I told Varmint and Critter last night that we were – as a family – going to go help out a friend in need by working a bit in her overwhelming garden.  I expected fighting, whining, and possibly altogether mutiny.

I won’t lie to you, I got a couple of ‘Why?’s out of my Critter.  But my varmint shrugged her shoulders and simply said, “ok.”

Then this morning I rounded them up and took them over.  And they didn’t buck.

Much.

Throughout, Critter tried to wrap his brain around why we were doing it, so I attempted to keep his attention while espousing the benefits of living a life of generosity and compassion.  He said that he didn’t question that part of it.  He just wanted to understand why anyone would want a garden in the first place when it’s so much work compared to, say, watching Batman.

I snapped off a stalk of asparagus so fresh the morning dew still dripped from it, and had him taste it.  Then he really couldn’t understand why we were doing it.

Apparently asparagus is not a kid-friendly food.

But, God bless him, he didn’t quit.

He just sat there  – one hands in the weeds, the other in a red cast (Yes, I made my kid weed with a broken arm.  We don’t raise sissies here in Dickerson, Maryland.) shaking his head at the alarming stupidity of adults.

And I think I heard him mumble something about the grocery store, and working smarter, not harder.

Before I share this story with you, you need to visualize the main character.  Imagine Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, and imagine Opie Taylor, from the Andy Griffith Show.  Mix ’em together.  That’s Critter.

Critter came home from school yesterday PUMPED because he had impressed his schoolmates (read: girls) with his ability to do front flips, handsprings,one-handed and no-handed cartwheels at recess.  He showed me several as soon as he got home from school, glowing from all the praise he’d received.  He was SO HAPPY!

I promised them I’d do a back flip for them tomorrow, Mom.

That’s great, love!

I just have to figure out how to do it tonight, though.

Er, yes, good plan.

Can you help me ?

Honey, I don’t know how to do a back flip.

Haven’t you ever done it?  Even way back when, when you were little?

If I did, love, my shrunken, aged brain does not recall it.

MOM!  I told them I would do a backflip for them tomorrow!  Will you at least watch me while I practice?

Sure.

So Varmint and My Captain and I sat on the front steps of the house sipping lemonade, watching Critter hurl himself around the yard.  Sometimes forwards, sometimes backwards, sometimes sideways, a constant blur of motion.  But whenever he tried the elusive back flip, he landed on his behind, and I winced.

I suggested he try ending a round-off type cart-wheel and then bending immediately backwards into a bridge.  It seemed like it might be a step in the right direction.

So he tried it several times, but kept falling down at the Bridge.

Until….

(I hate ‘Untils’)

He tried it again and landed catty-whompus on his forearm.

He winced in pain.

I winced in pain.

My Captain was off the steps in a flash.

The long and the short of it is that he cracked the bone in his forearm, and will be wearing a cast for several weeks.

He kept saying, “This is YOUR fault, Mom.  This was YOUR idea.  YOU did this to me.”  And he believed it.

I told him it was bad luck and that there was no honor in blaming others for your own bad luck.  Eventually, like after HOURS of pounding that concept into his peeved head,  he begrudgingly accepted the idea that an accident is no one’s fault.

And I went to bed feeling very bad for my Critter.  But at least I could tell myself that he wouldn’t hate me for the next cast-wearing six weeks or blame me for his misfortune.

This morning, I picked him up from school to take him to an appointment, and the first thing another parent said, laughingly, when they saw me was,

“I hear it was your fault.”

***sigh***

If anybody needs me, I’ll be hiding out from Children’s Services……

A friend of mine on Facebook, who is the mother of a couple of young kids, asked me for my thoughts on how to parent well.  She seemed to think, and this still cracks me up, that I am doing something right in the raising of my Varmint and Critter.  She bases this on my postings on Facebook and here on Mama Boe.

My immediate response is that there is no single way to raise a kid.  My second response is that life is so dynamic that one moment you think you’re doing it well, and the next you are sure you’ve scarred them for life.  My third response is it depends on how you define ‘parent well’.  If by ‘parent well’ you mean help your children grow up to be productive, positive, content members of society, that is one thing.  If you mean that you survive the process, that’s quite another.

She said, “No, seriously.”

I was serious.

But since that didn’t mollify her, I gave her a trite little nugget to cling on to like a drowning woman to a life-preserver.  I thew out the ol’, “Try to encourage them twice as much as you criticize them.”  Because kids tend to only remember the negative for some god-forsaken reason.  I swear, despite every time I’ve told my kids how wonderful they are, they only remember the time I called them butt-heads.

