I’ve had a major revelation recently about how to get my daughter to do more to help out at home.

She is seven and a half and for a while now we’ve had a chore chart going in an effort to get her to be more consistent about doing a few things to help. Nothing too crazy: Put away the dishes after dinner, make her bed in the morning, check her backpack for school, sweet the kitchen floor, feed her fish, etc. She is not terrible about remembering but I do have to reminder her, a lot.

The other day I wasn’t feeling well so I plunked down on the couch and said to my daughter, half kidding: “Could you please go and make me some tea and a snack?”. She has never done this and I wouldn’t trust her with the hot tea, but as soon as I said it she got really excited and ran to the kitchen. My husband was there and she asked him to help her get the tea ready and figure out what snack I might want. They came out and brought me some tea, cut up apples and some cheese on a tray. I kissed her and told her it was the best snack ever and she was so excited.

A few hours later I was in the kitchen finishing up making dinner and she came over and asked me: “Mama, do you want me to make you more tea?” I told her sure, so she went and got my husband, and they repeated the routine from before (she pressed the electric kettle button, he poured, she timed three minutes on the clock for the tea to steep). The next day she asked me again. And it’s now become a regular things she asks me and I don’t know which one of us likes it more.

So here is my revelation about how to get your kids to help out more:
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How much time do your kids get with an iPad/iPhone/computer?

Lately I find myself having this conversation a lot with friends and other moms at my daughter’s school. Everyone seems to be wondering what’s enough, what’s too much, and how everyone else is dealing with preventing the wave of technology from completely overtaking their homes and kids’ minds. And like every parenting decision, it’s not easy and not black and white.

I have spent the last ten years of my career working in technology and I am big enough to admit that yes, I am quite inseparable from my iPhone. A lot of it is for work but a lot of it is for things outside of work: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and a bunch of other time-takers. We have an iPad at home and a laptop in the office. My husband and I often spend the evenings sitting next to each other working on our respective work laptops.

Do I like that technology is such a huge part of our life? Absolutely not. I think there are ways in which it is bad for our family. We try to be as disciplined as we can - no phones when we are eating, no background TV, etc. - but we’re absolutely not perfect. It is a core part of our daily lives and while we can blame it on work, the reality is that that’s not the only reason we’re attached to our gadgets.
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We’ve got a pretty set routine most nights after work. My husband or I come home by 6pm to relieve the babysitter, who picks up our daughter from school. (We trade off nights when one of us can work late or hit the gym after work while the other gets home right on time. It’s something that allows our two-somewhat-crazy-job household to function.) When I get home, I hang with our kiddo for a bit in the kitchen, asking her about her day. Then it’s homework time, piano practice time, and if we have time left, we try to play a game or read together.

The other night I asked our daughter my usual coming-through-the-door question: “How was your day today?”

She said it was good and that they played museum on the playground (I think more adults need to play museum at work, but that’s for another post). And then she did something that startled me a little. She asked me how my day was.
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My daughter is a really good kid. Of course we all think our kids are good kids but there is a general consensus amongs friends and family that she is well-behaved, nice, and all-around not a lot of trouble. I dig that. But there is one thing that I’ve been pestering her about endlessly, especially as we’re in the midst of the holiday season: Saying thank you and please more often.

We’ve had lots of presents giving and lots of meals with friends and family, all of which made me realize that my daughter doesn’t remember her manners as often as I think she should. She is 7 and to be honest, I think most of the time when she doesn’t say thank you after finishing a meal or getting a present it’s because she is off to the next thing or she is excited to play with the new thing she just got. When I remind her to say thank you or to use please when she is asking anyone for anything — including family, friends or strangers — she is quick to do it.
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Yesterday was one of those Tuesdays which felt like ten terrible not very good Mondays squished in one. I’ll spare you the details, other than to say that it started with my sitting in traffic for over an hour and missing an important meeting and involved spilled tea, temporarily lost phone and forgetting to call someone I really needed to call. Yowsa. Needless to say by the time I got home I was cranky and exhausted.

I don’t know about you, but one of the first things that goes when I am exhausted is patience (and no, I’m not a very patient person to begin with). So when my kiddo - who also happened to be pretty tired - was goofing off as we practiced piano, I got upset. When she left her dinner dishes on the table and walked out of the kitchen, I gave her a lecture on my not being her made and her needing to clean up the dishes (it’s one of her responsibilities in our family.) You get the idea — it was one of those evenings.

After I put her to bed, had some tea and caught my breath a bit I felt pretty terrible.
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In the last few days I’ve been catching up with a few of my girlfriends who are either thinking about having kids or have just recently had a little one. All work and plan on continuing with their careers and so at some point our conversations turned to childcare. I have to admit that I was really surprised when all of them asked me a version of the same question:

Do you think if I get a nanny my kiddo will like her more than me?

