UnchartedParent.com

I’ve blogged here before about corporate, professional America needing to recognize that not only is it necessary and desirable for people to have children, but also that someone has to raise those children.  In my opinion, our 9-5 (or 6, or 7 or later) society has not adequately adjusted to those realities.

So I wasn’t surprised when a friend shared a story with me that seemed a perfect example of exactly what I’ve been talking about.

My friend’s company decided to hold a major celebration to mark a significant milestone.  The senior executives planning the event determined to hold it at a well-known resort two hours away from the office, and offered a variety of activities beginning on a Friday afternoon and ending the following day, the highlight of which would be a fancy dinner on Friday night.  Spouses or significant others were expected to attend.  Approximately six weeks’ notice was given for the event.

Intrigued by the opportunity to visit the well-known resort, my friend naturally inquired about babysitting for her two young children.  Other employees echoed her interest, and soon a member of the administrative staff was collecting names of employees in need of babysitters in order to attend the dinner.

Then: an e-mail from a higher-up in the company.  The e-mail stated plainly that the overnight event was for “adults only,” and made it clear that children were neither welcome nor expected to be anywhere near the resort.  The e-mail did state that if a couple were left with “no other options” than to either bring their kids with them or not attend the event, than the employee in question could approach the higher-up and discuss the situation on a case-by-case basis.

My friend’s reaction: you’ve got to be kidding! 

Here’s what I think: it’s one thing for a company to fail to consider that their employees might have children for whom they have daily—and nightly—responsibility.  To my mind, this was offense enough.  But to then have the problem brought to their attention and to respond by saying, essentially, “Too bad, we don’t care and you’re on your own” is a made-to-order example of how professional America continues to refuse to acknowledge the needs of women and families. 

I’ll say it again: our society needs children, and someone has to raise them.  Women will only be able to be full partners in the workforce when that workforce recognizes that women and the families to which they are inextricably linked have very legitimate needs.  Until children are no longer considered an afterthought—or worse, an unwanted obstacle—women throughout corporate and professional America will continue to be torn between their children and their careers.

And yes, this issue affects men, too.  But that’s a different blog post.

Here are two universal truths of parenting: 1) children whine;  and 2) their children’s whining sooner or later causes parents to want to run, screaming, from their beloved offsprings’ presence until said offspring learn how to converse in an acceptable tone of voice.

Like so many parents, I began searching for a way to cut down on the whining almost as soon as my five-year-old, “Jack,” acquired the power of speech.  As you can undoubtedly guess, there is still plenty of whining in my house.  So a few months ago, I decided to try a new tactic: instructing Jack to throw his whine in the garbage.

It worked beautifully for a while.  Whenever Jack had reached our limit on tolerance for whining, my husband or I would insist that he stop whatever he was doing, walk over to the trash can and throw away a pretend handful of whine.  For the first few weeks, he invariably giggled at this requirement and by the time he had fulfilled it, he was in a better mood and the whining was indeed gone—at least temporarily.

But the trouble with kids is that they catch on to our techniques.  Like the Borg of Star Trek fame, they learn and develop resistance to our arsenal.  What threw them off yesterday is often a boring imposition today.  Sure enough, after a few weeks, the order to throw his whine in the garbage only brought us more whining.

So now what’s a parent to do?  There’s a limit to my creativity, only so many innovative techniques in my tool belt.

If only there was a limit to the whining.

That would be my daughter, two-year-old “Emmie.”

Surely this child has a future on stage and screen.  Sweet, adorable little Emmie: her smile can melt your heart, and when she twists her shoulders, cocks her head to one side and bats her eyelashes, no one is safe.  I can already see the crowd of adolescent boys who will line up to take her to the school dance.  (And have a I mentioned, by the way, that Emmie already has her first crush?  A friend’s five-year-old son is the object of her attentions/obsession: “Where is J____?  Wanna go J____’s house.  Wanna see J____.”)

