Why do Legos drive me crazy?

My house is covered in Legos.  I mean, literally, they are everywhere. 

On The Boy's art table.... 

On the breakfast table....

On the kitchen bar....

And my nightstand....

The bathroom....

On top of the Working Dad's piano....

Welcome to Lego City!

And Ninjago!

Uh-oh, looks like the Empire and/or the First Order and/or the Rebels and/or the Resistance and/or Nexo Knights have taken over Sodor!

Of course, part of it could be my slatternly housekeeping style.  And it does kind of get to me that there's SO MUCH!  I mean we don't have enough flat surfaces in our house for them all.  Sometimes I get to the point where I want to just put up a Lego embargo. No more room, no more sets!

Disassemble them you say?  Noooo, not an option. Once built, the Boy wants them to stay built so he can play with them.

He loves them. And he's good at building them. And then he plays with them. Imaginatively. He gives them voices, makes up stories. It's a joy to watch. 

So far, this has been my solution:

It's imperfect, and, inevitably, things fall apart, but at least it's an attempt to keep them from piling ever higher on our tables and window seats. 

So, now, I guess, it's confession time: it's not just him. No, I have to admit that it's me too. I also like to build. 

This is my Scooby Doo plane and Mystery Machine. 

Nothwithstanding the fact that I have no idea where to put the Legos once built, I bought that Mystery Machine set for myself because I wanted to build it. (My brother gave me the plane for my last birthday.)

These Lego minifigures are also mine. 

That worried Unikitty: mine. 

I bought this set and asked the Boy to build it for me because I wanted it:  It's Hera Syndulla in a tiny version of her ship, The Ghost. (Star Wars Rebels....)

Chinese knock-off Ahsoka Tano minifigure, mine too.

And lest you think that it's just me and the Boy, may I introduce you to the Working Dad's piggie man minifig, four-armed Lord Garmadon, and Lego Creator airplane. 

We are a Lego family.

And just like any family member might, sometimes you love the Legos and sometimes they make you a little nuts.

So we will keep building.  It's fun. It's often challenging (especially when tired or after a glass of wine).

It's something we can do together...as a family.

So yes, we'll build every Lego set that comes our way. And we will free-build with the loose Legos too (which must be kept separate from the built sets, of course). 

After all, I've already started stocking up for Christmas. (No, really, I have.)

To the parents of the boys on the train today....

On my train ride home today, two young boys -- not more than 11, but probably 10, probably 5th graders -- sat across the aisle from me. They were going home from the private school that is down the street from my office. They chatted and played video games on their phones.  They kept asking each other what stop this was, and what stop they had to get off at.  Reminding each other, really....

I kept wondering whether I'd be brave enough to let my 10 year old ride the train home by himself (well,with a buddy).  I believed this was a great thing for them: independence, responsibility, resourcefulness....  And all within a limited sphere:  just catch the train home with your pal, don't get off at the wrong stop, do get off at the right stop. It was totally within their capabilities.  And this limited independence is exactly what will help these boys become well-functioning adults.

But even though I recognized all of this, and even though I admired these boys and how well behaved they were (their parents should be very proud), I concluded that I probably wouldn't be brave enough.

I thought of The Boy and I was terrified at the thought of setting him out in the world on his own like that.  No, I couldn't do it.  A lump developed in my throat at the thought.

Indeed, I think I paid so much surreptitious attention to these boys because I was thinking of my own boy and how I would hope some adult on the train would silently and secretly watch over my son if he were out on his own. I was fully ready to step in, help them, protect them, if they needed any help.

But they didn't need any help. They were fine.  They had this handled. They knew what to do.

At one point, one of their moms called to make sure they'd gotten on the train. "Yes, MOM."  And she told them that she was in the car in the parking lot at their stop.

And soon, their stop came and they got off, easy as that. I watched them descend the platform steps.  They were confident, unafraid. I want my kid to be like that.

I just need to be like that first, confident and unafraid to let my boy venture out.

Right now, he's only 4 and a half, and he's no more ready to be set out on an almost-grown-up adventure than I am ready to allow it.

Maybe, in five and a half years, when he is 10, he will be, and maybe -- MAYBE -- I will be too.

For now, I'll just send out my thanks to those two good boys' moms and dads for the unintentional lesson in setting your little bird free.  I'll remember it.  It may not be the train, but I'll remember that he needs independence to become a good adult.  And I'll treasure the time right now, when I can keep him, mostly, safely under my wing.

"Heather has Two Mommies."

Slate.com published an article a few months ago entitled The Straight Parents’ Guide to How Not to Raise a Homophobe—and How to Be a Better Ally .  I started writing a blog post inspired by it then, but I am just getting around to finishing it now.  Hey. I'm a busy working mommy....

Anyway, the article gives some suggestions on how to talk to your kid about same-sex-parent families, and how to make the reality that they exist a -- well -- reality for your kid.  Because, whether you approve of them or not, these families are in your neighborhoods and their kids are in your kids' school.  And about the last thing any parent wants (or ought to want) is to find that their kid is bullying or teasing other kids because of who their parents are.  Even if you're a straight "gay ally," you can't just assume that your attitudes are going to rub off.  So a little attention on the part of the parents is in order.

I confess that my own ability to talk to my son about same-sex parenting has been made infinitely easier by our having a few same-sex parent friends.  It's easier to point to The Boy's own friends and say it's like Suzie's dads or it's like David's mommies.  Also, the book, And Tango Makes Three, helps.

