Author: Rebecca Cuneo Keenan

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This past couple months have been awful for sicknesses around here. It seems like everyone I know has had various bugs and viruses run through their homes, one after another. I don’t think I’ve had a week without at least one child staying home from school for a day or two in over two months.

Early spring often seems to brings out the germs. And every year I hear complaints from parents online and in person about people sending their kids to school sick and spreading the sicknesses. I’ve even received notes home from teachers reminding parents to keep kids home if they are sick.

Even more heartbreaking this year, is that I’ve heard of a couple mothers who passed away after suffering from complications related to the flu. My heart goes out to those families and, on a more selfish level, it reminds me to prioritize my own health as well.

But, honestly, it’s not that easy to just “keep your kids home if they’re sick.”

If my child has a fever, has thrown up in the past 24 hours, seems lethargic, or tells me they are feeling sick, sure, I keep them home. But what if they have a niggling cough or a runny nose? My four-year-old is the kind of kid whose nose runs for weeks on end every winter. It just does. If I kept her home whenever she had signs of a cold, she’d miss months and months of school.

And when are we supposed to do these daily health assessments? Each morning is a flurry of cajoling sleepy kids out of their beds, convincing them to get dressed, making them breakfasts and lunches, and hurrying everyone out the door. Every day, I ask my four-year-old: “How do you feel? Are you sick?” And every day she blows her nose, and tells me she feels fine. My ten-year-old has complained of stomach aches, only to spend the day watching TV and asking what’s for lunch.

Parents are making these calls on the fly, as they try to get busy families out the door, weighing their own work priorities and their kids school commitments against the level of sickness they detect. Is there an important meeting? Is it exam time? How many days have you already missed? Does the child likely have a more serious contagious illness like strep throat or the stomach flu or is just a cold? And, honestly, if your child already has that cold, hasn’t it already been spread around the class?

I don’t know!

This is all to say that I have mostly been feeling guilty every single day for months. If I keep one kid home, but send his sisters to school because they’re fine, might they possibly be contagious even if they’re not yet sick? But often they don’t get that illness at all! If my kids seems fine in the morning, but tired in the evening, were they sick? Or just tired? And those days when I do keep them home, or if I’m sick myself, (which has been a lot!) are days I hardly get any work done.

So I guess my general point is that in the absence of clear signs of abuse and neglect, maybe we can just trust that parents are doing their best. Don’t send notes home reminding parents to keep sick kids home. Don’t post inflammatory comments on social media scolding parents for spreading viruses. Because I really can’t take much more guilt.

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Do you know how hard it is to take drywall plaster off school uniform pants?

Let me start at the beginning. It was a bright and shiny August day and the good people at Old Navy sent me an email to remind me to put in an order for school uniform clothes. They even offered me a nice-sounding discount and waived the shipping charge. So I poured myself a beer, got out my trusty, old credit card, and dove in.

My son wears the same thing to school, day in and day out. A navy blue polo shirt and navy blue pants. I keep his drawer stocked with these and getting dressed is a breeze. My oldest daughter, on the other hand, likes to make things difficult. This dress, but these leggings and not those tights and this sweater, but not that one and whatareyoutalkingabout, those pants are BOYSIE. I WON’T WEAR BOYSIE CLOTHES. You can imagine all the boys’ clothes, like pants, that I was trying to foist upon her.

But I could dream, couldn’t I? So when I saw the slim-fitting, girls navy blue school pants, I imagined a winter where two of my children could pull out the same pair of school pants and shirt everyday and all I would have to do is wave them off in the morning.* It didn’t matter that those slim-fitting pants were almost twice as much as the marked-down boot cut style we had last year. Hell, they could have been three times as much. I was drunk on the fantasy of easy mornings and I was going to have those pants.

So I ordered one pair because I am also not a complete fool and I know my daughter.

