Are your kids ready to party like rock stars?

It’s 12:15 am and the kids are bored.  Sure, some parents would say that they should be in bed asleep but I disagree.  Is that really preparing your children for the future?  How will they ever be able to stay up all night and party like rock stars if they are asleep by midnight?  Doesn’t the party just get started around 11 pm?

To encourage the children to go to sleep, I like to read them the latest Department of Labor Statistics report about the recent drop in the U.S. employment rate.  Of course, the authors were a bit off the mark with their lack of taking into account the discouraged workers that aren’t included in the report’s figures.  However this report did help to push the Dow Jones (and my heart rate up) to the 15,000 mark.

If that doesn’t put the little buggers to sleep, I usually like to talk about my bad experience at the local coffee shop where the coffee shop was out of my favorite flavor.  Whoa.  Hold on.  It is a bit unsettling for the young minds of today and it does threaten their fragile belief in the miracles of coffee shops on every cover.  What injustice is it that one can’t rely on their local coffee shop in this crazy world?  It’s like not having the sun appear in the eastern sky every morning.

I try to avoid things that would give the kids nightmares.  Like the time I had to park way out in the south parking lot of the mall and walk in a light Seattle rain drizzle without a hat!  You have to have boundaries when it comes to storytelling.  It is a thin line between an educational lesson and a nightmare that haunts you forever.  Be careful when you talk about how your latte was too foamy or not quite hot enough.  Children’s young minds are very impressionable.

If all else fails at getting your kids (or the kids that other parents dumped on you) to sleep, start making a list of all the chores you’ll be doing the next day with them.  You might as well make this time into a proactive and productive planning meeting.  Nothing else says I’m a winner than a very long “To Do List” written in purple color crayon on an old PTA newsletter.

Dust off the old broom and rev up the vacuum cleaner, we have a house to clean and dreams to ruin!