So I frankly wasn't ever expecting any questions from The Boy on this topic. I assumed that since he sees same-sex parenting first hand that he'd just assimilate it without questions other people get from their kids.

Wrong.

Kids are curious.  And they can see that their families look different from each other. Frankly, I shouldn't have been surprised to get a question about same-sex parenting because I've already gotten questions about mixed race kids (and my kid has half-Asian cousins!), kids of different races entirely, the different religions he has encountered among his friends, and "what is God."

Kids notice differences, and they ask questions about those differences, not to be malicious but because they are little detectives, little knowledge sponges, investigating their worlds.  Kids just want to understand why things and people are different. They aren't judging.  They haven't learned to judge yet. It's we adults with our years of "experience" that judge the differences as better, worse, or not at all. 

So, one day The Boy asked me, out of the blue on the drive home from school (as there is not a warning system for "hard" questions), about Suzie's mommy.  Suzie (not her real name, obviously), has two dads.  And The Boy simply asked, "Where is Suzie's mommy?"  It's not that he thought Suzie shouldn't have her two daddies, but he thought she should have a mommy too. He has a mommy, after all.  So I very matter-of-factly explained the truth:  Suzie's mommy couldn't take care of Suzie, so she gave Suzie to Mr. Jack and Mr. Richard (also not their real names) to raise, and now she is their daughter, so she can have a wonderful life."  He said, "Her mommy couldn't take care of her?"  I said, "No, she couldn't, so Mr. Jack and Mr. Richard adopted her and they are her parents."  And he accepted that explanation without a blink, no further questions.

The key to responding to these questions is to remain calm, to stick to the facts, to make the answer age appropriate and, if possible, to answer the question in the most direct way possible. There's no need to introduce politics or sex or anything else into the conversation with your kid. Frankly, a little kid isn't going to understand the nuances of sexual relationships. They're still in the just-the-facts stage of development, and that's where you should meet them.

Also, answer the question posed to you and then stop there. Your kid doesn't want or need your baggage in trying to process his or her world.  It's very similar to explaining to your kid how he came to be in your tummy, and then came out of it.  Real life example:  "Mommy did you poop me out?"  "No, honey, I did not poop you out. Poop comes from a different place in mommies' bodies than babies, but those places are close to each other."

I'm sure there will be more questions one day, and more complicated questions as time goes by, and The Working Dad and I will field them as best we can.  As long as we are honest, I think it will be okay. Because I do think that honesty is the best policy even with -- especially with -- your kids....  Cheers.

Our Self-Subjugation

We make it hard on ourselves.

I mean, individually, we women, we working moms, we stay-at-home moms, we something-in-betweenness:  we set impossible standards for ourselves.

We put pressure on ourselves where none needs to be:  breast feeding, home schooling, family dinner, organic foods, television, co-sleeping, cry-it-out, baby wearing, attachment parenting, time outs . . . our weight, our looks.

And we judge our friends as harshly as we judge ourselves.

I guess I was reminded of this recently, by this video, a Similac formula commercial, for Pete's sake.  It shows us all in all of our self-righteous glory -- even the baby-wearing dads.

And while we are judging -- ourselves, our friends -- we are doing only one thing.  With all of our self-imposed requirements of parenthood, we are subjugating ourselves as people.  We are crushing ourselves under the weight of expectations that we have no right to demand.  Enslaved by the breast pump.  Defeated by words like organic, natural, free range and whole grain.  Conquered by a thousand "better" methods to discipline and control (indeed, subjugate?) our children.  A tyranny of a crowd of "better ways" and obligations and judgments and joyless self-sacrifice . . . all in the name of "good parenting."  We hold ourselves back and down with our lofty ambitions, instead of pushing ourselves up and forward.

We are parents.  We are love.  Our children are joy.  We should rise and praise and smile and encourage.  Just as we do with our kids, we should do with ourselves, and each other.

"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so let us all be thankful." --  Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha 

I am thankful for my health, and my family, and my job . . . and I am thankful for you diverse crowd of parent peers who do things differently than me, or the same as me, or somewhere in the middle.

I am glad we are all trying.

 

I'm not going to do it anymore.

I fought with my son today. 

About sweatpants.

Let me explain:

Because he hadn't been potty trained a year yet, and because he has trouble with jeans flys (and because I don't like the look of elastic-band jeans), I took to dressing The Boy in fleece sweatpants this past fall. But I've gotten a little tired of the sweatpants. And I think his dad has as well.  And they're not exactly a polished look....  Still, he does look cute in them, because he looks cute in everything.

So I decided to try to transition us out of sweatpants.  Accordingly, when I bought some new size 4T pants for the guy recently, I did get a couple of pairs of sweatpants, but I also got these cute elastic-band gray cammo cargo pants.  They even have lots of cool pockets for carrying rocks and acorns and hotwheels and sticks!  With these awesome pants, I would move The Boy into normal pants and away from the sweatpants. 

These were the pants that I wanted him to wear today.  The cute elastic-band gray cammo cargo pants. 

He demurred.

Actually, he flatly refused; I got irritated; he said he didn't like them; I asked him why; he said that they were too big; I said, "You can't know that; you've never put them on;" and just like that, I was trying to force the pants onto his little body while he said, "Stop it, stop it, stop it!"

