Examined Lives

A family travels the world

Green-eyed monster is throwing a fit over here, after I read this New York Times article on a family that has managed to live out something I've only dreamed about: traveling around the world. Indefinitely. 

The indefinitely part wasn't really in the cards for us, but the traveling around the world was. Back in 2000, after the husband and I got laid off, we thought about selling our house for a pretty penny and then home-schooling the older child—we had a baby, too, at that time—for a year while we circled the globe. We'd had it all planned out, even a budget of sorts. A book we'd read about a family that did something similar gave us a ton of tips. (Australia allows foreigners to enroll their kids in their great public schools, which gave them a break from homeschooling.) 

But then old-fashioned pragmatism prevailed. Naysayers—and there were many—said the kids needed stability. To which another friend cried "bullshit," because, as she so eloquently put it, a loving family is most of the grounding a kid needs. So we sold the house, moved east, got jobs and an apartment, and here we are. 

Sometimes I wish we'd gone on that trip. It would be difficult now, especially with one child in high school, when her social life and future plans for college hold lots of sway. When she was 7, it wasn't such a critical thing to home-school her one year. (We were moving, anyway, so it's not as if we weren't cutting ties.) Now, it feels like a major upheaval.

If you look closely at the comments on the Times article, there are critics aplenty. But from my vantage point, this set-up seems mostly win-win. Your thoughts?

—CityMom 

Time out for a wee rant

So, my neighbor brings over her new next-door neighbor to meet us yesterday. Ordinarily, I would have been sociable, but I hid out in my office. First of all, it was dinnertime. But more importantly, I was still working, trying to finish just one task, by god.  Plus, I was wearing a nightie and drinking a glass of fume blanc. Obviously not presentable -- though the new neighbor might as well get used to it, because almost everyone in my street has seen the nightie, the frantic overworked frown, and the glass of dinner wine. 
(Neighbors, if you're reading this...any time after 5 p.m., please don't come a'callin'.)

Anyway. Seems this family has a child a year older than mine, because I heard muffled talks of a prospective playdate. Rather, I heard the woman talking, while my painfully shy children, mouths full of IKEA meatballs, apparently said nothing.

I heard:  "You guys can come over to our house! We have [unclear] Hannah Montana! You'll like that, right? And we have a Wii, and [muffled] Xbox."

Still no response from my kids, presumably due to meatballs but also potentially because they don't really give a crap, bless their hearts. The Dude laughed a bit to cover the awkward silence and says something like, "Well, they're more into DS."  "Oh, [kids name] has one of those, too!" New Neighbor replies.

Ordinarily, I would have sent my kids over, just to meet the new kid and make nice, but honestly, now I'm put off. Why try to entice kids over to your place with stuff? Why not just say, hey, you look like nice kids, and my kid would love to get to know you better? 

(Wondering here if I should mention that the new family has two monstrous matching BMW SUVs. Same color, even. Kind of plays into the impressed-by-stuff theme...but maybe they own a BMW dealership. Or got a two-for-one deal. So I won't mention it.)

Full disclosure: We have a Wii, which The Dude bought for himself. The kids don't play it except with him, but I did use it to try to entice my teenage catsitter to hang around a little, which would make my cats very, very happy while we're away.  But it's different, somehow.  Right?  To his credit, the catsitter was unimpressed.

~BurbMom

Music doesn't just soothe the savage beast ...

... it keeps him healthy, too. According to CNN, playing or listening to music opens up the blood vessels, allowing blood to course through more freely. It's an excellent de-stressor—a good thing since stress can tax both the heart and the immune system. (Dr. Mike Miller of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore says music "gives us an overall feeling of good, well-being -- a sense of euphoria in some cases.") The only caveat? You must actually like the music you listen to, since stress levels actually rise if you pick something you can't stand.

I'd always sort of guessed this to be true, since nothing snaps me into a better mood faster than putting on music I can dance to. Except, perhaps, running. Better yet, running with the iPod. But it's gratifying to know research proves it. Even more gratifying is finding out that my children's music lessons are actually fending off stress and illness. It makes the push-pull over daily practice seem totally worth the trouble. (All that cajoling is a serious pain in the ass.) 

We already know that music helps improve certain brain functions, especially those to do with math. And the discipline they acquire from playing everyday totally helps them in other ways. But knowing it keeps the kids happy and healthy is the best part. 

—CityMom

(Photo from Aramstudios.com)

On not caring about Joe Biden's daughter's teen rebellion

Does anyone really care that Joe Biden's daughter was once cited for underage drinking? Because honestly, I don't. I didn't pay much attention when Bristol Palin's pregnancy microwaved repeatedly for the news/tabloid cycles, and I don't much care about Ashley Biden's teenage antics way back when. It seems to me that certain factions are trying to make this a statement about the vice president and his wife's parenting. But having been a teenager myself, and now that I'm a parent, I know that this isn't necessarily true. 

