Top Ten Signs Your Kid Is a "Real Life" Noob

My nine-year old son, the self-proclaimed “Orange Phoenix” destroys Endermen the way I destroy a Toblerone while hiding in my closet. His deft, little fingers tap out combinations on the X-Box 360 controls that make my thumbs sore just watching it. Not to mention, his killer moves on “Just Dance”, I mean eat your heart out Jagger. But ask him to make his own lunch for school, and I have to draw a detailed diagram of how to assemble meats and mayonnaise on top of bread as he stares blank-eyed at me like I’m speaking Klingon before having an epic, Oscar-worthy melt-down just attempting to untie the twisty-tie off the bread. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my little gamer, a cyber chip off the old block, his dad made me a World of Warcraft widow a month after I married him. But it boggles my mind sometimes how he can build an elaborate amusement park in Minecraft but can’t always walk and talk without falling over. Or how he will watch his lemonade/water/milk spill completely baffled as to the fact that he can pick up the cup ending the progression of liquid onto the table and floor, but he can recite verbatim the intricate details of each level of Geometry Dash. 

So here are the top ten signs your kid can master Minecraft but can’t navigate reality without the use of a tool bar and mini-map.

1. Your kid can download a mod for a game but can’t unload the dishwasher or his backpack.
2. Your kid can quickly pick up the rules for a new computer game but can’t pick up his shoes, socks, cup, plate, basically anything you’ve asked to be picked up and put away.
3. Your kid can feed tokens into the Pac-Man machine at the pizza parlor but can’t remember to feed the cat/dog or himself.
4. Your kid knows Mario Land, Nintendo Land, and Azeroth backwards and forwards but can’t navigate his own neighborhood without getting lost or distinguish the front of a Polo shirt or his underwear.
5. Your kid mastered the X-box controls, the Wii remote, and the use of a mouse by age 3, but has trouble using a fork to feed himself with and hacks away at poor defenseless bread while attempting to spread peanut butter on toast with a knife.
6. Your kid can guess the emoji but can’t guess simple math equations or why you are mad about the congealed milk he left out on the counter.
7. Your kid can end a boss on Pikman 3 but can’t remember to end a sentence with a period or a toilet session with a flush.
8. Your kid can find rare pumpkins in Minecraft but can’t find his socks, backpack, shoes, feet, the list goes on… when they are right in front of him.
9. Your kid can hang notes up in Roblox but can’t hang his clothes up, backpack, keys, etc..
10. Your kid can put away books in Riddle School but can’t put his books back on his own bookshelf leading to a Jenga-like construction on the bedside table that inevitably falls over.

Obviously, I need to pull the plug and kick him outside to play or hand him a book or some Legos. This comes with its own set of challenges, but maybe if I persist I can level him up to a Level 10 reality expert. Here's hoping.

3 Tiered Bathroom stand- Hot Glue Fun

I needed a tower that didn't topple my hair products & deodorant over. My slated metal tower from Home Goods let everything slip through the bars or fall over usually when I was innocently brushing my teeth. 

I checked out Pinterest & found a cool design using Dollar store metal trays. Alas, not trays to be had at my local. But a child-free meander of Big Lots scored these beautiful, teal melamine plates for $2.99 each. 

 They also came in a red and yellow print. 

Next, I found .99 cent no drip cups hanging off an end-cap.

With a little hot glue, I now had a pretty tower to store my beauty products that didn't topple them over or let my eye cream tube fall through the cracks. 

Easy, peasy! Except, now I have to hide my hot glue gun from my 6 year old who's made his own towers. 

You're Not Entitled to Fun

So I just viewed a blog post that not only got under my skin, it set up camp and festered. In the article, a snarky mom (because it's the cool thing to be nowadays) boldly proclaimed not to her kids' teachers privately, but to the Internet that her children would not being doing homework because they needed to have fun.
Excuse me for a minute while I jump on my soapbox and state my own opinion on this subject:
1. Great example for your children - No kids, you don't have to do something if you don't want to or it interferes in your playtime.
2. You are not entitled to fun!

