Picket Fence Post

My 7-year-old — known on this blog as The Youngest Boy — came home from school yesterday and related to me a fantastical tale about a kid who he says is known as “King Chaos” and rules the playground like a mini Tony Soprano, complete with henchmen, only without the guns or FBI wiretaps.

As best as I can determine, my son’s schoolmates are fond of playing a game they call “Chaos.” The Youngest Boy described ”Chaos” as a game of tag only with a jail and teams. If a player is tagged, via a two-hand touch by someone from another team, the kid who’s been tagged has to go to the other team’s “jail.” The inmate can be freed from jail upon receiving a tag from a fellow teammate, provided that the teammate doesn’t get tagged by the jail guards in the process.

With me so far?

My son told me that the game had been working out fine at recess for the past few months until a boy, who supposedly goes by the name “King Chaos,” and his “friends,” who The Youngest Boy described as “big with weight,” went rogue. Now, when they tag and capture someone from another team, they supposedly treat their prisoners harshly, even made one kid cry yesterday, or so The Youngest Boy said.

He added that because members of his team, led by a boy he called “The Emperor,” haven’t been caught by King Chaos & crew, King Chaos has issued orders that members of The Youngest Boy’s team be detained and then punched by an assigned beat-down master. (No, I’m not making any of this up. Seriously.)

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“I spied on them,” The Youngest Boy said. “I’m a spy. I heard them.”

When The Youngest Boy finally wrapped up his story, I was, at first, kind of speechless. “Did you guys tell the teachers?”

“I think so, one of the guys did,” he said, adding that he thought, but wasn’t sure, that one of King Chaos’ prisoners went to the nurse’s office.

“So what happened then?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

I made The Youngest Boy relate the story to The Spouse during dinner. He was just as befuddled as I was. We asked him if he wanted us to contact his teacher and, if so, what would he want us to say. He told us not to contact his teacher and that he would handle it. I’m okay with letting The Youngest Boy handle things on his own, however if he comes home with a black eye or is sent to the nurse’s office courtesy of King Chaos & crew, they’re gonna get a visit from this Mama Bear.

Image credit: Superior Colorado Elementary School.

Item #1: Obamas as Parents

The media seem obsessed with Barack and Michelle Obama, with Michelle’s clothing (tongues were clucking at the fact that she wore a sleeveless ensemble to her husband’s address to a joint session of Congress), with their daughters’ clothes, toys and JoBro fandom. Not a week has gone by when I haven’t read a story about the Obamas’ journey through parenthood.

This past Sunday, the New York Times ran yet another story about the Obamas’ parenting style, “First Chores? You Bet,” portraying them as loving, but strict with their daughters, ages 7 and 10:

“In the Obama White House, bedtime is still at 8 p.m. The girls still set their own alarm clocks and get themselves up for school in the morning. They make their own beds and clean their own rooms. And when the much-anticipated pet arrives, they will walk the dog and scoop its poop.

. . . Mr. Obama is a modern-day dad who leaves the Oval Office for dinner with his girls, rarely misses a parent-teacher conference or piano recital and prides himself on having read all seven books in the Harry Potter series aloud with Malia.

Mrs. Obama juggles play dates and homework with speeches to federal agencies and students. Both are committed to keeping their daughters grounded, their friends and aides say.”

As a mom with kids the exact same age as the Obamas — twins who are 10 and a 7-year-old — it will be interesting for me to watch them raise their children as I raise mine, but I’m hoping that the media will back off and let the family settle in and try to normalize the girls’ lives as much as life can be “normal” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And no more stories on the girls’ clothing or backpacks, please.

Item #2: You Looking to be Led by a First Daddy?

In the same issue of the New York Times, there was another article about Barack Obama, the dad, this time in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Entitled, “Father in Chief,” this piece by Lisa Belkin likened being a dad to being the president:

“We are intrigued by the first family not only because their children are adorable and so excited about getting a puppy and meeting the Jonas Brothers but also because our president seems to be such a good father — loving but not a pushover, thrilled that he now has a job where he can be with the girls for breakfast and dinner, strict about their chores, slightly cranky when their school is canceled ‘because of what? Some ice?’”

