Locker Chandeliers? Fancy Lunchbox Notes? Seriously Folks, Can't We Dial It Back a Tad?

I'm not one who's fond of picking fights with people. Usually I'm a live and let live kind of gal. But where I do get my knickers in a twist is when someone else's actions start putting pressure on me to adhere to their over-the-top standards. Then I get testy.

What sort of standards? The kind I read about in a series of three articles last week:

First, I read an article about parents who go to their children's middle schools and decorate the youngsters' lockers with rugs, wallpaper and even locker chandeliers. Yes, LOCKER CHANDELIERS. (The article described how the lockers are now seen by those in the middle school set as a reflection of the students' personalities and has an impact on how that child is perceived by her peers.)

Second, I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about how parents (re: moms) can craft A+ lunches for their kids by tucking elaborate, inspiring, Dale Carnegie-esque notes inside their children's lunchboxes every day, perhaps mixing things up a bit by gift wrapping their offspring's sandwiches or occasionally decorating their kids' pieces of fruit so that the fruit has a face. (The piece said the note writing has become competitive in some circles with disappointed children chastising their mothers if another student receives a hipper lunchbox note than they did.)

Finally, there was the story about a woman who was 39 weeks pregnant yet ran a marathon, delivered her baby only a few hours later and then proclaimed she wasn't tired. After reading this, I readied my white flag of surrender. Reading about these women simply exhausted me.

However I decided against waving the flag of surrender and instead opted to launch a counteroffensive, declaring these parental actions simply batty. Therefore my Pop Culture column this week over on Modern Mom calls for the moms who are raising the parenthood bar to extremely absurd heights to consider the plaintive cries of we mere mortals who have neither the time nor the inclination to install a chandelier in our children's lockers to please, for the love of God, dial it back a bit. In the words of fellow blogger Jen Singer, of MommaSaid, "You're ruining this for the rest of us . . . Knock it off."

Image credit: Locker Lookz.

Palin 'Mommy Wars' Rage On

After venting my head off on my other blog, the Picket Fence Post, about the double-standard in the way in which the GOP VP nominee's parenthood is handled as compared to her male counterparts, I was contacted by a reporter from a California newspaper, the Contra Costa Times, to muse about the controversy about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the working mom.

I found some of the comments by others in the Times article regarding the criticism of Palin running for national office while a mother of five -- including a 5-month-old with Down Syndrome and a pregnant 17-year-old -- intriguing, including a quote from a UC Berkeley professor and author of a book on mothers who work:

"Palin is 'an easy target.' The latte crowd at Starbucks can sit around and shred her up. But some of the things that have been said, if it was a man would never happen. You'd think some of the hard-core feminists would come out and say, 'Give me a break.'"

One would think that, wouldn't she?

Image credit: Contra Costa Times.

It's the Apocalypse: Bikini Wax at 9

I wasn't exaggerating when I wrote a short while ago that so-called reasonable mothers have been taking their 9- and 10-year-old daughters to posh salons all over the fruited plain for microdermabrasion treatment and facials, as well as eyebrow and BIKINI waxes, arguing that they need to get their grade school aged daughters "used" to regular hygiene regimens.

For those who live by the adage of "seeing is believing," feast your eyes on this recent Good Morning America segment about this phenomenon, interviewing little girls and their mothers about this god-awful practice. To watch the video, click here. (It's sparking quite the debate on the ABC News bulletin board.)

Hopefully, sanity will triumph and little girls will go back to the sweet charms of sticky Bonnie Bell lipsmackers and a little bright pink toenail polish applied by an amateur.

Girls & Sports: When There's Too Much of a Good Thing

I want to go on the record as saying that having girls play sports is an amazingly wonderful thing. Girls learning to be physically and mentally strong, making quick decisions, working as a team and not being afraid to get dirty are all good and positive goals.

However -- as with many things related to today's youth and sports -- things have gotten out of hand. Way out of hand. We've gone beyond promoting all the myriad benefits of being a member of a sports team. And we've gone into a place I like to call, "Stupidville," where, starting at tender ages in elementary school, we're introducing too much competition. Too much stress. Too much insistence on sports specialization. Too many games. Too many practices. Not only does this lead to the complete disruption of the family (no time for healthy family meals, no time for homework, kids going to bed too late, parents on the road all the time playing chauffeur, etc.) but it has serious physical consequences for the youth athletes.

The negative health implications of sports specialization is, in essence, the argument made by a recent New York Times Sunday Magazine piece entitled, "Hurt Girls: What Sports Are Doing to Young Women is Not Pretty." (If I were the copy editor, I would've changed the sub-headline to read, "What Too Much Sports At Too Young An Age is Doing to Young Women is Not Pretty.")

Some excerpts:

-- "The pressure to concentrate on a 'best' sport before even entering middle school -- and to play it year-round -- is bad for all kids. They wear down the same muscle groups day after day. They have no time to rejuvenate, let alone get stronger. By playing constantly, they multiply their risks and simply give themselves too many opportunities to get hurt."

-- A pediatrician, Rebecca Demorest, told the Magazine that when it comes to treating young girl athletes: "They ache and they hurt and they use pain medicine and try to keep on playing. When they finally get to the point they can't play, they come and see me . . . They have a series of nonspecific, overuse injuries that comes down to being worn out. Don't get me wrong. There's a chain of events with boys too. But I see it more with the girls."

-- In the part of the article which discusses attempts to create exercise routines which supposedly help ward off injuries that disproportionately affect female athletes (like catastrophic knee injuries), writer Michael Sokolove said, "Coaches rarely like to give up precious practice time for injury prevention, and often have to be pushed by parents."

