Picket Fence Post

A few weeks ago I mentioned here in this space that the three Picket Fence Post kids were eagerly awaiting the fourth installment of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days. From the moment the book arrived at the house, it was in such high demand and everyone wanted to be the first to read it that I decided to do the democratic thing and read it aloud to the three kids over the course of a weekend.

They were so jazzed after we finished reading the fourth book about the Wimpy Kid’s summer vacation that the four of us — me, my twin 11-year-olds and my 8-year-old — e-mailed questions to Kinney about his book and his best selling series, featuring Wimpy Kid in chief, Greg Heffley. The Q&A is below:

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: Your portrayal of Greg’s summer, where everything seemed to go wrong — his family’s adoption of a dog wasn’t what Greg hoped it would be, his trip away with Rowley’s family went awry, his “landscaping business” failed and his mother tried to make him read books in which Greg had no interest — had my kids simultaneously laughing and feeling badly for Greg. What were your childhood summers like? Anything like Greg’s?

Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days: I think Greg’s childhood summer was much worse than any of mine. Like Greg, my friend and I tried to start a landscaping business, but my grandmother wouldn’t give me a recommendation (due to poor service on my part), and so we never got past the starting gate. But I think most kids can relate to Greg who has grand plans for his summer that didn’t pan out.

O’Brien: Here’s a question from my 8-year-old son, “When you were Greg Heffley’s age, were you like him?”

Kinney: I was like Greg in some ways. I could be immature and self-centered, but really, I was a normal kid. I think Greg has very exaggerated faults. I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t as flawed as Greg.

O’Brien: Here’s a question from my 11-year-old son, “Where did you get the funny ideas for your books?”

Kinney: I spent a lot of time thinking and remembering funny things I’ve seen or heard. I try to make sure my ideas are realistic, because I think that’s what makes Greg’s story relatable. When I’m writing, I spend every night sitting and thinking with a blanket over my head, trying to come up with a good idea. Most of the time, I fall asleep.

O’Brien: A question from my 11-year-old daughter, “Which one is your favorite Diary of a Wimpy Kid book? Why?

Kinney: I think I’ll always have a soft spot for the first book, since I didn’t have any success in cartooning before it was published.

O’Brien: Another from my daughter, “Who is your favorite character in Dog Days?

Kinney: I think Rowley will always be my favorite character. He’s a good kid and he’s not tainted the same way Greg is.

O’Brien: Another from my 11-year-old son, “Can you give us a preview of the next book?”

Kinney:  Sure . . . it will be about Greg and Rowley’s friendship, and whether or not it can be salvaged as they start to grow apart.

Ayelet Waldman’s new collection of essays on modern motherhood are fearless. In Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace, Waldman puts herself out there — the good, the bad, the ugly — in a bracing memoir that seeks to speak truthfully about parenthood. Waldman recently fielded four questions about her new book via e-mail:

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: Your book has the air of confessional, almost as if you’re asking for readers’ absolution — or, at the very least, for understanding — for being a “bad mother.” You write, “One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.” Noting that today’s parents feel as though everyone’s watching them and is ready to lash out in judgment about every parental decision, you make this observation: ” . . . [W]e women are the primary authors of our own  subjugation. The Bad Mother cops with the most aggressive arrest records are women.”

Why is that? Why, instead of feeling supported by a community of mothers, it’s so often the complaint that mothers feel judged by online “mom squad assassins” or in-person parenting scolds?

Ayelet Waldman, author of Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace: I think partly because we’re so judgmental of ourselves that we can spare no support for others. We’ve managed to work ourselves in what Judith Warner called the “Perfect Madness” of competitive, neurotic parenting, always striving for an imagined ideal, never reaching it. Our anxiety, our fear that we have failed our children, makes us crazy, and makes us judgmental.

O’Brien: Christie Mellor, the humorist behind The Three Martini Playdate books, has, for years lamented the fact that she believes parents are pressured to cede their whole lives over to their children and make every facet of their existence kid-centric, hence her tongue-in-cheek recommendation that parents teach their kids how to be useful at cocktail parties and make martinis.

