The Nintendo Nanny?

It's 11 AM on a Wednesday. Do you know where your children are? If you're the moms at my athletic club, you do. They're sitting in the cafe with their handheld Nintendo DS games, glued to their screens, while you do Zumba. Welcome to the new version of electronic babysitting.

I just wrote a post about my reaction to finding ourselves surrounded by 12 boys, each with his own DS that I am posting on svmoms later this week. I wasn't the only one to notice this new scene that had popped up at the gym. You can bet my five-year old was fascinated. He couldn't tear his eyes away from all the big boys with their cool video games. The teenager working at the gym cafe noticed too. She commented to another customer on "the new version of babysitting".

Given that I happily let 5-year old Rainman play with his Leapster in the gym's daycare center (it's educational! Really!) while I do Zumba, I can't blame the Nintendo moms. But I do wonder how it will be when my kids are in school if "everyone" has a DS and they want one too.

This may be a uniquely Silicon Valley concern. My friend visited her cousin in Colorado recently. Her cousin and her husband had never heard of a DS, even though she has a seven-year old boy too and they're both teachers.

How will we cross this next gaming bridge when we come to it? I assume that like everything else, we'll say our kids have to ask for it for Christmas or a birthday (or maybe do chores to earn money to buy it if they're old enough), and then we'll set limits on screen-time.

Will I let it become my virtual nanny though? I hope not, but having just seen how quiet a room with 12 young boys can be when they have their DS, I know it will be tempting.

A Parent's Identity: Segmentation or Fragmentation?

Parenting 101: No one ever tells you before you have kids that one of the biggest challenges you may face as a parent is ensuring that you don't lose yourself along the way.  I've struggled with this for five years.  How can I fulfill the different -- and always multiplying -- roles I need to play as a parent and daughter without losing the core that makes me me? It has taken several years and a few mistakes, but I've found answers. I'm not cut out to be all one thing or another. My monthly routine has to include activities that anchor me solidly in the adult world, despite spending almost all day every day with my preschool-aged kids. That means my part-time consulting work and my volunteer work in city government.It also means managing the care of my ailing Dad as a part-time job.  Setting new challenges to accomplish small goals (like running a 10K) is part of the mix. And I need time for bonding with other women (like my book club and nights out with my oldest college or high school friends). 

Reading Michael Miller's memoir and self-help book What Happened to the Girl I Married? reminded me of the stark differences between a stay-at-home-parent and a full-time working parent. When Miller was working, his identity had three segments: Sales Executive, Dad and Husband. But that all changed when he decided to stay home for a year and try to do the job his wife had done for more than a decade. That's when he realized that while he was used to having three neat segments to his identity that rarely overlapped, the stay-at-home parent faces a more daunting situation. Her segments become fragmented between all the roles she has to play (e.g. Administrative Assistant, Taxi Driver, CEO of the House, Therapist, Social Planner, Chef, etc.)  As a SAHD, Miller could plan his day and anticipate that he might need to play seven roles such as Butler, Cook, Tutor and Taxi Driver in the morning followed by Laundry Man, Housekeeper and Husband in the evening. But the unpredictability of life with kids forced him to abandon nearly every task before it was complete and add new ones such as Nurse (sick kid), Facilities Manager (leaking toilet), and Counselor (child is bullied at school) at the spur of the moment and in response to everyone else's needs. He quickly lost his sense of self and felt fragmented or torn apart rather than segmented into tidy slices. 

Miller gained insight and empathy from walking a mile in his wife's shoes. That's something I try not to lose sight of in my own marriage. I've found the outlets that help me not to feel totally overwhelmed by my caregiving roles (most of the time). But my husband -- and all the full-time working parents I am close to -- has a different struggle. For the conscientious working parent like my hubby, the pattern in a typical day is  work, then Dad (until bedtime), a little bit of husband-time and then more work at night. At times I worry that he will lose his sense of self since there's so little time in that busy schedule for a social life, sports, volunteer work or hobbies. He carves out some time for himself (a weekly tennis class, bike-riding , the occasional baseball or hockey game), but I try to check in with him to make sure he's not disappearing in some way. I know how easy that is to do and that it takes hard work, planning and commitment to avoid it. Fortunately, my part-time work has always been something of a lifeline that prevents me from drowning in the overwhelming flood of my children's all-consuming needs. A working friend with three young children told me that she thinks the first thing to go for working Moms is attention to self. They work. Then they parent. There's not much time for adult activities. That's a struggle that SAHMs and working Moms can all relate to. We may each tackle it differently but it's a problem we can't just ignore. If we do, we risk losing ourselves. And once that is lost, what do we have left?,

Saturday Morning Outing: Science and Tech with Toddlers?

