UnchartedParent.com

What does T.F. stand for? Why, the Tooth Fairy, of course. Also, as it turns out, Tough but Fair.

At long last, seven-year-old “Jack” lost his first tooth last week. He lost it, and then, within minutes, he lost it. He lost it on an off-white berber-style carpet in our playroom.

Figuring we stood a better chance of finding a random haystack and then locating a needle within it than we did of finding that tooth, I advised Jack to write the Tooth Fairy a note explaining the situation. Possessing no small amount of insight into the Tooth Fairy’s brain, I told him that she would probably understand. Then I left Jack and the missing tooth in the hands of our babysitter and headed out with my husband for the evening.

As that night would bring my first experience acting as the Tooth Fairy, I surveyed some friends at the party we attended regarding T.F.’s going rate. Different amounts were offered, but I took particular notice of the arrangement T.F. had struck at the home of one of Jack’s classmates.

“At our house,” the child’s mother replied, “the Tooth Fairy leaves a dollar for clean teeth and seventy-five cents for dirty ones. And you should see how well she brushes her teeth every single day now. Worked like a charm.”

The plan certainly worked like a charm on me. Jack takes the same amount of care in brushing his teeth as does a toddler in exercising neat and proper etiquette while eating spaghetti. Sure enough, the Tooth Fairy instituted the same policy in our house as in Jack’s friend’s.

The Tooth Fairy, as it turns out, however, isn’t all about rules and compliance. She was very understanding about the missing tooth. And she is as magical as she’s purported to be: she walked into the playroom from her evening out, looked down at a random spot on the carpet and announced, “Here’s the tooth!”

The Tooth Fairy then completed a twist on the usual exchange. She took Jack’s note from under his pillow: Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost a tooth today but I can’t find it. I hope that’s okay. I will keep looking. From Jack. She then replaced Jack’s note with the tooth, a five-dollar bill and a note of her own: Dear Jack, I think I found something that belongs to you. I always give a little more for the first tooth. Congratulations. –T.F. (The new policy was communicated verbally through the parents; T.F. didn’t want to have to get too elaborate in a note left under a pillow.)

Jack sees the dentist tomorrow. I guess we’ll find out then if T.F. will have to crack the whip on the next missing tooth.

On a completely unrelated note: How do you know you are living in northern New England? When you can’t remember the last week your kids didn’t have a snow day. The good news for my writing schedule is that at this rate, they will necessarily be going to school into July!

Of all the food items to be next on the this-could-kill-you list: peanut butter!

Probably three-quarters of seven-year-old “Jack’s” protein comes from peanut butter. His actual peanut butter is not yet on the recall list, but I’m watching that list closely. Jack’s whole universe may fall if he can’t have his daily peanut-butter sandwich.

For those of you who also are concerned about which peanut, peanut butter and peanut paste products are on the ever-growing list of foods recalled due to the possibility of salmonella, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has posted a searchable list of products, and they promise to keep the list updated.

Please keep in mind that this list seems to be changing hourly. Just because something wasn’t on the list yesterday doesn’t mean it won’t be there today.

Endangered peanut butter—what’s next? If Kraft recalls Macaroni-and-Cheese, my son will starve.
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Yet another administrative note: Technology is kicking my you-know-what once again. For reasons that are a complete mystery to me, my server is arbitrarily deleting comments from some posts. I apologize if your comments are among the ones that have been vaporized. Please continue to comment, however; they add a lot to the blog, and I do receive all of these comments, even if they are later deleted. In all likelihood, I will be transferring this blog to a different platform at some point in the next few months, at which point problems like these, I hope, will be eliminated.

When last I knew myself to be witnessing a moment of enduring history, I was six-and-a-half months pregnant with my first child. I was filled with feelings of powerlessness and horror as I tried to imagine the world in which my child would grow up; I’d just heard an airliner crash into the Pentagon, and the images of fire and terror I saw on the television told me that this horrific explosion was part of an attack that had, until that moment, been unimaginable.

Today, I took that same, now seven-year-old child out of school and brought him to a place where people gathered for another enduring moment in history. I instructed him to stand beside me and watch the images on an enormous television screen with me as once again, I knew, I witnessed an event which would change America forever.

It doesn’t matter whether you support President Obama’s politics or not; it doesn’t matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent. It only matters today if you are an American, because today our character as a nation has changed. Today we have shown the world that we as a country can accomplish anything, and that we can permit any individual to achieve a dream. We still have our flaws and our faults and, God knows, our problems in a greater number than anyone can count. But those problems don’t seem quite so impossible to solve as they did a few days ago, and our flaws, we now know, are correctable.

