I’m starting a new advice column on Motherblogger. My dear friend, Peter Schaeffer, Ph.D an amazing psychotherapist will also be on hand to answer questions. Here’s the first installment. Send us the questions that are keeping you up all night and we promise to answer them as best we can. My specialty: gifts for friends. Schaeffer’s specialty: all real problems.

Dear Motherblogger,

I want to lose weight before my kid’s school starts so I look good when I see all my old mom friends on the playground at pickup. But it’s only a week away and I refuse to do the Cabbage Diet. I don’t have time to workout because we’re hosting friends for Labor Day weekend and frankly after a summer with my kids my willpower is shot and I need to eat and drink whatever I please to feel happy. Any suggestions?

Signed,

Always a 10, never an 8

Dear 10,

I feel the same way. Somehow I always start off fit in June and soft around the edges in September.  For me summer is like the holiday-time only it lasts for three months. Someone pours me a glass of rose at 2:30 in the afternoon and I think, “What the heck its summer.” Same goes for when I see corn or the cob and lobster salad.  Or I hear the ice cream man ring his jingle. I wave him down, ostensibly for the kids, and order a Toasted Almond bar too telling myself, “What the heck it summer”. When it’s time to start packing school lunches, I’ve packed on a few too.

Now that the weather is cooler though I’m ready to slip into something less forgiving than a tankini and a cover up. A friend invited me shopping today, but I had to work and I was relieved because I wasn’t ready to watch myself try to wiggle into a pair of jeans that are just a wee bit to tight.

So she went off to Nordstrom’s without me and while there she was fitted for a new Wacoal bra. She came back walking taller looking like she lost ten pounds. When I complemented her new silhouette she told me about her new bra and said, “I feel like I’m being supported by a strong man’s hands.”

Cross my heart.

Forget the crash diet, just go get a Wacoal bra. They run about $55. But for an instant drop in dress size, it seems worth the price and come Sept 9th, you’ll feel like you have a brand new body.

It’s a breezy 59 degrees I’d planned on taking Dash to the park but the clouds are moving in. If we have to skip the park, as soon as we come home from school Dash is going to head straight for the couch with a sippy cup and ask me if he can watch Super Friends until his brother comes home from his playdate. But I’m sick of the TV and more sick of me letting them watch it.  I’ve got a rule that I try hard to stick to: 15 minutes of TV = me reading them one book, and yes there are days where I have to read them 8 books!

But today, we’re not turning on the TV we are going to make a craft and given my lack artistic flair this is a pretty big deal (see Holiday Workout post from 12/20). We are going to make DIY candy necklaces. I think I read about them on familyfun.com but I can’t find the recipe/instructions so I’m just going to wing it. Here’s how you make it:

Buy one bag of string licorice (red or blue or whatever color you think they will like)

Cherrios (I’ll probably break down and get Honey Nut)

And then add whatever candy or snack has a hole in it: Lifesaver gummies, pretzel tubes, etc. (Knowing Dash, he’ll want to add his secret favorite snack: uncooked Pokemon pasta). Hey it’s his necklace.

Then we’ll string the Cheerios and gummy Lifesavers on the licorice, tie it and he can eat it and rock out with his DIY candy jewels.

The whole thing should take about 15 minutes.  And then I’m sure he will ask me if he can watch Super Friends.

I’ll  post a photo if I get one.

I like my boys to look neat. They don’t need to wear peter pan collars but they do need to have clean faces and brushed hair. My boy’s tidiness says: we’re pretty much pulled together, even if we’re not. The problem is that Dashiell has had a dreadlock growing in the back of his hair for about six weeks. It started over the holidays as a maple syrup tangle that grew bigger and bigger every time I would try to comb it out or spritz it with leave in conditioner. I think the conditioner gummed up when he slept on it and it grew and grew and grew. Never mind that when I would try to touch it he would run away and try stuff his head in any small place it might fit, like his mini kitchen stove and that was actually was much more troubling than the dreadlock itself.  I brought him to the hair dresser and she couldn’t even get it out with professional detangling product without making him cry. We discussed cutting it out but it was close enough the the crown of his head that it would be an Alfalfa if it was lobbed off. So I thought I could work on it slowly (just like when his circumcision tried to reattached itself and I had to pull his foreskin back everyday day during the first three months of his life. Slow and steady won that race, so I could handle this.)

The other day I was at a party and talking about his hippie-hairdo and a friend asked, “Why not try Goo Gone?” We laughed. How funny to use  a petroleum based product that’s powerful enough to wash asphalt stains off t-shirts near my kids scalp. Hilarious!