-- In a section about "club" teams -- different from town leagues or school-related leagues in that parents have to shell out big bucks for "professional" coaches who take their sport very seriously -- Sokolove wrote: "The club structure is the driving force behind the trend toward early specialization in one sport -- and by extension, a primary cause of injuries. To play multiple sports is, in the best sense, childlike. It's fun. You move on from one good thing to the next. But to specialize conveys a seriousness of purpose. It seems to be leading somewhere -- even if, in fact, the real destination is burnout or injury."

There is a price to be paid for too much of a good thing. And all our kids -- not just our girls -- are paying for it. With their bodies. And it's sucking all the joy out of sports. Think about that the next time someone tries to talk you into signing your grade schooler up for a club team.

Image credit: New York Times.

My Take on the Miley Thing

My daughter adores Miley Cyrus. Has Hannah Montana pictures on her bedroom wall, T-shirts in her dresser drawer, TV show on the DVR and CDs playing constantly. Together, the two of us went to see the 3-D movie -- about her concert tour -- earlier this year.

So it was with a heavy heart that I informed her yesterday morning, before she could hear through the rumor mill, about what happened with her idol and that now-infamous Vanity Fair photo session. Boiled down to its essence I told her: The adults behaved irresponsibly and should've protected a minor from taking such provocative photos at the age of 15.

For my full response, check out this post on the, oh-so-cleverly-named Picket Fence Post where I wrote an open letter to the folks at Vanity Fair.

What do you all think of this controversy?

Three for Thursday: King Gets the Boot, Soccer Mom Syndrome and Mysterious Stillbirths

The King of TV Talk Given the Boot?

I’m still on the fence about whether this story – which I found on The Huffington Post and then in the New York Observer – was an April Fools Day joke or not. According to the Observer, the 79-year-old Larry King was asked to leave his 9-year-old son’s baseball game after he became too, shall we say, boisterous with an umpire. File this under: Sports Parents Gone Wild.

Soccer Mom Syndrome

Yep. If you’re a soccer mom, it’s likely, you’re a victim of a syndrome. At least according to an “eminent biologist/naturalist” quoted by a blogger for Discover Magazine:

“In a candid conversation with an audience here at the Aspen Environment Forum, eminent biologist/naturalist E.O. Wilson said soccer moms are killing off bio-education because they don’t let their children experience nature.

In what he calls the ‘soccer mom syndrome,’ Wilson said the worst thing a parent can do for a child is to take him or her to a botanical garden where all the trees are marked and labeled.”

Wilson says we should let our kids experience nature first-hand, instead of making everything in their lives be activity-centered. While I don’t like the sideswipe at soccer moms – given that my kids play soccer and I’m their mom must mean I'm a member of the group – I do appreciate the message: Let the kids go outside and explore. And don’t hover over them.

Tragic, Mysterious Stillbirths

The New York Times recently ran a story in its Science section which, while lamenting the fact that little research has been done on why some pregnancies end in a stillbirth, suggested that if more autopsies were performed, perhaps parents would get some answers, or at least a clue, as to what went wrong.

“The single most important step in trying to determine the cause of a stillbirth and the likelihood that it may recur is a fetal autopsy. Yet, beset by grief and lacking a clear understanding of what an autopsy entails and how it can help, many couples fail to authorize one. An additional obstacle is the fact that the cost of an autopsy — about $1,000 or more — is usually borne by the couple.

“’If autopsies were done routinely, we’d know a lot more about the causes of stillbirth and, probably, more about how to prevent them,’ Dr. Hamisu Salihu, a leading researcher in the field, said in an interview. Dr. Salihu cautioned against reassuring couples that stillbirth was unlikely to recur, even if there was no explanation for the first one.”

Four for Friday: Culinary Tricks, Secret Lives of Soccer Moms, Kids and Privacy, and Common Sense Prevails

Item #1: Culinary Tricks

Okay. I admit it. I’ve fallen for those cookbooks which advise parents to sneak healthy ingredients into kids’ meals without their knowledge. I’m not proud, mind you, but sometimes, when your kid will only eat carbs (bread, pasta, cereal, crackers) and maybe cheese pizza, a mom’s gotta do, what a mom’s gotta do. Read about my attempts to serve healthier fare to my group of uncooperative eaters in the March issue of Parents and Kids.

Item #2: Secret Lives of Soccer Moms

I’m normally not a fan of reality shows. They’re often contrived. The shows’ creators frequently edit the heck out of the footage to juice up drama where there really isn’t any, or when drama doesn’t need to be manufactured.

That being said, I’m, shall I say, a reluctant fan of TLC’s new program, “The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom,” which takes an at-home mom and gives her the chance to resume the career she left behind when she decided to care for her children full-time. I wrote about the first episode on Mommy Track’d, where a former fashion designer and mom of three, after impressing a fashion house owner accepted a full-time job as a designer.

Then I saw this week’s episode: A former gourmet chef and mom of two pre-schoolers tried her hand at cooking in an upscale restaurant and snagged a full-time job offer. But, when she and her husband were given only a short time to make a decision about whether she’d take the offer, she reluctantly and tearfully decided to take a pass, saying that her dream would have to wait just a little while longer.

At least the show provided some balance. Not every mom takes the job, although it remains interesting to see women who’ve left their dream jobs tear up when they realize they can still do their work well. However I stand by my objections to the reality show cruelty of pressuring a family into such a major decision that will turn their lives upside-down in just a wee bit of time.

Item #3: Kids and Privacy. Do They Get Any?

If you were to ask syndicated columnist Betsy Hart if children living at home with their parents should get privacy, her answer would be, “Um, no.”

