Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Snacks All the Time

It was something that annoyed me to no end when my children were but wee little toddlers. Everywhere we went – playdates, the park, pre-school – it seemed as though nearly all of my peers were handing their children snacks every two hours or so. If you went against the grain and didn’t provide your offspring with some sustenance at regular, two-hour intervals, your kids would throw a tantrum because the other kids were eating Pirate’s Booty while they were wasting away to nothing as you just sat there impassively, witnessing the horror of their deprivation without batting an eyelash.

It has continued, even worsened, during their grade school years, this obsession with snacking. I chaperoned a school field trip for my 8-year-old this past fall and was stunned that the students were instructed to eat their snacks (that parents were told to send in) on the bus on the way to our destination, less than an hour after the students had arrived to school. (Hadn’t they just eaten breakfast?) Some kids even brought in multiple snacks, one for the bus ride there, one for the bus ride home, and a lunch in between the snacks.

This constant feeding of children — despite all the news stories about rampant childhood obesity — has even infiltrated the sidelines of youth soccer games and the benches during baseball games. Here we are, bringing our kids to participate in an athletic activity and we give them food either during or after the games (or both) because, what, they can’t make it for an hour or two without food? They can’t just wait until they get home?

What the heck is up with all this food? Why are we, as a society, encouraging this, creating this habit that, once the kids become our age, will catch up with them and their waistlines? I have no problem with giving kids an afterschool snack, or with giving them an occasional dessert after dinner (I did blog about making cupcakes the other day) but why do we feel compelled to institutionalize this snacking throughout the day in addition to their three meals (which, oftentimes, they won’t eat — even though I’ve worked hard to make well-rounded, homemade fare – because of all of these damned snacks)?

An article in the New York Times Dining section this week entitled, “Snack Time Never Ends” made me feel vindicated. I am NOT the only parent who rolls her eyes when she sees someone pull out a box of powdered doughnuts on the sidelines soccer games or when a kid brings a series of snacks, plus a lunch when he’s only going to be away from home between 8:30 and 4. Here’s an excerpt of the story about the all-snacks-all-the-time mentality:

“. . . [W]hen it comes to American boys and girls, snacks seem both mandatory and constant. Apparently, we have collectively decided as a culture that it is impossible for children to take part in any activity without simultaneously shoving something into their pie holes.

‘Children used to come home, change into play clothes and go outside and play with other children,’ said Joanne Ikeda, a nutritionist emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. ‘There were not snack machines, and the gas station only sold gas. Now there are just so many more opportunities to snack and so many activities after school to have snacks.”

Do you think we’ve become a society obsessed with snacks?

Item #2: 11-Year-Old Skater

Here’s what my 11-year-old daughter does during any given week: Goes to school, plays basketball or four-square at recess, does her homework, reads tons of books, listens to music, draws/sketches, plays on a basketball team and goes to her games and practices, attends church, watches TV, plays Wii and plays with friends, her brothers and our dog. All in all, it’s a pretty nice, well-rounded tween life. Just the way it should be.

So when I read a profile in the New York Times this week about another 11-year-old girl who’s gunning for Olympic gold in figure skating, I couldn’t help but think of my own child and how different her life would be if she were in that girl’s skates. The ice skating girl had skates slapped onto her feet at age 2, started “formal lessons” at 4 and now is “out of bed at 5 on most school days, on the ice six days a week” and “finished an encouraging sixth on Tuesday in the novice ladies division at the United States championships,” the Times reported.

The article quoted her coach and her mother saying that, at age 4, it was decided that, as far as her career and future in figure skating went, they were going to “commit everything to it.”  While I respect that every family has its own set of values and priorities — there are folks who think I’m crazy for limiting our children to one sport per season per kid and, most of the time, do not permit playing the same sport in back-to-back seasons — I felt very sad for this child when I read this passage:

“On winter and spring breaks, her classmates can sleep in while she must spend much of her time at the rink.

‘I do want a break sometimes,’ [she] said. ‘I’d like to go to a birthday party.’

