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Tag Archives: parenting

How To Build A Better Parent

05 Aug

No one likes to be told what to do. (Just ask a toddler if you don’t believe me.) But that hasn’t stopped anyone and everyone from proclaiming that you are not raising your children in the correct manner. There are books which chastise you for not being more French or feline. Newsstands are chock full of glossy instructional manuals. There was a time when parenting articles were bundled with home economics and fashion articles in ladies’ magazines. That will no longer do. The magazine industry (in all its floundering glory) has produced copious parenting titles. One needn’t purchase a magazine or book however; simply turn on the computer and enter the blogosphere/chat rooms/message boards that long to be heard.

Of course many of these sites are less interested in telling you what to do and much more concerned with daily affirmation. Are you having some doubt about sleeping in the same bed as your baby? Fear not, there are thousands of people out there poised to support your decision. Does using a pacifier make you feel less than? Give it 10 seconds, and someone will vote you virtual mother of the year.

Let’s face it, there’s a lot of noise out there. There are as many people lining up to cut you down, as there are to boost you up. Parenting is a lonely job. There is no boss to hand out an “atta girl” there are no annual reviews or even colleagues. There are hundreds of tiny (and not so tiny) decisions you must make at all times. A little person, even a verbal little person, cannot offer much feedback as to how you’re doing. It takes a village just to quell the loneliness. So naturally, we’re disposed to hearing the chatter (by the end of the day the chatter of adults sounds like a freaking symphony to our ears!) But if there’s any danger in our weakened state, it is that we often only hear what we want to hear. If we are sleep deprived (and shower deprived) and are still being woken up every 3-4 hours by a three month old, we want to hear that we are and will be okay. We probably do not want to hear that we have to let the baby learn to self-comfort. We can’t bear the idea of listening to the baby cry itself back to sleep once let alone every night for a week. Just tell us that we’ll live through this. Well, you will, of course you will, but parenting isn’t really about our survival it’s about helping children grown into healthy, happy, strong adults. However it’s easy to lose sight of that when you haven’t slept for three months.

Put a post-it-note on your computer for when you find yourself shopping online for a perfect parenting book or trolling chat rooms at 2:00 AM. Have the note simply state: “I know what I’m doing” then in tiny script just below “see print-out.” See print-out?

Print-Out:

How To Build A Happy, Healthy, Strong Person

  • Adults are in charge – Flight attendants instruct adults to place the oxygen mask on their own face first for a reason
    • A fulfilling life of your own, outside of your parenting responsibilities is key to allowing your child to grow and to modeling the appeal of growing
    • Adult activities (working, fitness, classes, socializing, dining, bar hopping) should not include children
  • Do only what is necessary for your child
    • A preschooler can pick up his/her own toys. Once children reach school age he/she can make their own breakfast and get dressed. A middle-schooler can do his/her own laundry and cook one night a week. And so on
    • Competence is the primary ingredient in self-esteem
  • Redefine “every advantage”
    • Don’t give your child what you didn’t have, give them what they need
    • Money & stuff is never helpful, life skills and a moral compass are

 

 
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Posted by on August 5, 2012 in Childhood, Media/Marketing

 

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Careful The Things You Do*

01 Mar

Hauling nutritionally balanced snacks to Little Leaguers (who engage in actual exercise for about 10 minutes.)  Creating elaborately themed birthday parties for children who would be happy with a whoopee cushion and a pizza.  Dressing little girls as miniature Mae Wests.  What do these, and many more slightly wacky things, have in common?

