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.

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.

The Picket Fence Post Family Christmas/Hanukkah Card Photos: Recent photo session with the three Picket Fence Post children was a disaster. Said session was punctuated by tears, parental threats, puffy eyes (still red from previous bouts of crying which delayed the taking of photos until children’s eyes were less red), forced awkward smiles (called to mind the web site Awkward Family Photos), an energetic (and slightly vicious) pediatric pillow fight and the labeling of yours truly as, and I quote, “the worst person in the world.” (No, the kid who said that does not watch Keith Olbermann’s declarations of who the “Worst Person in the World” is for each particular weekday. However the mere fact that I asked the children to put on nice clothing and brush their hair is clearly grounds for human rights violations. I should start planning for my trial at the Hague.) I’m contemplating actually using some of the odder, weirder shots and chronicling the photographic debacle for a bit of holiday humor, greetings for those with a sense of humor.

Mentos/Diet Coke: This summer I bought a six-pack of 16.9 ounce Diet Coke bottles and a six-pack of Mentos packets with the intent of reenacting the Diet Coke/Mentos explosion — the one you’ve likely seen on the internet – in our backyard. Long story short, I just — FINALLY — got the chance to do it this afternoon after weeks upon weeks of The Youngest Boy whining, “When are doin’ the Diet Coke-Mentos thing?”. What a bust. Maybe we did it wrong because it didn’t look anything like we thought it should. Maybe we should’ve used a two-liter bottle instead of those small ones. Completely anti-climatic.

Soccer’s Over. Hello Basketball: The final soccer games of the season for The Girl and The Eldest Boy were rained out on Saturday. (The Girl’s game was re-scheduled for Sunday, but we were at my niece and nephew’s combined birthday party. The Eldest Boy’s game has yet to be re-scheduled.) And just as I was starting to enjoy the fact that I didn’t have to race around delivering them to various fields for practices and trying to remember who had the game where and whose practice ended when, we’ve started receiving e-mails to alert us to the fact that basketball season starts in two weeks. (The Spouse is The Girl’s head coach and is assisting The Eldest Boy’s team so things’ll be insane around here in short order. Not many family meals together during the week I expect.) Meanwhile, The Youngest Boy just started a once weekly hockey scrimmage thing on Sunday mornings before church. (That doesn’t include his Saturday morning hockey skills sessions.) How is it that I was naively thinking about getting a break?

Going on Month Four of Working at the Kitchen Table: The Picket Fence Post family puppy Max, now 6 months old, is still not completely housebroken yet. Whenever he sets his paws on a carpet, he acts as though it’s the grass outside and he pees. So that means he spends his days in our kitchen on its hard wood floors (on which *knock wood* he hasn’t had an accident in a very long time). But since he’s a puppy who’s still teething, Max needs to be monitored or else he’ll gnaw on the furniture and get into stuff. (That’s when he’s not in his crate whining about the fact that I had the nerve to leave the room.) Guess who’s been doing the monitoring? That’s right. I’ve been working on my laptop at the kitchen table or the kitchen counter for almost four months so that I can allow Max to run around when the Picket Fence Post kids are in school. (Once they get home and heap their stuff atop mine, the kitchen looks like a Superfund site.) We recently had our backyard fenced in and that’s taken some of the pressure off because I can let Max out to romp around (and tire out) like the little maniac he is, but the world starts feeling mighty small when you spend most of your days confined to one room. Kind of feels like I’ve been grounded. Then again, maybe I deserve to be grounded, what with being the worst person in the world and all.

 Item #1: ‘Screaming is the New Spanking’

A feature story telling readers that parents yell at their kids is akin to a story that says there will be a sunrise tomorrow morning. Unless you know only mellow,uncaffeinated, really Zen-like folk, you, or someone you know, has yelled at a kid. It’s not like this is a new trend, this shouting at irrational small people who like to push their parents’ buttons and nag you until your ears bleed. However the New York Times’ Style section ran a feature story this week which asserted that “screaming is the new spanking.”

As author Hilary Stout outlined how spanking has fallen out of favor (or is only done in super-top-secret for fear of ostracizing), she suggested that today’s parents have simply replaced spanking with shouting. “. . . [W]ith regularity, this is a generation that yells.” [Emphasis was NOT added by me. It was in the paper that way.]

Stout quoted a parenting coach as saying:

“This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.”

Do you think that GenXers yell at their kids more than parents did in the past? (I vote, “No.”)

