My Passover Parenting Fail

This piece originally ran at Kveller.com.

On the way home from Sunday school, my tiny children asked so many uncomfortable questions. They asked about God, and death, and bad guys, and then something even worse. That Egyptian child from the tenth plague was just temporarily frozen, I told them. Once Pharaoh realized his mistake all the children were fine. Then I desperately tried to change the subject, but it kept coming back.

My children watched Prince of Egypt in Sunday school this weekend. They didn’t watch a short excerpt either. They watched a pretty big chunk of the movie and it was nowhere near age appropriate. I was there and in hindsight I wish I had followed my gut and pulled my children out of the room. Sometimes I wonder if I am being oversensitive, all of the other parents were chatting in the other room. I was the only one in the room wringing my hands.

If I had previewed the movie, I wouldn’t have let my children watch it. When I asked the other mother who is a volunteer teacher about it she said it was very gentle. Before the scene on the plagues, I asked her how the movie handles the tenth plague.  She said, “Oh, it is very tasteful. It will go over their heads. It is just like a wind storm that comes through.” I don’t blame the teacher, other parent volunteers had canceled at the last minute and she was doing her best to fill in.

So I left my little ones seated, my tiny new 3-year-old and my sensitive nearly 6-year-old.  But when the scene came, it made my stomach wrench. It focused on the Pharoah’s adorable innocent son being hit by this creepy wind storm from God, and well, you can imagine. Next the small boy is covered by a white sheet and the Pharoah says to Moses, “Ok, you can go now” or something.  The crossing of the sea was rough too, but nothing compared to the boy with the sheet.

On the car ride home my 3-year-old said, “Why did God dead that boy.” These are moments I question everything, why do we even pass on scary stories generation after generation. Clearly, I do not believe it should be done through a video. I could have just reached for the remote, hit pause and suggested a story or game, but when I am in a community I don’t want to always be the trouble maker. It would have been better for all the children. I could have, but I didn’t.

It is so frustrating because Sunday school is a big effort. We rushed breakfast and drove 30 minutes away. And I have a feeling I will be digging out of this hole for a long time.  I wound up fabricating this lie that God was just trying to teach Pharoah a lesson. And all of the Egyptian children were happy in the end too.  My 3-year-old wanted to believe it, she kept repeating, “so God was doing a joke that wasn’t silly. The child did not really get dead-ed.”

My 5-year-old sort of believed me, but not fully.  And I don’t know if I should have been lying or not, but I do think we shouldn’t have even been having that conversation. And since we were all in the car together, I could not have a slightly older kid conversation with my son.  I did the best I could with my scrappy answers while trying to keep my eyes on the road. Parenting is hard, and messy, and this morning I am pretty sure I missed the mark.

 

Compostable Toys and Farm Photos

Again, I am guilty of not keeping up with the farm blog now that the farm is kicking into the real season.  We are so busy with the CSA, selling flowers to a wholesaler and trying to connect with more chefs that writing has been falling by the wayside, and so many writing ideas are slipping away! That’s OK, I will keep trying.

I have to share this photo I took of a project my two year old did with the newly harvested baby squash.  She spent a long time moving them around and arranging them until she was happy with the organization. I think she tried to get the most of the smallest ones together and she was also talking about some different family combinations as she worked (daddy squash, sister squash).  I was happy to see her enjoying the novelty of something new in the house and it made me wish more of our toys were this ephemeral and compostable because just like a new toy, they will not hold interest for very long. But with squash, that’s perfect because we can just eat them or compost them.

 

I want to share a few more images of where we are in the season right now.  I was happy to get to sample the first of our potatoes.  These were just dug as samples, they are really not ready yet and will hopefully produce lots more before we dig them for real.  They were such a treat!

first potatoes – purple, pink, yellow

Here are the last of our summer crops hardening off outside the hoophouse. Last night, I moved all these trays inside in advance of a major thunderstorm and today they are back outside.

 

Our main seedling house (below) is now half overtaken by peppermint.  This perennial did what I always dream a perennial will do when I buy a  new one — established itself and became a big part of our life.  I use this peppermint all the time and I even want to start calling this hoophouse “peppermint house” since  we are always asking each other “which hoophouse” and they really need names.

Tomatoes in another hoophouse that are still green but look so promising.

And finally, my Nikko Blue Hydrangea, a plant that I love so much, even though they are everywhere.  I hope to propagate this plant and get a commercial sized planting in, right now there are just two plants.

And on the farm, we have had a nice long spring season.  We are still harvesting lettuce, spring onions and radishes and we are sliding towards our summer crops.  I can’t wait for those tomatoes to ripen!

 

Lessons from Sunflower Seeds and Shelling Peas

There is so much happening on the farm now, it is hard to find time to write about it. We are already into our fourth week of the CSA season, and strawberries are sadly winding down already.  Deer attacked our late strawberry planting, so the season will end a little earlier than we hoped.  We are also harvesting spring onions, radishes, tons of lettuce, spinach, arugula, cilantro and peas.

A couple of weeks ago we went to a birthday party and one of the party favors was a little plastic pot with sunflower seeds that children could water and watch the plants grow.  I tried to direct my 5 year old toward something else, like the little boxes of crayons or bouncy balls figuring we see enough seeds and plants at home.  But he wanted the little pot and brought it home.  I was very surprised to see it became his new favorite thing for a while, he woke up each day and rushed straight to his little pot to check on the seedlings.  I realized that even though he sees us raise plants by the thousands, it is entirely different to care for your own.  So, I am thinking he needs more of his own farm projects that are on his scale.

