What I'm Reading Now ... A Primer on Raising Adolescents

I realized the other day that when my kids were very young, heck, even when they were still in the womb, I was voraciously reading up on the best parenting practices. Compulsively so.

Then all three of the Picket Fence Post children hit puberty and it dawned on me that it's been quite a long time since I've read anything about childrearing. Two are of my kids are teens, the other's not too far behind. And all hell has broken loose.

After hearing some vivid tales from the Picket Fence Post household, a friend recommended this:


I now feel as though I finally understand why my house is suddenly filled with such loud melodrama ... or, conversely, the eerie silence of sulking and somber offspring. Reading Get Out of My Life But First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall? is akin to stumbling upon a helpful translator who's explaining the goings-on that are occurring right in front of my eyes but seem to be in a foreign language.

The Youngest Boy, not liking the cover of the book one iota, was displeased to see me chuckling as I was reading it the other night.

"I'm gonna read that when you're not looking," he threatened.

"Go ahead," I taunted him, "at least you'd be reading a book."

"Grrrr," he muttered as he kicked a dog toy across the family room, "I hate reading."

Bissinger's 'Father's Day' Book: Raw, Honest & Page-Turning

* Cross-posted on Mommy Tracked *

Buzz Bissinger doesn't care what you think about his parenting. Honestly. He doesn't. That's what makes his new memoir, Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind & Heart of My Extraordinary Son compellingly different from other parenting books.

Bissinger's candor about his failings and how he responded poorly to his son Zach's "serious intellectual deficits" are bracingly real. He's not trying to impress readers with how empathetic he was or what a fabulous, patient father he can be. He's laying all the ugly stuff out there. He isn't concerned if you judge him because he's already done a number on himself as far as condemnatory judgment is concerned.

Bissinger, the author of the widely acclaimed Friday Night Lights, has three sons, adult twins Gerry and Zach, and the college-aged Caleb. However, Father's Day is focused on Zach, specifically on the cross-country trip Bissinger took with Zach in the summer of 2007 in an attempt to get to know Zach who -- despite the fact that he has child-like comprehensive skills, counts on his fingers and doesn't understand much of what he reads -- still remains emotionally and intellectually out of reach to his father as much as Bissinger wished it were otherwise.

There was a three-minute gap between the birth of Bissinger's son Gerry and his son Zach, born three-and-a-half months premature in 1983 and weighing little more than two pounds apiece. Gerry, who was born first, had stronger lungs than his twin brother Zach and, as Bissinger said, the three minutes between Gerry and Zach's births made all the difference in whether Zach's brain got the oxygen it required. It didn't. Zach was hospitalized for his first seven and a half months on the planet.

The legacy of Zach's birth is something which continues to rattle and anger Bissinger, and had -- prior to the road trip with Zach, which he recorded so he could quote their conversations verbatim -- caused Bissinger to mentally check out to some degree when he was with Zach. "It is the most terrible pain of my life," he said. "As much as I try to engage Zach, figure out how to make the flower germinate because there is a seed, I also run. I run out of guilt. I run because he was robbed and I feel I was robbed. I run because of my shame. I am not proud to feel or say this. But I think these things, not all the time, but too many times, which only increases the cycle of my shame. This is my child. How can I look at him this way?"

The book -- which is sprinkled with anecdotes about Bissinger's relationship with his parents and his own career highs and lows, as well as Bissinger's admission that he has anxiety, depression and "mild bipolarity" -- reads like the script for a buddy road trip movie, as Bissinger drove them to an eclectic assortment of places to which he and Zach had connections and Bissinger frequently lost his cool when he foolishly didn't listen to Zach's suggestions on which roads to take because Zach not only has an unbelievable memory but is something of a human GPS.

Motivated to take this odyssey by fond recollections of road trips with his father, Bissinger tried to capture lightning in a bottle and reconstruct those precious father-son moments with Zach. But Bissinger's attempts to connect frequently left him feeling frustrated. For example, what he thought would be the crowning moment of the trip, a night in Las Vegas, fell apart because Zach was overcome and disinterested. Bissinger was angry and disappointed with his son at first, then he turned the fury on himself. It was a Cirque de Soleil show when Bissinger realized that what he'd thought would be one of the best nights of his son's life was crumbling. "Tears fill my eyes, as I face the fact that, all night long, I have done nothing but push my son beyond all limits of what is reasonable and right," he said. ". . . Everything I have learned from and about him on the trip cannot eradicate that so much will always be overwhelming and incomprehensible to him."

