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Kathy Buckworth

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Natural Selection

by Kathy Buckworth

“I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.”

Or so Popeye used to say in the cartoons I watched when I was a kid. And while there’s something comical and fun about these words, I believe they really do sum up how each of us starts life with certain characteristics that we can never really let go.  My Mom gave birth to me in about two hours flat and she said “You came out fast and you really haven’t stopped since.”  I could describe how each of my four kids’ births define them, but it would likely segueway into some discussion involving bodily fluids and other gross descriptors.

Instead, I’d going to analyze the traits we see our children displaying from toddlerhood up, and the potential careers that might be naturals for them, incorporating both their positive and challenging personality quirks. 

1.      Judge: For the kids whose mantra is “It’s not fair!”, this would be the perfect position to allow them to see that while indeed Life is Not Fair, they at least would get to help out someone, plaintiff or defendant, whose entire argument consists of “It’s not fair.  You like him better.”

2.      Lawyer: Requires great skills of negotiation (“Just one more cookie?”), tenacity (“Please please please please please”), and, let’s just say it, the ability to push one’s own agenda through (“I won’t tell Joey about the last cookie. He doesn’t need to know.”) Also excellent at getting Mom and Dad to take physical dares at cocktail hour. (My toe is healing nicely, thanks.)

3.  People Manager: Must have the ability to listen to many sides, negotiate with kindness and fairness, give tough evaluations with a gentle hand, and know when to make difficult choices in delegation and rewards.  (Note these same qualities are also awesome for Mothers, especially those on the PTA, to have.)

4.      The Arts: Perfect for the child who excels at writing on walls, making guns out of toast, using all the scotch tape and cardboard in the house to make the best parking garage, squirting toothpaste in the style of Monet, and skilled at the ability to imitate Mom and Dad when dancing, singing, or “parenting”.

5.      Scientist/Engineer/Inventor: This is a terrific profession for “The Why Guy”.  Most families have at least one of these.  The little person who says “Why?” about 27 times an hour. We call my Why Guy “Question Boy”, and he wants to be an engineer when he grows up.  He thinks they are superheroes.  With pocket protectors.

6.      Government Employee: If you’ve got a child who loves to line up a bunch of little cars on one side of the room, just to move them across to the other side to line them all up again, you might just have the perfect candidate for an Ottawa job.  If you spent 200% more for the cars than you had to, you’re in for sure.

No matter what our kids choose to do when they grow up, or more to the point, whatever chooses them, here’s one more piece of advice: they could grow up to be a writer, like me.  It could be your word against his…and his sister the lawyer.

Kathy Buckworth’s latest book is “Shut Up and Eat: Tales of Chicken, Children and Chardonnay”, and is available everywhere books are sold.  Visit www.kathybuckworth.com or follow Kathy on Twitter 

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House & Home

Shut Up and Eat Already!

by Maria Lianos

Shut Up and Eat! Tales of Chicken, Children and Chardonnay is Kathy Buckworth’s latest book, in stores now.

It’s a hilarious take one of my least enjoyable duties – feeding my picky kids.  Having to prepare three meals a day plus snacks can cause any mom to lose her marbles.

The witty Buckworth, who also has written other parenting humour books such as The Secret Life of Supermom, offers some great tips and even easy recipes for moms who don’t want to add “chef” to their already lengthy and unbearable list of responsibilities. 

Effortlessly and humourously, Buckworth tackles mealtime and the dreadful snack-time, as well as the lovely task of “feeding the in-laws and outlaws”. 

Before you even get to feed the brood, you need to shop for groceries with your rowdy kids in tow. Leave it to the husband you say?

“The main thing women need to recognize about grocery shopping is that it plays into some ancient, anthropological instincts.  Women, as we all know, were society’s gatherers; men were the hunters.  I am always impressed by how men have managed to transition these skills into “hunting” at the liquor store or the aforementioned Home Depot, but have entirely skipped over the grocery store.  This has left it up to us – the gatherers – to fill the void. While they get to hunt for vodka and screwdrivers, we get to gather zucchini and 12-grain bread.”

Easy recipes, that any culinary novice can do blind-folded, round off this light-hearted, funny book.

