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Songs of the Seasons

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December is here, and Christmas music is part of the festive fun. Has it been playing in your home for months? Or can you stomach it for only a short period of time? It’s not my fave. I couldn’t listen to it for more than one month out of the year, my husband can give it about a week, but my girls love it! And so, for roughly 25 days, we hear a lot of the same songs over and over and over-and over.

My Spotify playlist of Christmas favorites includes:

  • Mary’s Boy Child, which, in my humble opinion, is not played nearly enough on the radio!

  • Feliz Navidad. My siblings and I have a gift exchange each year and we have named the yearly event “Feliz” because of the song.

  • Merry Cherry Christmas is a lesser-known Neil Diamond Christmas song that my younger loves. I always wonder, what is a Cherry Christmas anyway?

  • It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. When my older was just about 2, this song was playing on the radio and after Andy William sings, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” I heard a little voice say, “It really IS the most wonderful time of the year.” Such a great memory!

  • Do They Know It’s Christmas? Can I be a child of the 80s and not love this song? Best line, of course, is when Bono sings, “Well tonight, thank God, it’s them instead of you.”

  • Christmastime. My sister-in-law put together a Christmas CD and this was on it-first time I had heard it. We listen to the CD when we bake cookies, so this reminds me of cookie baking.

  • Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). I know you are surprised a U2 song didn’t rank higher on my list.

  • Christmas Cannon. I just think it’s a very pretty song.

  • Same Old Lang Syne For years I didn’t really consider this a Christmas song-guess I still really don’t-but I like it and it gets played a lot during the Christmas season.

  • Silent Night is beautiful and sums up the true meaning of the season. Each year our Christmas Eve church service ends with a candle-lit sing-along of this tune.

 

And the worst? That song about the boy who wants to buy his mom Christmas shoes. So depressing!

What are your faves? Shoot me an email and let me know some new ones I need to add to my list!

Margaret Sarver jams to Christmas tunes for one month from her home in Lenexa (and in her minivan, which makes her ultra-cool). 

Coming Clean: Organization Skills for Kids

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Does your child’s bedroom look like a tornado recently swept through? What about the backpack or school locker? If your pack rat can’t seem to find homework projects, library books or a favorite pair of shoes, it may be time to instil some basic organizational know-how. Strong organizational skills serve children well through grade school, college and beyond and help them avoid the daily stress of hunting down lost items-not to mention tardy slips, missed buses and late classwork.

Research from the New York University Child Study Center shows that organizational skills training boosts school performance and reduces family squabbles in children with ADHD. And experts say every child can learn to be more organized, beginning in toddlerhood.

Here’s how to get started, at any age.

TODDLER/PRESCHOOL YEARS 2-5


Model behavior

Do you complain about after-dinner cleanup or moan about making your bed? Your toddler will pick up on your attitude about organization, says behavioral psychologist Richard Rende, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School in Providence, RI. Model a positive attitude about daily tidying up to foster cooperation in tiny tots.

Children as young as 18 months can begin learning basic guidelines for organization (just don’t expect a spotless bedroom quite yet!). And because toddlers often enjoy cleanup, parents can take advantage of tots’ enthusiasm to begin instilling good habits. Start by setting a few simple family rules-for example, cleaning up one activity before starting another or always putting dirty clothes in the hamper-and follow through. Young children can learn and sing a “cleanup song” when it’s time to put toys away.

 

ELEMENTARY YEARS 6-12


Schoolwork shuffle

Homework assignments, permission slips and other school paperwork can pile up for grade-schoolers-and losing track of these school papers creates a hassle for both students and parents. Now’s the time to begin teaching children how to keep school items organized, says Karen Meadows, Ph.D., supervisor of K-8 counseling for Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, NC. First, create a spot for school papers at home-a hanging file folder or wall file works well-as well as a special place for your child to put papers that need a parent’s attention, like permission slips or class newsletters.

Set a daily time for homework and provide the tools your student needs to stay on track, like a timer and calendar. Help your child develop daily routines that support organization: emptying his or her backpack at the end of the school day, writing assignment due dates on the calendar and chunking up big projects into smaller, more manageable tasks.

