A long time ago (let’s call it 1984 for sake of argument, because that’s when it was), when high school students received college acceptances or rejections in the mail (you know, with envelopes and stuff) exclusively, I got an acceptance to the school I really, really wanted to attend. When I’d first applied, I hadn’t been all that convinced, but by the time the envelope was in my hands, I was sure. I opened it and was ecstatic. Then I read the part about the financial aid package, which was a big fat zero, and my elation deflated.

It made no sense — my parents had crunched the numbers, and it seemed clear that without some aid, they’d have to mortgage the house, or sell my brother (an idea I semi-floated), to afford it. How could this be?  This was where I felt I was supposed to go, where I’d already imagined myself. It wasn’t just the course offerings; the faculty-student ratio; the quirky history; the long tradition of liberal arts education; the prestige. It was the day the previous fall that I’d been on campus, walking on a path near one of the older academic buildings, with its stone archway, through which streams of the most interesting-looking and fascinating students were walking, that had  grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go. I remember feeling, right at that moment, that I needed to join that stream of students, leave my high-school self behind and find out who I was on that path, under those falling leaves, amid those old, old buildings.

This is the spot, Vassar's Blodgett Hall

In the midst of the crushing realization that I wouldn’t be able to go after all, my father put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes — he looked sad, too — and said, “I don’t think we can do it, honey. I’m so, so sorry.”

My story has a happy ending; it turns out that my father had made an error when filling out (with pencil! On paper!) the financial aid forms; a self-employed businessman, the way he’d interpreted the forms meant he gave the erroneous impression that he had a salaried job and his business, effectively doubling his on-paper income. Once that was discovered and straightened out, a generous aid package came my way and I sent in (by mail! with a stamp!) my deposit to become a member of Vassar College’s class of 1988.

Now my alma mater is all over the news for a grievous error that was made in the recent batch of early-decision acceptances. What happened was not that they rejected hopeful students who should have been admitted; instead, a placeholder letter of acceptance for  applicants was posted on a site they could access, and left there for just long enough to give a number of students the false news that they’d been accepted to their first-choice school. When they checked back (after making phone calls, popping champagne, and, I’m sure, as I had, imagining themselves in their chosen school), they found out the truth, that they were rejected.

It’s important to note, in case you missed the story: It’s not that Vassar revoked any acceptances. The disappointed students were rejected on their merits. The error was in giving them the false impression that they had been accepted, the cyber equivalent of slipping the wrong letter into the envelope. (It should also be noted that Vassar has a financial-needs-blind admissions policy.)

Those students likely had the same crushing feeling that I did when I thought what was mine had been snatched away. Thing is, it never was theirs. I’m not in any way dismissing the seriousness of the mistake. Catharine Hill, Vassar’s president, issued an apology; families were called by admissions staff for more personal mea culpas; application fees were refunded. All of which feels fair from the outside, though it does nothing to take the pain, shame and rage away. However, once a mistake is made, even a really, really horrible one, what else can be done besides sincere apologies, a promise to fix glitchy systems, a public accounting of the mistakes? From the inside, of course, it can feel as though more should be done.

Some of the students and their families, it seems, do want more to be done — specifically, that they should be admitted anyway. If it was theirs once — albeit very briefly, and even if in fact it wasn’t really theirs — it should be theirs again,or it’s equivalent (I’ve seen comments — not from these students, to be clear — on blog posts that suggest the students get their first year at their second-choice college paid for by Vassar). That’s like, as a classmate of mine wrote in a comment on one of the many an opinion pieces about the debacle, the rare times a bank screws up and deposits $10,000 in your account, when you only slid a $1,000 check into the ATM. Even if that little receipt in your hand says you’ve got five figures, you don’t, and it’s no sense arguing with the bank that they “owe” you $9K for their mistake.

I do not dismiss those prospective students’ pain, or their parents’ justified anger over the treatment their kids received. I’d feel it too. I’d be furious, I’d feel like marching into Ms. Hill’s office and demanding she fix it, somehow, in some way that would remove my child’s pain and make it all okay again. But I wouldn’t do it.

I wouldn’t turn my anger and pain on behalf of my child outward and try to retroactively fix a problem in an attempt to make it go away. I contend, in fact, that there’s not a lot of difference between that impulse (“I’ll make that school take my kid! They have to! He deserves it!”) and the parents of much younger kids who argue their children into a better grade on the first-grade spelling test (“His ‘n’ looks like an ‘h’! That’s what he meant! He deserves the perfect grade!”).

