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.”

My boys last summer, at a local (safe!) beachside playground.

Last summer, we met our friends Sally and Mike and their kids in a nearby harbor town to let the kids play on a playground, walk around a bit, and get some dinner. Typical late-weekend-afternoon-in-the-summer stuff here on Long Island’s bucolic North Shore. I’d been to this town many times before, but not with my kids, so I didn’t remember the playground, and I figured it would look more or less like every playground I’ve seen in the last eight-and-three-quarter (almost!) years of being a parent.

You know the kind. Carefully planned. Almost too carefully planned, really, with one tiny (plastic) slide for the littlest ones; one high, but not crazy high, twisting slide (but covered, like a tube, or at least with high sides), and maybe a medium-height “bumpy” slide. There’s always an unstable-seeming-but-safe, bridge-like thing. (I think the kids are supposed to feel as though they’re crossing an Amazonian ravine on one of those rickety rope bridges, a la Indiana Jones, not that our kids necessarily know who Indiana Jones is). In another part of the park there are usually swings. And it goes without saying that the surface beneath is soft and safe.

I like safety. Truly, I do. I know that as a kid, though I played with nothing but cement or asphalt beneath playground equipment, I never experienced a major or memorable accident, so I’m willing to admit it’s because no serious accident happened that I can smugly scoff at the padded-cell safety of kids’ play equipment these days. My parents talk (brag?) about blazing-hot metal slides and the rusted poles in monkey bars, atop cracked pavement. And they survived. Right?

Right. And learned how to climb high and exactly where their threshold for fear was on any given day.

So back to this day last summer in this nearby town. On the waterfront is one of those typical parks, as I described above, but bigger. Sandboxes, areas designated for littler ones and bigger ones, lots of swings, but otherwise the expected conglomeration of equipment that seems to be saying, “here you go, kids, play this way!” instead of just sitting there, like the old-school stuff, saying “I don’t give a crap what you do. I’m some monkey bars. Climb me, don’t climb me, it’s entirely up to you.” The latter is often so pre-planned that only the smallest kids really have fun (them, and the teens who occupy the areas at night, but that’s another story.) The former are more like blank slates waiting for kids to make their own brand of fun.

But then our friends showed us a different portion of the park. I drew in my breath. Though it was set on soft sand, this (shaded!) section had metal slides, two of them. Not attached to any other equipment; just slides, with long, metal ladders. And there were two merry go rounds.You know the kind — where you climb on and maybe the bigger kids run around the outside to get it going, and you hope to hell you can hold on tight enough not to be flung out to the elements? Yes, that kind.

The kids loved it.

I was reminded of that park just now when I read a New York Times article about parks, by John Tierney. Now, this is not a new subject. I’ve read it before: playgrounds are getting blander and blander; tots are being followed obsessively around by helicoptering parents, so even on the blandest and bluntest-edged equipment, there’s little to no chance of children getting hurt; playgrounds which may as well have been designed by lawyers.

But this piece got me thinking about something else: it’s not just about a nostalgic longing for the hot metal monkey bars of our own or our parents’ past; it’s about why kids might actually need that perception of danger. Or even the reality of it. A Norwegian psychology professor, a playground-observing expert quoted in the piece, says that kids need to: explore heights; experience high speed; handle dangerous tools; be near potentially dangerous elements like water or fire; play rough; and wander away from adult supervision.

I’d say, the above is a list of attributes and attitudes you don’t find in my local parks. How about yours?

The psychologist, Dr. Ellen Sandseter, goes on to say:

“Climbing equipment needs to be high enough, or else it will be too boring in the long run,” Dr. Sandseter said. “Children approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner, and very few children would try to climb to the highest point for the first time they climb. The best thing is to let children encounter these challenges from an early age, and they will then progressively learn to master them through their play over the years.”

 

As my friends and I sat on the periphery of the more-dangerous, throwback, who-let-this-stuff-stay-here portion of this port-side park, our kids were spinning that merry-go-round for all they were worth. My friends’ son then began climbing trees (he’s the sort of kid who sees basically any structure — trees, fences, playground equipment, hills — as a scaling opportunity) while my sons sort of lingered on lower branches and watched their friend scamper higher. So I guess they were proving Dr. Sandseter’s point: They were doing what they each, individually, felt capable of doing, and not 100% afraid of trying.

Without any piece of equipment telling them thishigh is too high.

