Sweet treat as a school reward?

I got a letter from a reader recently that I want to share:

Hi Denise,

I love your blog.  My only child, my son, is 5, and you certainly present an interesting take on many issues that I’ve faced as a mom.

I was wondering whether you had an opinion on the candy culture in elementary schools these days.  It seems like every other day my son is coming home with a lollipop that he got from the treat bag for being good.  Now, I’m delighted that he’s being good, but enough with the sugar already!  I certainly don’t remember being rewarded with candy by my elementary school teachers.  I just think it sends the wrong message on so many levels, when we’re trying to educate young people.

So I’m the “mean mommy” who has to ration the candy at home, and who writes to the teacher to ask whether she could please reconsider her rewards.  Is this an issue you face?

Thanks, and keep up the good writing,
Patricia

Ah, Patricia. Do I have an opinion on the candy culture in elementary schools? Yeah. Little bit of one. More on that in a moment.

First I want to address Patricia’s dismay over the treat-as-reward compulsion. I have two main problems with that. One is the very notion of connecting a tangible reward with either good behavior or good grades. Not a fan. Turns out, neither are experts you might consult on this issue. A lollipop (or a dollar bill or a collection of raffle tickets that lead to this or that prize) as a reward is a misguided means of motivation. It inevitably and dangerously ties a child’s motivation to do well with the promise of a treat. In psychological parlance, that’s external motivation: the child wants to ace the test or demonstrate good behavior not because it feels good inside, but because he wants the prize.

But the second reason is for the sheer fact that kids have access to way too many treats –in school and eslewhere. Not only is the lollipop Patricia’s son’s teacher gives him a poor way to motivate him to continue his good behavior or whatever, it’s probably just piled on to other stuff he’s handed all week long — at a Cub Scout meeting, say, or after his pee-wee soccer game.

Let me be clear that I’m not against treats, cupcakes, candy or anything like that. But without an effort at moderation, we’re all left either sliding down a slippery slope of cake icing, or banning treats outright.

Which is what our school principal tried, last year — she called down a moratorium on any food in the school outside the cafeteria or the scheduled (hopefully healthy) snacks parents packed for their kids. She seemed almost evangelistic about it, but I’m thinking she was as frustrated as I often am: why can’t we find a middle ground between the occasional, well-deserved and happily enjoyed birthday cupcake on the one hand, and total sugar-salt-and-fat-fueled gluttony on the other? Why can some class moms keep the party more focused on a holiday themed activity, with the treat as a side-show; while others can’t resist the candy aisle?

Before the ban, when my older son was in first grade, a Thanksgiving celebration involved making butter by shaking containers of cream and salt. But was that, and the corn muffins on which to spread the homemade, just-like-the-Pilgrims-did-it butter enough? Hell to the no: the class parents also provided a party spread that included — and I am not making this up — everything from cheese doodles and potato chips to Twizzlers and M&Ms. Row by row, the class lined up to fill a paper plate with their chosen goodies. Guess what?! Nearly all of them completely over-indulged in this uniquely American mixture of salty, crunchy, sweet, fatty fare. One of the class moms actually said to me, “Look at all the stuff they’re piling on their plates!”, as though it was some sort of wild surprise that when 6- and 7-year-old kids are presented with a buffet of snack and treat options, they’ll take a little too much of just about everything. Did she somehow think that they’d be discerning, or say things like, “Hmmm, Twizzlers and cheese doodles might leave my tummy a bit upset”, or “better just take one or two things; we’re headed to lunch in 10 minutes anyway!”

Of course they wouldn’t. Duh. You give kids an unlimited buffet of crap, it’s crap they’ll reach for.

But when my younger boy hit first grade, Year One (and, as it turned out, Year Only) of the ban, birthdays involved parents coming in to read — no cupcakes, no goody bags, no treats. And holidays involved a craft or other activities.

They felt the difference, and while having their parents in the room reading a book or helping with a craft was nice, they noticed the lack of celebratory goodies, and they didn’t like it.

Are you surprised to find that neither did I?