The hilarious thing about a two-year-old drama queen is that though her cognitive abilities may be sufficiently advanced to suddenly burst into fake sobs just to garner sympathy, she doesn’t understand that she’s incredibly obvious.  Emmie thinks that after a meltdown, her protruding lower lip and deliberately widened eyes accompanied by a sorrowful, “I’m crying,” will result in showers of whatever it was that she wanted in the first place.  In reality, it’s often all I can do to keep from bursting into laughter at her attempts to use her feminine wiles. 

Overly dramatic, too, are Emmie’s emotional reactions to just about anything that occurs in the course of her day.  Ninety percent of Emmie’s emotions fall into two categories: overwhelming delight and excitement or crushing defeat and disaster.  There is very little middle ground for Emmie, and anyone within a two-mile radius of her voice knows exactly how she feels at any given moment.

So who knows?  Right now, Emmie’s parents and her brother are her primary audience.  But maybe one day, she’ll aim for a bigger crowd.  Maybe one day we’ll hear her name after those immortal words, “And the Academy Award goes to . . .”

Or, in a more likely scenario, maybe one day soon she’ll figure out how to fine-tune her performances, and then her father and I will be even more vulnerable to her dramatic abilities than we are already.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: boy are we in trouble!

Everyone kept telling me that one day, it would “just click.”  I have to confess that I didn’t really believe them.  “Jack” had known his ABC’s since he was twenty-two months old, and though he knew all of his letter sounds, I didn’t see any real evidence of reading ability.  It seemed to me that reading acquisition was going to be a lengthy and gradual process.

But about a month ago, it “just clicked.”

Suddenly, Jack is reading not only his assignments from school, but signs in stores, words from books and newspapers that he glimpses over my shoulder, and all manner of children’s books he’s never seen before.  He’s sounding out words for himself—something of which I have long known he was capable, but I was frustrated by his refusal to exert himself to do it.  Now, however, he’s discovered that he can puzzle out words for himself, and—unless he is tired—he proudly reads pages and books without much adult assistance.

And, as you can no doubt guess, Jack’s father and I are proud, too.

This is one of those classic “Uncharted Parent” moments: every parent, I’m sure, is near-to-bursting with pride when his or her child learns to read.  But I’ve never been through this before, and neither has my husband.  I’ve never before had a child suddenly break though a door into a whole new world of ideas and learning, of facts and fantasy, and as far as I’m concerned, my son has just reached the Mount Everest-sized pinnacle of early childhood development. 

My husband’s and my excitement is enhanced by two facts.  First, we are both bibliophiles; nearly every room in our house sports a collection of books (in the office, an entire wall is lined with them, and then some), and our idea of a spectacular vacation is a beach house with a screened in porch and a water view, and a suitcase filled with books.  The idea that our son may soon join us in our obsession gives us a warm, fuzzy feeling all over.  Second, we have believed for about a year-and-a-half now that Jack’s intellectual pursuit of his own interests, including puzzles, academic-style workbooks and facts about dinosaurs, has been hampered by his inability to read.  Jack cognitively outgrew most preschool versions of these activities a long time ago, but more advanced material all seemed to require reading ability.  Now Jack can explore to his heart’s delight; there is literally no limit to what he can learn.

Of course, there is one downside to this wondrous achievement.  Until now, I’ve been able to write anything I want about my kids free from any danger that they might read about it and voice objections.  But if my son can read, he can read my writing—including this blog!

I wonder how much longer it will be before Jack learns to navigate the World Wide Web.

Please click here to see my article that was published today at www.InterfaithFamily.com: Challah and Rice Cakes.

Secretly, I’ve been dreading this for years: my first child’s first music recital.  Yes, I know this fact instantly qualifies me for the Hall of Bad Parenting.  But the thing is, I like music.  Actual music.  And from the time I first knew I wanted to have children, I knew that in all likelihood, someday I would sit in a music hall and listen to kids bang or scratch out off-key notes in their failed attempts to produce music.

My destiny was fulfilled on Sunday, when I packed my well-dressed family into the car and drove to a local church for my five-year-old son’s first piano recital.