"Mama, I don't want to listen to any boring talks!" proclaimed my five-year old, Rainman. "Mama, where's da popcorn?" asked my two year old, Red. Welcome to Saturday morning and my kids getting antsy just before Bill Nye the Science Guy gave his presentation at San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation. 

Wrangling a two and five-year old by myself at a museum was not exactly what I had in mind for Saturday. This was supposed to be a family outing with Daddy solidly at the center of our group. Instead, he stayed home -- sidelined by the one-two punch of strep throat and pinkeye. 

After a week of Daddy being ill while my mother-in-law visited us from Canada and my own Dad's chronic illness took a turn for the worse, I was desperate for an outing. So I packed up the kids, remembered to pack some Goldfish to quell any whining or hunger pangs, and off we went. Despite the rocky start ("No, there's no popcorn here. It's not a movie." and "Don't worry, it will be fun!"), the kids and I loved our day. 

This was an event for SVMoms sponsored by a company that makes a green cleaning product called the ActiveIon Pro. The real lure for me was not the swag bag with science-y gifts for my kids and my own $300 water-based cleaning system (though that turned out to be an AMAZING perk), but the chance to see Bill Nye, the Science Guy. He was witty, smart and lively and managed to make all the science concepts he taught us about soap, fluid dynamics and how to make rings of air "poof" out of a modified garbage can fun. Rainman laughed at all of Nye's jokes and probably didn't get much of the science. Red sat on my lap and had a successful potty-training session at the museum (yay!). 

An unexpected highlight of the day turned out to be exploring the Tech Museum. I had only been there to see IMAX films and didn't realize how many interesting interactive exhibits they have. I would never have thought to take my preschoolers there (alone! while pottytraining!) but they had a ball and would have stayed all day. 

I walked away from the outing with three great takeaway lessons: 

1. Taking the kids on excursions by myself on a Saturday is not nearly as lonely or difficult when you have all your blogging friends there to play with. 

2. We should rent Bill Nye the Science Guy DVD's so my kids can continue learning and thinking science is fun. 

3. Giving my five-year old our new ActiveIon Pro and turning him loose to spray and wipe all the hard surfaces in our house (with magically electrified water and no cleaning chemicals) is his idea of a rocking good time. And any free child labor I can get to clean my house is just the icing on the cake! 

The Supreme Court: Gets Way Too Involved in a Discussion about Underwear

My latest blog is titled "Hey Supreme Court: Keep Your Hands out of My Daughter's Underwear!".  You can read it in full on www.svmoms.com

It's about the cases of Savana Redding, a then-13 year old girl who was strip-searched with very little cause by school administrators. She ended up suing the school for violating her Fourth Amendment rights (the right against unreasonable searches). A lower court found in favor of the middle school, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal found her constitutional rights had been violated. The Supreme Court heard the case yesterday. The almost-all male justices made arguments including one by Justice Breyer that basically claimed it was no big deal to be strip-searched at school since kids change clothes at school for gym class. He later said that in his experience in changing for gym, some kids put stuff in his underwear. He then backpedaled and said maybe it was him that put stuff in their underwear. Either way, the deliberations had a through-the-looking-glass feel with Supreme Court justices bandying about the words "panties," "underwear," "brassieres" and "body cavity search" with great relish. Thank God for Justice Ginsburg, the lone woman on the court. She actually "sputtered" in response to the nonsense that her male colleagues were spewing and reminded them that Redding wasn't just forced to strip but to shake out her bra and open up her panties to show the officials there were no drugs in her crotch. 

Common sense in this case would point towards that search having been an unreasonable one, even though there might still be some set of extremely rare circumstances in which you could imagine school officials needing to strip-search a student. However, calling their parents or even the police first would also seem to be a common sense next step. 

I first heard about the story on NPR yesterday but decided to look into it online and to see what more conservative media sources were saying. After all, protection against unreasonable searches would seem to also be an issue that would resonate with conservatives, and certainly with libertarians. Fox.com had some good coverage. Other outlets today, especially slate.com with its-always-entertaining Supreme Court dispatches by Dahlia Lithwick was excellent. 

So far everyone I've mentioned the case to is aghast. Those of us who are parents can imagine the nightmare scenario where our own innocent, honors student daughter is subjected to a humiliating strip-search at school.  It may be the best argument I've ever heard for home-schooling. 

Is there a case against breastfeeding?

My latest blog on this crazily contentious subject is up on www.svmoms.com. My post was inspired by reading an article in The Atlantic called "The Case Against Breastfeeding" by Hanna Rosin. 