Then she swerved into a comparison, saying governing is “messy” like parenting:

“There are big differences, of course, between parenting and governing. Unlike children, we choose our leaders; the job of those leaders is not to nurture us emotionally; and the fantasy of a wise, all-powerful Daddy is what has gotten Russia and Germany in trouble over the years. But if Obama is going to struggle in his metaphorical role as parent to the country, it will be less because of the differences between parenting and leadership and more because of the similarities.”

I wonder if that mindset is what led Time Magazine’s Joe Klein to extend the analogy on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today. While discussing new CBS News polling numbers showing that a vast majority of Americans support President Obama and his proposals to jump-start our flailing economy, Klein quipped: “People are scared. They want to see government activism. They’re looking for Daddy.” (Link to video here.)

President Obama himself during his address to the joint session of Congress this week, also invoked his role as the First Dad when he was discussing how parents can help their children achieve their educational goals:

“In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child. I speak to you not just as a president, but as a father when I say that responsibility for our children’s education must begin at home.”

I’m planning on quoting Obama the next time my kids balk at my request to turn off their TV shows/video games, per order of the Daddy-in-Chief.

Item #3: The Dirt on Working from Home

The same woman who wrote the Times article comparing governing to parenting — Belkin — recently posted an interesting blog item on her Motherlode blog entitled, “The Messy Side of Working from Home.”

“One side effect of the [economic] downturn may well be more parents working from home. For some it will be involuntary cobbling together a home business after losing an office job. For some it will be a way to save on the expenses of going elsewhere for work — no more office space to lease, no more commuting costs. And for many it will be a way to save on childcare. Work during nap time, or play dates or on wi-fi while watching karate practice. It can be done. Right? RIGHT?

Working from home solves many problems, but as one who has done it for nearly 15 years, I should warn you that it creates others you might not expect.”

Belkin described having to literally leave the house and then re-enter, once a babysitter was there, in order to stop her son from screaming and shrieking while she worked.

As a work-from-home writer for the last decade, I have to say that her observations are on the money. Sure, working from home gets slightly easier once the kids are older and in school, but the time I have alone in the house to spend on my writing once the kids leave from school doesn’t constitute a full work day. Therefore I have to get creative. Some of the keys of doing it without going crazy are: Being flexible, being willing to work at night (after the kids are in bed) and working on a weekend, when a spouse could watch the kids while you work.

Image credit: Jae C. Hong/Associated Press via the New York Times.

Okay, so we’re all aware that the economic news is downright depressing these days. Some times, I just don’t want to know how much the Dow dropped in a given day or how many more thousands of jobs just evaporated.

And with all this worrying and people holding onto their wallets more tightly, it’s only natural that folks would start to hunker down in their houses and not go out as much. Broadcasting & Cable just reported that TV viewing is up, with the average viewer watching 151 hours/month compared to 140 hours/month in 2008 and 145 hours/month in 2007.

This got me wondering for my Pop Culture column at Mommy Track’d this week: What are moms with young kids watching on TV these days? I talked to nine Bay State moms, with kids ages 2-10, to find out.

TV shows mentioned most by the moms: Grey’s Anatomy, Friday Night Lights, The Office, 30 Rock, Desperate Housewives, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Private Practiceand Brothers & Sisters.

What are YOU watching?

Image credit: ABC.

If you ever get to feeling down about how you’re doing in parenting your kid (or kids) do yourself a favor and spend a moment watching Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ sitcom, The New Adventures of Old Christine for a reality check.

Take last week’s episode, “Honey I Ran Over The Kid,” Christine Campbell (Louis-Dreyfus) was in a heated debate with her ex-husband Richard over who was the safer (and saner) parent. In the video below, Christine was incensed when Richard brought Ritchie home with a minor, post-skateboarding injury after she’d secured so much safety gear onto the boy that he put Randy in the giant red snowsuit from the Christmas Story movie to shame. This scene occurred BEFORE, Christine accidentally ran her son down with her car (she was following him “for safety” when he was riding a bike to a friend’s house). This kicked off a warped competition for “worst parent” where Christine and Richard kept trying to one-up the other with sordid tales of each other’s poor parenting.

When I’m done watching this show, I always feel as though I’m not doing such a bad job after all. At least I’m not Christine Campbell.