And you’ll never guess. Yes, she refused to wear them. Every couple months I’d pull them out and it would trigger insta-hysterics. “I HATE THOSE PANTS!” “But did you see-” “THOSE ARE BIG, FAT, UGLY PANTS!” “They say right here, sli-” “I WON’T WEAR THEM! I WON’T! NO, NO, NO, NEVER!!!!” Until I just slide them back into the drawer and grasp around trying to figure out an acceptable combination of leggings/skirts/t-shirts/sweaters that would both keep to the dress code and keep her warm.

That is, until yesterday.

Yesterday all the pieces finally fell together. My daughter looked at the pants I laid out, shrugged, and said, “Alright, I’ll try them.” The heavens parted, a chorus of angels sang, and the morning was lit with a warm, golden glow.

She came down for breakfast and said, “I think I like these. They’re the same ones M— wears.” I kissed all my children and waved them off .*

I passed the next several hours in tranquil bliss, the bane of my existence having been lifted.

One by one, the kids clambered off the school bus that afternoon and greeted me with their own peculiar expressions of love, respect, and gratitude.

“I’m hungry!” “Here. Hold my backpack.” “Why did you give me tuna? I told you I don’t like tuna.”

Aw, such sweeties. It was good to have them back.

Then, on the walk home, my daughter excitedly told me about the art project she worked on for much of the day. They were building a structure or something … I’m not exactly sure because when I stepped back to admire how smart she looked in her coat, boots, and slim-fitting school pants, I was distracted by several bright white stains that dripped down an entire leg.

“What’s on your pants?”

“Oh, mom. I’m sorry. I tried so hard to be careful because we were told it wouldn’t wash off. It’s drywall? Something? And I didn’t get any on my shirt!”

The sky darkened; the angels packed up their harps and slammed their bedroom doors.

“What? What! WHAT?! Drywall plaster? You were using drywall plaster at school on the ONE DAY you finally decided to wear those BRAND NEW pants?”

And then I really lost it.

“I can’t believe they would give that to you. They make you wear a freaking school uniform! THEY KNEW IT WOULDN’T WASH OFF. I could have sent extra clothes. God, any other day and you’d be wearing worn out leggings anyway. AAAAHHH!!”

My poor little girl looked so sad. Crap. It wasn’t her fault.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not your fault. It’s only pants. It’s just that they were basically BRAND NEW. And I can’t BELIEVE …”

And I was off again, riding a seesaw of rage and remorse, vacillating between how I felt and how I wanted to feel. Because I’m not the mom who cares if the kids’ clothes get dirty or stained or worn out or torn. I’m not! Any other pants, I swear, would have been no big deal. And I love that her teacher embraces all kinds of crazy art projects and engages them in ways that no other teacher does. I KNOW that is way more valuable in the long run than a teacher who is worried about staining their clothes.

But those pants!

So I googled, and I soaked, and I took a plastic knife, a plastic scouring brush, a toothpick and my fingernails to task. I was actually able to scrape off almost all of the plaster. The only stain that remains is a whiteish smear right above the knee where she had rubbed the plaster deeper into the fabric in an effort to wipe it off herself at school.

It looks like she spilled some yogurt on her pants at breakfast and then I hastily wiped it up with a paper towel on the way out the door. You know, hypothetically. And, well, that’s going to have to be good enough.

Because, by god, those yogurt pants are getting worn again.

* By “wave them off in the morning,” I do mean make them breakfast, frantically scavenge for lunches, break open piggy banks for bake sale money, search for lost library books, sign permission forms a week late, wrestle them into snow pants, scream about lost mittens, and then haul ass to the school bus stop, of course.

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I woke up at 6:45 am Saturday morning to register my kids for Toronto’s city-run summer day camp at a local community centre. I pried open my eyes, trudged down the stairs, and sat down in front of the computer. I made sure my internet was working. I double checked that I had all the proper codes: family code, client code for each kid, and the individual codes for every session I wanted to register for. I dialed the phone-in registration number, too, so I would only have to hit redial. Then I waited.

6:58. 6:59. 7:00. AND GO! I pressed the online registration button on my computer with one hand and the redial button on my phone with the other. Both were busy. I kept on refreshing and redialing for a few minutes, but it didn’t take too long before I had gained access to the online system. I signed my kids up for the camps I wanted and then I was done. Not bad!