Along those lines, we had some shelling peas last week and that was another great project for both children 2 and 5.  They both focused for about 40 minutes on splitting and sorting the peas.  And it naturally followed that they were much more excited to eat the peas that they shelled. It reminds me to look for more opportunities for farm projects that are on the right scale for the children to naturally engage in.

Today we attended our first 4-H meeting around the corner from our house.  There we worked on planting another little garden. It will be interesting to see how that group takes shape and to learn from some teachers who have lots of experience with engaging children on farms.

Have you had any great experiences working in gardens with young children?

Kale Chips: A Surprising Hit with Preschoolers and Recipe

this piece is running at kveller.com today. You can try it with other greens too!

Last week, my sweet boy turned 5 and we celebrated by hosting his preschool class at our farm for a treasure hunt, pony rides with a neighbor, and lunch. He originally requested a party at one of those indoor bouncy centers, so I was very happy that we were able to coax, sell, and redirect him toward a homespun farm party.

The day before the party, my husband brought in a large bag of tender baby kale from the farm–the first of the spring new growth. When I asked my son what we should serve as a snack for the party, he completely surprised me by suggesting kale chips. I laughed and wondered how they would go over with his class that is used to much more standard preschool fare.

We served lunch in our sukkah which is still standing on the edge of one of our fields, now dressed up with balloons and crepe paper. The children were hungry when they sat down and the first thing I put out was the kale chips. Only one child made a face and said, “I don’t like those, they are green.” But all the other children reached in to try them. And they were a huge hit! The children grabbed seconds and thirds and moments later the bowl was empty.

Maybe you want to try this for your next preschool or grown-up gathering. I promise you, if you have never tried them you will be amazed by how good they are. Plus, they are kosher for Passover! Here is how to make them:

1. Gather one large bunch of young tender kale from your garden, farmers market, or grocery store. Note, they shrink a lot in this recipe, so start with more than you think you need.

2. Wash well and drain or dry leaves.

3. Put kale in a large bowl and drizzle with olive oil and salt to taste, stirring to get an even coating of salt and oil on the leaves.

4. Lay kale in a single layer on baking sheets and bake for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Flip kale and continue cooking for another 3-5 minutes. Watch them closely; they should crisp up nicely. The edges will brown a bit but should not turn black.

5. That’s it, cool and serve.

 

This post originally appeared on kveller.com.

Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children–including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies…and advice from Mayim Bialik.

Matzah in the Sandbox (repost)

I am reposting what I posted around the third day of Passover last year since I have some new readers.  There is no time to write now, but I am experiencing the now annual matzah crumb issue and I am thinking that if Jewish Mamas invented our Jewish celebrations, somehow Passover would have been linked with Sukkah and we would always eat matzah outside,  just like during the #exodus.

  

Nobody wanted to leave the sandbox at lunch time today. With the perfect spring breeze shaking the new Bradford Pear leaves over our heads and the soft afternoon sun warming our cheeks, we were all content to keep playing. Plus, there was a new bucket of plastic sand toys for digging and building. But I was hungry too, so I ran into the house and grabbed a box of matzah.

I have noted the irony of the impressive onslaught of matzah crumbs beginning the moment the house has been cleaned for Passover. The near constant shower of matzah crumbs around my kitchen table has been relentless for the past few days. With two young children, I even found myself sweeping in “real time” with crumbs falling around me and a few directly into the dustpan. Maybe this is another opportunity to remember the bitterness of slavery, I am sure building the pyramids and sweeping up after Egyptians was far more thankless. But for me, I would rather be eating horseradish (which I guess isn’t fair because I do sort of like it).

So, matzah in the sandbox was a welcome change. The crumbs fell and instantly camouflaged into the sand just as the original matzah crumbs must have disappeared on the ground of the Sinai.  And as we were eating, it seemed a perfect time to talk about Passover with my son who spent most of the Seder playing with legos in the next room with his cousins.

He started the conversation. “I love matzah with jam and matzah without jam” he declared.

“Do you know why we eat matzah”, I asked.

“To remember that we are free and that we ran away from the Egyptians.” He said.  Ok, I thought, he absorbed more than I realized during his brief stints at the Seder table.

Then he thought for a minute, raking some sand and asked, “Who was good, Pharaoh or the other one?”

“Moses,” I volunteered, “he and his sister Miriam lead us from Egypt and God helped too.”

He thought about it and asked, “Is Pharaoh still around or did he turn into a skeleton.”  This has become his turn of phrase for describing his new concept of death since we visited the dinosaur museum.

“No, Pharaoh turned into a skeleton long ago.”  I said thinking this is not the time to introduce the mummy concept.

“Then we could stop eating matzah, and go back to Egypt.” he suggested still raking.

“Yes, I guess we could visit Egypt someday,”  I told him.

Then he ate some more matzah and said, “Mom, the matzah is working. It does make me remember.”  And he had a far off look in his eyes, like the matzah was literally giving him memories from someplace far away. What was he thinking about? Were there four year olds who played in the sand in Sinai after crossing the Red Sea.  Or maybe he was remembering something from earlier that day, like when we ate matzah with jam on actual plates at breakfast. Either way, I highly recommend matzah in the sandbox.