Quick Hits: Scary Mommy Manifesto, B'Day Goodness & Gram's Bread

Scary Mommy Manifesto

Saw this 12-step pledge for moms, written by blogger "Scary Mommy" -- Jill Smokler -- on the Huffington Post this morning. Loved it. Well worth your time, unless you're a helicopter parent. Actually, if you're a helicopter parent, perhaps you should read it . . . and take heed.

A couple of items in the pledge:

"I shall not judge the mother in the grocery store who, upon entering, hits the candy aisle and doles out M&Ms to her screaming toddler. It is simply a survival mechanism.

. . . I shall not question the mother who is wearing the same yoga pants, flip-flops and T-shirt she wore to school pickup the day before. She has a good reason."

B'Day Goodness

The Picket Fence Post family, along with other friends and family members, kindly celebrated my birthday with me yesterday. Here are the highlights:

I was kidding around with a nephew of mine on the phone after he asked me how old I was. I told him I was 100. When he balked, I said, "Okay, I'm 101." Then I mentioned that I, along with his father, had a great grandfather who lived to age 99. The pre-schooler responded by asking, "When are you going to die?"

I got to spend the evening with the family -- after enjoying a homemade meal of pan-seared scallops, salad, rice and wine followed up by a mint chocolate brownie sundae (thanks to The Spouse) -- watching the NCAA championship game between Baylor and Notre Dame. We all marveled at the athletic prowess of Baylor's Brittney Griner and the unparalleled success of the Baylor team, the first NCAA hoop team to go 40-0 in a season.

The Girl printed out and colored, a la Andy Warhol, an image of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, with the words, "Great Comedian Figures." The image was taped to my bedroom door and greeted me when I woke up.

This from The Eldest Boy's homemade card: On the front, there was a drawing of me, "What you look like," which was a garden variety woman in a T-shirt (albeit with a sarcastic saying) and jeans. On the inside, there was another drawing of me as "Super Mom" (complete with a cape) with quotes beneath the image such as, "Deals with two teens and a tween without breaking a sweat" and "Her super yell can make anyone deaf," to "Washes dishes, does laundry, writes multiple columns and a novel, cooks dinner, drives kids to places and watched the dog all in a day!" (*big smile*)

Gram's Bread

I am so setting myself up for failure here, especially by writing about this subject in this venue . . . Why? Because I may attempt to make my grandmother Liv's -- Gram's -- Easter bread. (Actually, when I was looking through her recipe boxes, I found two recipes for Easter breads, one where you make the bread dough from scratch and one where you use frozen dough. Even though Gram once had me over to her house and spent hours schooling me on how to make the bread from scratch, if I do this thing I'm going with option two. I seriously don't have a whole day to devote to bread.)

Every year when Gram was with us, she'd proudly present a giant loaf of bread laden with layers upon layers of tangy meats. As it would land on my parents' kitchen counter with a hefty caloric thud, the bread would become a central focus of our Easter meal, giving the ham a serious run for its money. It was a big deal, the unveiling of this culinary masterpiece. And, as with many things Gram did, the bread was larger than life, about the size of an infant it was. Everything seemed bigger when my grandmother was around.

So for me, the lowly griping chef whose will to cook has been beaten into submission by my resident picky eaters no matter how many times I watch Julie & Julia, to even suggest that I'm thinking about attempting to make "Gram's bread" is a feat of enormous ego. I'm hardly a larger-than-life kinda gal. Snarky, dark and twisty, yes, larger-than-life, no.

Will I actually make the bread? It depends. Maybe. I'm making no promises. The Picket Fence Post family will also be hosting a Passover dinner for The Spouse's family this weekend so if I get the chance, I will work on the bread. If I don't get the opportunity, maybe I'll take a stab at making Gram's bread on a less auspicious occasion, like Arbor Day.

Three for Thursday: Baby Proofing Insanity, Parents 'Occupying' Wall Street with Kids & 9:30 AM School Lunches

Item #1: Baby Proofing Insanity

The very first parenting column I wrote after having my twins was one which lampooned the mania that all the parenting “experts,” baby stores and parenting media had whipped up when it came to baby proofing. Of course, like any parent, I wanted to make my house safe for my newborn twins, so The Spouse and I got to work and covered all the electrical outlets. We bought a multitude of gates. We put protective latches on cabinet doors and drawers throughout the house (including on the kids’ bureaus). We bought doorknob covers for most doorknobs and installed eye hooks on the sliding glass door so that when they were toddlers they wouldn’t escape. We had powerful baby monitors to listen to the goings on in the nursery even though we lived in a small ranch style house.