I know it’s commonplace now for parents to leap up and admonish and/or hover, but I tried my best to sit on my hands and just watch, remembering for myself the freedom of getting to the top of the bars, or swinging so high the chains on the swing went slack. Remember that? And then when the swing swung back down the chains would snap straight and you’d bounce, hard, jolting your kidneys. It might have given my mother a minor heart attack. If she’d been watching. Which she usually was not.

Do you think playgrounds are perfect, too safe, or not safe enough?

A long while ago, I wrote a post about how much more involved parents of my generation are in our kids’ schooling and schools than my parents — well meaning as they were — ever were in mine. As my kids have progressed through more school since then, it’s naturally remained on my mind. Just the other day, my third-grader brought home a book-report project with glowing reviews from the teacher. It was neat! It was comprehensive! It was clearly written! The accompanying diorama of the Titanic was fun and detailed!

So where’s my grade? Admission time: I made the diorama. It was my plan, though it was executed with the help of my son (he stuck the silver star stickers on the black-construction-paper night-sky background; he stuck the “HMS Titanic” stickers on the wooden boat that started as a $1 craft kit from Michael’s). In truth, I didn’t mind doing it, because the meat of the book report — actually writing about the book he’d read, a Magic Treehouse volume — was his responsibility; all I did was make sure he was following the directions of this particular project.

But when it came to the obligatory art-portion of the project … I had to step in. Thing is, he’s not good with the scissors the glue and the glitter, and never has been. Neither am I, frankly, but at least I have 36 years more experience in life as well as in crafts than he does, plus I can drive to Michael’s. My family is full of creative, artistic types, people with 3-dimensional imaginations and skillful patience with things like this. I did not get that gene. (Which is why, though my parents didn’t otherwise get involved to the level of showing up monthly in the classroom to be a secret reader or lead career discussions, my dad — who did get the art gene — “helped” us often, including a social-studies project on Inca farming, involving an overturned flowerpot covered with clay fashioned into a mountain slope, and a bottle of homemade shampoo with a creatively designed label he “helped” my sister make for a science fair).

Anyway, I’m thinking my “grade” as a parent would be respectably high. But in all the swirl lately surrounding how well (or, let’s face it, poorly) American kids are doing in comparison with the world, the focus may be shifting from demonizing teachers (No Child Left Behind, anyone?) to parents, at least in some cases: I was reading Lisa Belkin’s New York Times Motherlode column the other day, entitled “Whose Failing Grade Is It?”. It’s all about current legislative pushes in a couple of states to “grade” parents on such criteria as showing up (or not) to parent/teacher conferences, or being sure their children are well-prepared for school.

At first I thought, well, I’d get good marks! And then I realized that at least some of what these state legislators are asking parents to do (and hoping to punish them for not doing) are things my folks did at their minimum level of school involvement (i.e., not including 3-D Inca farming models or shampoo recipes): fill us with breakfast, pack us our lunches, make sure we had enough sleep, crack the whip when we dragged our heels over homework, show up to conferences. The difference from then to now, or one of them, is that while my parents did those things, they were leaving all the rest of it, for good or ill, up to the teachers.

Maybe this shift of blame is inevitable, as teachers have been taking the brunt for a while now, but I don’t think it bodes well.

As Belkin writes:

Teachers are fed up with being blamed for the failures of American education, and legislators are starting to hear them. A spate of bills introduced in various states now takes aim squarely at the parents. If you think you can legislate teaching, the notion goes, why not try legislating parenting?

It is a complicated idea, taking on the controversial question of whether parents, teachers or children are most to blame when a child fails to learn.

But the thinking goes like this: If you look at schools that “work,” as measured by test scores and graduation rates, they all have involved (overinvolved?) parents, who are on top of their children’s homework, in contact with their children’s teachers, and invested in their children’s futures. So just require the same of parents in schools that don’t work, and the problem is solved (or, at least, dented), right?

Time was that children’s behavior in the classroom reflected on their “upbringing” and parents were expected to reinforce an accepted truth that “teacher knows best.” But today’s parents are just as likely to see the teacher as the problem — a view that has been reinforced by presidents who accuse teachers of leaving more than a few children behind, governors who want to eliminate their collective bargaining and mayors who want to be rid of laws that protect teachers who have been in their jobs the longest.