The fact is, if you write n’s that look like h’s, you’re going to miss that point on the test, and it’s your mistake to own. Vassar owned its mistake, however clumsily (and you can, and folks have, argued how they could have handled it better, or differently). And now the kids have to bear up under the weight of being briefly granted what they wanted, and then being disappointed to find out that they didn’t make the grade after all.

It is a bitter disappointment to discover that someone else’s mistake can have such an impact on your life. But it’s going to be a long life, and it’s going to be filled with disappointments big and small. It’s going to be filled with problems their parents can’t fix the way they used to mollify a poor showing at the spelling bee with an ice cream sundae, the way everyone got a trophy just for showing up. All the parental impulse to fix, smooth out, or argue away does is to give kids the damaging notion that they deserve what they haven’t earned.

The best thing those kids’ parents can do is to take their kids’ shoulders in their hands, look them in the eye, and say, “I’m so, so sorry honey.”

James, at daycare "graduation," circa 2008

I was just talking over the weekend to an acquaintance, a childhood friend of one of my cousin’s, who’s started her own in-home childcare business. After years as a pediatric nurse, she shifted gears, and good for her! As we talked, I fell into a host of sweet memories of Kozy Korner and Harbor Kids, the (related) daycares my sons attended.

I’ve written about childcare before here (in fact I just re-read that old post and realized I used a photo from the same day as the pic at left!). Most recently I wrote a blog post for DailyWorth.com, this time on the specific subject of of childcare for work-at-home moms, and the value of it as an investment in one’s business. Now, I know plenty of moms who managed at-home work with babies in arms or toddlers underfoot. I get it, and I’ve done it that way, too, on temporary bases here and there. It never suited me.

For me, as for nearly all the freelance/work-at-home/sole proprietors I know, work and life blend and swirl and overlap, and while I can tolerate a large amount of that (I can juggle work so I can get to the holiday concert at school, say; or I can take a break between assignments to defrost some chicken breasts and fold some laundry) it can’t be my main M.O. I needs me some boundaries.

So for this Daily Worth piece, my editor came up with the brilliant idea of having me sit down and calculate how much I’d actually spent on childcare over the years. It’s one thing to write that I feel the cash was worth it (and it was!), it’s another to actually look at the number. (And when you read that number bear in mind: for most of the time I had the boys in childcare, it wasn’t five days a week, apart from the last year James was in preschool — but it also doesn’t take into account the ongoing childcare expense of summer camp).

Here you go — and tell me what you think!

 

In the seven years that my sons were in childcare—a period that began when my oldest was three months old and ended when my youngest hit kindergarten—I shelled out upwards of $80,000.It was worth every penny.

Handing over that last check, I felt as if there should be champagne, or at least balloons falling from the ceiling. Because child care will remain one of the best investments I ever made.

Moms who work from home and use child care often get judged: Can’t she work around the baby’s schedule? Isn’t she throwing her money away? Is it a teeny bit selfish?!

For me, child care was never an indulgence but an investment in my business, no different from a decent computer and reliable broadband.

And it also made me a more relaxed mother. For his first five months, my youngest son was home with me as I launched my freelance career. I had to work—that wasn’t an option. But did I have to work with my baby in a swing, ticking like a metronome behind me?

That $80,000 sounds steep, but I wonder: How much less money might I have earned if I hadn’t invested it? It’s worth pondering…over a glass of champagne.

 

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?

A slightly belated Happy New Year, everyone!

As the next month or two progress, I’ll be hard at work preparing for the publication of MEAN MOMS RULE, WHY DOING THE HARD STUFF NOW CREATES GOOD KIDS LATER. I’m so excited about the possibilities for this fresh, new year, and I hope you are, too.