Item #1: Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Today I contributed to the downfall of western civilization by taking my three children to see the movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop, filmed at the Burlington Mall in Massachusetts, where a pivotal scene was set in the very same Rainforest Cafe where we’ve eaten on many an occasion.

The kids loved Paul’s slapstick set to bad 80s tunes, while I, however, will never get those 91 minutes back.

Item #2: To American Girl Bistro We Go

Speaking of malls . . . I’ll be heading to a big local one (in Natick) this weekend to take The Girl, my niece, my sister-in-law and the girls’ American Girl dolls to the American Girl Bistro (not restaurant, not cafe, but bistro, which isn’t, by the way, a very American sounding eatery for a company that celebrates Americana). The luncheon is a long overdue birthday gift for my niece, after our first lunch reservation had to be canceled during one of the bazillion weekend blizzards we’ve had this winter.

The one and only time The Girl and I have been inside an American Girl establishment was during a family summer road trip to New York City a few years ago. We’d made reservations far in advance for the entire family, including The Spouse and the two boys, to have lunch there. The lunch went over about as well as big honkin’ veggie burger with sprouts would’ve with Paul Blart the Mall Cop. Boys thought it was way too girly and were offended when they only saw a girls’ bathroom and a unisex bathroom for disabled patrons and no boys’ room.

But The Girl’s tastes have radically evolved over the past few years. She’s gone from wearing pink sparkly things, skirts and dresses, to today where she only wears primary colors, jeans and hoodies. No pink items of clothing are allowed in her room, thank you very much. So it shall be interesting to see how she fares this time around in the ultra-feminine eatery.

Item #3: Becoming a Softie With Youngest Kid

New York Times writer Michelle Slatalla ‘fessed up. Big time. In her piece entitled, “How I Became a Soft Touch,” she wrote that while she was and remains harder on her older children, she’s a major softie when it comes to her youngest gal Clem, 11:

“My older daughters grew up in a family where candy was a controlled substance. Vague requests to ‘hang out’ with ‘friends’ were covered by a rule that specified no loitering in the alley behind the movie theater. Sleepovers were restricted (one girl only, please, and not the one who gets homesick at 2 a.m.).

I’m not that mother anymore.

. . . Our [youngest child] eats Gummi bears by the bagful. She wears flip-flops to school even in winter. She stays up as late as she wants, sleeps as late as she likes and does not need a fever to prove she’s too sick for school.”

Slatalla said that with her older children, born 22 months apart, she and her husband had to play zone defense. She’s since mellowed out and, now that she’s no longer tag-teaming two kids, she has become “the mother I wanted when I was a child.”

Do you think you’re a different parent with your younger child than with your older one?

Image credit: Reel Movie News.

Ever have a day when you question whether you’ve done this whole child-rearing thing correctly and wonder why things aren’t working out as you thought they would?

A day where you realize that some of your approaches to parenting have backfired?

When you look at yourself in the mirror and realize you’ve become an odious mom martyr who sacrifices and schleps around trying to please her offspring, only you’ve gotten yourself all worked up and angry once you realized that those offspring don’t give a whit about your self-imposed martyrdom?

That was me. Today. Following a huge argument with one of my children (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty). After said argument with the child who shall remain unnamed, I vowed that I was going to put my foot down. No more mom martyr for me, no more constantly trying to please the small people and allowing them to think that the entire world revolves them . . . at least as far as the rest of the day was concerned. (And February vacation isn’t even halfway through . . .)

Item #1: ‘I Hear You’re Running an Infirmary’

That’s what one parent said to me after our second graders’ Valentine’s Day school show this morning. And he’s right, I have been running an infirmary. The Spouse has been sick, though he’s better now. The Eldest Boy stayed home from school on Monday with a cough, headache, low-grade fever combo, the same combo that had The Girl home from school for two-and-a-half days last week. (I sent her back to school one day, but the school had me pick her up at 11 a.m. saying she wasn’t well.)  The Youngest Boy, who spent many days holed up in our house after being diagnosed with a “breakthrough” case of chicken pox (he’d already been vaccinated,  though didn’t have a booster shot, who knew?), got the green light to return to school yesterday.

