It's been quite the year for parents on the small screen.
We've been entertained by the hijinks of the Modern Family's Claire & Phil Dunphy and their bedroom door that should've had a lock on it before their kids surprised them at inopportune moment.
We've seen Parenthood's Adam and Kristina Braverman try and fail to ban their teen daughter from dating an older man who had his own apartment.
We witnessed The Middle's Frankie and Mike Heck declare themselves to be free from their children's unreasonable demands which reduced them to little more than unpaid, disrespected servants (although the self-declared freedom was short-lived).
We laughed as Up All Night's new parents, Chris and Reagan Brinkley, tried in vain to prove that they're hip and cool and able to party it up on weeknights, even though their baby isn't sleeping through the night yet, they're sleep deprived and Reagan needed to work in the morning.
My recent Pop Culture and Politics column details these child-rearing lessons that I gleaned from watching TV parents during 2011.
Why Moms Should Run for Office
In another recent Pop Culture and Politics column I extended an invitation to women who are raising the next generation to run for public office because, all too often, women's voices are not heard or represented in our elected bodies.
The advocacy group She Should Run offered up this dour data on the state of women in American politics:
"Women hold only 17 percent of the seats in Congress."
"State legislatures only have 23 percent women."
"Only 6 out of 50 states have a female governor."
"The United States trails behind the rest of the world -- ranking 87th in the number of women in our national legislature."
". . . [W]omen are 50 percent less likely than men to seriously consider running for office, less likely than men to actually run for office and far less likely to run for higher office."
As one of the founders of The White House Project (whose goals include electing a female commander in chief) said in the powerful documentary Miss Representation, when it comes to our daughters, "You can't be what you can't see."
As the fall TV season kicks off in earnest, I’ve been paying close attention to shows that feature parents and families . . . at least those which tickle my fancy. This was the focus of this week’s pop culture column over on Modern Mom/Mommy Tracked where I previewed the shows which I’m planning to record on my DVR.
Among the returning shows I’m anxious to see are ABC’s Modern Family, CBS’ The Good Wife and BC’s Parenthood. (I reviewed the rather disappointing Parenthood season premiere here, though I’m fairly certain it’ll improve.)
Two new comedies about which I’m holding onto some lofty hopes are NBC’s Up All Night with Christina Applegate and Will Arnett as potty-mouthed new parents (you can watch the pilot episode on the web site) and ABC’s Suburgatory about a single dad (Jeremy Sisto who was great as the messed up brother Billy in Six Feet Under) who moves his teenage daughter from New York City to the ‘burbs in an attempt to provide her with a more protective, wholesome environment. The sharp, snarky pilot reminds me of the freshman season of Desperate Housewives which expertly satirized the faux perfection of the suburbs.
What shows are you eagerly waiting for?
Early Risers
The Eldest Boy asked The Spouse and me to drive him to school for 7 a.m. every day this week in order to get a little extra drum practice with his teacher leading up to the middle school band tryouts next week. (Yes, we’ve got a drummer boy in da house. And thank God he’s good because if he wasn’t, I’d be buying myself some pricey noise-canceling headphone . . . and Tylenol by the gross.)
Meanwhile The Youngest Boy, who also plays the drums/percussion instruments in the fifth grade band, has claimed that he too is supposed to arrive early to school for band practice as well. Only he’s not quite sure when exactly, which makes getting him where he’s supposed to be a tad, um, tricky. I think he simply guessed that he had to be there early yesterday, so I hauled my fanny out of bed early – The Spouse had already driven The Eldest Boy to school – to drop him off at school. That afternoon he reported that he and another kid just wound up sitting in the office until school started because the band teacher wasn’t there. His mistake or the teacher's I’m not quite sure. (Last year The Youngest Boy missed a bunch of band practices because he hadn’t been listening to the teacher when he announced the dates and times.)
All I know is that I was up, dressed and had applied make-up every morning this week well before I normally would have and if it was for no good reason, I'll be. I’ve sent The Youngest Boy's band teacher an e-mail asking him when I’m supposed to roll out of bed early and bring my fifth grader early. I’m still waiting to hear back.
Bronchitis Blows
Last week it was The Girl who not only came down with a vicious case of strep throat which caused her to miss three days of school (after not having been in school for a full week yet), but she also developed what we believe was Scarlet Fever. (Yeah, sounds Dickensonian doesn’t it, or something out of a Jane Austen novel? But when you’re already taking antibiotics, as The Girl was, this side effect of strep isn’t a big concern, or so the pediatrician's office told us.) She rebounded nicely and was well enough to play soccer on Saturday morning.
