Trapped at the Doctor's: Endless Waiting, With Two Four-Year-Olds and a String of Work Emergencies

11/19/2009

The tired-looking woman at the doctor’s office shoves a towering stack of paperwork at me. After relentless haranguing by the boys' school, we’re here at the D.C. branch of a national HMO to get their age-four shots.
 

And it doesn’t bode well that we’re greeted with at least half a trunk’s worth of dead tree. (Can’t they just Xerox what I filled out last time? It’s exactly the same.)

When I’m finally done furiously writing what I’m sure nobody will ever read—I’m reminded of those college blue-book tests—I plunk it down on the front desk.

A nurse looks up, calls out, “You know, there are four people in front of you. Gonna be a while.”

“WHAT? Why so many in front of me? How did this happen?” As it is, it’s a bad day to be missing work. We’re in the middle of 18 health care-reform-related emergencies, I’ve taken on a huge new project, and then there are the usual Web fires.

“Dunno. Just the schedule today.” The nurse just looks at me, impassive. All she’s missing is the bubble gum to snap. “You wanna reschedule?”

“No!  I had to upend my schedule for this as it is! I just hope it goes fast!” I stride back to my seat, fuming.

For the next two hours—yes, two hours!—we wait. While I frantically try to schedule meetings on my BlackBerry—thinking, there has to be a better way than finger-punching these microscopic keys—the kids throw stuff around the waiting room and periodically dive-bomb me.

When we're finally shown to an examining room, a nurse takes some readings, scribbles on a chart, and leaves. And then….you guessed it, we wait some more. At least another half hour more.

It’s past the boys’ lunch time, well into their nap time, and they’re getting VERY CRANKY. And now I'm supposed to undress them and get them into those freezing-cold paper things. They don't comply.

Bzzzzzzzt! Bzzzzzzzt! My BlackBerry starts going bananas:  “EMERGENCY: Link going to porn site—FIX IMMEDIATELY!”

Well this is perfect timing. My eyelid twitches as I watch the responses pop: “Where’s the link? WTF?? What porn site?? Can Bridget fix it?”

No! Bridget can’t fix it. She’s stuck in prison, AKA the doctor’s office, trying to convince her distraught four-year-old to don a paper dress. And, unfortunately, the worst is yet to come.

In walks the doctor. She’s perfectly nice. Just two hours and 45 minutes late. She does a quick exam of both boys, signs off on their shots, and hands me referrals for an allergist (for T-Rex) and an ophthalmologist (for both of them). Done!  Well, until somebody has to haul them to all those appointments.

Today, all we have left is the big event: the shots. But still. We. Have. To. Wait.

By the time the nurse arrives with her tray of doom, the kids are pelting each other with tongue depressors. I’ve long since given up.

Next is the part every parent dreads:  I have to hold down each of my children while a stranger sticks ginormous needles into their legs. In this case, five needles a kid. When she’s done, both boys are crying boulder-size tears.

“Can we go now?” I ask, head pounding, angry at the whole situation.

“No,” says the nurse. “I still gotta do your paperwork.”

The door slams shut, and I’m left with my howling, half-dressed kids. Perfect time for my ShackleBerry to start spazzing again. “Bzzzzzzzt! Bzzzzzzzt! BZZZZZZZZZT! Contract finalization meeting: 15 minutes.” Uh. No way. Not gonna make it. And no, I'm not going to call in from the doctor's office.

I turn to my hungry, tired, sniffling, needle-struck kids.

“Guys,” I say. “You know what we’re going to do? We’re not going to wait any more. We’re going to go get you some stickers. Right now!” The wailing stops for a second. “Stick-owz?” asks Punk hopefully.  I take them by the hands and march them off to find a nurse. Or tech. Or someone with access to stickers. I don’t give a continental hoot who.

It takes a while—everyone’s at lunch or something— but we finally track down our shots nurse. “We need some stickers please. NOW!!”

“Well, OK,” she says grudgingly.

“And may I also have those papers? We’ve been here over four hours.”

She hands them over, somewhat sheepishly, I think (I later find out some are missing), and we bolt. Enough is enough.

Driving the kids to school, feeding them chicken sandwiches and cupcakes I scrounged from a food cart, I make an executive decision: I am going to switch us to more expensive health insurance. Immediately if not sooner.

There is no reason to wait four and a half hours to get five lousy shots. That’s almost an hour a shot.

'I Don’t WANNA Go to School. You Can’t MAKE Me!' Oh, But I Can Sweet-Talk You

11/12/2009

T-Rex is hunched on the couch, arms folded, glaring at me.

He’s staked his position, and he’s not budging: “I don’t like playschool. I’m staying here!”

I’m glaring back at him, BlackBerry in my backpack buzzing work requests it seems I will never get to.

We had an episode like this not so long ago, involving both T-Rex and his twin brother, Punk. They pretty much staged a mutiny against school, and I devised what I thought was a brilliant solution. I told them we were going on safari. Punk’s favorite stuffed animal, “Elephant,” had gone missing, so I suggested we go find him. The search would just happen, you know, during the walk to school.

I strapped on their safari hats, and boy did my ploy work. They were out the door in seconds, running down the street calling “Elephant! Elephant!”

We had a few hitches. Like Elephant had recently scratched his butt (which required a band-aid), and there was some concern that he was incapacitated. Also, Punk decided we couldn’t move forward without a map. Luckily, I produced an imaginary one that he then kept checking. We looked for Elephant behind bushes, under leaf piles, and up in the trees (I know I know, elephants don’t generally climb trees, but you do what you have to do).

The whole thing went gangbusters until I steered them into their school. They immediately lay down on the floor, screaming and wailing that they thought they were on safari, not going to school. And, well, I felt like a jerk for duping them.

