Happy Chaos

by Soleil Moon Frye

  When we got back to my house, the kids were happy, and Shawn stayed for dinner. As we sat around the table, chatting and feeding the girls, I realized it was the first time that he and I had ever been alone with the girls. Suddenly our not-so-close relationship became so much warmer. The one person in my family that I would never have thought to depend on became someone I really needed to depend on, and our total dynamic changed. What a gift. In that moment any frustration that I had with him as a stepfather disappeared because I saw the incredible grandfather he had become, and my heart opened up in a way I did not realize was possible.

  One piece of advice I can give from this experience is to write down a list of the people you love and you really trust, keep that list by your side for emergencies, and even add the ones you might not usually think of, because you never know when you are going to need that one person you might never expect. I don’t think my mom ever imagined that the King of Pop would be my babysitter. Just like I didn’t know my Teamster stepdad would be a big teddy bear I could totally count on.

  S.P.S.

  It takes a village . . .

  It can be really hard for us to imagine that anyone can take care of our kids as well as we can. I know lots of parents who never go anywhere without their kids because they haven’t found anyone they trust. Sometimes, this fear isn’t really about our kids—it’s about us. It’s also important to remember that our kids learn really important things from people other than us. My kids get totally different—and wonderful—things from their grandparents, friends, and the other amazing people in our lives. And experienced babysitters or good friends can also empower our kids to do stuff for themselves that maybe we always do for them without even thinking about it. As my mom always says, “It takes a village.” I really believe that, and I’m grateful for the friends and family who surround us and our girls.

  Knowing when to ask for help . . .

  I have learned to ask for help when I really need it. This has not always been easy. Of course I want to be supermom and do it all. Write, design, pick up groceries, drop the kids at school, pick them up from school, make breakfast, pack lunch, make dinner, run a business, the list goes on. For any parent, we do our best at artfully juggling life and family while trying to balance it all. Now I ask for help when I really need it without being hard on myself. Often my mom is here playing with the kids on the floor or making a beautiful art project outside while I am writing. Then I get to swoop in like supermom and really enjoy their artwork or roll around on the floor with them. It’s good for all of us! So don’t be afraid to ask others for help. You can still be a superhero while leaning on that village.

  17

  What I Learned from Punky

  Question of the day: How do you encourage your kids’ quirks?

  “Let them decide what they like and what they don’t. Schedule time for things like digging in the dirt or dancing in circles. Save old clothes for playing in the rain. Have towels for wiping off mud. (Can you tell I have boys?)”

  —Allen

  “Just let them be. Don’t draw attention to them and don’t try to get rid of them. If they are quirks to stay and part of them, they will withstand the test of time.”

  —Hillary

  “Be involved!!! My 3-year-old son is very much into how things work, so we take apart the controllers, cover off the computer, etc. I want him to know that questioning how things work and why is a good thing! Never settle for the big picture! My 5-year-old daughter likes to put makeup on herself and pick out her clothes. Instead of telling her she looks silly (but in a very cute, silly way), I tell her how glamorous she looks and then I ask that she make me up and pick out my clothes. :) It’s fun one-on-one girl time for us and has given the UPS man quite a few laughs when he drops off packages!”

  —Jennifer

  “I was the anti-princess mom. Then Cortana said to me after I dressed her one day, ‘Look mommy! I look just like a pretty princess!’ . . . Now she has a princess kitchen, a princess bed, a treasure box of princess dress up, and princess clothes AND shoes. She also loves pirates so we’re hoping for a well rounded, butt kicking princess. :D”

  —Kelley K.

  “Let them express themselves, within limits of course, if they are not harmful to themselves or others, there’s no need to point out that they are different. Just let them be the individual they were created to be.”

  —Whitney

  When you play a character for as long as I played Punky, sometimes the line between where you end and your character begins can get kind of blurry. For me, Punky was so much like me, and I was so much like Punky.

  Punky had her own unique sense of style and so many great crazy catchphrases. Now I can’t remember if Punky said them first or if I did. Some of my favorites were “Holy macanoli,” “Grossaroo,” and of course “Punky Power!” I still laugh saying that. In fact, I laughed hysterically when I decided to dress up like Punky to celebrate getting my one millionth Twitter follower. I went full-on Punky in pigtails, rolled-up jeans with a bandana around one leg, bright mismatched sneakers, the works. My daughter said, “You can’t dress like that, Mom!” (Ah, the joy of embarrassing my children.) It was so much fun to get into that character again, after all these years. Once I started yelling “Punky Power!” it was hard to stop.

  Decked out in all my Punky glory as an adult. I really do love laughing at myself.