A few days later, The Youngest Boy started complaining of a sore throat and of feeling poorly – a strep test was negative though – although he never became sick enough to stay home from school or stop participating in activities.
Then there’s me, who catches everything that goes by as if I’m fly paper. Although I miraculously did not contract The Girl’s strep (despite the fact that I’d been snuggling with her the night before she was symptomatic), I have developed a sore throat and vicious cough, the kind that you feel deep within your chest, like an itch that you just can’t scratch. (I only get relief from said itch when I pound on my chest to loosen the phlegm. Sounds awesome, right? You know you’re jealous.) Plus my voice has already started going hoarse, as it does at least three times during the fall/winter season.
A quick check of my symptoms on various, illustrious medical web sites indicate I likely have bronchitis, something I get rather often, and the only treatment is really no treatment at all. Other than rest, which I can’t really get with 14 million kids’ activities going on.
So when I sound like I’m coughing up a lung at Curriculum Night at my fifth grade son’s school tonight, hopefully the school nurse won’t march on over and hand me a face mask as the other parents inch away from me.
The latest episode of The Middle sparked all kinds of debate in the Picket Fence Post house about how far The Spouse and I would go to make a point and stand our ground when we punish a kid in the hopes of teaching him or her a lesson.
In The Middle’s fictional Heck family, the obnoxious, clueless teenage son Axl would not stop leaving his dirty socks all over the house. This habit was driving his father Mike absolutely insane. After repeatedly asking Axl to refrain from abandoning his socks, Axl continued with his slovenly ways until Mike threw down the gauntlet: If Mike found one more dirty sock lying around the house, he’d punish him, big time, take away something Axl cares about.
That next time occurred shortly thereafter. Mike was highly frustrated and, when Axl got all snarky and challenged Mike to take away whatever he wanted, Mike told him he couldn’t play in his final basketball game of the season . . . a move Mike immediately regretted and which his wife Frankie, behind closed doors, said she thought was idiotic. (She said she would’ve taken away use of the car, his iPod, his cell phone or TV before going to the extreme of taking away a kid’s season ending hoop game.)
And when Mike and Frankie learned that Axl was on the cusp of breaking his father’s high school record for the most free throws in a single season, they started actively looking for ways to try to back off the punishment without looking like they were backing off. They, in essence, caved.
The Spouse and I agreed that had one of us hastily punished a kid without realizing that he or she was on the verge of breaking a record, we’d likely offer the kid a choice: Miss the game OR lose the car/iPod/cell phone. However if it wasn’t the last game, too freakin’ bad. Next time, pick up your damned socks kid.
Modern Family’s 'We Love the Word'
Modern Family was so fun this week. I really needed the laughter it gave me like a little gift I didn't know I needed.
From Phil Dunphy’s ill-advised minivan shrink-wrap scheme to promote his real estate business – which would up making the family minivan look like a giant ad for an escort service with Claire and Haley serving as Phil’s escorts – to Cameron’s over-the-top middle school musical direction, I was thoroughly entertained.
As the end of the season draws near, I’m already starting to feel Modern Family withdrawal symptoms.
Image credit: NBC
Parenthood: Dealing with Teens is a Massive Emotional Challenge
Boy was NBC’s Parenthood a tough watch this week, leading up to the season finale next Tuesday.
There was the distinctly uncomfortable scenario of parents learning that their 16-year-old was having sex with her boyfriend. Sure, the mom, Kristina Braverman, had come right out and asked her daughter Haddie if she and her boyfriend were having sex, so when the girl eventually told her they were, Kristina should’ve had some kind of plan about what she’d do with that information. Instead, Kristina, who first had sex at age 15, looked baffled and uncertain as to what she was supposed to do next. Her husband Adam was horrified, wouldn’t even look at Haddie and had a great deal of trouble dealing with the contrast of him seeing her as a little girl and seeing Haddie as a young woman who was discovering her sexuality. (I covered this in more detail in my episode review.) The subject of teenage sex was dealt with in such a realistic fashion that The Spouse was definitely squirming in his seat.
Then there was the sadness surrounding the whip-smart and edgy Amber, the high school senior who plunged into a downward spiral when she learned that she didn’t get into either of the colleges to which she applied. She started doing drugs, drinking and engaging in reckless behavior, including showing up at a restaurant to meet her mother for dinner while high and dressed bizarrely.
