A recent New York Times article highlighted a new trend about which I have mixed feelings: Schools hiring playground coaches (at $14/hour) to supervise children during recess (isn’t that the teachers’ job?) and guide the students play playground games. Apparently, according to the article, children either don’t want to play games or don’t know how to play games or the schools just want someone to keep tabs on the kids. With their new playground coach on duty, school officials say, “disciplinary referrals at recess have dropped by three-quarters, to an average of three a week. and injuries are no longer a daily occurrence.”
The Times said of a New Jersey school it highlighted:
“The school is one of a growing number across the country that are reining in recess to curb bullying and behavior problems, foster social skills and address concerns over obesity. They also hope to show children that there is good old-fashioned fun to be had without iPods and video games.”
Recess is, of course, the place where a lot of the bad things tend to happen, particularly if the staff is ignoring what the kids are doing or turning a blind eye or the kids are good at hiding their mischief. Recess is where kids tease and exclude one another and swear. (My kids have learned all sorts of new phrases from recess.)
It’s also where kids learn how to function without adults giving them step-by-step directions, where they get to be creative. Isn’t this a common complaint, that kids today don’t know how to entertain themselves because they’ve been enrolled in so many different classes and teams and leagues that when they’re on a playground alone with sports equipment, they don’t know what to do?
I’m all for schools paying more and closer attention to what’s going on right in front of them and handling problems as they crop up, but to take away children’s ability to play on their own isn’t a good thing. Sure, you could have a faculty member out there overseeing a game of kickball or something, but making all the kids have to abide by the playground coach’s dictates isn’t necessary, is it?
While most parents I know who try to simultaneously work and raise kids — or juggle the needs of multiple kids at the same time — struggle to make an appearance at every kid-centric event their children have, I found myself feeling envious of President Obama’s ability to put everything aside, including budget talks and national security, in order to attend one of his kids’ events.
In a recent New York Timespiece entitled, “He Breaks for Band Recitals,” a senior advisor to the president told the paper: “There are certain things that are sacrosanct on his schedule — the kids’ recitals, soccer games, basketball games, school meetings. These are circled in red on his calendar, and regardless of what’s going on he’s going to make those. I think that’s part of how he sustains himself through all this.”
I think I need a presidential advisor handling my schedule.
Item#2: Seinfeld on the Poison ‘P’s’
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, the father of three kids (ages 4, 6 and 9) told Parade Magazinerecently that he’s figured out what’s wrong with today’s kids, something he calls, “The Poison P’s.”
Praise: “We tell our kids, ‘Great job!’ too much.”
Problem-solving: “We refuse to let our children have problems. Problem-solving is the most important skill to develop for success in life, and we for some reason can’t stand it if our kids have a situation that they need to ‘fix.’ Let them struggle. It’s a gift.”
Pleasure: As in, “giving your child too much pleasure.” Seinfeld said that because parents believe that today’s children aren’t as innocent as we used to be when we were young, “We feel so guilty for destroying that innocence — which is what we did — so we’re now trying to repair that by creating perfect childhoods for our children.”
Betcha his kids would reply with a nice, “Yadda, yadda, yadda.”
Item #3: Bullies in the Bull’s-Eye
Remember that horrific story a few weeks ago about the bullies in the Massachusetts town of South Hadley, who, according to news reports, drove a 15-year-old girl to commit suicide? Well the school superintendent has announced that the students involved in harassing the girl have faced disciplinary action and may also face criminal charges, according to Fox and the Boston Herald.
In the meantime, the issue of students harassing other students in school to the point where the victims are fearful and can’t focus on their lessons, has become a hot button issue. Even Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick who, while relating his own personal experience with being the victim of harassment from fellow students when he was a child, said that harassers should be held accountable.
“Whatever we can do to create a safe environment for kids, that’s what we should do,” Patrick said, according to the Boston Herald. “If we can give teachers and administrators some extra tools, we should do that, and do it swiftly . . . Parents have to take responsibility, especially ones who are themselves parents of bullies. There is nothing in the [pending anti-bullying legislation] that absolves adults from their responsibility to teach kids how to behave respectfully.”
He said he was contacted by a 9-year-old boy from a Massachusetts school who needed help in dealing with kids harassing him and when Patrick met with the boy, the child appeared frightened. The governor said he went on the school’s intercom and told the students that there was to be no bullying at the school and that if there was, he’d have to return and deal with it personally.
Item #4: Trending Toward More Chores? I’m Skeptical.
On Valentine’s Day, the Boston Globe ran a story which claimed that a “modern trend” has been evolving where today’s parents are making their kids do more chores, like we all used to do back in the day, otherwise known as the Stone Age. Citing research from a Wellesley College sociology professor, the article said that parents have been “reasserting” the importance of chores in the past 15 years.
