Picket Fence Post

Saturday Night Live fans may remember this TV Funhouse video from a while back, the one where they lampooned Dora the Explorer and her side-kick Boots with a new character, Maraka and her side-kick Mittens. This video features wildly inappropriate questions interspersed with those gratingly long pauses you frequently see on Dora where the toddlers are given more than sufficient time to answer Dora’s leading questions.

It’s NOT for kids, though parents who’ve watched their fill of Dora will likely find Maraka’s question about “free will” and use of bleeped-out profanity at least a little bit amusing.

Friday Funnies . . . because parents need to laugh. At least once a week.

Item #1: Embarrassment Campaign

 My latest GateHouse News Service column — in Parents & Kids Magazine this month — chronicles my campaign to embarrass my three children just simply by being me. I seriously don’t need to put any effort whatsoever into it. It just happens.

I specifically mention how The Youngest Boy this spring banned me from shouting or cheering for him when he was playing baseball (ask other parents, they’ll tell ya, I had to ask them to cheer on my behalf) and how the fact that my bathing suit tops expose some cleavage is horrifying to them. They prefer that I wear a burka, thank you very much.

Anyone else conducting a similar campaign with your kids, trying to embarrass them? Please, weigh in below in the comments section. There’s strength in numbers you know.

Item #2: Father-Daughter Tearjerker of a Column

I read a column, “Raising a Princess Single-Handedly” in the New York Times on Sunday about a father raising his 4-year-old daughter Madeline on his own after his wife, her mother, died, leaving them “living in a world we could not have imagined.” I found it poignant, particularly the way he can still see the silly, lighter side of every day.

“Madeline and I have a groove now. I always wake up before she does, and we take turns picking restaurants, outfits and movies. When we do have a crisis, it seems like the end of the world only for a few minutes.

The other morning I was frying bacon, drinking coffee and trying to scramble Madeline’s eggs. In a single moment of craziness, the bacon turned black, which triggered the smoke alarm. The eggs began welding themselves to the pan; the garbage bag I was tying split open at the bottom, covering my slippers in three-day-old linguine and rice pudding.

As I fanned the smoke detector furiously with a towel, Madeline rushed off the couch to see what was going on, tripped and spilled her orange juice on herself and the floor. From the corner of the kitchen, a little girl covered in juice looked up at her father and said, ‘We’re like clowns!’

I think it was Charlie Chaplin who said that close up, human life is tragic, but from a distance, it’s funny.”

Item #3: Sick Days

So I was that annoying parent who pestered my three kids’ teachers, principals and schools nurses with e-mails this past spring inquiring about the protocol for pre-lunch handwashing in light of the fact that there had been reports that the flu was going around. One of my kids’ two schools provided me with a satisfactory answer, while I learned that the other let students play outside for recess then come in for lunch with no stopping in between to wash hands before eating. (To put this in context, this wasn’t too terribly long after the Vice President was panicking everyone saying that he wouldn’t want to have anyone in his family in an enclosed public space lest they get sick.)

At the no-handwashing-before-lunch school, I was told my kid could independently carry anti-bacterial gel or excuse him or herself to go to the bathroom and clean his or her hands, even though none of their peers was doing it.

And wouldn’t ya know it, the mom who was harassing them about trying to use good hygiene to prevent the spread of illness has spent the better part of two weeks with various members of the Picket Fence Post family — myself included – sick with fevers, headaches and congestion. Between the sickness and the rainy, inclement weather, it’s been one heck of a lousy start to the summer vacation.

When I posted a lengthy story/interview with author Lenore  Skenazy — who wrote Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry — I neglected to include on this blog a YouTube video that she prominently mentioned in her book.

Arguing that parents shouldn’t try to protect their children from every risk, thereby robbing them of valuable learning opportunities, Skenazy said that encouraging an “If I fail, so what? I will try again” mindset is considered to be a child’s “surest path to success.”

I finally looked up the “Life=Risk” video she mentioned in her chapter, “Fail! It’s the New Succeed.” And I think I’m going to keep it bookmarked and pull it up onto the computer screen the next time one of my Picket Fence Post kids is feeling down or discouraged.

Found this delightfully ironic Miami image to the left on Dave Barry’s blog, which is always a good place to find a funny or two.

Meanwhile, I saw the spoof video about the Jon & Kate Gosselin marital debacle on Salon this week and felt guilty about the fact that I laughed while I watched it. Given the media overload on all things sextuplets, it was amusing, in a dark and twisted kind of way.

Friday Funnies . . . because parents need to laugh. At least once a week.