When asked, the majority of adults will explain (variations of the above) behavior with the following: “There’s such pressure.”  Such pressure.  From their child?  Visions of a pigtailed girl a la The Bad Seed dance in my head.  There she is in the middle of GapKids/Gymboree/Children’s Place, her $200 doll held aloft prepared to swing; “Buy me the fur shrug or the latte gets it.”  I don’t think so.  If so, someone call Willy Wonka and have him rustle up some oompa loompas.  I think what these parents in fact mean is that there is perceived peer pressure.  That’s right; peer pressure.  That plausible excuse for the pack of cigarettes your parents found in their car, the explanation for shoplifting that 45 (a small disc when placed on a turntable emits prerecorded sound,) and a plausible excuse for kissing that boy in the basement.  But peer pressure in adults?  How does that work?  How does one even keep a straight face?  I suspect that it is not peer pressure so much as it is herd mentality.  Semantics perhaps, but defined as “group think” it makes just a bit more sense.

Very few of us, no matter how many times we’ve done it, feel like professional parents.  Every child, every developmental stage, in fact every day presents new challenges.  Yes, there are some whose very nature is laid back.  They feel confident that their child is well fed, healthy, happy, and curious.  They don’t grasp at enrichment programs as if they were life preservers or buy every latest geegaw and gizmo.  Their confidence might be innate or may be a reflection of their diverse portfolio.  Perhaps all their identity eggs are not in the parenthood basket.  They may have a paid job or not.  They may be married or not.  The diversification is more internal than that.

But these are not the parents hiring aerialists and face painters for a bris.  They are not the ones baking for the school/church/scouts/karate class/soccer club every week.  The parents staying up to create bespoke goody bags for their 6 year old’s birthday party are hearing different voices in their head.  They want desperately to get it right and like the creature in the strange land (that all parents really are) they take every cue and piece of advice to heart.  A cycle is created of external reinforcement.  Where the trouble may lie (if you consider hovering parenting and spoiled children, trouble) is a sense of unease and disquietness.  Look around.  How much of the media noise is about “stressed moms” “mommy wars” or far worse “the hidden drinking life of moms.”  How long do you think it will be before we have a psychological condition known as “stressed mother?”

Feeling exhausted and strained is nothing new.  Mother’s little helper, anyone?  But the angst which comes from losing one’s internal compass is.  What would happen if we tried something new, yet very old for 30 days?  For 30 days, let’s not visit any parenting websites, chat rooms or magazines.  Let’s only talk to our friends and acquaintances about what’s going on in our own lives, not our child’s.  Let’s plan weekly dates with our partners (and hire babysitters.)  If something comes up in those 30 days which really warrants guidance, call a parent, or aunt, or uncle or grandparent.  Look to the elders, the survivors if you will, for guidance, reinforcement and comfort.  For 30 days, do not look to the others floundering in the sea of parenthood for help.

Let me know how it goes.

*Children Will Listen – Into The Woods, Stephen Sondheim (1986)

 
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Posted by on March 1, 2012 in Childhood

 

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Demons Are Prowling Everywhere*

27 Oct

Did you know you can childproof every single electrical outlet in your home for just $20 each?  And a $30 bracket will harness that lightweight (unsightly) lethal flat screen television?  There are also electric cord shorteners, doorknob covers, toilet seat locks and childproof window treatments.  Remember when everyone was up in arms over the (now quaint) childproofing of pill bottles?

It seems that while I was quietly mastering the push down twist of my vitamin bottle, the world has become a perilous, Raiders of the Lost Ark place for small children.  Evidently even baby monitors are lethal.  An aside; I never really understood the baby monitor.  How big is someone’s home that they can’t hear the ear piercing cry of a child?   Or are they used to quell paranoia?  What is that baby saying about you while it feigns a nap, huh?  While we’re on the subject of my limited understandings; what’s with the toilet seat lock?  Is it a drowning concern?  A flushing of valuable items concern?  I am in need of enlightenment.

The advent of those little plastic outlet covers have no doubt saved many little ones from electrocution.  (Reportedly, they are too difficult for today’s parent to use and hence the $20 per outlet solution.)  Kitchens and medicine cabinets will always demand rethinking.  Unless your little one has rappelling gear, moving everything on up should solve any problems.  When my brother was at his most dangerous and destructible, cleaning solutions went into the upper cabinets and foods went into the lower.  It went well until we awoke to find him happily playing in a pile of grains on the kitchen floor.  That night, hook and eye locks were installed on the kitchen doors.  Problem solved.

