P&K Insider

I had dinner with a dear friend of mine last night. She’s eight months pregnant and nervous as could be. The truth is she’s going to be a fantastic mom - she’s caring, nurturing and one of the most organized woman I’ve ever known.

No matter how prepared you are, though, becoming a mom is a major transformation. I’m excited to welcome her to the world of choas (although I never said that word out loud) In fact, I was very careful about every word that came out of my mouth. When she asked how long my labor was, I put a positive spin on the 18 HOURS. When she asked how breastfeeding went, I encouraged her to give it her best shot (if she wanted to).

Being with her reminded me of what it was like to be pregnant. There’s no hiding it and every one feels the need to comment. I never minded that part. I loved sharing the news and answering the same questions over and over.

“I’m due in January.”

“Yes, we know it’s a boy.”

“Haven’t decided on a name yet.”

I mean towards the end, I could say the answers in my sleep.

Strangers became rather friendly too. They opened doors, always offered up their seat on a busy train and one woman went as far as to help me pick out comfortable underwear. No word of a lie. She asked what I was looking for in the racks at Marshalls and then she went to work finding me the best pair she could. She didn’t work there.

Another stranger put parenthood in total perspective for me. I was four weeks away from my due date when the crib and dresser were being delievered to our house. I rushed to the door to welcome the moving guy. He smiled at me and asked “the questions.”

“Yup, my husband and I are getting ready for our new roommate.”

The man laughed…at me. “Roommate?” He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Honey, you’re not getting a roomate. Your boss is moving in with you.”

And that my friend…was the most candid advice I ever got.

Little things can make a big difference. And in this case, when I use the word ‘little’ I’m referring to our children and the word ‘big’…well that refers to our world.

Ask any parents about going green and they’ll most likely tell you about how their child is the driving force behind changes in their own home.

One mom recently told me that her 6-year-old son refused to eat his school lunch if the contents were in plastic bags (Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade-breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest). Instead he finished out the school year using re-usable containers.

For four kids in Wellesley, weekend fun includes a trip to the dump. There they sort all the recyclables in colored bins. This mom reports that her family of six has reduced their trash consumption significantly. (The average American individual throws away 3 and 1/2 pounds of trash per day. This contributes to environmental ills from shrinking forests to changes in climate.) “The kids get so mad if my husband throws a bottle or piece of cardboard in the trash!”

My own nephews (ages 3 and 5) will walk around my house to be sure all the lights in unoccupied rooms are turned off. “Auntie, don’t waste energy,” they say.

From global warming to consuming less electricity, our kids are challenging us adults to change some bad habits by considering how our actions affect our world and our environment. Little things can make a big difference.

We know saving the world can seem a bit overwhelming so we’re giving you a quick list of little changes you can make right now in this issue of P&K.

There are lots of other ‘little’ things to check out in this issue. Read about how discovering nature’s littliest treasures (like bugs) can help your children develop a respect for nature that will follow them into adulthood. You can also meet the area’s littlest heroes - with courage beyond their years, they helped to save lives.

You know our kids are really impressive teachers. They look at the world with open eyes, they believe that they can make a difference and they take action. Let’s follow their lead, shall we?

Heather

This Saturday, June 28 is the Great American Backyard Camp Out when thousands of families will opt to leave the comforts of home (I’m talking cozy bed, fridge full of food and TV) and sleep under the stars. If the weather holds up, my family will hauling our 3-room tent outside. I like the fact that it’s in the back yard so if I need to use the facilities, I can walk right back inside.

Sponsored by National Wildlife Federation, this annual event is meant to encourage parents and kids alike to turn in all things high tech, and experience a night with Mother Nature.

Whether you are an old pro, new to the outdoors or camping with kids for the first time,
these tips and ideas will help you make the most of your campout.

General tips:

• Children get cold faster than adults. Dress them in several layers, which can be peeled off as they get warm or added on as they cool off.
• Children love to play with flashlights, and having one also makes them more at ease after dark. Flashlights are also handy when making trips to the bathroom, for making shadow puppets on tent walls, and for reading before bed.
• Bring along a game you all like to play inside. Playing it outdoors with a lantern or flashlights will add to the fun.
• Teach your kids to treat the outdoors kindly. Make sure all waste is disposed of properly.