In a recent column where she was discussing her kids’ use of the internet she wrote:

“There is no privacy in my house for kids . . . I'm obviously not talking about physical privacy when bathing, dressing, etc. I mean when it comes to how they, well, operate. The ‘default’ position in my home is one of ‘openness.’ This doesn't mean I always do, or need to, know what they are up to or what they talk about with their friends. It does mean I have the ‘right’ to know. Why? Because a private, ‘secret’ world, by definition outside of the circle of safety that the family and parents afford, can be a dangerous one to a child.”

Not exactly PC, but she makes good, solid points.

She continued:

“I don't intend to monitor my children at every turn. I don't want to. I do want to adopt the default position of my child's life being understood, by both of us, as best being an ‘open’ book. And for them to understand that a parent is positioned more than anyone else to help the child understand and read that book.

Is this going to solve all teen problems, secrets and defiance with my kids? Of course not. But the goal is for my children to see what is normative and wholesome, vs. secret and so, more dangerous.”

Parenting, the job that never ends.

Item #4: Common Sense Prevails

Sometimes I feel as though people have wholly taken leave of their senses. That’s the conclusion I reached after reading this blog item from ParentDish about an Illinois mother who was charged with child abandonment “for leaving her sleeping 2-year-old in a locked car while she escorted other children to a Salvation Army Kettle a few feet away,” according to the blog, which detailed how the mother was hauled away by police last December ironically, leaving her children behind. “Bizarrely, while she was being arrested and transported to jail, the girls she had taken to the Salvation Army kettle were left alone in the parking lot and later found huddled on a bench inside Wal-Mart, too terrified by the police officers to ask for help,” ParentDish reported.

Someone in the state of Illinois finally came to her senses, and the criminal charges were dropped, the Chicago Tribune reported, although the chief of police told the paper, “We’re not happy with the decision . . . We stand behind our officers and the decision they made that night to protect the welfare of that child.”

Putting Youth Sports Into Perspective: Don’t Count on That Athletic Scholarship

A couple of excerpts from an eye-opening page one New York Times story today worth pondering:

-- “Excluding the glamour sports of football and basketball, the average NCAA athletic scholarship is nowhere near a full ride, amounting to $8,707 . . . Even when football and basketball are included, the average is $10,409. Tuition and room and board for NCAA institutions often cost between $20,000 and $50,000 a year.”

-- In 1999-2000, 2.57 million American high school girls played sports, according to the Times. Only 59,763 of them were awarded scholarships, full or partial. During the same period, 3.86 million high school boys played sports, with 78,453 receiving full or partial athletic scholarships.

-- In 2003-4, 330,044 American high school boys played soccer, the newspaper reported. Only 6,047 boys received scholarships, with an average value of $8,533 per recipient. During the same period, 270,273 high school girls played soccer and 9,310 received scholarships, with an average value of $8,404.

-- “Coaches and administrators, the gatekeepers of the recruiting system, said in interviews that parents and athletes who hoped for such [scholarship] money were much too optimistic and that they were unprepared to effectively navigate the system. The athletes, they added, were the ones who ultimately suffered.”

-- “Parents often look back on the many years spent shuttling sons and daughters to practices, camps and games with a changed eye. Swept up in the dizzying pursuit of sports achievement, they realize how little they knew of the process.”

-- The newspaper quoted NCAA President Myles Brand as saying: “The youth sports culture is overly aggressive, and while the opportunity for an athletic scholarship is not trivial, it’s easy for the opportunity to be overexaggerated by parents and advisers. That can skew behavior and, based on the numbers, lead to unrealistic expectations.”

The lengthy story -- accompanied by a large graphic which breaks down the number of high school athletes participating in specific sports and how many of them received some form of a college scholarship – also profiled two Pennsylvania brothers who have played elite-level soccer since they were pre-schoolers and whose father estimates that he shelled out roughly $10,000 per son for soccer training over the years. One brother, Joe Taylor, received a $20,000 athletic scholarship to Villanova, while his brother Pat didn’t make his college’s soccer team. Pat Taylor’s comments were heartbreaking:

“The whole thing really is a crapshoot, but no one ever says that out loud. On every team I played on, every single person there thought for sure that they would play in college. I thought so, too. Just by the numbers, it’s completely unrealistic. And if I had to do it over, I would have skipped a practice every now and then to go to a concert or a movie with my friends. I missed out on a lot of things for soccer. I wish I could have some of that time back.”

Bottom line: Participating in sports can be great fun and can teach children valuable lessons about working hard and being a team player. But, chances are, your kid isn’t going to snag a scholarship, or at least one that will in any way cover the full college tab. Remember, the average scholarship value, excluding football and basketball, is only $8,797. So, for your kids’ sake, keep youth sports in perspective. They only have one childhood.

Three for Thursday: ‘Lost’s’ Parental Issues, Political Baby and Sox Spring Training

Item #1: ‘Lost’s’ Parental Issues

Ever watch the labyrinthian drama “Lost” -- about survivors of a plane crash stranded on an island -- and wonder why almost all the parents are screwed up and why women who get pregnant while on the island all die? Nearly every major character on the show has some kind of parentally-inflicted damage, the after-effects of which they’re still coping. And the irony of pregnancy equaling death, well, that just adds to the show’s many mysteries. I muse about these curious contradictions in a recent piece on Mommy Track’d.

Item #2: Political Baby

Want to know with which presidential candidate a baby feels most comfortable? During this presidential primary season, journalist Darren Garnick had his baby girl photographed with each of the major presidential candidates. In Senator Barack Obama’s arms, Garnick’s then-newborn looked comfy. She was happy for two seconds in Senator John McCain’s arms, Garnick wrote, but then started wailing. When the baby was held by Senator Hillary Clinton, the two locked eyes and the senator looked like a pro.

