My daughter is three years old. I have no idea how to respond when we are in public and she starts asking about body parts. Maybe you have some advice for me. Here’s an example.

We’re in a diner in the middle of Alaska. We are standing by the counter waiting for our to go box. There are a number of people sitting at the counter and a few men in their 20s standing nearby.

“He’s a man,” announces my daughter, pointing to one of the men.

“Yes, honey, he is a man,” I reply.

“He’s a man because he has a penis,” she says loudly.

“Yes, honey, that’s true,” I respond.

“He has a penis because he’s a man,” she says again, louder and pointing.

“Uh huh,” I respond and try to act like nothing is out of the ordinary.

Because I don’t want her to be alarmed. I don’t want her to think she is doing something evil or dirty or wrong. I don’t want her to be hung up about parts of the body. But I don’t know what to say or do in those situations. Smile. Wince. Grin again. Roll eyes. Stay calm.

I don’t want her be ashamed of her own body. I’ve told her the correct names for everything, but when she kept referring to “my magina,” I decided to give her a cuter, easier-to-pronounce name for her parts. We call them “Girly Parts.” She likes that. And she likes to talk about them, too.

We’re in public again. She points between her legs.

“Are these my girly parts, mommy?”

“Yes, honey, those are.”

She turns and looks behind her.

“Is that my butt?”

“Yes, sweetie.”

“Are those your girly parts, mommy?” Point point point.

“Uh huh.”

“I saw your girly parts are furry,” she announces.

“Yours will be someday, too, baby” I say, and lead her gently but quickly to another aisle in Wal-Mart.

Am I doing something wrong here? Should I be shushing her? Scolding her? Swatting her? Ignoring her?

I’m afraid that if I make a big deal, she might start bringing up body parts on purpose to see is she can get a wild reaction from me. I don’t want to overreact. So I just keep an even tone, acknowledge her accurate statements, and hope that people don’t think I’m some kind of weird, bad mother.

I have spoken to her a few times about when and where it is okay to talk about our body. Home? Yes. Diner? No. Doctor’s office? Yes. Wal-Mart? Please no. When she brings these things up, it just seems like a spontaneous realization that there are penises and vaginas hidden behind every pair of pants, skirt or dress.

What is the proper way of handling this kind of thing? Is there one?

I’m an inadequate mother. There, I said it. And I have to say that I feel a sense of relief saying it out loud or at least out in the open on a very public blog. I’ve felt this deep, burning inadequacy often in the last three years since my daughter was born, but I feel it more and more as I fail to properly navigate the twisted paths through parenthood.

Tonight, my husband is out of town, and my daughter refused to go to sleep. I decided to make things fun for her and to let her snuggle in “mommy and daddy’s bed” for a while, maybe even sleep there with me. I even let her watch a little movie in bed after her regular bedtime to make it extra special. I thought that would be a cool mommy thing to do.

The whole thing backfired on me. When I said it was time to go to sleep, instead of a compliant child, I had a toddler meltdown on my hands. What was I thinking? Of course she’d be overtired if I let her stay up past her bedtime. Why hadn’t I anticipated the errors of my ways? And why did I think my idea of cool mommy was even remotely suitable for a three year old? But what the hell do I know?

I don’t know, and there’s the rub. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, a devastating realization for an overachiever who has been good at just about everything I’ve put my mind to do. But not motherhood. I throw my heart, soul and brainpower into being a good mom, but it always seems to backfire on me.

For some reason, I’m not getting the memos on what to do when she refuses to go potty, refuses to eat her dinner, refuses to go to bed. Intellectually, I know she is testing the waters, testing her power as a little individual. I don’t know how much is too much discipline or how little is too little. I don’t want to crush her feisty little spirit, but I can see how this could happen all too easily.

Tonight, after carrying her kicking and screaming into her bedroom when she utterly refused to go to sleep in my bed, I listened to her screeching and howling. Then she came out of her bedroom and back into mine.

“Go…to…bed,” I said in measured tones.

“I don’t want to go to bed,” she sobbed.

“Go…to…bed…now…or I’ll carry you back in your room and shut the door.”

“I don’t want to go to bed in my bed. I don’t want to go to bed in your bed. I want to go to bed in the living room. On the sofa,” she told me.

The living room? Was that okay to do? Was I giving in too easily, I wondered, as I followed her to the living room and tucked her blanket around her as she curled up on the sofa. She wanted to go to sleep in the living room. I returned to my bedroom exhausted, overwhelmed, feeling like I didn’t know what just happened or why. Certain that I just committed Mommy Sin #1285 and creating some new problem by not making her sleep in her own bed tonight.