Hilarious yet intriguing. Last night as I was, once again, making him cry by spritzing and combing his dreadlock in the tub I finally hollered to David, “Honey, can you bring me the Goo Gone!”

David brought the bottle up with a big question on his face and I flashed to that horrible scene in Slumdog when Jamal and Samil escape from the beggar camp.  Children are so willing… the first time around. David  watched me check the label that read: “Non-Toxic… Avoid prolonged contact with skin.” Clearly, if they could use the word “prolonged” it wasn’t going to burn his brain right away. I took Dashiell’s tangle in my palm and massaged a few drops of Goo Gone on it, being careful to not let the tangle touch his head or the rest of his hair. David got very nervous and told Conrad to get out of the tub and turned to me and said, “You know what else might work, setting the tangle on fire.”

I gave him my most understanding eye roll and kept massaging the knot and it completely came undone! After a shampoo and rinse his hair was as smooth as new baby peach fuzz. Except for a very slight industrial cleaner-ish smell that’s on the back of his head, you’d never even know his type of hair could master a dread lock at all. I’ve spent most of this morning, running my through his fine and shiny hair.

I know it sounds risky, but it was effective and I’d also use it (sparingly) for those times your kid’s hair comes in contact with:

Glue (Krazy, Gorilla, Elmers, and Rubber Cement)

Honey

Gum

Nail Polish ( it’s probably safer than nail polish remover because it works so quickly there’s less exposure to chemicals)

Vaseline

Diaper ointment

Penut Butter

My name is Francesca Castagnoli and I’m a screamer.

Admitting I’m a mom that screams, shouts and loses it in front of her kids feels like I’m revealing a dark family secret (like in the 1970s an uncle thought it was funny to use porno music as a soundtrack to our family videos). And even though I didn’t yell on the playdate where Conrad’s friend thought I was mean mom (see post below) , I have yelled. And yelling isn’t really done anymore. It’s a retro idea like leaving your kids alone in the car while you buy groceries. There was a time when it was okay for parents to do that, but not anymore. And now screaming is as taboo as spanking.

Social stigma aside, yelling makes me feel bad. I’d yell at my kids and remember a clip from SuperNanny where they would show a child who had just been balled out by his mom alone in his room. He would be looking away from the camera, crying, feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. Every time they’d show the sad kid shot, I was always on that child’s side. “God that mom is such a bitch,” I’d think. But by 7pm the next day, somehow I would have cast myself as the bitchy mom yelling my head off while and my own kids were the ones crying in their room.

I had to stop. It simply wasn’t the tone I wanted to have in my house anymore. Luckily, my son’s preschool hosted parent’s workshop on how to stop the screaming cycle that has completely changed my approach to parenting. The tips were so helpful and family-life changing I just had to share them with you here:

Checking in with myself technique:
Before when I would come home from a crazy day and the kids would instantly start bickering to get my attention, I’d have to raise my voice to be heard above them. Now instead of yelling to simply be heard, I ask myself, what am I really feeling and how do I want my kids to see me? What is the vibe I want them to have tonight? Reflecting on how I feel helps me understand why I react the way I do. After a week of checking in with myself  I realized that when I come home I’m usually hungry or still stressed about work and I need to take a quick shower to transition to the chaos of home calmly. Once I tend to my needs for five to ten minutes, I’m more centered and I can be more thoughtful about how to deal with their cries for attention.

The silent scream:
During their bath, which can get fairly rambunctious, I would resort to yelling to get them to stop splashing me or to get out of the tub. Now I lean in and whisper and it works like a charm.

Act you age not shoe size:
Caught off guard by shocking behavior, say when my three-year-old breaks his brother’s Lego creation to get him to pay attention to him, or kick the dog, or climb on a chair where he’d be perched to crack his skull I’d shout at him not to do that. Now I say out loud, “What are you three!?” to remind myself that after all, my son is only three. My husband and I also use this technique when we see that the other person is about to lose it to remind each other how young children behave and no, they don’t “get it.” The beauty of this trick is that it can work for every age: your kid is lighting his soldiers on fire: What are you 9? Your kid is pregnant. What are you 16?

Give yourself a starchart:
Before I would yell and hope they wouldn’t remember, but I know that if they don’t actually remember the yelling they remember how it made them feel. Now I relish my new solution: I’ve decided to give myself a star chart and I reward myself at the end of the week with something really awesome for the house, or a long yoga class, or I make my husband get up in the morning, because I’m not the guilty party anymore.