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Early Eleanor art
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Like laying your hand over your child's forehead to do a quick check for fever, these seven little questions give a good idea of whether there's a problem.
(Fair warning: If you'd never use just your hand to check for fever, you might not want to go any farther...)
Your child mentions that a schoolmate brought in chocolate-chip cookies for the class to celebrate his birthday. You:
- Call the school to clarify its sugar-and-flour policy, petition the PTA to start a campaign banning birthday treats, and/or erase this diabetic-trainee's number from the playdate roster in your Blackberry.
- Bite your tongue but take care to balance your child's diet (and calorie intake) the rest of the week by banishing desserts and serving only organic carrots for snack.
- Say, "That's nice, and how did you do on the math test?"
Your son wants a pirate blunderbuss for his birthday. You:
- Tell him that there is too much meanness and killing in the world and guns are not appropriate playthings for nice little boys, while making a mental note to check out peace camp next summer.
- Try to divert his attention to books about pirates instead. Or better yet, books about more appropriate boy heroes like cowboys--wait, more guns--or soldiers--no, more guns--or spacemen--do laser guns count?--or sports figures--well, except for the steroids, the gambling, the bling--
- Wrap up the gun along with an eyepatch, dagger, hook, and Jolly Roger flag. Yo ho ho!
Loud wails float down from the floor above where your children are playing. You:
- Rush up the stairs two at a time to comfort the wailer, coax an apology from the sibling, and deliver a loving lecture on fine points of turn-taking.
- Sigh deeply and holler, "Are you okay?" (while being wracked with guilt about your high-decibel role modeling).
- Wait. You know that it's overly quiet play that's a real sign of trouble.
Your 9-year-old is such a promising soccer player--"scholarship material"--that her coach wants her to play in a second, more competitive league. You:
- Congratulate yourself on your luck (and talented genes) and sign right up; show your commitment by asking for the name of a good private coach and switch to a part-time job so you can have more time for hauling her to tournaments and scouting events.
- Gripe and moan about the all-weekend travel, the high-priced camps, the lost family time-not that you'd dare miss a single practice or game.
- Calculate the odds of a scholarship, the amount, and the price of gas for getting to all those lost-weekend practices and games, and decide you'd rather sleep in on Sunday morning.
It's a rainy Saturday. Your child whines, "I'm booooorrred." You:
- Come to the rescue with a craft project for the two of you (saved up for this very emergency) followed by a Chutes and Ladders marathon and a trip to the Apple store for a few new computer games.
- Start dialing for playmates and, finding them all gone off to lacrosse camp and Junior Scrabble tournaments, rue the dreadful cosmic coincidence that your child's own Chinese lesson and competitive tumbling team practice were both cancelled.
- Say, "Go twiddle your thumbs," and congratulate yourself for simultaneously boosting your child's dexterity and creativity.
It's your turn to bring napkins for the class fall party. You:
- Consult the other mommies about theme, decorations, and menu in order to color-coordinate, and get a class list from the teachers so you can stencil each child's name on a pesticide-free oak leaf that you will fashion into a napkin-holder.
- Run all over town to find the last pack of fallish-looking napkins still in stock.
- Put "napkins" on the shopping list, forget the list when you go shopping, and scrounge up last year's leftover Christmas cocktail party and birthday-party napkins. You know that kids don't notice party napkins any more than they use them.
The backseat bickering has reached migraine-pitch. You:
- Ignore it because the poor dears are probably just tired/hungry/eager to get home/upset because the TV in the car is broken.
- Threaten to take away the X Box when you get home...you're serious...you really mean it...not one more word....
- I'm sorry, what was the question? I was too busy yelling at my kids to understand it.
Rate Yourself in the box at right.
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