That's when my husband said, "We don't have to do this today," and he went to the closet to retrieve some sweatpants.

And he's right. We didn't have to do that today. Who, other than me, cares if he wears sweatpants today?  Completely irrational behavior on the part of the mommy....  Basically, I didn't get my way.

For better than 15 years, I've given the following advice to people in various circumstances at various moments in time:  If what you are worrying about or upset about will matter in 5 years, then it's probably worth your worry today. If it won't matter in 5 years, you should let it go right now. 

Whether The Boy wore sweatpants or cargo pants today will not matter in 2020. We wouldn't even remember what he wore today at all, five years hence, but for that pointless fight that was entirely my fault and this blog post. 

And The Boy looks adorable today in his black sweatpants and green Lego men shirt (which is, in fact, the item of clothing I laid out that is actually too big). 

So I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm going to take my own advice. If it won't matter five years from now, I'm not going to have a battle with my son about it.

Before I went to work, I apologized to him for the fight. He seemed unphased, but who knows. I hope the memory of battling his mom over cargo v. sweatpants will not linger for him (like it will surely linger for me), will not be one of those childhood memories he carries forever. But from now on, I vow, I resolve, not to sweat the small stuff. Life's too short to fight your kid over, e.g., sweatpants. 

Bye-bye, Time Out

With this post, I am not about to tell you that you're doing it wrong.

I'm not going to tell you that your method for disciplining your child is inferior to mine. 

I'm not going to suggest that you change what's working for your family. 

I'm just going to tell you about something we've done recently in response to an ever growing problem of finding an effective means of discipline and instruction for our child. 

Time outs don't work for The Boy. They do not teach him anything but to get angry with his parents. His immediate thought when placed in time out is not "what did I do wrong?" or "how can I avoid getting a time out next time?," but "How do I get out of here?" and "I'm really pissed off and I don't know why."  This is despite the fact that we tell him why he's being put in time out.  The problem is that he's so upset and in such a heightened emotional state, he can't understand us.  He hears us, but the intelligent, comprehending part of his brain is not the part that is engaged when he gets a time out.

So it doesn't work.

There is a lot of screaming. A lot of crying. A lot of pleading and begging. A lot of drama.

A LOT. 

There is no evidence of changed behavior after time outs. No, day in and day out, it is nothing but more of the same behavior with the same ineffective means of "discipline," the time out. 

Like I said, time outs don't work for our kid.

And they don't work for my husband and me either...besides the obvious that they have proved to be an ineffective means of behavior correction for The Boy, they increase our anxiety because his anxiety is increased.  He gets upset. We get upset. No real communication occurs in the time out process. Only punishment.  For the whole family.

So we needed a different way.

Enter No-Drama Discipline by by Daniel J. Seigel, M.D., and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.  Seigel is a child psychiatrist.  Bryson is a pediatric therapist/social worker.

In the book, they teach that discipline is not about punishment, but instruction. You teach when you discipline. And when an individual, parent or child, is in a heightened state agitation, no teaching or learning can take place. No discipline occurs.

I'm not going to describe, chapter and verse, what we've done differently. But we don't generally do time outs anymore.  The few times I've resorted to one after reading No Drama Discipline, I've regretted it. It's been just as ineffective as they always were before.  The urge is always there, to just toss him into time out, but I have to remind myself that I need to do what works, not what is easier for me to do in the moment. 

The point of no drama discipline is to connect emotionally and intellectually with the child so that you can calmly give instruction and the child can calmly receive it. If it sounds like more work than a time out, it is. It's a lot more work.  But who said parenting was easy?  And, frankly, I'm happy to put in the extra work to effectively discipline The Boy rather than to continue with the ineffective time outs. 

So instead of time out, we do what my husband has taken to describing as "an aggressive hug."  We sit down with The Boy, and we hold him until he calms down. Sometimes, this involves saying, "I know, I know. I know you want to watch Ninjago right now, I know," (or whatever the issue is). The point is to chill the kid (and yourself) out so that you can proceed with effective instruction.

So when he's calmed down, we redirect his energies and focus onto good behaviors and better choices.  We talk about what happened. We ask him what a better choice would have been. Sometimes, if appropriate and possible, we give him a do-over to make the better decision.  This doesn't mean that he ultimately gets his way all the time. He's still often disappointed. But it does mean that we have engaged him intellectually and emotionally to refocus his brain on appropriate behaviors, responses and problem-solving, rather than heightening in his base, negative emotions that lead to further bad behavior.

Is he a perfect angel?  No.  He's a little boy who is still learning. But his behavior is better, so much better, than it was before we started implementing the No Drama Discipline techniques.  Even his teachers sent a note home last week noting his improved behavior and problem solving skills.  We're seeing real change in his behavior because we changed our response to it.

No drama discipline has worked to bring more calm to our house, and has reduced the number of tamtrums and outburst from The Boy.  He's learning how to use his intellect, rather than his reptilian emotions, to navigate the world.

Does this mean that he won't occasionally burst into singing the Chuck the Truck theme song at volume in the middle of a restaurant? Or throw a tantrum?  Or make pouty demands?  No, because he's three.  He's still learning correct behaviors. But it does mean that our approach to handling that situation will now be more effective at changing the negative behavior.  We're optimistic that more good things are to come.

My Boobs, My Choice

Why is it that, in some circles, when it comes to abortion, women's bodies are sacrosanct?  She's granted complete sovereignty over her person when it comes to the embryo or fetus within her.  She alone gets to choose.