So now I have the same school-resistance problem with T-Rex, but obviously I’m not going to do the safari bait-and-switch again. I’ve got to plot some other response. Trouble is, dealing with T-Rex takes some serious maneuvering. A mini version of his grandfather, he’s every bit as smart—and stubborn.

I need a political strategist on this one. Where is David Axelrod when you need him?

I’ve already tried the appeal to sympathy:  {sigh} “C’mon sweetie-pie, you’re going to make mommy late for work.”

T-Rex: Glare. Pout.

And the appeal to reason. “T-Rex, you don’t have a choice here. Sometimes mommy and daddy don’t feel like going to work, but we have to. And you have to go to school.”

Frown. "I’m staying HERE!”

Tick tock, tick tock. Now I really am late for work.

I resort to coercion, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him to the door. “Look bucko! I don’t have time for this. Come ON!”

This, of course, prompts him to park himself on the floor and draw the most effective weapon in his arsenal: tears.

“I don’t.” [sniffle] “Wanna go.” [choke] “I don’t” [snort] “Liiiiiiiiike it theeeeere.”

Now, as planned, he’s got me. I can’t have tears, so I’ll have to try an extreme tactical shift. Even though it’s against my cynical nature, I opt for the pep talk.

I roll up my sleeves, sit next to him on the sofa, and ask if there's a problem at school. He shakes his head, no. Time to turn on the sunshine:

"T-Rex, sure you like it at playschool! You get to eat syrupy pancakes for breakfast. And sing songs. And play with the computer. And [I'm reaching now] and Ms. Johnson is there. She reeaaally likes T-Rex. You're her favorite!"

T-Rex considers this for a moment. Then he jumps off the sofa and gets all puffed up. "Oh yeah. I'm the best boy. I'm the strongest, big boy too. I'm Ms. Johnson's biggest boy of all. And I have really strong muscles." He flexes a bit, then puts on his jacket, all ready for school.

Touchdown! I'm dumbfounded that this tack actually worked. And I'm curious whether any of the strategies I tried are actually what experts recommend for tackling (in expert-speak) school refusal, AKA school phobia or school avoidance.

The American Academy of Pediatrics Web site confirms that yes, I was right to insist that he go to school; let a child stay home for no good reason, and the school refusal will only increase.

And, my asking him if there was a problem and playing up the positives of school are also recommended strategies of the site Phobics Awareness. Both sites also recommend speaking with a child's teachers about the problem—that's on my to-do list.

OK, I gotta admit, I was feeling pretty smug after I packed T-Rex off to school and read that I'd, for once, done all the right things. Small victories, folks. Small victories.

And I was still feeling pretty pleased when I went to pick up him up from Ms. Johnson's room after work. Unfortunately, it was not a happy scene. T-Rex was sitting in the corner, sulking, and Ms. Johnson looked, well, tense.

 
"What happened here?" I asked.

"Well, T-Rex got hold of my ink stamp pad, and stamped ALL of my report cards. I mean all of them. Stamps all over them. I'll have to get a whole new set."

Understandably, she was more than a little ticked off. We quickly made our apologies, and I hustled T-Rex out of there.

Crud. T-Rex had just single-handedly obliterated my "You're Ms. Johnson's favorite" tactic. Why am I not surprised?

Outsourcing Our Brains: So Busy Recording, We Forget to Live

11/06/2009

A good friend of mine called me in a snit earlier this week. She was going to a big-deal event on Capitol Hill for work—some Senate thing—and a colleague had casually asked her to take photos.

She was all whipped up. “I mean the nerve!” she fumed. “I’ve earned this. I had a dress altered. I don’t want to be stuck behind a damn camera. Not gonna do it. I want to snarf heavy hors d'oeuvres and get snockered. I want to schmooze!”

I tried talking her down, but it didn't work because I totally identified. Not on the schmoozing part. (I couldn't schmooze my way out of a wet paper bag.) I sympathized that logging the event would crimp her fun. Because that's exactly what happened to me at my twins' fourth birthday party last weekend.

It wasn't enough for me to be party planner and people herder; I also appointed myself photographer. So while everyone else was dancing with giant parrots, feeding bison, and stroking camels (the party was at a local petting zoo), I was scrambling around the "safari" wagon like I was after the money shot for National Geographic.

I kept it up the entire time.

Click. Click. Click. Distribute bottles and pellets for barnyard-feeding. Click click click. Order pizza. Click. Click. Click. Everyone on the pony rides. Click. Click. Click. All aboard the wagon. Click. Click. Click. Catch ostrich grabbing cup and chugging pellets. Click. Click. Click. Serve pizza. Click. Click. Click. Cake and candles. Click. Click. Drop dead from exhaustion.

Afterward, I realized I hadn't spent one free moment with either birthday boy. When I wasn't playing traffic cop, I was full-on recording.

In a way, I'd totally missed their freakin' birthday!

So now I'm wondering what else I've missed.  As a blogger, I am always writing, tweeting, Facebooking my observations. That means I'm not living in the current moment. I’m capturing the one that just passed.

And I'm not alone. Millions of other moms—and dads—are out there snapping, blogging, and video-logging their kids' milestones and antics. Now, as I blathered in a previous post, there's a positive side to all this. If you don't capture those first steps and words, it all gets buried in the mush of your poor, information-overloaded brain.

When you record it, you not only have a record to return to later, you also help cement your memory of it—as found by memory researchers. But there’s a price: Not only does your reality become more about the recording, but your reality may be altered by the recording.

Imagine if a bride had to videotape her own wedding. Walking down the aisle and cutting the cake would be more than a little awkward. And it would no longer be her day. It would be her guests' day. But I bet it's been done.

Just think of all the people Facebooking and tweeting their babies' births. I was one of thousands who followed Pregnant Jane (@HisBoysCanSwim) as she tweeted the birth of her son, Monkey, from the very first contraction to the big delivery. It was like my favorite show, "Birth Day," except on Twitter.

