My fifth graders are going to start middle school this fall and, because they’re my oldest kiddos, I attended a recent principal’s coffee where parents of incoming sixth graders were given a tour of the middle school and a primer about middle school life.
Among the handouts parents were given was a pamphlet that provided moms and dads with advice on how to help make our child’s academic experience in middle school a positive one.
So where’s the “Friday Funny” in this, you may be asking. It was in the pamphlet’s seventh tip: “Encourage your child to keep his/her locker tidy — feel free to come in after school with your child to clean out unwanted items.”
This is one step removed from this kind of helicopter parenting advice: “Please meet your child in the cafeteria at his/her designated lunch time in order to properly cut the child’s foods into bite-sized pieces so the student does not choke. In the event of choking, you should be pre-certified in the Heimlich Maneuver and execute the maneuver if given permission by the lunch room monitor to do so. Your certificate must be on file in the office before entering the cafeteria.”
Actually, that one about cutting up a kid’s food and being certified in the Heimlich Maneuver was not included among the tips, but seriously, asking parents to clean out their kid’s locker is ridiculous.
When I posted this on my Facebook page, I was delighted to read some of the responses from my friends:
“Just bring a scraper, some diluted hydrochloric acid and proper protective gear. And proper containment apparatus,” one wrote.
Another added, “And a wheelbarrow for all the papers not brought home.”
A current college student who attends the university where I used to teach, provided the most salient response when he wrote, “If my mom came to school to clean out my locker it would have probably taken until college for me to forgive her.”
Item #1: The Chew Monster (Otherwise Known as the Puppy)
Max, our mini-Wheat puppy, is smack dab in the middle of a rather nasty chewing phase and has been grabbing at anything within his reach and shredding it. Anything. Lego pieces. Pencils. Trash. Tissue boxes. Magazines. Soda cans. Shoes. You get the picture. Combine Max’s propensity for gnawing with the Picket Fence Post kids’ tendency to leave items lying haphazardly around the house and you’ve got the ingredients for my latest GateHouse News Service column.
Item #2: Co-Ed Sleepovers . . . Are They Nuts?
When I saw a Tweet this week from a Boston-based Fox TV journalist promoting her segment about teen co-ed slumber parties, she asked people thought about the notion. My immediate response was decidedly thumbs down. Putting hormonal kids together, with soft bedding, in the dark where parents will be absent for long stretches of time including in the middle of the night and a developmental lack of impulse control (plus teens’ brains aren’t fully developed) is patently crazy. Then I watched Sara Underwood’s piece on local TV and it only confirmed my initial thoughts. Please, tell me what you think about this trend.
Item #3: Pajama Diaries
So. Very. True.
Item #4: Modern ‘Like’ Family
Freshman ABC comedy Modern Familywas unbelievably fabulous this week. It provided me with ample laughs just when I needed them. (You can watch the latest episode “Fears” for free at the ABC web site.) But the part that really had me rolling — aside from seeing the adorable Manny in his classic fisherman’s cap (I just want to hug that little guy) – was the scene where Claire Dunphy was driving her teenaged Haley and her friend around and could not, not for one more second, tolerate listening to her daughter continually and nonsensically invoke the word “like.”
Here’s what Haley said to her friend: “And then I’m like, ‘There’s no way I’m wearing that.’ And she was like, ‘Well if you don’t wear it then you can’t play.’ And then I was like, ‘Well, that’s fine by me.’ And then she was like . . .”
By this time, Claire, who’d been rolling her eyes as she listened to this, snarkily said the word “like” over her daughter’s conversation four times until her daughter objected. “Stop saying, ‘like!’” Claire shouted.
“Don’t embarass me!” the daughter shouted back.
“Ahhhhhh!” Claire shrieked as she gripped the steering wheel and violently shook her head.