I laughed out loud while reading and even gasped once.   The Lasagna recipe on page 82 calls for a jar of premade tomato sauce which would likely cause my Italian husband to suffer a panic attack.  He’d kill me if I didn’t share my quick and easy tomato sauce recipe 😉

So as Ms. Buckworth would say, Shut Up and Eat!, I would say, “Kali Oreksi!  Mangiamo!”

Enter to win one of three prize packs which include Shut Up and Eat!  and The Blackberry Diaries!

Contest ends June 4, 2010.  One entry per person.

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House & Home

Timing is Everything

By Kathy Buckworth

Being in the right place at the right time is a long time accepted principle of success in life. This can also be true when trying to achieve success in the parenting world. From getting the registration into the soccer club on time and scoring that preferred Monday versus Sunday timeslot, to producing a child who doesn’t land in the overcrowded kindergarten class because you delivered two days after January 1st, there are some things we can control in terms of timing, and some we can’t.

You might want to take my advice and take control where you can. For instance:

  • Don’t tell your kids you’re taking them to the dentist, doctor, or other such dreaded appointments until the last minute. And by last minute I mean when you’re walking in the door to their offices. You’ve just cut the whining time to about two minutes. (Or in the case of the doctor’s office potentially two hours, in the waiting room, where all can enjoy.)
  • Next time you have a long car ride, you might surreptitiously mention to two of your favourite kids that they have about three minutes to jump into their favoured seats in the family vehicle before yelling out the age-old “We’re leaving now!” announcement to the rest of them. Squatting rights and all that. You’ll save loads of time listening to fights on this one.
  • If you’re heading out to a restaurant with your kids, you might want to call your order in before you even get there. The minutes spent waiting with children in a public eating space are existentially not the same length of the minutes that pass while you’re sitting in a bar with your friends. These minutes with children drag and you need to make sure to minimize the impact on fellow diners, and your own patience.
  • If you frequent a neighbourhood park, you have to be careful of not only the Last-minute Extension Situation (you’re just leaving and Junior’s BFF arrives – of course with his annoying mother in tow, and you have to stay an extra 20 minutes or face a melt-down of nuclear proportions), but also avoid that Mom or Dad who always comes to the park and has to “dash back home” for a snack or something, and is gone for an hour (no doubt drinking wine, eating dark chocolate and snickering over your gullibility) while you watch their kid pummel your kid with a sand shovel.

There are many things we simply can’t control in terms of timing with kids, such as the internal alarm of theirs which goes off the second you close the bathroom door, get on the phone, computer or BlackBerry, or collapse with a glass of chardonnay on the couch – fyi their alarm sounds like this “MOOOMMMMMMM!!!! WHERE ARE YOU????? YOU NEED TO COME HERE RIGHT NOW!!!! MOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!” – so we need to learn acceptance techniques for things like this, as these are universal problems which have likely been faced since Mom took a break from the butter churning and racoon skinning to take a swig from her own wineskin.

We need to have “wineskins” too. I like to think of mine as Twitter, Facebook, and email. Just be thankful you’re not living in that place, a way back then, when an escape into technology wasn’t possible – in fact like it or not, you’re in your right place, at the right time. You timed that well, after all.

Kathy Buckworth’s latest book, “Shut Up and Eat: Tales of Chicken, Children and Chardonnay” is available at bookstores everywhere. Visit www.kathybuckworth.com or follow Kathy on Twitter.
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Books & Music

Feeding Your Family: Moms and Dads and Food Oh My

This is an excerpt from Shut Up and Eat! Tales of Chicken, Children and Chardonnay written by Kathy Buckworth

We need to face facts. The family meal is fraught with disaster and a prescription pre-written to fail, almost every time.

You (the earnest Mom), hate making it day after day after day, and they (the annoying children) hate eating it. Mostly because you made it with your own hands, in your own kitchen, with disdainfully fresh and nutritious grocery store ingredients.

Come on Mom! Everyone knows food goes through an amazing taste transformation once it’s been passed through a drive-thru window. In fact I’m thinking of installing one on the side of my house so the kids can grab their breakfast sandwiches as they ride by on their bikes.

 To make it really authentic, I’m thinking of charging them and getting the order wrong half the time. Hopefully I won’t get the pre-requisite zits and “uptalk” pattern of speech. And I’m nixing the hair net, okay?

