Mon dieu! Some news (well, okay, not news so much as opinion) from across the pond: French moms are not just thinner than their American counterparts; they’re meaner, too. (And Amy Chua thought she had cornered the market on tough.)

A friend just sent me this link, to a 2007 article in an U.K. paper (the Telegraph) by an American journalist married to a Frenchman. Janine diGiovanni may (inexplicably, to my ears) describe non-French mamans as “Anglo-Saxon” mothers (who, me, Anglo-Saxon? My people are from Sicily!), but she makes excellent observations (some of them uncomfortable to modern American parents’ ears, if not mine) about the parenting differences she sees among her Paris contemporaries.

Here’s what she says, essentially:

• French mothers are less squishy than American moms; they are strict, unafraid of enforcing rules. “It’s always shocking,” a friend of diGiovanni’s is quoted as saying in the article, “to hear the shrill ‘ça suffit’ that is the refrain of all French mothers. They speak with sharpness that is alarming to the uninitiated.”  (ça suffit means “that’s enough!”, and you don’t have to wonder — I say it all. the. time.).

• French mothers prefer their adult lives to remain separate from their children’s lives — which is why you don’t see precocious tots dominating the dinner party with cute tricks involving mashed potatoes and the new song they learned in preschool. The kids are in the other room, already fed, while Maman and Papa entertain guests. There is something, explains the French godmother of diGiovanni’s son, called l’heure de l’adulte, which is when the children “…go away and leave us alone.” (We don’t have many dinner parties in these parts, but we do have our own version of l’heure de l’adulte. It’s called bedtime. Now.)

• French parents believe more firmly than American ones in institutions, such as schools. When petite Sophie is in the ecole, the teacher’s in charge, and the parent steps back. Nothing like our superinvolvement in our kids’ school lives, non? The kind where you know in which cabinet the kindergarten teacher keeps the extra Elmer’s?

• French parents don’t appear to be worried about stifling their children’s creativity with strictness; in contrast, they seem more concerned with setting boundaries than with letting them run out of bounds. This, to me, resonates as more “mean” than letting your child eat sand to learn the invaluable lesson that he shouldn’t eat sand (an anecdote mentioned in the article) or having an old woman in the park pinch your kid’s ear and say, “listen to your mother!” (also related by di Giovanni). It’s hard for American parents to place the enforcing of boundaries — in the service of some future time when your kid will need them — in front of the almighty pursuit of creativity. I’m not against creativity, for the record; but I’m not convinced that setting boundaries, sticking to rules, and even allowing the occasional real or metaphorical pinched ear is mutually exclusive with it.

Because, as di Giovanni appears to conclude (she waffles a little, but I’m going to say she concludes), French children seem, to her, to be better behaved than American ones, with their mashed potato creations interrupting the l’heure de l’adulte. She writes:

But as a result, you find beautifully brought up children, and many of my French friends who are parents will argue endlessly that instilling discipline and setting boundaries is the way of showing the utmost love.

Isn’t that the whole point? That it is precisely our utmost love for our children that does (or should) prompt us to think less about immediate comfort, and more about, you know, the future?

I already packed one of these. So it's a "no" on buying lunch today.

Who’s afraid of saying “no” to their children?

Just this morning, literally five minutes after watching me pack his and his brother’s lunchboxes for school, my seven-year-old asked me, “Can I buy lunch today?”

Now, I could have looked at him, and realized in that split second that saying “No, honey, not today, Mommy already packed your lunch and you bought lunch yesterday” would elicit a moan and a whine and simply given in (the lunch in the box would keep until later; I could eat his turkey sandwich and he could have the grapes and the yogurt for an after-school snack).

But I’m not afraid of “no.”

In this case, the “no” came with some lessons. First of all, I’d already packed the lunch, and he needs to understand that my efforts and time have worth that he should respect. Second of all, school lunch, while not expensive (it just went up to $1.75 in his school, in fact) isn’t free, and as I’ve tried and will continue to try to get across to him, my wallet is not a magic dollar dispenser. Third of all, I have fresh and perfectly good food in the house, so I’m not going to buy lunch when I have already-paid-for food right here at home.

These are not always easy lessons for a second-grader, but they are no less valuable ones for him to take on.

But I think that the most valuable lesson of all is this:

I can (and will) say no; he can (and will) grumble about it; and he can (and always does) get over the temporary disappointment of the no.

That last part is what is often overlooked — the temporary disappointment. We’re afraid of meting out dispappoinments, of being the heavy, of saying no kindly, matter-of-fact-ly, and — here’s the kicker — without apology.