But when it comes to breastfeeding, those same people who trumpet a woman's right to choose on the front end of the pregnancy also act as if, once the baby's drawn breath, there's no choice, no sovereignty of the body anymore. 

Lady, if you brought that child to term, you must breastfeed.  You don't have the right to choose what you do with your boobs.

Let me tell you a little bit about my experience:  I was 40 years old, fresh off a month of bedrest.  My breasts have always been plenty "full," but they were not -- they were never -- full of milk.  I starved my son for the first five days of his life trying to offer him a nearly dry teat.

And then, AND THEN, the lactation consultant came.  She made remarks about my nipples, their quality and type, even their ethnicity.

Seriously.

She encouraged me to use the breast pump to stimulate milk production when my child was not feeding instead of, you know, holding and bonding with my baby or taking a nap.

She even suggested that I use some weird contraption involving a catheter threaded from a bottle with formula or, preferably, expressed milk, alongside my own breast down to my nipple and into my son's mouth so that, even if he was not getting milk from the actual boob, he was still sucking it through the effing catheter.  (You should imagine me typing really hard on that last bit there.)

Because the only way to bond with your child is if he's sucking your teat.

Seriously?

I went along with the pumping-all-the-damned-time-thing, but the catheter was a bridge too far.

I'm sure the lactation consultant felt I was an utter failure for having rejected the ridiculous catheter trick.

What not a single professional said to me -- not the pediatrician, not the lactation consultant, not the OB/GYNs -- was that it was okay to let go.

No, the breastfeeding was too important:  More important than me getting rest.  More important than me sitting and holding my baby.  The agenda was more important than me.

And I bought into it.  I pumped incessantly.  I worried about there not being enough milk.  I gloried in the mere six ounces a day of anemic breast milk that I brought home from work each day.  (Until, at age six months, my son rejected both boob and breast-milky-like substance, mercifully freeing me from that sucking machine.)

If I had to do it all over again, I'd tell that consultant to walk on by so fast.  I would enjoy my maternity leave.  I would actually sleep when the baby sleeps.  I would allow that having a newborn is stressful enough without adding to the stress by trying to make happen what was clearly not going to happen.

I would relieve myself of the daily humiliation of half-disrobing in my office four times a day to pump while I worked.  I would also relieve my co-workers of the awkwardness of finding my bag of sterilized pump parts in the microwave where I'd forgotten them after a harried pumping session.

I would give myself a break, even when no one else would.  And in so doing, I think, I think, I would have been a more present and better rested mommy of a new human.  (But who knows, right?  Because newborns are challenging even when no breast pumps are present.)

One thing I know for sure:  I wouldn't feel betrayed and bullied by a system that means too well.  Breastfeeding is not so important to the bonding process that we need to pretend that we're doing it by means of a catheter.  That's just nuts.  I know the intentions are good, but someone needs to say, "Enough is enough, if it's not working, use the formula, lady.  It will be okay.  You'll still love your kid and your kid will be fine."

Because new mothers are as vulnerable as newborn babies.  We want to do everything just right.  We don't want to screw up.  We're terrified we'll accidentally harm this precious gift we've been given, our baby girls and boys.  Someone in the breastfeeding establishment needs to say, "You tried.  It's okay to quit."

Hey, if your boobs work well, and breastfeeding your child is a breeze, more power to you.  I am envious.  It wasn't easy for me.  I wanted it to be, but it wasn't.

But if you're having trouble, if you're feeling wrung out, if you feel like a slave to the breast pump, if you just don't want to do it anymore or at all (even though your boobs work fine), it's okay to let go.  I give you permission.  They're your boobs.  It's your choice.

My One And Only

Dan Kois and Allison Benedikt have a podcast for Slate called Mom and Dad are Fighting.  It’s a podcast about parenting issues, and I listen to it nearly every week it's on.

 

In the latest edition of the podcast, one of their topics was the social stigma attached to being the parent of an only child.  Neither Kois nor Benedikt are parents of singletons, so they can’t really relate personally, but they do generally come down on the side of “hey, you shouldn’t judge someone for the number of kids that they choose to have or not have.”  (All the while admitting to their own biases:  Benedikt doesn’t get the singleton parent thing, and Kois thinks anyone with more than three kids is out of their minds, to paraphrase.  Psst, I’m with you, Dan.  More than three seems like you're assembling your own army against yourself.)

 

Anyway, my kid’s an only child, as you may have noticed.  We’re not planning on more.  Part of that is made easy by the fact of biology – it took a long time to get The Boy, and I was 40.5 years old (almost to the day) by the time he was born.  So the odds of bringing forth new life again for The Working Dad and me were slim to begin with.

 

But to be honest, before we started trying to have a child, before we discovered that I had premature ovarian failure and that having even one would be difficult, we were pretty much planning to have only one.  We would occasionally muse on the idea of two (especially in the year or so after The Boy was born), but if I’m honest, we seriously only envisioned a single child.

 

And there were a lot of reasons for that, but chiefly, we wanted to devote all of our energies to the single child.  We both thought that it would be better for the child and for us to have the single focus.

 

This is no slight to families with more than one child or to our own upbringings – I’m the oldest of two and my husband is the middle of three.  But for us, one and only seemed to be the right choice.

 

I’m not going to say that we gave too much thought to the over-population argument for smaller families, although we certainly were not unaware of it.