Item #3: Sox Spring Training Bay-Bee

Enough of winter, black ice, white-out conditions, etc. Enough of the flu, colds and whatever bugs are going around. I’m ready for spring. And spring means baseball. Or, at least spring training. More specifically, Boston Red Sox spring training.

(Image from ABC.)

Catchin’ Up: Kid Liars, Breastfeeding in the Funny Pages, Going Green and More

New York Magazine has been on a roll lately. They’ve been producing one provocative parenting piece after another. The latest was a recent cover story about why kids lie to their parents. And they do. Lie. All the time. (Without impugning anyone specific, I can say that I speak from experience on this subject.)

I felt great despair as I read through the article, wondering what, if anything, can be done about pint-sized tellers of tall tales . . . until I arrived at the end of the piece and found some pointers which included:

-- Don’t dissuade your kids from tattling because they’ll internalize the message that they can’t come to you with their problems. This will become habitual and, when they’re teens they won’t tell you one of their buddies has been getting loaded every weekend. Or driving drunk. Or other delightful stories.

-- As maddening as it may be, the article says, let your kids argue their points, even if you have no intention of giving into their demands: “In families where there was less deception . . . there was a much higher ratio of arguing and complaining. The argument enabled the child to speak honestly. Certain types of fighting, despite the acrimony, were ultimately signs of respect – not of disrespect.”

So when my Eldest Son is bitterly complaining about how I’m on a multi-year campaign to ruin his life and embarrass him with my mere existence, I can take comfort in the fact that by letting him prattle on, I’m encouraging him to, according to the article, be more honest?

Breastfeeding in the Funny Pages

The “Stone Soup” comic recently had a storyline featuring a new mom who was discretely nursing her baby at a restaurant and was asked to leave because her breastfeeding offended the man who was “nuzzling a buxom bimbo half his age.” Kudos to cartoonist Jan Eliot. Keep fighting the good fight.

Going Green

Ever since my children commenced their formal education, I’ve been on an anti-paperwork kick, frequently complaining that I feel as if I'm under an unrelenting siege from school paper with which I absolutely cannot keep up, no matter how many dead presidents I waste on containers and organizers.

My February Parents and Kids column was yet another volley in my anti-paper campaign, where I lament how my kids’ schools had been resistant to the notion of going paperless and hadn’t been accepting of the notion of sending me school notices, permission slips, et al, by e-mail, so they don’t wind up in massive, scary piles on my kitchen counter.

I have good news to report: The unnamed PTO president who I mention in the piece -- who unsuccessfully argued my point to the school department this fall -- called me after reading the column and told me that there’s been a change of heart at the school. The day will be coming, she promised me, when the school will cease and desist with sending home three copies of the announcement that Friday is Aloha Day and that I’ll get ONE e-mail informing me of the mirth and frivolity at my children’s institutions of learning.

So if you feel overwhelmed by your child's school paperwork, take up the cause and make the case to your school district to go paperless. Print out the column and tell ‘em it CAN be done. Your cluttered kitchen counters will thank you.

Lenton Cash

During Lenton season every year, my interfaith household takes on the task of either giving something up or promising to do something for the greater good during the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. This year, as I did last year, I’ve said I’d try to give up swearing and saying “bad” words (to the kids, “bad” words include: Darn, damn, stupid, dumb and the obviously blue language that occasionally *cough* slips past my lips, even when the kids are out of earshot, such as when I'm driving to work solo and am trapped behind a horrifically slow motorist). When I make a mistake, as humans are apt to do, I must deposit a quarter into a jar. At the end of Lent, we’re going to donate the money to our church.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. The jar is embarrassingly full. At least the church should be happy.

Letting the Kids Play

The New York Times ran a fascinating piece in their Sunday magazine this past weekend about the value of children’s free play time. Though it suggests that there’s no hard, scientific evidence that giving children the opportunity to play is a sure-fire ticket to future success, it does raise some interesting points. Well worth the read.

Read This

Humorist Christie Mellor has a very funny, spot-on essay detailing why you shouldn’t abandon who you are and suddenly don an angelic, Sancti-Mommy halo the minute you become a parent. It’s cleverly entitled, “Chardonnay Swilling Whore.” Not for the faint of heart. Or those who are easily offended.

(Image from Stone Soup.)

Four for Friday: What Moms Want, A Mean Mom, School Drop-Off/Pick-Up Madness and Toddler Beasts

Item #1: What Moms Want

That’s a question a blogger at the Babble web site tried to answer. Do moms want to work full-time, part-time, no time? No matter how moms answer these questions, Kelly Mills maintains, it doesn’t seem as though Gen X mothers feel fulfilled by their decisions.

Item #2: A Mean Mom (Who’s Not So Mean)

You’ve got to love a mom who sticks to her guns. Or at least I love a mom who, after she makes the rules and her teenager breaks ‘em, insists that the kid has to suffer the consequences. No wimping out.

Thus I was thrilled to stumble across this Huffington Post blog entry by psychotherapist Terry Real. He profiled a mother who gave her teenaged son a car and said he could keep it as long as he followed the agreed upon rules, one of which stated that there was to be no alcohol in the car. Long-story-short, she found alcohol. The kid said it wasn’t his. She said it didn’t matter because a rule had been broken. She sold the car.

Real applauded the mom and parents like her by saying:

“Too many parents faced with this situation would become mushy and capitulate. These are the same parents that say, ‘You’re grounded for two weeks’ and then step on the slippery slope wherein day by day the kid gets a few privileges back – a phone call here becomes, video game time there – a week into the punishment, he’s enjoying most of his amenities and scoring allowance.”