It just breaks your heart as a parent to watch a child endure emotional pain and watch her mother Sarah struggle with how to help her child guide through this wrenchingly difficult time.
The entire episode made me admire parents of teens – which I’ll become at the end of the summer – all the more for the challenges with which they must deal and still attempt to retain their sanity.
The sophomore season of Parenthood has been getting better and better. And more on the mark.
The last episode – about which I wrote a review -- had achingly realistic scenes that tugged at the heart, or at least they tugged at mine. From the parents of a girl who were told that the wife now is very unlikely to be able to bear another child, to the couple who disagreed about mainstreaming their autistic son in a charter school to academically challenge him, to the teenage girl who was distraught over the fact that she had been rejected from the two colleges to which she applied and she doesn’t know what to do, it was filled with stories that resonated.
This is why it annoys me to read that Parenthood hasn’t yet been renewed for a third season because NBC considers it “struggling” in the ratings, according to a USA Today article. There are so few shows that are dramatically capturing so many facets of modern parenting while still keeping it real. This Tuesday night show includes imperfect grandparents, a married couple with a teen girl who ran away from home (she’s now back) and an autistic young son, another married couple where the wife is successful lawyer and the husband’s an at-home dad to their one daughter, a divorced mother of two teens (one who’s had trouble and didn’t get into college and one who misses his AWOL father) and a former couple who must try to raise a son while living separately.
It’d be a huge shame if Parenthood isn’t afforded the chance to continue to improve, ripen and enlighten.
Item #2: Grade School Slang, Getting Beast-y with It
The Youngest Boy -- he who loves to wear his baseball cap on backwards and cockeyed – has recently taken to using the world “beast” as a substitute for the word “cool.” Example: That hat is so beast!
A while back for a brief period of weeks, The Eldest Boy also used that word. However when I attempted to use it too, I was subjected to his scorn as I was a too-old person who was pathetically attempting to use the young kids’ lingo and, in his mind, looked like a numbskull.
This time around, I’ll let The Youngest Boy keep saying “beast” and won’t attempt to co-opt any shred of his coolness by using the word myself.
Item #3: Liz Taylor, the Working Mom
Image credit: People Magazine
In all the news coverage last week following the passing of American screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, a paltry amount of time and space was allotted to the fact that she was the mother of four and was, during several of her marriages, the chief breadwinner in her family.
I was curious to find out what kind of a mom Taylor was, so I poured through three Taylor biographies and many news articles in an attempt to find out. I summarized the inconclusive results of my quest to answer that question in a column.
Image credits: NBC and Boyer Raymond/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis viaPeople Magazine.
The creator of those crazy “Mom-Petitor” Xtranormal videos has posted a new one. Of course, it made me laugh because it rings true. This time, the insane helicopter mom on speed decided to grill the down-to-earth mom on what she plans to do when the perfect mom's kid sleeps over at the slacker mom's house. The helicopter mom plans on spending the night in her car outside the house, just in case.
Item #2: Modern Family’s Coitus Interruptus
The Spouse and I were rolling -- rolling I tell you -- as we laughed out loud while watching Modern Family last night as Claire and Phil’s three children burst into the bedroom to find their married parents doin’ the nasty. The kids’ reactions – literally washing their eyes and young Luke looking confused because he doesn’t understand what was going on, saying, “It looked like Dad was winning” – were priceless, as was Claire and Phil’s and the kooky confusion that ensued later when they had a confusing discussion with Gloria who was trying to sneak into their house to erase a horrific e-mail that was accidentally sent to Claire.
I, personally, think that when a couple’s first child stops sleeping in a crib, the parents should, as Claire’s father advised, buy a solid bedroom door lock. Hell, maybe it’d be a good idea to present a pregnant woman with a door lock at her baby shower and tell her, "You'll thank for me this later."
Did this particular episode ring true with any of you? The Spouse and I have had a lock on our bedroom door since day one so, thank goodness, we've not had this unfortunate "caught in the act" moment.
Image credit: NBC
Item #3: Parenthood Takes on Team Fundraising
I hate it, hate it, hate it, when you sign a kid up for a club or a team only to learn, after your check clears with the admission fee and/or you’ve already spent a mint on athletic gear, that you’re ALSO expected to sell crap -- lots of crap, hundreds of dollars worth -- in order for your kid to continue participating.