Perhaps counter-intutively, the holiday season is the perfect time to practice your “no.” When easy yeses are everywhere, try it out. No, honey. Not today. Not this week. Not this year.

No sounds awfully tough, but it’s actually one of the most tender things we can give our kids.

The lessons are valuable, they last — and (surprise!) they make the “yeses” so much sweeter.

(Oh, and by the way? Chapter 6 of my book, Mean Moms Rule, is all about the “no.”! May I humbly suggest you preorder your copy now?)

Try it!

[photo: Everystockphoto.com]

One major thing I struggle with is teaching my sons to be grateful for what they have. It’s not easy — as I’m sure many of you would agree with. It’s hard to just say “be grateful!” Reminds me of a story my mother used to tell about how her own mom would prod her to eat up her dinner (my mother didn’t like anything and would subsist on milk alone if she could; she didn’t even like sweets), saying, “Be glad you have this food! There are children starving in India!” To which my mother would, quite naturally for a child, reply: “So send it to them!” She wasn’t trying to be clever. Sending the food seemed practical to her. Being grateful for it? Too abstract for most little children’s minds.

But it is an essential concept to teach, because children who aren’t grateful for what they have can potentially become what no parent wants: selfish, grabby, whiny. And it doesn’t stop there, says my guest poster today, children’s book author Phoebe Lee: “If they aren’t grateful children, they will be incapable of becoming grateful adults. Gratitude is often the difference between a happy person and a dissatisfied person, and we all want our kids to grow up happy.”

Lee writes about ADHD, children’s sleep issues, and parenting from a Buddhist perspective.  She is the author of the new children’s picture book, “Monkey Mind: A Captivating Bedtime Story for Children” and the accompanying children’s audio, “Monkey, Fish, Dragon.” Here’s her book:

When she asked if I wanted a guest post about teaching young kids to be grateful, I leaped (gratefully!) at the chance. Here’s what she has to offer:

Three Ways to Teach Young Kids to be Grateful:

Delay Gratification.

Easy come easy go. Waiting for objects of desire teaches a child not to expect instant gratification. A child that cannot wait for their next toy or treat can become very difficult to deal with.  Fits and tantrums often set in. Do not reward your child with a gift for such behavior. Ignore the behavior, and provide an immediate consequence. An ungrateful child usually discards his or her favorite toy for the next as if the first were disposable. He or she will never truly value anything at this rate. What’s worth having is worth waiting for, is the lesson to teach, here. Don’t let your child grow up trying to keep up with The Joneses. It is helpful if he is encouraged to save up money or earn money himself for the next gadget; there’s nothing that helps children appreciate items more than having had to work for them.

Make Gratitude Lists

For younger children this can be presented as a game. Ask your children what they like about themselves and their lives. Do this often to encourage this healthy habit. For older children, suggest they make a daily list of everything they enjoy in their lives. When they are having a bad day you could remind them of the little things that they often take for granted.  Remind them to include not only the material things:  A good friend who sat next to them in the lunchroom at school, the time to finish that really good novel, the way the birds chirp right before dawn.

Do Charity Projects

There is always someone less fortunate than us, regardless of the circumstance in which we find ourselves. Find a group or person and offer your time or your valuables. Make a project out of it to express the value of this behavior to your child, and if possible, do it alongside your child so that they also enjoy the benefits. Do this consistently during holidays or throughout the year so that your child will adopt being charitable as a part of his or her lifestyle. A good time to help others is when you are feeling down yourself. Teach this to your child. When you are helping another you are no longer in a state of self-pity and will gain perspective. There are many organizations that need support. Pick one and educate your child about the situations of others. Show him or her that even a child can make a difference in the world. The act of charity will also provide your child (and you) a sense of purpose and belonging.

There is nothing more pleasing than seeing a contented child, except, seeing your contented child offering a helping hand to someone less fortunate than they are. Imagine less complaining and a new child emerging! Follow these steps toward a grateful child.

Monkey Mind author Phoebe Lee

Visit Phoebe Lee’s blog and follow her book tour at Monkey Mind Book. And then tell me, how have you been frustrated by teaching kids gratitude, and how have you managed to do it?

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!

So he's posing with Peeps in his mouth. He's a strict dad. Really.

This morning, I got to talking to a woman at my gym. Normally, I don’t talk much at the gym (too focused on getting in, working out, and getting out!), but as it happens we were hanging around waiting for a Zumba instructor who never showed up! (Grrr… does she not know that I only just became addicted to Zumba, and now she’s messing with my high?).