This exact scenario – with slightly different wording and sans the guttural yell – occurred between my mother and me while she was driving me and a friend around when I was but a teenaged gal. I have a vivid memory of having what I saw as a perfectly pleasant conversation with my friend only to have my mother, seemingly out of nowhere, shout, “Meredith! Stop saying, ‘like!’”
I’m busily trying to stomp that tendency out of my own children before they become teens. I’m tryin’.
What if, just for kicks, we stopped referring to the on-going harassment and humiliation of children — which interferes with their ability to function in school — as “bullying,” and, instead, started calling it what it really is, which is “harassment?”
After I read several pieces in today’s Boston Herald about children being subjected to physical and emotional harassment in school which left them feeling unsafe and unable to concentrate – along with school officials, by and large, not doing much to stop the behavior – I kept wondering why it’s not simply called “harassment.” The word “bullying” seems insufficient. As does the word “teasing,” which I’ve also heard invoked to refer to this subject.
“Hundreds of angry parents, worried teachers and even terrorized kids are reporting ugly episodes of brutal bullying at schools across Massachusetts as the heartwrenching case of Phoebe Prince continues to expose a painful nerve.
The abuse — detailed in e-mails and phone calls to the Herald – is emotionally jarring, often physical and spreading like a merciless virus in cyberspace.
Kids tell of being forced to drink toilet water, getting pummeled on the bus and seeing themselves ridiculed for all to see on Facebook.
. . . A Boston Latin High School parent said the bullying was so bad her son had to leave the elite school. A teacher on the South Shore said she’s sick over special-needs girls being photographed in the bathroom — only to learn it was all posted on Facebook.”
An accompanying Herald column, “Parents’ pleas fall on deaf ears,” painted a picture of parents feeling likewise helpless when it comes to putting an end to the harassment of their kids at the hands of their classmates:
“‘We told the school and the school did nothing.’
That’s the common refrain I’ve heard over and over since news broke of the apparent suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley, who was relentlessly hounded by high school bullies.
Incredibly, her tormentors remain in class, protected by the school. Yet in conversations with parents and in more than 100 voice mails and e-mails, I learned that protecting bullies, not the bullied, is hardly unique to South Hadley. It’s now the rule in our schools.”
If the student victims were instead adult employees at a company being harassed by a peer, their supervisor would have to step in and stop the harasser from creating a hostile work environment or face a possible lawsuit. If one adult wouldn’t leave another one alone, a criminal restraining order could filed against the harasser. So why can’t the schools do more, like workplaces have done?
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 Timesthis 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*
The story was about a Massachusetts mom of a 3-year-old whose labor with her second child came on so hard and so fast that she wound up delivering her 6 pound 4 ounce baby alone in the vehicle while her mother ran into the Emergency Room to summon hospital staff for help. As the baby, Grace Emily-Marie was making her way into the world, Meghan Aucoin’s mother drove her to the hospital and by the time medical staff returned to the vehicle, Aucoin was holding her daughter in her arms.
Makes me shudder. That was me with The Youngest Son. Eight-and-a-half years ago. Baby was coming out when I was still in my bathroom. The Spouse loaded me into the car, drove like mad to the hospital, then left me (because I was unable to walk) laboring in the car as he ran into the ER to get the doctors . . . except that the doctors got to me in time and The Youngest Boy was born shortly after I was wheeled into the hospital. I became known as “the lady who almost gave birth in the parking lot.” Now Aucoin IS the lady who gave birth in the parking lot. My hat is off to her.
Item #2: 8-Year-Old on Watch List
Reading a page one story in the New York Timestoday about an 8-year-old third grade New Jersey Cub Scout who’s on the Transportation Security Administration’s watch list as a potential security threat does not make me feel safe. A boy named Mikey Hicks shares a name with “someone named Michael Hicks [who] made the Department of Homeland Security suspicious and little Mikey is still paying the price,” the Times reported.
This boy has been subject to pat-downs and questioning when flying on commercial aircraft with his family, starting when he was, get this, 2 years old and was frisked at an airport in Newark because his name was “on the list.”
