoned spider monkeys. But it turns out that they figured it out without me. I shrugged, they struggled. Once they found their rhythm they lit up with accomplishment and were going steady with that broom by nightfall. Do I hear a motion for a 4H charter in your kitchen?

Mom, let the toddlers pet the pig. Hands wash.

I know it’s totally gross to see your Precious dripping in pig spit, but nurturing an animal teaches everything we need to know about love and protect. That giggling glee when your sticky stumbler gets to spray the pig with water (especially on THE BUTT) and then caresses his stinky hide lovingly, that’s parenting 101 at its finest. That’s what we did for them. Nurturing is a drug. Let them have a hit.

Hard work deserves recognition but only the hardest worker gets first place (and who you know makes a difference)

In the pig group there are three BIG days. There is the competition for the best market hog, the competition for the best showmanship, and there is auction day. These are sandwiched between the squealing delight of move-in day and the tearful goodbye of move-out day. Like many things in life, fair week is made up of important events between hours of waiting. But the one thing the events have in common? The kids who are there first thing in the morning mucking pens and working with their animals are also the ones who get the ribbons and the big money award at auction. There is one caveat, however. Kids who hand wrote an impressive buyer letter and those who are well known to the community pick up the extra spoils. Watching the way hard work and networking works prepares kids for their lives ahead. It doesn’t always happen fairly, but good preparation makes a huge difference.

We are stronger as a tribe and fun matters

In 4H clubs form based on community. Older kids mentor little kids and seniors help novices. During competition we stick with our tribe, cheering each other and sharing resources. But when push comes to shove, we all work side-by-side and make good care of the kids and animals our highest priority. Judges place high value on intensity and fun. 4H does not tolerate meanness.

Gender is irrelevant. Get tough and get dirty.

There is no gender discrimination at fair. My scrappy thirteen year-old daughter muscles in and makes it happen indistinguishable from the boys. Everybody throws in ideas, holds office, and works hard. I’ve been raising kids for 21 years and this is one of the healthiest, non-discriminating activities I’ve ever taken part in. Wrestling pigs and showing steer is not for the meek. The confidence these kids gain is impressive and hard-earned.

Too much delicious gets old

It doesn’t seem possible but kids will beg for a home-cooked meal when it’s not readily available. This is a great argument about how restricting something may encourage desperate desire. A fifteen year old schooled me yesterday about letting my son have a pretzel for lunch after his donut at breakfast. “Mom! This is fair!” he said. I hung my head and surrendered. The next day my 11 year-old junk food junkie was begging for steamed vegetables. I lie, homemade chicken tacos, but still.

Boredom sparks magic

The first day my kids brought their iPads to the livestock barn and even got them out half-heartedly throughout a day of back-breaking work followed by hours of waiting. But it didn’t last. Bored kids visit baby goats, snuggle pigs, and play cards. Old timers stop by the barn and share their stories and kids answer the pig questions of picture-snapping visitors. 4H kids increasingly adopt a buzz of contentment and confidence. By day two they leave their screens at home. I swear that the livestock barn at the county fair is the last bastion of screen-free sanctuary. It’s only one of the reasons my husband and I take off the week without hesitation. It’s old-school family time, and we all delight in it.

Sometimes you have to scream at stupid people

In the pig barn, things go from calm to dangerous in two seconds flat. At one moment the pig is sauntering calmly with a kid in dress whites at their heels. The next, Maple Bacon is hauling her 270-pound delicious rump through hordes of corn-gobbling fair-goers. That mom cowering in her path with her toddler at her knee? You’re going to have to screech, “PICK UP THAT BABY NOW!” while you throw yourself in front of them and slam a pig board in front of Maple. Both the pig and the stunned mom will cooperate, and you’ll both be laughing afterward. Fear makes all of us stupid. Fight or flight or stand there mouth agape. I think that’s how that goes.

Fairs attendies don’t care about modesty, but 4H parents do

Sorry about the body shaming but after witnessing the carnival horrors of overly-revealing fair outfits, my kids grow content with their dress whites. There is nothing more adorable than the functional garb of 4H kids hard at work.

Animal slaughter should spark vigorous, heart-felt, intelligent debate. Taking a life should not be minimized.