I don’t buy it. Not that we here in the Picket Fence Post household don’t make our children do chores — we do — it’s just that I find it hard to believe that many other parents are doing the same thing. I’d be shocked if even half of today’s kids have to do regular chores.
What do you think? How prevalent do you think chores are today?
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.
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 Magazinewould 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 Timeshas 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.
Item #1: Controversy Over H1N1 Vaccine Availability
After posting on Facebook the news that this week one of my kids was diagnosed with H1N1 (swine flu), many folks lamented the fact that they’ve been vigorously trying to obtain vaccines for their children but can’t. People are, in a word, pissed.
First of all, the president last week declared that the United States is in a state of emergency when it comes to the swine flu as the media have been hyping the death stats from H1N1 with scary stories of healthy pregnant women and children being fatally stricken with the disease — like the constant, ominus, beating of a drum — and making it seem as though the plague is awaiting us on our front stoops.
Secondly, there’s been an unforeseen production shortage of H1N1 vaccines, vaccines for which the Centers for Disease Control is urging parents of young children and pregnant women to obtain. And, in the midst of this federal-government-declared emergency, there’s currently not enough of the vaccine to go around right now.
Third, another unseemly factor was thrown into the mix this week: The government has been releasing dosages of the hard-to-find H1N1 vaccine to various groups including corporations, a practice they typically utilize to distribute the seasonal flu vaccines every year. However when people read the news that Wall Street banking and trading companies like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are obtaining doses of H1N1 vaccines (for which the companies had previously ordered from health officials) while other groups like pediatricians and ob/gyns don’t have enough to meet the needs of their high-risk patients, folks get irritated, to put it mildly.
Seeing NBC’s Today Show report below, which says that New York’s Goldman Sachs got as many doses of H1N1 vaccine as an entire hospital (200), you can see how this issue is quickly spiraling into the haves vs the have-nots, or, as the Today Show put it, Wall Street vs Main Street, yet again:
While this news story falls into the, “Well, yeah, of course, you idiot” category, I found some of the points made in the New York Times’ piece, “Fathers Gain Respect From Experts (And Mothers)” — about how having dads around is important to children — are worth mentioning. The story said that institutionally, dads feel excluded from places where parents and children gather because the physical environment and the practices utilized by staff in such locations are geared toward children and mothers, sending clear signals that taking care of the kiddos is for mothers, not fathers.
“The walls in family resource centers are pink, there are women’s magazines in the waiting room, the mother’s name is on the files, and the home visitor asks for the mother if the father answers the door,” a University of California Berkeley psychology professor told the Times. “It’s like fathers are not there.”
This happens all the time in schools as well when there’s an assumption that the volunteers for school-related tasks will be women, hence the phrase “room mothers.” (I’ve yet to hear anyone invoke the phrase “room fathers.”) One time The Spouse volunteered to be a chaperone for one of our kids’ field trips and, after the chaperones had been selected, a note was sent home saying that I had been among those chosen volunteers to go on the trip, when it was The Spouse’s name that had been submitted.
Additionally, the Times story pointed out that, in order to allow children to benefit from their relationships with their fathers, mothers need to back off and stop micromanaging everything. The paper paraphrased a child psychologist as saying, “Fathers tend to do things different . . . but not in ways that are worse for their children. Fathers do not mother, they father.”
Item #3: Parents Should Back Off Kids’ Homework
Speaking of backing off, syndicated columnist Betsy Hart asserted in a new essay that she doesn’t think it’s necessary for parents to micromanage their children’s homework assignments and drill the children to prepare them for tests, especially in the younger grades. The mother of four believes that her children should learn how to manage their schoolwork, and, when they fail to do so, learn from the consequences fo their failure. An excerpt:
“I worry that if a parent is stressing about [his or her child's] tests and advanced placement in the third grade, these might be the same parents who are literally checking in on a child’s tests and assignments in college on a regular basis. Or even going to job interviews with a grown child after he gets his degree.
. . . Okay, I could just be rationalizing the ‘benign neglect’ that I employ for the most part when it comes to my kids and school. Maybe my children are going to be the ones at a huge disadvantage someday. Perhaps I just don’t have the time to ‘grind through’ a third-grader’s test prep.
But once again the older I get, the more wisdom it turns out my mother had. When it comes to what we do for our kids, she would say, so often less is more.”
Back in July, I blogged about how irritated I was to find, prior to a 1 p.m. mid-week showing of a PG movie about wizards, a movie preview for a PG-13 apocalyptic film about the end of the world and one for an as-yet-unrated film which included examples of close-contact brutal violence. Both trailers terrified my 11-year-olds.
I was even more irritated a few weeks later when I went to see the PG-13 film about Julia Child — to which I’d considered taking my 11-year-old daughter — and was treated to a trailer for a movie about a homicidal stepfather who went after his stepkids with a chainsaw and a knife.
