My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life by Gabrielle Reece

Author:Gabrielle Reece
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Family & Relationships, Self-Help, General, Family Relationships
ISBN: 9781451692709
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2013-04-16T00:09:32+00:00

SIMPLIFY, FAMILY EDITION

Simplify is the concept de jour when it comes to adult lives; why don’t we apply that thinking to the lives of our children? For starters, kids need to go out and play . . . for hours on end . . . every single day.

Every study you care to name says the same thing: sitting in front of a screen for too long makes kids cranky and fat. Hell, it makes me cranky and fat. Reece and Brody get only an hour of electronics a day. Electronics is defined as anything with a screen: watching TV, playing games on the computer or on my iPhone. If it was up to Laird, all of it would be thrown out the window. Of course, he leaves in the morning; he isn’t the one who has to tell them “no” every fifteen minutes.

We adults check our phones after a meeting and before we get in the car, after we get out of the car and head into the house, after we stir the pasta but before we chop the onions, after we get up in the morning and before we hop in the shower. All these little moments, these little gaps between one activity and another, when you might otherwise enjoy a little daydream or think about a new recipe you want to try or have a thought about a book you’ve read or just look forward to the weekend when you’re going to go snowboarding or hang with a friend, all those moments have been gobbled up by our compulsion to check our devices.

It messes with your head, and I don’t want it for my kids.

So I say no. A lot. And tell me I don’t feel like a shit mom when little Brody, who’s been cooperative all day, has a meltdown in the afternoon and sobs miserably, “I. Just. Want. My. Electronics.”

I often think my real lifestyle role model is Norman Rockwell. Throw on some jean shorts, play in a tree, throw a rock.

Is there anything more beautiful than that?

Why, yes, there is: a children’s birthday party that could never be mistaken for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. One of the things I love about living in our little town in Kaua’i is that the basic requirements for a kid’s birthday party are: kids, cake and ice cream, and presents. It’s a different world in Malibu. When I take my kid to those parties with the different activity stations, and the clown and the face painters, I can’t help but think, are you fucking kidding me?

For Reece’s last three birthdays we took her and some pals go-karting. We found a great little place where the maximum speed on the cars can be adjusted down for the kids and up for the parents, so everyone has a blast. All these little kids roaring around the track. Some food, some drinks, and some cake—simple, but still with the sense of an occasion.

Halfway through the last party one of the kids turned

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