And our obsession with digital recording is only going to escalate as the technologies get smarter. As noted in a recent CNN article, Microsoft will soon be releasing a wearable digital camera, SenseCam, that auto-snaps your every action, 24/7. Think of the implications! Will we all become walking citizen journalists recording everything that we and others do? Swear, and it's on the record. Burp, and it's on the record. Everything you do and say can and will be used against you on the Web.

On the other hand, if you do want to record something, it'll be even easier. And we're all so addicted to documenting everything that I can't see us foregoing the recording equipment.

Consider my friend. She called me all gushing and aglow after her Capitol Hill event. But she had one complaint: "Nobody brought a camera," she wailed. "Not even one person. So now we've got no record of it at all."

But boy did she enjoy herself.

Hey Yelling People—I’m Standing Right Next to You

10/30/2009

Some people just can't seem to talk without yelling. You know that moment when you switch off the DVD player, and the TV blares at top volume? They're stuck in it.

I had an office across the hall from one of these people once, and I swear I knew more about what was happening in her life than my own.

I'd get the blow-by-blow on troubles with her ex-boyfriend, for example.

"WHAT'S WITH THE NAKED PICTURES OF HIMSELF HE KEEPS E-MAILING ME??" she'd roar into the phone. "I MEAN REALLY, IT'D BE ONE THING IF HE WERE HOT….WAIT, HOLD ON, GOT A WORK CALL HERE."
[Click]

"YOU FINALLY GOT MY REPLACEMENT CHAIR? 'BOUT TIME. I'M ON THE SEVENTH FLOOR. ACROSS FROM THE QUIET GIRL."
[Click]

"BUT EWWW. I MEAN THERE'S ONE PHOTO WHERE HE'S POSING ON A TRACTOR, AND IT'S LIKE WHAT THE HELL?"

I really don't want to know this. But now I've got this picture stuck in my head. Eww is right.
She hangs up. Apparently, the next call is to her plumber.

"HEY!! WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE TOILET SNAKING??"

Oh for crying out loud. Now I'm covering my ears—though, really, defense is useless. Even if both our doors are shut, it's still like she's barking in my ear. And if I put my earphones on, people sneak up behind me and scare the bejesus out of me.

Turns out there's a name for my former co-worker's malady: Voice Immodulation, as portrayed by comedian Will Ferrell in his role as State Department attaché, Jacob Silj, on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. Click here to watch a clip of his SNL Voice Immodulation segment. In it, Ferrell scolds interviewer Tina Fey for her insensitivity when she complains that he's shouting:

"I SUFFER FROM VOICE IMMODULATION TINA. I'M UNABLE TO CONTROL THE PITCH OR VOLUME OF MY VOICE…." he yells. "NUMEROUS PROMINENT AMERICANS SUFFER FROM THIS DEBILITATING DISEASE, TINA, INCLUDING THE GUY WHO PLAYED RAJ ON "WHAT'S HAPPENING" AND TENNIS GREAT PETE SAMPRAS."

I'm not sure about Sampras, but the late Billy Mays, giant of infomercial screaming (OxiClean! Orange Glo!), should definitely be on that list. In fact, all actors in advertisements should be, along with Chris Matthews, Nancy Grace, and kids' show stars Dora the Explorer and all five Backyardigans.

OK, yeah, so Will Ferrell punked us. There is no such thing as Voice Immodulation.

But in all seriousness, I think Ferrell is onto something: There's a whole lot of unnecessary shouting going on. In restaurants, in the workplace, on TV, into cellphones, on the sidewalks and subway trains—and not just by teenage girls.

And what's really triggered my shout-mograph is my four-year-old son T-Rex. I'm pretty sure I'm living with a miniature version of Billy Mays. I love him to bits, but his voice is deafening.

"MOMMY/DADDY I AM THROWING THESE PILLOWS BECAUSE I….BECAUSE THEY'RE IN SPACE AND THEY'RE GOING TO HIT THE EARTH AND BLOW UP. AND. AND I'M GOING TO MAKE A SPACESHIP OUT OF THEM. THEN I WILL CRAWL IN THIS HOLE 'CAUSE I'M A POSSUM. I'M RAJA THE POSSUM. AND I…..I WANT JUICE. MOMMEEE I WANT JUICE. MOMMEEE! MOMMEEE! I WANT JUICE!"

 You can read about what happens to me after several hours of this in my post from last week.

And here's the problem, people: I can't seem to get him to quiet down. No matter how many times I say inside voice, take it down a few notches, settle down, easy tiger, whoa there Tex, and plain old sssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh, he keeps up this earsplitting delivery.

 I tried looking for advice on the Web, but there isn't much out there.

The closest thing I could find—and it isn’t close at all, really—is Pragmatic Language Disorder, in which people say the wrong thing at the wrong time with inappropriate voice modulation and body language. I’m not saying T-Rex isn’t capable of this—he’s a kid, after all, and kids do that sort of thing—but it’s not his issue.

(It’s more characteristic of the socially inept adult who says at an intimate Thanksgiving gathering, “You know there’s gelatin in that pecan pie you made, in the marshmallow. That’s animal hooves you know. I don’t EAT that!”)

No, T-Rex has a basic volume problem. And I’m wondering, was I like this as a kid? Surely I was a quiet, sweet angel. I vaguely remember my parents shushing my sister and me now and again, but it couldn’t have been often, right? I’m sure we listened and immediately dialed it down.

Hey, whatever it takes. I’d just like to nip this in the bud while T-Rex is a kid, so that he doesn’t end up with full-blown Voice Immodulation, so that he doesn’t become an office yeller. Not only do I not want him driving everyone else around him to tears, I don’t want him broadcasting intimate details of his personal life to his office-mates. He’ll have the Internet for that.

