Picket Fence Post

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?

What do you think of the idea of recess coaches?

I’ve gotta hand it to Bruce Handy, a writer and deputy editor at Vanity Fair. He created a sarcastic and sharply humorous phony school form for the New York Times that hits the inanity of the dynamics between parents and schools squarely on the mark. (Go here to see the fake form in full.)

The faux parental registration form for a school known as the “Elm Street School” starts off by saying:

“Greetings, parents. We’re sure you’re every bit as excited about the new school year as we are. (Sigh.) Please take the time to fill out the following registration form. Send it in on the first day of school with your fully inoculated, adequately medicated, lice-free son/daughter.”

Among the pieces of information requested on the form:

– The name of the student’s test-prep tutor.

– The name of the student’s playdate coach.

– Whether the child has dietary restrictions, allergies, biting problems, attention-seeking disorder, mange or early-onset despair.

My favorite part: After the line, “This year I will volunteer for,” there are the following volunteer opportunities from which to choose:

“a. Class parent.

b. The auction.

c. The spring fair.

d. All of the above.

e. None of the above? O.K., then excuse us while we go and work on those college recommendation letters, if you catch our drift.”

Second favorite part of Handy’s satirical form: Asking parents to promise not to “check my BlackBerry during the holiday concert and/or think unsupportive thoughts during the fifth grade string section’s performance of ‘Dreidel, Dreidel.’”

Item #1: No ‘Bliss’ for Real Moms

Galt Niederhoffer wants all of you mommies to knock it off with your mommy propaganda, saying stuff like “motherhood is bliss” because, as she says on The Huffington Post, it’s not. In her post entitled, “The Bliss Myth: Cut the Crap Mommies,” Niederhoffer wrote:

“Why not acknowledge that frustration, boredom, guilt and ambivalence are universal, unavoidable facets of motherhood? Sharing will make us better and happier mothers, affording women the comfort of community and the benefit of shared information — the very tools we need to transcend motherhood’s challenges.”

Well, if Niederhoffer had been reading the Picket Fence Post, she would’ve never gotten the misguided notion that parenthood is bliss. Maybe I should e-mail her a few links to places where she can get a reality check on what real, non-blissed-out parenting is like here on Planet Earth.

Item #2: Family Meals Good for Parents Too

Speaking of real parenting . . . Slate’s Emily Bazelton tells us that while we’ve all heard about how absolutely fantastic and grounding it is for children to sit down with their parents for family meals each night — family-meal-eating kids are less likely to get into trouble, are more likely to feel closer to their family, get higher grades, become rocket scientists, etc. – it’s also good for parents too. Bazelton wrote:

“The research by lead author Jenet Jacob of Brigham Young University found that among 1,580 parents who worked at IBM, those who said their jobs interfered less with being home for dinner tended to feel greater personal success, and success in relationships with their spouses and their children. The working parents — both mothers and fathers — had all of these buoyant feelings if they made it home for dinner more regularly, even if they still worked long hours. They also felt more kindly toward their workplace.”

I know I’d certainly feel better if The Spouse were home more often for family meals, then I wouldn’t be the only one to develop a migraine when the kids say they utterly loathe what I’ve made for dinner (there’s always at least one protester per meal), then watch them sulk and, in at least the case of one child, literally throw up all over the kitchen table in order to avoid eating the baked chicken. Good times.

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Oh joy. Another story about how having kids can make you miserable because parenthood is: a) Hard b) Requires sacrifices c) Is oftentimes maddening and d) Is so tiring that it sucks the life out of you and renders you useless for other things, like happiness, romance and discussions about adult topics, like politics, books and good television programming.

The new issue of Newsweek contains a feature story questioning whether having kids makes you happier or miserable (their answer: miserable).

An excerpt:

“Parents may openly lament their lack of sleep, hectic schedules and difficulty in dealing with their surly teens, but rarely will they cop to feeling depressed due to the everyday rigors of child-rearing. ‘If you admit that kids and parenthood aren’t making you happy, it’s basically blasphemy,’ says Jen Singer, a stay-at-home mother of two from New Jersey who runs the popular parenting blog MommaSaid.net. ‘From baby-lotion commercials that make motherhood look happy and well rested, to commercials for Disney World where you’re supposed to feel like a kid because you’re there with your kids, we’ve made parenthood out to be one blissful moment after another, and it’s disappointing when you find out it’s not.’”

But then, you already knew that parenting is a series of trade-offs. Nothing good comes without sacrifice, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. If you’re married, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine either, but the moments when it’s good make up for the irritations and frustrations. That’s the way parenting is. If it’s not that way for you, there’s always sleep-away camp and boarding school and colleges really far away.

Image credit: Zohar Lazar/Newsweek.

Caps and gowns.

Graduation speakers.

Proms.