I don’t think kids should be handed donuts, cookies, candy, and chips every time they turn around, which is standard operating procedure these days. No one can go to a club meeting, a sport, or a playdate without treats. Even in our religious ed classes, catechists had to be told by the director that they should try their best to refrain from offering snacks during classes. The net effect, though, is that what I’d call legitimate treat times — birthdays, holidays — become less special. I say, get rid of the lollipops or M&Ms or Twizzlers as “prizes” for good spelling or good behavior; get rid of tables groaning with an overabundance of crap at parties; disassociate Girl Scouts and religious ed classes and soccer games from “chance to have a donut.”

Do that, and you can safely leave in place a cupcake on a birthday, or chocolates on Valentine’s Day, or freshly-buttered corn muffins on Thanksgiving.

Now that our principal has bowed to pressure and re-instated food “privileges” in classrooms, we’ll see how things go. Next up is Halloween. The school holds an adorable parade of the costumed classes, and often the teachers and class parents have parties afterward back in the classroom. Can we all reign it in? I’ll let you know in a few weeks…

And Patricia: Continue to fight the good fight!

First day of school, last year. I can't help being organized, but I fear it triggers an excess of impatience.

Well, the title says it, eh? I’m confessing: I’m horribly impatient. (Those of you who know me are, I realize, sitting there rolling your eyes, like, duh.)

I want to be started with things, and then I want things done. When I wanted to become pregnant, I wanted it to happen pronto, and quickly became frustrated and upset when it took longer than immediately (6 months, for the record). I was sure we’d never find a house we liked and could afford (it took 3 months, for the record, though the closing process dragged for another 5 months until moving day because the house we chose, or that chose us, was owned by a guy whose finances were, let’s say, questionable). My husband likes to chide me for this sort of “we’ll never….” impatience, and in general he’s a very patient man (he’d have to be, with me, right?).

But there’s one way in which he’s not so patient, and because it’s the same with me, I worry. We are both impatient with our sons. Not cruelly so, but there are times I feel like we’re both hurrying them along, prodding them, and sighing impatiently when they dawdle or disregard us or otherwise act like, you know, distracted little boys.

True, both of our children know every single button there is and seem to delight in pushing them, over and over, to the point where even the spawn of Gandhi would be stomping around in parental looniness. But I’m finding I don’t enjoy being Mama Looney, and I don’t like seeing my impatient tendencies on display in my normally calm husband’s demeanor.

True, we’re both tired often, and busy all the time. True, too, that when you strive to raise boys who are capable and responsible, you feel (as we do) that slacking off isn’t the best approach. And true, most of all, that I’m constitutionally unable to be loosey-goosey. There are things I can’t compromise on, at least not easily. I’m too organized to be lax, and sometimes that feels like a big burden to carry around.

For example, I can’t just say, “oh, whatever” on certain rules or habits that pertain to sleep and eating (mostly because good sleep and decent meals are, I’m 100% sure, keep my boys healthy and not beyond-the-bounds-of-reason nuts). If there’s a birthday party that starts at noon, I know that food won’t be served until 2pm (I’ve been to enough kid parties to have this fact firmly in mind), so I make sure they eat a little something before they go. Case in point: at a recent amusement-park party with James, he seemed to be the only one who had eaten first. Meanwhile, a friend of his fainted from heat and hunger.

For another example, I can’t just stick a cold piece of toast in my kids’ hands and drive them to school because we were so lackadaisical that we missed the bus. We never miss the bus. I don’t get missing the bus. So I prod them to get up on time, prod them to finish their breakfast (which I also can’t compromise on; there’s a girl at Daniel’s bus stop who has a cookie and a glass of milk for breakfast, which would never fly at our house), prod them to go upstairs at the precise time they need to be upstairs so they have enough minutes to get their dawdling version of tooth-brushing and dressing done), prod them to get their backpacks sorted out. I don’t enjoy the prodding — but I can no more stop it than I can switch eye colors or the genetic lottery of my mom’s bad feet and my dad’s problematic skin.

So I’m impatient. But I’m looking, I’m keenly searching, for ways and times I can be less so, times I can deliberately let the guard down so my kids can see a more carefree mother in front of them. I can’t stop being organized or thinking four steps ahead, and we still won’t miss the bus, be late for piano lessons, or not have clean underwear on hand.

