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Today is a sad day in The Wiggles’ World.

The announcement came out of Australia earlier this Thursday: Greg Page, a.k.a. Greg Wiggle or The Yellow Wiggle, is leaving the group to deal with a serious medical condition that will be with him for the rest of his life.  According to the press release, Greg has “orthostatic intolerance,” which means:

[W]hen Greg stands up, his heart does not compensate for the change in posture by pumping more blood around his body for it to function properly.  A similar problem occurs when there is a change in the environment such as a warm room or hot weather.

This condition is causing problems with his walking, balance, speech and coordination.  It relates to the proper functioning of the autonomic nervous system, which is the way the human body regulates things we don’t consciously have to think about such as heart beat and temperature regulation.

The Wiggles will continue with Sam Moran, Greg Page’s understudy, permanently replacing Greg as The Yellow Wiggle.

No disrespect intended, Sam, but it just won’t be the same.

The Wiggles mean more in my family than Elmo, Buzz Lightyear and every other entertainment figure to which my kids have been exposed—combined.  Their effect on my children and my household has been nothing short of magical.  They first wove their spell on my now almost five-year-old son, “Jack.”  As a toddler, Jack was very late in developing speech.  He happened upon The Wiggles’ television show when he was about nineteen months old, and he was transfixed.  Though we were—and continue to be—strict about our children’s television viewing, we decided that The Wiggles passed muster and we permitted Jack to watch The Wiggles almost daily.  Thus, we were delighted when some of his first words came from episodes of The Wiggles, and our enthusiasm for the quartet was confirmed when Jack’s speech therapist watched a video with us and explained to us in child development terms not only the group’s appeal, but how watching their singing and dancing could aid in a child’s growth. 

Now my twenty-month-old daughter, “Emmie,” is the one obsessed with The Wiggles.  (Jack, after seemingly outgrowing them for a while, has had a resurgence of interest in recent months and the two kids compete for the privilege of selecting the day’s Wiggles video.)  For her, Wiggles videos and even the audio CD’s are interactive: she learns the dances, moos when the four men pretend to be cows and quacks when they dance as ducks.  She would watch them all day if we let her, and she has no interest in any other television show or video.  For her, it’s The Wiggles or nothing.  (And we also think she has her first crush: Murray Wiggle, watch out!)

So, for those of you who think I am nuts to get so worked up over a cast change in a children’s band, I can only point out that yellow, blue, red and purple have been the colors of my children’s early childhood.  I spend more time with those four Wiggles than I do with anyone else outside of my husband and my children; after all, they are in my family room and my car nearly every day.  And the best thing about The Wiggles to me, a parent and an adult, has been that, unlike most other children’s music, I can listen to The Wiggles—over, and over, and over again—without wanting to rip the DVD or CD out of its player and smash it to bits on the floor.  Why?  These guys are actually musical, and their songs are more likely to have me tapping my toes than tearing out my hair.  Moreover, Greg Page has a truly beautiful voice—one that I would readily listen to in many other genres of music.  The sweetness of the melodies emanating from his throat is rarely equaled in children’s entertainment.  Together, these factors, coupled with the men’s solid grounding in child development, created a unique package that became an international icon to children and parents alike.

This is why I, a grown woman, am lamenting and writing at length about my sadness over Greg’s departure.

To Greg, of course, we can only wish you the best.  It’s always heartbreaking when someone so young and so gifted is forced to cut short his career because of a betrayal of the body.  As someone who was also informed early in adulthood that I had a chronic disease that would require adjustments for the rest of my life, I know how transformational that declaration can be.  Greg, you have brought our children joy, their  parents peace (I shudder to think how many dinners would never have been cooked in my house if not for those Wiggles) and been a central part of bringing children and their parents together in a world of fun.  If there is no greater gift than to bring happiness to a child, then you have more than done your part to lift up the world and we hope that you find a way to be well and live the life you desire and deserve.

As for the rest of The Wiggles, we will always be fans as long as our children’s youth so permits.  As much as part of me wishes that you would leave behind the legacy of Greg, Anthony, Murray and Jeff to be enjoyed via the music you have already recorded, part of me also knows that your appeal to children will continue to shine whether it is Greg or Sam driving the Big Red Car.  And, as you have always known, it is the children who really matter.