I went onto Facebook to gloat a little and saw that many friends were not so lucky. They had been unable to access the registration system for an hour or more and then the programs they wanted were full.

Lucky for us, I’m not the only one who noticed how stressful out the city’s park and rec registration process is. Mayor John Tory announced yesterday that he is planning to revamp the entire process to bring it up to date. He appointed a panel of people to find long- and short-term solutions for the registration process.

HALLELUJAH!

And of course we are all, “Finally!” A better system will be able to accommodate more people at once, so at least everyone trying to register at the same time will have a shot. Even a simple band-aid fix like offering one registration date for camps and another, separate date, for rec programs like swimming or dance lessons would immediately lessen the burden on the system.

An up-to-date registration site that easily shows program registrants all the available spots in the entire city will help families figure out when and where they can get into their desired program. Maybe the system could even recommend other neighbouring community centres! Maybe those programs could be plotted on a Google map! And TTC routes could also be integrated! Can you imagine this brave new world?

But I have one more radical idea for you, John Tory. Brace yourself.

Why don’t we let all residents of the City of Toronto sign up for whichever program they want and then simply fund those programs?

Now, hold up. Don’t get mired down in the details just yet. Don’t worry about the finite amount of pool space available in Leslieville on any given Saturday morning.  Don’t think about the fixed number of gyms in Parkdale/High Park. Don’t think about the budget. Just … shh.

Think about a world where people sign up for the programs they want and then the city offers enough of those programs. Close your eyes, breath deeply, and let that idea permeate through your body. Doesn’t that feel nice?

Good. Now all we have to do is get some smart people to figure out the how. Extended hours, discounted prices for less popular programs/locations/time slots, and possibly renting out space from the school board are a couple ideas that spring to mind. I’m sure you have some bright minds that can come up with even more solutions.

Man, I am so glad we had this talk.

This was a big movie year for me, guys. I saw not one, but TWO movies nominated for Oscars this year. Okay, so one of them was Inside Out, but I’m still counting at. At least Mad Max: Fury Road is basically as far from a wholesome family movie as it gets. I’m not sure I’m even old enough to have seen it.

Speaking of age, I couldn’t help but notice that both the Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress awards went to women in their twenties. (They were Alicia Vikander, 27, for The Danish Girl, and Brie Larson, 26, for Room, respectively.) Clearly I haven’t seen either movie, so I will assume their accolades are well-deserved.

But now that I’m clinging to my mid-thirties by the skin of my teeth, (mid-thirties lasts until 39, right?), I’m ever more aware of which roles are available to women as they get older. And since, as Oscar Wilde says, “Life imitates art,” movie roles count, dammit!

Fueled by a whiff of a suspicion of injustice, I naturally turned to Wikipedia. “Lemme find out exactly how few older women have ever won Best Actress and compare that to Best Actor,” I snickered. I was sure this had been done a million times before. I mean, this is not new. There are no good roles for older women, everyone knows that.

Sure enough, only 8 out of 87 Best Actress winners have been over 60-years-old. And three of those winners have been Katharine Hepburn! But here’s the shocker. Only 7 out of 87 Best Actor winners have been over 60-years-old. It looks like Hollywood doesn’t discriminate against gender when they are discriminating against age, after all.

Except … <cut to a scene of me typing furiously in the moonlight while I call up yet another Wikipedia page> … only ONE actor has EVER won Best Actor while he was in his 20s. (It was Adrien Brody for The Pianist at age 29, if you really need to know.) Meanwhile, a gobsmacking 31 women (out of 87, remember) have won Best Actress in their twenties.

Again, this is nothing particularly new, but it is glaringly reflected in this year’s winners. (The lack of racial diversity in the nominees was also, of course, striking. But much has already been said about that elsewhere.) In a time when a middle-aged actress is far more likely to receive press about the state of her face than the quality of her performance, we still expect actors to mature like fine wines.