Dispatch from Migraine Lane: What Really Causes a Headache?

10/22/2009

"I wanna be, your SLEDGEHAMMER!" my husband is belting out over Peter Gabriel in the kitchen. He's in there doing something useful, like caulking, or—I don't know—gluing the windows shut.

Me?

I'm sprawled on the sofa with a headache, feeling beat-up as the Public Option.

So I shouldn't begrudge him the singing, but…

"Oh let me be your SLEDGEHAMMER. This will be my TES-timony...."

Just what you need after a workday has kicked you in the head. And now, of course, the three-year-olds join in.

T-Rex stands on the arm of the sofa, bellows, "Momeeeee, Yucky-Man's gonna get yooooooo!" He's acting out the "Super Heroes vs. Super Villains" episode of the Backyardigans, which is blasting in the background. I knew we were in for this when he mastered the volume button on the remote.

"T-Rex, INSIDE voice please."

"Red alert. Danger! Red alert. Danger!" he screeches, and launches himself at my head.

"Ouch! T-Rex!"

"SLEDGE!" sings my husband.

"Mommeee, I did a poopoo and a peepee," trills Punk from his potty station in front of the TV. Oh fantastic.
 

I get off the sofa to investigate Punk's output, and wish I'd stayed put. On the biohazard index, this is a level five, Code Red, and at this point, so is my headache. Really, this is a job for the EPA, with all their special equipment and stuff.

"Moommeeee, I can help. Yucky-Man to the rescue!" yells T-Rex. He runs over and slams into the potty, very nearly setting off a toxic explosion.

 "SLEDGE!" from the kitchen.

Well this is fun. What I really want to do is let out a primal scream. But that wouldn't be good role-modeling of the inside-voice thing. Just another night on Migraine Lane.

It's all a hazy blur, but we eventually pack the kids off to bed. I crash on the sofa, arm draped over my forehead, and contemplate my headache.

I've got a chicken-or-egg question: Did my headache already exist—in a low-grade way—and then just get massively accelerated by the kids? Or was I susceptible after a long day at work, and them whomp, the kids brought it on?

As a cyberchondriac, I must, of course, look this up. But not right now. Right now, I. Just. Need. To. Sleep…….

The next morning, the headache is still back there, faintly knocking on the inside of my skull. It's what my parents call a "Lurking"—a hint of headache that should promptly be killed with a handful of Advil. Which I proceed to do.

Unfortunately, the Advil just nudges the Lurking a little further back in my head. It's not going away. So I go online. Time to conquer this thing with information.

To sum it up, there are three major headache types:

Tension—More often isolated than chronic, they cause mild to moderate, dispersed pain. The head feels like it's in a vise.

Cluster—Aptly named, they usually stab, like a hot poker, at one side of the face. The eye is often involved, and attacks tend to recur.

Migraine—Severe and chronic, they often herald their arrival with auras, which are flashes of light, blind spots, or limb tingling. Sufferers are sensitive to noise and light.

As far as I can tell, I don't get any one of these. I get a combination of the first and third. Tension headaches but with the noise and light sensitivity. Migraines but without the auras.

And it turns out that my medication of choice, Advil (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID), is recommended for migraines but not tension headaches. In fact, NSAIDs can actually cause tension headaches if overused. ?!

Where the heck does this leave me? I should take Advil but I shouldn't take Advil.
 

Seems to me that my only option here is to stop the headache before it starts. So back to the chicken-or-egg question of cause—click here for a Discovery Health video on the range of triggers.
 

For tension headaches, the origin is largely fatigue, stress and the chemical changes it sets off in the brain. For migraines, the list is longer: stress and fatigue, too, but also hormones (estrogen fluctuations with menstrual cycles, in particular), certain foods or drinks, certain smells or…..(drumroll please) NOISE.

So the answer to the question of headache causation is the chicken and the egg. Stress, hormones, foods—and yes, my boys' noise—can plant the seed of a headache, and they can also make it worse.

But some other key triggers are missing from the list. I'm thinking of petitioning the American Headache Society to add them. These include small boys hurling themselves at your head. Blaring children's programs. Potty incidents that go from bad to worse. Offers of "help" from three-year-olds.

Oh, and the song "Sledgehammer."

Quick, When Did Your Kid Start Talking? Forgotten, Haven't You?

10/15/2009

It’s early morning. Zoned, I shuffle into our neighborhood coffee shop in search of caffeine. Next to me, twin toddlers scarf their parents’ pancakes, waggling small fat feet squeezed into Robeez moccasins.

 
“Mmm, mmmm, mmm,” they grunt for more, waving puffy hands at their parents' plates.

I watch the parents struggle to keep one toddler off the table and the other from upending the flower vase. And I immediately feel a sense of kinship. I tell them I also have twin boys, though mine aren’t identical.

“Oh my God!” says the dad, his hair syrupy and spiky. “When did they start talking? Ours are 20 months and nothing! Look at them. They just grunt. We have no idea what they’re asking for!"

He is wild-eyed, manic—with that just-a-few-shrinks-short-of-inpatient-admission look that's characteristic of parents with two toddlers under age two.

 
"Well." I say. Well what? I realize I have no memory of my twins' first words and what they said when.

Nothing whatsoever. Total blank.

But here I am, getting expectant, even pleading, looks from this mom and dad.

"Sooooooo, your twins are 20 months. Great age. They're really coming along." I stall. "Oh, I'm sure it was right around this age that mine started talking. Any day now your guys will be talking so much you won't be able to get them to shut up [snort after lame joke]."

Mom looks doubtful. Dad looks grumpy. "Well I sure hope it's soon. We aren’t mind-readers."