Goodbye, Greg.  We will miss you.

(Click here to read The Wiggles’ November 30 press release and to see Greg’s farewell video.)

“Wouldn’t you rather have an all-boy party?”

I posed this question to my son after he recited to me the list of children he wanted to invite to his birthday party.  The list included more than twenty kids, and I quickly grabbed the only safe, bright line I could find that would permit me to pare down the list without offending anyone.

Anyone, that is, except myself and my own notions of equality and feminism.

I love the fact that my son hasn’t reached the “girls-are-icky” stage of development yet.  He likes his male and his female friends, and I’m not even sure he’s noticed that, for the most part, the boys like to play his running, wrestling and shouting games more often than the girls do.  As far as he is concerned, there is no reason girls and boys can’t be friends, and that attitude is perfect as far as I am concerned. 

I, too, used to have lots of friends of the opposite sex, until sexual politics intervened and made most of those friendships too complex.  I believe that men and women ought to be able to be friends, and we shouldn’t be forced to draw social lines between genders in deference to outdated notions of separatism and inequality.  So I’m all for my young son holding on to his female friends for as long as possible, and I don’t want to create any distinctions among his friends before he does.

But I panicked.  In one weak, desperate moment, I discarded all of these values when faced with the specter of twenty-three kids high on sugar at a five-year-old’s birthday party.  Girls?  Who needs ‘em?!  (In fairness to myself, I was also facing a limit suggested by the museum where my son wanted to hold his party.)  “Jack” loved the idea, and I instantly sighed with relief—and guilt. 

As luck would have it, though, I found the opportunity to stop beating myself up about this betrayal of my inner self.  Jack requested a change of venue for his party, and when I called the place, I was told that they had no limit on the number of kids who could attend. 

“Jack,” I offered brightly, “______ says you can have as many kids as you want at your party.  What if we decide to invite the girls after all?”

“Okay.” 

I don’t think Jack really cares one way or the other; he just wants a fun party with lots of running and shouting.  And some M&M’s.  So I am off the hook. 

Off the hook, that is, except for that annoying little feminist in my head who won’t let me forget that I was the one who said, “How about we have a party and we only invite the boys?”

The good news: we sold our house.  We close and move out in the middle of January.

The bad news: through a series of unfortunate and unlikely and somewhat underhanded events, we have no new home to go to. 

We thought we had this worked out; really, we did.  We spent more than a week negotiating with a seller, then less than twenty-four hours considering their final offer.  (This after beginning this whole process with an offer made on an entirely different house in June.)  We went back and forth between that house and another, less expensive one.  But the image of my son romping up and down the first house’s enormous lawn, his entire face glowing in the fulfillment of every boy’s desire to run, jump and cavort until exhausted, kept tugging me back to that house and we called our realtor to tell her to contact that seller and accept their counteroffer.

Moments later, she called back to inform us that not just one, but both houses were under contract to other people.  The sellers of the first house had concluded a contract with another buyer even as they continued to negotiate with us.

We have seen every house in our price range in the town to which we plan to move. (Moving to this town, with its excellent school system, is the whole impetus for us to move now, before our son is ready to start first grade.  We’ve even been to the elementary school, taken the tour and sat down with one of the administrators.)  We know what’s out there.  And there’s nothing else we want to buy that we can afford.

So we are out of luck.  And, as of the middle of January, out of our house.

All I kept thinking as I drove home from our Thanksgiving weekend was that I tried to do a good thing for my kids and now they’re going to have give up their blue-sky and pink-striped rooms decorated with puffy clouds and pastel butterflies, their big, flat backyard and their sense of security for absolutely nothing.

We’re going to spend a lot of money we don’t have to move someplace we don’t want to be and don’t plan to stay.  And then in a few years, we can do the whole real-estate dance and uproot the kids all over again, things that until today I swore I would never repeat.

They say that home is where the heart is.  My heart, however, is no longer in this process.  Where is home when you don’t even know where your heart—and your children—are going to sleep?

Well, it’s almost Thursday.  And not just any Thursday, but America’s homage to gluttony, my favorite vice.

