“Are we there yet?”  A.k.a. “How many more minutes?”, “I have to pee!” or “I’m gonna be sick.”  Four phrases that can test the strength of even the strongest parent. From tinies and toddlers to tweens and teens, the infamous road trip can be one of a parent’s greatest challenges but can also inspire some of a family’s greatest memories.

Greetings! My name is Cheryl Wendt, Parent to Parent Program Coordinator at CTC, and I am the guest blogger this month. I have 3 sons, ages 17, 14, and 12. My family is on a quest to visit each of the 50 States. Traveling as a family unit, we have succeeded in visiting 45 states! I can’t even begin to calculate how many hours or miles we’ve traveled. Over the years, I’ve learned a few parenting travel tips that I’d like to share. 

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During the past year, I have been the other half of the Chrissie and Bethann Parent to Parent podcast series. I looked back over the topics we have covered in our 20+ podcasts including parenting, communication, cannabis, dealing with feelings, setting boundaries, and mental health. My role in the podcast is to present the parenting perspective from someone who has successfully (or not) navigated the challenges of raising children into healthy young adults. My children Aubrey (25) and Joshua (28) would be the best to determine my “parent score” but, I am willing to share with you my short list of “things” I would tell my younger parent-self now that I am in a different parenting space.

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In my house, we are BIG Philadelphia sports fans. On Sundays during the Fall, we have football on all day in our house (Go Birds!). As my 7 year old has gotten older, he has started to take more of an interest in sports and pays more attention to the games we watch. Last week, we were watching our favorite pregame show and he noticed that they were all talking about sports betting. I explained to him that many people do this and it is legal in the state of Pennsylvania. After that short conversation, he started to take notice of all the online sports betting commercials - and for good reason, as these commercials, highlighting various sports betting sites, seemed to flood our tv.

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September is here. Kids are in school again and structure has returned. Many of us (maybe most of us?) welcome this time of year as “summer together time” has peaked and is petering out. My kids and I feel ready for a change of routine and season come the end of August (even though it is a strange in between time as I wrote about last month).

But forget January, September is truly the “new year”, as my friend and co-host Bethann told me, “September is the real new year where we all get an opportunity to start fresh.” I tend to agree! In my house, we are excited to get new school supplies and backpacks. We are filled with anticipation to see who is in whose class, and what each new teacher is like. But we are also filled with lots of big feelings that we aren’t quite sure how to deal with…the “we” here being my kids, but also me at times.

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Time in August feels strange. Summer isn’t over yet but fall is looming and you can’t escape it. It’s 90 degrees outside and I’m ordering school supplies and learning teacher names. I’m taking my kids to go swimming in the morning, and stopping at the outlets in the afternoon to get a winter coat for a deal at an early Labor Day sale.

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Back in April I wrote a post about my plan for finding time to work this summer using my older child as a helper with my younger one, I called it “Camp Big Brother”–you can read the post HERE–and I wanted to provide an update.

As with anything, I could for sure make a meme about “how it started vs how it's going” for this adventure. Back before school was over I met with my son to outline the expectations of Camp Big Brother (CBB)--the rules, the pay, how much time he would have to do this each week. He asked if he could use the money he earned for anything he wanted to get. I told him, ‘Yep, it's your money so you can save up to buy what you want as long as it is age appropriate.

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I am writing this at the end of our first week of summer and we are starting to get into our rhythm. My kids, husband, and I had a summer planning meeting (as mentioned in a recent podcast episode) to map out what “regular” weekdays would look like and our goals for the summer. Our goals are: 1) To be kind (can I emphasize this with my font anymore? Ahem.); and 2) Tidy your things each day. My own personal goal is to get my kids to do more for themselves and shift out of my “I have to do everything for everyone” mindset. Here is how I plan to achieve this.

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I have become that person, the person who when chatting with friends about life happenings now says, “well my therapist said”. I try to only use this to describe my own stuff, but I can’t help it if she is good. And knows things. Because she is disarmingly good and knows a lot of things and after every session I have learned something new about myself and have a thing to work on. Allow me to share how I got here.