Asked if she skated for herself or because others wanted her to, she replied, ‘I guess it’s half and half; sometimes I want to and sometimes I don’t.’”

When the Times asked the child’s mother if she’d permit her daughter to drop out of figure skating if the 11-year-old didn’t want to do it anymore, the mom told the paper, “Probably not. I see her potential. For sure I would like that she continue and do her job. I think she can do it.”

Item #3: ‘Squeakquel’ Gripes

Okay, I know that I have no business griping about that Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. It’s a Chipmunks movie, so what the heck should I have expected, literary allusions and insightful observations on the human (or mammalian) condition? Of course not.

When I took my 11-year-old twins to see this screechy sequel this week (the 8-year-old saw it with friends during Christmas break), I didn’t give much thought to the film’s premise: The trio of famous singing boy chipmunks goes to high school while a trio of as-yet undiscovered singing girl chipmunks enrolls in the same school in an attempt to become international rock stars a la the original Chipmunks boy band.

The problem — other than the fact that I didn’t bring ear plugs – was watching the female chipmunks perform. I was really disappointed that their ”performances” were all about hip swaying and pelvis grinding, along with substantial booty shaking. Offstage the “Chippettes” were as innocent and sweet as the boy chipmunks, but on stage, it was an entirely different story. On stage, they turned into Beyonce.

This annoyed me, probably more than it should have. Why couldn’t the Chippettes just have been portrayed as really good singers who rocked the house with their talent and coolness? Why did they have to send the message to the girls that to be successful, gals should capitalize on sex appeal and go the rump-shaking route? After all, the boy chipmunks weren’t pulling a Justin Timberlake when he does his booty shaking thing. *shaking my head*

Image credit: Pirate’s Booty web site.

Item #1: Time Magazine Takes on Helicopter Parenting

Recently, my twin fifth graders were given an assignment to create hats which represented a vocabulary word they’d been given. As the deadline for them to bring the word hat into school neared, I asked them two things: Did they need me to get them any supplies and how they were progressing. Other parents, I later learned, took a MUCH more involved role in the creation of their kids’ hats, helping the children come up with phenomenal ideas on how to graphically and physically represent a word’s meaning in hat form.

After The Eldest Boy told me about how awesome some of the other kids’ hats were – the ones who got help from a proud parent — I wondered if I was a lazy slacker mom for not suggesting more ideas and for not helping my children create more intricate hats. (I simply let them think it through and execute their ideas on their own.) Or was I, by my insistence that they do the project themselves, engaging in my own, small form of civil disobedience by refusing to hover over my kids?

Time Magazine would say that I was bucking the fear-driven helicopter parenting trend and actively participating in the backlash against it with my inaction.

In her story, “Can These Parents Be Saved,” Nancy Gibbs wrote in Time:

“. . . [T]here is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they’ll fly higher. We’re often the ones who hold them down.

A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reflects a new reality.”

God, I hope that’s true. The backlash hasn’t quite reached my own little Boston area suburban hamlet yet; my 11-year-olds’ teachers still want parents to sign off on far too many homework assignments — indicating that mom or dad has seen the assignments or that the kid completed something — a fact about which I loudly complain on a daily basis. But my fingers remain crossed as I wait for this movement to land here. Underparenters unite!

Item #2: NYT Tackles Rudeness at Holiday Dinners

Right in line with my upcoming 2009 Dysfunctional Family Bingo card (see Item #3 below for my plea for you to help me out), today’s New York Times has a story featuring horror stories of rude relatives — of the ilk I’d love to see appear on my Bingo card — from people who’ve survived Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with their extended families and lived to laugh about it, because, seriously, what else can you do but laugh? (Laugh and pass the wine, I suppose. Or write memoirs about it. Or columns, blogs.)

One anecdote from the Times story involved a teacher who was pregnant with  her first child when she spent Thanksgiving at her in-laws’ house:

“For months, the teacher’s mother-in-law had been saying that she wanted to be in the waiting room when the teacher went into labor, and the teacher, who recounted her story on the Mothers-in-Law Anonymous section of Grandparents.com, had been politely rebuffing her.