My hippy friends are horrified we raise 4H hogs for auction, and I don’t blame them a bit. My argument is that meat-eaters should have to raise a meat animal to slaughter to really understand the life sacrifices behind that carnitas burrito. Our pigs live happy but short lives. They live in a roomy pen and are walked daily in the sunshine by caring kids. We are aware they are raised for slaughter, and we don’t pretend it’s pretty. By a year old market pigs are crippled with arthritis from too much weight gained too quickly. We cry when we leave them behind on Sunday afternoon. It’s brutal.

In my experience, 4H families are the most loving, hard-working, and caring people I’ve run across. They love their children, their friends, and their community and they work hard to ensure those things are taken care of. Most agree that there is a powerful argument to sparing animal lives if you have the resources to and raising them humanely if you don’t. In our family the experience has led half of us to vegetarianism and the other half to less meat eating but with grateful awareness. Other families share the same story. Raising our animals gives us a true understanding of the meat aisles in the grocery store. We get it. We think reading a magazine about it may not be enough.

And finally, there’s the 4H moto “Make the best better.”

This one speaks for itself.

If you’re ready to get back to good old-fashioned family bonding, cut down on screen time and get dirty. One way to launch a healthier family life is to stage your house for smarter, better managed screen use. My GKIS Connected Family Online Course details just how to make that happen.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Photo credit:

Presidio of Monterey, CC by-NC-2.0

Snog by Tim Zin, CC by-NC-2.0

This post is dedicated to my Aunt Becky and Uncle Chuck for introducing me to a profound love for family and the barnyard, Chelle Smith for your laughing eyes, willing hugs, and awesome attitude. You teach our kids what true leadership is all about! And to Leverno, Sidney, S’moa, and Pensetta. We love you babies and thank you for your sacrifice. xoxo

Oh Delicious Summertime: 6 Tips to Balancing Nourishing Family Connection and Fun Screen Time

June 11, 2015 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

Remember last summer? You started out strong with fantasies straight from your ‘80’s memories of yummy giggling connection, nourishing sunshine, fresh fruit, and dusty barefoot tree climbing. But then there were closets to sort, kids to feed, and socks to wash . . . Everybody kind of drifted off, positioning themselves in front of their screens. When you tried to chase them off they’d whine and complain and promised “just a minute.” You got tired of nagging, gave in, felt guilty, and promised to rally the next day. Rinse. Repeat. Before you knew it, the summer was gone and all there was to show for it was hours of video games, clean socks, and mommy remorse.

This summer be awesome and proactively prevent the dreaded screen media summer slide

Confession: I’m a mom with kids that have more resolve than I do. If I don’t have an easy plan in place, they wear me down. I’ve raised them to be smart and headstrong and sometimes the inmates run the asylum. Simply put, without a solid workable plan and preplanning, our summer days get thrown together in a tumble.

Here is a quick and doable checklist to help you set a reasonable screen media balance, plan fun family activities everybody will groove on, and most importantly stick to your goals without surrendering to the summer screen sinkhole.

Stage the house for easy supervision and constrained use.

Two powerful and easy ways to stage are to set up GetKidsInternetSafe (GKIS) cowork and family docking stations and insist on no screens behind closed doors or in bedrooms or bathrooms. By cementing habit right from the beginning of summer vacation, you’ll avoid soul-killing nagging and whining, not to mention compulsive use and sneaking that can eventually lead to addiction and problematic activities like sexting or viewing online pornography.

Think your children are too young or have better judgment than that? That’s what families in my therapy sessions thought too. Check out our GKIS Connected Family Online Course if you’d like a powerful but fast and easy blueprint for home staging.

Batten down your cyber security measures.

Keep out tech-cooties by turning on firewalls, cybersecurity software, and educating your kids about malware, phishing, and scamming. Imagine three weeks without screen media while it’s being debugged. How’s that for motivation?

By the way, I spent an hour at the Apple Genius Bar last night clearing adware off my laptop. Because I bought Apple Care, the genius looked through my directories teaching me along the way. He said there are no software programs or user strategies that will prevent adware from loading onto your computer. Adware is now unavoidable. It’s impossible to tell an adware link from any other kind of link. He showed me Apple’s list of ever-changing adware strings (available online) to clean adware on my own or instructed me to simply bring it in to a genius to rapidly search hidden directories for the occasional cleaning.(Apple does not pay me to give you information for the record).

Block schedule blackout times.