I was incredulous. A 2-year-old being searched and treated like a potential terrorist? Seriously? I don’t know about you, but it wouldn’t instill confidence in me to see a kid in Pull-Ups being frisked before boarding an airplane because his name is “on the list.”
As Hicks’ mother said, “Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal. A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”
Their congressman, William J. Pascrell, told the Times, “We can’t just throw a bunch of names on these lists and call it security. If we can’t get an 8-year-old off the list, the whole list becomes suspect.”
Item #3: Brutal World of Politics
I’m reading the book Game Changefor a column I’m working on. It’s the book that’s getting all the media attention for containing a series of inflammatory comments about the 2008 presidential campaign reportedly from the mouths of marquee national politicians (Senate Leader Harry Reid, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, etc.). And as I’ve been pouring through it — reading anecdote after anecdote about searingly private moments between politicians and their spouses (the material on Elizabeth Edwards is so devastating and so personal that I feel like I needed a shower after I read it) — it makes me wonder why anyone would want to open him or herself up to such intense scrutiny, knowing that everything you say and do — even with your spouse when you think it’s private, even in front of “trusted” aides and colleagues – would someday be blabbed to reporters and made grist for late night comedians.
Whenever I start to fret about how insane and overcaffeinated my life seems at times – I never have enough time to get my work done from my home office (hence the caffeine) amid the demands of the three young narcissists I’m raising (for whom I serve as an unpaid administrative assistant/chauffeur/cook/cleaner/home health aide), my husband with his broken wrist (which’ll likely require surgical repair in the next week or so), and our wildly teething nutty puppy who can now leap onto all of the furniture with ease — I like to flip on the TV and observe the hell that fictional TV families (or non-fictional in the case of the Gosselins) endure on a daily basis and realize that these folks — fictional or not — have stress levels way higher than mine.
A prime example of TV families with more on their plate than me comes in the form of the three wives of HBO’s Big Love. Not only do they share one husband — I cannot even imagine — but they have to worry all the time that they’ll get arrested for practicing polygamy and that the creepy folks and relatives from the nearby polygamist compound (which looks like real life ones I’ve seen on the news) will draw them into all manner of mayhem. Plus they have a good number of little kids and babies running around, in addition to two teenagers, one who wants to get married to a guy in his late 20s. At least one wife is trying to get her career off the ground and another is going back to school.
The fourth season of the polygamist drama premieres Sunday night and promises to be as controversial as ever. My bustling suburban home with three kids, one husband, one wife and one dog seems downright tame and manageable by comparison.
Item #2: High Hopes for Parenthood
Remember that old film Parenthood, the one from 1989 which starred Steve Martin along with a great ensemble cast? It dramatized how parenthood is complicated and messy and heart-rending no matter how old your kids are. Well NBC is hoping that, despite the fact that the film is decades old, that there’s still magic in its formula. NBC is taking the film’s premise and turning it into a TV show, kind of like they did with the phenomenal Friday Night Lights, which was a non-fiction book, then a movie, then a fictional TV drama. (If shows like the Bionic Womanand Knight Ridercan be resurrected, why not a 21-year-old movie?)
Parenthood, the TV show, will feature Gilmore Girls’ Lauren Graham, Six Feet Under’s Peter Krause and Coach’s Craig T. Nelson. I’ve seen a handful of promos and I’m hopeful that this show will work, though the bar for family comedies has been set mighty high by the fabulous freshman ABC comedy Modern Familywhich literally makes me laugh out loud each week.
How will Parenthood, the TV show stack up? Check out the trailer for the 1989 film:
I’ve been blogging relatively lightly during the past 10 days in a (somewhat) vain attempt to achieve (or chase an elusive) Zen-like state of mind. Trying really hard not to get overly rattled by holiday stress (though, at times, I’ve failed and needed someone to tell me to chill), I decided to give myself the last two weeks of December off from full-fledged blogging as a gift. . . which means I’ll be back in January ready to dish.