So at Thanksgiving dinner, with the family gathered around the table, the mother-in-law (referred to on this site as ‘MIL’) took the matter into her own hands.

‘MIL announced to me and the entire family the following,’ the teacher wrote. ‘I WILL be in the waiting room while [daughter-in-law] is in labor, and all of you are welcome to come too. MY SON will come and give me updates every hour on the hour.’”

That’s EXACTLY the kind of thing I’m looking for to include on my Bingo card . . .

Item #3: Send in Your Holiday Anecdotes

Don’t forget, I’m counting on you. I’m collecting your amusing family holiday anecdotes (like the one above) to help me fill the squares on my 2009 Dysfunctional Family Bingo card. I won’t reveal identities if you don’t want me to, so please feel free to e-mail me (meredithobrien@hotmail.com) a brief explanation of a humorous/insane/annoying instance which occurred at a family holiday event (like Thanksgiving). The people who submit the four best submissions will net signed copies of my collection of humor/parenting columns, Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum.

Image credit: Hugh Kretschmer/Time.

Kimberley Clayton Blaine, a family and child therapist known on the Internet as “The Go-To Mom,” creates videos for parents about everything from potty training and handling a toddler who has a penchant for running away from mom and dad, to dining out in public with young kids. Now she’s become a book author/editor, compiling and recruiting mom writers and businesswomen to muse on the topics of the Internet, women, motherhood and business. Clayton Blaine, who also contributed her own essays to The Internet Mommy: Inspiring Interviews and Stories from Mothers Who Work and Play Online (Disclosure: One of my columns is included in the book), agreed to field some questions.

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: Your collection of 13 interviews and 30 essays address a wide swath of subjects, from advice on how to start your own online business and blogging about  parenthood, to the pressure to do everything with aplomb — work, parenthood, romantic relationships, perfect homes and bodies.  What do you hope readers will take away from reading Internet Mommy?

Kimberley Clayton Blaine, The Internet Mommy: I thought moms would enjoy reading about other moms who work play online. But what I didn’t expect was for the book to be a guide or teaching tool to the extent that it’s being used. I’ve gotten feedback from mom bloggers who are highlighting advice and bookmarking pages so they can implement the ideas to further their online careers. I wanted to produce an “offline” publication in part to show the media what moms are really doing online — making friends, earning  money, obtaining parenting advice and making a name for themselves.

O’Brien: Why and how did you put this book together?

Clayton Blaine: As a producer of online women and family content, I regularly make a habit of watching how moms conduct their lives online. The moms featured in my book, who I refer to as the “circle of moms,” were introduced to me through my tenacious social networking. I bumped into them on Twitter, Facebook, from Google alerts, by being a fan of their blogs, or by directly contacting them as potential partners. A lot of these women believe in reciprocating — I’ll do for you if you do for me. It’s a win-win. The support that I received from these online moms is what really inspired me to create the book.

There are many amazing moms doing impressive things online — so many that there are times I find myself green with envy. Many of the women in this book have impressive visitor statistics, make good money, have high caliber advertisers, large publisher book deals or are highly regarded for their advocacy efforts around motherhood. Their successes were even more reason to bring them into the “circle of moms.” Some were easy to get to write an essay for the book, others were hard to contact or very busy that they barely made the deadline!

The “circle of moms,” in my book are women who have a successful online web presence. There are a few moms in my book who don’t generate revenue from their online endeavors, but who do clearly impact thousands of mothers with what they offer. However, the one thread that holds them together is the ever-so-popular, “non-compete” clause. We are all here to support each other, competing only holds women down. The Internet is HUGE, so I suggest we make room for all! There are so many other moms who should have been in my book, but I simply did not have the connection, time or mode to include them. I’m just thankful that they (and you) took the time to help out.

O’Brien: Do you see the Internet as the new frontier for mom-run businesses? Why?