I gotta say, I agree. Blame, if we want to use that word, should be shared all around, and there should be a realization that zeroing in on one individual or group for systemic problems doesn’t get any of us anywhere good. We can all point fingers and offer bad grades, but that doesn’t help put our kids on par with students in, for example, Singapore or China, who in some areas are blowing us out of the water.

What do you think? And what are you expected to do for your kids in their schools?

Healthy Activity -- or Crazed Competition?

I never have to wait around for very long, or dig very deep, to find something to be either baffled or outraged about when it comes to modern parenting. Yesterday’s crazy-making dose came in the form of a New York Times article about sports for babies.

Yes, I meant to write “babies.”

The article opens with a quote from a woman named Doreen Bolhuis, whose company, Gymtrix, sells DVDs of activity programs for kids as young as 6 months. There’s something about the idea of promoting organized physical activity for babies and toddlers that, to me, straddles the line between “good idea!” and “how crazy, exactly, have we become?” The good idea part is simple: if a parent buys a set of videos and watches them with her 10-month-old baby, and it prompts them to roll around on the floor and play and tumble, but it doesn’t replace other, non-video forms of physical play, isn’t that a good thing? Of course it is. But the “how crazy” part creeps in when parents buy these videos as a super-early start in the world of sports for kids: seeing a straight line connecting baby tumbling videos, pee-wee soccer, competitive lacrosse at age 8, football at 10, high-school glory on one field or court or another, and of course a college scholarship. Here’s a quote from Ms. Bolhuis:

We hear all the time from families that have been with us, ‘Our kids are superstars when they’re in middle school and they get into sports.’

Another company selling baby-centered sports DVDs, also mentioned in the article, is Baby Goes Pro. I watched a bit of promotional video on the website, during which I think I threw up in my mouth a little. This groundbreaking series, the founders enthuse, don’t simply promote physical activity (and provide a break in mom’s day so she can “wash the dishes,” and yes, they say this). They also depict “technically correct” sports skills. It’s all very cool and colorful, lots of rainbow-hued golf balls piling up, say, but then the pint-sized viewers (some of whom can’t stand up yet, presumably) are treated to sights such as a professional golfer demonstrating the proper swing, or a close-up of a baseball batter mid-swing, or a soccer goalie executing the perfect save. All in primary colors, and with musical interludes with a cartoon monkey, M.K. (You have to have a cartoon mascot, after all!)

The founders, two women, chat amiably, as if they’re guests on The View, about how awesome it for parents and kids to have fun with sports and physical activity (with which I wholeheartedly agree) but how, it’s just amazing that watching these videos promotes proper use of sports equipment, and teaches real skills that (it’s not said but it’s strongly implied) will give your child a leg up in competitive sports as he grows. (It is called “Baby Goes Pro,” after all, not “Baby Has Some Fun Goofing Around With a Wiffle Bat and Some Plastic Golf Balls.”)

They actually say — I’m not making this up — that if your kid has watched these videos, and then goes to play golf at age four, he’ll instinctively know how to properly pick up and use the club. Here’s a direct quote:

If you have a three or four year old who’s been watching the video, and he goes to the golf course, he’ll know how to grip a golf club,” says one woman. “And that’s confidence!” enthuses her partner.

Really? That’s confidence? I’m not sure I’d call it that. Delusion is maybe more apt. Or even better: the path to the absolute opposite of what you hope to achieve. Because I’m thinking, the four-year-old who can correctly hold a nine-iron will either be Tiger Woods (and we see how often someone like that comes along), or will be the kid who gives up sports at 13 because he just can’t take the pressure anymore.

What’s sticking in my craw today is how these videos and programs latch on to what is actually a good idea — getting kids and parents enthused about physical activity — and twist it into yet another way for parents to be anxious and competitive, and pass those feelings on to their children.

What do you think?

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?

The story about the young man at Rutgers University who, after he found that a video of him having sex with a male partner had been live-streamed on the Internet, committed suicide, has me heartsick. I’m sick for him, for his family, for all the other teens unsure of how they fit in a world that still, still can’t deal with the fact that we’re all born different. I’m also sick for my own children, who are coming up in a world where being a homosexual puts you in a second-class category, shunts you aside, tells you you’re at best someone to be tolerated (or laughed at/with on a sitcom, a la Will & Grace); at middling someone to deny basic human and civil rights to; at worst someone to be bullied, beaten, driven to suicide.

Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about lately:

• My older son, in third grade, just did a unit in health on bullying prevention. Being that they are now all sophisticated third graders, they’re being asked not simply to parrot a line back to the teachers: “Don’t be a bully!” It’s no longer enough to give kids strategies to deal with a bully in their own life (walk away, tell a teacher). Now, they’re being told to Take a Stand. The example my son brought home, in his barely-legible notes (Jesus, they take notes already, in three-subject spiral-bound notebooks!), was something like, what if you see a bigger kid push a smaller kid away from some playground equipment? You’re supposed to Take a Stand. Tell the bully to stop. Defend the younger kid. Empathize with the victim, and make clear to the perpetrator (yes, they use the word “perpetrator”) that bullying is not cool.

So my question is, in light of the Rutgers story and others like it, what do I tell my nearly 8-year-old about the kind of bullying that doesn’t involve use of the monkey bars, but is personal? What do I tell him about kids not a lot older than he is who are bullied for their sexuality? Do I explain gay to him? Is it, like sex ed, one of those subjects for which you dole out information as they ask, in a level they can grasp? I’m asking because I honestly don’t know.

• The second thing I was thinking about involves a cute-kid story. My younger boy has been sad since first grade started that his best friend from kindergarten (“the best person in the whole wide world,” so I’m told), Connor, is not in his class anymore. Not long ago, he said that he was never going to get married. The reason, he informed me, was that “boys can’t marry other boys, and until I can marry Connor, I won’t get married.”

So my question is a version of the one I posed above: Do I tell a nearly-six-year-old that, in fact, in some states, he can marry Connor? That his mom and dad hope like hell that our own state gets on board with what’s right (with what’s inevitable) and lets gay men and women enjoy (some will debate the “enjoy,” but whatever) the right to marry legally?

It’s what I want to tell him, truthfully, but I have no idea how.

Those of you of a certain age may remember the TV show Soap, which aired from 1977-1981 (when I was age 11-15). I have not seen an episode since it was on TV (back when we had rabbit ears on the set and an antenna on the roof), but I’ll bet my lunch that what was shocking and racy and after-family-hour back then will probably read as unbearably quaint and wink-wink now. On Soap, Billy Crystal played Jodie Dallas, who came out as gay one (shocking!) evening. And as luck would have it, that episode aired on a night my parents, in an unprecendented move, allowed my sister and me to watch our favorite, illicit show on our own. Picture tween-age me, bounding down the stairs and saying, “Dad, what is ‘gay’?”

He stumbled and bumbled out an answer.

I don’t want to stumble or bumble, or nudge and wink and sigh. Listen, all of us enlightened modern parents will say flat out that bullying a gay kid (or harrassing gay adults, for that matter), is wrong. But what about making jokes at the dinner table? Isn’t that tacit persmission, from some parents who’d rather not address the matter with their kids (because their own feelings are unresolved or even ugly) for kids to tease or bully?

An article in yesterday’s New York Times tells more heartbreaking stories of gay teens — 13, 15 — killing themselves after relentless teasing and bullying. Listen, kids don’t get the message that it’s okay (on some level, overt or not) to treat different kids badly from nowhere, you know? I look around my kids’ classrooms and see the little faces pressed against the bus windows and think, surely some of them are gay. What if on the sixth-grade bus, my son witnesses a homosexual classmate being bullied? Will he Take a Stand? Will he understand?

So I’m asking. What should I do? What should we all do?

Are your kids always fishing for food?

There’s nothing like being validated, is there? Especially, I have to say, by the New York Times.

Just yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link to a story in the Times about — wait for it — how kids today snack too much.

Yeah, been there, said that.

The writer, Jennifer Steinhauer, herself a parent, laments how kids can never go anywhere or do anything without snacks being involved. And it’s not just the pretzels, Goldfish and juice boxes moms stash in our bags (just in case of low blood sugar and/or a meltdown) while we’re out and about with kids. It’s also the amount of times we’re asked, as moms, to provide snack for this or that activity or event or meeting.

I fully understand the point of some snacks, as I wrote months ago, when this blog was still new. I get that toddler tummies are tiny, and it’s hard for little ones to manage the long stretch between breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner, without a tiding-over. I get that snacks can strategically fill in nutritional gaps (didn’t finish his breakfast milk? A 10 a.m. cheese stick or yogurt is a good calcium-and-vitamin-D boost).