It’s also a time to rest and relax, two things I haven’t done much lately.  I’m going to take a break from the rush to school, the constant illnesses (I hope), the mind-boggling dance that has been trying to sell one house and buy another, the constant struggle to figure out ways to earn some income and the self-regenerating laundry pile.  In short, I’m going to eat, sit on the couch and play with my kids.

Have a great Thanksgiving, everybody.  Uncharted Parent will be back next week.

Just a brief update today, because I owe it to my son after Friday’s post.

Yesterday I saw “Jack” stand up to another child–an older child, no less–who had taken a ball away from him in a museum.  The two children maintained eye contact for a moment, and then the older child walked away, leaving the toy for Jack.

That was the first time I have ever seen Jack stand up to another child and win without any adult intervention. 

I’m so proud of him.  And now I’m thinking that maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about the times he comes to me for help in social situations.  He’s come an awfully long away, and maybe I need to give him the credit he is due.

(Addendum: reading this post, my husband noted that I had left out the part of the story where, prior to the confrontation described above, Jack nearly hit a woman in the head with the beach ball in question.  Details, details . . . .)

Kids must be taught appropriate behavior.  When the inevitable happens—one kid takes away another’s toy, a child cuts in front of another in line, a kid refuses to play the game another child wants to play—most children’s natural reactions are to scream, cry, whine, hit, push, grab, pull or taunt.  Many adults’ natural reactions would be similar, but we, presumably, have learned to control our emotions to some degree and act in what at least ought to be a more dignified fashion.

Teaching our kids these skills is difficult; we are combating nature.  For example, when my son, “Jack,” was very young, I taught him that rather than throwing things when he was angry, he could stomp his feet and make a frustrated, growling noise as an emotional outlet.  Now that he is almost five, I’ve been trying to instill the idea that he should try to talk about things when he feels he is treated unjustly.  If talking with an offending child doesn’t help, I’ve said, then seek help from me or Daddy or another grownup.

To his credit, Jack has been working on this behavior and I think he’s been doing pretty well. But I seem to have created a monster, because now every play session includes multiple pleas from him to me about other kids’ behavior: “Mommy, she took that toy away from me and won’t give it back.”  “Mommy, I want to run this way and he wants to run that way.”  “Mommy, he won’t give me that toy train to play with.”  (That last one referred to a train that was another child’s prized possession and to which Jack had absolutely no legitimate temporary or permanent claim.  Naturally, that fact didn’t matter a bit to Jack.) 

So now what do I have?  A child who makes no effort to solve social disagreements on his own and who runs to me to report even the most minor infraction of any real or imagined rule committed by any child in his vicinity.

The dilemma is made more difficult by the fact that we had to teach Jack how to stand up for himself.  When he was a toddler, other children were able to take toys from him by just looking at him; Jack would instantly don a look of sad defeat and walk away, leaving behind the toy that he had just been playing with.  I’m proud of him now that he makes some effort to stand up for himself, but now I wonder how to teach him to take the next step and work out some of these differences on his own.  I understand that the skills we teach our kids evolve as they get older, but I can’t help but feel like telling him not to come to me for each little dispute contradicts the instructions I gave him not so long ago: to seek my help when he meets a problem rather than simply letting himself be stepped on.

A corollary of this dilemma is the fact that my son seems to be developing into what, for lack of a better description, I will call a tattler (although I see this trait in many other kids his age, and I hope that it’s simply a developmental phase that will eventually go away).  How do we teach our kids to talk to us about their problems but not eagerly report every little infraction or negative behavior they witness in other kids?

I suppose these lines are no more clear in adult behavior than they are in childhood; many of us still wrestle with how to express our emotions and when to tell someone else about a bad behavior we witness.  But as a parent who takes very seriously my responsibility to raise two decent human beings to become valuable members of our society, I find myself wrestling to locate these lines almost every day.

I’ll let you know if I ever find them.

Is there anything more endearing than watching one’s four-and-a-half year old son coach and praise his one-and-a-half year old sister?

Lately, little “Emmie” has become enthusiastic about throwing things in the garbage.   (Perhaps I should turn her loose in our basement.)  It doesn’t matter what the object is; rejected food, scraps of paper, imaginary dirt or baby-doll clothes—it’s all fodder for the trash. 

