UnchartedParent.com

I owe a thank you to Phil Collins.

No, I don’t know him.  But I recently saw him perform on the Today Show, and, as if in a time machine, I was transported back to another place and time.

Phil Collins ruled during my college years.  My friends and I knew every word to every song, we got each new album (remember those?) as soon as it was released, and we listened to those albums on cassettes (remember those?) every single day.  Phil accompanied us to parties, sang in the background as we studied, celebrated our joys and soothed us in our heartaches.  For me, Phil Collins brings back a time of treasured friendship and of learning about the world and what role I might be able to play in it.

I was pleasantly surprised to notice that Phil sounded as dulcet now as he ever has, which is often not the case with rock stars who’ve been around for several decades.  I’d like to think that maybe I, too, have withstood time and am no worse for the age that shows on my face.  Maybe I’m even a little better?  Most of my best friendships from my “Phil Collins Era” have survived, too, and though they have changed, those people remain among my most cherished friends.

Of course many things are different now.  Today, I watch Phil Collins on the Today Show while I  fold laundry instead of listening to his cassettes in my dorm room while drinking cheap beer.  But the essence of who I was in my Phil Collins Era is still within me, even though I now answer to a name I could barely imagine then: Mommy.

My kids are ages four and one.  So why am I worried about the prom?

Because my schedule sometimes revolves around that of a certain teenager’s.  Not my own teenager, but someone who is almost as important in our lives: the babysitter.

I never realized that I would have to think about things like prom, homecoming, dance practice, homework, etc., when my kids were under the age of five, but these things are part of my life.  For my husband and I to secure those extremely rare moments out of the house, alone together, we need to take all of our babysitter’s plans into account.

A feat of Olympic proportions occurs when we decide that we would like to go out with another couple, for then we must coordinate the schedules of four adults and two teenagers (and varying numbers of kids).  In the four-and-a-half years since becoming parents, we have succeeded in accomplishing this goal only twice.  And the last double date took two years to assemble.  The efforts went something like this:

My friend: “OK, we are free six weeks from Saturday.”

Me: “Sorry, we’ve got a swim class followed by a gymnastics class followed by a birthday party.  We can’t heap a babysitter on top of that.  What about the next week?”

Friend: “Nope, we’re out of town visiting Thomas the Train, and then we have family coming in.  The week after that?”

Me: “Yes!  That’s it!  Eight weeks from Saturday!”

Friend: “Great.  What about a backup date, you know, in case we can’t get sitters?”

We negotiate some more and eventually come up with a date some three months from now that will serve as a backup.

My friend: “Now we’ve got it.  You talk to your sitter and I’ll talk to mine, and we’ll see where we are in a couple of days.”

A week goes by, and I get an e-mail from my friend.  “Our sitter can make it; how about yours?”

I reply, “Sorry, her boyfriend’s dad got tickets to a baseball game that night.  How about our backup date?”  My friend promises to get back to me.

Two days later, she does.  “Our sitter is away that weekend at a lacrosse tournament.  Let’s try to find a new date . . . .”

And so it goes.

Last year, we didn’t get to go out at all during the month of July because our sitter went to Spain for the month.  This summer, she’s staying in town.  But I think there are some college-visitation trips I need to jot down on my schedule . . . .

Why is it that with all of the advances women have made in American society over the past half-century, we are still forced to choose between our careers and our kids?  Why is most of the professional world still structured around the schedule of the man who works from 9 to 5 (except now he—or she—is expected to work until 6, or 7, or later), and then comes home to find his dinner on the table?

I went to school for twenty years, not counting kindergarten or preschool.  Twenty years.  I have three degrees, and a set of skills that I’ve been told is quite in demand. 

But apparently, I and my skills are only “in demand” if I am willing to be parted from my children for 40 to 50 hours each week.