But, in honor of New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and all of the resolution baloney you’ll be — or have been — treated to, in my January GateHouse News Service column I’ve created my own parenting anti-resolution list which involves trying to make “underparenting” seem cool, acting more like moms you see on TV and embracing the crazy.
Who amongst you, my dear readers, has sent out Christmas/Hanukkah cards with images of your kids on it? I’d venture to guess that if you have any children who are of grade school age, 99 percent of our holiday cards included some form of a photo of said kiddos.
After looking over the array of holiday greetings that have been delivered to the Picket Fence Post family’s home, I couldn’t find a single one from a family with young kids that didn’t include a photo of said cherubs.
The Picket Fence Post’s family Christmas/Hanukkah card included photos of the kids and our dog Max, however they prominently featured anti-perfectionist snark. I included an image of the pillow fight the kids had in the middle of our disastrous Christmas photo session which was marked by tears, puffy red eyes (from the crying) and arguments over the fact that I was supposedly “torturing” my children with a cruel and unusual punishment of having the nerve of asking them to put on some nice duds and sit still on the sofa. They might as well have called it Gitmo-New England the way they were acting.
Anyway . . . a former college newspaper colleague of mine at the Boston Globepenned a sarcastically funny column this week decrying the flood of generic, processed photocards with the “grinning moppets” on them that he’d been receiving, the kind you get from Shutterfly and the like (Full Disclosure: I got mine from Snapfish):
“I know this may come across as mildly offensive, but I am asking as nicely as possible: Please keep your kids off my Christmas cards . . .
Simply put, it’s a Christmas card, not an advertisement for your blissful existence. If I’m interested in seeing your children, your vacations or your dog dressed as an elf, I’ll look at your Facebook page, thank you very much.
. . . Before you paint me as a total ogre (I only admit to being half-ogre, on my mother’s side), let me say if you’d like to send a photo of your family inside an actual greeting card, along with a quick handwritten message, I’d be very happy.”
What do you think of the nearly unanimous use of photocards among families with young children? Do you think they should have something handwritten on them?
Item#2: Fluff-Eating Pup
I was on a tight deadline and was thisclose to completing a column. I needed some quiet and some major physical distance put between me and the three bickering kids, who’d still managed to maintain their near-constant arguements as they were cozily set up in the family room for their TV hour, though these days the definition of the word “hour” is more concept than reality.
“Please watch Max, I need to go upstairs to finish this column,” I said, referring to our now-7-month-old puppy who’ll still chew stuff up if he’s not watched carefully. Just this week, he’s killed a couple of Star Wars figures, gnawed on slippers and socks left within his reach, and has pulled kids’ backbacks off of kitchen chairs to root around for stuff inside.
The children all acknowledged that they’d heard me and acted as though they had it all under control, with Max curled up next to The Girl on the sofa.
About a half-hour later, The Spouse came home and I could hear his shouting from my upstairs bedroom to which I’d retreated with my laptop: ”What happened here? Argh!” Max had somehow eluded the TV-addicted children’s supervision, walked over to the pantry (which was open but I don’t know why) and found our big plastic tub of Marshmallow Fluff lying on the floor, its cover, as always, only partially snapped down. Then he’d proceeded to gorge on Fluff.
The Spouse came upstairs a few minutes later to inform me of the goings-on while I tapped away at the keyboard. “I don’t even want to see what he looks like,” I said. When I returned to the kitchen, I learned that The Girl decided it’d be easier to cut off clumps of the pup’s hair around his mouth covered with the sticky substance. Oy.
I thought we were in a recession, marked by high unemployment and people cutting back as they try to ride out these days of TARP and discussions of another possible federal stimulus package as industries wither away (auto, newspaper, etc.). So why did I read in the Boston Globethat Massachusetts school districts feel the need to warn parents against giving their children’s teachers “pricey” gifts? The story began as follows:
“School superintendents across the region are penning letters this holiday season to parents, cautioning them against going overboard with gift-giving to teachers, principals, and other staff members.