Clayton Blaine: I think any business eventually has to have some online presence. The Internet is clearly a great way to market a mom’s business. Having a web page is not good enough. Businesses now need to commit to socially engaging their clients or post write-ups on their service or products. Social marketing along with networking is key, and women are particularly good at that!

O’Brien: A good portion of the essays and interviews dealt with women who started blogs about parenting and write some pretty personal stuff about themselves and their families. One essay by Beth Blecherman entitled, “Live Blogging Pillow Fight with My Three Boys” focused on Blecherman’s decision to post updates about her kids’ pillow fight on Twitter as it unfolded. Do you think that blogs and social networking has changed modern parenthood, if so, why?

Clayton Blaine: I truly believe that blogs and especially social networks have changed modern parenthood by bridging the gap between parenting and technology. I included Beth’s Twitter posts about her boys’ pillow fight because it’s a great example of how moms stay connected to other moms, which in the past could not have been done so easily. I have more friends now that I’m online running my business than I did eight years ago when I was not online. I have intertwined my business and social life. I don’t feel isolated online. When I’m in a rut, I pop on Twitter and get some quick answers from other moms. I just love that. Or I’ll drop a direct message to someone asking for advice. I’m more efficient at running an online business because I’m not in a rush to shut down the shop at the end of the day. I can play and work at the same time. On the flip side, since I work at home, I can leave the computer for a few hours and be with my children. The flexibility is invaluable.

It’s always fun to get together with the Manic Mommies, Kristin Brandt and Erin Martin Kane, and their fans. Last week they held a Manic Mommies event at the new Champion store in Wrentham, MA — where I got the Picket Fence Post family some sportswear for soccer, basketball, etc. – and afterwards spent some quality time chatting with fellow moms.

It really lifts one’s spirits to bond over common parenting flaws and crazy stories. I just don’t do that enough. I’m particularly fond of the fantastically weird tales part. One woman told me about a verbal exchange she had with her son’s first grade teacher (after the teacher showed the class a questionable video) in which the teacher made the mom (also a teacher) feel like she was a know-nothing dunderhead, same way I felt on The Youngest Boy’s first day of school and we’d already forgotten to do an assignment. Another regaled me a tale about horrifically inappropriate behavior on the part of a mom associated with a scout troop.

And, I especially appreciated hearing from another mom who has problems with her kids not regularly eating the meals she prepares for them and agreed that having kids has sucked the joy out of cooking. When all you see are articles and books telling you how you can successfully “make” your kids eat whatever exotic food you make as long as you pitch it or spin it correctly to the kids, it gets downright depressing when that doesn’t work in your kitchen. Over the past week, my failure rate in getting the kids to eat well rounded meals has been abysmal. Oh well, at least I know I’m not alone.

Image credit: Meredith with Erin Martin Kane of the Manic Mommies.

Item #1: Slutty Halloween Costumes

From the moment the first catalogue for Halloween costumes arrived in my mailbox, I noticed that something seemed off, more so than in previous years. As The Youngest Boy leafed through it and circled a half-dozen costumes he was considering for Halloween, I couldn’t help but notice that a large proportion of the costumes for the girls beyond their toddler years, were sexed up, with the girls wearing obvious make-up and striking mature poses to make them look older, much more so than the boyish looking boys. I opined about this phenomenon in my October GateHouse News Service column.

Item #2: Fall TV Premieres

In the midst of the TV networks unveiling their slate of season premieres, I visited with the Manic Mommies and did a podcast with them where we dished about fall TV.  Shows we discussed included: Mad Men, Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Wife, Cougar Town, Glee and Parks & Recreation. You can download their podcast for free at iTunes or through other means. Go here for info on how to listen to the Manic Mommies online.

Item #3: Law-Breaker Moms

Three instances of states/municipalities trying to enforce over-the-top rules and regulations when it comes to the care of children:

How many of us have relied upon our fellow parents to help us watch our kids from time to time? How many have watched other people’s kids as a favor? Well if you lived in Michigan and you didn’t have a daycare license, you’d be a lawbreaker, according to media reports. Here’s the scoop from the local TV station, WZZM:

“Lisa Snyder, of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.

