Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Forgetful Mamas

It’s not even the insanely busy spring yet — the time when we’re overloaded with school projects, school events, national holidays, Little League & spring soccer games/practices — and I’ve still been forgetting stuff like sending my kid to school with lunch money, birthday parties, etc. So, when I was trying to get the Picket Fence Post family’s schedule into some semblance of order last week, I felt a bit better about my slacker-ness when I witnessed moms on TV shows being overwhelmed and forgetful too.

I dedicated my Mommy Tracked column this week to this topic, saying that:, “. . . [T]he depiction of two fictional moms on TV this past week screwing up in big ways when it came to their family’s schedules made me realize that, if moms feeling overwhelmed by the weird administrative complexity of contemporary child-rearing is now a punch line on TV shows, I can’t be the only one who’s feeling burned out.”

At least I haven’t forgotten my kids’ birthdays. Yet.

Do you find yourself forgetting stuff, repeatedly, despite your best efforts to get organized?

Item #2: Dysfunctional TV Families

I’ve been going on and on about how much I adore the ABC comedy Modern Family and how much hope I have for NBC’s brand, spankin’ new dramedy Parenthood. Well, the Boston Globe’s Don Aucoin mentioned those two shows when he wrote about a trend in family-centric TV shows as of late: A lack of parental authority.

In his piece, “Dysfunction Junction: Who’s the boss? TV parents these days are often as adolescent as their children,” he asserted that today’s TV parents aren’t as stable and authoritative as TV parents of years past, like on The Cosby Show. He quoted a woman who writes about media and parenting issues as saying: “Bill Cosby was hysterically funny, and yet when push came to shove on The Cosby Show, there was no question that he and his wife were the authority figures, no question that ‘We’re the parents here, we’re here to take care of you, we’re not your friends.’ We lost something there and it’s time to get it back. A better sense of parents not so much as dominant authorities but as parents.”

While I agree that we’ve lost an overall sense of authority over today’s kids, I think the TV shows are simply reflecting today’s reality.  (Ever try to lightly reprimand/correct the behavior of  a kid who’s not yours? Be prepared for pediatric snark and smirks.) If you’re going to complain that TV parents are acting too much like kids, we need to start with the actual parents they’re depicting.

Item #3: Boston Baby & Family Expo

Mark your calendars New Englanders: Next Saturday — that’s March 20 — I’ll be appearing at the Baby & Family Expo at the Bayside Expo Center to tell parents that, while they’ll see lots of products and get lots of parenting advice at the Expo, the most important thing they need to keep in mind is this: If you don’t keep your sense of humor about this child-rearing adventure, you’ll go nuts.

At 10:30 a.m., I’m slated to give a talk/book reading called, “How to Keep Your Sense of Humor (Believe us, you’ll need it!)” where I’ll give expectant and current parents a humorous pep talk and read some of the more embarrassing columns from my parenting/humor book Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum. People who attend the talk will not only get a signed copy of the book, but they’ll get the added bonus of meeting “The Girl,” (otherwise known as my daughter) who’ll be helping me out at the Expo.

In addition, my Parents & Kids Magazine editor Heather Kempskie and her twin sister Lisa Hanson, authors of The Siblings Busy Book, will be giving pointers at 1:30 p.m. about activities you can do when you have children of different ages.

If you’re heading to the Expo on Sunday, March 21, you’ll get a chance to meet my buddies, the podcasting divas that are the Manic Mommies,  Erin and Kristin who’ll be taping their show at 1 p.m.

Here’s the link for more info. Hope to see you there.

Image credit: Baby & Family Expo.

For the past few years I’ve addressed the issue of holiday stress – particularly when you gather multiple generations together for a high-pressure holiday dinner — by creating Dysfunctional Family Bingo cards. I take awkward-but-realistic scenarios that might occur during (before or after) your family’s Thanksgiving dinner and place each one into a box on a BINGO card and pray that no one checks off enough boxes to actually win.

In some twisted way, writing up all of these scenarios amuses me and serves as a reminder that EVERYONE experiences a bit of familial dysfunction during holiday dinners so we may as well just find the humor in them. (For the full history of Dysfunctional Family Bingo, go here.)

What kinds of scenarios am I talking about? For the past couple years, I’ve used a few of my own holiday dinner experiences (though there’s no way I’m ‘fessing up which ones are autobiographical) as well as some which my friends have shared with me in order to fill out each box on the Bingo card. Here are a few from my 2008 Dysfunctional Family Bingo card:

– Some older children at the gathering taught your impressionable young child how to spit, the glory of purple nurples and new vocabulary words like the “F” word.

– Your mother suggests that you join her in starting a diet in the new year, noting that your pants are getting “a bit snug” and asks you if you’ve ever heard of the term “muffin top.”

– It gets heated when several members of the family cannot agree on the best, fastest route to take from this location to the mall.

– A male relative drags you outside and points out everything that’s wrong with your house, from the roof and gutters, to the window screens and the chimney.