But there have to be ways to let down my guard. Right? Help me out here!

Five years with my sweet baby James.

Today is my baby James’ fifth birthday. My second son. And even though I’m a second child, and my husband is, too, we still managed to infect our darling baby with Second Child Syndrome.

I’m beginning to believe it’s inevitable. All parents are prone, the second time around, to be less awed (and less cowed) by baby number two; you can’t help it. And we got a double whammy, having a second boy, born just weeks from Boy Number One’s second birthday. So same season, too. I went into it with a naive, blase, “I know what this is all about” attitude.

Bzzzzz! Wrong answer.

James, being his own person (as all children are, of course, but I give my little one extra credit for being even more his own person than most, if that’s possible) muscled his way into our hearts in a different way than Daniel. And still he got infected with the syndrome.

Here are the symptoms:

1. Very few photos. Last year, when James was about to graduate from pre-K, the school asked for a baby photo for a DVD montage. And I had to dig for a really good one. Not only had we taken more baby pics of Daniel by a factor of … well, something quite high, but we also have more photos of Daniel at two, when James was an infant. Or, in every picture of James as an infant, there’s Daniel, too.

This is amazing, because I have spent my whole life grousing (in a nice way) about how there are so few pictures of me as a baby. “They’re all on slides,” my parents used to say. Yeah, right. (They were slightly vindicated a few years ago, when they undertook the huge project of organizing and scanning decades of slides. True enough, all the photos of me as a tot are on slides. But there are still a lot more of my sister, three years older. Like, every step she took.)

2. Hazy memory of firsts. What was James’ first word? Beats me. See, when J was born, Daniel had just started speech therapy, since at age two he had yet to say anything other than “za-dah” (not including having said “star” at 16 months, after which he shut up almost entirely). I was a little preoccupied all through James’ infancy, as Daniel went from twice-weekly to thrice-weekly sessions, and then, at 3, to a special-ed preschool. Now nearly 7, Daniel’s an absolute chatterbox, with a quite sophisticated vocabulary and a sometimes jarringly adult manner of speaking. But the upshot is I just don’t remember what word first came out of Jamie’s mouth. Car? Baby? Dada? All I know is the sweet, sweet relief I felt when he started babbling happily in the right way at the right time.

It’s not just milestones, either. It’s the everyday stuff. I had just started freelancing when James was born. He spent a lot of time in a swing in my office. I nursed him not in the just-him-and-me way that I enjoyed with Daniel, but at my computer, in the kitchen while observing Daniel’s speech therapy, in the pediatrician’s office, everywhere.

But that’s the thing with Second Child Syndrome, right? They go along, because what choice do they have?

3. No parties of his own. Very few non-hand-me-down clothes. Very few just-for-him baby toys, stroller, carseat, crib, anything. These are self-explanatory, of course. I, as a second daughter, didn’t have a bicycle bought solely for me until I was 19.

4. A curious disconnect between delaying his babyhood, and pushing him to independence quicker. As for the babying: James was in a crib until he was just past three, whereas we tossed Daniel in a twin-sized bed at 2. (But that has more to do with me being cheap than anything else, now that I think about it. James needed the crib; I wasn’t going to buy another, and my sister gave us a hand-me-down bed. Done). I also still cheat quite a bit and help him get dressed when he knows how to put on his socks and such himself. He’s my baby!

But in other ways, James has moved faster: to a cup from a bottle; to a regular chair at the table from a high chair.

Will you allow me a little indulgence here? I adore my firstborn. No, adore isn’t the right word. I’m still awed and cowed by him, amazed by him, besotted with every inch and freckle of him.

But my James? My baby? My second sweetheart? He is my heart.

Here’s the difference: When I check on my sleeping boys at night, I pull Daniel’s covers up, re-shelve the books he has scattered all over his quilt, stroke his hair, and whisper “I love you” in his ear (he usually wipes his ear with his hand, a trace of irritation in his sleeping face). In James’ room? I have to fight the urge to crawl into his bed.