I head out with my coffee, and now this is bothering me. How could I have forgotten when my kids started talking? For crying out loud, I can't even remember their first words. This is pathetic. What kind of parent am I?

OK. Focus. Focus.  Somehow I'm pretty sure the twins were talking before 20 months. But I didn't want to say that to those poor, frazzled parents.

So, before 20 months. Focus, focus. Still getting nothing. Just a blur of respiratory ailments, profuse green snot, potty-training misfires, peed-on sheets, projectile vomit, heated phone calls with day-care providers, traumatic haircuts, and assorted food-throwing incidents.

OK, this is bad. It's like I have complete amnesia about perhaps the most hallowed aspect of kids' development. I thought memory was meant to be kind. Aren't you supposed to forget all the bad stuff and just remember the warm fuzzies, like baby's first words?

 
I've seen studies that show moms with small kids aren’t nearly as gung ho about child-raising as moms with older and grown kids. Maybe the positive-memory amnesia is just temporary and returns with gusto once the kids are older?

Time to get on Google. First I do a search on parents and memory because I need to find out if this amnesia is normal. Perhaps the raising of small children, much like giving birth, brings on a sort of amnesia to ensure propagation of the species. This theory would seem to be backed by certain grandparents who have completely forgotten how to change a diaper (for the record, my mother is a SIGNIFICANT exception to this).

But wait. That argument doesn’t work because it would mean parents only forget the negative stuff. My issue is I only forget the positive stuff.  Either way, my Web search reveals zero support for my parental-amnesia theory.

My next stop is an old blog I used to keep when the kids were six to 22 months olds. Why didn't I think of this earlier?

 
Here I have a record of their happy milestones!

The first thing I notice:  When the twins were 17 months, I was obsessing—and I mean FREAKING OUT—that they didn’t have 15 words yet.  For Pete’s sake, that totally wasn’t worth it.  Because by the time they were 18 months, I was all, “They say ‘bah bah’ for baby, bye-bye, and ball: so cute!” and “OMG, T-Rex said ‘sheeeoooo.’ His first word, shoe!” He has always been obsessed with feet; but that’s another topic entirely.

I mentioned that Punk’s first word also started with “sh” but isn’t FCC-approved, so we were furiously trying to rework it to “shirt.”

Two weeks later I was just tickled that T-Rex was calling his brother “Doo Doo.” (Glad that one didn’t stick.) And then, by the time they were 22 months, they pretty much had 50 words. I actually listed them all. (Did I happen to mention that I’m obsessive?)

Now this would have been good information to pass on to those stressed-out parents in the coffee shop: That I was also freaking out about the language thing when our twins were their twins’ age, and then “poof,” in a matter of weeks they had partial words. Then full words.

But after looking at my old blog, I think the timeline wouldn’t be my focus at all. What I’d want to say to those parents now is, write it down. Write down every articulation. Because if you don’t record when your kids utter those first syllables, those first words, you’re going to forget.

Child Growth Charts—Just Another Means of Making Parents Feel Like Doofuses

10/07/2009

It's a universal law of siblings that if one likes a particular food, the other detests it. My three-year-olds are no exception.

This makes preparing any meal for them a complex mathematical equation, and I'm no math genius. Just ask my friends. Ever since I lost my tip-calculator cheat-sheet, I'm a wreck when the restaurant check comes.

But there I stand in the kitchen each night at dinner time. Head on the fridge. Calculating.

"Now, let's see. If I give them carrots, Punk will eat them but not T-Rex. Better throw in corn or T-Rex won't get a vegetable. Wait. Last time he didn't eat his corn. Crud. Well, they both like hot dogs. If I put sauerkraut on there, that would count as a vegetable, right? What am I thinking? No WAY either of them would eat sauerkraut. Plus Punk doesn't like the bun. Or ketchup directly on the wiener. Has to be on the side…."

It goes on like this until I finally hit a combo that will render each kid roughly enough food. Then I act fast, before I forget it.

But if one of them throws off my equation—like Punk did last night when he sent back his chicken and strawberries, yes, strawberries!—it sends me into a tizzy.

I'm all: Oh no, he didn't get his protein, or his fruit, or his vegetable. He's going to be malnourished. He's going to get rickets or something. Maybe scurvy. Or worse, pellagra. Like that case I read about in Deadly Medical Mysteries, where orphans down South went crazy and spasmodic from lack of niacin.

 
Oh Lord, has Punk got a niacin deficiency? He’s losing more baby fat every day. Aside from the old-man potbelly, he's getting downright skeletal. Any minute Child Services is going to haul me off for starving my child.

But the real test comes in the pediatrician's office, when they drag out those height/weight charts with all the percentiles showing how your kid relates to the norm. You know the ones with the tiny sets of numbers down both sides and a bunch of squiggly lines in between.

One glance, and I get flashbacks to the part of high school geometry where they lost me. And then the pediatrician jabs her finger somewhere in the jumble and declares, "Your kid is right THERE."

I'm sorry, where?

All these charts do is confuse the pants off most parents, who, according to a recent study, are apparently as math-challenged as I am. Only a third of parents in the study could accurately pinpoint their kid's age, weight, and percentile on the charts.

 
And there's another big problem. The charts fuel what I call parental inadequacy and slacker-phobia syndrome (PISS)—a constant, maddening fear that your poor parenting is causing your child to fall behind.

Extreme sufferers will resort to bribing whoever they can to get their kids into a Cadillac pre-K with Spanish immersion. Otherwise, their kid will surely never graduate junior high.

And these growth charts? These growth charts only perpetuate PISS. Sitting in the pediatrician's office, I tell her, "Look, just give me the quick translation. Are my kids above normal? Below normal? What?"

She won't give me a straight answer.

"Punk is above the 95th percentile for height, 75th to 90th for weight," she says, impassively. "T-Rex is in the 50th percentile for height, 50th to 75th for weight."