Manicures, pedicures and limos.

“After-parties” at homes or even hotels.

Professional party planners.

Not for college graduations or even high school graduations. We’re talkin’ eighth grade graduations, at least ones highlighted recently in the New York Times.

During a Father’s Day speech, Senator Barack Obama commented on such celebrations, saying: “This is just eighth grade. So let’s not go over the top. Let’s not have a huge party. Let’s just give them a handshake. You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”

My kids are years away from eighth grade, so what say you middle school parents: Is the eighth grade graduation scene over-the-top or is the Times just highlighting extremes? Do you think the media are sensationalizing this and that there’s nothing wrong with having a big, happy party?

The Bay State is teeming — teeming I tell you — with twins, according to a page one story in the Boston Globe:

“The combination of an unusually large number of pregnancies in older women, who are more likely to have multiples, and a heavy reliance on readily available infertility treatments, which also increases the odds, has propelled Massachusetts to the top: The state has a twin birth rate of 4.5 for every 100 live births, compared with a national rate of 3.2, according to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

What does this mean? Well, sometimes, bad, bad things, according to the article which included quotes from physicians about the dangers of pre-term births (most twins are born early) and the drain multiple births are putting on Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs). Typical stuff. No article on multiples is quite complete without the not-so-subtle bashing of parents of multiples for selfishly pursuing infertility treatments (usually uttered by people with no fertility challenges) and blaming them for hogging hospital resources when they forge ahead with a multiple pregnancy in which babies which could be born early.

As a mother of nearly 10-year-old twins, I have a special loathing for these kinds of articles which start out fine and then go downhill quickly. I’m the first one to acknowledge that twin pregnancies are difficult (though I had a harder time with my singleton pregnancy), that babies born early do sometimes require time in the NICU (as mine did), that twins born very early can suffer from health problems (mine, thankfully, did not). Attempts have been made by physicians administering infertility treatments, as noted in the article, to reduce the number of multiples. All of that is fair game . . . to a point.

But then I read quotes like this one from the chief of newborn medicine at a Boston hospital: “The usual condition is one baby per uterus. That’s the way the system is designed. Mother nature does not take kindly to anything being unusual — even if she created it.”

I’m glad I didn’t give birth to my twins in his hospital where I could benefit from his warm understanding and compassion.

Apparently when a mom and a dad share the child-rearing workload, it’s a major news story. At least according to the New York Times.

The cover story of this weekend’s New York Times Magazine – entitled, “Will Dad Ever Do His Share” (not a very nice topic for Father’s Day weekend) – was downright depressing. While the piece did feature couples who participate in “the equal-parenting movement” (we need a movement, with an official name and, I suppose, name tags and literature, to get parents to do their jobs?), it also included some dire statistics, . . . dire if you’re a mother raising young kids that is.

Among the upsetting stats: Women handle more child care duties in their households than men by a margin of nearly five to one. Even if you remove the whole employment factor and look at two-income families, women still spend 11 hours a week caring for the couple’s children, to men’s three hours. Sampson Lee Blair, a professor of sociology specializing in families, told the Times, “The most striking part is that none of this is all that different, in terms of ratio, from 90 years ago.”

 So, I guess it IS news when mothers and fathers share the burdens (and yes, of course, the JOYS, but no one complains about the joys) of child-rearing.

In my household, because I work from home, I bear the brunt of the responsibility for doctors’ appointments and trucking kids to activities, although The Spouse has coached several of the kids’ teams and makes it to the practices and games. When The Spouse is home (and not commuting during dinner time as he usually does) he will make or help make dinner, particularly if he’s trying to butter me up so he can go play basketball with the guys. He does the laundry and has almost always been in charge of making sure the kids have been bathed at night. If he hasn’t left for work before the kids have gone to school in the mornings, we tag-team breakfast duty and school lunch-making. I have precious little about which to complain regarding the ratio of child-rearing work The Spouse does, except when he has a string of really late nights, misses a bunch of meals and I get cranky about it.

What about in your household? Do both parents share the work or is Mom responsible for a disproportionate amount of the work? And if Mom does most of the child-rearing is it because she wants to or because she thinks she does it “better” than Dad?

Item #1: ‘Mommy Porn’

That is not a typo. You have not inadvertently stumbled into one of THOSE sites, the ones that would get you fired if a supervisor happened to walk by and see it on your screen.

This item is entitled “Mommy Porn” because that’s the term Boston Globe columnist Penelope Trunk used in her blog, the Brazen Careerist, to describe the media’s fawning coverage of celebrity parents when they talk about how wonderful it is to balance work and parenthood. She says the media do not tell the truth about parenting and that the celebs who are interviewed likewise are tellers of tall tales.