But before all that, I’m kicking off my 2012 blogging with a guest post from a writer and friend, Kayt Sukel, whose new book, DIRTY MINDS: HOW OUR BRAINS INFLUENCE LOVE, SEX, AND RELATIONSHIPS, published by Simon and Schuster, was released last week. I was privileged to be there (sort of) at the creation, having read Kayt’s proposal before she even sold the idea. I knew she had a winner with the idea: the neuroscience of love. Genius! Here’s the (very cool-looking) cover:

Now, I can guess what you’re about to ask — what does this all have to do with parenting, or to be more specific, with being a Mean Mom? A lot, says Kayt. Turns out (as any mother knows more or less instinctively) our brains are wired to adore our children. But does “adore” have to mean “indulge” (in its negative, hyper-vigiliant, over-protecting sense)? Do we have to fight our own neurobiology to, as Kayt writes in this post, say “no” to our children? In a sense, yes. But she doesn’t call it fighting, as you’ll see. I love this: she calls it “tricking” our brains — altered by pregnancy and motherhood to be a “yes” machine to our undoubtedly awesome children — into doing the right thing.

So without further ado, here’s Kayt Sukel: mother, writer, intrepid traveler, and friend:

Kayt Sukel and her awesome son, Chet

Kayt Sukel is a passionate traveler, science writer and Mom whose work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Scientist, the Washington Post, Parenting and American Baby.  She is a partner in the award-winning family travel website Travel Savvy Mom and can frequently be found oversharing on Twitter as @kaytsukel.  Her first book, DIRTY MINDS:  HOW OUR BRAINS INFLUENCE LOVE, SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS is fresh off the presses.  This funny and irreverent tome takes on the age-old question,”What is love?” from a neurobiological perspective–and offers a frank discussion on why our brains allow us to adore our children despite their consistent and daily efforts to wear out our last nerves.

Just this morning, I was reading an excellent op-ed in Newsday, the Long Island, New York newspaper. A writer friend of mine, Claudia Copquin, wrote about Rudolph. I’ll put the link here for those of you who may be Newsday subscribers or Optimum Online customers (which you have to be, dang it, to get access), but for the rest of you, here’s the gist: A professor at a local university came out with a self-published e-book called “No More Bullies at the North Pole,” contending that all the adult figures in the 1964 holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are guilty of such poor behavior and example-setting that, I presume, we should shield our kids from it.

Claudia writes that the professor, George Giuliani of CW Post College, feels that the Rudolph story…

…promotes bullying. He also points to incidents of sexism, favoritism, exclusion and hypocritical behavior in the holiday classic.

That Rudolph, with his nose so bright, becomes a hero by leading Santa’s reindeer on a foggy night is no matter to Professor George Giuliani, who claims that this isn’t a cute little story. The rampant use of the word “misfit” aimed at Rudolph sends the wrong message to vulnerable children.

And heaven forbid we ever, ever send the wrong message to children. So as I was telling Claudia in a Facebook comment, a lightbulb went off when I read her wonderful op-ed. Didn’t I write about this very subject, right here, last year? So off I went to check,and as it turns out, I did. But it was two years ago.

In the spirit of the holiday, I’m re-gifting my December, 2009 post: Enjoy!

Rudolph and His Dad: Why Donner Would Never Be Allowed to Call His Son a Misfit Today

(originally posted here, December 8, 2009)

 

The other day, on impulse at the supermarket, I picked up the DVD of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for the boys. They hadn’t seen it yet, even though it’s been on TV. Both of them are rehearsing holiday songs for their school concerts, so it’s been a nonstop chorus of Rudolph over here, and I figured it was better to own the dang thing than to sit through commercials.

So we watched. And while James tucked his head under a blanket whenever the Bumble came on the screen, and Daniel laughed over my favorite character, Yukon Cornelius, I was taken back in time to the 70s, remembering watching with my sister on the oval braided rug in the den (small time-travel aside here: did others of you raised in the 1970s do all your TV-watching on the floor/rug, rather than the couch? Did the couch in your house, as in mine, have an “adults only” vibe? Weird).

The story is full of you’d-never-see-that-on-TV-today oddities. And I’m not talking about laughable “special effects” or the way the characters’ mouth movements never match their dialog. I’m talking about a reindeer father who is awfully mean to his misfit, red-nosed son, entreating him to hide his differences and fit in. Then what does the dad do, when he realizes his shunned and ridiculed child has run off? He mans up and goes after him, telling his anxious wife to stay in the cave, not for the sensible reason that Rudolph might come back, but because going out in the storm to search is “man’s work.”

Then there’s poor Hermey, the misfit elf who wants to be a dentist. His stand-in father is the head elf, who rages at his “son” who wants to be anything other than what he’s supposed to be. He, too, apologizes in the end and lets Hermey set up a North Pole dental practice, but his original sin — fatherly non-acceptance — is one that you’d never see in kids’ fictional fare today.