So I called a spokesman for a national chain of movie theaters and asked him to kindly explain to me: Who picks these previews to accompany the feature films, whether the time of day is considered when selecting trailers and if the expected feature film audience is taken into consideration. The result is my November GateHouse News Service column in which I argue that theaters aren’t making wise choices about which trailers they’re choosing to run prior to movies.
Item #2: Baby Einstein Refunds
Perhaps you’ve read the news that the Disney Corporation is offering people who purchased Baby Einstein videos a $15.99 refund each, for up to four DVDs per household (for DVDs purchased between June 5, 2004 through Sept. 5, 2009). Why the refunds? Because the videos aren’t quite as “educational” as the company made them seem, the New York Times reported.
Over on the web site Mommy Tracked — where I’m a contributing columnist — author/columnist Stefanie Wilder-Taylor had a snarkily funny response to the news:
“It made perfect sense to me that I could sit my children in front of a DVD that shows colorful sock puppets moving at a pace slower than my grandma on the interstate highway and expect them to come away a prodigy. The only movement any of my kids produced after watching Baby Mozart was in their Pampers.”
Item #3: The Jig is Up
Remember yesterday when I posted an item about The Eldest Boy having lost three teeth in the span on 15 minutes. Well, as of the morning, I was informed by said child that the jig is up and that he knows “the truth” about not just the Tooth Fairy, but the dude in the red suit. The news filled me with a twinge of nostalgic sadness.
Okay, I’ll admit it. I am obsessed with Mad Men. (I think some of my friends secretly cannot WAIT for the short Mad Men season to conclude so I’ll stop dropping Don and Betty Draper’s names into virtually every conversation, blog post and Tweet.)
Annnywaayy . . . this week, over on Mommy Tracked (note the new spelling of the site’s name), I wrote a column about how watching the show, set in the 1960s, has given me a new-found understanding of how women in my family were raised and the expectations which were instilled in them when they were grown women, some expectations which they never jettisoned, even long after the feminist movement went mainstream.
Watching Mad Men’s affluent, Grace Kelly look-alike at-home mom Betty Draper, newly married career gal Joan Holloway (who thinks she wants what Betty has, not realizing that Betty hates her life) and the single, aspiring careerist Peggy Olson interact with the 1960s world has consistently brought to my mind aunts, grandmothers and sometimes my mother and has helped me look at their viewpoints with a whole heck of a lot less judgement than I used to.
Item #2: Family Dinners
Also on Mommy Tracked this week is a piece by Abby Margolis Newman, a mother of five (including two teens and one tween), who challenged the notion advanced in a New York Timesarticle (and elsewhere) that families who are interested in keeping their kids off drugs, unpregnant, engaged in school and not off toting a rifle under a trench coat someplace should strive to have family meals together at least five times a week.
She wrote: “. . . [The] National Center on Addition and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) also shows that ‘teenagers who eat with their families less than three times a week times a week are more likely to turn to alcohol, tobacco and drugs than those who dine with their families five times a week.’”
Given her family’s hyper-busy schedule and that her husband doesn’t get home until after 7:30 p.m., Margolis Newman said that even eating together three times a week is a stretch:
“The boys are at three different schools and are involved in sports and theatrical productions. This situation, needless to say, is not conducive to cozy family dinners during the week. Frankly, we’re lucky if we even get one sit-down dinner per week — and I mean at the table . . .
So, if my teenage and pre-teen boys get only one family dinner per week, does this mean they are five times as likely to turn to alcohol, tobacco and drugs? Holy crap. And do the chances of this bad behavior go up even higher if I, as the stay-at-home parent, do not actually do any home cooking but rather buy the pre-marinated chicken breasts, the frozen (but organic!) oven fries, and never vary our vegetable choices? Does eating In n’ Out burgers in the car on the way to or from baseball practice — as long as the boys are all together — count as a family meal (is there such a thing as partial credit)?”
Does your family eat dinner together at least five times a week?
Item #3: Reality Check Survey (Please Chime in Below in Comments Section!)
Statements directed at me by my children since school began:
“Everyone else on my soccer team has a cell phone but me.”
“My friend Matt can watch as much TV as he wants . . . No, his mother doesn’t stop him . . . No! Really! She doesn’t!”
“I’m the ONLY one in my class whose mom makes him pick up after the dog.”
I’ve been told all manner of tall tales by the kids — specifically my fifth graders — about what other kids’ parents are or are not allowing their children to do. Not that what other parents do or don’t do is going to change my opinion that my rugrats do not need cell phones at this time. And no matter what other parents report, I’m not putting a TV or a computer in their bedrooms any time soon. (To do so would result in my children watching TV until their eyes bleed.) And if they’re going to use the internet, it’s going to be in a public area (our kitchen, family room, etc.) so I can walk by to glance at what they’re doing. (I’ve already been asked, “If you type in ‘naked butts dot com’ into the internet what will you get?”)