I was, by all accounts, a straight-arrow teen. I probably bordered on nerdy. I loved books, pulled all A's (or nearly all A's—damn that chemistry class), played tennis, joined the debate team and was an all-around good girl. My parents warned me of the dangers of alcohol and drugs, and they were pretty strict parents. But let me confess: On a few occasions, I did drink a beer or two. Maybe even a wine cooler. The thing is, it was the teenager thing to do, to try what was forbidden. (I broke curfew many times over, too.) 

I'm not defending what Ashley may or may not have done, nor am I saying that underage drinking is no big deal. Make no mistake: It is. (For starters, it masks insecurities and fears that may need confronting but can't be when you're drinking, and second, paired with driving, it can be lethal.) What I'm saying, though, is that I had parents who cared and watched me nearly hawk-like, and I still wanted to push my boundaries. (And I don't mean anything life-threatening like trying heroin, or life-changing, like dropping out of school, which is a totally different conversation altogether). That's all. Rebelling and making mistakes as you figure life out is the teenager thing to do.

Ashley Biden is a social worker now, and appears to be a well-adjusted adult. So does it matter if she sowed some oats long ago? Seriously, what's all the noise about?

—CityMom

(Photo from DelawareToday.com.)

Your life, as you know it, is over

"People only talk about what a joyous experience it is, but there is terror: Your life, as you know it, is over. It`s over the day that child is born. It`s over, and something completely new starts." - Bill Murray's character, talking about childbirth, in Lost in Translation

That pretty much sums it up for me, folks.  Except for the childbirth part. 

About two weeks ago, we got preliminary results for a bunch of neuro tests my Mom has been undergoing.  Last winter, we noticed that the strange things she had been doing, formerly attributed to being in her early 60's (which is pretty young, in the scheme of things), had gotten much worse.  Getting confused on the grocery store; withdrawing in a group of people, walking away from us in a crowd at Disney, while holding my child -- that sort of thing.

She has a frontal lobe disorder, a dementia. It's undoubtedly degenerative. We just don't know how quickly.

Your world view changes pretty quickly after news like that.  I never really got the phrase, "carpe diem" before.  I should say, really embraced it. I understand now the infinite preciousness of each sane moment we have; how fleeting are the joys. And how sudden and crushing the responsibilities. I had pretty much shrugged off marriage, children and home ownership, I now realize. Do any of us really feel the true import of loving someone?  I mean, we enjoy our love and grouse about duties, but until someone is sick, you're pretty much skating around fancy-free.

Anyway, more on this later.  But what do I do, now that I have a huge caretaking job ahead of me, now that I know that the chances of me moving to Europe or even Manhattan, or taking up a hugely demanding career, are ever more remote?  I adopted a pet. Two, in fact. Giving in to a years' worth of whining, we are getting two cats, potentially from the litter of formerly abandoned kittens pictured here.

In my opinion, few things are more of a responsibility than a pet. You can't shuffle them around the world, or leave them alone. They can't tell you when they're sick. They are very dirty.

But they, like so many people (and things) these days, need my help, are warm and cuddly, and love unconditionally. Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound. 

~BurbMom 

Grandma won't be babysitting, thank you!

BurbMom blogged in January about how President Obama can sometimes make us feel like losers. It looks like the Grandma-in-Chief Marian Robinson (the First Lady's mom), who famously uprooted herself from her native Chicago so she could help raise her grandkids, could be giving some grandparents a run for their money, too. Not that they apparently care. According to the New York Times, some grandmas and grandpas can't be bothered with grandparenting—at least not the superinvolved way of doing so. Says one source, Susan Shapiro Barash, gender studies professor: 

Thoroughly modern grandmothers, so-called glam-mas, “feel they’ve put in their time ... They were devoted to children to the exclusion of their own freedom, and they’re not looking to repeat the mothering process with their grandchildren.”

Take it from someone who lives far away from her own mother and mother-in-law, and who has had to manage the life-juggling with hardly any other family help, except for her husband's: That sucks. I understand that some men and women feel they've been there, done that. And I know that love isn't measured by how often someone is willing to pitch in with the diaper changes. But isn't part of grandparenting enjoying your grandkids, poop and all? And isn't part of parenting helping your grown child, when asked, to navigate the challenges you yourself have had to face? The article just made me all sorts of sad. Take this choice anecdote: 

True to her word, Judy Connors flew to Toronto from her home in British Columbia a week after her granddaughter’s birth. “It was clear she was bored,” her daughter said. “There was a lot of sitting in the living room while I struggled to figure out how to nurse. She said, ‘I don’t know why you don’t just give her a bottle,’ and then repaired to the veranda for a cigarette.”