For other ideas, you can read Sleep Under the Stars article from our June issue.

If you’re not up for an entire night outside, spend just part of the evening in your back yard, listening to night sounds and admiring the stars. The whole family can enjoy this summertime activity.

Star Gazing (found on page 128 of The Siblings’ Busy Book)

On a clear summer night, head outside with your family to view the sky.

Supplies:

Large blanket

Flashlight

Celestial map or book on constellations

Red tissue paper

Find a rural location without much artificial light. Spread a blanket for your family to sit on. There are approximately five thousand stars visible to the naked eye.

Baby

The stars may be too dim for your baby to see, but she’ll enjoy listening to her family talk and hearing the nature sounds. Lay her on her back with her siblings. Point to the stars and talk with her about all the nighttime noises she hears.

Toddler

Your toddler will find an outdoor nighttime activity exciting!

If the moon is out, ask him if he can point to the brightest object in the sky. Entice his imagination by asking if he can see the man on the moon and what he may be doing up there. Count the stars together.

Preschooler

Help your preschooler find a few popular stars and constellations, like Polairs (North Star) and Ursa Major (the Big Dipper). Tell her the stories behind the constellations names. She can find her own too and create stories about them.

School-Age Child

Your school-age child will enjoy using a celestial map to identify a constellation. To help him see the stars more easily, have him place red tissue paper over his flashlight.

Excerpted from The Siblings’ Busy Book. Copyright 2008 by Heather Kempskie and Lisa Hanson. Reprinted with permission of Meadowbrook Press, www.meadowbrookpress.com. Available in bookstores nationwide August 2008.

If you love live music, songs with a groove and lyrics that your kids will go bonkers about, you should check out Little Groove who released their debut CD this month titled Building Blocks! They will be having a CD release show and celebration at the Beehive this Saturday, June 21 at 10:30am. The Beehive is located at 541 Tremont Street in Boston.

Check out this video of Mariana Iranzi and Sara Wheeler at a Baby Wiggle class singing songs from their Little Groove CD.

Sara Wheeler, the lead singer of Little Groove has toured and performed her original music all over the world. She has lived in Europe and had a band for many years based out of Geneva, Switzerland. Now Sara lives in Boston and has made a career shift towards children’s music. Sara Wheeler founded Baby Wiggle - MusicEducation for Children in 2005 at the Boston Center for the Arts. Baby Wiggle has hosted and musically educated over 500 Boston families. Visit www.babywiggle.com to learn more about the music educational side of this story. S Visit: www.littlegroove.com

I know it was completely unproductive but my husband I spent the better part of Sunday night laughing at…well babies laughing.

If you want to smile, check this out. It has received nearly 16 million hits thus far. If you have a funny clip of your little one, send me the clip!

Teaching Kids a Lesson via a New Reality Show

NBC, with the support and help from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancym, will be debuting a new reality show on June 25 called “The Baby Borrowers”   The Associated Press reports that the show features ”five 18-to-20-year-old couples tasked with taking care of tots, toddlers, tweens, teens and elderly folks on camera.” On the show, the five teen couples live together for the first time and fast-forward through the various stages of parenthood, starting by wearing an “empathy belly,” then caring for a real live infant. After a few days, the couples move beyond babies to toddlers, preteens, young teenagers and eventually senior citizens. Perhaps, the folks up in Gloucester should tune in.

Concrete Research on Discipline: What doesn’t work

According to U.S. News & World Report, “researchers have spent decades studying what motivates children to behave and can now say exactly what discipline methods work and what don’t: Call it “evidence-based parenting.” Alas, many of parents’ favorite strategies are scientifically proven to fail. “It’s intuitive to scream at your child to change their behavior, even though the research is unequivocal that it won’t work,” says Alan Kazdin, a psychologist who directs the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic.” I’ve printed up a copy and plan to bring it home to share with my husband. We have totally different styles and according to this article, we both have things to change.