The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors’ kids or face consequences.”

In addition to Michigan criminalizing unlicensed ”it takes a village to raise a child” parents helping parents, folks who actually do run licensed daycare centers out of their Massachusetts homes were met with a host of new regulations by the state’s Board of Early Education and Care which will now consider daycare providers ”educators.” According to the Boston Herald, new regulations will mandate that daycare providers to do regular progress reports on children in their care which track “the cognitive, social, emotional, language, motor and life skills developments of infants and preschoolers,” brush the teeth of any kids there longer than fours hours and creative a an educational curriculum which demonstrates that daycare providers are offering “planned learning experiences.”

Meanwhile, a New York mother is being threatened by officials in Saratoga Springs because she and her 12-year-old son have been riding their bikes to his middle school. Riding or walking to school, according to the Times-Union, is banned — yes BANNED — by the school, at the same time we’re reading non-stop about the epidemic of fat kids who get little to no exercise:  “The Jackson street residents pedal more than four miles together each way to the middle school on nice days, despite being told not to by school officials and police.”

So, let me get this straight: You can’t watch your neighbor’s kids without getting a daycare license. If you get a daycare license, you have to become an “educator” and create curricula and conduct progress reports on babies. And if you’re trying to teach your kid about the joys of riding a bike to school, you’re told by the school and an awaiting state trooper that you’re breaking the school’s regulations and that you’ve got to plop your behind into a parent’s car or a bus seat.

Is it any wonder that parents feel under siege from governmental buddinskis?

Item #1: Obama’s Speech to School Kids

After a week of insane hullabaloo over the fact that the president of the United States wanted to speak to the nation’s school kids — seriously, if ANY U.S. president wants to talk to the kids about the importance of education, why not let him (or her), regardless of to what political party he or she belongs? — the three Picket Fence Post kids finally saw the speech in school, though they reported that there wasn’t much classroom discussion about it afterward. The kids’ reactions were mixed.

The two fifth graders claimed that they found it interesting — or perhaps they just told their political junkie of a mama that they did in order to score brownie points – particularly President Obama’s invocation of their patron saint of authors, J.K. Rowling. (While trying to make the point that you should never give up on yourself, Obama pointed out that the manuscript for the first Harry Potter book was repeatedly rejected before Rowling found a publisher.) The Girl said she liked the “keep at it” message and to not let mistakes or failures get you down.

The 8-year-old, however — who is normally motivated by food, cartoons/Star Wars, video games and toys — wasn’t all that impressed. “It was BORING!” he said when I asked him what he thought. I tried to get him to tell me what the president discussed and he said, “Stay in school, blah, blah, blah.” When I pressed him, he said, “Jeez! You saw it too! You know what he said!”

(more…)

Thanks go out to Kristen for sending me this spoof by The Onion satirizing parents who attempt to stalk their college-aged children via Facebook and Twitter while said offspring are off at institutions of higher learning. (It’s also a send-up of those “parental experts” of whom I’m so very fond.)

*Warning: The video contains a bit of written profanity that’s displayed on screen, obviously inappropriate for the youngin’s.*

If you have anything you think would give fellow parents a much needed chuckle, please send the video, link, etc. my way: meredithobrien@hotmail.com.

Happy Labor Day weekend.

Item #1: Hatin’ on the Ice Cream Man

Parents from across the country told the New York Times this week that they so despise the folks who bring their ice cream trucks/carts into or adjacent to public parks and neighborhoods and just hang around, that they want something done about it because when their kids see the ice cream truck/cart, they bug their moms and dads incessantly for an icy treat.

A New York City mom of a 3-year-old told the paper: “I fall into the camp of parents who are irate . . . I feel kind of bad about having developed this attitude. I want Katherine to have the full childhood experience and all. But it’s really predatory for them — two of them — to be right inside the playground like this.”

An Oregon mother of two young children said: “When we were kids, you would either get the ice cream or not and then he would just go away. But they just sit there now, and it’s like an hour of, ‘Can I have an ice cream? Can I have an ice cream?’ It’s really the vulture-like behavior that bothers me.”