Item #2: Pop Warner Scuffle

Speaking of screaming . . .

Did you get a load of the story this week about a Massachusetts dad who got peeved that his son’s Pop Warner football coach told the man’s 12-year-old son to run laps because the father had brought him to practice 10 minutes late? The dad started allegedly shouting a few things to the coach about his weight from the sidelines, according to news reports, at which point the coach allegedly suggested they meet in a secluded spot, where, police say the coach beat the father up. The dad wound up with a busted eye socket and other injuries and the coach was busted for assault.

What crossed my mind when I read this story? Putting aside the alleged taking of verbal pot shots — which the dad should NOT have done — and the alleged actual assault which, obviously, shouldn’t have happened either, it seems to me that some people take youth sports too seriously. This is sports for kids. Children.

I’ve had a kid who was on a sports team where the coach said he wanted to teach parents a lesson by making their kids run laps if the parents brought the kids late to practices. The kids aren’t in control of getting themselves to practice at this age, therefore I don’t think they should be held responsible for something that’s beyond their control.

When my kid told me about this new behavior modification technique by the coach, I responded by telling my child that I have three kids who all play sports, my own work obligations and a ton of other responsibilities outside of my kids’ recreational activities which The Spouse and I fund. I do the best that I can to get everyone where he or she needs to go on time. If you’re 10 minutes late for practice because I accidentally ran late, so be it. Running’s good for you.

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Jon +  Kate Not So-Great

As difficult as she’s been making it, I’m starting to feel badly for Kate Gosselin, from Jon “Hey I’m only 32 and for dates” & Kate Plus 8.

I’ve already written about how disappointing and breathtakingly difficult it must’ve been for Jon and Kate Gosselin to have their marriage crumble in front of national television cameras for a reality show whose producers seek to get the best ratings, not take care of a family in trouble.

Soon after they announced that they were divorcing, my feelings of melancholy for both Kate and Jon started to shift. It had a lot to do with the photos and footage of Jon cavorting with several different twentysomething gals late into the evenings, one of whom is the daughter of the cosmetic surgeon who gave Kate her tummy tuck in the first season of Jon & Kate.

Then Kate decided to provide an exclusive interview to the Today Show, and the program exploited Kate’s pain, seemingly trying to goad her into crying. (Wrote about it here.) Following the interview, anonymous NBC staffers complained to the Chicago Sun-Times about Kate’s behavior following the interview, saying, “We get virtually all of the world’s biggest egos coming through here. But Kate was one of the most unpleasant I’ve seen in working here for many years.”

I now wish that this family would simply cease providing interviews to anyone and just pull up the draw bridge to protect those eight young kids and, frankly, themselves. I wish they’d stop providing fodder for anyone to write about, live their lives as quietly as possible. Aside from doing the TLC show — payment for which is likely providing the family with the funds to put those eight kids through college — I wish Jon and Kate would just stop talking about their impending divorce and love lives and just focus on providing TLC with footage of raising eight kids, not on tabloid sideshow trash.

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Here’s the situation: The Girl’s ankle problem — which has been on-going since the winter of 2008 following an ankle sprain during a basketball practice and, much to her chagrin, prompted us to pull her out of soccer — now has an official diagnosis, a mild case of regional pain syndrome. For this, the recommended treatment is a combination of acupuncture, water therapy and TENS therapy.

(Wanna know where I’ll be this summer? Dragging her and her two brothers around to therapy sessions. And being forced to bribe everybody into submission, and maybe buy another game or so for the handheld Game Boy thingie. And pray the price of gasoline doesn’t suddenly spike.)

Of course when we told The Girl, 10, about the acupuncture part of the youth sports medicine specialist’s recommendation, she was none too thrilled. Terrified, in fact. The Spouse and I have tried telling her that this’ll make her ankle feel better, that the needles are unbelievably thin, but nothing we said made any difference in mollifying her fears.

“Think of the street cred you’ll get,” I joked. “You can tell all your friends that you’re not afraid of needles. You’re a tough girl.”

I’m still in the process of trying to secure The Girl an initial acupuncture appointment with someone who’ll hopefully do a better job than me or The Spouse in convincing her — the kid who took an hour of convincing to use a nasal spray for allergies — that this’ll be a good thing. After watching her suffer intermittently for well over a year as she’s played a series of half seasons of soccer and basketball, I’m happy to try whatever might help her return to normal and allow her to play her beloved soccer again, no matter how crazy three sports-playing kids makes the family schedule, or how insane The Summer of Therapy will be.