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Summer is coming and along with planning vacations and camps, comes the adventure of also figuring out, “how can I work / get things done with the kids home all day?”. I don’t need full time childcare, but I do still need set time each week to work (uninterrupted). In the spirit of building independence (and moving up a parenting level) I have an idea for a new venture: Camp Big Brother. Here is what I have in mind and how I devised this plan.

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Usually on the days we record a podcast episode I like to share the topic and speaker with my family at dinner that night. It's fun to see what gets interest and what gets an eye roll. The last episode we recorded was about supporting kids to have healthy relationships with Joe Myers from Crime Victim’s Center (the episode is out on March 28th, after this blog post comes out–you can find it here to listen once it is live!). I was explaining that we talked about how to have positive relationships and friendships, and my son, a 3rd grader, asked, “Well, you know who my crush is right?”

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Sometimes (ok, many times) things I learn as part of my job working in mental health and drug & alcohol prevention overlap with my personal life. The story I am sharing today (with permission) happened right after I recorded a podcast episode about the substance in question so I was able to be helpful, even if it was after the fact.

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Full transparency: I am in a post-holiday-winter-blah funk (with the added layer of covid stress). My mood is “bored and rammy yet I have no motivation to do anything”. I feel sort of…flat? I considered just putting up an image for this blog post that was a sign like the ones in store windows that show the time a shopkeeper will return, and instead have it display, “Back in…February!”

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My goal to end 2021 is to somehow miraculously pair rest and quiet with what some would argue is the busiest time of year. How, you may ask, did I come to make this my goal to achieve over the next few weeks?

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I consume a good bit (some may say an obscene amount) of parenting content. Many of the tips and tricks I read and listen to have similar themes, but oftentimes I find myself in situations where I am doing “the thing”, and it just doesn’t work. Like at all. Maybe this has happened to you? However, last weekend I did “the thing” and it actually worked. In real life. With my kid. Finally! Here’s the story:

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The other night my daughter and I were preparing to hang out and watch a show of her choosing while my husband and son were out at an activity. The whole house and entertainment selection to ourselves! She chose to watch a beloved series featuring a family of pigs. In the episode the family was tending their garden of vegetables, and the kids helped the grandparents (grandpigs?) prep everything for a salad. As I watched I was thinking to myself, “oh this is cool they are showing ways to try new healthy foods,” observing the plot of the story.

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You heard it here first: CTC will soon be launching a podcast! In a way--yes, cliche I know, who doesn’t have a podcast nowadays--but we are excited to offer simple, quick tips for parents on a variety of topics from the local experts that are also our community partners. But this post isn't really about the podcast...stay with me.

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Back to school is right around the corner and every year the fall brings a sense of new beginnings and excitement, but also stress about the unknowns...though especially this year (similar to last) that unknown factor is climbing a little every day (ahem, looking at you Delta doom). We are also mere weeks away from getting out of “summer mode” and into “school mode” where everyone needs to be real functioning people out the door by 8:15am.

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We have all seen those memes of “How it started vs how it’s going”, right? I figured since we are at the halfway point of the summer I would check in on my progress with my intention to be more present with my kids from our May blog post. So far I would give myself a “B-” if asked for a letter grade. Some days we (oftentimes me) just can’t seem to get it together. I am working on saying, “it’s ok, we can reset and try again tomorrow”. Other days we have planned things to do together, or time set aside, and I feel like, “ok, I am doing this!” I thought it might be helpful to share a few things that I feel are going well:

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The other day I was in my basement exercising while my kids were upstairs making noise and jumping around, from what I could hear, but overall playing nicely together. I also heard repeated singing of songs from the soundtrack of a musical we recently watched that they loved (and had re-watched many times).

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As we inch closer to the summer with each passing day, I find myself caught between two schools of thought: the first is--yay, no more virtual school work to complete, we will have open days to frolic and play! The second is--open days to frolic and play and more (more!) togetherness… yikes! I am starting to map out the summer and plug in activities and travel into the calendar, but there are still many days of “what are we doing today?” ahead of me.

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