I know how fortunate I am that I have been able to make the choice to stay home with my kids.  Many, if not most, parents would love to have this opportunity but cannot.  So I recognize that many of you may perceive my comments as overprivileged whining, and there is probably some truth to that.  But that partial truth does not preclude another truth, one which is well-known: many, if not most, professional women still have to choose between their careers and their families.

It has been made abundantly clear to me that should I wish to work full-time in my former profession, I could choose from numerous job opportunities in less time than it takes to say, “Hi, here’s my resume.”  But as soon as I utter those ominous words, “part-time,” I can almost hear the screams as the purveyors of those would-be jobs scramble to put as much distance between me and themselves as possible.

Of course, I do know several women who work part-time, in arrangements cobbled together after they had their first or second or third child.  But in almost every case, these women already had full-time jobs, and were able to approach employers who already appreciated and relied upon their efforts and skills and had a vested interest in keeping them as part of their teams.  But for me, who moved to an entirely new region of the country when my son was 18 months-old, there was no pre-existing job that I could convert.  I sought a part-time job as a beginning, not a means to hang on.  And as of yet, there have been no takers.

There have been positive outcomes, of course.  Though we have significantly less money than we used to, we are generally able to make ends meet.  I really do know my kids better than anyone else does, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.  I manage to find some time to write things like this blog, which I’ve always wanted to do.  But sometimes I feel that my years of education and my skills are wasted, all because I’ve made the commitment to make time with my kids my first priority.  And it’s frustrating beyond measure—and beyond what I anticipated—when I know that I could contribute much-needed cash to the family budget if only someone was willing to pay for my skills for 10 to 20 hours per week.

We’ve come a long way, baby, but I think we still have some distance to go.

It’s a cliché, a colloquialism: “He couldn’t control himself.”  And with little kids, it’s often true.

As a parent, it’s sometimes tough to remember that our kids really can’t always control their emotional behavior, and it’s our job—often a frustrating one—to teach these out-of-control, wriggling, screaming maniacs how to manage their emotions. 

Usually, we witness this phenomenon in a negative context: a temper-tantrum, or a sobbing meltdown over some seemingly inconsequential event, like the fact that I purchased the purple Big Bird bubble bath instead of the much more acceptable blue Elmo bubble bath (I don’t remember if those are really the colors, but you get my point).  This morning, however, I was treated to a rare example of out-of-control emotion in a positive context.

We have been reading “Jack” the “Magic Tree House” books, by Mary Pope Osborne.  (For those of you unfamiliar with this series, the books follow the adventures of two young kids who discover a tree house filled with enchanted books that enable the children to travel through time and space.  You can visit the associated website here.)  These are Jack’s first “chapter books,” and he eagerly hops into his pajamas and brushes his teeth at night in order to join his fictional friends for the next two chapters of their exploits.  Last night, we finished book number 10, and I’m willing to bet that Jack spent the night dreaming of these books and the possibilities for book 11.

How do I know?  This morning, Jack and I engaged in what is fast becoming a ritual: the “Presentation of the New Book.”  Jack came into my bedroom and asked, smiling, “Can I have the number 11 book?” 

I disappeared into my closet and emerged with one hand behind my back.  “What number 11 book?” I asked, teasing him. 

The only sound Jack could muster was a half-insane giggle, which was accompanied by a little shimmy of excitement.  Literally unable to stand in one place, he ran out of the room, down the hall, and bounced onto his bed, giggling all the while.  He returned to my room for the book, only to be set in motion once more by his own irrepressible enthusiasm. 

Finally, I called him back to give him the book and announced the title.  “Lions at Lunchtime,” I proclaimed.  Jack received the book with huge eyes and a bigger smile, and instantly began to page through it, repeatedly running over to show me each of the pictures sprinkled through the slim volume. 

What better joy is there for a parent than witnessing a child’s excitement so intense that it spills over and creeps into our own emotions?  (And what a bonus when the excitement comes from reading a book!) 

I have to devote at least one post to The Wiggles.