 

I think that, for me, two things were going on:  allocation of personal and financial resources towards the child, and odds of my being present for the child through maturity.

 

It's cheaper with one child.  But it's not just that it's cheaper, we'll never have to do the per child budgeting other parents do. No dollar limits on gifts to be "fair."  No juggling the checkbook to pay for an expensive activity for one child while worrying about slighting the other child with the less expensive hobby.

And our time can be devoted solely to the one guy. Sometimes, that means both of us are present with our son at an activity. Sometimes, that means one of us is with our son while the other one takes care of family chores like grocery shopping or home maintenance.  It's a juggling act, still, but there are fewer balls to keep in the air with just the one guy. 

And, of course, you should not underestimate the benefit of not being out-numbered (or even even-teamed) by the children in the house.  One child can never gang up on you. (He can still say hurtful things and frustrate you, but he's got no back-up. Which, come to think of it, is good for him too...because a lot of life is going up against someone or something more powerful than yourself, mostly on your own.)

Maybe this all sounds a little selfish to the parents of siblings. And maybe it is a little. But all efforts are towards giving our one child the best start he can possibly have. 

Because we won't be here forever. He will lose his parents, in all likelihood, at a younger age than many of his peers because we are older by about (or more) a decade than many of our parent peers.  I will be 58 years old when The Boy graduates from high school.  I believe my grandmother was younger than that when she became a grandmother for the first time.

We need The Boy to be as well prepared for the world as possible. Better prepared than his parents were so that he can hit the ground running and not spend a decade or more figuring it all out.... And we want to leave him financially secure.

Still, there are all these cultural ideas hovering around that stopping at one kid is a disservice to the child.

"You are depriving your child of the joy of having a sibling."  To which many an only child friend of mine might respond, "Why, no.  You can't miss what you do not have."  Sure, he may wonder about what it might be like to have a sister or brother. But I wondered about what having a sister would be like, so these flights of fancy about alternate sibling relationships are not limited to singletons. AND not all siblings find having their siblings to be a joy. There's no guarantee that your kids will like each other. Some people find having a sibling to be a real chore and a constant source of conflict. We can't all be Jane and Elizabeth Bennett. (Besides, remember, they had Lydia for a sister too....)

But the most annoying criticism that's been lodged against us as parents of a singleton has, generally, come from strangers who make judgements about our son's behavior because he's an only child. Because three-year-old kids with siblings never misbehave in public....  No, kids who live with other kids are always angels, always waiting their turn, never screaming or pouting, never being aggressive on the playground like those awful, spoiled and coddled singletons.

;-)

One woman so much as told my friend (also a singleton mom) and me one day at the park that we needed to have another child so to better socialize our kids.

What evs, lady. Our kids play with 14 other kids at pre-school every day -- and were, in fact, playing with each other right that very moment -- so they're plenty socialized.

Study after study shows that singletons do just as well or better than kids with siblings. But there's still the societal myth that two would be better.

Maybe it's primal:  more kids equals more likelihood that your genes will survive through the ages.

Maybe that's what the lady in the park meant:  She observed my friend and me (and our excellent spouses because we were all four there with the two kids).  She saw how delightful all four parents were, and how adorable our only children were, and she thought, "What a tragedy! We need more people in the world like these good people. Please, on behalf of humanity, I implore you fine citizens to reproduce again!"

Yes, maybe that's what she meant. 

Tolerance

I wanted to write a blog post today because, well, I wanted to.

A friend recently gave me the idea to write about all the wonderful benefits of age – specifically, the fact that age gives you the extremely blissful ability and desire to say of most thing, “aw, blow it off and get you a beer, who cares?”  Trivial stuff actually DOES seem trivial at this age.  And that’s a great topic, but then . . . .

The Federal District Court in San Antonio published its opinion/order in Deleon v. Perry, in which it finds Texas’s gay marriage ban unconstitutional on the basis that (broad over simplification of the opinion to follow) it violates the 14^th Amendment’s protections of due process and equal protection under the law.  So I thought I’d write about that.

But then I read this article about over-achieving mom/parent culture at school (and how we parents – and the schools too -- should all just simmer down a little bit), which, paired with all of the crazy things I’ve seen on Pinterest, lead me to concur that we’ve all gone just a little bit overboard on, e.g., our kids’ Valentines cards and gifts.

AND THEN, I read a story about a new study – a single study – that found that, basically, if you didn’t breastfeed your baby, no harm/no foul.  Your kid is not permanently damaged because you didn’t give him/her sufficient boob juice with all kinds of magical and beneficial hoosiewhatsits in it.  And for those of us who had a hard time producing enough milk to fill even one bottle, this was welcome news.  (It was also welcome news to those of us who have been milk-shamed for not breastfeeding or not “trying hard enough” to breastfeed.)

Then I realized something:  all of these things have something in common.

Tolerance.

I think that tolerance has gotten a bad rap in recent years.  Some people hear the word, “tolerance,” and they think that you mean “approval.”  And that’s not what tolerance is at all.  Tolerance is the ability to accept that something you dislike exists.  Think of tolerance, in fact, as endurance.  Something may be painful to you, or distasteful to you, but you nevertheless endure it with grace and aplomb.  I have tolerated many a continuing legal education lecture through the years....