And they can be butt-heads.

But then it hit me.  EVERY life we touch we would do better to encourage twice as much as criticize. Not just our children…. but also our neighbor’s children and our neighbors and their parents and their dog.  My trite little nugget actually had substance when I gave it a moment of thought.  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be told what I’m doing right as opposed to what I’m doing wrong.

You want to raise your kids to be happy and positive?  Show them that.  Live that.  And then, while you’re at it, show the rest of the world, too.  It’s hard to do that when you’re in a funk, or when your bitchy, or when things around you go awry.  But even in all those instances, the point is no less true.

Lift up more than you pull down.

And that includes yourself.  So many people I know love to tear themselves down.  It’s easier for them to believe they are screw ups than it is to believe they are wonderful.  I joke around and say I’m slow-witted, or fat, or whatever silly thing might make a joke, but I AM jesting.  I really do like myself.  There is no one I’d rather be.

In trying to help out this lovely young mother, I ended up getting smacked upside the head with my own pithy truth.   I went from ‘hug ’em more than you yell at ’em,’ to ‘love and accept yourself.’

Anthony Robbins has got NOTHIN’ on me.

So there it is: Spend twice as much time praising as you do criticizing.   It applies to everyone.  Your kids.  Your spouse.  Yourself.

She asked if I had any other nuggets of wisdom for her.

I figured I was on a roll, so I added:
“Never give a child a drum”

Word.

A couple of weekends ago, it was raining.   I felt bad for my munchkins, who really wanted to go out and about. So I dragged the whole fam damily out to the Adventure Park Arcade and Indoor Rope Course to expend some energy.  I thought it would be fun! I thought it would be adventerous!  I thought it would be great exercise!

Clearly, I’m slow-witted and delusional.

Why?  Well, for one thing, I hate heights.

And my kids were not going to get up on the ropes unless I proved they were safe by placing my own monstrous girth and weight upon them as a stress test.

I hate heights, if I was not clear about that earlier.

But I got up there, and by golly so did they.

Except for My Captain, who stayed below in case he needed to put humpty dumpty back together again.  And to take pictures.

Ratfink.

Varmint is so brave.

Critter is fearless.

And fast.  Critter is fast and fearless.

They all were.

Except for Mama, who had a deathgrip on every solid piece of metal she could find…even though she was triple-tethered and double-harnessed and clinging desperately to any and every staff member she could find.

I hate heights.

So I finished my Hot Dog, and then sat twiddling my thumbs for a bit.  Grandma Jane had come with us, and she was doing a crossword puzzle while she waited.  That was all well and good, but all I had to keep myself entertained with was My Captain’s phone, which he had given me to hold while he braved the 5K obstacle course.

Whenever I get My Captain’s phone (and it’s rare because he doesn’t trust me with it for some reason, which frankly is unchivalrous and also a sad comment on our marriage)  I like to screw with his settings.  Usually I just change his ring tones.  Once I made his ring tone the sound of a woman climaxing.  That’s when he stopped sharing the combination to unlock his phone with me.

But for some reason he hadn’t changed it since I last knew it…and so there I was with an hour on my hands and nothing to do but screw with my beloved’s phone.  I can’t tell you what I did with it because I want him to find out on his own.

I like to keep him on his toes in this relationship.  Don’t want him to get too comfortable.

ANYWAYS….after about an hour passed by, two hot dogs, two cups of coffee, a blue gatorade and a potty break, I wandered over to the finish line with the camera.  I wasn’t disappointed.

The end of the course was a rope climb and a final mud pit.  I really enjoyed watching the wild abandon it unleashed in people:

I couldn’t see my Varmint and My Captain!  I waited and waited and waited…and then…

YEY!  There they are!  With My Varmint in the lead, no less!

Into the mudpit they went.  Well, into the mud pit My Captain went.  My Varmint was working smarter, not harder.

The wuss.

You can barely make them out, but there are many bungee ropes you are supposed to wiggle under.  My Varmint cheated and pulled them up or climbed over them.  All the spectators were chanting for her to dive in.

And as you can see, she mostly did!  Would you look at My Captain?!  Good LORD.  My washing machine weeps at the sight of this.

But they did it.  They completed a 5K that was challenging in the best of conditions, and these were NOT the best of conditions!

They had fun.

They got great exercise.

They spent time in the great outdoors.

They bonded.

They may have picked up some horrible dermatological fungus.

But that will be for another post altogether.