The recital was for students of both piano and violin, so I was prepared for plenty of pain, suffering and torment.  And lest you think that this is going to be one of those “but I was wrong and the sun came out and everything was beautiful” stories, there were enough wrong notes to make me bite my lip hard numerous times so that no one would notice my discomfort.

Oh, but wait, the sun did come out.

As you have no doubt guessed, when my son sat before the piano all by himself and played his scales and his two very short songs, I couldn’t get enough.  And yes, there I was, the classic beaming parent, video camera in my hands, still digital camera forced into my husband’s, recording our little Mozart’s moment for eternity.  “Jack” played his pieces perfectly, faced the audience and bowed just as he had practiced all week, and then returned to our pew to be covered in hugs and kisses by his proud mommy.

And you know what?  I can’t wait for his piano recital next year.

I always hated first dates.  Sure, they could be exciting, but they were nerve-racking if I was lucky, nerve-grating if I wasn’t.  I was always much more comfortable on second or third dates, when we both knew there was mutual interest and we could at least reasonably assume that the other person wasn’t a drug dealer or an ax murderer.

But at least on first dates, the only person I was taking a risk with was me.

After nearly four years with the same, beloved babysitter, my husband and I are now facing a bleak social existence as she heads off to a summer job out-of-state and then college.  (We tried to persuade her to pursue her higher education locally so that she could still watch our kids, but darn it, she insisted on putting her own interests first.)  I’ve known that this day would come for, well, four years, but I have been unwilling to face the truth.

Unfortunately, my husband and I are now at the point where we feel that if we don’t go out on some sort of “date” ourselves soon, we will no longer be capable of discussing anything but our children or our increasing money-pit of a house. 

So after months of stalling, I finally gave myself a pep talk and called a potential new babysitter.

As referrals go, I’m in a pretty good position here.  This prospect came highly recommended from a close friend, she’s in her twenties—an adult—and her area of academic and professional expertise is child development.  Really, what more could I ask for in a babysitter?

But her resume didn’t stop me from having to quiet my nerves before I called her.  “Hi, a friend gave me your name.  I’ve never seen you, and neither I nor my children have any idea who you are, but could I perhaps pay you to take complete responsibility for them, see to their every need, including feed them, keep them clean, give them hugs, respond appropriately to “Jack’s” food pickiness and “Emmie’s” constant need for attention and control, and keep them safe from sharp objects, tall stepstools, containers of poison disguised as cleaning products, predators out in the world and fast cars in the street?”  (Aw, heck, maybe I’ll just lock them all in the house.  Wait, no, then they couldn’t get out in case of fire . . . .)  “Also, make sure you put them to bed EXACTLY as I would, and make sure they don’t miss me too much—just a little.” 

What was that?  You think I’m neurotic?

Wait until I blog about the “babysitter memo” I’m going to draft for this poor person.

Maybe those first dates weren’t so bad after all.

“What’s the problem?”  “Jack’s” question was serious.

“What do you mean?”

“Every story has to have a problem.  What’s the problem in your story?”

I had been grappling with this precise dilemma that morning, and all I could do was laugh at Jack’s unintended wisdom.

As a writer taking my first crack at fiction, I am learning the basic lessons of the craft as I go.  I aspire to write “literary fiction,” which I saw described on some website long ago as (I will paraphrase), “Nothing happened.  Then nothing happened some more.  Then nothing happened, then the protagonist realized his mistake, and the story ended.” 

Now, I do not ascribe to this definition of literary fiction; I do not aim to write stories in which nothing happens.  I do want my works to tell stories of people, relationships and maybe even—if I may be so ambitious—to explore great themes in human relations.  As a result, my fiction drafts thus far sometimes lack a clear, active central conflict with a discernable resolution.  Yet, every source I’ve consulted about writing stresses the importance of every story having a clear conflict that must be resolved.

Including, apparently, my son. 

Jack recently has taken to looking over my shoulder as I write in my journal.  He finds the process fascinating, and though my handwriting is too messy for him to read, he still finds plenty of curiosities in my work habits: “What is that cross-out?  Why did you make your ‘b’ that way?  That’s the wrong way to write a ‘4’.  What are you writing about now?  How about now?”  (By the way, if anyone is looking for a method of shutting down the creative process, I’d have to recommend the five-year-old-analysis-as-you-write method.)

