The "Kind" Dinner

The place where you live certainly plays an important role in shaping your lifestyle and values.  In my case, moving to and living in LA changed the way I look at dinner time.  Dinner used to be centered around one main dish, either meat, chicken or fish.  But now, feeding off (pun intended) the movement of eating a "kind diet," I have incorporated vegan dinners into the rotation, serving absolutely no animal products to my family a couple of days a week.

The first few times I attempted to introduce my family to vegan dinner night, they looked around the table and asked "where's the main dish?"  Moving from an animal-based diet to a vegan one is a difficult transition to make, even if it is only for a couple of days a week.  There is something physically and emotionally satisfying about eating a burger, or even chicken and rice, and you cannot reproduce this feeling with vegetation.  It makes one wonder, Why try?  Or, more specifically, why would I, someone who does not believe it is immoral to eat animals, incorporate vegan meals into my family dinners? 

I believe that if you hear of an idea enough times, you will be at least partially convinced.  Living in LA, it is impossible not to feel that a vegan diet is at least worth trying.  I have become "greener" in so many ways, seeing billboards everywhere I go convincing me that it is my job to save mother earth by recycling, reusing and buying green products.  It was only a matter of time before I started wondering about a greener diet.  I have always known the importance of eating healthy, such as whole grains and lean protein and many fruits and vegetables,  but now green was becoming the new healthy in my mind.  While I was swatting away at the notion that a vegan diet is "kinder" to the planet, the idea that a vegan diet is the most healthy was planting itself firmly in my mind.

So I jumped right in with both feet and committed to making a vegan dinner once a week.  But I quickly found that cooking and serving the dinner was the easy part; explaining to the kids this new way of eating was a bit more tricky.  They wanted to know where the meatballs for the pasta went, and if they are really expected to eat the rice and beans.  So I began educating them on the health benefits of increasing plant based products and decreasing animal products in their diets.  We went online and researched the dangers of high animal protein diets, and the benefits of plant based diets.  We even discussed the possible benefits to the planet that a vegan diet offers.  They asked me if I think it's wrong to eat meat, and I told them that to me, it's not about right and wrong.  It's about small lifestyle changes that are healthy and maintainable.  It's about knowing that there are other options for dinner that are not animal based.  It is about becoming more educated to the beliefs of  our ever changing society, and approaching them from a place of curiosity and open-mindedness.  Then they asked for doubles of the vegan pasta and sauce.  And as they ate this heart-healthy dinner, rich in vitamins and minerals and educational at the same time, I reflected that this is exactly what I would call a Kind Diet.

Stream of Conciousness, or Unfiltered Thoughts of a Harried Mom

The profound and the mundane swim around in my head, swirling together and creating an indiscernible collage.  Indecipherable from one another, important and trivial become one and the same.  The blackberry buzzes nonstop for twenty chaotic minutes, then it is silent for two hours.  Why does everyone call at the same time?  What should I prepare for dinner tonight?  Nobody wants to eat the same thing twice in a row.  Yet starving children in Africa (and elsewhere?) would be grateful to eat anything.  I'd be grateful for a piece of chocolate right now.  And coffee.  And I'm grateful for running sneakers that take me the distance, and can you even do distance on a treadmill?  I do.  Six miles, sometimes only two, I always find myself exactly where I started.  And then it's time to have lunch.  Salad for me, mac and cheese for the kids.  Is this mine or is it yours?  Is it time to flip the laundry already?  When did she grow so tall?  The passing of time is a stealthy adversary, acting when we are busy with other things and deceiving us when we look in the mirror and are greeted by someone much older than ourselves.  We are all at different stages in the time continuum, but not at any stage for long.   There are babies and old ladies, young children and midlife crises.  Is a sports car really that dangerous?  And shouldn't red light camera's be illegal?  There are too many rules.  And we're out of yogurt again.  Wow the kitchen stayed clean for a full hour.  Questions about pirates and ninjas, and are there any REAL princesses these days?  Almost time to put the kids to bed.

Can Gender Be Neutral?

Can gender be chosen by each individual, or is it assigned?  According to one couple in Toronto, each child should have the right to choose his or her gender without any external pressure from parents and society.  They named their youngest child Storm, and they have not told anyone, not even the grandparents, the gender of their baby.  See the full article here:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110524/ts_yblog_thelookout/parents-keep-childs-gender-under-wraps

Why do they want their baby to be genderless?  They feel that society puts too much pressure on children to conform to specific gender roles.  Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, parents of Storm, feel that Storm should be able to wear whatever color he or she chooses, and to play with whatever toys he or she wants.  They have two older children, both boys, who wear pink and have long hair, but they feel the gender neutrality is not complete because their gender is known.  They want to let Storm make his or her own choices about his or her gender, and to be able to decide when to share that information.  But have they truly left the choice to Storm?  Or have they already made a gender-related choice for Storm?