Like exposure to dirt and germs, children need minor controlled exposure to cause and effect.  A bump on the head, scraped knee, burned finger tip are the ways we learn our (and the world’s) limitations.  Might I suggest that parents who feel they are living in a house of horrors, introduce themselves to a playpen.

Wait for it.  There it is.  “THERE IS NO PRICE ON SAFETY!”  Look, I am safety girl.  I took Robin’s admonition to Batman to; “buckle up for safety” quite seriously.  But I also am a disciple of the principles of cost/benefit ratios.  Confiscating my room service pots of jam are not keeping the passengers on my commuter flight any safer.  That confiscation served to entertain a bored TSA elder in a one-horse town.  Turning one’s own home into Fort Knox also contributes to a false sense of security.  But even more detrimental is how it initiates an imbalance into the home.  (Brace yourself, there’s gonna be outrage)  Children don’t pay the rent/mortgage, adults do.  It is the adults’ home and the children live there.  If you’re still reading, why not set the tone when the little one first arrives?  The baby can be contained (infant seat, playpen) both for his/her safety and your sanity.  The world (particularly the corporate world) loves to make new parents feel insecure.  The unsolicited advice starts pouring in at almost the moment of conception.  May I please (perhaps be the first) to tell you that you are doing everything right.  People have been surviving childhood for a very long time.  Parenting is not a spectator sport.  Relax, go snuggle with your little one in your home filled with sharp edges, it will all be fine.

*Stephen Sondheim – Sweeney Todd (1979)

 
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Posted by on October 27, 2011 in Childhood

 

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But You Say It’s Time We Moved In Together

03 Oct

The institution of marriage, in America, is becoming less popular.  This shift is occurring as wedding hype is escalating and equal marriage is gaining ground.  Interesting, eh?

Several European cultures have long eschewed legal marriage for cohabitation (presumably, an arrangement which more Americans are embracing.)  Cohabitation is so popular in the United Kingdom that I have heard Brits often substitute the word “partner” for “spouse” when discussing their legally wed better half.  Of course, Europeans cohabitate differently than we do.  While American are serial monogamists, moving from committed relationship to committed relationship, Europeans (by and large) treat their cohabitation as it were marriage and are in it for the long haul.  Of course, they have laws and policies which support this paradigm.  I’m not certain which came first; habit or attitude.

The American change in marital statistics is intriguing, as it seems to have happened in somewhat of a cultural vacuum.  “The number of unmarried Americans has reached a historic high, as the census also found that 30 percent of Americans have never been married, the largest percentage in the past 60 years.”  Sixty years.  In other words, since 1951.  Think of all the phenomenal cultural shifts that have occurred since 1950 (kinda mind blowing.)  Yet, the decline in marriage is happening now.  Why?  Some might point to a celebrity culture which embraces “all the benefits of marriage without the pesky commitment of marriage” lifestyle.  But I would debate that one; perhaps with the ghosts of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy or Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett.  Yes, there were many many more examples, but can you think of any couples more romantic and brimming with glamor?

I am going to go out on a (trembling precarious) limb here and posit that there is a direct link to the decline in American marriages and to the development delay of our most recent crop of young adults.

Since the dawn of time, children have been looking longingly towards the cave door.  Thousands of generations ago, adolescents were grumbling; “when I have my own fire, I’m gonna do it totally different man.”  Children have embraced their primal genetically preordained imperative to flee, until very very recently.  The result of the last twenty (plus) years of children ruled households, has resulted in (surprise!) childhood seeming far more attractive than adulthood.  Hence, the 28 year old in your basement.