Turns out this other frustrated Zumba-er was annoyed for a similar reason as me. Well, a similar one aside from the addiction thing (didn’t ask her about that; wouldn’t be seemly, right?). She was pissed off and antsy because she works at home. Like me! So we got into a conversation about how every time you step away from your home-office desk during your designated work hours, the background drum beat of your divided life starts to pick up in your inner ear, and you hear: you are not making money/you are slacking off/you have to pick up the kids in 10, 9, 8, 7…

She asked me what I did at home. When I told her, including mention of this very blog, and the book I’m working on (that is, when I’m not heading to the gym for my Zumba fix), her eyes lit up. Mean, it seems, suited her fine (“I’m European, you might have noticed my accent,” she said, as though the fact that she’s Hungarian is explanation enough for a devotion to discipline.)

But it didn’t, she said, suit her husband in quite the same way. Their daughter, who is two, can bend her father right around her little finger. While this mom could clearly imagine the end result of all this finger-wrapping and giving in to whining (a future, only about 14 or 15 years on, when this same little girl, now possession of a driver’s license, takes the keys without bothering to listen to the “hold on there!” coming from behind her), all the father saw was an occasion to say, “oh, just this once.”

But just this once turns into just this every-single-time. And then you get the defiant kid with the keys. Okay, maybe you get that anyway — the scary part of having teens, so say moms I know dealing with that age, shudder — but my point is the whole journey is a lot harder if you’re battling not just your whinging toddler-future teen, but the person who helped you create her.

“What we do now has an impact on how they are later!” my gym-friend said.

Um, re-phrase the subtitle of my book for me, why don’tcha?!

On my way home (after running on the treadmill without my iPod because I’d come for Zumba, not solo running!), I thought about how my husband and I are on the same page when it comes to how tough, or strict, or authoritarian, or whatever you want to call it — mean, let’s say — we naturally tend to be. If I say “no, no more Wii today,” there’s no running off to daddy for a different verdict, because they ain’t gonna get it.

(In fact, even before I had kids, I was prescient enough to realize that my future kids would not have that play-one-parent-off-the-other luxury, knowing my husband as I did. He’s German, after all. Joke, relax. I mean, yes, he is German but that’s not why he’s tough.)

Also, he manages to be both tough and awfully soft. He’s far more likely than me to, say, play endless rounds of Uno Attack or some made-up game with a Nerf basketball in the dining room that only he and James know the rules to. In fact, I do wonder if, like my Hungarian gym friend’s husband, he’d be flummoxed and turned to flan if he had a daughter batting her eyelashes at him. I doubt it. My father was a softie with me — the original Daddy’s Little Girl — but that doesn’t mean he bent rules. Like, ever.

So here’s my question: Are you and your partner on the same page when disciplining your children? What’s that led to, discipline-wise, in your house?

Since I wrote my post last week on The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the parenting memoir by Yale University Law professor and writer Amy Chua, it’s gotten even more press — good, bad, backpedaling, explaining. I’ve read a lot of it, not all of it — but I did read the book, as promised.

One superficial observation: Wow. It’s short. Some of the chapters are only a few pages long. She claims she wrote the whole thing, save the last chapter or two, in a lightening-fast 6 or 8 weeks. Um, it shows. Not that it isn’t technically well-written, and it even has a few flashes of humor. But what it doesn’t have a whole lot of is insight.

In my previous post, my thoughts were based on that one Wall Street Journal excerpt, which triggered the kind of response newspapers kill themselves for (well, kill themselves if they weren’t already dying. Ba da bum! I made a journalism joke!). It was also the kind of response — a gajillion online comments, thousands of blog posts (mine included), and, within a few more days, many more articles — that authors and their editors and publicists dream about, the kind that sticks what might have been a kind of “eh” book onto the New York Times bestseller list (where it now sits).

Having now read the book (did I mention it’s short? With narrow pages with even narrower margins? Didn’t take me long, and I was in the middle of reading another book at the same time), I can say this with certainty:

• The WSJ, or Chua, or likely the both of them together, chose the most incendiary portion of the book to excerpt. Duh.

• The WSJ editor wrote a title — “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” — he or she knew would provoke even more reaction. I know this; I used to write article heads for a living. You want people to read the piece.

• Chua is justified in claiming that her book is not a how-to parenting book, but is instead a memoir. (Despite the fact that articles about it (and, okay, its own back jacket copy) detail “how to be a Chinese Mother.”

• Methinks Chua may not be 100% clear on what makes the most satisfying memoir, which is true, palpable personal transformation. She never really, truly transforms. It’s more like she gives in — wisely, and not even cynically — when she realizes her choices are either to remain hyper-tough with her obstinate younger daughter, Lulu; or to lose the girl entirely.

