Picket Fence Post

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 Magazine would 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 Times has 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.

Image credit: Hugh Kretschmer/Time.

Item #1: Obamas as Parents

The media seem obsessed with Barack and Michelle Obama, with Michelle’s clothing (tongues were clucking at the fact that she wore a sleeveless ensemble to her husband’s address to a joint session of Congress), with their daughters’ clothes, toys and JoBro fandom. Not a week has gone by when I haven’t read a story about the Obamas’ journey through parenthood.

This past Sunday, the New York Times ran yet another story about the Obamas’ parenting style, “First Chores? You Bet,” portraying them as loving, but strict with their daughters, ages 7 and 10:

“In the Obama White House, bedtime is still at 8 p.m. The girls still set their own alarm clocks and get themselves up for school in the morning. They make their own beds and clean their own rooms. And when the much-anticipated pet arrives, they will walk the dog and scoop its poop.

. . . Mr. Obama is a modern-day dad who leaves the Oval Office for dinner with his girls, rarely misses a parent-teacher conference or piano recital and prides himself on having read all seven books in the Harry Potter series aloud with Malia.

Mrs. Obama juggles play dates and homework with speeches to federal agencies and students. Both are committed to keeping their daughters grounded, their friends and aides say.”

As a mom with kids the exact same age as the Obamas — twins who are 10 and a 7-year-old — it will be interesting for me to watch them raise their children as I raise mine, but I’m hoping that the media will back off and let the family settle in and try to normalize the girls’ lives as much as life can be “normal” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And no more stories on the girls’ clothing or backpacks, please.

Item #2: You Looking to be Led by a First Daddy?

In the same issue of the New York Times, there was another article about Barack Obama, the dad, this time in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Entitled, “Father in Chief,” this piece by Lisa Belkin likened being a dad to being the president:

“We are intrigued by the first family not only because their children are adorable and so excited about getting a puppy and meeting the Jonas Brothers but also because our president seems to be such a good father — loving but not a pushover, thrilled that he now has a job where he can be with the girls for breakfast and dinner, strict about their chores, slightly cranky when their school is canceled ‘because of what? Some ice?’”

Then she swerved into a comparison, saying governing is “messy” like parenting:

“There are big differences, of course, between parenting and governing. Unlike children, we choose our leaders; the job of those leaders is not to nurture us emotionally; and the fantasy of a wise, all-powerful Daddy is what has gotten Russia and Germany in trouble over the years. But if Obama is going to struggle in his metaphorical role as parent to the country, it will be less because of the differences between parenting and leadership and more because of the similarities.”

I wonder if that mindset is what led Time Magazine’s Joe Klein to extend the analogy on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today. While discussing new CBS News polling numbers showing that a vast majority of Americans support President Obama and his proposals to jump-start our flailing economy, Klein quipped: “People are scared. They want to see government activism. They’re looking for Daddy.” (Link to video here.)

President Obama himself during his address to the joint session of Congress this week, also invoked his role as the First Dad when he was discussing how parents can help their children achieve their educational goals:

“In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child. I speak to you not just as a president, but as a father when I say that responsibility for our children’s education must begin at home.”

I’m planning on quoting Obama the next time my kids balk at my request to turn off their TV shows/video games, per order of the Daddy-in-Chief.

Item #3: The Dirt on Working from Home

The same woman who wrote the Times article comparing governing to parenting — Belkin — recently posted an interesting blog item on her Motherlode blog entitled, “The Messy Side of Working from Home.”

“One side effect of the [economic] downturn may well be more parents working from home. For some it will be involuntary cobbling together a home business after losing an office job. For some it will be a way to save on the expenses of going elsewhere for work — no more office space to lease, no more commuting costs. And for many it will be a way to save on childcare. Work during nap time, or play dates or on wi-fi while watching karate practice. It can be done. Right? RIGHT?

Working from home solves many problems, but as one who has done it for nearly 15 years, I should warn you that it creates others you might not expect.”

Belkin described having to literally leave the house and then re-enter, once a babysitter was there, in order to stop her son from screaming and shrieking while she worked.

