My kids are brains

This morning I figured out that I am going to retire to the lap of luxury (no pun intended for those familar with Cheap Trick discography). You may be asking yourself how and that would be fair. Well, my children are going to take care of me in style during my old age.

O.K. maybe they won't support me when I'm old, but I'm just certain that they could. If their brains are any indication of how they'll fare in life, then they'll do just fine.

This morning it came to me. After years of intensive research, poring over books such as "Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood," "Playful Parenting," "Happily Married with Kids," "Parenting the Strong-Willed Child" and more... I realized that either A) I can become a parenting book critic or B) my kids are brains, bloody brilliant, advanced for their age, gifted beyond belief and here's how I can tell:

Almost every parenting book worth it's salt at some point emphasizes the need for giving children choices. Seems reasonable. Give a kid a choice between A and B and then you both feel good about it (making certain you are comfortable with both options). Give my children a choice between A and B and they will inevitably choose C, D or even E.

Other books suggest the use of Mama time outs. Just walk away for a while they say. Sounds oh so good to me. Most kids apparently are fine with Mama taking a few minutes to herself. My kids however, usually see this as an opportunity to fine tune their thesis on the correlation between extended periods in close personal proximity and the increase of stress in adults.

See... they are already doing college level work in preschool and elementary school. I'm set...

... if I don't lose my mind first.

Happy Halloween! Be safe and have fun. And by the way, the answer to the mystery rocker man was solved by my good friend from way back when, Kristin who correctly answered Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick. Ahh memories.