We all impose our beliefs onto our children.  Children look towards their parents for direction, and form their values based on the parents guidance.  This Canadian couple is trying to let their children make their own choices regarding their genders and not imposing the choice on them.  But in doing so, they are in fact imposing two values on them; one, that parents don't have the right to make choices for their children, and two, that gender neutrality is preferable over defined gender roles.  The question of whether parents should or shouldn't impose their values on their children and make choices for them is a moot point because it is impossible not to do so, just as it is impossible to be genderless.

"What's My Prize?"

Kids have a desire to be rewarded for every good deed.  My children are especially talented in negotiating prizes for the things they do.  When they score well on a test, I immediately tell them I'm proud of them, and the first thing they say is, "Can I get an Ipod as a prize?"  When I say good job cleaning your room, they say can we get ice cream since we did such a good job?  When I ask them to finish the book report they are working on, they say, when we finish it can we go to Toy's R Us for a prize?  They even want a reward for hitting a home run in baseball (although, granted, I offered this prize on my own, I was so proud!)

Rewards have their benefits.  People often need external motivation to complete non-meaningful tasks.  But I think the goal should not always be the reward.  The goal is to find intrinsic value in everything we do, and eventually the task itself should be the reward.  While my children receive many prizes for jobs well done (they really are great negotiators,) they also receive many speeches about finding satisfaction in the work itself.  The reward for a good grade in math is having a good grade in math.  The reward for cleaning your room is  having a clean room.  The reward for finishing your book report is having completed your book report.  And the reward for hitting a home run is a score for your team, and the lego set you've been waiting for (hey, as I said, I was REALLY proud.)  Kids are human, and they will need some external motivation, but these should be used as a tool to reach the final goal of finding meaning in the task itself.

Being human myself, I wonder, what's my reward for being a patient mother?  What about my prize for spending my free time building a lego tower with my toddler instead of reading my book, for contemplating with my older children the pros and cons of choosing flying as your superpower instead of chatting with my friend on the phone, and for reading to my daughter a disney princess book instead of getting a manicure?  But even as I write this question, I know the answer.  My reward IS being a patient mother, building a lego tower with my toddler, discussing superpowers with my sons, and reading a princess book to my daughter.  I wouldn't trade it for any other prize in the world.

Where did all this laundry come from?

The title for this post pretty much says it all, but I'm going to write it anyway.  If there is one thing I do more than the dishes, it's the laundry.  A mother's job is never "done."  We cook dinner, and it gets eaten, and then we have to cook dinner all over again the next night.  We clean the kitchen, which usually lasts about a couple of hours until the kids come back in for a snack.  We give the baby a bath, and sometimes the results of that job don't even last the day.  No matter how many snacks we prepare in a day, there is always someone who wants another, different snack.  No matter how many dishes we wash, there is always another dish waiting in the sink.  And of course, no matter how much laundry we do, there is always more.  A mother can sometimes feel like there is no sense of accomplishment in her job.

Yet at the same time, there is more accomplishment in a mother's job than any other job.  It is a job which is never completed, and yet it allows things to happen in a way no other job can.  I was reflecting on the fact that I've been washing and folding (and sometimes even ironing, but rarely) my children's clothing for over ten years, and I'm still not done.  That's right, after ten years of laundry, there is still more laundry in the basket in my son's room.  You'd think by now I'd be done.  I might feel like I will never accomplish anything at this rate.  But then I took a closer look at the laundry I was folding, and I noticed that instead of size newborn, they shirts were size 10.  I realized that although it seems like nothing was accomplished, so much was.  And if I wasn't folding my son's laundry, and washing the dishes he ate off, and making him another snack, he would never have grown into the boy he is now.

After a day of cleaning and folding, I look around the house and wonder how many hours until I have to start the process over again.  The constant turnover of housework doesn't seem to say much about all the work I've done.  But hidden between the piles of neatly folded laundry is the story of how far my family has come.

In Celebration of Mother's

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers and especially to my very own Mom.  While every day really should be "Mother's Day," and acknowledging how much we appreciate our mothers and love them should not only be done once a year, nevertheless this is a day to celebrate motherhood and recognize it's importance on a national level.  So to my mom, and to all mothers, thank you for being so awesome!

More on Socializing

This video made me laugh at about 3 minutes in.  Especially because I just wrote a post explaining how homeschoolers socialize, and how in school true socializing doesn't take place; and the responses in the comments were mostly "but how do you socialize your children? If they don't go to school they will be weird."  The baseless argument has become so rhetoric people cannot even think beyond it.  This animated video is 5 minutes long, and very worth watching.  If you wonder how homeschoolers socialize, this video might help you understand.  And if homeschool, this video will look like conversations you have certainly heard before and will probably make you laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjOXT_KSFhA&feature=player_embedded