Category: Parenting

Charting the puzzles and peeves of kid-herding — from Huggies to homework, Pilates to pinatas.

Gift Wrap This

Published on October 13, 2011

I’m not what you’d call a natural salesman. Having never worked in retail, and rarely even hosted a yard sale, I’m uncomfortable pawning merch onto other people. My idea of a solid marketing pitch: “Hey … you don’t want one of these, do you?”

Yet in 15 combined years of my children’s schooling, I’ve hawked enough nearly useless junk to fill a 3rd-grade classroom. And not one of the tiny portable ones either: a huge classroom, like the kind we used to have before schools were penniless and begging for bucks.

Sucked into countless school fundraiser sales — whining and grumbling all the while — I’ve slung chocolates and coffee. I’ve moved magazines, pushed potted poinsettias, and hustled gift wrap. I’ve hit up friends, trapped neighbors, and pleaded with long-since-tapped-out family members to buy muffin tins and scented candles and macadamia nuts.

I’ve done it for two reasons: to funnel field-trip/assembly/art/lab money to our sickeningly cash-strapped schools, and so that PTA moms don’t mutter “slacker” when I skitter past them, hoping to avoid being tapped to work the clean-up shift at the scrapbooking booth. (I will write a check for \$100 right this instant if you promise never to make me scrape craft glue off of someone’s decorative scissors.)

Avoiding the Custody Shuffle

Published on September 15, 2011

My parents split up when I was a toddler, and I’ve always felt lucky that I was too young to feel the full sting of my “normal” being torn in two.

While divorce alleviates the intolerable tensions of a sour marriage, the children of divorcing couples rarely feel the same relief. Mom and dad’s breakup rocks their notion of “family,” and ping-ponging between dual residences upends their sense of “home.”

That’s why more and more divorcing couples are opting to let their kids remain in the family home while the parents rotate in and out instead. Dubbed “bird-nesting” (in some species of birds, both parents share in the feeding and protection of their young), the practice tends to be tricky for mom and dad, but easier on kids.

Santa Barbara dad Maddox Rees and his wife have been bird-nesting from their family home since they separated two years ago. When one is at home with their sons — ages 10, 9, and 4 — the other stays at a one-bedroom apartment that they also share.

Weird? A little. But it made the most sense for them at the time.

What If My Kid's Gay?

Published on September 1, 2011

It’s probably unwise to wonder this aloud, but that’s never stopped me before: What if you suspect your child is gay? Or — you know — will be gay eventually?

My own boys seem humdrumly hetero thus far, but I’ve known lots of kids who bucked traditional gender stereotypes to the extent that I wondered if they were gays-in-the-making.

A person’s sexual orientation can be neither truly discovered nor fully revealed until said person is, well, sexual. And yet there are those kids …

“My daughter has always wanted boy toys and boy clothes and her best buddies are boys. I’d say she was a possible future Chaz,” says a friend of mine, only half-jokingly. “But it’s hard to say. Boy clothes really are more comfortable, and boy games more fun. Ever play Pretty Pretty Princess?!”

Another friend suspects her kindergartner may wave a rainbow flag one day. “He loves to play beauty shop, has known the difference between mascara and eyeliner since he was three, and will always comment on a new haircut or dress. He’s obsessed with drawing hearts and rainbows and has told me that he’d like to marry boys,” she says. “Perhaps this is all typical 5-year-old boy stuff … but my guess is that it isn’t so much.”

Lewd Lullabies

Published on August 18, 2011

It’s our beloved bedtime ritual: In the dark of my son’s room, at the edge of his small bed, I sing him to sleep every night. From the day he was born, I’ve been lulling him off to dreamland by warble-whispering the random anthems filed in my musical memory. Lullabies. Folk tunes. Soulless pop songs from the 1980s.

I love our routine so much, love sending my custom soundtrack — like a mommy mix-tape — resonating through his subconscious as he slumbers. It relaxes him. It relaxes me. It’s achingly peaceful.

Until the vulgarities start flying.