What I don’t get, and never will, is the idea that kids of all ages need food to accompany just about anything they do. Let’s stop calling snacks anything virtuous (the tummy-tider-over; the nutritional gap-filler), and be honest: we use snacks as an event in themselves; a boredom-buster; a tantrum-avoider (hence, as my friend Gretchen told me, the growing number of parents who bring snacks church–as though you can’t ask a 5-year-old to go foodless for an hour. In church).

Snacks are a crutch.

You can’t go a soccer game without a snack. Sure, they play hard, so the orange slices and water bottles at half-time are good. But the Munchkins after? Apparently, my friend Susan told me, you can’t go to a Brownie or Girl Scout meeting without a little somethin’-somethin’ either (I have boys; hence, no Brownies, and I haven’t broached the world of Cub scouting yet). Says Susan, a 7:30 pm Brownie meeting for a bunch of first-graders must be aided and abetted by donuts and cookies. Really? Didn’t they just have dinner? Don’t they have to go to bed, like, soon? You can’t go to a Mommy & Me class without food. My younger son James was in a gymnastics class a couple of years ago, and he was the only one who left after the hour of tumbling and balancing; everyone else had signed up for a second hour of crafts. And … a snack.

I am quick to add here, my kids do get snacks. Of course they get them at school because frankly I think I’d be hauled up in front of a very disapproving PTA if I didn’t send in my second-grader and kindergartner with their daily snacks (along with lunch). I agree with that, and I’m a big fan of our principal, who frowns on junky snacks, and both my sons’ teachers this year, who have stressed that the kids should bring in water, not juice, for snack (probably more to avoid sticky spills on desks than for health, but I’ll take it!).  I have bought vending-machine fare for the boys as a treat (though I steer them to pretzels and popcorn, and away from candy bars and Pop-Tarts, and I often require them to hang on to the goodies until after dinner. They comply).

How do you feel about the ubiquitous culture of snacks? Not about the necessary, between-meals, nutritious snacks, but the “here, kid, have a dollar for the vending machine because I can’t bear to hear you whining any more” snacks? Can your kids get together with an organized group without sniffing around for juice and cookies?

What's good for Fido...

Did anyone see this article in the New York Times’ Style section the other day? It’s by Alex Williams, it’s titled Becoming the Alpha Dog in Your Own Home, and woo, boy did I get a good laugh over it. In a good way, I assure you! The story is about how some  parents today have hit on the bright idea of incorporating principles of dog training into their discipline efforts.

The idea is based on the work of Cesar Millan, the so-called Dog Whisperer, who has a TV show (disclosure: I’ve never watched the show; I don’t have a dog, and truth be told, I’m not much of a dog person, but that’s another story), a book, and a rabidly (sorry!)  devoted following of families with formerly out-of-control pooches. Y’know, I’ve never watched SuperNanny, either, but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here to say that the Super Nanny and the Dog Whisperer basically have the same message. Which is:

You’re in charge. You, the taller one, the one who walks upright on two legs. Not the four-legged one, and not the one or ones who exist somewhere on the developmental continuum between diapers and SATs (and even quite a bit after the SATs, come to think of it).

Um. Duh?

But like I said, I got quite a giggle out of the piece, in part because not too long ago, on a writer’s list I belong to, a writer/father who cares for his two young daughters presented the rest of us with a discipline dilemma regarding his 14-month-old daughter. The gist of it was that the toddler is going through a clingy phase with her mom, who’s at work all day. Instead of sitting in her highchair at dinner, she was wailing for her mother, which as you can imagine was putting a bit of a damper on dinner, and stressing out her well-meaning parents. We all had advice, such as giving the baby some cuddle time with her mother before dinner, in hopes this would satisfy her Mama-craving; or moving her from her highchair to a booster seat at the table, in hopes this would make her feel closer, physically, to the family.

But what writer-dad ultimately tried was to remove his wailing child from the kitchen, take her upstairs, and calmly ask for/expect her to calm down before he’d bring her back, and repeating as often as necessary. It worked. And here’s the kicker: He got the idea from an episode of  Cesar Milan’s Dog Whisperer show.