However soon after I woke up this morning, I began feeling slightly feverish and not quite right. I hope the minor cold symptoms end there, but I suppose this is what I get for running an infirmary and for hugging my patients.

Item #2: Don’t Talk to Me About the Octuplets

I really don’t want to talk about them, or their mother – who’s now a mother of 14 – or her infertility doctor, although I think most reasonable people can agree that the mother and the doctor who transferred all those embryos acted irresponsibly.

But amid all the name calling, the finger-pointing and the discussion about who’s going to pay for what, my thoughts keep gravitating back to those fragile little babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, as well as to their six older siblings whose lives will be turned upside-down once everyone’s living under the same roof. There are 14 children who are going to need a whole lot of care, regardless of how they or this situation came to be. So instead of treating this like a circus sideshow, where everyone attacks and mocks the adult players involved, I can’t help but see this as a sad story for the children whose needs, I hope, will be met, one way or another.

Item #3: I’m Anti-Valentine’s Day Like Risa

I am so with my Mommy Track’d colleague Risa Green when she said that she does not like Valentine’s Day because she thinks you should already be telling the people you love that you love them on a regular basis and shouldn’t require the Hallmark company and the nation’s florists telling us how to celebrate that love.

Her latest column focused on how her daughter’s glee in filling out valentines for her friends was turned into a major moment of decision when Risa told her that she had to give a valentine to a girl who had been mean to her. If she didn’t give a valentine to the mean girl, Risa told her, she wouldn’t be able to give one to anyone in her class. ”She countered with the fact that all the valentines said things like, ‘I Love You,’ and ‘Best Friends,” and ‘Be Mine’ and that if she gave this particular girl a card that said any of those things, it would be like lying,” Risa wrote.

While her daughter ultimately chose to make one for the mean girl, this kind of moment is one of the reasons why I don’t like what Valentine’s Day has become because it all feels forced an inauthentic, like compulsory Mother’s Day celebrations.

Last week, I wrote about how my two fourth graders have been asked to write, excuse me, type up, a two- to three-sentence compliment for every member of their class, including the kids who haven’t been nice to them or who have made fun of them. They, like Risa’s daughter, balked at the notion of having to write a compliment for everyone. Like Risa, I told them if they didn’t want to do the assignment, they didn’t have to do it. My suggestion to blow off the “compliment assignment” was met by both children with utter shock because to not complete it would mean there’d be some sort of notation made in their teachers’ ”Homework Book,” which apparently is very bad. And, like Risa’s daughter, they soldiered through it anyway and wrote out compliments to everyone, no matter how insincere or untrue.

While the flap over a photo of golden Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps taking a bong hit passed by my household without any discussion (my kids aren’t into swimming and weren’t big Phelps fans), the A-Rod steroids story . . . well that one has not passed by unnoticed. My kids have played, watched and loved baseball, so yet another blemish on America’s favorite pastime, hurts much more than a Phelps scandal.

Over the weekend, The Eldest Boy hungrily consumed newspaper stories about the news — first reported by Sports Illustrated — that the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez took banned substances when he played for the Texas Rangers. My 10-year-old son asked, “So is he now a cheater, just like Barry Bonds?” If the allegations were proven true, The Spouse and I said, then, unfortunately, the answer was yes. If A-Rod took drugs he knew he shouldn’t have in order to improve his performance, that wasn’t playing by the rules.

Today, A-Rod came clean to ESPN, admitting that he lied to Katie Couric in 2007 when he denied taking steroids, that he did indeed take “performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers during a three-year period beginning in 2001,” but that he’s been clean since he’s been on the Yankees. ESPN quoted him saying:

“I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time. I did take a banned substance. For that I am very sorry and deeply regretful.”

I remember when the Mitchell Report on performance enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball came out in December 2007. I was trapped in my car during that hellish mid-day blizzard at the time of former Senator Mitchell’s press conference. I listened to the radio and crossed my fingers that there’d be no current Red Sox players — and no one associated with the Sox’s 2004 epic World Series odyssey – listed as steroid users. My children had come to know that 2004 Red Sox team, and each team since. I didn’t want their baseball heroes tarnished, for them or for me. Roger Clemens notwithstanding (my kids never knew him as a Boston player), I was relieved that no one they ever knew from the Red Sox was named as having used or been suspected of using banned substances.