And that’s the upside of Second Child Syndrome. Too bad he’ll never know.

Last weekend, my sons and I went to an awesome birthday party. It was Daniel’s friend Luke’s seventh birthday. Luke’s a great kid — the boys have been in class together since kindergarten — and he has a pretty cool mom. By which I mean, she throws cool birthday parties. Last year, she hosted a bunch of kids and their parents on a short trip on the Long Island Rail Road to a sweet little old-fashioned ice-cream parlor two or three towns away. We rode the train, played some I-Spy-like games and pored over maps while sporting our “official’ travel badges, had some hot dogs and ice cream, then took the train back home. I had way more fun, as a mom of a partygoer, then I’ve ever had at those giant bounce-house-warehouse parties (they are always over-air-conditioned and loud as a rock concert) or, heaven forfend, Chuck E Cheese, which I’ve dubbed Dante’s 10th Circle of Hell.

This year, Luke’s mom decided to keep it even simpler: just a couple of guests — Daniel, another boy named Jack from their first-grade class, Luke’s little brother Liam, and my little guy, James. The boys ran around the backyard looking for hidden, homemade “rocks” that hid small prizes. They created “jewels” out of rock salt, glue, and food color. They ate pizza. They even made their own ice cream (though patience for the process waned and we ended up with milkshakes, which were just as delicious).

The soiree’s piece de resistance: We made volcanos. Nothing too science-fair-worthy (remember the volcano eruption from The Brady Bunch? Worth watching — I’ll wait!)

What we made was decidedly low-tech: just a small water bottle filled with baking soda, tinted lava-red with powdered fruit punch mix. The kids poured white vinegar through funnels into the bottles, and the mixture foamed and bubbled up over and over.

Here’s one result:

Low-tech lava

It occurs to me that what Luke’s mom planned was an updated equivalent of the typical kid birthday party when we were kids. All the elements were there: a backyard; some games; some food; plenty of chances to get dirty.

Now it’s time for my birthday-party confession: To date, I’ve thrown exactly one kid party for my sons’ birthdays, which adds up to a combined 10 birthdays. (Hey, they never asked.) Their birthdays are close together — in October and November. Daniel’s first birthday just happened to fall the week we moved into our house, so I planned a family party for that. It became a pattern: we generally invite both families over for both boys somewhere in the middle of their birthdays.

But last fall, when Daniel turned 6 and James turned 4, both of them had been to enough kid parties that I started to feel I’d been maybe a little remiss. But I still couldn’t force myself (or afford!) to host two big parties. So I chose to have just one, for them both, in my backyard. A couple plusses and minuses:

• Plus: I rented a bounce house for the day. Minus: It rained on and off, so the kids bounced, then rain inside. Then ran outside. Then inside. (Translation: wet socks, mud)
• Plus: I made my own food (mac-and-cheese, hot dogs, cupcakes) to save money and to avoid the same-old pizza party. Minus: it rained, so we had to jam into my kitchen to eat, rather than on the deck as planned.
• Plus: During a rainy bout, my husband led an impromptu, move-the-living-room-furniture-out-of-the-way Chicken Dance. (That one’s just a plus)
• Plus: My parents helped me clean up after the kids left because… Minus: I decided to also have the usual family party an hour after the kids left. Because I am a glutton for punishment. And it still rained.

I still believe that my impulse — to plan an at-home party — beats the birthday hoopla at all those (expensive!) places, though I think I’d have been better off taking a page from Luke’s mom’s book, and scaling it back by, oh, 10 or 12 kids. This past year, I’ve driven to every bounce-house-warehouse joint and climbing emporium in a 10 mile radius of my house to bring one son or another to a bash. I call it the birthday-industrial complex. Everyone does it, so … everyone does it. It becomes The Right Thing to Do to spend hundreds and hundreds on a party for 2 or 3 year olds, the Right Thing to Do to have a pinata (don’t get me started…), overstuffed goody bags, and favors to top all favors. (I swear, the last favor James got cost more than the gift I bought the kid. Oops!).

Is everyone afraid of at-home parties? Are you?