By the time I had my sixth kid, I figured I had this parenting thing wrapped up.

Well, this cheeky toddler has knocked me square off my parenting high horse. One of our babysitters describes him as an adorable weirdo. One of his weirdo things is that every night for the last six months, he has insisted upon falling asleep on the family room floor. I later transport him to a suitable floor upstairs when I head to bed. Maybe it’s not a big deal, but for this “establish good bedtime routines and habits” mama, this sleeping on the floor stuff is outrageous!

What’s strange about it is why it started happening. During the Christmas holidays, we stayed in an old farmhouse that belonged to Daddy-o’s deceased grandparents. The house sits empty unless family members wish to have a farm stay. Not all will stay there because of the stories and rumours that it is possibly haunted.

I didn’t let those rumours deter me – when a family of our size can stay somewhere for free, we don’t turn it down. On about the third night, my little guy woke up in his crib screaming in a way that made me run so fast my feet didn’t touch the ground. I rescued him from his crib, resettled him then went back to bed a little confused. Next night, the same thing happened, except this time there was no way he would go in the crib or the room. I took him into the family room, fell asleep on the couch and he fell asleep on his little blanket on the floor beside me. He has remained on a floor ever since.

I spent the next morning shaking my head in confusion. He was not unwell and his mood was otherwise fine. Daddy-o finally solved the mystery for me when he got a sheepish look and said: “I think he saw the ghost”. Suddenly, everything made sense and this non-believer started re-thinking my ideas on the subject. Thanks to that pesky ghost, all my perfect baby routines have gone down the crapper and I have a toddler who is a floor dweller.

Have you had an experience that has turned you into a believer? I’ve heard that children and animals may be more sensitive and aware of this kind of activity. Is it true?

My kids love hanging out with Shane and his team from Adamson Lawn Care (www.adamsonlawncare.com)

I recently popped down to my local grocery store with a bottle of wine and farewell card for my favourite cashier, who was working her last shift. Some complications as a result of MS have forced her to retire. Every time I see her, I get a hug as she makes fun of my monstrous grocery bill and comments on how many or how few children I happened to have with me on that particular day.

I find it hard saying goodbye to community helpers. When my mail carrier died a couple of years ago, I was pretty torn up. I got to wondering if everyone gets attached to community helpers the way I do and, wanting to do a temperature check to see if this was “normal”, did some asking around.

From that bit of digging, I now hypothesize that people whose kids have special needs feel particularly connected to community helpers. We become very attached to the various people in the lives/health/development of our children, and perhaps it carries over to community helpers in general.

I’ll never forget how I felt when I found out, a few days before the new school year began, that our school principal was being transferred. This is the kind of news that keeps parents like me up at night. We think about the years spent relationship building, advocating, winning that principal over – all that time, energy and investment, gone. A new principal means having to start all over again.

The same goes for those in the medical profession. When friend and Mabel staffer, Melissa, found out that her daughter’s very first nurse was leaving their hospital, she experienced extreme distress. How can these people just up and move on when we rely on them? There is no such thing as a “simple” transfer in our worlds.

Last month, my son’s young, vibrant and extraordinary speech therapist, Kim Pace, finally lost her incredibly courageous battle against cancer. She leaves behind countless devastated parents of children with special needs.

They say that it takes a village to raise a child. I, for one, appreciate and value every one of those villagers. I will miss Bonnie the cashier and Kim the speech therapist. My village won’t be the same without them.

My father died in December. He had spent the last several years very unwell, and my mother spent a lot of her time taking care of him. That is a difficult situation for any family, but it is even more difficult when the person you are caring for continuously makes choices that contribute to their bad health. And so, although he was a loved man, the result was a team of fairly frustrated family members.

My biggest frustration was trying to understand why he didn’t make choices that would allow him to be involved more fully in the lives of his grandchildren. He adored each and every one of them. Every morning he asked my mother which of his grandbabies was going to visit that day. He had frequent visits from his collection of loving grandkids, who called him The Gaffer. Kids would disappear into his man cave and they’d have the place trashed instantly – toys everywhere, cushions off the couches and the TV channel changed to their station. Every visit was a kid invasion into The Gaffer’s space. Interestingly, he was not at all bothered by the noise or chaos. He was never impatient with them and he certainly never snapped at any child. Visits ended with hugs, kisses and “I love you’s”.

I felt that relationship wasn’t good enough because he didn’t actually DO anything with my children. His illness made it so he couldn’t – that pesky illness that didn’t really have to be there. My dad never read to the children, and certainly never played a board game or did a puzzle with them. He didn’t take them out for walks or do any of the other things I see active grandparents doing with their grandchildren. It made me sad that he was missing out. And, so were my kids.

Apparently, I was wrong. A couple of weeks after his death, my 9-year-old daughter emerged from her bedroom at midnight to share a drawing of him. Included in the illustration were several messages and statements – one for each day since he had died. The most striking message to me was “I loved EVERYTHING about you”.