Or this one:

When Lorraine R. and her children visited her mother-in-law’s swimming club, “she wanted to show everyone she had grandchildren, but then she sat as far away from the kiddie pool as she could,” Lorraine R. said. “She has no idea what our kids are like or what they’re interested in.”

Now I'm not advocating that grandparents slavishly attend to their children's children. (Not unless they want to; grandmas aren't built-in nannies, though the occasional babysitting would be nice.) And of course I realize they have their own lives and should enjoy the freedom that retirement offers. They earned it, they should live it.

But what's a little assist between family members now and then? I had loads of trouble nursing my firstborn, and the last thing I would've wanted was to have my own mother acting bored out of her min and dismissing my choice to breastfeed. Not to get all sancti here, but if you can't go to your parents for support and guidance after taking the biggest leap of your grown-up life—i.e. having kids—then when can you? 

—CityMom

(Photo from CafePress.com.)

College kids and their entitlement

Saw an interesting story in the New York Times last week that gave me pause: College kids expect to be rewarded with high grades for basically doing what they're supposed to do in the first place. According to a recent study by University of California-Irvine researchers, "a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading." Adds James Hogge, associate dean at Vanderbilt University: “Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a high grade.’ “

Blogger/scholar Angus Johnston worries about how representative the study's sample is, and whether its results are being misunderstood. He explains: 

For each statement, students were asked whether they strongly agreed, agreed, slightly agreed, slightly disagreed, disagreed, or strongly disagreed. The study’s authors aggregated all of the “strongly agree, agree, and slightly agree” responses into a percentage, and that’s the percentage the Times used as the basis for the passage quoted above. Let’s set aside for the moment whether the phrase “If I have attended most classes for a course, I deserve at least a grade of B” means the same thing as “I expect B’s just for attending lectures.” I’m not certain that it is, but I’ll let it go for right now. The more important point is that the Times reporter, following the lead of the study’s authors, interpreted even slight agreement with the first statement as identical to the second.

I'm no statistician so I can't comment on the data-gathering, but the findings nevertheless got me thinking about how we raise our kids. It's one thing to instill in them a sense that goal-setting is important, but quite another to teach them that they deserve kudos for simply doing what's expected. Last time I checked, kids go to college to learn. It may seem like a great place to expand your wings socially and come into your own as adults, but you better keep up with the readings and get to class, too. And no, you don't get a B simply for doing that. If your papers are lousy and your tests substandard, then a C or a D or whatever is all you get. (I know the pain; in undergrad, I got a C—my only C—in one damn logic class despite near-perfect attendance and assignments, all because when it came time for midterms and finals, I'd crash-and-burn and get, yes, Cs.)

BurbMom wonders if this may have something to do with the everybody-gets-a-trophy trend, where kids are rewarded for non-exceptionalism. Are we coddling them so much that they expect to be gratified just for trying? 

—CityMom

Oh, and one more thing: those octuplets are also bad for the environment

Funny, out of all the criticism levelled at the Octo-mom (Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to eight kids after already having six, in case you've been meditating in seclusion for the past month), the one I have hardly seen at all was the first to pop into my head: Did she ever think, even once, about the environmental ramifications of just one sole person popping out so many mouths to feed and diaper and clothe and blow-dry and transport?

A few folks have muttered about it, but population is the elephant in the room of environmental talk. Though it seems okay to point fingers at overpopulation in the developing world -- even Al Gore did it -- it's a taboo topic in the U.S., where our carbon footprint per head is exponentially bigger. Why not at least air the issue?  (I'm talking informed personal choice here, not Brave New World; let me make that clear.)

I have seen a persuasive discussion of this by Daniel Engber on Slate; he cites arguments pro and con, concluding that makes sense that as we consume far more energy per capita than we can possibly conserve in other ways, so the fewer people, the better. Another balanced piece, in The Christian Science Monitor, argues that it's the number of households that matter environmentally, not the number of people in each.

 

One argument that never holds water: That people always hold the solution; that perhaps, say, one of the octuplets will be a rare genius and come up with the perfect green energy solution and save us all. An Einstein comes along just so often.

And as our planet's resources are finite, precious and shared, why, then, does one family's DNA get a lion's share? We level accusations at those with McMansions and Monster Cars, while mass procreators get nary a finger shake. Instead, we give them their own television show.