Among the hardest parts to read were those where Bissinger tried to speak candidly with Zach about his disabilities, a subject which Bissinger hadn't really thoroughly discussed with Zach in an attempt to protect him. The scene where they returned to a school where Zach had been treated abysmally -- yet Zach didn't realize he'd been treated badly -- was particularly agonizing for Bissinger because it brought him back to a time and place in his life when he felt unable to adequately help his child.

"There is no rose-colored ending to any of this," Bissinger wrote unflinchingly. "There is no pretty little package with a tidy bow. [Zach] will never drive a car. He will never marry. He will never have children. I still fear for his future . . . He is not the child I wanted. But he is no longer a child anyway. He is a man, the most fearless I have ever known, friendly, funny, freaky, unfathomable, forgiving, fantastic, restoring the faith of a father in all that can be."

The portrait Bissinger painted, of lugging along with them the heavy iron chains of his paternal guilt, a bag full of family photos and haunting memories, did eventually offer a glimmer of, not hope necessarily, but poignancy in the end. At the conclusion of the trip when his son Gerry joined the duo, Bissinger found himself moved by his sons' camaraderie in spite of how differently their lives turned out. "Three minutes does define a life, but never in the way I had always imagined," he said. "So many times I never thought I would get there. But we are a family, all different, sometimes divided, sometimes in pain, but unconquerable."

Image credit: Amazon.

'Tiger Mom' is Back ... Because She's Selling Her Paperback

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I really didn’t want to leap onto the Tiger Mom bandwagon again, now that the Yale University Law Professor’s controversial book – The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother – is now out in paperback. But Amy Chua’s latest Wall Street Journal essay and her appearance on news programs -- where she says  that, despite all the time she’s had to reflect and all the negative reactions her book sparked, she wouldn’t change anything and that her methods are superior to the "soft" American style of child-rearing-- has pulled me back into this quagmire again. (The return of Chua’s somewhat tamer version of her Tiger Mother persona is the subject of my latest Pop Culture and Politics post.)

In her Journal essay, Chua tries to persuade readers that because her eldest daughter is now a college student (attending Harvard no less), she is “hands-off” and thinks of herself as pretty much done with child-rearing.

“When our kids go off to college, we want them to have the confidence, judgment and strength to take care of themselves,” Chua wrote in the Journal. “Even critics of my approach to parenting would probably concede that, after years of drilling and discipline, tiger cubs are good at focusing and getting their work done. If instilled early, these skills also help them to avoid the college-prep freak-out that traumatizes so many families.”

This is from the woman who wrote that when one of her daughters was 7, she made the child sit at the piano, with no breaks for food or the bathroom, for hours, until the kid mastered a piece. She was also the one who said that her kids weren’t allowed to “attend a sleepover, have a playdate, be in a school play . . . watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A . . . play any instrument other than the piano or violin."

I, for one, don’t see a parent who had as much invested in her kids doing well and succeeding as Chua does, just turning that switch off if, for example, her daughter wanted to drop out of college, join the Peace Corps or start a rock band, and play the drums.

Cheering from the Cheap Seats: It All Depends on Where You're Sitting

The Youngest Boy’s hockey team played three games this past weekend and won two of them. During the Friday night game, his team won 5-3. Even when his crew was up 5-2 and seemed in command of the game, we parents in the stands were still cheering aggressively, encouraging the kiddos to chase down every puck, to skate as fast as they could and not to stop playing hard.

To the parents for the opposing team, our entreaties might’ve seemed like overkill. They might’ve wanted us to stop cheering so loudly and to cease urging our players to act like the game was on the line. But then they wouldn’t understand the context which would explain all our enthusiasm. Our children’s team has only enjoyed a precious handful of victories over this long, long, oh so long hockey season. So when our young players had a chance to actually come away with the W for a change, we really wanted them to get it.