– Maxi pads, whose box you had tucked away in a bathroom cabinet, were taken out by a young nephew who decided to remove the paper strips on the back and stick them all over the bathroom wall in a random pattern.

This year, I’m going to ask you, my smart and witty Picket Fence Post readers, to please contribute YOUR OWN oddball/dysfunctional family holiday dinner scenarios which could happen (or have happened) during the celebration of Thanksgiving. I’ll use reader suggestions along with my own to create my 2009 Dysfunctional Family Bingo card. Please e-mail me your contribution (everybody’s got at least one amusing scenario) — to meredithobrien@hotmail.com — no later than noon on Monday, November 23.

 The best four contributions (as determined by me) will earn their creators an autographed and personalized copy of my collection of humor/parenting columns, Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum, where the motto is, “Parenting is best done with a hearty sense of humor.”  Looking forward to reading your e-mails!

Image credit: AP.

I’ve been blogging about parenting since 2005. My first parenting blog had the word “mommy” in the title. (I’ve been writing columns about parenting for a decade.)

My book — a collection of humor/parenting columns – has the word “mom” in the title, as in “suburban mom.”

I continue to blog under the name “Suburban Mom,” though that blog (Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum) now covers all manner of pop culture and politics, not parenting.

I write for a web site — Mommy Track’d – that has the name “mommy” in the title.

So when I heard that some folks were taking issue with the terms “mommy blogger” and the Today Show’s “digital moms,” saying that they’re used by the mainstream media as dismissive and pejorative labels — turning “mommy bloggers” into the ”modern day June Cleaver” – I decided to contact several women who are mothers who blog to see what they think about the monikers and whether they believe the mainstream media cop a patronizing attitude toward folks, particularly women folk, who write about parenting.

The result is my column entitled, “Mainstream Media Mommy Box,” where I had an excuse to again reference my favorite newspaper columnist, Dave Barry, who has frequently mentioned his family’s exploits in his writing.

Who among us hasn’t hosted or attended a holiday dinner/event from hell? I’ve had a number of them myself.

There was the year my grandfather died on Christmas morning . . . and no, he wasn’t run over by a reindeer walking home from my house Christmas Eve. And we didn’t debate what to do with his gifts, thank you very much.

There was the Christmas when my mother, sidelined by a neck injury, still managed to engage in a sweet potato tossing incident with my father and hurled the F-bomb at him, all while my then-fiance cowered in an adjacent room having overheard the whole exchange but was unable to flee because the only exit was through the kitchen.

We can’t forget Christmas Eve from two years ago where The Spouse and I hosted my family’s traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner for the first time. All was going swimmingly well until the moment I put down my fork at the end of the meal and I succumbed to a nasty case of what I believe was food poisoning that felled my father within hours. I spent Christmas lying in bed feeling like stuff you scrape off of the bottom of your shoe.

Then there was the year when my mother was recovering from a serious illness and my father, The Spouse and I had to call a plumber the night before Thanksgiving in order to fix the gas stove which I’d accidentally busted while trying to make a potato dish.

When my twins were 2, they literally ate decorations off of our Christmas tree, leaving it looking as though it had been ravaged by rampaging wild beasts.

There’ve been family gatherings punctuated by lovely arguments between relatives about the best, fastest route from point A to point B.

The list could go on and on.

But for you, my faithful Picket Fence Post readers, your holiday anecdote could pay off. Parents & Kids Magazine is having a special contest. The magazine is looking for funny, snarky or really interesting family holiday stories. Four winners will be selected and will each receive an autographed copy of my collection of humor/parenting columns, A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum, which is a testament to my life filled with snark, messy family gatherings and all manner of imperfection. E-mail your tale to: parentsandkids@cnc.com. The deadline is December 22.

Shameless self-promoting addendum: Copies of Suburban Mom would be fantastic — and inexpensive – Christmas or Hanukkah gifts (available via Amazon.com.) They would add some laughter to the life of a suburban mom you know and love, as well as provide relief that her parenting’s not as nutty as mine, as she’s free to laugh at my many foibles mentioned throughout the book. I’ve been told by moms who’ve read Suburban Mom that, because it’s a collection of brief columns, it’s easy to dip into when they’re out and about picking up kids from activities or while waiting in the car pool line.

In its October review of the book, a Literary Mama writer:

“In this collection, O’Brien adroitly handles the balance between relating what could have been tedious anecdotes about the specific frustrations and joys that come with three young children and offered a universal message. With essay titles like ‘The Scrapbooking Cult’ and ‘To Yell, Perchance to Scream,’ it’s easy to picture O’Brien as one of your funniest friends, the one who can make you laugh through your tears and shore you up with the all-important validation that you’re not alone.”

And by sharing YOUR holiday anecdotes, you’ll be doing the same thing . . . letting other moms know that they are not alone with their less-than-perfect family celebrations. I’ll post the winning ones — once Parents & Kids editor Heather Kempskie shares them with me – here on the blog.

Remember, by December 22 people!

Image credit: Wikipedia.