By some miracle we successfully trained our inmates to respect #NoTechTuesday and #NoTechThursday during the school week this year. Honestly, I’m more shocked than anybody how easily my kids took to it. After the initial protests, T-days eventually became our best days. I looked forward to coming home to puppy trick training, goat cart pulling, outdoor forts, hide and seek, and even bone piles. Seriously, my two youngest are finally old enough to venture a bit and carefully crafted an adventure into the barranca where they giddily excavated a coyote den. Kind of gross but super educational! No humans died in the process and the pile of bleached bones became an anatomy lesson and effective props for creative horror movie making. (PS my husband says only Southern Californians use the word “barranca.” It means the undeveloped mountain-side by our house.)

Thinking ahead to long summer days, I’ve realized whole tech-free days would be too tough on everybody, especially me! So instead of being a zealot, instead I’m shooting for a balanced tech-activity day setup.

Of course, every child and family is different. I don’t recommend a strict adherence to these guidelines. In fact, we delight in media binge days and screen-free days on occasion. The goal here is for flexibility, spontaneity, and easy-going fun, not prison camp. The most workable and wise plan is to have some days with structured limits and other days where you let your family’s freak flag fly!

#TechTime Guidelines:

DAYLIGHT DELAY

No screens until 7 am. Otherwise the boy creeps out earlier and earlier in the morning for eager game play. A sleepy mom makes for a nightmare of a day for everybody. Early morning walks filled with laughter with my BFF is critical for my mental health these days. I recommend.

CHORE CHECK

I’ve achieved my happy life from a mix of gift, grit, and fortune. This is where teaching the grit comes in. We try to instill a good work ethic by teaching work before play.

Create a checklist that includes a daily chore and enriching academic task (a worksheet or academic game). Nothing grueling, just an opportunity to self-congratulate that between 9:00-10:00 stuff got done! Getting a little help from the kids takes the edge off of the parental servitude we all complain about.

SWEET SIESTA

Maybe you’re still in the sweet naptime stage, but we aren’t. Instead of relying on screen media to shut them down, 11-1:00 allows a leisurely lunch followed by yard play and a lazy read. WHAT? Academic enrichment during the summertime? Yep! Reading is one thing we insist on around here and it has served us well. Sometimes I allow a TED talk or podcast, because they seed stimulating dinnertime conversations.

AFTERNOON ACTIVITY

If we haven’t committed to an all-day adventure, then afternoon is rejuvenating adventure time. This may be the beach, swimming, the dog park, or a hike. Other times, it’s a family project like cleaning out the chicken coop or room cleaning. If the kids are whining, I provide a choice between the two types (haha). We try to do something going that makes us laugh and gets us exercise to keep us all from being screen zombies.

What if you’re working? On workdays I rely on kid camps, trades with other moms, or I bribe the 20-somethings to take the little ones out.

TABLE TOGETHERNESS

We go old-fashioned everyday and eat around the table and play high-low. No screens allowed. Best part of your day (high)? Worst part of your day (low)?

Ah sweet connection. This is also where we throw in sex-tech educational discussions, organic and easygoing information, often inspired by current events, weaved in with everyday chatter. GKIS FAMILY MEETING – ✔. THIS is what memories are made of, not Web Surfing, MineCraft, and social media stalking.

Implement our free GKIS Connected Family Screen Agreement.

This is a powerful parenting tool. A “living” agreement is a consistently negotiated, comprehensive contract that closes gaps and prevents work-arounds. Propose ideas, discuss it, and commit to guidelines.

Implementing screen-securing strategies haphazardly just doesn’t work. It’s like installing a screen door on a submarine. Implementing half-baked interventions and then panicking when something happens leads to sneaky spying and intrusive knee-jerk grounding. This is the perfect habitat for resentment and sneaking all the way around.

I’ve witnessed hundreds of times in my practice how a proactive agreement works to build parent-child cooperation and respect. With reasonable justification, even teens appreciate honesty and transparency.

At the launch of summer vacation, calendar 7 day-trip adventures.

Invite the kids to participate in the planning and entice them with maps and websites. Anticipation is almost as fun as the trip itself, and it will fuel follow-thru. Another opportunity to involve the kids in the prep-work instead of being your family’s servant.

Great ideas include new vehicles of transportation (buses, trains, boats, horses) and hikes into exotic neighborhoods (city centers, river walks, mountain strolls). My family makes serious use of the AroundMe app whenever we drive into an unfamiliar area. This transforms Sunday afternoon drives into exotic ice cream tastings or best cheeseburger competitions.

Maintain reasonable expectations. This isn’t Leave it to Beaver.

Let’s face it. None of us are perfect parents.