As a work-from-home writer for the last decade, I have to say that her observations are on the money. Sure, working from home gets slightly easier once the kids are older and in school, but the time I have alone in the house to spend on my writing once the kids leave from school doesn’t constitute a full work day. Therefore I have to get creative. Some of the keys of doing it without going crazy are: Being flexible, being willing to work at night (after the kids are in bed) and working on a weekend, when a spouse could watch the kids while you work.

Image credit: Jae C. Hong/Associated Press via the New York Times.

“I Wish I Could Read Like a Girl” — New York Times

On New Year’s Day, the New York Times ran a Michelle Slatalla column about young girls’ ability to dreamily live in the world of literature instead of skeptically assessing plot lines. It resonated with me.

Writing about her daughters (ages 19, 17 and 11), Slatalla said they read “like I did when I was a girl. They drape themselves across chairs and sofas and beds — any available horizontal surface will do, in a pinch — and they allow a novel to carry them so effortlessly from one place to another that for a time they truly don’t care about anything else.”

Now, when Slatalla sits down to read, she says, “I feel the pressure — of unfinished work, unfolded laundry, unpaid bills.”

I remember those youthful days spent with great stories. I loved books and read them in a way I never realized would be fleeting. It’s only on a rare occasion these days that I become so entranced by a book that I cannot put it down, even if it means staying up until an ungodly hour to read it.

Now I too see my children, at least my twin 10-year-olds, voraciously consume and mentally live in books the way I used to. For example, last spring, when I told them I would read all the Harry Potter books that they so adored, they found it unbelievable that I couldn’t just stop everything I was doing in order to simply read. I hope they keep loving good books that way.

“For Minors, Major Events: World Titles Possible, Even for 6-Year-Olds” — New York Times

This is a story about a 6-year-old golfer named Brett (turned 7 after the article was published) whose family moved from Chicago to Las Vegas so the child, for whom they hired a golfing coach, would have more time for golf. Brett “played in his first [golf] tournament at 4 and now plays four to five times a week, from one to three or more hours each session,” the Times reported. The child has won over 40 golf trophies “in his career,” the paper reported.

While observing Brett, and his family during a tournament, the Times reporter noticed the following:

“During the warm-up, the father of an 11-year-old watched Brett drive the ball about 150 yards. He was heard calling his son a dolt for not being like Brett, who had just knocked a second ball down the center of the fairway. One father was barred from caddying for his son because tournament directors said he had been belittling him after nearly every shot.”

This whole story made me feel very, very sad. There’s a difference between healthy youth sports activities and insanity.

“Have Americans Gone Nuts Over Nut Allergies?” — Time Magazine

Two of my three children are in the classes which include students who have nut allergies. This can be a real pain in the rear, particularly when you have to remember to check the packaging of every snack you send in to make sure it doesn’t contain nuts. It’s also irritating that you have to ban home baked goods at in-class parties because there’s no guarantee the food is nut-free. I get, from personal experience, that it can be inconvenient.

But my inconvenience is extremely minor compared to the anxiety faced by a parent of a child with a nut allergy for whom a rogue incident involving nuts could prove lethal. I cannot even imagine what it must be like to send your severely nut allergic kid to school knowing that some folks poo-poo such allergies as over-exaggerated and no big deal. Even as you send the kid in with her Epi-Pen and inform every teacher and staff member with whom your daughter is in contact during the school day that she cannot be exposed to nuts, there’s no way to be sure she won’t be exposed due to the negligence of someone who doesn’t take her allergy seriously.

That’s why articles like this one in Time, which portrays nut allergies as overblown, are of concern. Sure, some kids have mild nut allergies that are not potentially life-threatening, but when you lump all children with nut allergies into one generalization — one that calls the reaction to nut allergies “societal hysteria” – and say, “Hey, only 150 kids die from this, no biggie,” you are minimizing a threat that can be easily avoided. The Time article said:

“Of the roughly 3.3 million Americans who have nut allergies, about 150 die from allergy-related causes each year, notes [Harvard Professor Dr. Nicholas] Christakis. Compare those figures to the 100 people who are killed yearly by lightning, 45,000 who die in car crashes, and 1,300 killed in gun accidents. As a society, Christakis says our priorities have been seriously skewed and it’s largely the result of fear. ‘My interest is in understanding [the reaction to nut allergies] as a spread of anxiety,’ he says.”

It’s easy to cite stats when it’s not your kid with the deadly allergy.