This has happened to us with both youth football and hockey teams, when we were saddled with raffle tickets for which we wound up eating the cost – like a hidden surcharge you don’t find out about until later – as opposed to putting the kids on the phone and making them harass everyone we know to raise money for their team/league. Why don’t they just incorporate the cost of the stupid raffles and fundraisers into the cost of the sport and get it over with once so that we know the full cost up front before our kids are already deep into the sport?
This week’s episode of Parenthood -- which I reviewed here on CliqueClack TV – tackled the issue of youth sports fundraising with an amusing storyline about a clueless teenage baseball player who didn’t realize it would’ve been a good idea to try to sell the $500 worth of Christmas wrapping paper that he needed to peddle to raise money for his team’s baseball tournament (or he wouldn’t be able to participate) BEFORE Christmas. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday isn’t really a great holiday for wrapping paper sales. His mom, upon whom he dumped this "I gotta sell this stuff immediately" argument, marched the kid out to a sidewalk in front of a corner coffee shop with a folding table and made him a quirky sign, “Support a Procrastinator.”
Though his mom wanted to bail him out and shell out the $500, she couldn’t afford to and told him if he didn’t sell it, that’s the way life is sometimes. But he wound up being bailed out by his grandpa instead.
Amy Chua wrote a book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It’s about how she started off her life as a mother of two girls as a very strict, “traditional Chinese” mother, like her parents before her. By the end of the book – in which Chua says she gets her “comeuppance” – Chua says she realized she wanted to “retreat . . . from the strict immigrant model” of raising her daughters, according to an interview she gave to the Wall Street Journal.
However the Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt of the first part of Chua’s book, when Chua was describing being fully bought into the strict, no messin’ around style of parenting that believes that children are strong and need to be pushed, not coddled or allowed to choose the direction of their lives. Outside of the context of the whole book -- and without knowing that Chua says she’s “not exactly the same person at the end of the book” -- Chua seems extremely domineering. Combine that excerpt with the headline (which Chua didn’t chose) “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” and you'll see why folks went nuts on the internet, calling Chua every variation on "Mommy Dearest" which they could come up with. Here are some excerpts which’ll give you a sense of why people were outraged by what ran in the Journal:
“Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
attend a sleepover
have a playdate
be in a school play
complain about not being in a school play
watch TV or play computer games
choose their own extracurricular activities
get any grade less than an A
not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
play any instrument other than the piano or violin
not play the piano or violin.”
Then there was the anecdote about Chua's then-7-year-old who was having trouble with a piano piece and, after the girl and her mom worked on it “nonstop for a week” and the daughter wanted to give up, Chua ordered her back to the piano:
“Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have ‘The Little White Donkey’ perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, ‘I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?’ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.”
Thanksgiving TV Episodes from Gilmore Girls and Mad AboutYou to Mad Men
Who can forget the wretched awkwardness at the Francis family Thanksgiving table when Betty Draper Francis literally forced her daughter Sally to eat sweet potatoes – shoving a forkful into Sally's mouth which led to the girl gagging them out onto her plate – in order to please her new mother-in-law on Mad Men? Or the Gilmore Girls episode where Lorelai and Rory wound up attending four Thanksgiving dinners because they couldn’t say, “No” to their friends and family? Or even the time when Mad About You's Paul and Jamie Buchman hosted their first Thanksgiving in their apartment and had to grapple with some serious passive aggression from their family members and friends when they didn’t like the fact that Paul and Jamie wanted to have dinner “buffet style” and had messed with everyone’s idiosyncratic ideas of what a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner is “supposed” to be?
I highlighted some of my favorite Thanksgiving episodes over on my Notes from the Asylum blog, including the one of the famous Cheers Thanksgiving food fight.
Helicopter Parenting on Parenthood
This week’s episode of NBC’s solid, incisive and sharply observed drama Parenthood provided a mixed bag of parenting portrayals.
On the one hand, you had Sarah Braverman, who gave her daughter Amber a much-needed push to get her to overcome her fears and meet with an influential alum from a university she wants to attend. And on the other hand, you had an over-the-top helicopter parent in the form of Kristina Braverman insisting that her son was entitled to an invitation to a classmate’s birthday party even after the mother of the birthday girl said he wasn't invited and that her daughter specifically didn’t want Kristina’s son there. While there’s a whole powerful, poignant and painful Asperberger’s backstory there, and some real bonding eventually occurred between the two moms with children who have challenges, a big chunk of the Kristina story bugged me this week. Read more about why in my review of the episode.