But according to the fear-mongering catalogues that were flooding into our mailbox and the articles in parenting magazines and online, we weren’t going far enough in attempting to bubble-wrap our children’s on the home front. That’s when I decided to write a satirical column about the insane levels people were going to in the name of household safety and suggested, with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, that I’d hire some “pediatric body guard/childproofing safety service” to definitively make my house safe for the my kids. It was preposterous, of course, I thought at the time, because there was no such thing as a childproofing safety service.

Lo and behold, some 13 years later, not only are there baby proofing consultants out there, but a New York Times writer recommends that new parents hire such a service because mere garden variety parents might not be thorough enough (which sends a lovely message about parental aptitude, that it's more prudent for them to outsource their parenting throughout the kid’s life to “experts”). After running through an exhaustive and expensive list of things parents “need” to do to batten down the hatches in a vain attempt to make their baby’s world absolutely safe, the Times writer said, “Even if you follow all these childproofing steps, consider calling in a consultant. Every house poses different hazards – with fireplaces and wood-burning stoves, for instance – and first-time parents can’t see everything.” And he wasn’t joking. He was being serious.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor at the unnecessary fear that was being instilled into new parents who read this piece I had to remind myself that it was this same newspaper section -- the “Home” section – that ran a piece last December about the lethal threat posed to babies and toddlers by coffee tables. Enough said.

UPDATE: You can read my original baby proofing satire here under the sarcastic title, "The Joys of Baby-Proofing."

Item #2: Parents ‘Occupying’ Wall Street with Kids

Seeking to provide their children firsthand experience with the First Amendment right to protest, parents have begun bringing their offspring with them to the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City, as well as to other Occupy protest sites around the country, the New York Times reported.
There’s even a web site – Parents for Occupy Wall Street -- which encourages moms and dads to bring junior to see democracy in action and to hear people wax poetic about economic inequalities. “With our children’s best interests in mind, we join together peacefully to support the Occupy Wall Street movement across the U.S. on our children’s behalf,” the web site says. “We’re speaking for the 99 percent that can’t speak up for themselves.”

Parents for Occupy Wall Street recently spearheaded a family sleepover event in New York City’s Zuccotti Park amongst the protesters -- featuring a sing-along, pizza party, arts & crafts and bedtime stories -- which organizers said would “not only be a great teaching moment for kids but a totally community driven peaceful protest with events throughout the weekend.”

The Times pointed out that children have been present at Tea Party rallies, the Egyptian protests in Cairo and “at many other events that marked the Arab Spring.” However the newspaper did add that during the Zuccotti Park sleepover, “families had to be moved at dawn to make way for new police lines and barricades.”

Would you take your kids to an Occupy Wall Street event, or a family sleepover next to the protesters in a public park as a “teachable moment?”

Item #3: School Lunch at 9:30 in the Morning?

NBC’s Today Show highlighted some Florida schools which are now scheduling students’ lunches as early as 9:30 in the morning. Why are they doing this seemingly bizarre thing? School officials told NBC that students today “start their days earlier,” therefore they’re hungry for lunch earlier, even though a federal mandate says schools need to serve lunch between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (These Florida schools obtained waivers for their early breakfast nosh.)

This seems nonsensical. Why not encourage students to have a healthy snack at 9:30 instead of serving them a full lunch? Who wants tacos or meatloaf at 9:30? Considering that most parents work and the family’s dinner isn’t served until sometime in the 6 o’clock hour, giving the kids lunch that early will throw off their entire eating schedule. They’ll be ravenous for dinner at 3:30. By 6:30, when many families eat, if the students consume a second dinner, I think we’ve got yet one more reason as to why American kids are gaining weight. There’s got to be a better way.

Image credit: Parents for Occupy Wall Street.

Three for a Thursday: Must-Read Parenting Article, TV Dads & Bruins Prevail

You Really Should Read This Article

The Atlantic's July/August issue has a provocative piece about the price children pay when their parents try to shield them from hurt, try to do everything for them and just focus on making the kids happy (I’m so guilty of the last one).

The end result? Unhappy twenty- and thirtysomethings who are ticked and disillusioned to discover that, once that they’re on their own, life isn’t all unicorns and rainbows people don’t constantly tell you you’re awesome and it seems like your entire happy childhood was somehow a lie.