And so it happened a few days ago that as I was scribbling a scene from a novel I’ve just begun to work on—a novel that thus far contains multiple little conflicts, but is primarily about the evolution of a relationship between the two main characters—I had been wondering how I would define the novel’s central conflict.  Just then, Jack questioned me about the story, relying on the lesson he had obviously learned at school.

I wanted to tell him he didn’t know what he was talking about, but I knew, of course, that he was right.  With regard to my story, I needed to answer the question, “What’s the problem?”

It’s really true: everything I need to know, my son is learning in kindergarten.

Thanks to my wonderful husband (and a little cooperation from Mother Nature), I had a fantastic Mother’s Day yesterday.  I read the paper, went for a walk in the warm sun with my family, caught up on some personal correspondence, got a massage, had dinner out with my family, and then, most decadently, spent several hours in a bookstore, reading and writing, all by myself.

What I did not do was write a real blog entry.  I took the day off.

I hope everyone out there had a great Mother’s Day, too.  Come back Wednesday for my next post.

That’s what we call it in my house.  You’ve probably got your own name for it.

If you are a parent, you know what I’m talking about.  It is the mind-bending, fingernails-down-the-blackboard irritating, teeth-clenching tendency toddlers (and, I’m learning, young school-age kids) have of taking more time to accomplish any simple task than our adult minds ever thought possible. 

I truly believe that “the pokies” is one of the most frustrating aspects of parenthood.

As adults, we have integrated into our consciousness that in order to accomplish a goal, say, going to the park, there are certain actions that must be completed.  We need to put on our shoes.  Unless it’s seventy degrees or more outside, we must don a jacket.  If the park has no facilities, we must use the bathroom before we leave the house.  The quicker we do these things, the quicker we get to the park to have fun.

Our kids don’t seem to know that.  Not even when it is told to them verbally and demonstrated in the laboratory of life, over and over and over and over and over again.

My son, “Jack,” is five.  He’s got years of getting out of the house under his belt.  Yet, most days, leaving for school (or swim class, or a museum—whatever) involves a string of commands:

            “Jack, go into the mudroom and put on your shoes and jacket so we can leave.”

            “Jack, get ready to go.”

            “Jack, put on your shoes and jacket.”

            “Jack, put on your shoes.”

            “Jack, that’s not the mudroom, it’s the living room.”

            “Jack, the mudroom is over there.”

            “Jack, why are you just standing in the mudroom?  Put on your shoes.”

            “Jack, your shoes are over there; why are you over here?”

            “Jack, you need to lift your foot up to put it in your shoe.”

            “Jack, that jacket won’t put itself on.  You have to touch it.”

            “Jack, stop daydreaming.  Put that jacket that’s in your hands on your body.”

            “JACK.  THE JACKET.  PUT YOUR ARM IN IT.”

            “ALL THE WAY.”

            “WHY ARE YOU JUST STANDING THERE?  THE OTHER ARM!”

At this point, the adult present is ready to retire for the day.  Too bad it’s only 8:00 a.m. 

Once Jack is ready to go, two-year-old “Emmie” must then be dressed for the outdoors, a feat made far more challenging by her insistence that she do everything “by self;” even when she’s physically unable to do so.  And then, when everybody is finally ready, they must be corralled into the car.

In our old house, a fist-sized hole in the laundry-room wall testified to my husband’s frustration with the pokies one morning.  In our new house, the tip of my new, black boot left a vivid smear on our just-painted, white door to the mudroom.  Again, the pokies were to blame. 

There’s got to be a time they outgrow this.  There must be a point at which they value their own time sufficiently that they don’t want to waste hours needlessly delaying more interesting parts of their lives.

Oh yeah, I know when they get frustrated with the pokies.  When someday they are the parents of toddlers, crying out in desperation, “For the love of God, you cannot brush your teeth without putting the toothbrush in your mouth!  And then you must brush!  That’s why it’s called brushing!”

We may not have any walls left intact at our house by then.