The first time I saw these guys, I thought, wow, these four guys are really secure in their manhood.  I couldn’t think of a single grown man I know who would ever agree to, on international television, dance and cavort with “Wags the Dog” or quack with a befuddled “Captain Feathersword,” a pirate with a—you guessed it—feather for a sword.

But then I got to know The Wiggles.

Back when “Jack” was not yet two, he fell in love with The Wiggles.  They sang and danced, and Jack was mesmerized.  They transformed into an obsession, and our video collection grew and sprouted offshoots like an electronic Murray’s Guitar, a Big Red Car throw pillow, and a comforter on Jack’s first big-boy bed.  We brought DVDs on long car trips, and even wiggled ourselves at live Wiggles concerts (think of these as the toddler equivalent to Star Trek conventions).

Best of all, as I got to know The Wiggles, I realized that I actually enjoyed their music!  No, I didn’t play the CD’s when I was alone in the car—I wasn’t that far gone.  But I didn’t mind playing them over and over for Jack, or listening to the videos each night as I made dinner.  To my amazement, I realized that these guys can actually sing, Greg—the lead Wiggle—has a melodious voice, and they engage their young audience without insulting the children’s intelligence.  When I introduced The Wiggles to Jack’s then-speech therapist, she noted approvingly their visual appeal of, for example, putting each of four kids appearing in one song in a differently patterned dress, as well as their clear enunciation as they sung and spoke at a pace just right for toddler comprehension.

In fact, we credit The Wiggles in part with encouraging our late-talking son to begin to speak.  Among his first utterances were lines from Wiggles tunes.

But as we all know, kids move on, and eventually, Jack’s obsession with The Wiggles gave way to a love of all things dinosaur.  Buzz and Woody figures from Toy Story replaced the Wags the Dog, Dorothy the Dinosaur and Henry the Octopus beanies on his shelves.  So, with a little reluctance, I, too, said adieu to The Wiggles.

But now it’s “Emmie’s” turn!

Though she’s on the young side—her attention span barely gets through the introductory “In the Wiggles World” song at the beginning of each episode—Emmie has begun to appreciate this goofy quartet.  She stares at them on TV, smiles at their silly physical antics, and even wiggles her tiny body for a moment before she turns to see the next toy that will grab her interest.  I can tell it’s only a matter of time before Emmie, like her big brother before her, falls head over heels in love with these four aging men in brightly colored T-shirts. 

And I’m glad that we’re heading back into The Wiggles’ World!

I love the word “toddler.”

It’s so descriptive.  Even as we brag about our babies’ first steps, “walking” doesn’t  accurately portray their activity.  Most toddlers begin this skill not by putting just one foot in front of the other, bending their knees as their strides require, but instead by executing full-body movements.  “Emmie” lurched about stiffly—much like the Addams Family member whose name described the same movement—for more than a week when she began walking.  Then her knees began to bend, but she has yet to achieve the heel-toe, heel-toe steps that she will undoubtedly exhibit by her second birthday.

Toddlers also strike seemingly unnatural postures to keep their balance.  Emmie toddles with her belly and bum stuck way out in opposite directions; I keep thinking that if I walked like that, my lower back would ache until it crumpled.  She also keeps both hands raised in the air as though she is surrendering or the subject of a hold-up.  The child of a friend of mine walked for months following his first step with both arms extended low behind him, forming a “V” shape away from his body; his stance reminded me of a car with a fancy spoiler designed to streamline the air around him as he moved through it so as not to slow him down or interfere with his precarious movements.

Regardless of how long toddlers truly “toddle”—whether it’s days or months—we love to watch them figure out their bodies and exult in their ability to walk upright like the adults and older kids around them.  Soon enough, they will become the very big kids they so admire, and their unique first steps will be relegated to our memories (and, if we were lucky and had the foresight, DVDs).  We won’t watch them toddle anymore; instead, we’ll stand by as they outrun us, as they should. 

But whenever we hear the word “toddler,” we’ll remember our own toddlers and those brief, tottering moments between babyhood and childhood.