Why are some parents out of line when it comes to sideline behavior?

Big news here reported by MSNBC. The worst offenders (to sideline antics) are ego-driven parents who take personally any slights to their children on the field, new research suggests. Here’s a quick peak at the findings:

Most of the parents (61 percent of those who reported getting angry) kept their anger inside.

Among the nearly 40 percent who expressed their anger, about 19 percent muttered comments; 10 percent looked away from the field or yelled comments; about 8 percent stood up from their seats in response to the incident; while others walked toward or away from the field, made gestures or responded in some other manner.

As you prepare to celebrate Father’s Day this weekend, consider the millions of children who will miss out. According to Carey Casey, CEO of the National Center for Fathering, he impact of fatherlessness is devastating every day for children without dads and for society as a whole.

On average, almost half the children in American classrooms live in a home without a father, according to the National Center of Education Statistics. According to various research on file at the National Center for Fathering, these children are five times more likely to live in poverty and have triple the teen pregnancy rate. These children also have higher rates of substance abuse, criminal activity, school dropout, depression and suicide.

“At the National Center for Fathering, we believe that men who take fatherhood seriously are best equipped to turn this tide,” Casey said.

Thus, the Center has launched Championship Fathering, which calls on fathers to involve themselves more deeply in their own children’s lives, to encourage other children and to enlist other fathers. Based on extensive research, Championship Fathering calls on fathers to love their children, to coach them by teaching them how to grow into responsible adults and to model for them by being responsible adults.

Championship Fathering also challenges dads to encourage unfathered children and to enlist other dads – at work, church, school or anywhere else – to embrace Championship Fathering so that the culture of responsible fathering will grow exponentially.

“If just 10 percent of American fathers made this commitment, that could equal a line of 6.5 million men – standing shoulder to shoulder – from Boston to San Diego,” Casey said. “That would be impressive, but more important would be the benefits to children. Indeed, we expect to see a cultural shift that would benefit all Americans.

“On this Father’s Day, we hope this vision of a new, stronger culture of Championship Fathering challenges and inspires every dad. We encourage every father to join the coast-to-coast line at www.fathers.com/cf,” he said.

His head barely fits above the window and by the way the yellow tin bus is rattling down the side streets of our hometown I wonder how his 38 pound frame is richeting off the chair. Our school district provided a “school bus ride experience” for incoming kindergartens and my son is one of them. For about 20 minutes, about 30 five-year-olds and their parents weaved through the roads and took in the sounds and sights afforded by a yellow school bus.

I held back telling my son that the cool kids sit in the back. I never sat in the back. In fact, I remember sitting right behind the bus driver. I also remember pulling into elementary school with the whole lot of us kids in full chorus “School - yeah! School - boo!” or the classic “No more teacher, no more books…” Do they still sing it?

He asks why there is no seat belts and I don’t have an answer. I just tell him he is never to move from his seat. He asks if the driver will know how to get to our house. I tell him that they know every street in our town (or at least they better).

His questions stop and I find myself wondering what other rules he’ll need to know when his all alone on this huge tank come September. Well he won’t actually be alone. One statistic I found says that 23 million students nationwide begin and end their day on a bus.

My search didn’t take long. If you have a child riding a school bus next year - make sure you review the rules.

Happy and safe travels…

Last Friday: I’m in a dance studio begging my 3-year-old daughter to participate in class. She’s sitting in a corner (behind the trash can) pouting. Her face is wrinkled up and her brand new dance costume now has a stain on it. The other little girls have followed her cue. They don’t want to rehearse their recital dance either. I try leaving the studio and she cries. I come back and try to be funny by stomping my feet instead of tip-toeing. It gets a little smile but no movement from the corner. The dance instructor calls in the dance DIRECTOR as a last resort. “Girls, we love having fun in dance, don’t we? Let’s have Miss Erin go through the dance and you can watch that way tomorrow at the recital you’ll be able to do it.”