Listen, I’m not saying that comparing Leonardo DiCaprio to a fine wine isn’t an apt comparison because it’s clearly the perfect comparison; our dear, rich, full-bodied Barolo with just a hint of mulberry. I’m simply saying that there was an expectation that DiCaprio had to wait to grow into the role of a great actor while women are expected to shine bright and then fade out. (There are many notable exceptions, to be sure. I generalize here.)

In any case, it looks like my own days of Hollywood dreaming are behind me. I’ll have to wait for one of my kids win an Oscar and hope to get a glimpse of my first name scrolling past on a ticker. Or maybe it’ll just say “Mom.”

“Be careful!” I called out. “Please don’t do that. You could get hurt.”

It was like I’d done so many times before, watching this kid clumsily climb up trees or perched on the highest possible playground surface. Except this time was different. We weren’t at a park or playground and what he was doing didn’t make any sense.

He was across the street on the top ledge of a five or six story building, holding his body up with his arms and doing some kind of break dancing superhero moves with his legs. The street was packed with people, some of them also calling up for him to stop, and I couldn’t seem to make my way any closer. Every once in a while, my four-year-old daughter would dart across the street and almost get run over by a car.

I was trapped in this dreamscape of paralyzing panic, not able to rescue either of my kids. Then it finally happened; he slipped. He caught hold of the ledge with one hand for the briefest of moments and then I saw him fall.

I screamed. I can still hear the raw, scratching shrieks of, “My son! My son! My son!” I ran to him, pushing through enormous crowds, screaming over and over again. Finally, I made it to where he landed on the concrete and there was a flash of his splattered head and that must have been too much. My subconscious short-circuited and I sat bolt upright in bed, blinking in the morning light, the sounds of Saturday morning cartoons drifting up the stairs.

It’s been three days and I still can’t shake the terror. I’m not sure if I ever will. But my son is fine. All my kids are fine. I can go up to their rooms where they lie sleeping and snuggle up with them, holding them safe in my arms forever more. Except then I need to put them on a school bus, and send them off to grow up and go places without me, and make the kinds of mistakes that I made with nothing but a prayer — a desperate, aching prayer — that they too might be lucky enough to survive those mistakes.

Because not everyone is so lucky. Parents in New Brunswick just lost their 18-year-old son to a drinking game. A fucking drinking game, can you even count the times.

I’m just coming up for air these days, after nearly a decade poised to pounce on babies, toddlers and preschoolers. In those early weeks, the simple act of feeding them and listening to them breath through the night was a constant vigil. Then there were beds to roll off, stairs to fall down, toxic chemicals, choking hazards, sharp objects, traffic to avoid and getting lost at the mall.

But somehow we got through it all and now it’s like there’s an evil joker laughing at me. “Oh, you thought those were dangers, did you? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

We try not to think about it too much because our hearts can’t take it. The loss of a teenager, a young person on the cusp of adulthood, so close to having got away with it all. Because isn’t that really the only way any of us ever make it this far? We were lucky enough to get away with it.

These are the deep tragedies of this life, that burrow into our souls and become part of who we are. Countless accidents, overdoses, bad calls, suicides and unjust forces of nature steal some of the brightest lights from this earth. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can only hold a place in my heart for those who will forever grieve: my dear cousin Daisy who lost her only son; Sue and Dave, and Michelle and Amanda who mourn their son and brother; and all the rest.

In the darkest corners of our subconscious, I think we have all been there. Yes, we can imagine all too well.

Now off to count my blessings and hope for a dreamless sleep.

As of the writing of this post, dear readers, it has been three days. Yes, three full days of house arrest by sick child. I can’t run errands, go out for lunch, take my laptop to a local coffee shop or go for my morning run. (I totally WAS going to start running every morning this week! Never you mind.)

It started with a feeble complaint about not feeling well on Monday morning. I shrugged off the complaint as usual with a, “Well, let’s just get dressed and have some breakfast and then see how you feel.” But the kid did not want to get up and since he’s not one to manufacture illnesses, we figured, fine, let him stay home.

It was kind of a bummer because the only thing I look forward to more than the weekend is Monday morning. I’m a complicated creature, I know! As much as I love spending time together as a family, I really love being all by myself and working on my own things. Still, I was able to get my most pressing work done and spend some relaxing one-on-one time with my guy who honestly did not seem very sick at all. These things happen. At least he’ll be back to school tomorrow.