You don’t have to like it.  You don’t even have to endorse it.  But humility, patience, and generosity of spirit can allow you to live in peace knowing that something you think is wrong exists in the world.

That’s tolerance.

There are a lot of people who don’t want to tolerate gay marriage.  They find it morally offensive.  I get that.  I tolerate that.  I can even sympathize with those feelings and thoughts.  Because there are a lot of legal things that I find immoral and/or distasteful, but I tolerate them because I live in this civil society that permits them.  (Example:  the death penalty.)  And it seems clearer and clearer that the law of equal protection and due process will extend to the marriages of same sex couples throughout this land, and sooner rather than later.  Not everyone has to like it.  But trying to find a way to tolerate it while remaining true to oneself is a virtue for which we can all strive.

As for the breastfeeding and the over-achieving parent behavior, well, let’s try to give each other a break, shall we?  Not everyone is going to make the same choices as you do, and that’s okay.  In fact, we make the choices that are best for us.  For some of us, that’s breastfeeding and making elaborate Valentine cards for our kids (sometimes simultaneously!).  For others of us, it’s Enfamil and dollar store Valentine cards with Dum Dums suckers taped to the front of them.  Whatever it is we choose, that’s okay.  No child will be damaged by a non-homemade Valentine card, nor will any child be damaged by elaborate homemade ones.  The worst thing that could happen is that the other grown-ups will talk behind their hands in judgment of your slackerdom or over-achiever syndrome.  (Something I’m guilty of myself, I confess.)  Rather than do either, we should gracefully nod, and tolerate the different choices of our neighbors.  “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.”  Proverbs 16:24.  (I love Proverbs.)  It’s good to remember that, when thinking of our neighbors.

All this being said, we should not tolerate everything.  Some things are worth the fight.  (For me, women’s rights, human dignity.)  And, I suppose, that we must choose what battles we will fight and what things we can tolerate notwithstanding our disapproval.  What is worth it to us?  And are there things for which we can turn the other cheek, or drop our untossed stones, understanding that we are also not perfect?

Which of course brings me to the first topic I considered writing about today:  the relaxation of care that comes with age.  In my forties, it’s true that I just do not have the fire in my belly to become indignant or fight back about every slight.  In my forties, I’m becoming more “live and let live” and less “you’re doing it wrong.”  It doesn't mean I don't have passion or that I'm world weary.  But my two-score-plus years have given me a lot of patience, gratitude and perspective.  So here in my forties, I tolerate a lot . . . mostly gladly.

We’d all be a lot happier, I think, if, rather than seethe and gnash our teeth, we would just blow it off and get us a beer when something irks us.  (Or a red wine.  Boxed, even.  I’m not picky, I’ll tolerate whatever you’ve got.  Cheers, friends.)

Pink is the New Blue.

I revise my opinion.

For several years, I've frowned on the pink and purple princess mania of modern girldom.  To me, it was a sign of early tracking of little girls to woman's weeds and "girl things."  It was so antifeminist.

I'd bristle. I'd roll my eyes. 

Why do they need special "girl" Mega Blocks?  What's wrong with the primary colored ones the boys play with.  What makes red, blue, yellow and green "boy," and pink and purple "girl"?

But I've change my mind.

I mean, sure, there is nothing wrong with girls playing with primary colored toys and I still think it's, I don't know, superfluous to make pink and purple blocks. But the fact that she's playing with pink blocks doesn't mean she is destined for a life of subservient, second-class citizenship.  That's going to require a lot more parenting mistakes than any frilly princess dress or box of pink blocks is going to impart.

I mean, let's remember that playing with any colored blocks is intellectually stimulating.  If pink gets her building towers, that's okay.  In fact, it's not just okay, it's great.  She's probably not going to demand a pink princess microscope when she gets to MIT.  The lessons she learned from her mom and dad about self-respect, personal fulfillment, education, and her fundamental rights as a human being are going to be the thing that determines whether she's mighty or a mouse.

Not that anecdotes are proof of anything, but I played with Barbies like mad and I turned out okay, with no illusions that I should only wear pink, have long blond hair, always wear heels, and have an impossibly tiny waist.

And, honestly, if I'm going to let my boy play with Hello Kitty and Minnie Mouse, I really ought to chill out about girls doing it. Probably, those girls have a few Hot Wheels or other "boy" toys in their toy boxes too. I mean, I did, after all.  I remember my collection of Star Wars figurines quite fondly. 

So, as due, I'm chilling out. And today, without second thought or guilt, I will accompany my son to a little girl's birthday party with an unapologetic gift of princess Duplo blocks.  May she build skyscrapers one day.

Maybe I'll even wear a pink sweater. 

Trained.

I'll bet you think I'm going to write about The Personal Trainer, and how I'm on a New Year's Resolution to finally lose the 20 pounds of baby weight I've been hauling around for almost three years.

Just like I wrote last year . . . .  Same 20 pounds, by the way.  Still here.  2013 New Year's Resolution Fail, as the kids might say.

But you'd be wrong about that assumption.

Oh sure, like everyone else in the Western world, the new year has brought a renewed resolve to get back into shape, but honestly, what more can I say on the subject that I haven't said already on this blog.  Who wants to be boring and repetitive?

(By the way, The Personal Trainer has been texting me trying to set up training sessions for the new year. Trying to drum up some New Year's Resolution business, no doubt.  I've been diligently ignoring her.  But I need to at least respond to say, count me out.)

No, when I say, "trained," I mean trained.