I had the opposite experience during many of The Girl’s basketball games this winter. During the regular season, her travel basketball team went undefeated, beating many teams by double digits. In those cases, as the point differential grew, we parents dialed back our cheering to polite applause when someone scored. At times, even polite applause seemed like it was too much, as though we were rubbing it in somehow, so we wound up not exhibiting much of an outward reaction to what was transpiring on the court. No one wants to make the players on the other team feel badly or to humiliate them. They’re just kids after all. But from a spectator’s perspective, having to sit on my hands while watching my daughter’s team and not being able to root for her wasn’t much fun.

Years ago, The Eldest Boy’s soccer team was absolutely demolished by another team. The opposing team obliterated my son’s team from beginning to end of the game. During the entire time, that team’s coach bellowed from the sidelines, at almost a non-stop clip, chastising his boys to go after everything, shouted when the boys made an error and urged them to “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!” Never once, when there was no earthly possibility that his team would lose, did he rein in his shouting which had a demoralizing effect on the players on my son’s team. I got angry that the guy just wouldn’t shut up and, seeing that I was standing not far from him, I executed a passive aggressive move and loudly muttered that maybe he could tone down all the yelling given the score. The coach gave me a glare but piped down after that.

It’s really challenging to keep your perspective when you’re the parent of a youth athlete and you're sitting in the stands. Unlike with professional athletes (who are paid) and, to some extent, college athletes (many of whom get scholarships), cheering loudly when your kid’s team is crushing another team is considered bad form. However in some cases, when your kid’s team hasn’t won many contests, you tend not to want to hold back.

Since I’ve been on multiple sides of this issue, I tend to try to cut other parents some slack when it comes to how they’re cheering for their kids . . . except when their team is wiping the floor with my kid’s team. In that case, if they keep yelling when their kids’ team is up by an obscene amount of points, baskets, runs, etc. it’s likely that some ticked off parents of kids on the other team (like me) will snap at them to try to remind them that all the players are just children.

Image credit: Alfy.com.

Three for Thursday: Controversy Over 'Chinese Mothering,' Teens on TV & 'The Middle's' Little Brick

Image credit: Wall Street Journal

Item #1: Controversy Over ‘Chinese Mothering’

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.”

The War on Coats

My 9-year-old has announced that coats are his enemy.

He will no longer wear them, he says, because they're not necessary for a kid like him. As an out-of-touch adult, he says, I just wouldn't understand. I also shouldn't pay attention to him when he's shivering and says he's not really cold.

If we lived in a warm climate, that wouldn't be a problem, necessarily.

But we live in New England.

Just this morning, I was getting ready to drop The Youngest Boy off at school when I realized he hadn't brought a coat. (I had to strong-arm him into putting a long-sleeved shirt over his short-sleeve one after breakfast. This was after The Spouse made him put on jeans instead of the shorts he was originally wearing.)

The temperature outside the school was 40 degrees. So I turned around, drove home and insisted that he run into the house to grab a coat. This is a kid who's been dressing in shorts and short-sleeve shirts up until this morning.

And when he was leaving the car, he hand his coat in his hand but informed me he wouldn't be wearing it while he was at school.

How long will this go on, only time will tell. But next time I drive the kid to school, I'm going to make sure his coat's in the car first.

Image credit: Standish web site.

Being 'The One' Who's Mean and, Apparently, Power-Mad

Image credit: Comics Kingdom/Oregonian

“Why do you have to be the one?”

That’s what a child of mine – who shall remain nameless -- asked me recently when said individual was railing against me, the power-mad, all controlling mother who'd said, "No," to something the person requested. Over the past few weeks, here are the questions two of the Picket Fence Post kids have asked me this person wanted to know was:

Why do I have to work? (Two of my children gripe about the fact hat I’m not as available as “the other moms” who volunteer in the schools, constantly arrange play dates for their kids and sign their offspring up for as many sports and activities as the children desire. Meanwhile, I can barely get the kids to their sports practices on time, feed them, oversee their homework and do my own work.)

Why do I make the family go to church? (Our Christian-Jewish family attends a Unitarian Universalist church where the Picket Fence Post kids – two of ‘em anyway – are practically dragged kicking and screaming into Sunday school each week. They think that my forcing them to go to church is, like, totally unfair and mean.)