Item #1: ‘Imperfect,’ ’Confessional’ Parenting

The Boston Globe shined a spotlight on “confessional” parenting blogs (like True Mom Confessions)and the spate of “imperfect parent” books (and “Bad Mother” by Ayelet Waldman). Saying that this is the best time to be a “bad parent” and tell the world about it online and in books, Joanna Weiss wrote of the “bad parent” genre:

“They sell you on cynicism. Then they give you the bait-and-switch. The bad parent, they argue, maybe the best parent of all . . .

Perhaps it’s the ultimate expression of irony, the perfect parenting stance for Generation X. Confessional parents see their badness as a way of striving to be good: Less overstressed, overscheduled, and fixated on perfection than the boomer parents who came before them. And they’re arguing that more relaxed parents — the slackers, slobs, oversleepers — might lead to happier kids.”

Or, another way of looking at it, is that if the “confessional” parenting blogs are honest about child-rearing and don’t offer pithy and nuggets of ridiculous parenting advice like the bulk of the parenting media do, they might collectively help to reduce their fellow parents’ stress levels when we realize that we’re all going through the same things and coping with the same foibles.

Item #2: Sick

I’m sick. The Girl is slightly feverish but on the mend. The Eldest Boy has a slight fever but is otherwise feeling okay. *knock on wood* The Youngest Boy and The Spouse are healthy right now but overall, this is a sucky way to start school vacation. Plus my head is throbbing and it hurts to read.

Item #3: Supreme Court Says ‘No’ to School Strip-Search

When I first read about this case a few months ago in the New York Times, it really disturbed me. A 13-year-old Arizona girl who was accused of hiding prescription ibuprofen somewhere on her person, was strip-searched by two school officials. Her parents rightfully sued. And today the Supreme Court ruled in the girl’s favor saying that the search was unconstitutional. Here’s what happened at the Court today according to the Washington Post:

“The court ruled 8-1 that such an intrusive search without the threat of a clear danger to other students violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search or seizure.

Justice David H. Souter . . . said that in the search of Savana Redding, now a 19-year-old college student, school officials overreacted to vague accusations that Redding was violating school policy by possessing the ibuprofen, equivalent to two Advils.

What was missing, Souter wrote, ‘was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,’ Souter wrote.

. . . The strip-search case was one of the most dramatic of the term of the court, prompting an intense oral argument and leading to charges from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that her all-male colleagues had failed to appreciate the trauma that such a strip search would have on a developing teenage girl.”

The notion that school officials would proceed with a strip-search of a young female student boggles my mind.

Lenore Skenazy is passionate about her cause: Giving children — and their parents – freedom. For the kids, it’s the freedom to play outside without grown-ups, to make mistakes, to climb trees, to walk to school alone, to frolic. For their parents, it’s giving them the confidence to let go of irrational fears that make them to want to place their children under lock and key or 24/7 surveillance. Or both.

Following the hullabaloo that accompanied her controversial public announcement (via a column in the New York Sun) that she let her then-9-year-old son to ride the New York subway solo, Skenazy started what she believes to be a movement, the “free-range kids” movement. Now that movement has a web site and a book, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. 

Instead of the Picket Fence Post’s typical author Q&A , I’ve summarized my chat with Skenazy below, as the author mused at length on a number of topics including why parents today are safety crazy and how to put risk into perspective. (Note: Some of Skenazy’s quotes below have been condensed.)

When we started chatting, the first subject that came up was the story about the New Hampshire father who was arrested and charged with child endangerment after he left his 16-month old alone in the car. (Police said the child, who was treated and released from the hospital, appeared to be suffering from “heat-related signs of distress.”) Prior to our interview, I’d been listening to radio talk show callers say they’d never leave a child alone in a car, largely because they were afraid a stranger would steal the child. One caller said, “Your baby only has one infancy. Why would you risk it?” I asked Skenazy about the callers’ opinions, in particular, the invoking of the “but it COULD happen” and the “if it’s one in a million chance, what if YOU’RE the one in a million” arguments.

This is what Skenazy called relying on “the very least likely scenario on earth” to gauge something’s relative safety.

“People get upset about these risks we ‘can’t take,’” Skenazy said. “We need to put it in perspective.” Parents who don’t constantly watch their children when they’re out of the house are pilloried by their peers in this climate of fear, she said. “I keep thinking of the Salem witch trials as the only sort of working analogy for me.” By writing her book which encourages affording more freedom to kids and for allowing her own grade schooler to take the subway alone, she said, “I’m on trial for being a cavalier parent who doesn’t care about safety.”

Putting risk into perspective

After scrutinizing federal child abduction statistics for her book, Skenazy said she learned that: “If you were outside in the 1970s/1980s, your children are safer outside today. To say this to anyone and to have them digest it are two different things because people don’t believe it. People don’t want to believe it.”