And he was. But after a restless night spent screaming, crying, moaning, and kicking at her mother because of an ear ache, it was the four-year-old’s turn to stay home on Tuesday. I got exceedingly little done with a clingy, whiny, but (again) a not-so-sick-after-all four-year-old under foot. It was enough to trigger flashbacks from a few years ago when I worked at home meeting daily deadlines with hordes* of sticky preschoolers, toddlers and babies constantly underfoot. (*hordes means three here)

I dug deep, though, and found just enough grace congealing in some dark recess of my soul to muster something of a prayer of gratitude. They will all be off to school tomorrow, I thought, and now I have been reminded of what a gift those precious few hours are. I will not squander them on Facebook or by obsessive-compulsively cross referencing restaurants that are offered on UberEats to Chris Nutall-Smith reviews before making myself a Cracker Barrel cheddar sandwich on Dempster’s brown bread. No, I will write the hell out of those hours and scour my house inside and out as a fun “change of pace” when I need to take a break from the writing. I will go for that morning run after all, goddammit!

So thank you. Thank you, not-quite-sick children for reminding me of the true value of our public education system. I vow never to take it for granted ever again.

Cue four o’clock in the morning and the four-year-old is once again crying out in the night. This time it’s not her ear, but her tummy and she does indeed wind up throwing up over and over (and over) again. Then, at breakfast, the nine-year-old also throws up (just a little, does that even count?), but sure, okay, you stay home too.

And now, here I am hiding in the kitchen with my laptop from these children who are NEITHER OF THEM HARDLY SICK AT ALL and constantly demanding to be fed, paid attention to and generally loved. And, guys, how can I even believe that tomorrow will be any different? Even if the nine-year-old is well enough to go back to school and even if the four-year-old can make it through the night, I also have a seven-year-old who must, by now, be a walking petri dish of viral infections just waiting to take bloom.

The question at this point is not, when will they all return to school, but how has there ever been a day when they were all three well enough to attend. It seems like an impossible fantasy; perhaps something I dreamed up or a cruel myth that people spread like “fat-free cheesecake” or “morning people.”

But, god help me, if they ever do go back to school, I will have the most productive morning you can possibly imagine — and then I’ll go out to lunch to celebrate.

 

Parents these days are the worst.

Ask anybody. I hear it everywhere. I’ve smiled and nodded more times than I can count while some old lady corners me in an elevator to tell me how horrible the other parents are. I’ve heard it from other parents, read it in opinion columns in the newspaper, listened to talk radio hosts go on about it, and now I’ve heard it from Dr. Sax, the prominent child psychologist who was the main source in Maclean’s The Collapse of Parenting feature last week.

Hell, I’ve even said it myself because enough with the neverending snacks already and maybe your three-year-old should just wear the coat you already bought her. Oh come on, you’ve done it too. “The way that mother lets her child speak to her!” “Can you believe what those parents let her wear to the dance?” I hear you.

But sweeping statements that belittle an entire generation of parents are so completely … what’s the word? Oh yeah, boring. There’s no better way to make yourself sound like an old, out-of-touch, fogey than to start wagging your finger at all the generations that come after you.

This is especially funny coming from the baby boomers because weren’t they all hippies? They were the ones who grew up preaching brotherly love, independent thought, breaking away from the system and doing away with stuffy, old formalities. So when people say that parents these days — my generation of parents — are basically huge pushovers compared to the generation before them, I honestly don’t know what they are talking about.

Of course it’s fair to examine and even criticize particular parenting beliefs and practices, especially when they are widely embraced. But it doesn’t follow that those practices reflect an entire way of life. Dr. Sax, for example, repeatedly talks about parents giving their children too much power when it comes to food in the Maclean’s article. He says parents give their children too much choice, plead and bargain with them to eat their veggies, and tend to turn consequences like “no dessert if you don’t eat your broccoli” into bribes that promise them dessert if they’ll only just eat two bites. This may or may not be a good criticism of how some parents fail to feed their kids healthy food but it’s hardly indicative of a entire generation of parents having their authority usurped by chicken finger-wielding brats. And the further claim that this has led to an epidemic of childhood obesity conveniently leaves out the fast food industry, the prevalence of HFCS/glucose-fructose, and the broader cultural trends that make us all need more exercise.