TEEN YEARS 13-18


Schedule sync

If anyone needs a well-ordered schedule, it’s a teenager. Between academics, after-school jobs and extracurricular activities, a teen’s daily routine can be incredibly hectic. Parents can help teens learn vital organization skills to manage a busy schedule-just make sure teens are the ones doing the organizing to keep the focus on skill-building. “Collaborate with your teen to develop organizational strategies. Their buy-in is important. Teens are more prone to follow through with strategies if they’ve been a part of the decision-making process,” Meadows says.

When it comes to bedroom cleanliness, teens can set their parameters while upholding certain family guidelines. The floor must be visible, for example, and any food wrappers or dishes need to be cleaned up daily. Visual cues can help a scattered teen stay organized, so invest in a white board or a large write-on calendar for a teen’s bedroom. And use teens’ love of all things tech to teach self-management skills using apps with daily schedule reminders, homework calendars and task timers. Once teens clean up their act, Meadows says, praise consistent progress. “The best way to always be organized is to stay organized!”

 

Malia Jacobson is an award-winning health and parenting journalist and mom of three. Her latest book is Sleep Tight, Every Night: Helping Toddlers and Preschoolers Sleep Well Without Tears, Tricks, or Tirades.

How to Rock Family Fun Night with Tweens & Teens

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When your kids were younger, family fun took center stage, whether that meant a riveting game of Chutes and Ladders or a backyard light saber duel. But now that the kids are older, how do you get your tweens and teens to want to hang out with the folks?

Besides creating great memories, family fun nights with tweens and teens also mean parents worry less about where the kids are going, who they’re with and what they’re doing. To make hanging with the family something tweens and teens look forward to, try these ideas to jumpstart the family fun.

Family Dinner

A fun family dinner can be as simple as ordering a pizza or take-out barbecue and eating out on the back porch for a change of scenery.

But to up the fun factor, try these mouthwatering ideas:

  • Declare a “kids in the kitchen” night where your tweens and teens get to be in charge from start to finish. Let them create the menu, shop for the ingredients and cook the meal-with parents on cleanup duty.

  • Try to recreate a dish from your favorite restaurant at home, either by trial-and-error cooking or some culinary sleuthing online for copycat recipes.

  • Pick a different ethnic food to cook together, such as Mexican or Greek cuisine, as a fun way to explore other cultures.

  • Engage in a friendly competition, where each family member makes a different course (entrée, dessert, etc.). Afterward, everyone talks about which creation wins top honors.

  • Take your kids to farmers markets, food festivals or similar events to help them select some never-tried-before produce. It gives them a hands-on experience and encourages them to try new foods.

Movie Night

Everyone loves to watch a great flick, but what can take the movie-watching experience from good to great? Consider upgrading your home theater environment to create a space that makes kids want to stay home. Depending on your budget, you can hang fun movie posters, build a new DVD case and install dimmable lighting (less expensive options) or install surround sound, get a larger TV or even buy custom leather seats (higher ticket options).

You want to feel like you’re front and center, explains David Pidgeon, CEO of Dallas-based Starpower, the largest seller of projectors in the United States. “With a 120-inch screen, you actually feel like you’re at the movies, giving you the complete theater experience but without the crowds and sticky floors,” says Pidgeon.

The key is to create a media room that brings everyone together. “Don’t make it the parents’ room that the kids get to use,” he says. “Make it fun for the whole family.”

Creating a fun media room yields a great side benefit too. “I want our home to be the place that our kids want to hang out with us and their friends,” says Pidgeon, a father of three teenagers. “When you provide a fun atmosphere at home, the kids gather there and you worry less about where they’re going.”

Game Night

Get your game on! Goodbye Chutes and Ladders and hello strategy games, cooperative games and party games good for a crowd. Play something fun that engages kids and stimulates their minds. Need a few ideas? Take your cue from these moms:

From Betsy McMenamin (three kids ages 14-22)

Pandemic is awesome! You don’t play in teams-all players work together collectively. You either all win or you all lose.

From Suzan Dees (two kids ages 13 and 21):

I brought out an old favorite game, Scattergories, and my kids loved it!  It was so much fun to see what they came up with.

Other family games perfect for tweens and teens: Apples to Apples, Reverse Charades, Clue, Spontuneous and Settlers of Catan.