More than seven years passed between these two events. The world we live in today—my children’s world—is scarier than it was before I knew I would become a mom. It is scarier, but it is also more hopeful. It is darker but brighter, more divided but more united. It is a world where the unimaginable can and does happen; where something that not long ago seemed impossible—like the election of an African American to the office of the presidency of the United States—has actually been achieved.

As Barack Obama raised his hand to take his oath of office, I whispered into Jack’s ear, “Always remember this.” Whatever moments in history Jack may witness during his lifetime, I want him to hold this memory as a foundation. I instilled one more lesson as we left the building. “If anyone ever tells you that something is too hard or that it can’t be done, you just remember today.” Being seven, Jack, of course, had moved on to other thoughts. But I hope that when he needs inspiration, he will come back to this lesson and what we all learned today. I hope that we all will.

Yes we can. Yes we did. Yes we will.

Good luck, President Obama.

I just finished doing my homework.

No, I haven’t gone back to school. I’m not referring to the writing I do at my desk in my home office, nor the research associated with my writing. I’m talking about homework assigned by a school teacher—homework in its most conventional sense.

Seven-year-old “Jack” is in first grade, and that means he gets homework. At first, I applauded this introduction to the concept; homework skills must be learned, and I figured these early assignments would permit him to begin developing these skills now so that good habits would be in place when the heavier workload begins in a year or two.

But I didn’t realize how much homework I’d have to do, too.

For example, Jack has to read two books out loud to an adult each week, with said adult paying careful attention to his performance and assisting where necessary. He’s a good reader, so his books are somewhat advanced for his age. But he’s also seven, which means that depending on his mood, the readings can progress fairly smoothly or they can be accomplished with the same level of persuasion and frustration I feel when I finally get off my undomestic butt to dust the living room because company is coming only to find twenty minutes later that a new, fine layer of dirt has already settled on the coffee table. In other words, one of these books can take more than an hour of prodding before Jack and I are done.

This weekly reading is just one of the numerous, regular assignments requiring parental participation. Many others come home in Jack’s (or even three-and-a-half year old “Emmie’s”) backpack: Go to the store and buy a jar of peanut butter . . . by tomorrow. Trace your hand, cut it out and decorate it to make it look like a member of your family. Work out this problem, draw that map, construct a to-scale diorama of the galaxy and all of its stars. Review this policy, sign off on this activity, write down your goals, your thoughts and your questions about who your child is and what you expect him to be when he grows up.

And when it’s all finished, look at your highly intelligent children’s expectant faces and answer the question, “So, Mommy, what should I do now?” (I don’t know, play with one of your 1,345,874 toys?)

To be fair, I don’t mind some of these assignments. I actually enjoy working on Jack’s math and logic challenge sheets with him because I find that sometimes, frighteningly enough, they are a bit challenging. (I guess he’s going to have to find someone else to help him in later grades.) But sometimes I can’t help but think that having already done homework for twenty years—yes, twenty years if you include postgraduate education—I really ought to be done by now.

And that’s all the time I have for this post. I need to get all my other work done in case I have any homework tonight.

Three-and-a-half year-old “Emmie” cooked dinner recently.

We ate it.

We liked it.

How, you may wonder, could such an event occur?

Emmie and I attend a biweekly cooking class at For Kids Who Cook, a nearby cooking school for children. As she does everything from chopping vegetables with a special knife to measuring flour to mixing ingredients, Emmie is learning how to create masterpieces she can share with her family at dinnertime.

I have to confess that the reason I sought out this class for Emmie is less about educating Emmie than it is about retraining me. Several years ago, when now seven-year-old “Jack” was about the age Emmie is now, he expressed an interest in helping me in the kitchen. I embraced his enthusiasm in theory, but in practice, I turned out to be just a bit too controlling to permit a three-year-old child to “mess up” my cooking. Now Jack has lost almost all interest in what takes place in the kitchen. So when Emmie told me several months ago that she wanted to “help” me cook dinner, I tried to figure out how I could be just a little more flexible in an area where I typically prefer people to keep out of my way.

Another mom told me about a parent-child cooking class, and I figured bringing in a third-party was the perfect approach. Let someone else show both Emmie and me how to work together in the kitchen, I thought, and then I can bring those lessons home.

The results have been spectacular. The food Emmie prepares varies in delectability; for example, her chocolate cake was a devoured as quickly as we adults thought we could get away with it, whereas quite a few of the meatloaf cupcakes we brought to a party were left over at the evening’s end.

What has not varied, however, is Emmie’s pride in making food herself and watching her mommy, daddy and the occasional family friend consume it and pay her compliments. Rachael Ray’s smile seems dim by comparison. And that result makes any mess in my kitchen or in my mixing bowl worthwhile.