It was also inspired by the experiences of some women I love who have not been able to breastfeed and have suffered greatly from the guilt they felt over that. I've always wondered a bit about why there is such guilt associated with this issue. I now believe that in part, it is generated by the overstated claims about the benefits of BF in the popular literature. Rosin's article offers a well-researched review of many of the studies of BF. She doesn't argue that BF is not better than bottle-feeding (on some criteria), but that the degree to which it is better is often overstated. 

As I've moved farther away from my own BF days, I've also gained a little distance and insight and realized that everyone -- myself included -- made way too big a deal of this at the time. Either way, we end up with healthy, happy kids and that's really the goal right? There's another goal too, which often gets lost in the frenzy around newborns and how to feed them: Mom's sanity and the health of the whole family. 

It is always best to look into these things a bit, especially when there's a bandwagon of people insisting that "breast is (always) best". I'm glad I read up on it, looked at the studies and noted their limitations. The upshot is, I'm for a moderate approach on this one. BF if you can and you want to and if it doesn't work out, don't beat yourself up about it. 

What I'm Reading: It Started with Poptarts

I have a neighbor who claims that she never looks at herself in the mirror if her daughters are around. Extreme? Maybe. But it does seem like a smart way to help instill what I think is a healthy “who cares” attitude about looks and body image in children.

As a busy Mom and a Northern California gal who just can’t be bothered with a lot of make-up and hassle about my appearance, I feel like I have a pretty sensible attitude about my looks. But then I remember the teenage years and my early twenties. That was a time of extreme insecurity about looks as well as an unhealthy focus on my weight and my appearance. I wonder if there is any way to help my own daughter (and even my son) avoid the pitfalls I fell into in those years? Or is this something all adolescents and young adults have to go through?

Reading the book “It Started with Poptarts” by Lori Hanson (for the SVMoms Book Club) was a dark detour into the mind of a bulemic, albeit a recovered one. Some of the passages where she wrote about bingeing on junk food and then falling into a cycle of regretting it and berating herself afterward brought back painful memories of my own struggles. If I close my eyes, I can remember exactly how it felt to notice my body changing as a teen. It seems as though it only took a few months to morph from a long skinny beanpole who could eat anything she wanted to an overly sensitive 16-year old who frantically dieted on baked potatoes and cottage cheese to fit into my Size 4 prom dress.

Lori Hanson’s solution to her bulimia and alcoholism lay in self-help books, tapes, exercise regimes and a full range of alternative medical programs, healing massage therapy, unusual diets, and the like. My own struggles with weight and body image somehow sorted themselves out over time without any major interventions. My problems were not extreme, and for that I am grateful.

But the Mom in me wonders if there’s a way to pass on healthy notions about fitness, physique and diet to my kids and spare them the agony of yo-yo dieting and mental recriminations for gaining a few pounds here and there? So far, the best I can come up with is to encourage my kids to be as active as possible and to take an interest in sports. And maybe one of these days, I’ll even stop glancing in the mirror before I leave the house.

Slowing Down with the Grandparents

Do you ever have visitors from out of town who make you slow down and take life at a different pace? In our family, my kids are blessed with 6 grandparents and two great-grandparents. Their visits are glimpses into a different way of life -- and a different culture -- that I'm really learning to appreciate.

The 4 grandparents who live in Canada come to visit once or twice a year. When they're here, I downshift into low gear and live life at about half my usual speed. At first, it's a hard adjustment. I find myself flying through the house practically knocking them down in my rush to get somewhere. I have to stop myself from yelling, "Come on, we've got to go! My hair's on fire!" Once I get used to it though, we all coast along in the slow lane together and just relax.

Some days, we do a whole lot of nothing. Other days, we rouse them out of bed and make them go on long family excursions. But when we're on those excursions, we eat leisurely lunches, stop for coffee, take lots of pictures and never hurry. When we're at home, I'm amazed (and sometimes jealous) by their ability to sit still, read the paper, sip a glass of wine and shoot the breeze.

My frame of reference is all wrong at first too. When Grandpa says "I had my eyes done", I think: "Wow -- laser eye surgery!" Then I realize he means cataracts. When we decide to go for a walk before picking the kids up at school, I realize the GP's don't want to walk at my "Let's-burn-as-many-calories-as-we-can" pace and that I need to re-think how many things we can cram in before the next thing on our schedule.

All of the grandparents in our lives are GREAT with the kids, and I feel truly blessed when I see how much they love each other. They're also very patient with me and have learned to try to get out of my way when my hair is on fire. And I've learned to ratchet things down -- at least for a little while -- and just enjoy life in the slow lane.