Whether you’re whipping up tamales in the kitchen, watching your favorite thriller on the big screen or playing a board game, you can bring your family together-even the tweens and teens-for a night of fun.

 

Lisa Beach is a freelance journalist and copywriter for hire. Her work has been published in Good Housekeeping, USA Today Back to School, Parents, Edible Orlando and more. Check out her writer’s website at LisaBeachWrites.com.

 

Hot Letters Can Cool a Temper

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Some of our historical elite, such as President Lincoln, wrote what he termed a “hot letter.” If he was upset with someone, rather than speak from an angry place, he would pen his feelings but never send the missive. After he vented in the letter, he found access to the strength of wisdom he needed. On the hot letters he’d write: Never sent. Never Signed. President Truman wrote them. Churchill too.

These hot letters in the annals of our world leaders make for eye-opening and sometimes funny reading. How easily the first things out of these people’s minds, their reactionary responses, could have led to major, negative impacts for our governments and, by extension, the world.

Bringing it down to scale, I personally have used the backspace key and watched a message fall apart word by word when I wisely rethought a spiky text and chose to reword my message. A box of journals sits in my closet, old, quiet and deflated, and in them I see many hot letters. In your own life, you might recall a few of these, especially when the genre is expanded to a fuller breadth. Writing the unsent letter can serve a person far more than simply cooling hot emotions. Many love notes have been written and not sent. Much grief has been facilitated on paper when a broken heart couldn’t find the strength to show up and speak words. Mark Twain, a man who also was known for his gift of humorous and wise correspondence, said these types of letters provided him “unallowable frankness and freedom.”

Our social media today is full of whip-like retorts that come not from a place of wisdom, but of anger and bravado. The norm has begun to lean toward striking first, then thinking deeply second. Our children aren’t immune to this. Adult culture, of course, gets funneled down to the playground, classroom and school hallways. These environments are at risk of becoming more volatile with pint-sized problems evoking rapid fire responses.

Ironically, this rapid response cycle is one we generally used to label as childish and immature. We see these quick-fire and often hurtful exchanges as developmentally on cue for our children, but we push them to grow beyond this kind of communication. With the adult communication world backsliding a bit, our children can use even more help up the hill.

When I heard Lincoln’s perfect metaphor of hot letters, the whole process of expressing feelings without throwing spears at actual people became really teachable for me. I had the infrastructure for hot letters in my own past; I just needed his perfect two-word branding to gussy it up for my kids. (The worthiest form of advertising is that which tugs on our need for wisdom. Thank you, Mr. President.).

As fate would have it, the very day I read of Lincoln’s term, I picked both my girls up from school and found them both in different storms of feelings (which is a lot of weather in one car, as many of you can attest). The older, 12, was upset by the actions of a friend, and the younger, 7, was upset with her teacher. I explained how hot letters work and asked whether, when we got home, they would want to write them.

My kids got the message that these letters would help them like a healing balm. They were both so on board I was stunned-but then again, wisdom is elegant, and elegance is simple, and children are simple in the best and brightest of ways. First thing after they hung up their backpacks, they wrote their letters. My younger daughter wasn’t yet able to spell proficiently and was worried about not expressing exactly what she felt. I suggested she draw a picture of her feelings. I was ready for her frustration after I said this, but she went to work with her crayons.

When they finished, I didn’t ask to look at their letters. I wanted to give them the freedom to express themselves in their own words or pictures. I wanted them to know that when they reached for this type of letter again, what they said or drew could be spiky and loaded without my intervening and trying to “nice it up.” I wanted them to know these emotions were their own to herd out of their brains in the ways that resonated with them.

My want was satisfied. I wanted to help them feel better without making others or themselves feel worse. On the flipside of letting our angry emotions fly, when we roll over our emotions and stuff them down, we can walk around with an unidentified heaviness in our mental world. And as we too well know, unheard, cumulative negative emotions can turn highly combative in different ways after a period of time. However mean or angry their letters sounded, those emotions were no longer only stuffed inside their minds.

We paraded our letters out to the fire pit and burned them, which seemed totally appropriate for hot letters. I have to add that if you can include the element of letting children safely burn their letters, this adds significantly to the wow factor of the whole event-makes it more of a ceremony.

