#Q4KIDZ II: My Girls Sound Off On Auto Design, Nature Noises and Mind Reading

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Lately, I’ve been the one asking the girls questions, too.

For more than a month, the girls and I have played along with a service called Q4KIDZ, from the organization Parents Together. Sign up, and you get daily questions by email or text to ask your kids.

It went so well last time, it’s now a monthly feature.

Here’s what the kids had to say to a few prompts in July. Apologies that the girls’ sketches don’t accompany their stellar answers this time. Two are off on a camping trip, and it’s an awful lot of pressure to put on the one who stayed behind.

New Year’s Wishes, in 6 Words

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See ya next year.

Couldn’t help it. It’s just the kid in me, and it’s been especially on display lately. This edition of Six Words has to do with wishes for the new year. With all the diets and life plans, we’re taking charge of the season of resolutions and turning new leaves.

But wishes still have a spot in the madness.

Every month, I compile a post called “6 Words.” Hemingway inspired it when he said any story can be told in a six-word sentence. I ask bloggers, friends, strangers, and a few strange blogger friends to respond to a prompt.

📅 My Plan to Get My Girls Hooked on Books

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The girls don’t think it’s cool to read.

Sad isn’t it? These kids’ parents read to them every night. With expression. And voices. Lots and lots of voices. So what gives? Why believe there’s no such thing as a good book? Should I blame Disney Channel? Vine?

Apps that allow you to spin your mental wheels without getting anywhere?

This is what happens when the school makes kids read books they don’t like. During summer vacation. What if we did this … What if … we let the kids read … whatever they wanted to read?

If you get a Chance to Spend Black Friday with a Toucan … Take it

Ever spent Black Friday with a toucan?

I have. I thought the toucan was a parrot. Toucans probably get ticked when you make that assumption. I should also mention this was not the wee hours of Black Friday when folks in Walmart are tossing roundhouses and uppercuts over flatscreens and Xboxes.

This was Black Friday afternoon – in the relative aftermath of such American doltery.

It wasn’t your average toucan. It was Camdyn, in a full-body toucan costume. We’d envisioned – when we both thought the costume was a parrot – we’d walk around the mall someday, I dressed as a pirate, she as a parrot.

A Coach’s Lesson, in 6 Words

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You can learn a lot from a coach.

Not all of it’s good. I remember a frustrated soccer coach who slammed his notebook to the turf after our team scored, then barked out the F word. Hayden, then playing U8 soccer, turned to me, mouth open slightly, and blinked several times.

I swear a light bulb illuminated above her head.

Thanks, coach.
Many other lessons are far less R-rated. Well, some.