Even if parents believe that it’s possible to vigilantly protect their children from harm, there’s no way to eliminate all risks, she said. “It’s all this mistaken notion that if we avoid everything, we’ll avoid risk. First of all, we’re all going to die,” Skenazy said, adding that the fact that the number one cause of death for children is as a result of vehicular crashes doesn’t stop parents from driving their children around. She said people have put the risks of automobile accidents into context by saying that driving is a necessary evil. And they should put the risk of child abductions into the same perspective, Skenazy said.

Parents have been persuaded to substitute the advice from TV and magazine experts for their own, and often fret about something that has a statistically minuscule chance of occurring, resulting in the over-zealoused protection our children, she said. (more…)

So this makes two weeks in a row that I’ve been late with my Friday Funnies installment, but better late than never. This week, instead of an amusing video, I’m posting this anecdote:

The Spouse and I were tidying up The Girl’s room the other day, picking up dirty clothes, crinkled up papers and tissues, magazines and myriad other clutter, all of which reminded me of my Superfund site of a bedroom when I was a girl.

After he took in the combination of girlish decorations (a framed gymnastics poster, fabric covered pink plaid bulletin board, pink doll house) as well as the tween ones (Tiger Beat Magazine cut-outs, mostly of the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato & High School Musical), plus the scented lip glosses and the many hair accoutrements lying around, The Spouse said, “This room scares me.”

“Why?” I asked.

“There’s just too much going on in here.”

Friday Funnies . . . because parents need to laugh. At least once a week.

There’s this new film that’s recently been released and I’m in a quandary about it. It’s directed by Sam Mendes, the guy who directed last year’s major downer, 1950s-era Revolutionary Road  starring the wonderful Kate Winslet. I went into that film with big expectations, seeing that I’m such a Winslet fan, plus I was suckered in by the trailer. However as much as I wanted to, alas, I absolutely did not like the film. Hated the ending. And whenever I looked at Leonardo DiCaprio playing the thirtysomething suburban dad who takes the train into the city to work, I just kept thinking, “He’s no Don Draper.” (For the uninitiated few, Don Draper is the lead character – played by Jon Hamm – on the amazing AMC drama Mad Men.)

There were people in the theater watching Revolutionary Road with The Spouse and me, fellow suburban dwellers, who were laughing out loud at parts that were NOT funny, or at least they weren’t intended to be gut-busters. Afterwards, while I was in the restroom, a couple of women, friends I’m guessing, who’d seen the film spied The Spouse waiting in the hall and told him they felt sorry that he’d had to sit through it. One remarked, “My husband would kill me if I made him go see this.”

Hence my hesitation with Mendes’ new film, Away We Go, about a thirtysomething, unmarried and unmoored couple who are about to become first-time parents. After learning that the man’s parents are moving to another country, the couple decides they need to find the best location in which to raise their baby and, perhaps, be in close proximity to some family and friends. Their journey takes them to visit said friends and family all over the place where they observe all variety of parenting styles and attitudes, from completely laissez faire to some serious attachment parenting. It stars The Office’s John Krasinski and Saturday Night Live’s Maya Rudolph.

Although it’s garnered mixed reviews, I’m still tempted to see it because I don’t think I can rely on the movie reviewers, seeing as though they’re the ones who convinced me to go see Revolutionary Road in the first place. The Spouse and I don’t get to go out to many movies together, so I want to chose which films I see on the silver screen and blow babysitting money on wisely.

Has anyone seen it and if so, what did you think?

Are therea ny films to which you’ve had to literally drag your spouse and later regretted it? (Link to the film trailer here.)

Item #1: Father’s Day

I went on the record, years ago in fact, as detesting both Mother’s and Father’s Days. They put you in an impossible situation, if you’re married and both sets of your children’s grandparents live within a reasonable drive away. You’re supposed to celebrate your spouse — or “help” the kids celebrate the parent on the special day – then you’re supposed to celebrate your own parent and your spouse’s parent as well. If you’re lucky enough to have your own or your spouse’s own grandparents around, you’ve got to throw them into the mix and honor them all at the same time. On the same day.

In some families, if one grandparent gets to see his or her grown children plus the grandkids ON the actual Mother’s or Father’s Day and the other one doesn’t, there’s likely going to be hell to pay and feelings are hurt. The sulking can get ugly. I’ve heard stories . . . but I can’t tell them to you or else the folks who’ve told me their stories will kill me.