I could tell writing and burning their hot letters allowed my daughters to own and manage their feelings in a way they hadn’t previously experienced. Not only did they get to more safely feel the feelings and let them go, but they stood up straighter (I think) from the authentic thrill of empowerment. This is what we want for ourselves and our children. Life is never without emotional challenge. You can read that even the sages get tripped up by their own emotions sometimes.

On the way back into the house after burning her letter, my older daughter said, “Mom you should be a psychologist.” To which I thought, thank you, Mr. President, your wisdom has been honored here today. 

Maggie Uhl lives in Waldo with her family.

Giving gifts worth remembering

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This year, Lee’s Summit mom Kathryn Adams wanted to give her 4-year-old son a Christmas gift he would talk about for years to come. They decided to head to Branson to take a ride on the Polar Express train-something bound to captivate any imaginative train-loving boy.

“My husband and I chose to take our son to ride the Polar Express because he loves trains,” Kathryn says. “He has plenty of toys, so we thought this experience would be a lifelong memory.”

When the toys and clutter begin piling up in your home and you want to give your children something more meaningful for Christmas, consider these ideas:

Memberships. Kansas City boasts an abundance of family-friendly destinations, and many offer yearly or seasonal memberships. Having memberships to these places can create hours of entertainment and enjoyment, and they can serve as a solution any time the kids are bored.

Movie/concert tickets. These can be perfect indoor activities during the winter months.

Contributions to their college funds. This is definitely a lesson in delayed gratification for something that’s not necessarily a “fun” gift, but teaching children to appreciate a college contribution as a gift will go far in helping them prioritize their future needs.

Books, art supplies and magazine subscriptions. These can make for fun and educational gifts.

Lessons of some kind: music, swimming or other sports. Not only are such lessons educational, they also can help children reach their goals.

Clothes. Accepting clothes as gifts can help children learn to be grateful for the necessities in life.

Vouchers for various experiences and privileges children can redeem at times of their choosing. For a number of years, Lee’s Summit mom Kristin Gravatt has been giving her daughter vouchers for things such as “get out of making your bed,” “choose dinner plans,” “choose what park you want to go to,” “manicure and pedicure” and “movie night.” She said her daughter gets quite excited to pull them out and redeem them, and most of the activities are family-based and not materialistic.

Camp. Give the gift of summer camp! For details visit KanakukSummer.com. Additionally, Santa typically leaves a voucher at their home for something winter-related, such as “take a magical sled ride.”

Trips. Branson has many attractions worth visiting during the Christmas season, including the Polar Express train and Silver Dollar City. Gravatt says her family has enjoyed many trips to Branson around Christmastime, but this year they are stepping up the traveling and going on a cruise to Mexico.

Another creative approach to giving children’s gifts is to develop categories of gifts. Lee’s Summit mom Bree Raymond is trying to minimize around her home and, after seeing discussion on the Facebook group of popular minimalist mom Allie Casazza, she decided to create four categories of gifts for her children. Her daughters will be receiving gifts that classify as something they want, something they need, something they can do and something they can read.

“We’ve always felt our house is filled with unnecessary toys our kids never play with after Christmas,” Raymond says. “We are drowning in stuff, and we are trying to live more minimalist.”

Some of the gifts her daughters have chosen include sewing classes, a skateboard, a fishing pole and bow and arrow. Other gifts include a membership with Sluggerr’s Blue Crew at the Royals and paddle boarding with Dad. Raymond says they also are doing a non-electronic Christmas filled with gifts that do not involve technology.

This approach to Christmas, she says, will help her family reduce the amount of possessions in the house, as the gifts are more focused on activities.

Membership ideas

Are you looking for gifts to keep your children entertained throughout the year? Consider memberships to the following family-friendly Kansas City destinations and organizations:

  • Kansas City Zoo

  • Science City

  • Paradise Park

  • Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead

  • The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures

  • LegoLand Discovery Center/Sea Life Aquarium  

  • Worlds of Fun/Oceans of Fun

  • Powell Gardens

  • Local community centers with indoor pools (Legacy Park Community Center, Matt Ross Community Center and the new Lenexa Rec Center are great ideas.)

  •  

Allison Gibeson is a Lee’s Summit mom and writer.

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