In our pampered overly privileged society, where we no longer have to toil for endless hours working, cleaning the house, making food from scratch, and helping others in society; we now expect all our massive amounts of free time to be fun.
I know my own family suffers from this phenomenon. To their ultimate chagrin, my kids have both on occasion complained "but that's not fun" when asked to do simple chores around the house. To which I respond, (after the urge to throw something passes) that it's not fun for me to clean the toilets, make them food, clean their clothes, drive them to school, and go grocery shopping. So maybe I should stop and see what happens because I want to sit on my butt and play too.

My mom always told me:
1. You make your own fun.
No one owes you a positive attitude. It's what you bring to the table. That's why I blast my Glee Radio on Pandora while mining for cat poo in the litter box and dance while cleaning house. If the new attitude is that's it's "all about me", then it's  "all on me" to make the best of things.
Homework can be a chore, but I also see it as a challenge. Something to be conquered. I always took pride in doing what my teacher asked wanting to do the best I could.

2. Suck it up kid & get it done.
My mom was a secretary most of her life. She was also a brilliant artist. Did she enjoy slogging all those mindless hours filing paperwork and writing reports for bosses who underappreciated her? No. But she did enjoy a paycheck that she used to pay the rent and fill the fridge and put gas in the car for our weekend adventures. And she found time for her art when she could.

Homework is boring to everyone. Even the teacher grading it. I know. I was a high school teacher. I also know I had to pull teeth just to get kids to turn anything in because the attitude was that homework was not fun and therefore, didn't need to be done.  Some of these seniors had spent their whole school career avoiding homework and even hating school except for P.E. because it was not fun. That's why they couldn't write complete sentences in 12th grade. Some didn't even know that Arizona was next to California. But why should they, it's not fun!

Look! I hate homework too. But I hate the attitude even more that we can blatantly be rude to the teacher, and disregard her time and energy for our own selfish agendas. I also fear the lessons being taught at home that you don't have to do anything unless you want to, and it's fun.
We are not entitled to have fun! As a society and decent human beings, we should be respectful, work hard, and entertain ourselves. Fun is a bi-product of our own attitudes and efforts.
After all, we are not separate islands floating on a social media sea. Our actions and the lessons we teach at home ripple out and affect others.

Truthfully kid, I love you but I'm bored to death with your chatter

     Yes, I've read the e-cards informing me that if I don't listen to my kids now and instill the habits of family conversations, they won't talk to me in their teenage years about important issues. And I get it. I want my kids to trust me and talk to me about all their insecurities large and small because I truly care about them and their personalities.
     But does that mean I have to feign interest in all twenty levels of Geometry Dash told to me in mind-numbing detail while walking the dog? And am I expected to memorize each Minecraft YouTubers name and alter-ego? Because I really don't fricking care if The Diamond Minecart is now known as Dan TDM, and he loves waffles and makes fun of pixelated cubic pigs. Or that there are 15 bosses in Terraria.
     Yes, I'm a horrible person and mother, the kind that doesn't believe everything my kids say is pure Facebook posting gold. But I am pretty sure my own mom tuned me out after ten minutes of regaling her with every My Little Pony or Cabbage Patch Kid doll, or the how I finally conquered the spider in Mountain King (I miss my Atari). (Have I given away my age?)
     But sometimes having the deep, soft-lighting conversations I envisioned when I was six months pregnant and talking to my over-stretched, chocolate filled belly evade me. My kids aren't deep, at least not yet. Yes, they are six and nine year old boys who favor fart jokes and Simpsons references and recaps of Gravity Falls.
     Questions about school invariably result in answers of "nothing", "the teacher yelled", or "Aiden chased Kaden around the playground with a dirty sock". When probed, I get long-winded details about the color of the sock, what it smelled like, how many people touched it, and how funny everyone's faces looked. This story is then repeated at least five more times with me trying to paint interest on my face each and every time.
     But their chatter bores me the same way a trip to the grocery story or an account of the minutes of the P.T.O meeting bores them. I can't tell them this though. I don't want to hurt them or have them stop talking to me making me miss out on all those deep conversations waiting patiently to happen.
     So for now, I plaster on the smile, bobbing my head up and down, making the expected conversational responses all the while counting calories or planning tomorrow's dinner as I pretend to learn about the door activating properties of Redstone in Minecraft.
     Just being honest, at least to myself.