Therapist Lori Gottlieb, also a mother, wrote that she’s seen a growing number of twentysomething and young thirtysomething patients who praise their parents but have had trouble “choosing or committing to a satisfying career path, struggled with relationships and just generally felt a sense of emptiness or lack of purpose.”

Gottlieb quoted psychologist and author Wendy Mogel saying, “Well-intentioned parents have been metabolizing [children’s] anxiety for them their entire childhoods so they don’t know how to deal with it when they grow up.”

A Los Angeles family psychologist added: “We’re confusing our own needs with our kids’ needs and calling it good parenting . . . I can’t tell you how often I have to say to parents that they’re putting too much emphasis on their kids’ feelings because of their own issues. If a therapist is telling you to pay less attention to your kid’s feelings, you know something has gone way out of whack.”

TV Dads: From the Doting to the Dreadful

In honor of Father’s Day, I surveyed today’s primetime dads and found that for every doting and devoted dad (like Parenthood’s Adam Braverman and Friday Night Lights’ Eric Taylor) there are also some dreadful drunks who no one would want to have as a paternal role model (like Mad Men’s Don Draper and Rescue Me’s Tommy Gavin).

I also left room for the lovable dopey dads like Modern Family’s Phil Dunphy who has a heart of gold and the common sense of a paper clip. The video above showcases how one of Phil's "big" ideas -- using the family's minivan to advertise his real estate business -- backfired. Big time.

Image credit: AP/MetroWest Daily News

Bruins Prevail

The entire Picket Fence Post family, including Max the dog, were up last night watching the Boston Bruins net their first Stanley Cup victory in 39 years while the boys wore Bs shirts and drank out of Bruins cups.

Once the game concluded, the boys ran out to the garage and honked the horns and then raced back into the house and replayed over and over the footage of Zdeno Chara hoisting the Cup over his head and shouting with glee. The Girl, who was happy for the team and the region, finally said, “Can I please go to bed now?” some 10 minutes after the game ended.

Now we learn that there will be what the mayor of Boston called a “rolling rally” in the Hub for the Bruins on Saturday. Provided The Youngest Boy doesn’t have a Little League playoff game on that day, I’m sure the Picket Fence Post kids are going to clamor to go downtown to celebrate.

These kids are so spoiled what with New Englanders being able to revel in this win, along with World Series victories, Super Bowl wins and an NBA championship over the past decade. When I was a kid, aside from the Celtics’ winning streak in the 80s, most New England teams were pretty bad and rooting for a team, like the Red Sox, mostly meant that you’d get your heart broken.

Image credit: AP/MetroWest Daily News.

Three for Thursday: More from the Mom-Petitors, 'Modern Family's' Coitus Interruptus & 'Parenthood' Takes on Team Fundraising

Item #1: More from the Mom-Petitors

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.

Image credit: NBC.

Three for Thursday: 'Soccer Mommed' Spoof, 'The Middle' Parents Revolt & I Won't Watch Dead/Dying Kid Fare

Item #1: 'Soccer Mommed' Spoof

Jen Singer, of MommaSaid, has created a fabulous send-up video lampooning how super-involved and nutty the world of youth soccer has become. In the video, a mother of a 9-year-old boy wants to sign him up for soccer and another woman, whose son has been playing since pre-school, said it’s too late for the 9-year-old. When the first mom says she herself didn’t start playing soccer until she was 10 and played all the way through college, the second mom scoffed at that as representative of the “dark ages of youth soccer in America.”

My favorite part? When the first mom asks when practices are held and the second mom says matter-of-factly that they're on, “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.” Sundays are reserved for games, of course.

Item #2: The Middle Parents Try to Take Back Their Lives

The Spouse and I loved the latest episode of The Middle in which the parents of three, Frankie and Mike, decided to spark a revolution and “take back” their house from the tyranny of their children after Frankie had raced around to three different fast food restaurants to get a separate meal for each kid, blowing off the parents desires. And her kids still weren't satisfied and wanted her, who worked all day, to run back out to different places and buy them a few more items. The parents had been caving on everything the kids asked of them because they thought that’s what they needed to do to be good parents.

And even though, after taking a strong stand that adults are in charge, NOT the children, Frankie and Mike capitulated in the end to their offspring, I think it’s worth having a substantive discussion about how American parents SHOULD aggressively strive to strike a balance between spending time with their children and attending to their needs, with the fact that the kids should NOT rule the roost and be catered to as though the parents are indentured servants at the children's beck and call.