Then I had to laugh through my own tears tonight as I read Steve Woodruff’s post about Father’s Day, and how men can feel inadequate about being fathers. Who are the parents who don’t feel inadequate most of the time? Or what I really want to know is who are the ones who do, and what denial pill or happy sauce are they slugging down? I want some.

Am I the only one who feels at any moment I might get fired from this mommy gig?

When I was growing up, living with my Grandmother, we got up every Saturday morning and cleaned the house. You did your chores before you got to do anything else. No exceptions. If you just did it and didn’t gripe too much, the cleaning took maybe an hour (it wasn’t a big house, and there were a couple of us doing the work). For me, it was a big lesson in “just suck it up and do it and it will be done quickly.” It took me a while to figure it out though. When I first started living with Grandma, I tried a lot of bargaining to get out of the cleaning. I never won that debate.

My little guy turned 3 in June and I think it’s time to start the Saturday morning cleanup. He picks up his toys, takes his dishes to the sink after meals, and helps me water the plants. He’s pretty good about doing those things without too much griping. That’s all fine and good. My challenges come in two forms: (1) I’m impatient when it comes to cleaning, and (2) I’m lazy.

Impatience Anyone?

I don’t know if it’s a hold-over from my childhood, but I just want the cleaning done and to get on with the rest of my day. That wouldn’t be a big deal except that I often take over the tasks I’ve asked my son to do so that they’ll get done quickly. I don’t know how much Nicholas has caught onto that yet (probably completely, he’s smart), but I’ve got to put a stop to it. Do you find yourself doing that? When a task will go a lot faster and be done better if you do it, you just take over for your child? I know this tendancy isn’t good for either of us, but I seem to have fallen into that pattern.

Lazy!

I’m lazy. Or overly tired. I can’t decide which is more accurate. When we wake up on Saturday mornings, I just want to be lazy and snuggle in bed with my Fella and my boy. Who wants to get up and clean and organize when there are two warm bodies waiting for hugs and a cozy bed to snuggle in? The problem is, that if I don’t do the cleaning and get it done pretty early in the morning, I tend not to do it. And then I spend the next week griping about how I should have cleaned Saturday morning :). Stupid, I know. The more important issue when I don’t clean is that Nicholas has allergy-induced asthma, and I feel like he does better if the house is fairly dust-free. That means dusting and vaccuming. Yuck.

How do you do it?

What is your family’s routine for cleaning and other chores? How much do you put your kids to work? Are you often tempted to do it yourself? How do you stop yourself from taking over?

I’m interested to see how you all manage the work in your families.

Sherry Carr Deer is a Mommy to Nicholas who just turned 3, fiance to William, the widow of Mark, and a PR professional at a non-profit hospital. You can read more of her posts here.

I can see Braxton’s toddler imagination working overtime. He’s developing stories and creating narratives about cars and trains, dogs and clouds. I pick up a word here or there, but for the most part, it’s all about him.

As I see this part of his personality developing, I wonder how I can foster his imagination and keep his creativity flowing. I remember playing for hours with my siblings, cousins and neighbors in our own fantasy world and that’s carried over into adulthood as curiosity, optimism and problem solving.

ParentCenter had a great article about this topic last week and I thought I’d share some of the tips with you here.

Read books together: We all know this is important for vocabulary and language development. Think about why you read for pleasure, though - for me it’s an escape - to visit far off lands and imagine unknown people and situations. For your kiddo, it’s the same. We have a book called Jungle Drums and it’s one of our favorites. The storyline is a little over Braxton’s head, but he loves the drumming part. The illustrations are big and colorful and there are lots of animals sounds to make.

Share stories together: Making up stories is just as good as reading a book together. Your toddler will help develop a sense of possibility and encourage the basics of creating a plot and characters. Tall Tales Audio has some great tips for getting started, like keep it simple (just four or five sentences for the littlest ones and try copying the format of nursery rhymes for ideas); use familiar people and places; put your child at the center and have fun and be silly!.

Celebrate his artwork: Ask your child to interpret - whether than “is that an X?” (you’ll be wrong) ask him to tell you about what he drew. Braxton loves to color. It doesn’t matter if it’s chalk, crayons, washable markers or just a pen from mom’s bag, he’s always drawing. Of course, he’s 2, so he never draws anything recognizable, but it’s still fun for him to imagine what he’s drawing and tell me about it. If you’re really interested, you can check out this home video of his artistic endeavors.

Make music: Even if it’s too early for formal lessons, you can still be musical together. Sing, dance and listen to music together.

For more tips from ParentCenter, visit the article. What do you do to help encourage imagination? Or what fun imagination fueled play have you and your kids had together?

Photo from my living room (yes, I was in the middle of laundry!). Braxton, age 2.