All that time I thought he wasn’t DOING anything with his grandchildren, he was very actively doing the thing that was most important to them. He was loving them. And it was all they needed.

Rather than "shush" my kid, I just throw another plug in his gob

I’m a little bit nosey and don’t pretend otherwise. On my recent travels to a conference, I injected myself into a couple of situations that were none of my business. I just couldn’t help it.

The first was on my way to the conference. Across the aisle from me sat a mother and her surfer dude teenaged son. He was polite, respectful, handsome – he pretty much had all the qualities I hope my kids have as teenagers. He also happened to be living with Down Syndrome. At one point he was making a few noises. I didn’t take much notice because I’m surrounded by noisy people all the time. Then, from somewhere nearby a random passenger let out the loudest, rudest SHUSH I’ve ever heard. I was angry and determined to find the culprit. I wanted to give the SHUSHER a piece of my mind. All my investigations were pointless – the SHUSHER would not come forward and admit to the SHUSHING.

On the way home came Nosey Parker incident #2. A young dad was sitting behind me and having a cell phone conversation with the mother of his baby. They were discussing her plans for the next day. It sounded like she had a fun event to attend with a group of friends. The dad expressed a bit of concern about taking care of the baby because he was exhausted from his work travels. He did the right thing – told her her to carry on with her plans but that he would find a babysitter for a couple of hours to get some rest before enjoying the rest of the day with his kid. Their phone call ended and a few quick calls to babysitters from the tarmac were made and he had it all sorted out. Happily, he called his baby mama back and explained that all was organized and that he was thrilled that she would have a well deserved day out with her friends. She must have announced that she decided to cancel the plans because he spent the next few minutes saying things like “but you deserve to go out” and “it’s not a hassle at all, I’m looking forward to having the day with my daughter”. Despite begging her to go, she could not be convinced. When he got off the phone, I heard a huge sigh of defeat and frustration.

Clearly, I know nothing about them, their relationship or how they share parental responsibilities. However, I couldn’t stop myself from turning around, admitting to eavesdropping and congratulating him on trying so hard to make it work – for wanting his partner to have a day out with her friends. Sure, I risked having him tell me to mind my own business but it was worth it when I looked at his exhausted big brown eyes and heard his whisper: “Thank you so much”.

It’s tough to know when to inject ourselves into a conversation or situation that we’re not directly involved in. For me, often my gut responds before my brain has the chance to make a decision. The greatest risk for the Nosey Parker is humiliation. For those of us who have experienced enough of that already, it’s not a risk that gets a whole lot of consideration.

Sometimes my kids may ask for a bowl of snow for dinner. And when they do, they may just get it.

That is what I call the dinner hour at my house – feeding time at the zoo. It’s not news – families that eat together regularly are better and the rest of us suck. Time Magazine reports that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide. They have a better chance of doing well in school, delaying having sex, eating their vegetables, learning big words and knowing which fork to use.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that all sounds fine, and although I want my kids to learn big words, there are a few reasons gathering around the dinner table only happens on weekends for our family.

Practical:
My biggies get home from school at 3:00pm absolutely “starving” and Daddy-o doesn’t get home from work until 7:00pm. I refuse to spend four hours listening to kids complain about being hungry. I am also not willing to shove snacks in their gobs in an effort to hold them over until the adults are ready to eat. I prefer to take advantage of that after-school appetite and fill their bellies with a healthy dinner at that time. It sets them up with lots of energy for their evening sports or outdoor play. Sure, they get hungry again later, at which time I’ll happily serve up toast, cereal, fruit or veggies as an evening snack.

Emotional:
So is our family falling apart? Have we become a huge non-communicating mess? Hardly. There are many other times in the day when parents and families can connect that don’t involve food and sitting. Growing up, I had dinner with my family every single night. Did I enjoy it? Not really. You see, for a kid who didn’t like food, the dinner table often represented a place of conflict. My mom was rightly frustrated that she spent time preparing beautiful meals only to have me and my sisters turn our noses up at them. My dad would inevitably get grumpy with us, falling into those ridiculous parenting platitudes like “you’re not leaving the table until….” And I can assure you, not every child will eat “eventually”. I found hunger pain more appealing than many foods.

Meaningful conversation didn’t always happen around our table, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. My memories credit family walks and bedtime tuck-ins as those special moments and important times.

Parenting is a tough gig these days. There are a lot of studies and research directing us. While I think it’s important to consider the information that we are bombarded with, I like to integrate that with my experiences, some common sense, and the knowledge that I’m the one best fit to make the decisions for my family. The dinner table is not going to make or break my family. I’m quite capable of doing that all on my own, thank you. Check back with me in a few years though – if no one is using three syllable words, I may reconsider.