  Even before “Punky Power,” the world of acting was the perfect place for a kid like me—it played right into my two biggest personality traits at that point. The first was my incredible curiosity. I always wanted to try everything, see everything, taste everything. My big brother regularly had to stop me from trying to eat bugs and dirt. And my other biggest personality trait then? Let’s just say that I was a little . . . quirky.

  For example, I loved horror movies as a kid. I inhaled horror films like other kids watched cartoons. I was just six years old when I got my first opportunity to be possessed by the devil, and I dove in headfirst. The movie was Wes Craven’s Invitation to Hell. I used to love sleeping over at my friend Cherie’s house because her mom would let me rent the most gory, scary movies. I would stay up at night watching them by myself. So a movie like this was a dream come true for me. The morning of my big possession scene, I woke up and I wouldn’t speak to my mother, I’d only give her freaky stares. I guess I was Method acting or something, getting ready for the scene where I was supposed to stab a stuffed bunny rabbit with a crowbar. My big line, spoken in a gravelly, “redrum” kind of voice, was “Bad bunny, bad. Bad bunny, bad.”

  As a little girl, quirks and all

  Another of my quirks was actually caught on film a few times. For at least a year when I was about five, I was compelled to say the word “probably” after every single sentence I uttered. This is literally how I spoke: “What’s going on, probably? I really love you, probably. Please pass the potatoes, probably.”

  One of my first speaking parts was in a TV movie called Who Will Love My Children? I was the youngest of ten kids whose mother (played by Ann-Margret) was dying of cancer. In one really intense, emotional scene, Ann-Margret was crying and I was sitting on her lap eating ice cream. I was supposed to look up at her and say, “I want to go to heaven with you, Mommy.” I said my line perfectly, but if you look really closely, I think you can see that I’m mouthing the word probably at the end of my moving little speech. Thankfully, acting eventually broke me of my “probably” phase.

  It was fortunate that I ended up on a show that was all about curious kids finding their way in the world and learning from their mistakes, and the writers and directors loved to pull plotlines straight from the stuff that was happening in our little-kid lives. One of the first times that happened was right after the Challenger disaster. Everyone around me knew that I wanted to be an astronaut. When I got to my school on the set that horrible morning of the explosion, a few of the kids told me, “We’ll watch your family for you if you die.” I burst into tears an
d carried that sadness with me for days. The result was a visit to the Punky set by Buzz Aldrin, and an episode in which he encouraged Punky to keep following her dream of becoming an astronaut.

  One of the most popular episodes we ever made was when Cherie got locked in a refrigerator, and we saved her life by giving her CPR we had learned in school. The episode was inspired by a letter sent to the show by a fan. To this day I’m still approached by people who say they saved someone using the CPR they learned on Punky Brewster. I love that kids learned important things from what we did on that show. Most of all, I hope that kids learned to be themselves—quirks, curiosity, and all.

  I look at my girls now and I’m continually entertained by them. I love it when I see myself in them, and I love it even more when they are totally themselves. I even try not to be too horrified when their little experiments take a wrong turn. Just the other day Jagger sprayed herself in the face with the bidet. Lovely. And once wasn’t quite enough to quench her enthusiasm. So she did it again. She’s given dirt a try a few times, too. But whether it’s a mouthful of bidet water or a lick of dirt, who am I to judge . . . probably . . .

  S.P.S.

  People are strange . . .

  We all want our kids to be happy. And we also want to be good parents. So when our kids are showing their individuality, we can feel conflicted about how to handle it. We want to encourage their uniqueness, but it can be a cruel world out there at times, and we wonder if we should prepare them for that. So what’s a good parent to do? I find it helpful to remember how quirky I was as a kid—and realize that I grew up to be a happy and (reasonably) well-adjusted adult. And truthfully, some of my best qualities as a person are directly linked to those quirks that I had as a kid. I don’t think I know anyone who didn’t have some unique interest or wacky quirks when they were growing up, or, for that matter, as an adult. So how about a little finish-the-sentence to remind us of some of the craziest quirks we had as kids?

  When I was a kid, my quirkiest habit was . . .

  “Putting cheese slices on my head to make people laugh.”

  —Alea

  “Singing . . . That is all I did was sing.”

  —Carrie

  “Clenching my fists together and placing them against my teeth with excitement.”

  —Ashley

  “Falling down to make people laugh. I still do that on occasion, but unfortunately I don’t do it on purpose.”

  —Nicole A.G.

  18

  Too Scared to Scream

  Question of the day: What is your favorite kid movie of all time?

  “The NeverEnding Story.”

  —Amy

  “Wizard of Oz (still is).”

  —Annette

  “My favorite kid movie was Annie. When I was young, I LOVED Annie. I even named my black lab Sandy after the dog in the movie.”

  —Danielle

  “Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins. Still to this day and against my boys’ better wishes I will kick back and watch both of them when they come on.”