Item #3: I Won’t Watch Dead/Dying Kid-Centric Fare

With the voluminous critical acclaim which has been heaped upon the film Rabbit Hole and its star Nicole Kidman, you’d think that a pop culture buff like yours truly would’ve put the film on my shortlist to see either in the theater or on DVD.

But no. Hell no.

Why? The film focuses on the aftermath of the death of a married couple’s 4-year-old son in a car accident. Kidman plays the mom in mourning while Aaron Eckhart plays the haunted father, their marriage fraying under the emotional gravity of what has happened.

My Pop Culture column this week over on Mommy Tracked is about how I tend to avoid, if I can help it, watching TV shows or movies in which kids are gravely ill and/or die. Why? Because I’m already an intense worrier – I think of myself as an in-recovery helicopter/safety crazed parent – who doesn’t need to start obsessing over the varied ways in which harm could befall my three children, nor do I need to try to put myself in the place of a grieving parent because that would prove painful. As Liz Lemon might say, "I don't want to go to there."

Does that make me a wimp?

Bizarre Parenting News Stories from the Past 10 Days: Killer Coffee Tables, No Coats & Minivans are ‘Cool’?

While I was laying in bed over the past week recovering from the (swine?) flu, I came across a series of bizarre parenting stories that I feel compelled to share with you, my kind readers:

Killer Coffee Tables

Who knew that coffee tables were killers, lying in wait in living rooms and family rooms across America. Seriously. The New York Times dedicated a huge chunk of the front page of its Home section to the notion that for babies and toddlers who are learning to walk, coffee tables are a hazardous menace.

When my kids were learning to walk and started scaling furniture, The Spouse and I temporarily removed the coffee table from our living room until the kids were stable walkers and no longer climbed on top of furniture. No biggie. No expert warnings were necessary for us to figure out what we needed to do. When we brought the young ones to other people’s homes in which there were coffee tables, either The Spouse or I would bey at our toddler’s side watching them and removing stuff like crystal candy dishes or open candle flames from their reach. We used common sense until the kids were older.

Did this mean that our children were protected from never banging their heads and getting goose eggs? Absolutely not. Life's hard and bumpy and there's nothing we could do about it.

The Youngest Boy once walked straight into a pole at a grocery store when he was 3 years old, leading with his forehead, and he sustained a huge, ugly bump which, for some reason, he named “Edward.” One day The Girl was dancing in the family room and accidentally kicked her twin brother in the face; he got a big bruise on his head. When The Eldest Boy was a toddler who’d mastered the art of climbing stairs, he tripped down the three stairs leading to our front breezeway in our old house, landing on his head. (I was videotaping him at the time too.)

"Do not be fooled. The coffee table means your children harm. And when it attacks, results can be ugly.

Last year, 143,070 children age 5 and younger visited emergency rooms after table accidents, according to estimates from the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. Coffee tables, in particular, turn up in more than a quarter of the accident reports, in the commission’s sample count."

My question: Why single out the coffee table as the chief menace to toddlers’ heads? When babies and toddlers interact with the world, they’re going to fall, no matter how much you don’t want them to, or how much you want to prevent it. That's life. Sending new parents into a frenzy and making them fearful of furniture -- I remember experts terrifying me about almost everything in my home when my twins were small – seems unnecessarily over the top.

No Coats

When I drove my kids to school this morning – The Youngest Boy had to be there early for school band practice – the temperature on my dashboard read 21 degrees.

I was bundled up in fuzzy boots, a warm winter coat, a cap, a long scarf wrapped around my neck and toasty leather gloves. And I was in the heated car absolutely loving the perk of heated seats. (They bring me an unreasonable degree of joy.)

As I dropped off The Youngest Boy at his school then drove The Girl and The Eldest Boy to their middle school, I noticed kid after kid – all boys – in shorts and many of them without coats.

This, sadly, did not shock me. I spent most of the fall arguing with my 9-year-old son over the fact that he’d fallen in with kids who insist on wearing shorts and no wearing coats when low temperature clearly call for outerwear and long pants. The principal of his school has sent numerous e-mails to us parents, pleading with us to please make sure our children are dressed for the weather. Yet even when I showed these e-mails to my son hoping that perhaps the admonitions of his principal would prove persuasive, I'd still get into an argument with him on many a morning about the fact that, regardless of his street cred, I was irrationally making him wear a coat. And yes, I was aware that he removed the coat the moment he thought he was out of eye shot.