In fact, I’m not sure there has ever been a generation of parents more concerned with feeding their kids healthy food. The importance of a healthy diet is widely touted and books, magazine articles, blogs and Pinterest accounts that provide tips and recipes to make healthy food appealing to kids are insanely popular. There’s nothing remotely new about kids who don’t want to eat there vegetables. The “sit at the table until you do” approach may result in fewer desserts being eaten (and certainly more dogs being fed broccoli under the table), but I’m not convinced it actually accomplishes much more than further entrenching a deep dislike for whatever it is the kid’s supposed to be eating.

And can we stop plucking examples of how parents are failing from random observations in public places? I know we’re supposed to be 100% consistent when applying rules but I’m usually too busy being 100% human and flawed. Sometimes you just need to get through the moment, and when that moment is the exception rather than the rule (eating at a nice restaurant, for example) it hardly makes you an entire pushover

For most casual critics, I think it’s a case of their memories being fuzzy and their eyebrow-raising reflex all too sharp. It’d be nice if they’d hone their compassion and sympathy triggers instead. But, honestly, I’d be happy if they’d just mind their own business.

 

 

“I’ll tell you what my problem is.

You know I love sending the kids to school. I want them to go out in the world and meet different people and get exposed to different ideas. I want them to learn. I think school’s do a half decent job of educating most kids even though they are chronically overcrowded, underfunded, and constrained by the yoke of institutional bureaucracy. Besides, it gets them out of my hair for a few hours.

But my problem. My problem is when the school system insists on thrusting the asinine prescriptions of institutional bureaucracy on our home life. I can’t engage my children in the learning opportunities they want and need after school because I need to stand over them, making sure they write the same sentence over and over until a seed of bitter resentment for all books and learning takes a firm root in their soul.”

I pick up a tea towel and walk into the next room.

“Ed? Are you listening?”

“What’s that?”

And this is why I have a blog.

My god, do I hate homework. I actually didn’t mind it when I only had one academically-inclined kid in school who was young enough that the teacher put the homework sheet directly into his backpack. I would sit him up at the dining room table and he would read the instructions and fill out the sheet. Easy peasy! Now, that same kid wouldn’t remember to bring the right books home if the Maple Leaf’s season depended on it.

Nonetheless, I was all set to send the kids back to school with the right “can do” attitude. I would simply be more organized and efficient and see to it that healthy homework routines became a priority. Cue Sunday night when I was lining up the kids’ backpacks and making sure they were cleaned out and ready to go. Crumpled at the bottom of my son’s backpack is a handout detailing the public speaking contest all the kids were required to enter and asking that an outline be submitted on the first day back. What. The.

Homework over the holidays?! A speech, no less! So clearly we had to spend all evening on Monday completing the outline which left no time for the other work he was supposed to do (not that he brought the books home anyway). Nor did it leave any time for me to oversee his first little sister’s homework or supervise his littlest sister instead of letting her log hours of screen time and then pull out every article of clothing she owns and strew them around the house.

My anxiety over my inability to keep up with the kids’ school work and also help them with areas they struggle with (ie. organization, reading, picking up after themselves) was mounting. Yes, I could hire a tutor or even just a teenager to oversee my daughter’s homework and help her with reading. But I only work while the kids are at school (or after they are bed when I have to). I have arranged my life so that I should have enough time for this stuff. I don’t even put them in after-school activities (except for one hockey practice per week apiece). I could hire someone, but I am the one who actually knows what they need.