Recess is disappearing.

That’s what articles, news stories and personal anecdotes seem to reveal about most kids’ favorite part of the school day: recess.

One such article ran recently in the Washington Post.  That story reported that in the Washington metropolitan area, pressures on school administrators to meet state academic requirements are forcing them to shrink daily recess time to 15 or fewer minutes; in some cases, they are eliminating recess altogether.  Other sources indicate that this is a national trend.

It’s also crazy.

If you’re a parent, you know that kids have loads of energy and they need a chance to release it.  (If you doubt this fact, just come up here to New England where we have had epic amounts of rain in the last month; every parent I know is desperate to find more “outside time” for their kids.)  If kids aren’t given the opportunity in the course of the school day to move around and play, that physical energy will cling to them and spread like kudzu as the school day progresses.  I don’t see how an afternoon math or social studies class can hold the attention of kids who have incurable cases of the fidgets.

The mental break recess provides is important, too.  All day at school, kids need to focus on their schoolwork; they must concentrate on the topic of the moment.  They have to think in the manners prescribed by their teachers in any given subject.  But in recess, kids can take a break from all that.  These breaks in the day are necessary for everyone; there’s a reason adults take coffee breaks from work (see the aforementioned Washington Post article), and it’s not just the caffeine.  Think about it: when was the last time you worked straight through the day without pause?  For me, it was a long, long time ago, and the rare times I did it, my brain felt like the eggs in the frying pan from that old, anti-drug public service announcement. 

The Post article also reveals that in some cases where recess is preserved, teachers are actually “teaching” recess by organizing activities for the kids.  One elementary-school principle stated in the article, “Before we organized guided play, recess was just a free-for-all, with kids never organizing anything much more in-depth than a game of tag.” 

What’s wrong with a game of tag?

In school, kids have to follow other people’s rules—adults’ rules—all day.  Recess provides—or should provide—the opportunity for kids to create games of their choosing played by their own rules and to practice social interaction free from interference by adults (in most cases).  If we want our kids to grow up to be responsible, social beings, we’ve got to make sure that they have the chance, on a regular basis, to find out how that works.

I could write about more reasons to preserve recess, like helping to combat this childhood-obesity epidemic we all purport to be so concerned about.  (I’ll save my rant on the disappearance of gym class for another post.)  But I think you get my point by now.

If mounting academic pressures are resulting in the elimination of school activities that permit kids to “just be kids,” then perhaps it’s time to rethink some of those pressures.  I am a firm believer in high academic expectations, but not at the expense of my kids’ childhoods.

My husband and I talk all the time about how in the future, our kids will run circles around us.  The latest evidence that we will someday get our butts kicked came just a few days ago, when my one-year-old outwitted me for the first time.  For reasons that elude me completely, “Emmie” will take bites from any food except cheese.  She loves cheese, but demands that I tear each slice into small pieces for her to eat.  The illogic of this position led me last week, finally, to insist that she deal with her slice of cheese on her own; in other words, I refused to tear it up for her.  She grunted her request and held the cheese out to me, and when I shook my head repeatedly and insisted, “you do it,” she promptly stuffed as much of the cheese as she could into her mouth until she gagged, and I had to go into her mouth and retrieve it.  Then I selected a new slice of cheese and tore it into little pieces for her; in other words, I did exactly what she wanted me to do.

What I didn’t know is that biology apparently has it in for us parents, too.  Blogging on MomandPopBlog.com, Linda Thomas writes about a high-pitched ring tone that some kids are using to receive text messages during school.  Why?  Because only kids can hear the tone; it’s too high-pitched for adult ears—including those belonging to teachers.

If you follow the link to the article Thomas cites, you will find a test you can try to see if you can hear the tone.  Even with the volume on my computer turned up, I could hear nothing.  But my four-year-old son had no trouble hearing the high-pitched tone.   

Yup, my husband and I are definitely in trouble.