Most of us grew up in a time before children’s: clothing stores, hair salons, furniture stores, and restaurants.  Seriously, where DO these kids get the cash?  There was a bold thick line between the adult world and the world in which we (as children) inhabited.  Parents’ lives ruled the household, and the schedule of the children was integrated into the household (versus setting the entire tone of the household.)  Besides the risk of raising a generation of Veruca Salts, the inherent danger in a child-centric upbringing is that it makes the adult world look pretty shabby in comparison.  If you have all the benefits of adulthood as a child (dinner, theatre, vacations, authority, power) why venture into the demanding world of adulthood?  Is it any wonder that college students are calling/texting their parents everyday?  Who the hell wants to dive into a world in which you will be ruled by children?  Am I the only one who found Lord of the Flies to be the scariest book ever?!

Which bring us to foregoing marriage, while living together, perhaps buying property and even having children.  It’s all the benefits of marriage without the scary grown-up commitment (cue Veruca Salt.)  My objection to these arrangements is purely based on legal (lack of) protection for all parties involved.  And to be perfectly honest, I always find it abhorrent to see people sleepwalking though life.  I find it hard to believe that most adults involved in non-legal relationships involving children are really being their best selves.

No one is offering predictions on where these marriage trends are going.  If the decline is in fact the start of a major cultural shift, it will be interesting to watch what occurs when the children of the cohabitants come of age.  Will they be the generation who, presumably raised in a child-centric household by adults not fully buying into the notion of adulthood, become the Eisenhower generation?  Or will marriage become as quaint and anachronistic as “coming out parties?”   Will it be left to the LGBT community to redefine marriage and make it relevant for the mid-twenty-first century?  Whatever the future of marriage, my hope is that our laws and policies catch up to those of our friends across the pond.  Children should have all the protections of the institution of marriage regardless of current cultural fashion.

 
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Posted by on October 3, 2011 in Marriage/Wedding

 

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Because I Said So, That’s Why

31 Aug

There is now legislation (in New Jersey) to combat bullying.  In schools.

I know, I too would be ready to cheer from the rooftops if we, as a people, had decreed that picking on persons or groups perceived as weaker than one’s own is an abomination.  What a world, what a world.

But no, the legislation I reference is only about schoolchildren.  There is nothing magical in the legislation.  It is exactly the kind of rules, forms, standards and bureaucracy one would expect.  There will be training for personnel, awareness campaigns, et cetera.  I am less interested in the minutia of legalizing common sense than looking down the road that led us to this point.

Why is bullying such an issue today?  (I am making the leap that bullying is in fact an “issue” as why else would people need to legislate?)  I think we can all agree that not much has changed about the physiological development of children over the past, say, 50 years?  Children have not turned into little Rambo like creatures fortified by steroid rich lunchables.  If anything, national childhood obesity rates would suggest that children have become less physically threatening in recent years (we are not including the threat of sitting on someone smaller than oneself.)  It is safe to assume that any change, on the part of the children, is psychological/emotional.

There is a traditional dichotomy that has been continuously eroding over past recent years: grown-ups were in charge, and all children were not gifted.

No doubt we all agree that children are not little adults.  They are not mentally or physically equipped to be mini-adults.  In fact, that is why parents were invented.  Minimally, parents help guide young minds in impulse control, decision making and the like.  Good parents help children grow into responsible and compassionate adults.

The child factor in this equation is far more troubling to me.  Passive or narcissistic parenting can be changed or augmented with positive interactions with aunts, uncles, teachers and the like.  But teaching a child that they are the center of the universe is cruel.  Not only does this perspective do nothing to help a child learn the skills necessary to be a functioning adult, it is just mean.  It is false advertising, plain and simple.  Not only is it not possible for any person to actually be the center of the universe, but what do you think will happen when he/she inevitably discovers the truth?  Is there any wonder that mental health services are at their breaking point in colleges and universities across the nation?

When we have to legislate adults to intervene when they see children misbehaving, we have a problem.  When did it get so scary for adults to embrace their own (innate) authority?  When did we decide that raising emotional terrorists is good parenting?  When exactly did we decide that the most ill-equipped of our society are in charge?  Legislating in loco parentis in the schools?  This is only the tip of the iceberg.

 
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Posted by on August 31, 2011 in Childhood

 

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