Last night, I was on the phone with my sister, and we talked about the show. I said, “If that were made today, the message would be ‘celebrate your differences,’ not, ‘shun the misfits.’ ” And sure, that’s eventually the lesson that’s learned in Rudolph, but the key difference is that before Rudolph can realize his oddity makes him special, he first has to be disparaged and cast out, not just by his peers, but by his own father. In the end, forgiveness is instant. And you get the idea that no one needs therapy.

Did we just miss that part as kids? No, we really didn’t, as my sister pointed out.  “We knew the father, and even Santa, was mean to Rudolph,” she said. And we pretty much thought, ‘well, that’s the way it is.’ ” And then we got on with our day.

Today, however, that show wouldn’t be made because we couldn’t stand the idea of our kids being shown a less-than-ideal parent while they were watching a TV show or movie. Sure, we’ll allow them to be temporarily frightened when the Bumble roars or, King Kong-like, grasps a struggling doe in his giant paw. We can allow them the temporary anxiety of wondering if Yukon makes it out alive, or if Christmas will be canceled like a flight out of O’Hare. Scary is acceptable.

What’s not acceptable any longer are adults who get it wrong, then apologize in the end, as Donner does to Rudolph after he saves Christmas. TV and movie parents don’t screw up. They make cookies and laugh indulgently and otherwise remain more or less benignly in the background as their kids (whether they’re reindeer, pigs, turtles or little bears) mess up, make messes, and sometimes learn lessons. But they’d never, ever, ever call their child a misfit. Even if they said they were sorry.

Back in the 70s, on that braided rug, safe in the paneled walls of our den, with our parents behind us on the couch, my sister and I watched, got scared, then felt good again, and my folks didn’t give a second thought to the negative depiction of parenthood in this once-yearly bit of holiday fun. They just yawned and sent us to off to bed.

Why do we seem to believe, as my sister pointed out, that our kids can’t comprehend and mentally manage the fact that sometimes parents aren’t perfectly nice, that they mess up and apologize, sometimes over and over for the same crimes? Why don’t we give them that credit? Why, instead do we give them entertainment that whitewashes parents into mistake-free creations that the kids run roughshod over?

Back then, Donner could apologize with a manly clanking of his antlers. Today, he’d be getting a visit from the Department of Children’s Services. Or, more likely, he’d have started out being the kind of dad who gave his misfit son a sentimental lecture on how that red nose made Rudolph special.

Apparently, fictional parents are no longer allowed to bumble their way to the right thing. They have to be perfect from the get-go.

What do you think?

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]

I thought Black Friday (a day during which I resolutely remain home with wallet firmly shut; crowds scare me and the dangling of so-called bargains in front of my face does the opposite of enticing me) might be an opportune time to share this little piece I wrote for DailyWorth.com, an excellent website about finances for women:

When I answered my seven-year-old’s Christmas request for an iPod Touch recently with a “no” (and a side of “are you kidding me?”), he shot back: “But you don’t even have to pay for it! It’ll be from Santa.”

I was temporarily stumped, but I reminded him that not only is Santa on a budget just like we are, he also knows (being magic) what certain parents’ rules are.

But my son brings up a vexing point for frugal-minded parents: You want to make your kids happy this time of year—but playing Santa in a grand style can kill your budget.

Is it possible to recast Santa as a cost-conscious gift-giver? Or should the holidays be conveyed to kids as a money-free zone, with no acknowledgement of bills coming in January—or of family values in general?

All the holiday hoopla, plus the intensity of kids’ desires, makes Santa a tough suit to fill. I’ve seen moms run around like maniacs, trying to get the exact X-box or iProduct or whatever.

The pressure blunts your ability to parse the difference between real wants and temporary ones. Kids’ll ask for anything shiny and new; that’s their job. It’s ours to see the difference between what they truly want, and what they perhaps want to want.

Also, when we shower our kids with presents, we may confuse them, particularly if they see us fretting over bills or clipping coupons the rest of the year.

You don’t have to turn into a Grinch, but I’ve stopped worrying that a dose of reality will kill the buzz of Christmas fantasy. My kids aren’t getting an iPod, but they are getting affordable items they’ve shown they truly want. That’s a Santa strategy I can get behind.

Tell me what you think — here, of course, but also use this link to chime into the conversation on the Daily Worth site.