Potty trained.

Without going into the specifics of all the, er, movements involved in this project, I am happy to report that our post-Christmas efforts at potty training with The Boy have met with great success and he is sporting undies 24-7, except for naps and bedtime (when we use pull-ups).

We've had a few accidents, which is to be expected, and some of those have been a result of his parents not being quick enough to get him to the potty when he has asked to go.  He's great at asking to go.  (Sometimes, he asks to go, I am convinced, just to get out of certain situations.  And, hey, I used to hang out in a toilet stall and read a book in the sorority house in order to get some alone-time, so he's just taking after his mom in that regard.)

So I have some advice to the un-potty-trained parents out there:

• Do not start before age 2, unless your child is really potty-precocious.  In fact, don't start until at least age 2.5.  I know you're tired of changing diapers and that your hands have aged 10 years in the past two due to over-washing, but just wait a few more months.  I mean, don't even buy the training potty and put it in your bathroom.  They're just not ready yet, and you will save yourself many, many months of frustration.  I say this as a person who has been sitting her son on the potty chair for a year.  Honestly, it was pointless to even try until about a month ago.

• When you do try to potty train your kid at around age 2.5, if the kid is just oblivious to his/her wetness or poop, put the training pants and the potty chair away and wait a few more months.  He or she is still not ready and unless you like being covered in urine and/or poop, you're just going to have a long-drawn-out mess.  You will find that if you allow your kid to mature just a little bit more -- both physically and emotionally -- it will go so much easier.

• Keep in mind, too, that the average age for an American boy to be fully potty trained is 38 months.  For American girls, it's 36 months.  So if you're starting at age two -- 24 months -- you're expecting a lot from your little person.

• Potty rewards work.  Find what works for your child.  The Boy has a friend who would do it for gummy bears.  Another for M&Ms.  Our guy:  Hot Wheels and Cars cars.  Maybe you might choose some special kind of undies (Disney Princess? Toy Story?) your kid would love to wear.

• Be prepared for accidents when you go out and about.  Maybe, for the first few days/weeks, you want to use pull-ups when you go to the grocery store with the kid, just in case.

• Carry two changes of clothes in the car with you.  Include socks.

• Find a friend with older kids and do not be afraid to ask questions!  He/She has been there and will have ideas that work.

As I was discussing recently with a dear friend of mine, a mom of three (two adorable boys and a beautiful college freshman girl), no one graduates high school un-potty-trained and, well, they don't have a space for "age at toilet training" on any college entrance exam we've seen.  So this is really not something we need to stress about.  It will happen with the child is ready, not when you are ready.

So, saying bye-bye to diapers means, alas, saying good-bye to the last vestige of babyhood for my sweet little man.  He announced to friends today, "I"m a big boy!  I have undies!"  It was adorable, and bittersweet.  Not my baby anymore, my adorable, funny big boy.  (But, you know, my shoulder will be so happy not to have that diaper bag digging into it anymore.)  Congratulations, Little Man.

From Ferber to the Family Bed

I've written several posts about our travails with the Ferber Method of sleep training.

And now I'm writing, not to eat crow, exactly, but to say . . . . .

Every parent must use the methods and techniques that are right for them and their child . . .

And to say that what is right at Time A may not be the right choice at Time B. 

And so here we are:  In our Working Family Bed.

How did we get here?

It started a few weeks ago, when The Boy started waking during the night.  Rather than employ Ferber, I would just bring him into our bed. It was easier.  And having him there to cuddle was kind of nice.  We had him in our room from the day we brought him home until July 2012 -- well into his second year.  And, although everyone has been sleeping better and not getting sick anymore since we moved him to his own room, there wasn't a day in which we didn't miss him in our room.

We turned to Ferber last summer because The Boy would keep us up for hours on end in the middle of the night, and all of us were getting physically ill from the lack of sleep.  And when I say ill, I mean, "need a Z-pack and a chest X-ray" kind of ill.  It worked so quickly, the Ferber method, and everyone was happier for it, and better rested.

That is, until a few weeks ago.  I can't really articulate why it was different, but it was different this time.  The Boy is older and he's a good sleeper, but he was consistently waking at night.  He said he was having bad dreams and was scared.  And this age, going-on three, is when those sorts of things start.  So when the wakings started, it didn't seem right to employ Ferber, right away.  (Actually, even Ferber says not to leave them to cry when they have nightmares.)  So I'd bring him downstairs to our room when he would wake.

Soon, I started to feel the old exhaustion from the pre-Ferber days.  I started to feel unwell.  I was getting wrung out by the process:  put him to bed in his own bed, go to bed in our bed, wake up middle of the night when he called for me, get up and bring him downstairs, get him settled, get self settled.  I was easily losing an hour or more of sleep each night. No bueno. 

So we (or maybe just I) decided we needed to reFerberize The Boy.  I felt guilt, too, for disrupting his sleep training, once again.

But this time, the progressive waiting process was awful beyond any sort of level of awfulness of the prior go 'rounds.  And it just felt wrong this time. Call it a mother's instinct.  Ferber was not the right call this time.

So what to do?  We weren't going to do Ferber again, but I couldn't continue the middle of the night wake up process, and have a hope of being healthy and useful.

The solution:  we put The Boy to bed in our bed, with no intermediate stop in his own room.