"But what does this mean? Is Punk going to be some sort of towering giant? And his weight is way lower. Should I be feeding him loads of cheesy grits or something? Not that he'd eat them."

"And T-Rex? Why is he so much shorter? Is it the asthma treatments? Don't those steroids stunt growth? It's because he doesn't eat his mac 'n cheese or red beans isn't it? Punk always does. I mean it's great that T-Rex likes strawberries, but where's he getting his protein, you know?"

The pediatrician just looks at me.

Stoic.

"The growth charts indicate that both your kids are on a normal growth track relative to their previous readings and the norms for their age group," she parrots.

There's the rub. She just summed up my whole issue with growth charts.

These measures weren't intended to be a PISS-inducing, standardized-test-like gauge of how your kid stacks up. They're meant to guide doctors on whether your kid's individual growth is standard, helping them ensure there isn't a huge discrepancy between height and weight, for example, or a sudden leveling off in height.

So my question is, why even show them to parents? Just tell parents what they need to know: that their kid is or is not growing normally. Done.

Parents already suffer enough neuroses about their children's development. And now we have Web sites out there exploiting the growth-chart paranoia; one site, which I won't name, uses the measures to peddle human growth hormone.

Kid too short? Buy our product.

Blagh.

I, for one, am going to forget I ever heard of these wretched charts. Just doing my daily number crunching on which kid will eat what is math enough for me.

My Kid is Talking to a Tree, But He Ain’t Got Nothin’ on Me

10/01/2009

Muns. Case. Corny. And She.

These were the names of my imaginary friends. At least that's what my mother claims. I'm not certain where I got the names from, but I suspect it had something to do with my father complaining that people were nutcases or songs were corny.
 

Not sure about She but, given that I am one, that's probably its origin.

But don't worry. I'm not still hanging with my four made-up pals (at least not in public). We were tight, carrying on long conversations back when I was three, four, five years old. Whenever someone knocked on the door, I'd announce that it was one of these four characters, and my mother would play along and answer the door.

 
My aunt had similar delusions. When she was a kid, she used to play with pretend buddies Panicen and Pee. Panicen even used to get her own placemat, knife, and fork at the dinner table. Poor Pee didn't because she was only a baby.

Given this odd family history, I shouldn't have been surprised when my three- (almost four-) year-old son Punk recently claimed that the wall stole his cookie—or when this past weekend he struck up a conversation with a tree.

Yes. A tree.

It was pretty basic, as conversations go.

"Hi tree. How are you?"

According to Punk, the tree said it was fine, and, in turn, asked after Punk's health.

So while my younger twin, T-Rex, is asking endless questions of me, my older one is interrogating a tree.

Now, I am all for the boys getting in touch with nature, which is challenge enough in our asphalt 'hood. But chatting with inanimate objects? I'm just not sure. I mean, if an adult was seen yakking with a shrub, there would likely be some speculation that they're a couple tacos short of a combination platter.

(Plant freaks who name their houseplants and talk to them to coax growth get a free pass. And you know who you are.)

But, being Punk's mother, I, of course know that he has no shortage of tacos; heck, he's got extras. I should be more worried about me and my aunt—we actually talked to stuff that doesn’t exist. So, time to do some investigating.

According to old-school thinking among psychologists and psychiatrists, imaginary friends are rare and could be cause for concern, possibly indicating problems like insecurity, timidity, and withdrawal. Even the famous Dr. Spock advised seeking help from mental health professionals if a child was too immersed in pretend friends.

Popular movies have stoked this sort of thinking. First there was Drop Dead Fred, who haunts a troubled girl into adulthood. Then came Don't Look Under the Bed, where the imaginary friend turns into the Boogey Man. And then followed Hide and Seek, in which an evil figment of a girl's imagination goads her into bloody violence.

But in the world of child development, scientists' thinking has done a 180. Imaginary friends are common—about 30 to 60 percent of people report having had them between ages three and nine—and they also benefit kids, find psychologists like Marjorie Taylor and Stephanie M. Carlson. Among other things, pretend buddies can:

• Fuel kids' creativity and imagination.
• Help kids become better conversationalists and more empathetic and emotionally responsive.
• Foster narrative skills that aid kids' reading later on.

That said, we parents shouldn't be duped by imaginary friends either. I know how much T-Rex likes to blame his various messes on Punk; just imagine how handy an imaginary friend could be for that sort of scapegoating.

"No mommy, that wasn't me who pressed the alarm button on your key-ring and called the cops. That was the Bellycoaster [a T-Rex invention who surfaces when tackling his parents]."

Uh. No. Imaginary friends may great for stimulating the imagination, but they won't be taking the fall in our house. I'll be happy to open the door for them, though, or set out an extra plate at the table.

My biggest reservation: If either of my kids gets into imaginary friends as much as I did, to the point of giving four different ones goofy names, they might be at risk for turning into as big a whack-job as their mother. God forbid, they might even try to make a living as a writer. My one comfort is that at least neither one is left-handed.

What's 'Endangered'?—You Have to Get Up Close and Personal With It to Get It

09/24/2009

The balding, nerdy-scientist guy on TV was doing a love dance with a whooping crane. He ran alongside it, chest puffed out, bobbing, weaving, throwing sticks, and well…whooping. The bird did the same back to him. If she'd had hair she would have been flipping it.

 

It was clear—this was chemistry. Frat guys across the country would be envious.

 

Watching it with my three-year-olds the other night, I had to ask, "What the ffff…I mean heck, is going on?"

Cut to the next clip, from 1982: Johnny Carson was asking this same scientist, the ornithologist George Archibald, pretty much the same question. Archibald answered that male whooping cranes did nothing for his crane-love, Tex. Only Archibald's mating dance could jangle her hormones intro producing eggs, one of which hatched into a male chick they called “Gee Whiz,” the first whooping crane ever born in captivity.