So, here’s a quick quiz: What does the United States have in common with Swaziland, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea?

I’ll wait. And no, it’s not because those nations’ governments have just named pizza a vegetable, as the U.S. Congress just has.

Got an answer? If you were thinking that the U.S.’s maternity leave policy (which is to say, lack of a cohesive, mandated one) is the answer, you win.  We’re are in fine company with those three countries for offering working mothers no mandated paid maternity leave.

This, despite the fact that we talk a very good game about family values. Goodness, but do I distrust that phrase. What sort of family values are at play when a wage earner has the choice between hobbling back to work after six weeks’ “recovery” from childbirth in order to feed herself and her family — or quit her job altogether and risk either a temporary or permanent dip below the poverty line?

I rant about this today because I just read this piece on AOL Jobs, by Claire Gordon. The article starts with what’s supposed to be “good” news, that according to the latest Census Bureau data, a smidgen more than half of first-time mothers who worked would receive some sort of paid leave. (That “smidgen more” adds up to 51%). Then, of course, one has to take into account the fact that without mandated paid leave, these moms (I was among them, when I had my first son back in 2002) are at the mercy of their companies’ policies and precedents, and are statistically — big surprise here — more likely to get paid leave if they are professional women. Younger, less educated, and lower-paid workers are the least likely to have any sort of paid cushion, post birth. As the article notes:

Eighty-two percent of employed new mothers without a high school degree did not get paid leave, according to the census. These women are less likely to have jobs with good benefits, and they’re more likely to be very young. The lack of any mandated paid maternity leave also exacts a much greater cost on the single mothers who raise a quarter of this country’s children.

This is meant to be good news, right? The fact that the number ticked up from 42% at the last survey to that whopping 51% now? I’m not impressed.

To me, mandated paid leave would be one sure way of getting behind true family values. It would define family values, in a literal way, because if you value families, you help them get by as a family, right? But — again, as the piece points out — America is nothing if not conflicted over its definition of family values. In light of these kind of stats (that are supposed to be “good news” but instead mask the same-old bad news), it becomes clearer than ever that, in this nation, family values and working mothers are mutually exclusive. Enemies. Opposites. Two magnetic poles that repel each other. Overstating? I don’t think so.

I’ve been a working mother from the start. I’d have loved more paid leave, or more leave full stop, but I didn’t get it, and that’s a shame. For the record, I took 12 weeks off from a full-time job after the birth of my first son, four weeks on full pay, 8 weeks unpaid. After baby #2, I went freelance and “gave” myself a whopping 2 weeks “off.” Of course, women like me with professional careers can, at least in theory, dip in and out work, swap full- for part-time, ratchet back and then ramp up. We have that luxury. Other women have no such luxury.  But to me this is far more than a class issue (though I agree that the class issue is often ignored or brushed aside).

To me it always comes down to this dichotomy between family values as broadly defined in this country, and the reality on the ground. Why shouldn’t my effort to keep my career humming — and to support my family  — be the very definition of family values? Why, instead, should I feel guilty (I don’t, by the way; as I’ve said before, I think I was born without that gene, and thank goodness) in order to be a “good” mom? Why should I have to keep my mouth shut when others (on TV, in the media, casually all over the place) define moms who aren’t working outside the home “full time mothers.” News flash: Once that child is in your life, you are a full time mother, with “time” defined as “the rest of your life,” not 9 to 5, Monday to Friday.

No matter what we mothers do, we’re wrong, let’s face it (we hover too much, or not enough; we’re soccer moms or harpies in shoulder pads, etcetera and ad nauseum, through the ages). But working mothers are the majority of the workforce — when are attitudes going to catch up with reality? I’m not conflicted one bit about my role: I am a mother, and I work.

Those, my friends, are my family values. What are your thoughts?

Ironic, ain’t it, that the very thing that spurred me to think about writing a book — this blog — has been languishing with fewer updates lately thanks to… the book. But the home stretch is stretching out. The book has been written, and edited, and re-edited, and designed, and has a publication date — April 1, 2012! — and a cover:

I've got the power! (Or anyway, my doppleganger on the cover does -- dig the remote!)

I’d love to know what you think. Spread the word, and look here for more regular posts as well as more updates and sneak peaks at what’s inside.

Did I mention it’s available for pre-order on Amazon?

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!