Here’s a snippet from the Times piece:

Certainly, an army, or at least a few divisions, of credentialed experts on human parenthood long ago stumbled on Mr. Millan’s philosophical holy trinity — exercise, discipline and affection equals happiness. And Mr. Millan does not hold himself up as a new Dr. Spock; he has never opined on how one should raise a creature with two legs in his show on the National Geographic Channel, or in his four books.

But some parents — particularly those weary of never-say-no techniques and child-rearing books suggesting that children should call the shots — say they find inspiration, and even practical advice, in Mr. Millan’s approach, which teaches pet owners how to become the alpha dogs by projecting his trademark “calm-assertive energy.”

Obviously, the notion that parents are in control of the household, and should retain and maintain that authority with a calm assertiveness (that is, without hand-wringing or, worse, wondering aloud to their children if they’re doing the right thing) is hardly a new one. But as this piece points out, it’s gotten lost in this generation’s (and, arguably, that of the one before it) misguided desire to never say no. To be the child’s friend. To create a home atmosphere where the child’s immediate feelings take precedence over what’s good for the family, and what’s good for the child himself at some later date.

But let’s face it. Peeing in the corner and chewing the legs of the antique piano are not good behavior (for kids or dogs). I like the idea of being the Alpha Dog in my home. Who’s in charge where you live?

Have you read this article in the New York Times yet? It’s by writer and psychologist Alison Gopnik, and it’s gotten a bunch of media play in the last few days, because it’s about something supposedly revolutionary: Babies, Gopnik asserts, are quite a bit smarter than we think.

I’m pretty sure I knew that already. I mean, I knew it already because it’s not exactly new news (though the research Gopnik cites, some of it her own, from the University of California, Berkeley, where she’s a psychology professor, is new). I know that science has discovered amazing things about a baby’s inborn capabilities, and how those capabilities blow out of the water our previous beliefs about newborns–that they are basically inert lumps, taking in food from one end and pooping it out at the other, little more than  adorable amoeba. But I also knew it because I’ve seen my own babies at work, so to speak.

The first time I held James, my younger boy (well, maybe the second time; the first time, I was still numb from unwanted C-section surgery to remember much), I saw something familiar in his eyes. There was a knowing glint in those newborn eyes, I swear. “This one’s trouble,” I said to my husband later. James was sharp as a tack from the get-go, and he hasn’t let up since. Here he is, at two months (a different mom would claim he’s counting to one with that raised pinkie!):

My smart baby James. Just what is he planning in that elastic brain of his?

All of which makes me feel better about the fact that I haven’t tried all that hard in the intervening years to “boost” my babies’ learning.

The biggest example is, of course, Mommy & Me or Gymboree and other, similar classes meant to give babies a chubby leg up on a lifetime of learning. I didn’t do it. The only foray I made into that whole arena were a few free Mommy & Me-style classes at my local library, which I’ve mentioned before on this blog. I never really liked them much. The woman who ran the classes was a little too into the whole thing, for one; but more important, when it came to the craft portion of the session, she seemed to expect us moms to do the gluing and the folding and whatever, and I frankly am not into that kind of mom-directed art project stuff.

Mostly, I didn’t follow up on other classes because they didn’t fit into our schedule. At the time, we were new to our town, and I was working three days a week at my old editing job in the city (Daniel, then one, was home with a nanny). The baby and I had two weekdays together, and no car (the library happened to be in walking distance, or I wouldn’t have done that, either). We stuck close to home by necessity, but also by temperament — mine. I’ve never been a joiner. Also, though I can’t underestimate baby classes’ value for breaking up the tedium of life at home with a baby, I’ve always been skeptical of anyone who asserts that babies need them. At best, I find all those classes a crashing bore; at worst they felt like a replay of junior high, but with babies in tow. I never quite fit in; I wasn’t a full-time working mom or a stay-at-home mom, but a curious hybrid of both. (See what I mean about junior high? How would I find the right kind of friends? Easier to just avoid the whole thing.)

Gopnik makes the point in her piece (and the research bears this out) that babies and young children (say, under 4 or 5) can’t focus on just one thing, and that in fact, that’s not how they learn best. Their brains are elastic (I love that image!), filled with neuronal connections that allow them to explore and take in what their senses offer them with no preconceived ideas of how things should look, taste, react, feel or sound like. It’s all new, it’s all stimulating, and it’s all good. Even preschoolers aren’t really “learning” as much from the journal-keeping and flash-card-working that many of them do in school (or at home!). They’re learning by hanging around with their peers in the classroom, or with their siblings and parents back at home; by watching, by listening, and above all by playing.