It was a victory that helped bring back the species from the brink of extinction, and the reason why Archibald was featured on this Science Channel program, "Jane Goodall’s Heroes."

Still, noted the narrator, though the whooping crane's numbers have grown to about 400 today, from 15 in the 1940s, the bird remains endangered.

One of my three-year-old twins, Punk, turned his head, looked at me. "Danger?" he asked.

"Not danger. Endangered." I was glad he was watching.

I've been putting on educational TV for grown-ups lately, trying to swap it in for some of the screaming kid TV that’s driving me and my husband up a tree. It's been hit or miss, so this was good.

But now Punk asked the killer question.

"What’s…N’dangered?"

Oh man. How do you define endangered to a three-year-old?

"Uh. Well. It's when a species of animals or plants that lives on Earth…gets in danger of…not existing anymore. Like it might be gone. Soon."

Response from Punk: Blank stare.

Well of course. Why would he get it? He has no context.

To Punk, "wildlife" is the sparrow or pigeon he sees on a city street during the walk to school. Luckily he hasn’t seen any of the alley rats. Yet.

As a kid, my context was different, rich. For one thing, I was born—and until age nine—raised in South Africa. For another, my dad is a wildlife nut, and were always road-tripping to one exotic African nature park or another. Half the wildlife documentaries I see on TV, I think, yeah, I was there.

And we lived in Cape Town, a city right on the tip of Africa that, with its jagged mountain peaks, cliff-side coastal drives, and sprawling white beaches, is arguably one of the most awe-inspiring places on the globe.

This is going to sound disgusting. But on an average weekend morning there my father would say, "So what should we do today? Go to the beach? Climb a mountain? Tour a vineyard? Drive to Cape Point and see the fynbos [indigenous South African plant life]? Go to Boulders and cavort with the penguins?"

Tough decision. Somehow we always managed to choose, and it was always an adventure.

But one day, the adventure was different, and for me, life-changing.

The night before, my father announced we are going on a quest to find…THE RED DISA. He had me right there. I mean, the name alone is right out of film noir.

What was it? A flower. But not any flower. A rare and endangered flower.A tri-petal orchid whose habitat was being depleted by agriculture and development, but that could still be found in the craggy crevices of Table Mountain, Cape Town’s flat-topped natural wonder.

The next day, by God, we were going to climb the mountain and capture ourselves a red disa—on film. I stepped out in our back garden, looked at the mountain jutting straight up to the sky, its sandstone edifice ghost-lit from below. Finding a tiny little flower up there seemed hands-down impossible. Which made it all the more exciting.

It’s about a four-hour haul to the top on rocky, crumbling trails, populated, as it turned out, by puff adders (grumpy, poisonous snakes), among other ominous creatures. Didn't matter. Aside from pausing every so often to swoon at the ridiculously gorgeous view of Table Bay below, we were focused.

And then one of us—don't remember who but it had to be my father; he would have known where to look—spotted it. A positively blemish-free specimen of The Pride of Table Mountain. Nodding in the breeze. Basking in a beam of sunlight that infiltrated the shadows.

We were quiet. Transfixed. We just stood there and watched as my father photographed it from every angle.

And I wondered, why has it come to this? That a flower gets so wiped out that it retreats to the crannies of a mountain too harsh and rugged too build on. It's about as pathetic as a middle-aged man doing gymnastics in hopes of coaxing a bird to reproduce.

Right in front of me was the definition of endangered. I didn't need any more explanation than that.

So now, I need to do the same for Punk. Can anyone tell me—where can I can take him on a quest to find a whooping crane in its natural habitat?

Don't Treat My Baby's Asthma Like It's a Zit on a Teenager

09/18/2009

Spend a morning in the ER of an average city hospital, and you'll likely see a lot of asthma. I sure did, recently, when I rushed my three-year old, T-Rex, to a local D.C. hospital for an acute asthma attack. He was wheezing and panting, and I couldn't drive there fast enough (yes, I made an illegal left on red).

By the time we got to the ER's intake tech, I was freaking out so much I was panting almost as much as T-Rex.

“HOLD up,” said the tech, typing languidly. She cast a sideways glance, sighed. “Let me guess. Asthma?”

“Yes, he was coughing all night and it just kept getting worse and…”

“HOLD up. I know I know. All day it’s been all asthma all the time around here.”

She wasn’t kidding. We were herded into the ER’s sizable asthma unit, where a nurse resembling Frau Blücher from Young Frankenstein strapped a mask onto T-Rex’s face, flipped the nebulizer switch, and marched off.

Over the next two hours, Frau Blücher dispatched a steady stream of hacking kids to similar treatment. Meanwhile, three doctors on the unit spent most of their time pecking on computers. Occasionally, one of them would scurry up, prod T-Rex, mumble something, and sprint back to the doc station for more typing.

It took cart-wheels and shrieking like Howard Dean, but I finally managed to flag down one of the doctors during his drive-by. In the nanosecond I knew I had, I asked if they were going to give T-Rex systemic steroids, which go into the bloodstream instead of just the lungs and had stopped a previous attack like this in its tracks.

He eyed me suspiciously and blathered something about checking with the other doctors. It was right about then that I realized we were on the ER asthma assembly line—a 24/7, mechanized operation—and weren’t supposed to break protocol.

 
Now, I could make a number of statements about what this automation says about our health-care system. I could lament the fact that doctors spend most of their time doing data entry for legal CYA, instead of treating patients like people. I could note that some nurses are so jaded by patients using the ER as primary care that they’ve forgotten their bedside manners. But. I’m not going to go there.