I still maintain, though, that at root Chua’s approach can be a good one. I think being in control of what your children do, for example, is a good thing. I also think that saying to your kids, sometimes, in certain situations, things like “because I said so” is smart. It’s undervalued, not said enough anymore.

The battles Chua describes with Lulu over the violin were awful in some scenes. There were times I was shaking my head, such as the story of visiting Budapest, where Lulu and her older sister Sophia would play in a concert, billed as “prodigies from America.” I’m sure the girls would have killed no matter what, so it seemed way over the top that Chua insisted on hours of practice, with a local, hard-ass teacher, no less, right after they landed. What about jet lag? What about just hanging out in a foreign city for a while?

But those cringe-worthy scenes overshadow the fact that Chua knew – the way a mother just knows — that Lulu loved the violin. Loved it, but would have quit simply because she is a stubborn child. Surprise! Children can be stubborn! So what’s wrong with a mother saying, “listen, I’m not letting you quit. You can hate me now, and thank me later, ‘K?” Of course, as the Budapest story illustrates, she goes overboard. Like, by a lot. But I still (throw tomatoes if you like) don’t think she’s a bad mother. She’s the mother she is, and if what she’s said in the interviews is true (that her daughters and husband approved every word she wrote), her family probably also thinks she’s simply the mother she is, the one they have, and love.

I’ve been thinking about choices lately, the choices we make for our children, the choices I continue — in typical hard-ass mean-mom fashion — to make for my sons, in the firm belief that they’re just not all that good at making choices for themselves. Isn’t that obvious? Isn’t it clear as day that a 6- and and 8-year old boy are going to choose hot dogs for dinner and SpongeBob on TV all day (with regular breaks for Wii Sports) if the choice were all theirs? Yes, I see that there’s a long stretch between a parent choosing dinner fare and TV access for their kids, and compelling a child to practice piano or violin 5 hours a day.

But in another sense, it’s perhaps not so long a stretch, because it’s an attitude.

Some years back, I caught an episode of a thankfully short-lived parenting reality show on TV. The premise was that a parent would present a vexing parenting issue to the cameras, and then a coffee-klatch gaggle of fellow-parents, plus an “expert,” would offer advice. On this one show I watched a mom of three young girls was aaaaallll about giving her children choice. About everything. All the time. It was so ridiculous I naturally suspected that her tactics were exaggerated for the reality-show cameras. (Ya think?) Her days were a mess — she was preparing three different breakfasts, down to the girls choosing what plates they wanted. And it was all, she said, in an effort to plump up her children’s self esteem. She wanted to know, if she was so sincere and careful about giving her daughters their own choice, why her house was in near total chaos most of the time? Why weren’t they happy that way?

It was crystal clear to me, though, that these three girls were crazed and disrespectful and holy terrors not because they were bad kids, but because they were at a loss for what else to do, how else to react. It was clear that they were dying to be told what to do, to be told that they had to wear their winter coats that day, or finish their homework now, not later, or that while they could choose if they wanted their waffles plain or with syrup, breakfast on this busy morning was going to be waffles.

Not that they would have said it was limits and rules they wanted. No self-respecting under-21-year-old would admit, or even cognitively apprehend, that they want and need their parents’ guidance. But they do.

The Tiger Mom knows that. She knows it like crazy (with several meanings of “crazy” implied), but she knows it.

Have you read the book?

Last week, an article in the Wall Street Journal caused a major stir in the parenting world. Amy Chua, a law professor, author, and mother just published a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and the blogosphere is having spasms over her and her stories of forcing her daughters to practice piano for hours on end, bending their little fingers to her will, or so it would seem; of banning such normal American pastimes as playdates, sleepovers and school plays; of commanding (demanding?) nothing less than ideal grades.

Yeah, let’s just say that she’s generating a lot of horror and hand-wringing, a lot of discussion on what she may be squelching in her daughters, such as self-esteem and creativity. Love her, hate her, agree a little bit, secretly, while also feeling more than a little squeamish … seems everyone has an opinion.

Want to know mine? Me, I think I’m a little bit in love with Ms. Chua. For a few reasons. But first, a few facts some might not be aware of. First, she does not mean her book to be prescriptive; it’s not “How to Be a Chinese Mother and Raise A+ Kids.” Instead, it’s a memoir of her own parenting journey, and like all journeys, there are ups and downs along the way, and she changes and grows as time passes. Second, she’s really quite funny. And also, she loves her children, believes in them, an awful lot. I’ve heard a couple of radio interviews with her, and I have to say, I kind of want to meet her for lunch, and not to throw tomatoes at her.