With all the smack that goes on in their school hallways (talk which prompted one of my kids to ask me to define “pole dancer” because this child heard kids joking about the subject in the hall), I wanted to do my own investigating and find out what other folks really are or aren’t doing with regard to cell phones, TVs, computers and family dog care.
Here’s where you, my smart readers come in. I would love to hear your answers to the following five questions:
1. How old is your kid(s)?
2. Does your kid(s) have a cell phone? If so, at what age did the kid(s) get it?
3. Does your kid(s) have unlimited TV watching time?
4. Unlimited computer and video game time?
5. If you have a family dog, is your kid(s) ever expected to clean up after the dog?
Please feel free to post your answers to my Reality Check Survey in the comments section below, or, if you’d prefer, e-mail me at: meredithobrien@hotmail.com.
Do you have a child who seems tentative, bothered or frightened by new things? Are you worried that the child will grow up to be an anxious adult?
The recent New York Times Magazinecover story about anxiety said that some people are born worriers. While many nervous children are able to successfully channel their nervous energy productively as they grow older, others deftly cover up the anxiety roiling beneath the surface. “. . . [W]hile temperament persists, the behavior associated with it doesn’t always,” the Times reported. It’s a long piece, but if you have a child who you think might be considered “anxious,” it’s worth the read.
Item #2: Mommy Penalty
If you’re a woman and you have a kid, there’s a good chance that in the workplace you may suffer from what researchers have dubbed, “the mommy penalty.” The Boston CBS affiliate, WBZ ran a segment this week based on a Cornell University study which found that “mothers suffer a substantial wage penalty” while “. . . [m]en were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent,” the study reported.
What kind of penalty? Five percent less pay per child than a childless woman receives, WBZ reported:
“A recent ruling handed down by the First Circuit of Appeals in Boston, could have an impact on the way working mothers are treated. The case involves a mother from Maine who says she was denied a promotion and told ‘You have the kids, and you just have enough on your plate right now.’
The ruling stated, ‘. . . the assumption that a woman will do her job less well due to her personal family obligations is a form of sex stereotyping . . . and that adverse job actions on that basis constitute sex discrimination.”
I finally relented and agreed to bring the puppy to get his hair trimmed. I’d been fretting that the groomers would make him look like a rat if his hair were trimmed too closely, that he’d lose his fluffy cuteness. But he doesn’t look like a rat. Other than the fact that you can now see that his legs aren’t as stocky as they appeared when his hair was longer, he looks pretty much the same. Look at the “before” photo followed by the “after” photo:
We’ve dished in this space about how kids don’t seem to walk to school anymore like they used to back in the day. I’ve often quoted rabble-rouser author Lenore Skenazy (of the Free Range Kids) on this subject where she’s mused about how overprotective today’s parents can be.
And this past Sunday, the New York Times ran a large article on the front page of the Styles section entitled, “Why Can’t She Walk to School? An Issue That Distills the Anxieties at the Heart of Modern Parenting.” It chronicled how hyper-parental anxiety, plus the heightened fear of abductions fueled by massive media coverage of disappearances, has driven parents to feel compelled to monitor their kids at all times when going to and from school, never mind letting them walk to school on their own. An excerpt:
“. . . [A] generation of parents and administrations have created dense rituals of supervision around what used to be a mere afterthought of childhood: taking yourself to and from school.
Certain realities also shape these procedures, such as the schedules of working parents, unsafe neighborhoods and school transportation cuts.
But when these constraints are mixed with anxiety over transferring children from the private world of family to the public world of school, the new normal can look increasingly baroque. Now, in some suburbs, parents and children sit in their cars at the end of driveways, waiting for the bus . . . Children are driven to school two blocks away. At some schools, parents drive up with their children’s names displayed on their dashboards, a school official radios to the building and each child is escorted out.
When to detach from the parental leash?”
Truth telling time: I still accompany my 8-year-old to the bus stop on my street. But it’s not because I think anything bad is going to happen to him. Believe me, I’d rather drink my coffee and read the papers while listening to Morning Joe in the background, but I just can’t resist the little man when he begs me to go out there with him so he’s not bored while waiting there alone until the other two families arrive. Plus, he’s the only boy at the bus stop.
But this will be the last year of my going to the bus stop with him. Next year, he’ll join his brother and sister, now 11 years old, who walk to their bus stop together and seem to be doing just fine. If the schools my children attend were within walking distance of the house, you bet I’d be in favor of them using some good, old fashioned shoe leather.
How do your kids get to school via bus, walking/biking or by car? Do you accompany your kids to the bus stops?
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.
Item #1: Time Magazine Takes on Helicopter Parenting
Item #1: Lessons from the 1960s
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.