Another Mean Mommy relief moment! My instinct (to not be a mommy-joiner; to not feel I have to get on the boost-baby’s-brain bandwagon; to do my own thing at home even if all I’m stimuating my child with is the sight of me folding towels or doing a Pilates DVD) was on target.

Gopnik mentions a famous experiment in which children and adults were asked to watch a video of two people tossing a ball back and forth, and count how many tosses they saw. Some time into the video, someone in a big gorilla suit walks slowly across the set. Guess who notices the gorilla and who remains focused on the counting task?

So I guess you can say by not doing more classes (and by using those insane Baby Einstein DVDs not as learning tools but as a mommy-needs-a-shower-break) I’m giving my kids a chance to see the many gorillas walking across the scene that they may otherwise have missed.

Do you think classes make your baby smarter?

Last year, I wrote an article for American Baby magazine called “Can You Afford to Quit?” It’s a perennial subject for parenting magazines — how-to advice for making a smooth work-to-home transition. I remember when I got the assignment. On the phone, my editor and I batted around the details of what to include, and she asked me what I thought would make a good sidebar to the piece.

I hesitated a bit, but then I broached this idea: What about a sidebar addressing the case against quitting? My idea was, maybe moms who are sure they want to stop working haven’t considered the economic downside of giving up their jobs — income, of course, but also retirement savings, health insurance, and so on. At the time, it was a subject close to my heart: my husband, who is now once again gainfully employed, was at the time in the midst of a protracted period of unemployment. My freelance business was keeping us afloat, and I was as grateful (and proud) to have my income.

I don’t want to get into the should-you-or-shouldn’t-you about working moms — but let me briefly address it, just to get it out there. Whether or not you quit your job to stay home with your child (or how often you change your mind and your work-life situation) has everything to do with your comfort level, your financial reality, your career focus, and your family’s  needs, and nothing to do with anyone else’s ideas, choices, or judgments. I have no judgments myself. As much as I know my choice works for me, I also see how others’ choices fit their needs. Don’t get me started on the so-called Mommy Wars, with working moms pitted against their stay-at-home counterparts. I’m not going to go there, because in my opinion, it’s a made-up war, whipped to a frenzy at predictable intervals by a media that should, instead, be trying to expose inequality in the workworld, and dismal lack of support for working families in this country.

Rant over!

I went back to work 12 weeks after my son was born. At the time, I was a magazine editor. And I was lucky: I had a good salary, lived 20 minutes from my office, and I found a terrific nanny. What I never had, curiously enough, was guilt. I knew I had to work. It was a financial reality for us, yes, but it was also an inner necessity for me. I loved being home with my new son, but I also loved getting out of the house, doing a job I adored, and coming home with a paycheck. I remember my first day back very well. It was January, snowy and cold, and I felt weird at first, tottering on high-heeled boots, wearing makeup, and handing over my three-month-old to his nanny. It was hard to walk out the door, but with every step toward the subway, I felt more like me. I was running toward work, eager to reclaim my old self. But at the end of the day, I was also running toward home. (Literally, I ran home from the subway, I was so eager to get my boy back in my arms.)

And so began the push-pull of work and home that all mothers feel at different times. There’s so much to worry about, from childcare to career concerns to what’s for dinner, that there isn’t (or shouldn’t be) much mental energy leftover for guilt.

I believe the reason I don’t feel guilty working is that this is as much who I am as any other indelible aspect of my personality. It sounds like the classic working-mom cliche, but it’s no less true: if I were home all the time, I wouldn’t be as good a mom as I am. If being a working person is who I am, then why should it be any less true to say that being a person who works  is who I am as a mom?

But back to that sidebar to my stay-at-home American Baby article. That was written when the economy was still teetering; it hadn’t  yet collapsed to the point it’s at now. These days, more and more moms who’ve been out of the workforce for years are heading back out of necessity, not to stave off boredom or make some extra cash, but to pick up the slack. To pay the mortgage. To get by.

The New York Times published a piece about the new pressure on moms to work in response to the dismal economy. Turns out, the percentage of moms in the workforce always goes up when the economy turns down. Again, I ask, where’s the room for guilt? Ditch it, ladies. You don’t need it, and neither do your kids.

I’d love to hear how you feel about working, staying home, guilt, and high heels!