She talks about being a Chinese mother as, she says, a broad term for the kind of parent (often immigrant parents) who expect her children to succeed. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with, as she says, assuming your child’s strength, rather than tiptoeing around his vulnerability? Now, that’s right the heck up my alley; assuming that your child is competent and smart means you expect him to act that way, to live up to that belief. Meanwhile, presuming vulnerability (his self-esteem is so fragile that he needs you to cheerlead his every effort and post his every scribble on the fridge and give him an ice cream sundae as a reward for a B grade) is what leads, or is one of the things that leads, to coddling. To creating children who, when they are well past the age of sleepovers and playdates, can’t make their inflated dreams match the harsh reality of the world.

The Wall Street Journal piece got a lot of negative comments and reactions thanks to a story Chua relates about her younger daughter, Lulu, and her love/hate relationship with the piano. In a story that can be tough to read for parents steeped in the belief that your child should lead the way while you clap for him on the sidelines, Chua describes sitting for hours with her 7-year-old, compelling her, without a break, to work on a tough piano piece until she gets it right.

What a lot of people missed in that story, in my opinion, is the fact that Chua loves her children deeply and emotionally (she’s far from cold or unfeeling); and that she understands them, what motivates them, what works and what doesn’t. She knew this approach would work, that her daughter would get to the point where she loved the piece she was playing precisely because she had worked so damned hard to master it. She also knew that if she didn’t push that hard, her child would have never felt that rush of mastery.

During a recent radio interview, Chua pointed out that if she had been that strict with Lulu and was also a cold, unfeeling, abusive parent, her efforts would quite obviously  have backfired. But she’s not. She simply expects a lot.

When did it happen that expecting a lot — and not backing down on that — became awful?

Chua described, in a recent radio interview, how her husband (raised in a liberal Jewish household) laments not having learned to play a musical instrument. His parents, he said, gave him a choice: do you want to take piano lessons, or play with your friends? What do you think a 7-year-old will say? Yes, yes, piano! Make me practice! Or will he go out and play with his friends and only regret that his parents didn’t sit his butt on the bench when he’s deep in his 40s?

To me, it simply doesn’t come down to the choice between showing your child unconditional love on the one hand, and pushing them hard to reach their potential on the other. I love my children unconditionally, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let them slack off for the sake of their self-esteem.

Sometimes kids have to be pushed hard. If I let them, my kids would bargain their way out of piano practice (both take lessons), or only do it every few days, or only for the absolute minimum. I don’t have future prodigies on my hands, I know that already. But I compel them, absolutely, to sit down and play their pieces and do their scales over and over because otherwise, as I tell them, they are wasting their own time and my money by taking lessons. Harsh? Thanks.

What do you think?

Order the pineapple pizza if that's what you like (even if the kids don't)

You know what’s funny? It’s not most sitcoms (ba-da-bum!). What’s funny is that after the last time I wrote about the CBS TV sitcom “The Middle,” my friend Sally wrote to agree with me, and also to wonder how it was that I even managed to sit down for an 8pm show. Sally and I both have young children, and yes, watching a show that starts at 8, which is the boys’ basic bedtime, is tough (and no, we don’t have a DVR. Yet. It’s on my list. Thanks in advance for that suggestion).

But it’s not impossible. And that small effort is part of a larger determination to not let my life, or my husband’s, be run over by small feet and sticky fingers.

And that brings me to my report on last week’s episode of “The Middle,” which totally let me down. I was so high on the Hecks a few weeks back, when Mike, the dad, stepped up to the plate and told another dad that, in fact, it was his job to tell his mean tween daughter that her manipulations and deceit were bad form. It would have been so typical-sitcom if he’d laughed it off, but he didn’t; he took the other guy to task. Go Mike, I thought.

But the other night, Mike and Frankie Heck dropped the ball. I won’t belabor the recap, because I don’t want anyone to think I’m a TV junkie (as if) or obsessed with this particular show in a way that would be unseemly (I mean it’s not HBO or anything!). But here’s what happened: the Heck parents realized that they were doing way too much for their three kids, at the expense of their own comfort and pleasure. They only ever ordered the kind of pizza the kids liked, they ran around on their lunch hours getting supplies for school projects, they lived without first-rights access to their own TV remote, for heaven’s sake! So they decided to take back their house and their lives, getting pizza with pineapples and watching what they wanted, kids be damned.