Item #3: School Drop-Off/Pick-Up Madness

I’ve written about this particular malady before, the insanity that descends over parental brains when they drop off or pick up their children from school. It can be intense.

A Parent Dish blogger, Trish Robinson, recently wrote about school traffic lines, lamenting the unvarnished aggression they tend to bring out in parents:

“ Ever since my son has been in elementary school, I have been shocked at how parents behave and drive in the school line. When he was in elementary school, there was a line of parents down the street in front of the school, slowly crawling around the circle drive to pick up the children. There was always an obnoxious parent or two would come up the left side of the line and try to cut to the front. I never understood why other parents would politely let them in the line, while the rest of us followed the rules and waited our turn patiently.”

Item #4: Toddler Beasts

Ever think that your toddler behaves a bit like a primitive beast? If you did, surely in these parentally correct times, you wouldn’t publicly admit it, but you might, in the safe confines of your home share your observations with a close friend or relative.

Well now a University of California pediatrics professor has released you from your guilt because he has told a national newspaper that your assessment was right on the money.

“In his latest book, ‘The Happiest Toddler on the Block,’ Dr. [Harvey] Karp tries to teach parents the skills to communicate with and soothe tantrum-prone children,” the New York Times said. “In doing so, however, he redefines what being a toddler means. In his view, toddlers are not just small people. In fact, for all practical purposes, they’re not even small Homo sapiens.

“Dr. Karp notes that in terms of brain development, a toddler is primitive, an emotion-driven, instinctive creature that has yet to develop the thinking skills that define modern humans,” the paper continued. “Logic and persuasion, common tools of modern parenting, ‘are meaningless to a Neanderthal,’ Dr. Karp says.”

Yup, you read that correctly. He said Neanderthal.

Four for Friday: College Application Nuttiness, Kids’ Homework, HSM 3 and 'Baby Mama' Movie Trailer

Item #1: College Application Nuttiness

One of my favorite, down-to-earth columnists, Betsy Hart wrote a great piece tackling the issue of how much emphasis today’s parents place on their children getting into the “right” colleges, instead of trying to “raise persons of character who will eventually be able to thrive and prosper and grow and learn in almost any college – and really, any life – environment.”

“Especially in an ever-changing and dynamic economy,” Hart wrote, “it seems it’s really the student, not the college, that matters.”

Item #2: Kids’ Homework for Kids (Not Parents)

It’s your kid’s homework assignment. Not yours. And if your kid does poorly on it, it’s her fault, not yours.

That’s the message sent by a blog entry from the Washington Post’s “On Balance” parenting blog. Writer Julie Lenzer Kirk said that she took umbrage when her 10-year-old daughter said if she did poorly on an assignment it would be because her mom wouldn’t help her because her mom was working. Au contraire, Lenzer Kirk responded, adding that the kid would have to wait until she was available for help instead of waiting until the very last minute to work on it.

A quick read through the comments section was illustrative, including one comment from someone who says she’s a teacher and wrote: “Nothing bothers me more than a child who has every homework assignment completed perfectly, has no questions for me, yet fails a quiz because he or she doesn't really get it, because mom/dad essentially did the work.”

Item #3: 'High School Musical 3:' The Franchise That Will Not Die

I can sing and/or hum every song from the two “High School Musical” movies, as we are an all-HSM all-the-time household . . . that’s when we’re not being treated to the musical renderings of Hannah Montana or the Eldest Son’s pounding away on the drum set he got for Christmas.

And there’s no end in sight for the HSM madness as the announcement was made official this week that the major stars from the first two HSM films will indeed appear in "High School Musical 3" which is scheduled to be released in movie theaters this fall.

We’re all in this together . . .

Item #4: 'Baby Mama' Movie Trailer

“Baby Mama” is a new film slated for a spring release for which I just saw the trailer on the Entertainment Weekly web site. It looks like it has the potential to be darkly funny. It takes the idea of having someone else be your gestational surrogate and makes it (hopefully) humorous. That’s a tricky proposition. But the film stars Tina Fey, who has a small child herself. And Amy Poehler co-stars as Fey's fictional surrogate. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Watch the trailer here and judge for yourself.

When Mothers Judge

Stop what you’re doing . . . well, finish reading this blog item and then stop what you’re doing and read Ayelet Waldman’s piece in this week’s New York Magazine entitled, “The Bad-Mommy Brigade.”

I was fairly far into my nine-plus years of parenthood before I finally figured out that the contemporary standards for motherhood – that you not only have to be perfect, but that you have to be happy while being the perfect parent (no complaining, for example, that you don’t like playing Barbies) – are utterly unachievable and are responsible for a whole lot of unnecessary parental angst. And in recent years, I’ve found that some folks derive an unmistakable glee from learning that other parents have foibles and fall far short of being role model parents. The glee seems to be exponentially increased if the perceived “failing” parent is a celebrity.

So it’s with that mindset with which I approached Waldman’s piece. Not only did she take on this perverted fascination many mothers have with attacking other moms -- notably misguided celeb parents with whom I think people have become unhealthy obsessed – but how distorted our views of our own parenting has become. Waldman wrote:

“One way to find consolation in the face of all this failure and guilt is to judge ourselves not against the impossible standard of the Good Mother but against the fun-house-mirror-image Bad Mother. By defining for us the kind of mother we’re not, the Bad Mother makes it easier for us to live with what we are. We may be discontented and irritable, we may snap after the 67th knock-knock joke, our kids may watch three hours of television a day, we may have just celebrated the second anniversary of the last time we had sex, we may have forgotten to pack a snack, or, God forbid, bought one replete with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, we may yank on our daughters’ ponytails while we’re combing their hair, but at least we’re not Britney Spears.”