Actually, we ask him where he would like to sleep each night, so he knows he still has the option to sleep in his room, if he wants it.  And we are all much happier, and better rested, for it.  I'm not going to say it is perfect:  I woke up with little feet kicking me in the small of my back this morning . . . but it was the morning, and not the middle of the night.  We have had solid nights of sleep since we instituted the Family Bed.  And that's a very, very good thing.

I don't regret our prior Ferber experiences. He was not sleeping through the night and we all were getting, e.g., bronchitis from being so strung out with so little sleep.  When he started sleeping through the night in his own bed, we were all healthier. We needed to get him over the hump to sleep the night through, and that wasn't happening when he was screaming half the night standing in his bed in our room. Having exhausted all other tactics, we needed Ferber's help to get him to sleep the night through. 

Now, he sleeps soundly through the night, but for the recent night wakings. Rather than lose an hour or more of sleep every night with night wakings, sleeping communally suits the family's needs right now. The Working Dad and I know that it could be months or years of bed-sharing with the boy, and we're okay with that. It's a small amount of time out of a lifetime, and we're glad to spend even our sleeping moments with him.  In fact, our bedtimes have become sweeter, cuddled together in our bed, as we read and listen to "quiet music."  I think The Working Dad and I will be a little sad when, one night, The Boy tells us he wants to sleep in his own room again. 

The thing to remember as a parent is that parenting is a relationship, not a power play. It's a relationship in which we have the majority of the power, by default, but he is a participant in this parent-child dance and deserves respect.  Relationships require constant reevaluation and flexibility.  Here, with our child it is no different.  And so.  Here we bent, so we would not break.

Nighty-night.

Wisdom Shaming

Wha?

A few weeks ago, Emily Yoffe wrote a piece and then a follow-up piece suggesting that if young college-aged women didn't get blotto at college parties, they would be less likely to be rape victims.  A wing of the feminist commentariate went nuts, insisting that Yoffe was blaming the victim to dispense such common sense advice.

Some of the opposition even seemed to suggest that they would prefer the blotto-rapes occur so that the rapists get caught and prosecuted so they wouldn't go on to rape again...as if it's okay to offer one drunk college girl up to the rape gods in order to save five...as if there's a guarantee of prosecution when the victim was too drunk to remember exactly what happened?  It was surreal. 

Disturbingly, though, American college culture seems to revolve around drinking.  Example:  I saw a  series of photos recently of a sorority chapter's cooler decorating competition in advance of the big game against their long-time rival.  Lest you think that these coolers were destined to contain Capri Suns and orange slices, one of the young ladies had decorated her cooler with the phrase "Hakuna La Vodka."

How very drunk Disney princess of her....

But I was a drunken sorority girl too, 20-odd years ago, and it was a binge-to-blotto culture back then as well. I was fortunate to have friends, who were gracious enough to help keep me out of trouble -- and hold my hair as I puked -- the times I drank too much.

And the times I didn't, well, my sorority sisters and other friends were lucky enough to have me as a driver. In one instance, I actually helped carry a pledge, too drunk to stand, home from a fraternity party and sat with her through the night to make sure she was okay.

But none of that was okay -- then or now.

What if my friends hadn't been there for me?  What if I hadn't been there for them?  What might have happened?  I shudder to think. 

But here's the thing:  we knew it wasn't good for us to drink to excess like that. We weren't stupid or unaware. But we ignored the advice. 

We've got to make it uncool to behave that way. We've got to make maintaining control, even just a little bit, acceptable behavior and not "unfun."

And that means for the boys and the girls too. 

Because, I've got to tell ya', I am aware of instances where the sorority-girl-network failed some of my peers and they were harmed. And that is horrible.  Horrible and tragic.

Obviously, I think that we parents should educate our boys about respect for women and acceptable behavior toward women. That means starting early. It includes teaching them what consent is and that a drunk girl can't really give it.  And these boys are the most likely to be harmed by alcohol poisoning or other physical risk taking behavior. For their own safety, they should drink less. 

It also means teaching girls how to protect themselves from a potential assault:  don't accept drinks from strangers; don't drink to black out; do travel in packs with trusted friends; do be wary when a drunken boy takes your hand to lead you away (if he's really into you, he'll be okay with accepting your phone number and calling you in the morning).

Giving that advice is not blaming the victim/potential victim of rape. It's giving her tools to avoid becoming a victim.

I'll tell you something else:  it is not a feminist statement to get shit-faced drunk.  I think there is a certain subculture of the feminist culture who thinks that it's an affirming feminist act to be as loud and as raunchy as any 19 year old frat boy out at the party barn.  All I have to say is, really?

The college drinking culture makes sobriety, even moderation, uncool. So the girls get sloppy and the boys lose inhibitions, and everyone forgets the good lessons they were taught.  This has nothing to do with feminism, and everything to do with an American society that has failed to teach its young people how to handle alcohol and the situations that alcohol can create.

I'm not sure how we change the binge-to-blotto culture. If it's not changed in  the 20-odd years since I was a participant in it, I'm not sure it will change organically, or at all. 

But it seems to me that the place it will have to change is at home.  And the time for change is long before these kids set off for college. Parents are totally uncool, by their nature, but I think we've got to start this thing early so it sticks, like music lessons or a foreign language. It doesn't mean our kids won't drink -- or even that they shouldn't -- but maybe they'll be a little bit safer about it when they do if we give them the tools to think it through.  Safer than me and my friends were . . . .