You see, he’s a musical child. Sings with conviction, dances with abandon, and hopes to play the tuba someday … when he’s bigger than one. The kid’s got perfect pitch, impeccable rhythm, and — herein lies the problem — uncanny recall for every lyric he’s ever heard. Ever.

So if he recognizes a song during our nightly tunefest, he sings along boisterously — negating the whole “lulling” objective. If I “sshhh” him in that gentle-but-I’m-dead-serious way that only mothers can, he begins dancing horizontally to the ditty, thumping its backbeat on the pillow, making James Brown faces and kicking his legs in spastic homage to a mosh pit he clearly visited in a former life.

My Child, My 'Friend'?

Published on August 4, 2011

As a mom or dad, you hear it all the time. Too often. It’s one of those firm parenting axioms recited by smug sages — like “sleep when your baby sleeps” — that’s as nonnegotiable as it is unachievable.

“Children don’t need a friend,” the advice goes. “They need a parent.” And it’s true. Except on Facebook, where it turns out to be entirely false.

After years of careful evasion, my husband and I finally let our 8th grader create a Facebook account. We’d been holding out, we said, because publishing personal information to hundreds of people requires a modicum of maturity; crude comments and damning photos can have disastrous consequences.

But here was the real reason: We didn’t want him to see our crude comments and damning photos on Facebook: The status updates whining about our kids’ whining. The picture of dual-mounted street signs at the intersection of Inyo and Butte. The absurd pages I support, including one called “When I was a kid I thought Cal Worthington said ‘Pussycow,’ not ‘Go See Cal.'”

But our reasons for keeping the kid off social-networking sites (“Beware the cyber bullies, whatever those are”) were growing thinner, and our hypocrisy (“We’ll discuss this later, son; I’m busy on Facebook now”) ever fatter. So we caved.

The Brand Canyon

Published on July 21, 2011

Do you love buying shoes? Are you someone for whom shoe-shopping begets a Zennish euphoria? Yes?

Here’s some advice for you: Don’t do it with a 12-year-old.

My 8th-grade-bound son has long coveted classic Converse low-tops. Last week, we found a pair of lookalikes on sale for \$15. Sweet! “We’ll take ’em,” I bellowed, relishing the rare and unparalleled near-delirium of buying fabulous shoes at ridiculous prices.

“Um,” my son muttered sheepishly, staring at another pair of shoes: The Converse brand. All Star Chuck Taylors. Same color. Same style. Forty-five bleepin’ bucks. “I’d rather have the real ones.”

In my mind, I said this: “Well, I’d rather have a ’57 Chevy Bel Air convertible, yet somehow we’re leaving here in a dinged-up Honda.” But sensing that we were heading into tricky parenting territory, I uttered this instead: “But … they cost three times as much.”

“Yeah,” he said, forcing himself to meet my puzzled gaze.

“And they look … exactly the same.”

“Not exactly,” he explained. “These have a label.”

I had several problems with this situation. First, when pressed, my normally articulate child could not put into words why the brand mattered so much. His stuttered attempt contained the phrases: “important to me,” “make fun,” and, of course, “cool.”

Circumcision: Cut It Out?

Published on July 7, 2011

Actor Russell Crowe railed against circumcision in a profanity-laced tweet last week, calling the ancient and still-popular practice “barbarism.” This month, Colorado becomes the 18th state (California among them) to stop funding circumcision with Medicaid. And in November, San Francisco residents will decide whether to outlaw the procedure outright when they vote on the “Male Genital Mutilation” bill.

Once the norm in the United States, the practice of slicing off a boy’s foreskin shortly after birth has become less common, and more controversial, in recent years. On the one hand are Jews and Muslims with religious and cultural reasons for making the cut, and statisticians convinced the practice reduces the likelihood of urinary tract infections and HIV. On the other are outraged “intactivists” stumping for “genital integrity,” arguing that lopping off the penile hood violates infants’ bodies, reduces sexual sensitivity, and was only popularized in this Puritanical nation as a (clearly futile) means of discouraging masturbation among naughty boys.