I cling to the concept of the good enough parent from D. W. Winnicott. He created this concept to affirm that authentic instinct drives parenting better than any expert plan. If you slip into occasional rants and screen media binges, then you’re in awesome company. You know what’s more important than having the perfect parent? Having a loving parent who is a real person.

Do you long for a blueprint that’s delivered in simple video format week by week? I’m here for you! Do you have a specific question you’d like answered? Email me at DrTracyBennett@GetKidsInternetSafe. As the mother of a 21 year-old, I can confirm that deliciously chaotic summers fly by before you know it. Cheers to putting a little effort into planning and making this the best summer you’ve ever had!

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

7 GetKidsInternetSafe Tips for Summer

June 22, 2014 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

Summer has arrived and parents everywhere are alight with anticipation and dread. It’s your job to be a good-enough parent, not a perfect one. Here are 7 GetKidsInternetSafe guidelines to help.

We are a week into summer at our house, and it has started already; that nagging guilt I feel to keep my kids happy while juggling my job, marriage, friendships, and sanity. The dreaded “bored” word hangs over my head like a dead tree limb ready to snap. Help!

There are always the über moms who had it together two months ago and scheduled Cantonese class, violin lessons, and sailing camp. Having a twenty year-old and being in session with the übers, I am over the fantasy that I am that mom. And frankly, I’m happy to say so, because that impossible expectation leads these beautiful, ambitious souls to have two gigantic glasses of wine every night and chases their husbands into the garage, as her resentment poisons the room. The sadly ironic fact is that a mother’s love for her children inspires her intensity. One or two activities at a time, please. Unscheduled time is valuable for healthy development.

And please know, writing these pieces makes me gag a little. Because I am the first to say I’m a good-enough mom, but far from perfect. I do and say things often that I have to apologize for and wish I could take back. But there are other times when I grin at myself because my babies are giddy little souls who wrestle puppies, build sky castles of hot lava on their computers, and climb trees.

My GetKidsInternetSafe guidelines should be read as they are intended; to give you permission to be happy outside of your parenting role while being proud and delighted with what you do pull off. And know that these are guidelines. Adopt what you want, how you want. Nothing is more valuable than your organic parenting instinct.

Practice mindfulness.

Stop, attend to the present, breathe from your diaphragm with a 6-second exhale, and fill your heart with the love of your children. This will help you set your priorities and keep you from becoming a screeching, bossy lunatic.

DJ.

Nothing gets the house rockin’ like some Elton John and a parent who sings badly. A little Earth, Wind, and Fire also inspires the spirit to soar through clumsy interpretive dance. As my dad used to say while we happily hustled around his knees, “It isn’t dancin’ unless your shoulders are movin!”

12:00-3:00 no screen time.

Be warned, the first couple days they will sit on the couch moaning in agony and run through every manipulative strategy they have in their brilliant cognitive toolboxes. Don’t cave! Eventually they will climb trees, read books, and wrestle until lamps break, as kids should. <note Brady Bunch reference>

One educational lesson a day.

It doesn’t have to be a kill and drill workbook though. Maybe 10 minutes on an educational or exploratory app like Google Earth or a TED talk. My kids like TED talks, and they give us something to discuss other than “kid stuff” that makes my eyes glaze over.

Kids need sun and run.

Schedule a nature event at least once a week, if not every day. Maybe you can’t pull off the beach or the mountains, but you certainly can take a walk around the block or visit a park to have a picnic.

When they beg not to go with, make them anyway.

We went to a concert in the park last night with our kids sulking in tow, and heck if they didn’t have a wildly fabulous time sitting on the blanket, playing tag, and eating chicken tostada salads and popcorn. Glow sticks, not to mention the horror of your parents dancing with a clumsy herd of friends in front of EVERYBODY, were a bonus. By the end they were spinning and hopping with us as well. My heart burst a bunch of times and my soul paid rapt attention and soaked it in. These moments are precious, but they sometimes have to be staged.

Treat the word “bored” as a cuss word.

It’s not allowed in our house and will immediately result in a consequence. Because first of all, that’s not MY problem. And secondly, the stinkin’ thinkin’ will make them miserable. So nip it in the bud.

Make sure you’ve subscribed to www.GetKidsInternetSafe.com for your free copy of “The Top 10 Mistakes Parents Make With Internet Safety (and How to Recover!). And please share your summer ideas with the GetKidsInternetSafe village. Cheers to making sunbaked, juicy life memories with your babies. (That tree pic is my son in the tree before school. I took it from my bedroom window). 🙂

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

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