Recently, Emmie discovered a stray piece of paper on the floor.  Her notions of neatness and cleanliness deeply offended, she instantly sought a trash can in which to toss the paper.  The nearest one was located in our laundry room, but, unfortunately for her, we keep that door closed, and Emmie has not yet mastered the skill of turning a doorknob she can barely reach.  She asked me for help, and I in turn asked my son, “Jack,” if he would open the door for her.

Jack agreed and immediately assumed the air of responsibility.  He opened the door, and then continued with a lesson for his baby sister.  “That’s it; throw it there.  That’s right.  Good job!  You threw the paper right in the trash.  Good job!”  His tone mirrored exactly the tone I take with him when I am offering similar praise.

How adorable.  Just the sort of thing a mother likes to hear.

It’s nice to know that at least one of my lessons is sinking in!

Time is not a constant with kids.  Usually, it feels so much shorter than it actually is.  Everyone knows how the days, weeks and years fly when you’re a parent.  Before you know it, your baby is a teenager.  You’re carving the Thanksgiving turkey and it seems like just yesterday that you spent that last, hot summer day at the beach.  I can’t believe the stores are playing Christmas music already; didn’t I just take that first sweet, juicy bite from an apple picked by my own hand from our local orchard?

Sometimes, however, time does slow down.  It takes on the feeling of a snail that you keep coaxing to leave your garden; he may be interested in that dish of beer you placed at the opposite end, but it’s taking him an awfully long time to get there.

If you read this blog regularly, you may have noticed that I didn’t post on Friday.

That’s because I was buried deep in a week that felt like it was at least a month long.  There’s no way everything that happened last week could happen in just one week.

The tally for last week included:

• One bizarre virus that struck two family members.  My son was miserable for approximately ten hours, and then seemed as though nothing had ever happened.  My husband was nearly admitted to the hospital, spent days in extreme pain, lost most of the function in his hands for several days, and had the always disturbing experience of hearing at least three different doctors describe his illness as “bizarre,” “interesting” and “unusual”—words no patient should ever want to hear.
• The administration by my daughter’s daycare center of peanut butter to an entire room full of toddlers, resulting in a late-afternoon phone call: “’Emmie’s’ allowed to have peanut butter, right?”  (No, actually, she’s not.)  “Oh, well, she’s had it and she’s a bit red . . . .”  The worst part of this experience is that when I confronted the director, who had actually handed out the suspicious substance, she denied that there was anything remarkable about the peanut allergy or that there was any reason she should not give peanut butter to a large group of toddlers. 
• Two afternoons of looking at houses with my son, and negotiations and actions pursuant to two, maybe three real-estate contracts, and I still can’t tell you where I will be living in two months.
• Seven nights in which I got a total of no more than 33 or 34 hours of sleep, all of it interrupted by Emmie’s middle-of-the-night wakings.  (She seems to have decided that she needed to ramp up this particular activity to occur nightly; I have yet to figure out how to persuade her that it’s really not making anyone’s life better.)
• One lovely baby-naming at our synagogue for a friend’s daughter, at which I pushed my well-behaved, almost-five-year-old son just a tad too late into the evening, resulting in a complete emotional breakdown over the fact that he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to a friend (whom he was going to see two days later).

So if you think that this blog entry isn’t the most well-written one you’ve ever read, well, you’re probably right.  Frankly, I’m proud of myself for writing anything coherent at all. 

Here’s hoping that this week in my house is much shorter than the last one. 

My two young children have nearly always attended daycare part-time, even though for most of that time, I have not been employed outside the home.

(Now we pause for the frozen silence that generally greets that revelation.  The listener’s/reader’s eyes widen slightly, the eyebrows raise almost imperceptibly, and she—sometimes he—dons an obvious mask to camouflage her surprise.  She waits for my further explanation of why I would do such a thing; sometimes I oblige, other times I just let the statement sit there.)