Pining for Thanksgiving Days of Yore
In my Pop Culture column this week, I pine away for Thanksgivings and Christmases of my youth, when I used to actually enjoy this time of year tremendously and didn’t see them the way that I do now: As one, long, life-sucking list of things to do, all at the same time, and all while under a heap o’pressure with no time to just sit back and soak in this time in your life. But when I think of how I used to love this time of year, to quote Liz Lemon, I want to go back to there. But how?
While watching last night's Halloween-themed episode of Parenthoodas all the parents with small kids, along with the children's grandparents, dressed in costume while the children trick-or-treated around the neighborhood, I wondered, "How many parents actually do this?"
Sure, I might put on a pair of Groucho Marx glasses or don a weird hat when I'm answering the door to trick-or-treaters while The Spouse is taking the Picket Fence Post kids out to collect sugary goodies which'll turn them into actual monsters, but I've never donned a costume. Neither has the The Spouse. And neither have the parents who've taken their kids to my house to trick-or-treat on Halloween.
Do parents in your area dress in costume on Halloween night when they take their kids trick-or-treating?
Best part of the Parenthood episode -- "Orange Alert," which I reviewed here -- was when the parents looted their kids' Halloween candy afterward. So. True. (It'd be a lot easier to pilfer from their Halloween bounty if The Eldest Son didn't literally count his candy before going to bed.)
The New York Times ran a feature story this week about a joke from a children's television comedy, iCarly, that has become, unironically, an alleged reality: Spaghetti tacos:
“On an episode of the hit Nickelodeon series iCarly, the lead character’s eccentric older brother, Spencer, makes dinner one night. Glimpsed on screen, the dish consists of red-sauce-coated pasta stuffed into hard taco shells. What could be more unappealing?
. . . That punch line has now become part of American children’s cuisine, fostering a legion of imitators and improvisers across the country. Spurred on by reruns, Internet traffic, slumber parties and simple old-fashioned word of mouth among children, spaghetti tacos are all the rage.”
To crib a bit from Saturday Night Live: Really New York Times? Really? Parents – aided and abetted by “mom blogs and cooking web sites" – are honestly serving their children carbs inside of carbs with a coating of tomato sauce? Really? It looks like something you see on those gross surgery scenes from Grey's Anatomy.
Have any of you heard of this trend? The Picket Fence Post kids watch iCarly, but I'd never heard of spaghetti tacos before reading the story, nor had I fielded any requests to serve spaghetti tacos. You?
Image credit: NBC
Item #2: No Time for a Life
Maybe I should just write a weekly segment: What happened on the NBC show Parenthood this week? The show has been so on the mark about issues facing today's parents that I sometimes wonder if the writers have planted spy cameras in my house.
This week, the issue of family overscheduling was highlighted via the characters of Adam and Kristina Braverman. They, along with the at-home dad character Joel, were the stand-ins for parents who don't have enough time to have lives of their own -- to enjoy their own hobbies, to connect with their spouse -- because of the fact that the expectations of modern day parents dictates that they be hyper-involved in all areas of their children's lives, to enroll them in myriad activities and ultra-competitive sports, and to sacrifice their lives so that they can take their kids to all their activities and oversee/correct homework assignments. It’s, on the surface, a small story, not having time for a date night, but it goes right to the heart of discontent, at least in my house.
While I find myself struggling not to be negative or resentful about the sheer quantity of the time-demands placed upon our family by our children’s many activities, I cannot escape the fact that I frequently find myself mourning that I don't have the time I crave and need for myself and for my marriage. Time with my friends? Forget about it. Our schedule is almost entirely devoted to work and kids' stuff, with a bit of volunteer work tossed into the mix. (That last hour-and-change after the kids have gone to bed in the evening and the dishes have been cleaned, doesn't count as grown-up time in my book because The Spouse and/or I are frequently doing work or we're both falling asleep.)
You can read my review of Parenthood, including how the at-home dad of a kindergartner freaked out because he said he has no life outside of taking care of her and the house, here. At least when I'm watching the show, I don't feel like I'm the only one trying to figure out a way to deal with these issues without losing my mind.
When I found this series of online videos satirizing sanctimommies, I was immediately smitten. The videos, posted on xtranormal.com, feature two women at a park, one “normal” (meaning she tries to raise well-rounded kids with her feet firmly planted on the ground) and one who thinks that parenting is a competitive sport complete with winners and losers, who believes it's wise to install GPS chips in her kids.
What I love about the series of videos is how the “normal” mom has the stones to refute the inanities spouted by the judgmental whack-job mom, and the "normal" mom is quick with the retorts, whereas we mere mortals might be rendered speechless and slack-jawed upon hearing such unmitigated garbage being emitted by a fellow parent at a park.