Wanna know what contributes to all of this parenting paranoia to which Waldman refers? Articles like the one in the February issue of Redbook entitled, “How to Say No (Without Saying No).” (“Kids hate to hear it, and you hate to say it – but how else can you keep them safe and well-behaved? Try one of these smart alternatives to just saying no.”)

Usually, I’m a Redbook fan. I admire its down-to-earth positivity, its embrace of different, non-cookie-cutter women’s lives and shapes (a year ago the magazine featured non-models). But then the editors had to go and publish a piece that will simply guilt more mothers into contorting themselves and stressing out when they have to and need to tell their children "No." The article tells parents that they need to be all namby-pamby by giving children the illusion that they have power and control, even when dealing with 3-year-olds. So if one of the “Good Mothers” mentioned in Waldman’s article happens to spot you saying, “No” to your kiddo instead of a gussied up/faux version of “No” that provides a child some false sense of power, you’ll be tagged as a “Bad Mother.” This, my friends, is part of the problem.

Three for Thursday: Poor Little Rich Kids, Freezing at PeeWee Hockey and Angry Women

Item #1: Poor Little Rich Kids

New York Magazine’s issue this week poses an interesting question: How do you raise your child to be a productive member of society when you’re filthy rich? The article focuses on wealthy parents who are struggling with how to help their children grow up to become normal, well-adjusted adults:

“. . . [T]he newly rich inevitably discover that it’s very hard to have your cake and eat it while raising healthy, hardworking children. ‘I just met this morning with a very sharp 48-year-old,’ says Charles Collier, author of Wealth in Families and senior philanthropic adviser at Harvard University. ‘And he said to me, ‘I don’t want my children to be entitled, but I want to have a jet. I came from nothing. Haven’t I earned my jet?’”

If only I had their problems . . .

Item #2: Freezing at PeeWee Hockey

As if Dunkin’ Donuts needed to give me another justification for my frequent visits to their establishments for my favorite, non-controlled substance . . . now the coffee purveyors have released a new TV ad that warms the cockles of my heart.

It shows parents and siblings of grade school-aged kids, shivering in the stands at a hockey rink while watching small people attempt to play hockey. Over the images you hear the catchy little jingle: “I can’t feel my hands. I’m freezing at PeeWee hockey. Freezing at PeeWee hockey.” Then, as the camera shows us an image of a dad toting a four-pack of steaming hot beverages, the song strikes a hopeful note, “But wait, there’s help on the way.”

Given that, in a couple of weeks, my youngest child will resume his learn-to-skate/hockey lessons very early on Saturday mornings, I too will be freezing at PeeWee hockey and will only find comfort with my scalding cuppa java and ugly, yet warm boots.

Item #3: Angry Women

Is that what made up the difference between Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s double-digit, pre-New Hampshire primary lead in the polls and New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s eventual come-from-behind win? Angry women? Were women upset that the other candidates appeared to be picking on her in the debates? Were they bothered that Clinton was told in front of a national audience that she was unlikeable? Were they moved by Clinton’s display of emotion in a New Hampshire diner on Monday?

While the much-shamed political punditry class tries in vain to figure out how they could’ve been so wrong as to almost unanimously predict a massive Obama win in the Granite State, others are offering their own pet theories, including New York Times columnist Gail Collins who suggested this:

“My own favorite theory is that this week, Hillary was a stand-in for every woman who’s overdosed on multitasking. They grabbed at the opportunity to have kids/go back to school/start a business/become a lawyer. But there are days when they can’t meet everybody’s needs and the men in their lives — loved ones and otherwise — make them feel like failures or towers of self-involvement. And the deal is that they can either suck it up or look like a baby.”

Parenting Madness Across the Pond

So it’s not just Americans who have lost all sense of perspective when it comes to parenting. The Brits are nutty too.

A few years ago, author Judith Warner wrote Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, about how affluent American mothers were slowly losing their grasp on reality in order to attempt to be “perfect” and to, essentially, envelop their offspring in bubble wrap and then, ironically, unhealthily wrap their own lives around their children’s.

Now we learn, according to Meg Sanders and Annie Ashworth, authors of The Madness of Modern Parenting, that it's not just an American problem. After interviewing parents, teachers, psychologists and doctors, Sanders told the Manchester Evening News that: “. . . [T]hey were seeing a great upsurge in neurotic, hyper-parenting which comes out of over-anxiety and competitiveness. Parents are constantly feeling judged, and that breeds insecurity.”

Among the great examples quoted by the Evening News was from a section of the book – no, I haven’t read it yet – entitled “School Life: Forgery and Fraud,” about parents who just can’t let their own kids do their own homework: “Teachers aren’t stupid. That’s why they write WDM very small at the bottom of the page of homework – Well Done Mum.”

(Image from Amazon.com.)

Three for Thursday: Presidential Election Begins, Maternal Profiling and Holiday Round-Up

Item #1: What’s Up with Iowa?

What’s up with Iowa? Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s been hard to miss the mass hordes of reporters and politicos who’ve descended upon the farm state for the first official contest of the 2008 presidential election that starts tonight. What do the primaries have to do with parenting? That’s what my January Parents and Kids essay is about. If parents can get their kids all revved up about “American Idol” – as millions of parents do – why can’t they direct that energy and interest into something that really matters, like who’s going to be the country’s war-time commander-in-chief?

(Speaking of politics . . . the razor-sharp satirists at JibJab, who create funny animated bits about politics and current events, just released their 2007 year-in-review cartoon. Warning: The video is distinctly kid- and work-UNfriendly. Plus, it may offend those who are easily offended.)