  —Lisa M.

  “My all time favorite film was Karate Kid. I remember pestering my parents for ages to let me go to karate school. In the end my dad told me to paint the fence on the back garden the same way as he does in the film as it would be good practice. It wasn’t until I had finished that I realized I’d been had.”

  —Steven

  I can so easily remember what it was like to be a kid that sometimes I have to remind myself I’m an adult. And I sometimes I have to remind myself I’m an adult. And I think that’s actually been really good for me as a parent, because I love to have fun with my girls, and I have no problem getting right down on their level and totally enjoying whatever they’re doing.

  Sometimes, though, as parents, we have to ask ourselves whether the stuff our kids would find fun (and we might find kind of fun, too) is really appropriate for them. Like, maybe my five-year-old isn’t ready to watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Meanwhile, I would have been the little kid watching that movie and loving every second, but my parents were—as you have probably figured out by now—more unconventional. In my total obsession with horror films as a kid, I convinced my dad to take me, my best friend, Tori, and my then-boy-friend Chad to see Too Scared to Scream at a seedy old movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard. We were eight years old. Tori and Chad begged to see a different movie, but I was too excited to worry about their fears.

  So my dad took us three eight-year-olds to a creepy theater—complete with red seats, red walls, and sticky floors—and then . . . he left us there. I guess he didn’t want to see the movie, either. By that point, I don’t know if Chad and Tori were more terrified by the movie or the fact that we were alone in this place without adult supervision, but they were clearly freaking out. Finally, I realized that this outing was becoming a total disaster, and it was time to call my mom. I found a pay phone at the bottom of a long, dark staircase and told her what had happened. I still remember her shouting into the phone, “Your dad WHAT?” Then she raced over to pick us up, and her first stop was my dad’s house to find out what on earth he was thinking. I remember him kind of shrugging. He didn’t mean to be irresponsible; it’s just that to him, this was not a big deal, and the idea of what was appropriate for an eight-year-old kid just didn’t really cross his mind. Little did we know then that there were some other issues going on with my dad, and that some of his odd behavior was hinting at an underlying illness. That was something I would only find out later in life. But that’s a story for a different chapter.

  The truly funny thing about that night is that after my mom rescued Tori, Chad, and me from Too Scared to Scream, she took us to the most sappy, G-rated animated kids’ movie at Mann’s Chinese. Tori, Chad, and I looked at each other in dismay, thinking, Damn—this is what we get for calling Mom. Oh well.

  I try to strike a balance in these sorts of situations with my kids. But it’s hard to figure out that balance, and what’s right for one kid might not be right for another. When Poet was four years old, we thought it would be fun to take her to a Hannah Montana concert. I remember seeing Miley Cyrus up on the stage on a motorcycle, and the music was booming and the crowd was hysterical, and I thought, Hmmm, I guess this is pretty intense for a four-year-old. Of course, Poet loved it, and everything was fine, but as parents we’re faced with all kinds of decisions every day. What music is it okay to listen to? What television shows are okay to watch, and when should they start getting into things like Facebook and Twitter? Is it okay to play video games? What happens when they act out the characters from the games? There are so many questions. Even though I loved The Amityville Horror when I wasn’t much older than Poet, I would never let her watch it now. If a scary trailer comes on TV and she happens to be watching, I’ll rush over and say, “Close your eyes, close your eyes!” And even though I love social media myself, there’s plenty of time—later—for Poet and Jagger to get into it.

  We can’t shelter our kids forever. God knows, no one could have sheltered me—I was too curious to be held back for long. But it’s definitely our responsibility as parents to protect our kids’ innocence. I hope my girls hold on to the little kids inside of them forever, just the way I have.

  And while they are little girls, I want them to savor every minute of it.

  S.P.S.

  Making the right choices . . .

  How do we pick what is right and what is not right for our little ones to be exposed to?

  I truly believe that every child is an individual. I don’t think we can hold one kid next to another and say that since it is okay for one, then it will be okay for the other. For example, Poet started out loving Scooby-Doo, just like her mother, and Jagger just can’t get enough of it. But Poet got a little scared with one episode and now is more cautious about watching it, while Jagger would love to watch a whole marathon if she could.

  I think we do the best we can, and the key to making these choices is communication and observing how t
hey absorb what is around them.

  Make your choices known . . .

  It is also important that the people around you know what you are comfortable with. If you have a babysitter, grandparent, or friend watching your child, then let them know how you feel about what your little ones are exposed to. Make a list of what works for you. Is it okay to watch live-action tween shows, or are you only comfortable with cartoons that are geared toward small children? Also, how do you feel about people being on the phone or responding to texts or e-mails while watching your children? Better to be up-front with them than to get frustrated later.