What say you? Would you want to see the ice cream truck/cart banned or perhaps have rules — like a “no loitering” rule — enacted? Or do you think this is much ado about nothing?

Item #2: Building Better School Lunches

 The Times this week also ran a feature story about the campaign — advocated by the president and first lady — to improve school lunches, serve less industrialized/pre-made food and make fresh food on location. As Congress prepares to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act this fall, the Times noted, “The Department of Agriculture is expected to upgrade school food nutrition standards this year, many of which haven’t been changed for 15 years.”

The paper quoted a former president of the School Nutrition Association with decades of experience as a food service chief as saying that nutrition directors should meet national standards and that “complex nutritional regulations need to be streamlined. And kitchens need to be re-equipped so workers can actually cook healthier food.” Less than half of public schools cook their own entrees from scratch, the paper reported. “If they don’t give me a steamer,” said the former association president, “I can’t steam a vegetable. I have to deep fry it.”

All of this is great, on paper. I’m in favor of re-tooling school kitchens so that actual cooking, rather than re-heating, goes on there. It galls me when I receive a pile of handouts from the schools every year lecturing parents on the importance of cooking good, fresh foods at home and making sure the kids eat a balanced diet, all the while crap is being served in the school cafeteria. But in an economic climate such as this – with fresh fruits and veggies being so expensive and schools laying off teachers never mind renovating cafeteria kitchens — I’m not holding out hope that we’ll see the end to fried mozzarella sticks as an entree any time soon.

Item #3: Drop-Off/Pick-Up Line Rage

Lindsay over on the Suburban Turmoil blog has a long tale to tell about the insanity that is the drop-off/pick-up line at her daughter’s school which left her sitting in said line for 45 minutes. Not only did she have to deal with parents who left their empty cars in the line — which were blocking other people’s exits — so they could chat, but she was outraged by the school’s decision to add a new wrinkle to the whole drop-off/pick-up procedure. An excerpt:

“Starting yesterday, each child was called out one by one, by number, as their parents arrived outside. We’re talking hundreds of children, people. While I sat waiting for [my daughter] in the school parking lot, a new president was elected, man landed on Mars, and Suri Cruise grew up and married one of the Gosselin kids.

I’m not even joking.

What’s worse, supposedly if your child does not hear his number when it’s called, you have to drive on around and go to the back of the carpool line thus waiting another 30 minutes. My child is in kindergarten. Her number is long.”

 I’ve been in her situation, patiently waiting in the queue to pick up the kids, only to have people abandon their vehicles, with me stuck behind their minivans or SUVs while they yak away without caring that they’re rudely inconveniencing a whole lot of other people. And while some schools have been outstanding in the way they’ve dealt with this issue — my twins’ pre-school, for example, did a fabulous job at handling this chaos — I’ve also dealt with my fair share of insane drop-off/pick-up procedures.Thank goodness I now make the three kids take the bus.

Image credit: Jenn Ackerman/New York Times.

Item #1: Acupressure

I took  The Girl to visit a medical acupuncturist today. Instead of using the acupuncture needles, he used acupressure — pressure applied to the acupuncture points sans a needle – and other techniques, like cupping . . . which was a good thing, given how apprehensive the 10-year-old was. I did the best that I could to calm her and soothe her worries. The staff put in a great effort to try to alleviate her fears by talking to her and affording her the chance to feel the hair-thin, flexible needle so she’d see that they weren’t some metal behemoths waiting to be jammed into her arms and legs. But every time a staff member left the room, The Girl’s eyes filled with tears and she told me she wanted to leave. NOW!

For those who’ve been following this saga, The Girl has had persistent ankle problems since January 2008 when she first twisted it during a basketball practice. Since then, she’s missed half of several seasons of soccer and hoop because of flare-ups. This spring we finally saw a youth sports specialist in Boston who recommended water therapy (which she’s been doing for a few weeks), TENS therapy (we just got the unit this week) and acupuncture.