When “Jack” was thirteen months old, we decided, in consultation with our pediatrician, to put him in a group daycare setting three days per week.  This was about fifty percent for my sake, because I knew that having a substantial break would make me a much better mother when I was with my kids.  The other fifty percent was for Jack, who had significant socialization problems even as a baby, and whom our pediatrician felt would benefit greatly from a high-quality group daycare setting.  And though it was hard for him at first, he gradually became accustomed to it and eventually thrived.  (The initial adjustment difficulties were no doubt enhanced by the fact that we foolishly started him in daycare when he was thirteen months old, when he was at the height of separation anxiety.)  I saw a real regression of Jack’s social skills when, due to our move to a different part of the country, he was home with me full-time for four months, and then a rebirth and continued growth of his social skills once he was back in daycare again.  His social skills developed exponentially from where they used to be, and where, I firmly believe, they would be today were it not for quality group daycare.  Today, at almost five years old, he is still rarely the most social child in a room full of kids, but he has no problem entering almost any social situation and mixing with adults and children alike.

With Jack’s history in mind, we placed our daughter in daycare two days per week as soon as our adoption agency’s policy permitted it.  She had one awful day, and since then she has loved it.  I believe the socialization experience is invaluable for her, even though she has never had the same clear need for remediation in that area that my son did.  And she gets to do creative activities there that she would never get to do with me at home.  (I’m just being realistic here; I’m never going to let my toddler loose with bare hands and a few containers of paint in my house.)

Daycare isn’t the right answer for every family, and there are countless permutations for discovering the right balance of care for each child’s early years.  I’ve discovered over the past four years that sometimes doing what’s best for your children and your family as a whole takes a lot of planning, consulting and willingness to stick with what you believe is right, because solutions that fall outside “the norm” will often earn you raised eyebrows or worse.  (And I recognize that quality daycare isn’t nearly as available as it ought to be, but that is a whole other topic for a whole other blog post.)  Ultimately, however, we are each the parents of our own children, and we owe it to our kids to use that unique status to create the best situation we can for them and for our families.

Several years ago, I was discussing an upcoming presidential election with several friends.  We assessed the candidates one-by-one.  Finally, one woman, a mother of two young children who had been silent for the whole discussion, piped up: “I just don’t care about this stuff.”

“Yes,” I thought.  “Yes, you do.”

If you think politics doesn’t matter, think again.  Do you care about whether your kids have health insurance?  Do you care whether they’ll be able to have it in twenty years?  Do you care if they breathe clean air and eat disease-free food?  Do you care about their educations, their schools?  Do you care if they will ever be sent to fight in a war?  Do you care if they will be secure in their retirements?  Do you care if they will have to support you in yours?

Do you care if your kids will be the victims of violence in this country, either via terrorism or “garden-variety” crime?  Do you care if they will become victims of domestic violence or hate crimes?  Do you care what happens to people who victimize kids?  Do you care what resources are available to help you find your kid if he or she goes missing?  Do you care about what would happen to your kids in a public-health crisis?  Do you care about getting accurate, effective information in any public crisis?

You may believe that politics is full of dirty tricks, people who talk a lot but don’t say much and individuals who are focused on power, power, power.  And you are right.  But politics is so much more than that.  At its core, politics is about the world we live in and trying to achieve the world we would like to live in.  It can be hard to maintain that vision when we are bombarded daily by negative attack ads, news reports of scandals and the words of candidates who seem only to think of winning.  But these are just the most visible trappings of the efforts by many to try to improve our cities and towns, our states, our country and our world.  If you scrape away these dingy covers, you will find that real issues that affect real people—all of us—lie beneath the surface, and their outcomes depend on the dirty business of politics. 

Moreover, if you think “one little vote” doesn’t matter, think again about that one, too.  We’ve all seen instances over the past few years where relatively few votes have made a big difference, and one can never tell in advance where those instances will crop up.  In 2000, a small number of votes in Florida were responsible for the outcome of a presidential election.  Imagine how small is the number of votes on which a town council or state senate election might depend.

On November 7, we will go to the polls.  We take this privilege for granted in the United States because it is also our right, but there are people around the world who die trying to exercise this right.  My son is not yet five, but I will be taking him to the polls with me on Tuesday to begin his education about this most fundamental participation in our cherished democracy.  Sure, he’s listened to my rants about politicians and positions I don’t like, but now he will begin to learn why I pay attention in the first place.  Politics isn’t just a bunch of yahoos calling each other names; it’s about real problems and real people.  It’s about us.  All of us.

So join me on November 7.  Get out and vote.