Image credit: Acupuncture Herbal Center.

While we watched our fourth grade sons play soccer during a game recently, a parent said to me, “I used to think that the Thanksgiving/Christmas time was the craziest time of the year. But now I think it’s the end of the [school] year. It’s just nuts.”

I thought about her observation for a while and have come to the conclusion that it’s a draw. While there’s more hype and pressure pressure to get all the big Christmas/Hanukkah stuff done at once (you have to get gifts and cards simultaneously for a slew of people), the end of the school year brings with it a crush of non-stop To Do items in only a short amount of time. And if you have more than one young kid in school, you’re exponentially increasing the number of ways you – the parent who shoulders the blame for everything – can screw up and forget things.

Here’s a sampling of the Picket Fence Post family’s end-of-the-school-year schedule for the next three weeks:

– The Eldest Boy is in a school concert this week (which we only found out about last week!) for which I still have to run out and get him the right clothes to wear as he doesn’t possess black pants, a white button-up shirt that fits or a black tie. This concert occurs at the same time as soccer evaluations for “placement” for next year’s fifth grade soccer teams. (Don’t get me started on the idiocy of the annual evaluations which start with SECOND graders.) However The Eldest Boy’ll miss the evaluations and go to the concert instead, which means The Spouse and I are crippling his soccer career forever by making this choice . . . but we’ll have to deal with that guilt later.

– All three of my children have two field trips a piece in the next few weeks. The Spouse is chaperoning two of those trips, one to the zoo with second graders, the other to an IMAX theater with fourth graders to see some educational film whose title I can’t remember right now because my brain is overloaded.

– The Eldest Boy has a class event in the middle of a work day next week before which I’ve got to remember to send some cash in to his room parent so she can buy a gift for his teachers.

– The Girl also has an in-class event in the middle of another school day. I haven’t heard from her room parent regarding money for a teacher gift, but I’m confident that a request will be forthcoming.

– I’ve got to remember to send money to The Youngest Boy’s room parent for a teacher gift, as well as money to the parents who are collecting money for a coaches’ gift for The Eldest Boy’s soccer coaches. I’m sure that The Youngest Boy will have an end-of-the-year event in class as well which I pray it isn’t on the same day as his siblings’ events or field trips that The Spouse is chaperoning or else I think my head will explode.

– The Spouse, who coaches The Youngest Boy’s baseball team, will have ice cream (likely Hoodsies) after the last game as a treat for the players. (Which I’ve been charged with purchasing and bringing to the field.) The team has several more baseball practices and games (which go on for hours, even when I complain to the coach). The Youngest Boy is having such a blast with baseball that he has expressed an interest in playing summer baseball. Shoot me now.

– The Eldest Boy has a couple more soccer practices and two games left before his season concludes.

– The Eldest Boy and The Girl just completed a fairly involved fourth grade U.S. landmarks project (complete with papers backed with research and clay replicas they made of the Pentagon and the Arlington National Cemetery, respectively). Now they’ve each got to complete a “Business” project for which they each have to come up with a product, create it (or a protoype of it), and then figure out how to market it, how much they’ll charge, etc. The Eldest Boy’s going to make his own comic strips/books (I had to explain why had couldn’t just create new installments of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series since that’s kind of, you know, stealing copyrighted material). The Girl wants to design book marks. They haven’t yet informed me of what supplies they’ll need, but given that the projects are due VERY soon, I’d better remind them to hand over the lists, even though we parents only heard about the business project thing last week.

– The Girl has a second appointment with a Boston youth sports specialist soon to figure out what we’re going to do about her ankle problems. (If it weren’t for her ankle problems, we’d have her travel soccer schedule to add to this family’s scheduling hell.) After her appointment, it’s extremely likely that she’ll be given appointments for treatments to hopefully remedy the situation.

This list, of course, doesn’t include a number of personal/family events (social and work-related) that The Spouse and I have because, you know, we actually have lives outside of our roles as parents. Hard to believe. After re-reading the list above, I’m convinced that all I need is more coffee and maybe a case of Red Bull. Who needs sleep?

Which bring me back to my original question: Which do you find nuttier, the end-of-the-school time or the December/Christmas holiday season?

Image credit: From this web site.