So it was with interest that I read this Associated Press story by Beth Harpaz about the phenomenon of young people who reject winter coats and, in some cases, opt for shorts during cold weather. Harpaz’s story began:

“Among the great spectacles of winter, along with the northern lights and frozen lakes, are coatless kids.

No coat, no gloves? No prob!

These teens and tweens are chillin’ out, literally and figuratively, in their sweatshirts and kicks. Maybe a boy will accessorize with a baseball cap, and a girl might choose stylish boots – but nothing weatherproof, please! Some boys even wear shorts year-round, and many parents say they’ve given up the fight.”

The bottom line of the article: If you live in Alaska and frostbite is a real possibility, you probably should make the kids wear appropriate clothing. If not, an ER doctor told Harpaz that, "If teens are 'going off to school in 30 or 40 degree (above zero) weather with less than ideal coverings, they're probably okay, as long as they do not find themselves stuck outside  for a long time at those temperatures.'" I'm going to choose NOT to share that particular quote with The Youngest Boy.

Minivans, Cool?

I once wrote a column about my reluctant journey from being a sedan-driving mom of two, to a minivan-driving mom of three kids under the age of 4. Though I knew that driving a minivan would designate me as a vanilla mom with a sub-zero hip factor, the minivan was a blessing in terms of affording my family space when we were out and about, giving me a safe, comfortable place to change my baby’s diapers and nurse him while my 3-year-old twins played. The stroller and other baby accouterments fit well in the back, even alongside bags and bags of groceries. However I was thrilled to ditch our minivan a few years ago when the Picket Fence Post family made the transition from a minivan family to an SUV family.

But I read with a skeptical eye, this piece in the New York Times which asserted that minivan makers are trying to market the family behemoths as the opposite of what they really are: Cool.

“In marketing campaigns featuring heavy-metal theme songs, rapping parents, secret agents in cat masks, pyrotechnics and even Godzilla, minivan makers are trying to recast the much-ridiculed mom-mobile as something that parents can be proud — or at least unashamed — of driving,” the Times reported. “Toyota led the effort early last spring with a campaign for its Sienna model that features a self-indulgent couple rapping about rolling through the cul-de-sacs with their posse of kids in their ‘Swagger Wagon.’”

Sorry, but I’m not buyin’ it. Are you?

Image credit: Andrea Levy/New York Times.

Three for Thursday: Rotting Jack-o-Lanterns, Homework Monitoring & Hockey Schedules

Rotting Jack-o-Lanterns

Once again, I have the scariest doorstep in the neighborhood.

Why? Because The Spouse and I have left the three jack-o-lanterns that the kids carved on Columbus Day weekend on the front steps. Now they’re moldy, collapsing piles of mush. So the question is, do I leave them on the doorstep to "scare" people on Halloween or toss 'em out to prevent the spreading of the mold-infested mush all over my doorstep? (I'm inclined to go with option number two.)

Homework Monitor: Helicopter Parenting or Responsible Parenting?

He knew that he had to finish the hat. The vocabulary word hat to be precise. Each member of my 9-year-old’s class was assigned a vocabulary word and was asked to create a hat which represented the meaning of the word without using other words.

For days I’ve been nagging The Youngest Boy about his hat – had he thought about what he’d like to do, had he pulled together the necessary material, etc. “You don’t want to wait until the last minute,” I told him as he'd tell me it wasn’t due until Friday.

When he presented me with his hat yesterday, I suggested that he needed to use something sturdier than Scotch tape to hold up this big piece of cardboard he wanted to attach to a hat. I offered to help him attach an elastic string to it later, later meaning today.

Then, as we were pulling out of the driveway this morning, with 10 minutes to spare before he was supposed to walk through the school door, The Youngest Boy started shouting that his hat wasn’t due on Friday, it was due TODAY. And because I was the one who suggested that he ditch the tape and replace it with an elastic but hadn’t yet done so, all of this was my fault.

I will admit that I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory when I reacted angrily to all of this. Luckily, The Spouse was still in the house, so I told The Youngest Boy to get out of the car and have his father assist him while I drove the other two kids to school so they wouldn’t be late.