It was way over the top, natch, especially when Frankie rid the family room of any trace of her children and refused to drive her youngest to the library. And also naturally, they gave up soon enough, specifically when they realized that not driving their bookworm kid to the library meant he was spending too much time online, and had already made plans to meet in the park “a guy he was chatting with online.” Uh, oh. Bad parents. Bad!

It was funny, sure, a little bit. But when Frankie, the mom, after capitulating once again, tells a random mom with a baby that she should start now to not give her baby every little thing he ask for, to not subsume herself in his needs (“It’s too late for me, but you can do it!”), I felt so… let down.

She missed the point, the show missed the point. You can drive your son to the library and make a point of buying the polka-dot umbrella for your daughter’s dance routine without giving up your own life. Mike and Frankie compel their eldest to babysit one night so they can go to see a cheesy 80s cover band at a local bar mid-week. And why shouldn’t they? Why is the choice — bear with me, I’m talking now about all of us in the real world now, not just these fictional TV people — between doing everything for our kids and never doing anything for our kids?

Which brings me back to my friend Sally and the modern-day wonder of my husband and me sitting down at 8pm every so often because, damn it, we want to watch a show. We get the bath/books/bed routine done ahead of time, and shoo the little darlings off to their beds by 7:59. The little guy usually falls asleep pretty soon after, and I don’t care if the older guy stays up puttering in his room for a while (what he actually does in there is the subject of another post; when I check in later I try to piece his routine together with clues like an overturned piggy bank, scribbled notes taped to the walls, and which books are face-down on the floor around his bed), as long as he’s not in my hair. Hey kid, after bedtime, unless you’re sick, I’m clocked out (as much as parents ever clock out).

At 8pm, the remote is mine. Minus the remote, which hadn’t been invented yet, this is how my parents rolled. They did an awful lot for us — you know, like paying the mortgage on time, feeding and clothing us, and extras like driving us to dance lessons and dates and taking us to really high-class resorts in the Catskills with actual running water and ice cream for dessert. But their parental self-sacrifice did not include cooking to order for us or doing our homework (though my dad was aces at helping with big projects, like the shampoo he helped my sister make for a science fair, or the Inca terrace-farming project he all but created for me).

Listen, I’ll certainly order half the pizza plain, but the rest is going to have something totally icky on it, like eggplant.

I’ve now been writing Confessions since May of 2009, when I tapped out my first post, The Birth of a Mean Mom. In reading over random past posts this morning, I felt the urge to re-read a couple of favorites, just to see if I still agree with myself (for those of you who are not writers: writers do this all the time. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I do still agree with myself ).

So, as 2010′s clock runs down, I thought I would share seven of my favorite posts from the last year.

In January of 2010, I wrote a post called Spoiled Rotten, in which I wonder whether the modern parenting penchant for doing every little thing for our kids (because we want to coddle them, because it’s faster, because it’s easier) might in fact backfire on our kids later, when they expect things to be done for them (and are quite naturally disappointed), and when they don’t have the skills to do things for themselves. As I wrote:

Then there’s the other kind of spoiling, which to me is far, far more insidious. It’s the kind of spoiling that encompasses everything from the sense of entitlement that grows like a cancer in homes when kids get everything they want without a moment of having to wait, or save, or consider whether they need it; to the lack of respect that’s bred in families where kids are not required to speak kindly to each other or the adults around them, or where manners aren’t enforced; to homes in which there are no rules, no clear sense of who’s in control. That spoils kids because it slows their progress toward maturity.

In April 2010, it was bullies, in a post titled Bullies, Bad Boys and Mean Girls: When Do Parents Get the Blame? I was upset and disturbed by the story of the young girl driven to suicide by bullying (this was before the recent media attention paid to bullies targeting homosexual kids and teens, but it’s all part of the same sad continuum). And I wanted to know:

…where are the parents?

Now, I don’t believe that parents of middle- and high-school kids can be as savvy about what their kids are doing as, say, I can. But I do believe that we all, as parents, should start as we mean to go on. I’m constantly walking a fine line between wanting to know what’s going on in my sons’ lives, the part that exists outside the boundaries of our home, and letting them be free to make friendships and deal with the sometime fallout of those friendships. And I plan to continue that, as best I can. I don’t plan to give up, and I think a lot of parents do.

Moving on to May 2010 –  appropriately for the month dedicated (supposedly) to mothers and motherhood — I wrote a couple of posts that zero in on mother-y feelings. The first is Let’s Tell the Truth About Mother’s Day, in which I make my case against treacly sentiments about mother-love, triggered by one of those Facebook status lines one was meant to copy and paste to “prove” how they loved their children. As I wrote:

I tell you, Mother’s Day or not, I refuse to rely on someone else’s words, on words that only graze the surface, or on words that — most dangerous of all — turn mother love into something false and a little bent out of shape. Mother love isn’t flowers in a field; it’s messy and angry and crazy (like me!).