That being said, I’m still struggling — procrastinator am I, this being the Thursday before Father’s Day — with what to do for Father’s Day. The Picket Fence Post kids and I are planning on taking The Spouse out sometime this weekend to let him pick out a new grill so he can be the Grill Master of the Universe and no longer cook outside on a grill where flames shoot out of the bottom. But then there’s the question of my dad and The Spouse’s dad . . . while I’m trying to work this whole thing out, I’d love to hear how you readers out there handle your Mother’s Day/Father’s Day situations.

Item #2: Born First

For better or for worse, when our twins were born almost 11 years ago, The Spouse and I decided that we wouldn’t tell them which one was born first. We didn’t want them to grow up thinking that one was the “older” sibling and the other was the “younger” sibling, or have the “older” sibling think that he or she was able to boss the other around, etc. A mere 16 minutes separated their deliveries and frankly, we didn’t think nor did we want those 16 minutes to matter to them or to their perceptions of who they are or will be. We planned on telling them when they were older, when we didn’t think being technically “older” or “younger” would really matter to them.

When they first inquired about it, we were able to get away with the line, “You were born at the same time.” But as they got wise about pregnancy and childbirth, they figured out that babies don’t emerge from the womb simultaneously and they began asking questions. In the meantime, the outside world, for some reason, pestered all of us about their birth order. When The Spouse and I would refuse to tell people who was born first, they’d give us a shocked, disapproving looks, as if we’d just told them they needed to wear more deodorant. “Why in the world,” they asked us, “wouldn’t you want to tell us?” “Well why in the world,” we responded, “does it matter to you?”

The breaking point with The Girl and The Eldest Boy came last night when they demanded to know. Now. “You know a secret about my life!” The Eldest Boy shouted tearfully. So we told them. The one who was born first was clearly happy, though that individual promised not to lord it over the other. The kid who was born second was horribly disappointed, saying that some kid at school once said that, “Kids who are older are smarter.”

“Sixteen minutes,” I told the child, “it’s only 16 minutes. It doesn’t make any difference at all.”

(more…)

If you live in New England, it may not seem like summer outside just yet. It’s been damp and cold and distinctly un-June-like outside. And while the school calendars are winding down (though several last-minute school projects are still ongoing and causing supreme angst in the Picket Fence Post household), summertime ’tis a-comin’ regardless . . . which means we’ll be tackling some of the activities in The Double-Daring Book for Girls, a collection of activities and general knowledge entries that’ll liven up your little gals’ (and boys’ . . . don’t tell ‘em the book title) summer.

The Girl and I have perused the 275 pages of activities countless times since we received it. (She’s also combed the book’s contents with her neighborhood gal pal.) However the activities she’s itchin’ to do are better suited for doing out of doors in summer-like weather . . . when we have 30 spare moments to cobble together.

So, as soon as it truly feels like summer and the Picket Fence Post family’s schedules have let up (sports have concluded, school and the insufferable projects are almost completed), here are the projects The Girl has ID’ed as ones in which she’s keenly interested:

 ”How to Dye Your Hair Using Kool-Aid.”

I know, you’re likely thinking that I’m nuts to even consider letting her do this. There’s even a warning at the beginning which says, “BEWARE! This project is messy and Kool-Aid will stain. Wear an old T-shirt to protect your clothes, and have a buddy help you.” Hence, we’re waiting until it’s warm outside, and until she no longer has to show up at school each day after she’s dyed her hair blue or purple or whatever color she selects. (Don’t worry Grandma, the color washes out. Eventually.) I haven’t yet informed The Spouse that I’ve already given The Girl permission to do this once it’s warmer.

“Make a Decoupage Bowl.”

Again, this decoupage bowl bowl project seems like it has the potential to be mighty messy what with oils, glue and/or varnish in the ingredients list. (And I’m anticipating that The Youngest Boy — age 7 — might want to participate as well.) But I think that our backyard will be the perfect place for The Girl and her gal pal (and whoever else wants to join in) to tackle this activity.

“Make a Lava Lamp.”

Actually, this is one The Boy (age 10, like his twin sis) wants to do. Includes baby oil, water, food coloring, mess in general. Again . . . this’ll be an outdoor activity.

Other activities in this empowering, kid-centric guidebook include: “How to Catch Fish,” “How to Build a Raft,” “How to Debate” (I think I’ll keep the Picket Fence Post kids away from this one; they’ve already mastered it), “Hula-Hoops,” “Make a Snow Globe” and “The Double-Daring Girl’s Guide to Getting Out of Trouble.”

To broaden the kids’ minds there are thoughtful entries on topics such as: “Notable Women,” “Cowgirls,” “Being a Private Eye,” “Horses” and “Dreams and Their Meanings.”

Once we’ve tackled the three projects above (dye hair, bowl and lava lamp), I’ll post images here.

Image credit: Double Daring Book for Girls.