Why don’t I drive the kids to school/pick them up every day like other parents? (Whenever possible, I have the kids take the school bus. It's simply more convenient. However because they have to be at school early – meaning before the bus would arrive at the school – for various activities, The Spouse or I already drive them to school three mornings a week.)

Why do I buy “only healthy” foods and try to avoid foods containing high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated fats when “no one else's mother” does? (I’m constantly accused of depriving my children of sweets and being a wild-eyed health nut. Me! The one who’s addicted to coffee and has an unhealthy attachment to barbecue potato chips. When I pointed out to the child who was asking me this question that, during the course of the week in which this statement was uttered, I’d made apple crisp served it with ice cream, bought a second gallon of ice cream, purchased Mint Milanos, snickerdoodle cookies and Cheez-Its, the kid replied, “Well those don’t count.” Why didn’t those foods count? Because all the sweets/snacks had already been consumed when the kid said this, except for the vanilla ice cream, and the complainer didn’t feel like having vanilla ice cream.)

Why don’t I allow the children to have unfettered access to the internet and computers in their rooms like “all the other kids at school?” (The kids can use a family laptop computer as long as they do so in a common area of the house – like the kitchen or dining room – and there’s a parental control on it which, I must say, is a pain in the neck as I'm constantly having to "approve" sites. In instances when they’ve wanted to go on YouTube -- which gets blocked, they’ve had to do it with me or The Spouse overseeing it. This makes me/us overprotective, hovering freak(s), apparently.)

Why do I limit their TV watching/video game playing? (We have a so-called “TV hour” on weekdays, timed to occur when I’m making dinner and don’t feel like dealing with the inevitable gripes about what I’m cooking. However they’ll keep watching/playing long after the hour has elapsed, waiting for me to tell them to turn it off. Even if it’s been in excess of an hour, I still get griping or pleas of, “Oh Mom, just let me finish this level” or “But we just started this show!”)

Why won’t I let them have cell phones when “tons of other kids” in their school have them? (I’ve told them that when they’re going to be in locations where they will have to spend time alone, without adult supervision, or if they have to walk long distances alone, I’ll get – or loan them – cell phones. So far, there hasn’t been a need for them. When they’ve taken walks with the dog, I've let them borrow my phone. This unreasonable, irrational anti-cell phone stance means that I’ve destroyed their street cred and made it impossible for the other kids to text them.) This last question was the subject of today’s Pajama Diaries comic which made me laugh when I saw it this morning.

Sometimes being “The One” who places all these restrictions on the kids feels pretty lonely, especially when they make me sound like just this side of Attila the Hun. I just hope that, once they're older, they'll get that I was trying to do what I thought was right for them, not act like a power-mad dictator. Believe me, it's not because it's fun being "The One." It'd be much easier for me to say, "Yes" to most of these things instead of enduring their criticisms all the time as they sometimes wish aloud that one of the "other" sainted mothers that their friends have were their mom.

Image credit: Pajama Diaries via Oregonian/Comics Kingdom.

Summer Shorts: Patriots' Training Camp, Badminton Tourney Gets Competitive & Youthful Protesters

After a neighbor of ours raved about going to the New England Patriots’ training camp -- on a field next to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough -- The Spouse and I roused our kids early on Saturday morning, slathered everyone with sunscreen, threw some food at ‘em and dragged the lot of ‘em to a hilly spot of grass overlooking the playing field.

And sat there.

And sat there.

In the blazing sun.

Until the players came onto the field. Many were wearing gray T-shirts and shorts, none with names or numbers on the back. There was virtually no contact (they weren't wearing pads) and it looked like they were casually walking through of plays for a while as the coaches held playbooks aloft for the players to see. C-SPAN is more riveting.

The fans sitting around us were busy trying to figure out who was who. “Is THAT Tom Brady? Is Randy Moss over there? I can’t tell. Where’s Belichick?”

And there was whining. Lots of it. From my kids and from the grown-ups. I was ready to pack it in as I too was bored, was getting fried in the sun and was tired of telling the kids that I wasn’t going to spend $47 on a bottle of water or a freeze pop or whatever else the vendors were selling as they gingerly stepped around the Patriots fans sitting there on the grass or sitting in the bleachers around the field.

