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Mommy Talk
March 2009
Friday March 27, 2009
Posted by: mlaehr at 12:33PM CST on March 27, 2009
I can’t remember who first told me that "Children should be seen and not heard," but I was a kid myself and was pretty insulted. I mean, imagine, actually being told to stifle my voice, not to make noise as I played?! I was a kid for crying out loud! I was supposed to have fun! Now, 30 years and three kids later, I know EXACTLY who came up with idea that children should be seen and not heard: an exhausted mother or father whose only want in the world was 5 minutes of peace and quiet. I’ve been there — just about every day for the past 7 years. Oh, how easy it is to be overwhelmed by the beeping of robot toys, the stomping of feet during bunny hops to the bathroom, the yelling and screaming and tattling, the crying in the night for lost pacifiers and the whining over dinner. Oh, how I know the frustration of loud and never ending demands for markers and juice and shoes to be tied and new toys. From the "ROOAARRR, ROOAARRR," of my 7-year-old’s dinosaur alarm clock each morning at 6:30 a.m. to the giggling under the covers long after their 7:30 p.m. bedtime, the noise of my children is a constant drain on my patience. There are some days it has me on my knees begging for just a bit of silence, and others when I’ve locked myself in the bathroom to finish a phone call. A typical 10 minutes or less with my children goes something like this: STOMP, STOMP, STOMP My 5 and 7-year-old boys are making are pounding their feet upstairs - where their baby sister is napping. "Boys!" I holler up the steps. "Get down here!" They stand in the hallway, right next to the baby’s room and stare at me. "No! We’re doing something," they yell back. "Be quiet please," I say a little softer. "The baby is sleeping. Come down here and play." "Mom!" The 7-year-old practically screams. "We’ll be right down. We’re just getting some books." THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. I hear the books, one by one, being thrown off the bookshelf onto the floor. "Mommmmeeee," my once sleeping daughter calls. "Mommmeeee." I tromp up the steps, walk past the two stinkers standing in a pile of books and into the baby’s room. I give her her pacifier and try to calm her down. I walk out. "Mommmmmmeeee!" she wails. I give my boys the evil eye, turn around and go back to the baby’s room. I pick her up out of bed and walk down the steps. "Pick up all of those books," I say to the boys as I pass. I bring the baby downstairs and set her down. I take some chicken out of the freezer. My daughter starts sobbing and puts her arms out to me. "Uppy," she says with a face full of tears and snot and messy nap hair. "Shhhh," I tell her as I pick her up and grab a tissue to wipe her face. "It’s OK. Mommy has to make dinner." I set her down again, only to be met by more crying. The boys, who have probably not touched a single book since I walked downstairs, clamor into the kitchen and head to the patio door. SLAP. SLAP. SLAP. The soles of their sneakers pound against floor. "We’re going outside," the 7-year-old says. "Great," I think. "Fine. Of course you want to go outside now, after you’ve already woken up the baby and ruined any chance I had to spend just 20 minutes in the peace and quiet of my own thoughts. Of course." Even if I had said it out loud they probably wouldn’t have heard me. They’re already screaming and riding their big wheels full force along the brick walkway in the backyard. "Batman!" one yells to his brother. "The Joker’s this way!" The baby’s still begging to be held, the microwave is dinging - signaling for me to separate the defrosting chicken, the washer and dryer are rattling and humming, and now the phone is ringing. And yet, I’ve never unplugged the baby monitor, even though my "baby girl" is almost 2 years old. When my boys go out to play, even in the dead of winter, I crack the kitchen window so that I can hear what they are doing. I remember waking up a few months ago on a Sunday morning in a completely quiet house. My kids were at my parents’ house for a sleep over and my husband had gone to work already. I was panicked. I’m a mom. I don’t know quiet anymore. And as irritating as it is sometimes, I am painfully aware that someday I’ll miss all the noise. Someday I won’t have to yell over video games to be heard. Someday I won’t hear howls in the middle of the night. Someday I won’t hear their voices calling me from the backyard swings to come see how high they are going. Someday they’ll be all grown up and my house will be still and quiet. Someday they might have children of their own, and I will be the grandma, eager for the chance to have my grandchildren come for a visit and make some racket at my house.