. . . While acknowledging that parents’ gift-giving gestures may be well intentioned the superintendents say that the state’s new ethics laws forbids public servants, including teachers on public payrolls, from receiving gifts with value in excess of $50. Violations are subject to civil penalties, the superintendents warn.”
Some of the examples of previous parental gift-giving excess, according to the Globe, were: $200 gift cards, fine wines, sports tickets, Rolex watches and HD TVs.
Hold on a sec, I thought. Who in the heck is giving teachers gifts that go for $50, never mind the ones the Globe was calling “pricey?”
Are people at your kids’ schools dishing out major cash for gifts?
Item #2: Decade of Overparenting
As part of its ode to the decade of the 2000s that’s about to come to a close, New York Magazine has a piece by writer Sandra Tsing Loh describing this past 10 years as a period of time when “Everybody Else Knows Best,” at least when it came to parenting, as parents have felt under siege by the volume of child-rearing advice. Tsing Loh focused on an anecdote involving her friend, the mother of a 9-month-old who won’t sleep. The friend didn’t know what to do about her son’s sleeping issues and fretted that she would make a mistake. Tsing Loh put a stake into the notion of relying on so-called parenting “experts” to tell us what we should do at every moment of our children’s young lives. Worth the read.
Item #3: Pregnancy Discrimination on ‘Housewives’
Desperate Housewiveshas had an irritating Lynette Scavo-centric storyline this season, one in which the fortysomething mom of four — who’s pregnant with twins, whose husband has gone back to college and she’s the only breadwinner — is being discriminated against by Carlos Solis, her boss/neighbor/friend, so much so, that after she was unjustly fired, she felt compelled to sue him.
She didn’t tell Carlos — who openly told her that he’d discriminated against another woman and not given her a promotion because she was pregnant and instead gave the promotion to Lynette — immediately after she found out she was pregnant, but made arrangements, trained an underling and landed a big account so that she wouldn’t leave Carlos in the lurch. But when he found out (not from her) he acted as though, by getting pregnant, she’d let him down and hurt him, and that he was justified in forcing her out of a job.
This fictionalized version of pregnancy discrimination is the focus of my Mommy Tracked column this week, where Lynette’s situation is being played for laughs. I also asked readers what a woman in Lynette’s situation could/should do. (See video from the latest episode below for an example of Lynette being treated shabbily by Carlos’ wife Gabby.)
By the way, after this past week’s plane crash on Wisteria Lane, I began to wonder if this particular (fictional) street in Fairview is the most dangerous street in America. The results of my curiosity can be found here, where I documented every violent/criminal act that I could find that has occurred on Wisteria Lane over Desperate Housewives’ half dozen seasons. If I’ve missed any, please feel free to let me know.
When I stumbled upon a video of a then 9-year-old Canadian hockey player on YouTube via ParentDish as he discussed how differently people treat him when they see him as just a kid, versus how they treat him when he puts on his hockey helmet and steps onto the ice rink to play hockey — like he’s been playing hockey “for 15 years” — I knew I had to post it here.
The video’s apparently a big hit in Canada.The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that in 2006 the boy “wrote a speech for a class assignment pleading with hockey parents to stop being so negative. It was only intended for his class and few members of his family, but a YouTube video of [Miller Donnelly] giving his speech has recently drawn attention and has now garnered more than 85,000 hits.” That was back in January 2009.
Author and columnist Meredith O'Brien gives you a peek behind the picket fences of modern day life and parenting in the 'burbs. With humor and candor, it's her take on real parenting in the real world.
My fifth graders are going to start middle school this fall and, because they’re my oldest kiddos, I attended a recent principal’s coffee where parents of incoming sixth graders were given a tour of the middle school and a primer about middle school life.
Author and columnist Meredith O'Brien gives you a peek behind the picket fences of modern day life and parenting in the 'burbs. With humor and candor, it's her take on real parenting in the real world.