I honestly don’t understand (or care, frankly) why they don’t love my cooking, or at least like it. But the whys don’t really matter. The indisputable fact is that whether they (or we) like it or not, moms are “supposed“to get three meals down the adorable, little throats of our offspring by the end of each day.

I’m pretty sure that rule is in every parenting book ever written. Whether we’re serving these meals at home, or bundling them up and sending them out to schools and camps, the food is “supposed” to be healthy and lovingly prepared.

After 17 years of trying to achieve this balance, my advice is this:  Go for one or the other. Either it’s healthy or you loved making it. (If it’s neither, it’s take out.)

If you knock yourself out making that perfectly nutritious meal each and every time, I have to tell you, the love will surely be missing. If you’re able to snatch a Lunchable out of the fridge, throw in an apple and a Wagon Wheel cookie, and send them on their way in five seconds or less, you’re going to feel the love.

Maybe not for the kids, but for the packaged-goods company who just helped you out. It’s all good from where I’m standing, baby.

Excerpted from “Shut Up and Eat! Tales of Chicken, Children, and Chardonnay, Kathy Buckworth, Key Porter Books, March 2010, now available at bookstores everywhere. Visit www.kathybuckworth.com and follow Kathy on twitter at www.twitter.com/kathybuckworth. 
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Featured

Listed

By Kathy Buckworth

KathyBuckworthMy name is Kathy, and I am a list freak. In fact, if you read my column regularly, you’ll know that I’m Queen of the Bullet Point.  It’s how I often write, it’s how I usually talk, and frighteningly enough, it’s the way I think.  Here’s why. In bullet form. Oh be quiet.

  • I like to do things in a logical sequence.  Doing what’s due first, and working my way through. If I know one child will freak out more by getting his ice cream second and not first, he gets it first. Yes it’s playing favourites. We all have them. Even your mother did.
  • If we are having people over, I clean the house in the order of the rooms they are going to most likely be in. Follow me here.  The front hall, the hallway leading to the kitchen (everyone hits the kitchen first – some never leave), through to the dining room, the living room, around the corner and into the bathroom.  Normally there are kids in my family room so sensible people avoid that – and because there are kids there, I can’t really be expected to keep that room clean anyway, can I? And I don’t go anywhere near the upstairs bathroom as that is my kids’ primary receptacle. Besides, if someone needs to go to the bathroom that badly that they race upstairs, they’re not going to notice the mess, now are they?plates
  • Like most Moms, my days range from the ridiculously busy and overscheduled to the mind-numbingly boring and monotonous.  Having a “list” in my head allows me to trick myself into thinking I’m getting things done and moving down a path of accomplishment. This, versus feeling like I’m a hamster on a wheel or Mom in a mini-van secured to the house with a stretchy cord that allows it only to circle back and forth between the schools, the hockey arenas and the inconveniently located playdates.
  • I have four kids. I do things in order to make sure no one gets missed. For example, when I’m serving dinner, I always put out their plates of food in order, from youngest to oldest. That way, the younger ones’ meals start cooling faster than the older and the younger ones like my cooking and the older ones don’t so I can get compliments first and complaints second. My oldest daughter has begged me to serve her first but I just can’t do it.  She’s going to complain about that vein in the chicken again.list
  • With 18 years of parenting experience under my belt, I’ve discovered that things that seem like a big deal really aren’t when you work through the logical consequences, step by step.  For example, some Moms might get upset if their child wears the same t-shirt for four days in a row. After all, here’s what might happen that’s bad…okay, no I can’t think of anything.  Really.  Here’s what good thing could happen – less laundry for you. Step 1: Wear the shirt until dogs start licking it for snacks, Step 2: Put it in the laundry with the one other shirt you wore this week.  Perfect.

Shut_Up_And_EatFrankly most of my days are spent working through lists to get me to the end of the day, where I can start compiling the next one for tomorrow.  Now excuse me while I check off “Write column” and add “Buy chicken.”

Kathy Buckworth’s latest book “Shut Up & Eat: Tales of Chicken, Children & Chardonnay” is available on March 21st at bookstores everywhere.  Pre-order your copy today and visit www.kathybuckworth.com for details on book signings and events.
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