Thursday March 26, 2009
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 11:33AM CST on March 26, 2009
A few weeks ago, I read a Washington Post Magazine story about parents who had forgotten their children in the car, most often on warm spring or summer days. The children died.
It's an incredible piece of journalism, and that's how I found it: through a Web site about reporting and writing. As soon as I finished it, I had this overwhelming urge to call my husband, who was home with Henry at the time, and make sure they were both OK. I wanted to tell them not to leave the house again, ever.
Former Mommy Talk contributor Elizabeth Young wrote about her penchant for "disaster daydreams," where she could visualize the horrible things that could have happened to her daughters. I haven't had that happen too many times. That story, though, immediately sent me spinning into disaster dream-land. I forget things all the time. I forget my cell phone. I forget my lunch. I forget my notebook. Just last week I locked myself and Henry out of the house. I was glad it was March and not January; it took about 15 minutes before someone with a spare key could get to the house to let us back inside. When I read the story about parents who have forgotten their children in the cars, I immediately thought that could happen to me.
One theory is that there's been an increase in children dying because they were left in cars at least partially because we put them in the back seat. We can't see them unless we look back there. If they're asleep and quiet, if we don't have the diaper bag on the passenger seat as a reminder, if we get distracted at just the right moment, maybe, just maybe, we could forget that we didn't drop them off at day care and head right to work.
The title of this post is a quote from David Diamond, a professor quoted in the story. Here's the whole passage: "Memory is a machine," he says, "and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you're capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child."
He spoke with the reporter while he was in Washington for a conference. The writer, Gene Weingarten, described Diamond's research like this: "What (Diamond has) found is that under some circumstances, the most sophisticated part of our thought-processing center can be held hostage to a competing memory system, a primitive portion of the brain that is -- by a design as old as the dinosaur's -- inattentive, pigheaded, nonanalytical, stupid."
In the article, Weingarten talks to a host of parents who have forgotten -- or almost forgotten -- their children or grandchildren in their cars. He talks to parents who were criminally charged for doing so, and those who were not prosecuted. The article is heart-wrenching in its honesty and its grief. As a mom, I came away feeling incredible compassion for those parents. They loved their children. These were not cases of neglect, or attempts to hurt their children. It's far too easy to condemn these parents and say "That would never happen to me. I could never forget my child." Maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you couldn't. I know that I don't want to take that chance. I'll take the vigilance that comes with knowing that the brain is faulty: If I can forget my phone, I can forget my child. If I can lock myself out of the house, I can forget that Henry's in the back seat. It's a reminder, especially as the weather warms up, to always double-check. Even if you think it can't happen to you, why take the chance? Always check. Always pay attention. Remember you're human, and that humans make mistakes. These parents had incredible courage in sharing their stories with Weingarten. That in itself is a way to help correct the horrible mistakes they each made. It's a gift they gave to every parent that reads the article. I am grateful they had the strength to give it. Click here to find the Washington Post story. Please note, there are graphic descriptions in the story of children's deaths and the emotions of parents.Wednesday March 18, 2009
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 2:23PM CST on March 18, 2009
A few months ago, readers of this column found a story about bras, breasts and breastfeeding.