The Girl had been dreading this acupuncture appointment ever since the orthopaedist first mentioned it. For weeks she’s told me there was no way that she was going to let anyone put the acupuncture needles into her, no matter how thin they were.

So, did the alternative techniques the doctor used today work? We’ll have to wait and see. (*fingers crossed*)

(more…)

Item #1: Harry Potter

I took my resident, twin 10-year-old Harry Potter addicts to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday and was unpleasantly surprised by the trailers that were run prior to the showing of PG movie being played in the middle of a weekday. They were extremely violent, more so than the magical, wizarding violence in the Potter series.

One film, spearheaded by John Cusack as the dad of two kids, was about the end of the world. We saw streets and major landmarks being swallowed up, a fake newscast about mass suicide, children being put in danger. There was a preview for a vampire movie for which I don’t think my kids are mature enough to see. Then there was the Sherlock Holmes trailer which I likewise have no plans to let them watch when its released in the winter. These were previews geared toward a teenaged audience, not the mostly a tweenaged one obsessed with a boy wizard and catching a 1:10 p.m. flick.

Some may ask whether it’s hypocritical to complain about scary, violent movie trailers when I was bringing my kids to a scary Harry Potter movie with one seriously creepy scene. Here’s my response: My kids have read all the Potter books a bazillion times and have seen all the previous movies. They knew what was coming and when to avert their eyes. (I pointedly did NOT take my nearly 8-year-old to see the movie because I thought it would be intense.) As for the trailers that aired before Half-Blood Prince, I thought they were distinctly age-inappropriate. I looked around the theater and noticed many kids my children’s age who looked terrified.

Here’s one that was aired for the apocalyptic film 2012:

As for Half-Blood Prince, while The Girl and The Eldest Boy did like it and said they want to see it many times over again – albeit once it comes out on DVD and we can fast-forward through scary parts if they so desire — they were disheartened by the several changes made in the movie that didn’t jive with the book, particularly in a pivotal scene. When I read aloud Entertainment Weekly’s Whitney Pastorek’s “Harry Potter geeks: Vent your frustrations about the movie changes here” blog item, the two kids roared with approval. While I was unhappy with some of the changes, I WAS, overall, highly entertained.

Item #2: Three-Hankie Entertainment

Continuing with the cinematic theme . . . I enjoyed Michelle Slatalla’s column in the New York Times about her daughters’ obsession with books and films that make them cry with their dreadfully melancholy premises, and who dragged her to see My Sister’s Keeper, a tragic, sick kid movie which makes me grab for the Kleenex just at the mere thought of its premise.

Slatalla wrote:

“. . . [I]nstead of ‘All-of-a-Kind Family’ or ‘Betsy-Tacy,’ in which the biggest excitement was the simple act of growing up, my children always preferred tear-jerkers featuring girls with fatal diseases, in which protagonists were forever going into and out of remission and meeting similarly doomed boys at summer camps for the terminally ill.”

Item #3: The Scourge of Naked Kids

Some parents are comfortable allowing their very young children to run around in the buff. Some aren’t. This is news? The New York Times ran a huge story in its Home section yesterday entitled, “When Do They Need a Fig Leaf: Children Like to Strip Down But Not Everyone Approves,” and quoted those in favor of naked kids and those opposed, including parents of young children who are offended when their 3-year-olds are in the presence of naked friends:

“For many parents, allowing a child to run around naked at home is perfectly natural, an expression of the physical freedom that represents the essence of childhood, especially in the summer. But for others, unclad bodies are an affront to civility, a source of discomfort and a potentially dangerous attraction for pedophiles. These clashing sensibilities can create conflict, even when the nudity in question takes place at home.”

Some questions for you, my intrepid readers:

1) Have you taken your kids to movies and been unhappy with the content of the film trailers?

2) When you were young, did you like to read books or see movies that made you cry, or is this a new teenaged girl phenomenon?

3) Do you think that seeing naked little kids frolicking in their own homes is a scourge?

Image credit: Warner Brothers via GateHouse News Service.