And that’s when it dawned on me. I am the one who knows. I need to spend one-on-one time with each child supporting their learning every evening. I can do that, but not when that time is wholly consumed by rote learning assignments that squander whatever mental energy that’s left after the school day and leaves the kids spent. The number one most important thing for my daughter’s learning right now is to sit and read with me every single day, for example.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I will incorporate the homework and school material into our reading as much as possible, but I’m also setting a time limit on how much learning work they do each night. No more tears, no more tantrums, no more late nights. If the only half the homework gets completed, so be it.

I couldn’t care less about grades at this point, after all. (My kids are in grades 4, 2 and junior kindergarten.) What’s important is that they learn, have fun, enjoy school and establish healthy and productive work habits.

I read the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up this year too. As I sit here typing at my dining room table because the teetering pile of papers on my desk finally came crashing down into the spot where my laptop goes, I keep getting lost in daydreams where a crane lifts my house up by the corner and shakes all of it’s contents into a giant dumpster to be hauled away. (In this fantasy I’ll also pay someone to pick through the dumpster and donate anything that’s in good condition, so you eco-loving do-gooders can relax.) I don’t think I can ever keep up with the sheer volume of stuff that gets carted into this house on a daily basis by my children, husband, and sundry friends and relations, and (I’ll admit it) sometimes I bring stuff home too. But I can damn well try.

Yet here we are, deep in the holiday season, with parcels tucked away in closets across the land, rolling up our sleeves, and getting ready to plunge into the deepest recess of the suburban mall in order to buy more stuff. Stuff for you, and you, and you! If I really love you, I’ll give you even more stuff!

It’s inevitable, really. Exchanging gifts is a nice holiday tradition and the anticipation of Christmas morning followed by the great reveal of brimful stockings and shiny, new Santa toys is one of the great delights of childhood. So we get more stuff; it’s worth it.

Still, less is more. Here are some gift ideas that are thoughtful yet small.

Subscriptions and memberships

There are more subscription digital services than ever that cater to every member of my family. There are two that I use all the time. Ooka Island is a fantastic online reading program for kids ages four to seven. (They are also a blog sponsor. You can read more about them here.) Cook Smarts is an online meal planning service that offers recipes and a shopping list for four dinners a week (each meal has has a vegetarian, gluten-free, and paleo recipe, too). I’ve been using it since the spring and truly love it. (Use the coupon code PLAYCOOK15 to save 15% on subscriptions until Jan. 15, 2016.) It has revolutionized weeknight dinners for my family.  You can also buy family memberships to the Ontario Science Centre, ROM, AGO, Toronto Zoo, and your own local equivalents.

Books

I think the value of real paper books are still more than worth their shelf space, and there’s no need to hold onto any of them forever and ever either. (She says as she side-eyes those Aristotle paperbacks from university.) Here are a couple favourites from local authors that have come across my desk this year. The Art of the Possible by Edward Keenan, Toronto Star columnist and my husband, explains how politics actually works for kids ages 10 – 14ish. The Joy of Missing Out by Christina Crook, Toronto writer and mother of three, is an inspiring look at what happens when you unplug from technology and embrace life in the moment. It will make you rethink your relationship with technology. Finally, Parenting Through the Storm by everyone’s favourite pregnancy writer, Ann Douglas, is guide to navigating the minefield of parenting children who struggle with mental, behavioral or neurological disorders.

ONE thing

Sometimes you want to give a child a toy and see their faces light up and get all the glory, their parents’ clutter situation be damned. FAIR ENOUGH. Now look at the pile of stuff in your basket, choose the one thing you think they’d like, and put everything else back. If the child loves Maplelea dolls, for example, a new outfit for her doll is a lovely gift. If she likes Star Wars, maybe one action figure from the new movie would be nice. You can fluff it up with stickers and candy (but don’t tell the parents you heard that here) if you think it’s not quite enough.

Consumables

That brings me to my last point. Stuff you eat or drink, plants that eventually die (what’s that? plants aren’t supposed to be disposable? Oh.), bubble bath that gets washed away, and generally anything that gets USED UP is a wonderful gift. Affordable, slightly frivolous and entirely expendable: the ideal gift.

But, for the love of pine needles and red plaid, don’t give out anymore keepsakes. They are like weights tied around our souls. Not keeping things is the gift that keeps on giving.