-BurbMom

Cape Cod teens face sexting controversy

So many things wrong with this story, I don't know where to begin: Six middle-school boys on Cape Cod are facing child pornography charges for disseminating photos of a partially naked 13-year-old girl via text messages.

Their supporters contend that the charges are much too severe given the ages of the kids involved, and I agree. These laws were meant to prosecute pervy, skeevy adults, not middle-schoolers. What 13-year-old child has a full understanding of right and wrong? 

Nevertheless, here's what disturbs me: The idea that kids are doing this, that it's okay to take nude photos AND send them to someone. I just told my husband about this news story and he's aghast. At 13, he says his world was made up of comic books, karate, frisbee, video games, a paper route and sneaking into the neighbor's pool with his friends. He had crushes, but from afar, and that was just fine. 

I realize that was a different time, and that technology is part and parcel of the way we live now. Taking cell phone pictures and texting is second nature to our teens. But—and this is a big but—there's a giant leap from there to taking naked pictures and sending them around. Or posing semi-nude for your boyfriend (or girlfriend) and sending them around. 

I'm no moralist, but I have to wonder how these teens came to believe that this behavior is alright. They're not alone, either. According to the TV station WBZ and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, "20 percent of teens have sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures and video of themselves," and that "39 percent of teens have sent or posted sexually suggestive messages." (Some of them have gotten into legal trouble like these Cape Cod boys.) If these stats are correct, parents are asleep at the wheel and it's time to wake up! We need to teach kids to respect themselves and others. And that cell phones have far better, more benign uses (like figuring out whether you're supposed to meet inside Midtown Comics or in front of it). 

For more information, check out this article on Slate.com on "what to do about teens and their dumb naked photos of themselves."

—CityMom

Are allergies over-diagnosed?

Or simply misunderstood? That's what some doctors are finding, according to the New York Times, and that's potentially dangerous because parents then limit their children's diets, sometimes to extreme. Says the article:

Doctors say that misdiagnosed food allergies appear to be on the rise, and countless families are needlessly avoiding certain foods and spending hundreds of dollars on costly nonallergenic supplements. In extreme cases, misdiagnosed allergies have put children at risk for malnutrition.

Also, say experts, avoiding said offending items may actually be exacerbating a child's sensitivity. Once they come around to trying the food, they end up reacting to it because it's so unfamiliar. Eleven million people and counting are said to have food allergies in this country, but many of them may have been labeled allergic because of a faulty blood test that apparently doesn't really work all that well. Or, blasphemy, because they jumped to conclusions that could possibly have no allergenic basis. (Maybe the hefty indigestion that settled in after eating sweet Italian sausage was caused by a bad batch of pork?)

Obviously, there are many who are truly allergic. (Let's not throw out the baby—er, allergies—with the bathwater.) Some kids I know have seriously suffered, and even need an Epi-pen—a medication injector that delivers epinephrine/adrenaline into the body asap in the event of an acute allergic reaction—on hand in case they're exposed to certain allergens. 

My oldest had a near-anaphylactic response when she gorged on blueberries when she was a toddler. She'd had it plenty of times before, so the doctors weren't sure if the blotchy, purple hive-like welts  that took over her body were caused by pesticides on the blueberries we served her, though we did wash them out thoroughly before feeding them to her, or whether they were the result of her eating not just a bowl or two of them but five pounds worth (!) in 3 days. (Our defense: She was our first and we thought blueberries were healthy, so why not give her as much as she wanted? Neither my husband nor I realized how much she'd eaten until she was at the hospital and we were figuring out what could've caused the reaction.) Maybe it was a combination of both.

In any case, they told us to lay off berries for a while. And then our then-pediatrician, an extremely talented and moderate man, suggested we give her 2 or 3 at a time and watch her reaction. It was surprising because I thought they'd tell us she couldn't ever have them, but he knew they were her favorite food. He said sometimes the body can grow more tolerant of an allergen when exposed to it in small doses and over time, and he was right. At first she'd get a hive or two from eating them, but eventually, those stopped coming. Now she can eat blueberries to her heart's content. (Not five pounds in three days, though. Never again.)

Having gone through it, it nevertheless does seem like being allergic has become the new black, in some cases. A friend of mine says sometimes people say they're allergic to justify a hyper-limited diet, a way to be able to limit one's food intake—yes, anorexics apparently do this—while seemingly concerned about health. More often, though, and especially when it comes to kids, parents are simply trying to be protective. As they should. Or, perhaps, trying to gain control of something—parenting—that doesn't afford as much control as we'd like. But in doing so, they may hurt more than help. 

—CityMom

(Photo from Adam.about.com.)