An excerpt:

“So look, in the interest of truth-telling, I’m telling you this: people are not being honest about what it’s like to be with kids. People are scared to admit that they would rather be at work than with their kids, because work is easier than parenting . . . If I have to read about how much someone loves their kids one more time, I’m gonna puke. Because we all know that parents love their kids. It’s not interesting. It’s not helpful. It’s not even very relevant. For anyone.

. . . So with all the [celebrity] mommy porn, the media does a lot to make us think that work life balance is possible, in the same way anorexic bodies without treatment for anorexia is possible.

So there’s real damage from mommy porn. Everyone begins thinking that every woman should be parenting gracefully while working full time. This gives people the temerity to ask me, nearly every day: Who takes care of your kids?”

It’s a button-pushing post that is sparking debate around them there Internets.

Item #2: Obamas’ Canine Debate

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his wife Michelle debated on national television whether and under what conditions the Illinois senator would keep his promise to his two young daughters to get a dog at the end of his campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported.

While speaking on Good Morning America, Michelle Obama said she thinks their 9-year-old is responsible enough to walk a dog. The senator, however, was not convinced, saying, “But whether they’re going to be responsible . . . in the middle of the winter to go walk that dog . . .” His wife jumped in, saying, “We’re getting a dog.”

Sounds like an average, American couple to me, arguing over who’s going to be getting up on those bitterly cold nights to walk the dog. Of course if Obama wins the race, he’ll have staff who can walk the dog, so he and his two daughters would be off the hook.

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This weekend’s Boston Globe Magazine contained a feature story asking this one central question:

Should you spy on your kids’ online and cell phone/texting activities? If so, how much?

I will be the first to admit that texting is a mystery to me. I’m sure I could figure it out if I needed to, but, at this point in time, I have neither the reason nor desire to possess such knowledge. I don’t IM but have done so when I worked for another web site. I’m planning to hold out — as long as humanly and socially possible — on buying my kids cell phones.

Currently, when my offspring (ages 9, 9 and 6) use the Internet, they do so on a laptop computer in the kitchen where everyone can see what they’re doing. Right now, as far as safety and the Internet are concerned, The Spouse and I are teaching them how to use it wisely, giving them such wise chestnuts of advice such as not to provide personal information to anyone online, instructing them how to safely search for information and how to find the right web site to, say, look up info about the Wright brothers.

But when they get older, when they start harassing me for a cell phone, when they develop the desire to communicate via texting, I’m going to face the dilemma of how much latitude I should provide them online and on their cell phones, and how much control/oversight I should utilize.

The gist of the Globe piece is that neither extreme, no oversight or too much, is advisable, however finding that sweet spot in between the two, the spot that provides some degree of freedom with some degree of oversight, seems tricky.

All I know is that the later I can put off buying a cell phone for my kids, the better. As long as I know where they are, who they’re with and how they’re getting home (and most of the time it’s Driver Mom who’s bringing them places) I see no need for each to have his or her own phone. To further build my anti-cell phone case, I just learned that a study has shown that teens who use cell phones a great deal (which would be, if you go by the Globe piece, all of them) have trouble sleeping and literally “put their health at risk,” according to the Washington Post . The article continued:

“‘The message is that adolescents who use their cell phones excessively are much more stressed, much more restless, much more fatigued, and have a greater tendency to develop sleep deprivation as a result of their calling habits,’ said study author Dr. Gaby Bader, an associate professor in the department of clinical neuroscience at Sahlgren’s Academy in Goteburg.”

With teens thinking that they need to be in contact with friends 24/7 as if they’re on-call ER docs making life-and-death decisions, a researcher said that the nearly “ubiquitous” cell phones have put “considerable pressure to keep in touch . . . and that this pressure can develop into an addiction with serious negative ramifications for adolescent health.”

But what do I know? I came of age in the era of the rotary dial telephone.

Item#1: OK Free Play

The Boston Globe ran a great column this week by Derrick Z. Jackson extolling the benefits of letting kids play on their own without adults chasing them with bottles of Purell and micro-managing everything. Jackson quoted Susan Linn, Harvard psychologist and author of the book The Case for Make Believe, as saying, “In saving make believe, we are saving ourselves.”

Jackson added: “What it means is an America where boys and girls are encouraged to not use the screen as a first resort of socialization. The first resort becomes themselves, scripting fantasies on porches and yards, becoming their own heroes and heroines, or just sending a letter to their teddy bear.”

My childhood summers were marked with great flights of imagination ranging from re-enacting Star Wars scenes in our living room with my brother using his action figures and ships (I always had to be the Evil Empire . . . fill in your wisecrack here), creating myriad secret clubs with convoluted rules, and staging countless shows with my brother and neighbors in our driveway (anything from dancing and singing performances to puppet shows . . . in fact my first boyfriend told me he once paid ten cents to see a puppet show at my house.)

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