We had a nanny for our daughter until she was three years old. Actually, we ended up having three nannies, each for about a year. We were pretty damn lucky, for the most part, because we had wonderful nannies who took great care of her and whom we treated as members of our family. Our last nanny in particular was so special that we literally considered not moving from New York City so that we could keep her. (We decided to move in the end, but it was a really tough separation - for our daughter as well as for us!) And the reason that my friends’ question surprised me so much is that I never thought about it myself.

Don’t get me wrong: Leaving my little three-month old daughter in the care of another person was excruciatingly hard.
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I realize this is one of those questions which is almost impossible to answer.

As soon as our kids become part of our lives we love and adore them and can’t imagine how we lived before we had them. (Well, that’s not entirely true — I still have some memories of getting a full night of sleep, deciding to meet a friend for dinner after work at a moment’s notice, and not worrying all the time, but you know what I mean.) We also don’t get to do our lives over so you can’t really know how things would have been if you’d had kids earlier or later.

Still, I’ve recently had this conversation with a few friends, so the topic is on my mind. One of my friends is in her mid 40s and she had her daughter at 38, which would probably be considered on the later side. She felt that having kids later in life was the right thing for her — she got established in her career, which made it easier for her to take a few years off and go back to work — and her husband — they got to travel and do all sorts of things that are harder to do with kids. Another friend, a guy actually, said that he felt he could have used a few more years of “maturing” (his word) before having kids.

I don’t quite know what my own answer would be.
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Our very good friends just had a baby, four weeks ago, to be precise. She is precious and amazing and they are tired and excited and overwhelmed. All par for the course. As we sat there, the little one napping on me an causing all sorts of nostalgia, my-friend-the-new-mom and I got into a bit of mom talk. Lack of sleep (sleep when the baby sleeps makes total sense), the reality of breastfeeding (much more painful and idyllic than she imagined), and trying to figure out how work and her other creative projects fit in now that she is a MOM and is completely in love with being one.

Boy, did that last one sound familiar. I didn’t want to be all grim about it, but what I told her is that even though my daughter is seven (OMG!) I don’t think I’ve got the winning formula down or even close to it. It’s something I juggle on a daily basis and sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m doing it very successfully. (I’m crossing my fingers that she appreciated an honest answer.)

I did want to be constructive so I shared some advice with my friend. I’d love to know what advice you’d give to a new working mom so please sound off in the comments.

• Don’t be a martyr. I did this, it’s stupid and it is not good for anyone in the family. I didn’t leave my kiddo’s side for 3 months until I went to work, save for a few doctor’s appointments or late night walks after she was asleep. My husband and I didn’t go out without her until she was nine months old. After I went back to work I pumped for 45 minutes at a time, 4 times a day, because my milk was running out but I was determined that I needed to keep my kiddo breast milk-only for a certain number of months. I can keep going for pages.
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A few years ago we moved to live closer to my and my husband’s parents. We wanted to be closer to family and I wanted my daughter to grow up around her grandparents — something I had a chance to do and truly cherish. (In fact, my mom’s parents are still alive and it’s pretty awesome to have them nearby.) Our parents work and stay pretty busy, but they do carve out some time to spend with our kiddo. One of those times is Saturday mornings, when my dad comes to pick her up around 9am, takes her to their house for breakfast, then brings her to dance class and hangs out with her a bit after.

Which means that on most Saturdays my husband and I get a few hours to take a walk, get some breakfast, run a few errands and generally de-compress. We’ve had this routine for a few years now and I’ve felt really lucky about it; our daughter enjoys some fun time with her grandparents and we get to catch our breath, even if just a bit.
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Earlier today I was spending some quality time with my organizer (it’s a new Filofax Flex organizer, if you must know, and yes, we’re becoming quite friendly), and realized that in just a few more week we’re back to a more hectic routine of school and after school activities. And then I see this article in the New York Times, titled Family Happiness and the Overbooked Child. Maybe someone is trying to tell me something?

The article is worth a read. It’s main point is that many parents are driven by the idea that they must expose their kids to all types of activities early on in order to set them up for success later in life… and that it may not be the right thing to do. According to some economists who’ve done research in this area, there is no indication that parental choices can be positively or negatively correlated with academic success. But what touched a nerve more than academic success is thinking about how overbooking our kids might be affecting their and our, as parents and as families, happiness. If rushing kids around from one activity to another and spending tons of money that puts a strain on finances to do so causes stress and anxiety for everyone involved, then what’s the true benefit?
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