Outside the United States, circumcision is prevalent only in Muslim nations, Southeast Asia, Israel, and South Korea. It’s rare in Europe, Latin America, and most of Asia.

Giving Birth: A Laughing Matter?

Published on June 23, 2011

I’m not into pain. Not even a little bit. A fitness trainer once instructed me to push through my searing muscle ache, assuring me that “pain is weakness leaving the body.” My response: “This is me leaving the weight room and signing up for Zumba.”

Life’s full of pain. Why invite more?

It’ll come as no surprise, then, that my position on pain management during childbirth has always been an unequivocal “YES, PLEASE.” Upon arriving at the hospital to deliver my children, I told every human being who would listen, including the valet who took my car out front: “I’m going to need an epidural. A big one. Soon, probably. I’m one of those women. Just so’s ya know.”

I got my epidural — twice. And it even worked — once. The other time it failed and had to be re-administered late in the game. Which is really the only good reason for an anesthesiologist to be holding a long needle inches from a shrieking woman’s spine, instructing her to “hold very still” during body-quaking, soul-rattling contractions. But I digress.

My point is that labor and delivery are brutal. They’re absolute misery; I don’t care what anyone tells you. I did lots of unpleasant and involuntary things in the delivery room. I wept. I vomited. I may have soiled the delivery table; my husband has the good sense to deny it, and I have the good sense not to keep asking.

Lost: One Father

Published on June 9, 2011

I always knew I’d speak at my father’s funeral.

It’s a morbid thought, I know. But I was sure I’d deliver his eulogy. See, he’s a fascinating man — passionate and charismatic, the kind of guy who seems to have lived several lives in the space of one. A dozen careers. Hundreds of adventures. Thousands of friends.

And my father taught me how to write. By turning me on to cunning authors and forcing me to rewrite shoddy school essays, he helped shape my voice. We share a love of style, an ear for rhythm.

So I assumed that when the time came, I’d need to squelch my own sadness, stifle my tears, and sum up the substantial capacity of this man’s character. The notion scared me half to death myself. I spent years wondering what I’d say to honor such a life and whether I could do it justice.

But I don’t wonder that anymore. Now I just wonder if anyone will tell me when he dies.

Technically, he’s not my dad; he’s my stepdad. But he was a real father to me for 30 years. He coached me in table manners and protected me from bullies. He donned a grass skirt to man the grill for my Sweet 16 backyard luau. He wrote a poem for me and read it aloud at my wedding.

That day — the day I got married — he was already one year into a secret love affair with a woman who was not my mother. The liaison lasted 12 years before Mom discovered it.

I Want Camp

Published on May 26, 2011

Considering the mess on my desk, and the muddle in my head, you’d think we were applying to college. My checkbook cowers beneath too many glossy brochures. My brain stews in conflicting data: dates, deadlines, and deposits, reputations and recommendations …

But it’s not college-application time — it’s summer-camp scheduling season. When I was a kid, that meant two choices: cot-sleeping at overnight camp or handball-playing at day camp. The most I learned at either was how to treat sunburn and skeeter bites.

Starshine Roshell

Times have changed. The summer-camp industry has exploded like a red ant hill under the trouncing cleats of World Cup Soccer Camp. Or like a failed soufflé at Kids Cook! Culinary Camp. Or like a rocket ship at Destination Science Camp.

These days you need a spreadsheet to sort out your kids’ endless options. Summer camps are a $12-billion-per-year industry, according to the American Camp Association (ACA), and there are more than 12,000 camps in the U.S. Unlike the offerings of my youth, today’s camps seem exceedingly specialized and impossibly — even unreasonably — fun.

Determined to cultivate kids’ hard-won confidence and spark their blossoming imaginations (or at least hell-bent on convincing the paying parents that’s what they’re doing), camps cover every conceivable interest under the searing summer sun. The ACA boasts camps for caving and clowning, fencing and farming, rafting and riflery. There’s rock rappelling, tap dancing, and “lamp working” (really?). There’s even a Secret Agent Camp, where mini wanna-Bonds learn stealth tactics, martial arts, and code-deciphering. All of which are invaluable in middle school.