The second May post, You Can’t Always Get (The Kid) You Want, is about how mothers all have to — if they’re honest — deal with the fact that what we imagine about motherhood, about what sort of child we’ll have, doesn’t mesh with the reality of the kid we actually get. Here’s what I said:

It’s heartbreaking not to get the child that you want. These longings, these things you imagine, they are less about the child himself (he’ll be smart, he’ll be gorgeous, he’ll be a good friend to many, he’ll be a wonderful father or the person who finally cures cancer), but about you. What you imagined you’d be doing with your child when he is one, or five, or 11 or 21.

In July 2010, it was all about happiness. When I wrote In Does Being  Mom Make You Happy?, I had just read a New York Magazine article on the subject of parents and happiness. Do we go into this adventure expecting to be made happy by it? I said this:

…while I expected that I would feel pride in his being, joy in the sight of his face and a renewed sense of being needed and wanted, purely physically at first, but psychically, too, as I raised this human being; while I anticipated that I would fall madly in love with my son and any other children who followed him out of my body, it honestly never, ever occurred to me that he would make me happy. Or that parenthood would be all joyful, or even, I don’t know, as much as 25% joyful. I knew it would be a lot of shit (literally, at first), a lot of snot, a lot of laundry, a lot of money, not a lot of sleep, not enough sex (in the early months and years), and other scary and amorphous non-happy-making things later.

Jumping forward to last October, I got into a contemplative mood, after hearing about the death of a mother in my town. In Hail Mommy: A Requiem for a Lost Mother, I struggle –  not for the first time — with the sadness of potential loss that comes with the whole package of parenthood. As I wrote back them:

The one thing I am absolutely sure of is that I won’t soon get the image out of my head of Alexa’s mom in that class last spring, her blond hair precise and neat, her hands folded in her lap, facing the hardest moment a mother is likely to face with such composure. Hers were the only dry eyes in the room. Maybe she’d cried it all out already, or saved her tears for when she was alone. Or maybe she knew something that I resist understanding but know I must learn: That to raise your children, you have to be open to the pain of knowing you may not be able to finish the job.

And in November 2010, I gave a shout out to a fictional dad, a sitcom parent who didn’t take the laugh-track easy way out, in “The Middle”: A Sitcom Dad Actually Gets it Right. I wrote about how I was surprised — and pleased — to watch a half-hour mass market TV show in which the father not only isn’t a thinly-drawn dope, but also steps up to the parenting plate. He declares, in an episode that involves tween girls being mean to each other, that in fact it is a parent’s job to tell their kids when they’re being, you know, idiots:

…he [Mike Heck, the dad in "The Middle"] said what he needed to say to Mr. Shannon’s Dad: When kids are headed down a path that’s going to make them mean, and a bully, and a braggart — and they sure as hell might; sometimes they’re idiots, right? — you say something. Because that’s our job.

And this has been my job (well, part of my job!) for the past year. I’ve enjoyed it and learned from it, and hope you have to. Thank you for your comments — I read and think about all of them. Keep ‘em coming! And let me know if there’s a Mean-Mom subject you think I should write about in 2011. Happy New Year!

So I was just reading this article in the Sunday NY Times this morning, by Pamela Paul, about the phenomenon of bullying drifting down into younger and younger ages. Like kindergarten. Of course, bullying is a huge topic right now, given the rise in attention paid to the tragic stories of bullying leading to suicide in young teens, even though most recent stories are about older kids and homosexuality.

But this issue of the mean streak in kids as young as five? Unfortunately this is not a surprise to me. Mean girls (and boys) were around when I was a kid, and I saw it in action when my older son started kindergarten. My boy, now a third grader, has the double whammy of being on the younger side (this year, he is, to his chagrin, the youngest in his class; he’ll be turning 8 next month, mere weeks before the cut-off date and the turning-9 of some of his classmates), and being — I’ve always been upfront about this — a geek. Don’t get me wrong; I love that my son is geeky. He’s awkward, he’s unathletic (though he’s game to try things), he’s goofy. We were all kids once; I’m sure we all knew kids like Daniel. The kind of kid who only has a handful, even fewer, of friends; the kind of kid adults adore because he’s sweet and polite; the kind of kid girls and younger children feel comfortable around because it would never, in a million years, occur to him to tease anyone. He’s not rough, he’s not tough, he doesn’t run fast, and if he ever tries to insult anyone (his brother, us) he can’t even think of what to say. Mean does not roll off his tongue.