Item #2: Maternal Profiling

The Huffington Post has an interesting entry this week about how the New York Times declared that the term “maternal profiling” -- a fancy way of describing the employment discrimination that some mothers encounter – was one of the hot buzzwords of 2007.

Item #3: Holiday Round-Up

Gifts: Santa bestowed upon my three rug rats: A Lego Star Wars Jabba the Hut barge, a Lego Star Wars Republic Cruiser and -- God help us -- a kid-sized set of drums. Grandma gave the Girl a karaoke machine (with which she’s been belting out all tunes “High School Musical” and “Hannah Montana” related. Non-stop.). Auntie Ellen gave the Eldest Boy a robot that, according to the box, not only is able to travel all around the house and see in the dark, but will develop its own personality and -- get this -- respond to aggression. Frankly, I’m frightened, and have already informed my beloved sister-in-law that if the four-legged robot gets out of hand, I’m going to abandon it on her front doorstep so it can exact its metallic aggression on her house.

Mirth: We got through Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year’s, the Patriots’ regular season finale and a Festivus celebration (with my awesomely snarky friends) in tact. No one contracted a stomach bug (as I did last Christmas). No one was besieged by lice (as the Girl and I both were when were planning on marking the dark, grievance-filled holiday of Festivus with the same friends last year). No one died. So, as far as I’m concerned, ‘twas all good.

Family Togetherness: The day after Christmas, The Spouse and I took all three of our offspring, plus one friend apiece, to see “Alvin and the Chipmunks” at a movie theater. The three sets of friends all wanted to sit in three different rows, as if they didn’t know the grown-ups except when I distributed bags of popcorn and drinks . . . oh, and when our Youngest Boy wanted to hold his Daddy’s hand. After the movie, after they devoured Christmas cookies at our house, played the drums, played video games, sang karaoke and all the friends had gone home, each one of our children, one by one, got angry with The Spouse and I for insisting that it was time for bed when it was an hour-plus past their usual bedtime. Each one of the ingrates told us that we were ruining their lives. Plus we were accused of getting a secret thrill out of bossing little kids around. Nothing like gifts, a hyper-saccharine kids’ movie, time with friends, oodles of sugar and late bedtimes to bring a family together.

(Image from CNN.)

Three for Thursday Returns With: To Freeze or Not to Freeze, the Ghost of Christmas Eve Past and Dragon Vomit

After a hiatus, “Three for Thursday” has returned . . . consider it an early Christmas gift.

Item #1: To Freeze or Not to Freeze

It comes as no shock that trying to have a career and parent young children simultaneously is insanely difficult and makes legions of parents stressed out. It also comes as no surprise that when women strive to climb the career ladder during their childbearing years, they oftentimes find themselves torn. Some want to get to a certain point in their career before having children and then some find that delaying childbearing can make getting pregnant more challenging. Others have children without regard to career concerns and later find that hitting the “pause” button on their work can hurt their careers.

Enter into the fray this piece from the Wall Street Journal by Ronald W. Dworkin, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, about the evolving technology which allows women to freeze their eggs – therefore suspending their fertility — indefinitely while they work on their career. Dworkin wrote:

“Our culture encourages women to pursue high-powered careers. Many women must pursue at least some kind of career: With the divorce rate over 50%, women can no longer rely on the integrity of the family unit to support them. The culture paints a rosy image about career and family. Then biological truth breaks through, by which time these women have lost a decade of their best childbearing years.”

On the newspaper’s working parents blog, “The Juggle” blogger Sara Schaefer Munoz asked her readers whether, when they were younger, they thought that men and women would have the same “career trajectories” through their childbearing years.

Item #2: The Ghost of Christmas Eve Past

I just returned from visiting my first grade son’s classroom for a “holiday” party and, after hearing several mothers discussing the vast number of children who’ve recently succumbed to a vicious stomach bug – striking victims in not only my son’s school, but in my twins’ school as well – my own stomach began to churn. It’s nearly the first anniversary of the Christmas Eve From Hell when, just after I finished eating our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, I fled to the bathroom where I spent the next two days making close friends with my toilet. I missed Christmas and was miserable for days afterward.

I’d been trying to blot that experience from my mind as my family’s Christmas Eve dinner draws near (though I did tell my mother that I can’t bring myself to eat the baked stuffed shrimp she’s planning on making as not enough time has elapsed since The Incident for me to stomach that particular dish yet).

However hearing that there’s a stomach bug going around has sent me into a hand washing frenzy. But it’s hard to wash your hands when your fingers are crossed as you pray that the bug will skip your house this year.

Item #3: Dragon Vomit

Random pediatric comment of the week, uttered by my 9-year-old son after suspiciously eyeing a pan of lasagna his father made: “That looks like dragon vomit.”

At least he’s got a flair for colorful adjectives.

Gestating While Celebritizing

Jennifer Lopez.

Jessica Alba.

Christina Aguilera.

Angelina Jolie.

Britney Spears.

Katie Holmes.

Marcia Cross.

Those are just a few of the names of celebs who’ve become mothers recently or are currently with child.

Starting from the early first weeks when most people try to keep a pregnancy under wraps for fear of miscarrying, paparazzi and celeb/Hollywood dirt diggers try to get the skinny on a potential baby bump that may or may not be growing on a celeb’s mid-section. This has become a virtual obsession that even makes it way from blogs and Hollywood gossip items to newspapers.

For several weeks this fall, for example, the media hounded Lopez – who’s pregnant with twins – about when she was going to announce that she was gestating. Why did we have to know about her pregnancy before she was was ready to announce it? Why have the media become so obsessed with the breeding habits of celebrities? Isn’t there something more compelling to cover?