We're about to head there again, folks, but this time, it's not quite so personal. It's societal. Breastfeeding moms are in an uproar over a recent article in "The Atlantic," which published third-time-new-mother Hanna Rosin's piece "The Case Against Breastfeeding." In it, Rosin talks about the societal myth and mystique of breastfeeding. She addresses the hip-ness, the cool-ness, the clique-y and club-y aspect of breastfeeding. She tries to poke holes in research that says breastfeeding provides health, mental and social benefits like fewer ear infections, lower obesity rates, higher IQs and better bonding with mom. A good friend and I were pregnant at the same time, with due dates just a few weeks apart. We talked about breastfeeding at our regular lunches together. We'd sit at a sushi restaurant in town (where we only chomped on non-raw-fish rolls) and talk about our pregnancies, our excitement, our worries, and our hopes. We both planned to breastfeed. We didn't talk in terms of ifs and maybes and wants. We expected to do it. We knew all the medical, social and emotional reasons to do it.We both tried. When Henry was born, he refused to latch on. He was tiny, and so sleepy. We were trying all kinds of ways to get him to nurse, but he didn't want to do it. After about a week of forcing and cajoling and crying and despair, he figured it out.My dear friend and her baby never quite got there. After an agonizing few weeks, she switched to formula. I asked her about this as I was putting this column together. Here's what she had to say: "My decision to not breastfeed STILL agonizes me. ...Every time I read something about breastfeeding lowering the instance of this, or the likelihood of that, I regret my decision to switch to formula. I actually have to go back and read the things I wrote in my journal and in (his) baby book during that time to remind myself of what a hard time we were having." Both our babies are dear, sweet little boys. By looking at them, you can't tell who was breastfed and who got formula. By looking at us, you can't tell who breastfed and who didn't. I never thought my buddy was a bad mom for not breastfeeding. She is a fabulous mom, a beautiful, strong woman with a fierce, intense love for her son. I believe breastfeeding was the right decision for us, just as my friend knows that bottle-feeding was right for them. Rosin's right about a few things: Breastfeeding is tough. It's hard, exhausting and, at times, inconvenient. It eliminates any semblance of equal division of labor between parents. I know that having a pediatrician who completely supported breastfeeding, having friends who had breastfed, having a mom who breastfed and knowing that, in general, breastfeeding was recognized as a healthy, positive and legitimate way to feed your baby were necessary components of my success as a nursing mom. I'm a full-time reporter. I pumped at work. I pumped in the car. I pumped in the bathroom of the courthouse. That's what I needed to do, and I found ways to do it. As mothers, we don't need to be told that something that's difficult but provides benefits to us and our children is expendable. I needed those pep talks, even if it turns out that the science isn't sound. We moms also don't need to be made to feel that, somehow, just because we use formula, we don't love our children. It's tough enough to be a mom in America. We aren't guaranteed paid maternity leave. We worry about bullying, sex, getting our kids ready for school, keeping our jobs, paying for groceries, paying for day care and forgetting our kids in the car seat. Can't we leave the breastfeeding wars behind us? Do what's right for your baby, yourself and your family. If everyone's doing that, what do we really have to argue about? Tuesday March 10, 2009
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 6:41AM CST on March 10, 2009
Today's Mommy Talk comes to us from a Daddy who reads the blog. If you have a Mommy Talk column idea, e-mail it to janine.anderson@journaltimes.com. It was about 1975 when my mother saw her 4-year-old son being beaten up on the playground. After getting a teacher, and rescuing the youngster, my Mom, still seething, put her son in the car and began to nicely, yet sternly, lecture the boy. She told him, when another person is hitting you or hurting you and an adult isn’t available to help you, you have a right to defend yourself. You need to hit back. The youngster looked at his mother and uttered one simple phrase almost 20 years before it became a cliché, "But mom, what would Jesus have done?" It’s funny how what comes around, goes around. Of course, that youngster was me and 33 years later I’m facing a similar issue and my mother is probably giggling a little in heaven. I have a 3-year-old son who is a kind-hearted, loving little boy. He loves to play with other children no matter their age. And, when included, he would easily receive an A (a B-plus at the very least) in playing well with others. Within the last