Item #1: Old School Tooth Extraction

The tooth is hanging there. I mean JUST hanging there. The kid’s whining, refusing to eat, or is eating with her head cocked to one side so that food and liquids dribble out of that one side of her mouth and all over the kitchen table. And you, the kid’s parent, want the drama to end already. You just want that tooth out.

When one of my kids has a loose tooth, the little enamel beauty’ll be wiggly for weeks upon weeks. And our close relatives will be well aware that their niece/nephew/grandson/granddaughter has a loose tooth because the child will regularly provide them with breaking news updates by phone which usually consist of four words, “My tooth’s still loose.” Inevitably, one of the relatives — likely a wise guy grandfather or uncle – will suggest that the kid tie one end of a piece of string around the tooth, tie the other end to a door knob and slam the door shut. The loose-toothed kid usually responds with a lively, “No way!” as though it had been suggested that the child eat a well rounded meal or clean one’s room without complaint.

But they may change their minds about that technique after seeing my editor Heather Kempskie’s video of her son’s tooth extraction via a string and door knob. Or maybe not.

Item #2: Rude Kids

Are Gen X parents – the ones who are endlessly worried about their kids’ self esteem, who were warned by parenting experts never to criticize their charges and to avoid saying, “No,” who practice attachment parenting and are fiercely protective of their offspring — raising a bunch of ill-mannered miscreants? Yes, in fact, they are, according to MSNBC’s Susan Gregory Thomas’s piece entitled, “Today’s tykes: Secure kids or rudest in history?” An excerpt:

“. . . [B]y many accounts, Generation X may be the most devoted parents in American history . . . Yet their kids are, well, rude. It may be that today’s parents are so fixated on their children’s emotional well-being that they’re teaching them that the well being of others is comparably unimportant, says Dr. Philippa Gordon, a long-time pediatrician in Park Slope, Brooklyn.”

What do you think? ARE kids ruder these days than they used to be? More self-centered? If so, on whom do you pin the blame?

Item #3: Ankle Woes Cont’d

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with the saga of my 10-year-old daughter’s ankle woes. Since January 2008 when The Girl suffered a minor ankle sprain during basketball practice, she’s been dogged by ankle problems. She’s only played half-seasons of fall and spring soccer and winter basketball since sustaining the injury. Following periods of pain, she’d rest, sit out of organized sports, get better, start playing during the next season (or join a season already in progress), then experience pain again. (It’d also hurt intermittently during regular activity but not as much as during team sports.)

She has visited an orthopaedist and a physical therapist. She’s had X-rays and an MRI. And she’s still not better. So The Spouse and I pulled her off her spring soccer team before the season began and said we needed to try to get to the bottom of all of this.

This morning we took her to see a youth sports medicine specialist in Boston for his input. He ordered another MRI and has raised the possibility of acupuncture and other therapies to help treat her, depending on what information the new MRI provides. Upon learning that acupuncture involved needles, The Girl’s eyes bulged and she began shaking her head, “No.” I told her that if we actually get to that point and we decide to take her an acupuncturist, she can use it to boost her tough-gal street cred. “Yeah, so I get my skin covered with needles, no biggie, doesn’t hurt at all,” I said, pretending like I was a 10-year-old trying to be cool. Didn’t really convince her though, so I dropped the subject.

To be continued . . .

As regular readers of the Picket Fence Post well know, the increased rate of children’s sports-related injuries is a pet issue of mine. Why do I have a bee in my bonnet about this issue?

First, I think that many adults — anyone from parents, coaches and those who stand to rake in big bucks from running a bazillion sports leagues, competitions, camps, classes, individual coaching sessions, etc. — push children too hard, particularly with the emphasis on single sport specialization and playing a single sport year-round. While in grade school.

Second, my own daughter has a persistent ankle injury, sustained in January 2008, that still plagues her today. She’s only 10. This spring The Spouse and I decided to tell her she couldn’t play soccer this season because she hasn’t been able to complete a season of either basketball or soccer since the fall of 2007, after which she suffered an ankle injury that hasn’t really healed. She’s had X-rays, an MRI, seen orthopaedic doctors and had physical therapy. And still, it continues to bother her.

So when my sister-in-law called me last night to alert me that NBC Nightly News was starting a two-part series on children’s sports injuries, I dropped everything and tuned in. The first segment pinned the blame for the increase in children’s injuries on overuse and on the fact that ”parents push the kids way too hard.” (Link to the first video here.)