However . . . the mood changed like a fast-moving late afternoon summer storm when a handful of players decided to walk over to the edges of the field – behind the ropes that keep them separated from the riffraff that is the fans – and sign autographs. That’s when the three Picket Fence Post kids perked up considerably, seeing as though there were standing right in front. Despite the efforts of aggressive fans and rude teenagers who shoved my children and pushed my kids’ hands out of the way by harshly lowering their arms on top of my kids’ arms, the children were able to snare some autographs from Patriots players and stand within arms length of some of their favorites.

Yes, one even got a "signature" from Tom Brady, doing his best Justin Bieber impersonation with that ridiculous mop of hair, though it was covered by a cap on this particular morning. As he walked along the edge of the playing field along the rope line, he grabbed The Youngest Boy’s football from his hands and signed it with my son’s Sharpie. This is what it looks like:

Yes, we’re all underwhelmed. Plus no one will believe that that's Brady's so-called "signature."

However the kids got enough signatures from players (Stephen Gostkowski, Zoltan Mesko and Brandon McGowan) that The Eldest Boy clamored to return to see the training camp on Sunday morning with The Spouse, which he did and came back smiling as one kind player, Cornerback Darius Butler, signed my son’s football card.

Badminton Tourney Gets Competitive

A few weeks ago, The Spouse put up a giant volleyball/badminton net in the backyard with the idea that the kids would have a ready-made activity to do when we said, “Go outside and play.” It’s worked out somewhat well, as they have played together, though my refereeing skills have been requested more frequently than I’d like.

But I personally hadn’t set foot on that spot of lawn in order to play badminton until this weekend, after the kids said they didn’t think I could play. (Doing yoga doesn’t exactly cut it in their eyes as a physical activity.) Yes, proving to the children that I can be athletic – my pride was hurt by the implications of their assertions – drove me to participate in a family badminton tournament and, once I shook off the rust, I wasn’t half bad. The following day we played a second tournament. The only downside to all this badminton: Getting into an argument with The Spouse when his trash talking and bellyaching about whether the birdie was out or in went too far.

Youthful Protesters

I recently took The Girl to see Eclipse – as I promised her I would when she saw the trailers a few months ago (though I think we’re going to hold off on seeing Breaking Dawn together when it comes to theaters) – and the two boys who were left behind with The Spouse were ticked. That’s putting it mildly.

The Spouse was in his office doing some work when the boys decided to treat him like he was a one-man G-8 summit and they were radical environmental protesters. For example, they made signs, which they toted into The Spouse’s office until he kicked them out, complaining of their treatment. (See above.)

Then they attempted armed resistance -- we are in Minuteman territory, after all -- toting Nerf guns into The Spouse's office while The Eldest Boy slid a tape recorder into the room with his hummed version of the Jaws theme playing (No, I don't get it either.) and demanded to be taken to a local laser tag establishment.

Unfortunately for them, The Spouse does not negotiate with pint-sized terrorists.

Welcome to the Picket Fence Post: Retooled Blog, New Location

Hello Picket Fence Post readers!

Hopefully you've made your way over from my former blog on the Parents & Kids/Wicked Local Parents site. I'm going to continue blogging in this location, writing not just about parenting in the suburbs of Boston, but about life behind the cliched picket fences.

I'll write about my three kids: The Girl (11, almost 12), her twin brother The Eldest Boy and The Youngest Boy (8 almost 9), as well as The Spouse and our 1-year-old Havanese/mini-Wheaten Terrier ball of fluff named Max.

I'll continue The Paper Project which I started last September when the Picket Fence Post kids started the third and fifth grades and I wanted to know exactly how many pieces of paper they'd bring home from school over the course of a year.

I'll do "Three for Thursdays" where I recap three newsy/buzzy news stories about parenting. Plus I'll delve into other lifestyle stuff I didn't touch on when I was writing for Wicked Local Parents that don't necessarily have anything to do with parenting, like coping with the dog's annoying chewing habits and my hatred of most things domestic (like cleaning, gardening, etc.).

If you're a pop culture buff, please check out my pop culture blog, Notes from the Asylum. I also write for other publications including: Mommy Tracked where I write a pop culture/politics column and I contribute to CliqueClack TV where I write about, cooking . . . no, where I write about TV of course.