But my kids do know A-Rod. The Red Sox play their archrival Yankees in much heralded games multiple times year. And now they’ve got another known quantity to add to their list of “cheaters.” It makes me wish that the Mitchell Report of 2007 did what it was supposed to do, get rid of the cloud of suspicion that hung over the sport and continues to do so to this day. Tales of superstar steroid users like this one which de-legitimize A-Rod’s place in baseball history, tarnish the sport’s integrity in the minds of their youngest fans who’ll now be more skeptical than ever before, eyeing every player suspiciously and wondering, “Did that guy take something?”

And I was just gearing up for what should have been a glorious kick-off for Spring Training this week. Guess what the story’s going to be instead of the return of baseball? At least I can be thankful that the Sox never did acquire A-Rod.

Who doesn’t love House, the Fox medical drama built around the cantankerous and rogue Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), who irritates everyone around him while he and his crack team of physicians solve medical mysteries?

For the past few weeks, House has featured a storyline about the hospital’s chief administrator, Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), who became a foster mother to an infant whom she hopes to adopt. After years of failed infertility treatments, Cuddy finally got to take home a baby. But once the baby came home, things weren’t quite as warm and maternal as Cuddy, a single mom, had imagined they would be.

I wrote about the Cuddy-working mom/new mom story arc in my Pop Culture & Politics column this week, in which I mentioned probably one of the best working mom exchanges I’ve heard on a TV program in a while:

Cuddy had just passed her department of children’s services inspection as a competent foster mother, yet remained irritated that she’d done so when her home was a mess and she was generally disorganized. Her colleague, Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) urged her to focus on passing the inspection and forget about the mess, but she wouldn’t.

“Why do women always do that . . . create ridiculous standards that no human could meet, with your careers, with your kids?” Wilson asked. “You’ve got to be more like us men.”

“Be lazy?” she replied sarcastically. “Blame others?”

“Get help! Most men in your position have a deputy and two assistants at work, and a wife and two nannies at home. You’re not Superwoman. Don’t be martyr!”

Image credit: Fox/Adam Taylor via the blog House is Right.

Item #1: Pox Upon My House (Chicken Pox, That Is)

I thought we were all set. The Spouse and I both had chicken pox when we were children. All three of our offspring had received the chicken pox vaccine during their first year of life. But it wasn’t until my 7-year-old boy was diagnosed with chicken pox yesterday when I learned that, in order for the immunity to the disease to be maintained, physicians have determined that a booster shot of the vaccine is needed. And my kids hadn’t had them.

Since the pediatrician’s visit yesterday — where we were told that The Youngest Boy’s bout with chicken pox should be mild because he’s been vaccinated once — we’ve also had our twin 10-year-olds receive booster shots, even though there’s still a chance they too could develop chicken pox in the coming days if their immunities to the disease have diminished.

So I spent yesterday afternoon e-mailing and calling people with whom we’ve come in contact or who’ve visited our house in the past week or so, and informing them that my kid had chicken pox and that if they haven’t had it, haven’t been vaccinated or had a booster shot, they should be on the look out for suspicious red blemishes. It reminded me of the time when one of the children contracted lice from school, and kindly shared it with me, and I had to contact a ton of people to warn them . . . except I think the lice calls were harder and more embarrassing to make.

Item #2: ‘High School Musical’ Lunchbox Gets the Shaft

The Girl is a Disney Channel addict. She loves all things High School Musical and Hannah Montana. She adores the Jonas Brothers, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and The Wizards of Waverly Place. So it’s no surprise that her lunchbox bears an HSM logo and the likeness of the film series’ stars.

When I was packing her school lunch earlier this week, she asked me to put aside the HSM lunchbox and instead use a plain, navy, canvas lunch sack The Spouse got at some business conference and has the name of a law firm on the top. What changed her mind? She said she sits with boys at her lunch table who aren’t big Troy Bolton fans and would have (or already have?) made fun of her. I was surprised to find myself feeling just as disappointed as when she abandoned her Kim Possible lunch box in favor of the HSM gang. It’s one more step.

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