year, though, he’s had a little trouble. My son, who is big for his age, was picked on by older children on the playground. They called him names and threw sand in his face and eyes. My son didn’t fight back. He didn’t cry. He just took it, went to the adult supervisor and got cleaned up. He later whispered what happened to his mother in front of the supervisor. The adult supervisor said she would take care of the problem — and to her credit it hasn’t happened again. I’d say the situation was boys being boys in the Lord of the Flies jungle that is the playground, but it happened again. At the playroom of a health club, a little boy tried to grab a toy from my son. According to the playroom supervisor, my son grabbed the child’s arm and the other boy hit him and taunted him. The supervisor stopped the fighting and my son told the other boy to stop laughing at him. That was about as much as my son wanted to say about the incident. In both cases, my son showed a lot of courage, but there’s no doubt that the incidents had a negative impact on him. Like any parent, including my mother in 1975, I was frustrated. Before I was a parent, I thought I would handle this by telling my son that if and only if the teachers aren’t protecting you, this is what you needed to do – stand up, pick one of the kids, go after him, fight dirty and just beat on him until the teacher stops him. I believed there would be one fight and kids would back off after one nasty battle. And if I get called into the office, I would back my child and tell the principal or teacher, "If you can’t protect my child, then he’s going to have to do it himself." Of course, that was the strange thinking of a dad-to-be. I now realize that there needs to be a more diplomatic approach that keeps everyone safe. Especially since you can’t expect a 3-year-old to understand when it’s OK to fight and when it’s best to walk away. Still, all children have a right to defend and protect themselves when an adult isn’t noticing the problem. So what is the best way to teach a child to do the right thing and still protect himself? Wednesday March 4, 2009
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 2:42PM CST on March 4, 2009
I saw firefighters pull a man’s body from the river. I saw people park their cars and get out to watch, young children in tow. I thought about my son, at day care that day. He’s too young to ask me about my day. In a few years, he won’t be. What will I tell him when I come home from something like this? I remember the first time I realized that people don’t live forever. I was 5 years old, and my Great-Grandma Dudick had died. I remember my mom talking to me about it. I didn’t go to the funeral. I had only met her once, and all I really remember is taking a turn feeding her. As I got older, family members that I knew better got sick. Grandfathers had heart attacks and bypass surgeries. A grandmother got cancer. My parents talked to me at each stage, told me how hard it was to heal. They prepared us for the surgeries, we made hospital visits. I saw my grandma lose her hair and fade with chemotherapy and radiation. I learned that sickness happens to children, too. When I was in sixth grade a cousin was diagnosed with a brain tumor. We went with her to the hospital for treatments, and waited with her mom and little brother. There’s a mom part of me that doesn’t ever want Henry to know these things. I wish he would never have to experience major illness or know the pain of losing someone he loves. I also know that the only way for him to not experience these things is for him to not really live. There’s happiness and sadness in life. There’s life and there’s death. When I go home, especially if death has been part of my day, the spark of life and energy that Henry carries within him is particularly precious. In him, I am reminded that, for something to begin, something else must end. Henry’s middle name is Paul, for my maternal grandparents, beacons of love named Paul and Pauline. A few weeks after I found out that I was pregnant, Scott and
I took a trip to By the time Henry was born, my grandfather’s health had
deteriorated significantly. He was in My mom called me one night shortly after Henry’s birth and told me that my grandfather wasn’t doing well. I immediately booked a flight to take Henry to visit his great-grandpa. We had an early flight out of Instead of the visit to introduce great-grandfather to great-grandson, I got on the flight knowing we were headed to a funeral. Right there, my 5-week-old son – so small, so new – came face-to-face with death. I remember crying as Scott held Henry up to my grandfather’s casket and introduced them. I cry now, writing about it. That weekend, as we remembered my grandfather, everyone also rejoiced in Henry’s new life. We saw the circle, the end of one life, the beginning of another. Today, I saw it again. I wish peace for that man and his family, with all my being. |
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