We all give up things when we become parents.  Romantic dinners at grown-up restaurants, hours at a time tucked into a big chair reading a fascinating novel, the ability to travel on a whim.  These are all things we had a pretty good idea that we’d have to relinquish—for the most part—when we became parents.

But I’d bet that for many of us, there is a surprise in that list.  Something we yearn for, some limitation we couldn’t foretell, that crept up on us, tapped us on the shoulder in one of those rare moments we find for reflection and proclaimed: “You want me and you can’t have me!”

For me, the unexpected longing turned out to be the desire to immerse myself in a newly discovered passion: writing. 

I write in the pockets of time I find between doing the laundry, making dinner, going to the grocery store and running 857 other errands.  I write between mandatory phone calls to help me determine where to send my son to preschool and why my daughter keeps getting earaches.  I write after the kids are asleep and before I nod off myself.  I always know that as soon as the words really begin to flow on the page, something or someone will intervene and I will need to focus elsewhere.  Even as I draft this post, I’m rushing to finish it before my husband returns home from a museum with the kids in tow; they’re due back any minute now. 

In fact, I’m done writing for now.  I just heard the car pull into the garage; the kids are home.

First on my list of things no one ever tells you about babies: sleep.

You know, of course, that you will lose sleep when you have a baby.  You’re aware that babies sleep and wake at odd hours, and so you will, too.  You’ve even accepted that your days of lounging in bed until the late-morning hours on weekends are over, at least for a while.

But no one tells you that sleep will become the primary focus of your lives.  New parents necessarily obsess about sleep.  How long did the baby nap?  What time will she wake up?  Is she sleeping in the right position?  When will she sleep through the night?  How can we get her to sleep longer, or to go to sleep earlier?  What does Ferber say about sleep?  Or Sears, or Weissbluth?  When will I get more sleep?  How can I get more sleep?  Why can’t I nap when the baby is sleeping?  Why does my spouse get more/less sleep than I do?  How can I be expected to rise at 5:00 each day?  When will I be able to sleep for more than four hours at a time?  How dare my spouse be grumpy when he slept two hours longer than I did last night?  How can I be this tired and still be alive?

And it continues past the first year.  What is the precise time that is best for my child’s bedtime?  Is he overtired?  Why am I still overtired?  Are his naps too long?  Too short?  Should he take two naps per day, or one?  Should I rest when he’s napping, or work?  Or should I do laundry?  Why is he still getting up before 6:00 a.m.?  How can I get him to stop waking up in the middle of the night?  What does Ferber say now?  How can I get more sleep? 

Sleep isn’t merely important when you have a baby; it’s everything.

While we seem finally to have crossed most of the sleep hurdles with our four-year-old son (at least until he stops wearing “GoodNites” to bed and we begin middle-of-the-night trips to the potty), we are still working through them with our one-year-old daughter.  Our current obstacle: “Emmie” likes to get up well before 6:00 a.m.

We don’t.

Emmie’s early risings wouldn’t be so problematic, I suppose, if we went to bed early ourselves.  But for me in particular—a night owl by nature—any awakening prior to 7:00 a.m. is painful.  I’ve reluctantly accepted that until my kids become teenagers, I’ll be getting up most days before that reasonable hour.  But I have my limits, and Emmie is definitely pushing the early-morning envelope. 

I like to think that I’m always open to new approaches or suggestions to solve a problem.  So when two close friends and my sister all shared with me recently their experiences of solving their young kids’ sleep problems by moving the children’s bedtimes up a half-hour, we decided to try this strategy with Emmie.  What have we got to lose, I figured?

More sleep.

Emmie’s gone to sleep by 7:00 p.m. (or slightly after) for four nights now.  And she has gone to sleep more easily and has been less of an overtired wreck immediately before bedtime.

But I’ve been up since 4:00 a.m. this morning, as has Emmie.

This experiment isn’t over, but it’s definitely on probation.

And I still need more sleep.  Has anybody out there got a caffeine IV for me?