I leave the studio with my daughter. I tell her she did great. I don’t mention the recital again…to her. Instead I make personal calls to the 12 people I invited to come to the recital. “Listen, I can pay you back for the tickets but I can’t give you back the hour and half from your life. I don’t think she’s going to go on stage. I was overzealous about her first dance recital. She’s only 3. This is too much.” Everyone ignores me. My brother-in-law calls me a “stage mom.”

Really, I should have made these calls weeks ago. As soon as her dance instructor brought up the recital for the first time, my daughter has been less than thrilled. I was surprised at first. She is really a little ham. Anytime, we go somewhere with a stage - she wants to be on it. But as the weeks went on, her interest in dance rapidly declined. Due to a vacation, she missed one week of dance and that week her interest suddenly returned. I called the instructor and asked that she e-mail the dance moves so she could practice. We set up her stuffed animals on the couch. I downloaded “Somewhere Out There” on my i-pod, put her in her costume and called the living room rug her stage. She froze. She sat down in protest and I privately sulked.

“I want her to be a confident little girl,” I say to my mother. “If she doesn’t go on stage then I’ve failed.”

My mom tells me that “She’s confident, she just wants to do things her way. She beats to her own drum.”

Day of the recital arrives. I have a stomach ache. I wake up before her and watch her sleep. Maybe I should pull her out of it? I don’t want to scar her for life. I remember that there’s only two other girls in her class. If she’s not there that would be unfair to the other girls. I play cool all day. We play outside, go on the swings and at around 2, I casually mention that its time to go upstairs to get ready for dance. We slip on the white tights, white leotard with pink sparkles and I tie the purple skirt around her waist. She’s wearing some red blush and blue eyeshadow and somehow I’ve even managed to pull her hair back into the white bow.

We leave carrying her ballet shoes. I bring my camera just in case she actually goes on the stage. She skips into the school building and points out all the other “girl dancers.” I bring her back stage and hand her over to a parent volunteer. She hardly kisses me goodbye as she skips away to play with some girls. I spend time wondering if I should stay with her but another mom ushers me out.

I leave and meet the rest of the family in the auditorium. I’m on a end seat. I guess I needed to know I could escape. We take up the whole row. My husband, my mother-in-law, my parents, my son and nephew and my sisters. Her dance is number 8 on the program. A mom sitting behind me has a daughter in dance 7. She’s so calm as her daughter goes on stage and claps for her at the end.

“Somewhere Out There” starts playing on the speaker and I cover my eyes. Will she come on stage? Will I hear her screaming any minute now? What will I do if she starts crying? Can I go get her? Do I let the teacher’s handle it? When I hear a collective “Ahhh” from the audience I peak out. She’s on stage! She’s walked on stage! I realize that even if she walks right back off I don’t care. She went on.

She’s in the middle of the two other girls and once she notices the audience and wiggles her whole  with delight. She’s smiling and… dancing? Oh, my God - she’s doing the sunshine dance move. I didn’t know she even knew it. She’s doing the plies too. Then she breaks from the other two girls - she’s gliding across the stage while the others watch. The crowd starts laughing and clapping and my daughter is smiling ear to ear. She returns to the other girls and does the ‘picking up flowers’ move with absolute vigor. The crowd laughs again and she’s encouraged to repeat this crowd pleaser. I am laughing. I am crying. The music ends and people off-stage are waving her off the stage. My daughter stops, she jumps up and down. She doesn’t want her moment up there to end and neither do I. She blows one final kiss and runs off stage to a thunderous applause. My baby. She did it.

My husband asks if I’m OK? “Yes,” I say as I squeeze his hand. She did her way and she did it beautifully. This stage mom plans to exit gracefully too.

If you don’t have a graduation or dance recital to attend this weekend, you should consider pitching in a hand to improve a local parkland. National Trails Day is a great way to meet people and stay healthy. Join DCR park staff, and other trail volunteers as they improve the trails in Culter Park in Needham and the Blue Hill Reservation in Milton (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.) . Sign up to join the team. All tools, equipment and gloves provided. You should wear clothes and sturdy footgear. Call 617-698-1802, etx. 212 for registration.