Here’s one of my favorites:
Item #2: Bullying the Allergic
When I read this Fox News story I was astonished and disheartened by the cruelty some children can level at one another. According to a study published in the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, over 30 percent of school children said they have been the target of harassment at school because they have a food allergy, Fox reported. Forty percent of those kids who were harassed said the harassment took a physical form “such as being touched with their allergen, such as a peanut, or having the allergen thrown or waved at them,” Fox reported.
The vice president of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, who also worked on the study, said, “Recent cases involving bullying and food allergies include a middle school student who found peanut butter cookie crumbs in her lunchbox and a high school student whose forehead was smeared with peanut butter in the cafeteria.”
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the study found that 20 percent of those who harassed students with allergies were teachers or school staff.
Item #3: Uncool on Parenthood
The first few episodes of Parenthood this season have been excellent. They’ve depicted parents as flawed, selfish, selfless, controlling, hopeful and worried adults, in other words, like flesh and blood, well-rounded people. This past episode (still available for free online viewing until Nov. 3) stood out for me because I completely related to it.
First, there was the dad, Adam (Peter Krause), who had his feelings hurt when his son Max, who has Asperger’s, was disinterested in speaking to or spending time with him. Adam tried, on several occasions, to engage Max in a conversation, to persuade him to sit next to him and watch a baseball game, all to no avail. Are there any parents who HAVEN’T experienced that gut-level twinge when our kids push us away, don’t seem to care about our feelings or act like they don’t want us around?
Second, there was Adam’s wife Kristina (Monica Potter), who used to work on political campaigns before becoming an at-home mom, who was over the moon when she learned that her teenage daughter Haddie was going to run for class president. Only Kristina, blinded by her enthusiasm, pushed way too hard, tried to take over Haddie’s campaign and then admonished her daughter for not appreciating her mother’s efforts. Just a few hours before this episode aired, The Girl came home from school and told me she was thinking about joining the school newspaper. I, a former newspaper reporter, was ecstatic (even though newspapers are, in their current form, dying) and had visions of my mentoring her running through my head. But after watching how this played out on Parenthood, I think I’ll wait for The Girl to come to me and ASK for help if she needs it.
Third, there was the sad spectacle of Sarah (Lauren Graham) who was jealous that her teenage daughter Amber was spending so much time with her friend’s parents, who are rich and with whom Sarah felt she couldn’t compete. In order to fashion herself into the “cool” mom in her daughter’s eyes, Sarah went to great lengths, though it was painfully clear – especially after a bouncer called her “ma’am” -- that she’s no longer a hip club-hopper and that trying to seem cool to her a daughter is a losing battle.
While I watched the sophomore season Parenthood premiere last night, there were two storylines that felt really familiar to me. I mean really familiar. Uncomfortably familiar.
First, there was the story about a 6-year-old girl's questions to her parents about how babies are born, how eggs get fertilized and how babies get into moms' bellies. I could so relate to this, having just gone through a series of reproduction/sex discussions with The Eldest Boy and The Girl earlier this year, while The Spouse suddenly had an urgent domestic chore that he had to attend to in a room far away from where we were talking the minute he heard me ask the kids if they really wanted to know what "sex" was. This is never an easy topic to discuss with kids, makes parents mighty uncomfortable.
The mom on the TV show, Julia, though she was initially taken aback by her daughter Sydney's questions, she answered them accurately and calmly until the questions got a bit, um, well, detailed is a good word to use. At that point, Julia got too squeamish and decided to take the route her distinctly embarrassed husband Joel, who kept wanting to change the subject, took and discussed what kind of ice cream they might have after dinner.
Then there was the teaching-your-teenager-how-to-drive storyline, which brought me smack, dab back to my days as a teen when my parents were trying to teach me how to drive.
The scenes, which were also uncomfortable to watch, also convinced me -- after watching the mom on Parenthood make her daughter completely paranoid about the horrid things that could befall teenage drivers, literally grab her daughter's leg, shout at her and exaggerate the magnitude of the mishap with the side-view mirror -- that I am not going to be the one to teach my kids how to drive. I'm afraid I'll be doing that sharp, loud, sucking in your breath thing that moms are apt to do from time to time (my mom used to do that, a lot), or that my fear about them learning how to drive will cause me to overreact to things to which I shouldn't overreact.
Previews promise more meaty parenting material in upcoming episodes. I hope they don't disappoint.