Here’s my question: Where’s the line between being a helicopter parent (who is doing her offspring no favors by doing everything for them, coddling them, instead of making them learn to do things for themselves, always coming to the rescue) and being a responsible parent who’s trying to teach her kids, as they gain the maturity, how to be responsible for themselves?

Three for Thursday: Satirizing Sanctimommies, Bullying the Allergic, Uncool on 'Parenthood'

Item #1: Satirizing Sanctimommies

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.

For my review of the must-watch episode, go here, to the Clique Clack TV site.

This is Why I Love Brian Williams, Calling People Who Want to Ban School Swings 'Safety Types'

I cracked up watching the segment below of the NBC Nightly News this week while Brian Williams waxed poetically and sarcastically about being a part of a generation that was "hardened by the horrors" and "violence" of playing school yard dodge ball, experiencing the "exquisite sting of the red rubber ball" usually in the middle of one's back. He even named his "personal nemesis" from grade school who used to slam him with balls which, to a 9-year-old Brian, felt like they were traveling at 100 miles per hour.

This was all a lead-in to Williams reporting that "safety types" -- the same ones who've tried to rid the nation's schools of the scourge of dodge ball -- are now setting their sights on swing sets as a safety menace. Trying to restrain the glee in his voice, Williams noted that an attempt to ban the swings in a West Virginia county failed when those "safety types" suffered the "embarrassing realization" that the swings are "required" on school playgrounds by education policies.

Score one for sanity. And Brian Williams.

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New York Magazine Asks, Why Do Parents Hate Parenting?

New York Magazine has a very provocative cover story this week by Jennifer Senior about happiness and parenting. Senior wrote:

“Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so.”

The most horrifyingly accurate paragraph went as follows:

"Before urbanization, children were viewed as economic assets to their parents. If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids helped mind the store. But all of this dramatically changed with the moral and technological revolutions of modernity. As we gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed. (The Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer describes this transformation of a child’s value in five ruthless words: 'Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.') Kids, in short, went from being our staffs to being our bosses."

. . . being our bosses.

I oftentimes feel that, in the world of modern parenting, many things, people and institutions elevate children above their parents, putting the parents – who are financially, legally and morally responsible for said children, must raise them and teach them, etc. – at a power disadvantage. A loud chorus of parenting "experts," who are so fond of prattling on in the media, loves to tell us how very important it is to focus on bolstering our children’s self-esteem, urging us to concoct alternatives to the word “No” and to afford children, even very young ones, the “illusion” of control on many things in their day-to-day life.

Additionally, these experts tell parents that they should not ever shout (never mind swear) at their children because to do so is akin to committing lasting emotionally damage, like the verbal equivalent of whacking the kids on the head with a two-by-four. When parents are struggling for alternatives to the word "No," when they can't shout, can't reprimand, they're expected to be hyper-vigilant, hyper-involved and hyper-aware of everything, like whether the kids have applied sunscreen, bug spray, are properly hydrated and whether they've consumed any high fructose corn syrup.

Then throw into the mix the notion that, as Senior wrote, “middle- and upper-income families . . . see their children as projects to be perfected.” Those “projects,” and the high expectations that people have for parents to entertain, educate, fill with organic/homemade/locavore fare (but not too much "filling" lest we have an obesity issue with which to contend), to take to the “right” sports camps, to get onto the “right” teams, to make sure have the "best" science projects for the science fare (it's called “aggressive nurturing” in the article) are, frankly, freakin’ exhausting. It’s no wonder people aren’t having fun and really enjoying this precious time with their children before they grow up and leave us crying about the end of their childhood like the parents in the audience did at the end of Toy Story 3.

The most fun I have with my own kids, the times when I feel most fulfilled is when we’ve got nothing planned, when we’re not in a rush and there's no pressure to make a specific meal and we just hang around together, maybe talking or playing a game or just lying in a big pile on my bed being goofy. That’s when the pressure to be perfect, to “aggressively nurture” is off and joy enters the picture. And I think that if parents were able to spend more time hitting that release valve and depressurize our families – and stop making parents do things like sign all the homework assignments, fight with their second graders to make them complete homework assignments and run the children run off to yet another practice or game – we’d all be a lot happier, or at least I would. The simpler, the better.

“Loving one’s children and loving the act of parenting are not the same thing,” Senior wrote . . . especially when "parenting," according to today's insane standards, has become an unnecessarily complicated, high-pressured gig.

Image credit: New York Magazine.