You sparked quite the tsunami of maternal judgment by suggesting, in a now-infamous New York Times column, that you loved your husband more than your children, even though you make a point to say how much you adore your four children. In the column, you were delving into the questions as to why so many of your peers weren’t having sex with their husbands and were instead retreating to the arms of their children, putting their children first. You wrote in the book, “The single defining characteristic of iconic Good Motherhood is self-abnegation. Her children’s needs come first; their health and happiness are her primary concern.”

How do parents try to re-set the balance in their homes, to step away from the all-kids’-stuff-all-the-time without incurring the wrath of those who think they’re being selfish? And why is it that today’s mothers are the ones who “self-abnegate” as opposed to fathers?

Waldman: I started writing about maternal ambivalence long before people were knocking back martinis during their playdates! My murder mysteries [Mommy-Track mysteries series] were about a woman so desperately bored with staying at home that she solves crime to keep from losing her mind.

I don’t think you can avoid the wrath. At least I haven’t been able to. But I am convinced that if you want to sustain a decent romantic relationship you need to prioritize that. It’s hardly a new idea — it just seems that we’ve once again forgotten that an untended garden (to use a perfectly cloying metaphor) will not bloom.

The day a father devotes himself wholeheartedly to self-abnegation is the day we can tell Gloria Steinem that she’s achieved the dream of a perfect, feminist universe.

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I spend a fair amount of time on this blog complaining about things my three kids’ schools ask parents to do. I whine, I detail, I verbally thrash about, but rarely do I hear from an actual molder of these young minds: An elementary school teacher. This particular blog entry retifies the situation.

After reading 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny: Life Lessons From Teaching by Phillip Done – a new, highly entertaining book by a California third grade teacher about one school year – I came away with insight and perspective on what dealing with a roomful of young kids is like on the educator’s end of things. Done was kind enough to field some questions from me about his book as well as on wacky parental behavior:

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: In your book, you paint a portrait of life as a third grade teacher throughout the school year. One of the chapters that horrified me as a parent of three school-aged children — and also made me laugh out loud — was the one on “Sharing” where you wrote that your students provide you and their classmates with way too much information about their families. Kids related tidbits like a father being made to sleep on the sofa, a mother crying each time she watched Baywatch and a girl who said her mom “went off the pill, and now I am going to have a baby brother.” You warn, “Kids share everything.” How do you react to these ultra-personal stories the students tell and how much does what you hear affect your impression of the children’s families?

Phillip Done, author of 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny: I just listen and nod, just like I would if they’re sharing a trophy or a turtle. And when they’re done, I say, “Thank you for sharing.” It’s all part of the job. I do tell parents at Back to School Night, “Just believe half of what you hear about me, and I’ll believe half of what I hear about you.” They laugh. But I still don’t think they really realize how much I know about them.

O’Brien: In one chapter you published letters you wish you’d been able to send to students’ parents. One was addressed to “Mr. Permissive” and said: “You’re shocked at your son’s language at school? Your son watches MTV all day long. He has every rap song memorized. He has seen more R-rated movies than I have. Please turn off the television.”

In another fictitious letter to “Mr. Pusher,” you wrote, “Please don’t be upset about your son’s B+ in math. No, this will not hurt his chances of getting into Stanford. No, he does not need a private math tutor now. And by the way, does he really need to take tennis and piano and swimming and karate and violin and polo lessons?”

Are parents really that clueless about what’s going on in their children’s lives? Do they put on blinders that detach them from reality? Have parents always been this way or are they getting more clueless?

Done: First let me say that for the most part, parents are great. They help with homework, drive on field trips, and send in birthday treats. Most know what’s going on in their children’s lives and try their best to help their children succeed in school. I’ve never met a parent who doesn’t want the best for his or her child. Once in a while, you do get a “doozy” of a parent, though. This too goes with the territory. Recently I had a parent pull me out of class during the middle of a math lesson. I thought there was an emergency so I left the kids and went outside. She wanted to talk about her child’s missing jacket. I had twenty students waiting for me and she wanted to discuss her child’s missing jacket. So, I guess you could say that was pretty clueless. But again, this is rare. Most parents are wonderful. You can’t do this job without parental support.

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