The latest installment in the national obsession with pregnant celebs features two stories, one involving rumors that a TV star may (or may not) be growing a baby in her womb, and the other is about the 16-year-old sister of a troubled young celeb mother who is pregnant.

Oy to the vey.

For the love of Pete, can’t we just avert our eyes from these celebrity parenting train wrecks and simply leave other star moms and moms-to-be alone and simply worry about our own lives?

(Image from the Associated Press.)

Spoiled is as Spoiled Does

An overwhelming majority of parents polled by Cookie Magazine and AOL agree with the following statement: “Today’s kids are spoiled.” We’re talkin’ 94 percent of those 1,500 or so Americans polled.

Oh, and only 55 percent think their own kids are spoiled.

Look around at playgrounds, at shopping malls and in family-friendly restaurants. What’s your verdict, is it worse than it’s ever been, and if so, why?

Holiday Madness: When Everything Can’t Get Get Done

Why haven’t I blogged in, what, weeks? I’m going to brazenly pass the buck and blame it on Christmas . . . and Hanukkah . . . and the fact that, when you live in dual-career household while trying to raise small children, it’s virtually impossible to keep up with everything, especially in a holiday season where you celebrate not one, but TWO major religious observances. Seriously.

As Christmas cards started filling my mailbox beginning on the Monday after Thanksgiving (!), the pressure to get our family cards done and mailed has continued to mount. (I wouldn’t open the cards for a while, simply shoved them into a corner in the kitchen because their presence was making me anxious about the fact that I hadn’t yet done ours.) Because I foolishly hand-make our cards – my December essay in Parents and Kids attempts to explain the irrational rationale behind my holiday card mania – and I haven’t had sufficient time to work on them. I’m way, way behind, even by my lax standards.

Hanukkah, which we celebrate in my interfaith family, is over. Yet in my house, we’re still pretending as though it’s on-going. Why? I completely forgot about lighting the candles on Monday night. When the kids remembered that we hadn’t lit the menorah, just as I was putting them to bed way past their bedtime, they went nuts. Of course they didn’t remember about the candle lighting either and The Spouse, who’s been working late into the evening many nights recently, wasn’t around to remember to light the candles either. Regardless of what the calendar says, we’re going to keep lighting the candles until we’ve officially celebrated all eight nights.

What about our Hanukkah cards, which I hand-make at the same time I do the (*ahem* not even started) Christmas cards? Well, my Jewish friends and family members, we’re going to pretend that the Festival of Lights is a tad longer this year.

I haven’t finished Christmas shopping. I haven’t baked Christmas cookies with the kids. I only got our outdoor Christmas lights fully up and operational yesterday (we had one of the few dark, light-less homes on my street). I’m still trying to figure out what to get The Spouse as he’s one of the hardest and pickiest people for whom to shop. In a weak moment two weeks ago (my mind clouded by the medicine I’d taken to battle back against a cold that wouldn’t end), I allowed my eldest son Jonah to convince me to buy a gingerbread house kit. Yeah, we’ve got time to stop everything else and put together a gingerbread house which likely won’t make it a full 24 hours without getting crushed or irreparably damaged by my 6-year-old son.

My kids just wrote their letters to Santa this past weekend, which means they just decided what single present they want from the big guy. (They didn’t want to give Santa a list of choices.) Jonah, clever child that he is, wrote his letter in secret, then sealed it and taped it closed and has been “checking” on it for the past few days — shocker, I haven’t yet mailed the letters — to make sure that neither The Spouse nor I have peeked at its contents. (Yes, it’s a test.)

Oh, and did I mention that Jonah’s indoor soccer league is extremely active (two, count ‘em, TWO games this past Saturday, scheduled several hours apart by the genius scheduling gods). My 9-year-old daughter’s basketball team has a game a week, one practice and a separate “open gym” time. AND The Spouse coaches both teams.

My father-in-law’s 75th birthday party – which most of his grown children are throwing for him – is this weekend. (We have neither purchased a gift nor bought the ingredients for the food we’re supposed to bring and make.)

My father just had knee replacement surgery, yet I’ve only been able to take the kids to see him once since his operation.

My daughter has a sleepover birthday party this weekend (she’ll attend after her grandfather’s party) for which I had to scurry to pick up a gift.

A church religious class just decided to do a holiday gift swap which will take place after the nativity play where my 9-year-old son will play the role of an inn keeper who denied Mary and Joseph lodging on the first Christmas Eve.

Despite my repeated distribution of salt all over our icy driveway and front walk, there remains a slushy snow/ice mixture that I haven’t had time to shovel away. And since The Spouse has been out most nights or is coaching one of his kids, the mess just refreezes every night. (I’m praying it will melt away.)

Our pantry is precariously barren. (How many consecutive nights can I serve breakfast for dinner before the child nutritionists descend upon my house?) Throw in the fact that it’s the end of the semester where I teach and the pressure is on to read dozens of papers and calculate grades, it’s no wonder I feel buried with stuff, domestic and professional.

In the winter issue of Hybrid Mom Magazine, a publication that emphasizes stories for down-to-earth moms both at-home and working, I wrote one of the lead stories on how to embrace the “Reason for the Season,” how to try to chill out and streamline your holiday “To Do” list while being realistic about what parents of small children can truly accomplish during this very busy time of year. I interviewed several women for the article, many of whom offered very sage advice. Unfortunately, I haven’t heeded a word of it.

So I face this choice: Either I just chill and let go of some of these tasks (For example, do we have to make everyone’s favorite Christmas cookie?), or I’m going to be in a distinctly bah humbug/Grinch state of mind until January while attempting to get everything done and done well. For the sake of my family and my own sanity, I chose Option #1.