It doesn’t roll off his back, either, and any teasing he’s encountered serves the purpose of confusing as much as hurting him.

Back when Daniel was in kindergarten, I would come to the class about once a month to help out, which usually involved working with two or three kids at a time finish an art project, stuff like like gluing beaks and googly-eyes on a duck. When you sit with two or three 5- or 6-year-olds, you see and hear things. Here’s what I saw: One girl, a full head taller than anyone else in the class, telling a much smaller red-haired girl, “I thought at first you were going to be our friend, but I guess you’re not.” (And in case you’re totally siding with our little redhead, she let go a few zingers of her own, when she wasn’t running around the class like a banshee.)

Then there were two other girls who, upon realizing I was Daniel’s mom, said “Daniel is the best boy. Robbie’s the worst boy, but Daniel’s the best.” They didn’t have to tell me why. I’m sure it was because he was quiet, didn’t go to the kitchen play area and mess up their tablesettings during free play, and did what they said (if they said anything to him at all) on the playground.

But back to this article in the Times. It began with the expected anecdote about a kindergarten girl taunted for wearing “funky” clothes, and the “wrong” shoes (from Payless!), the whole bullying campaign orchestrated by one alpha girl.

But this piece was not just about the mean girls (and boys); it was about their parents. What role, the writer wondered, did they play? A big one, it would seem. After wondering what the culture has to do with the trending-down of meanness to the youngest kids (plenty; just watch TV shows aimed at kids — meanness is the new way to relate, and sarcastic comebacks are not just for grownup sitcoms anymore), the focus of the article turns to the trend toward tacit (or not so tacit) parental approval of what used to be called impolite behavior:

While peer influence is no doubt a factor, veteran teachers and school counselors say parents are often complicit. “Parents think it’s really cute when their 2- and 3-year-olds are doing ‘Single Ladies’ or singing the Alicia Keys/Jay-Z song,” Ms. Wiseman said. “But it’s not so funny at age 8, when they’re singing along to Lady Gaga and demanding a cellphone.”

A kindergarten teacher at one of New York City’s top private all-girls schools observed, “The mean girls are often from mean moms.” She was thrown back by the “venom” among 5-year-olds. They’ll say, “You only read ‘Biscuit,’ and we’re all reading chapter books.” Or, “Why don’t you brush your hair? You don’t look nice today.” And they’re not afraid of getting into trouble with a teacher. “Perhaps they can act that way at home without repercussions,” she said. “It’s untypical of this age group because they’re usually adult-pleasers.”

In certain cases, the parents themselves seem to be pleased. When her daughter Julia was in first grade last year, said Lea Pfau, a mother of two in Sherman Oaks, Calif., one girl threatened that, unless Julia did as she ordered, “I’m going to tell my mommy, and she’ll set up a meeting with your mommy, and you’ll get in trouble.” The girl then orchestrated a series of exclusive clubs in which girls could be kicked out for various infractions. “I was surprised by the fierceness,” Ms. Pfau said. “But I was more surprised at the other parents. Rather than nip it in the bud, they encouraged it.”

At first I was surprised to read this, but then it sunk in. I love that my son is a bit geeky, but other parents might not be so pleased with a child like mine, would be pushing him to like tougher things, to run faster and act more … aware. Sharper. Meaner. There’s a hardness afoot today that depresses me and makes me scared for kids with a softer side. Last year, my son dealt with a boy on his bus and in his class who said mean things to him. When he finally told me (“He said ‘I’m going to kill you,’ but he was just kidding, right Mom?”), and the boys were sent to meet with the assistant principal and the bus driver was told to keep them apart, I was heartsick.

Months later, when I asked Daniel how things were with this boy, he said, “oh, we’re friends now,” which I let him believe was true. Then I finally saw this boy, put a face to a name, along with his mother. And all I could think, of both of them, was “hard.” This boy was good-looking, in that way where you can tell exactly what kind of teenager he’ll be. He had cool-looking sneakers and a world-weary attitude. So did his mom. I wondered what she thought when she got the call from our sons’ teacher about the things he’s said to Daniel.

I can only imagine. And I can only hope that my boy remains the best boy, even if he’s buffeted by bullies from time to time, who tell him his hair is funny, or that he doesn’t run fast enough (both of which he’s heard).

Sure, kids can be mean; they always have been. But surely the response isn’t to foster a meanness in our kids, too — to harden their edges.

What do you think?