I’d be lying if I said that I’ve gotten over my need for control in the kitchen, but I am working on it. Parenting isn’t just about teaching your kids skills like cooking as they grow, after all; it’s also about learning to grow yourself and figuring out when to step back no matter how badly you want to grab the peeler from their awkward hands and scream, “You’re butchering that cucumber!”

And if you’re not sure when to step back, just look at your child: that beaming face above the fresh-from-the-oven macaroni-and-trees will tell you all you need to know.

It hardly seems possible that the next holiday is less than three weeks away, but that’s what it’s like in a multicultural household that celebrates everything from Passover to Chuseok to Army-Navy Day.

January 26 heralds the Lunar New Year, known in Korean as Solnal or Seollal, in Vietnamese as Tet and by many cultures as Chinese New Year. My three-and-a-half year old daughter knows it as one of the days on which she gets to wear her hanbok.

Hanbok is the brightly colored, traditional dress of Korea, and “Emmie” struts like a peacock whenever she dons hers. (I can’t blame her; she does look beautiful in it.) We try to attend numerous Lunar New Year events, in part to infuse our northern New England lives with a bit of Korean culture and in part to give Emmie as many excuses as possible to dress accordingly.

A young girl’s excitement about Lunar New Year is beautifully depicted in one of our favorite children’s books, New Clothes for New Year’s Day:

We bought this book a few years ago as soon as we saw it, because it’s the only children’s book we’ve found that focuses exclusively on Korean culture; most Lunar New Year resources deal with Chinese New Year, or sometimes Tet. The simple narrative of a child getting dressed for the New Year is gorgeously illustrated, and Emmie loves both reading it with me at home and watching when I read it to her class each year.

Other ways we celebrate the Lunar New Year are by eating duk guk, traditional rice cake soup (which I will have to make myself this year as our favorite and only local Korean restaurant has closed), attempting to play yut –which we have yet to master—and giving the kids money for their good-luck pouches.

There are plenty of resources on the web to help you understand and put together your own Lunar New Year celebration. Simply Google “Lunar New Year” and the name of the culture of your choice, or here are a few links to get you started:

• “Lunar New Year Across Asia” at AsianAmericanBooks.com
• “Lunar New Year” at FamilyCulture.com
• “Lunar New Year” resources at AsiaforKids.com
• “Seol-nal (Lunar New Year)” at Life in Korea.com

Sehe Bokmanee Bateuseyo (a little early)!

Last week, the Korean Herald ran an article describing a new dual-citizenship policy beginning in 2009. Long wary of dual citizenships due to real or perceived use of this status as a means for men to avoid compulsory military service, the South Korean government is now looking to expand its dual citizenship law in order to attract more “foreign investors” and “exceptional talent” to the country.

Included in the new policy, the Justice Ministry announced, would be “those who have been given foreign nationality due to involuntary circumstances, such as adoption and birth abroad.” In other words, people like my three-and-a-half year old daughter, adopted from Korea as an infant in 2005.

I won’t pretend to do an analysis of the pros and cons of South Korea’s new policy on a macro level; such a discussion is better placed in a politics-and-policy blog. But on an individual level, this development seems a welcome one to me.

I am thrilled that my daughter has all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of any other American (except for the right to run for President; see my earlier posts on this topic); this is how it should be. She is as American as my biological son, as much a citizen as any other, and part of what she gained by becoming my daughter is my citizenship.

But I cannot deny that I do not share everything with my daughter. She is Korean by birth, she has blood relatives somewhere in Korea, and that heritage is as valuable and important a part of her as any other.

I can only truly embrace all that my daughter is if I embrace her Korean heritage. My husband and I have always planned to help her explore that aspect of her identity as much as she desires. The ability to hold citizenship in both the land of her birth and the land of her upbringing means that she will have the opportunity to make her own choices, when she is old enough, to immerse herself in her ethnic heritage as a full Korean citizen or to remain in the heritage and culture given to her via her adoption. Or perhaps she will choose some combination; there is no way to know that now. The point is that through dual citizenship, this child—who lost her birth nationality and culture through no choice of her own—will now have a few more options for what she wants her life to be about.

Korean policies on adoption are very much in flux these days, and it’s impossible to say with any certainty what the change announced last week will mean for today’s young adoptees. These policies can and probably will be reformed countless times between now and the time my daughter reaches adulthood. Moreover, the devil, as they say, is often in the details, and I don’t know how clear are issues such as male citizen adoptees’ obligation to serve in the Korean military and what would trigger those obligations.

But right now, looking at this change through the eyes of this adoptive mother, I’d say South Korea has at least begun to take a step in the right direction.

Uncharted Parent wishes everyone a safe, healthy and endearing New Year. (Try to remember how adorable your kids are when they finally fight their way out of the heaps of new toys and ask, as my daughter did yesterday, “Can we go to a toy store today?”)