So, here’s where I’m going: It’s sad that asthma has become so common that ERs treat it like it’s no big thing—“all asthma, all the time, just give 'em the regular treatment.” Asthma rates have more than doubled in the past 25 years. And as incidence has grown, so has casualness. But the exact opposite should be happening.

 
First, we need more emphasis on stopping asthma before it starts. Studies show that urban kids are at higher risk for the disease because of more exposure to irritants like pollution, cockroaches, and indoor dust. But they also show that in neighborhoods with more trees, fewer kids have asthma. So let’s plant more trees and cut pollution (think walking, public transportation, and carbon caps)!

Second, when kids do have a serious asthma attack, let’s not treat it like it’s no big whoop. Actually it is. Too many people—5,000 each year—die from this disease. And kids who were preemies (like T-Rex) are at even higher risk for problems.
 

So if you’re a health-care professional, I don’t care if you’re seeing T-Rex on Jupiter or in an ER, please take the bleeping time to find out his medical history. And please don't treat his asthma attack like it’s a zit on a teenager.

Because, getting back to his story (and not to sound too vindicated here, but hey, why not), the systemic steroids I requested turned out to be exactly what he needed. It took several foot-stomping trips to the doc station to make sure they were ordered, and to then verify that they'd been given.

But, along with the hour-long nebulizer treatment with rescue meds, the steroids eased T-Rex's breathing after just two hours. Of course, we were kept in the ER another two hours, no doubt also for legal CYA. I tried to warn the staff that this was not a good idea because once T-Rex is bored, you are screwed.

 
They just ignored me; I don't think they got it. But they sure did later, when T-Rex began harassing other patients, using his chair as a trampoline, and swinging on his heart-monitor line. I didn’t do anything. I just waited.

"Do NOT jump off your chair," scolded Frau Blücher as she strode past.

What T-Rex did next was truly masterful. I really have to hand it to him.

He climbed right back on his chair, wound himself up for take-off, then yelled full-volume at the doc station as he jumped: "LET ME OUT OF HERE!  NOW!!!"

We were discharged with in five minutes, steroids refill in hand.

Questions, Questions, Questions—Curiosity Killed the Parents But Fed the Kid

09/10/2009

Remember the Volvo commercial from a couple of years back, where the little girl talks nonstop—from when dad straps her in to when he pulls onto the road? 

That’s my three-year-old T-Rex. Just yesterday, in the car, the conversation went like this: "Mommy, I like you because I'm bigger than you." To which I responded, "Actually, no you're not." And to which my husband added, "Yet."

There was the briefest of pauses, then, "Um. I'm a small boy. I can't play music like big people. I only play teeny-tiny musical instruments."

While I was puzzling over that one, he launched into a stream of logistical questions, delivered staccato. "Vere are we going mommy? Vy is it taking so long? Vy is the car moving?"

"Because…..because….because the wheels are going 'round and 'round."

To quote Bill the Cat, "Ack."

Another category of challenging is the abstract questions—the ones three-year-olds really aren't equipped to know the answers to because they don't have, well, life experience. A case in point. I was driving the kids back from daycare recently, relaxing to some Simon & Garfunkel after a punishing workday. "Kathy’s Song" was playing:

“And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

….And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.”

T-Rex piped up from the back seat, “Vy is this man singing like that about rain mommy?”

“Uh. Because he’s sad, hon.”

“But vy is he sad?”

“Um. Because his lady love went away.”

“But vy did that lady go away from that man?”

Ack.

I related this incident to my parents, and my father’s response was, “You should have told him it’s because she went off and got [censored] with some other guy.” Strangely, I was reminded of the grandfather in the movie "Little Miss Sunshine."

Anyway. You get the idea. T-Rex asks a lot of questions, many of which I can't answer adequately. So, now I'm the one asking the questions:  Is all his questioning normal? And when he asks the same question over and over, am I supposed to be OK with that?

Of course, I went surfing the Internet for answers, and the resounding answer to both questions is, "Yes!" When kids ask questions it's a good thing, the experts say, because:

● It helps them think critically. Parents, of course, want to answer correctly. But not all questions have a definite answer, and discussing children's questions can help teach them that. They can learn that different ways of asking questions prompt different answers. And when answers aren't clear, they can learn to dig deeper.

● It fosters persistence. Endless questions can get irritating, especially when the same ones are repeated. But shutting them down can send a message that it's not good to keep asking. And in the adult world, pushiness often pays.

● It stems from curiosity, which is linked to good mental health. In the field of positive psychology—what makes life satisfying and meaningful to people—researchers say curiosity is a key indicator of people's success and well-being.

One of the leading researchers in the area, psychologist Todd Kashdan of George Mason University, maintains that curiosity is key to growth. His studies find that the more curious people are, the higher their levels of confidence, autonomy, and spiritual satisfaction.

Curiosity also acts as an antidote to anxiety – opening minds to new people and experiences and superseding self-doubt and fear. It can also keep addiction at bay. And it even helps stave off dementia, not that that's something T-Rex needs to worry about yet.

This all makes sense, but I'm not convinced that curiosity is always good. And Kashdan does acknowledge that it has its dark side. For example, you can be too curious about other people, intruding in their lives and gossiping relentlessly. Keep pressing them on private matters, and they may start making things up.

I think that's what Eugene O'Neill was getting at in the play "Diff'rent" through his character Benny, who said, "Curiosity killed a cat! Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies."

But when it comes to questions about the world—how it works, why the sky is blue, what a vacuum cleaner does, why airplanes leave vapor trails, why mommy paints her toenails, why our dog Simba is so smelly, and why the car is moving—apparently a kid can't ask too many of them.

So I'm bracing myself for many more question-and-answer sessions with T-Rex. But I'm ready to turn more of the questions around on him and to suggest doing research if I don't know the answers.

I'm also seeking a bottomless well of patience—and the energy to explain that some things just don't have answers. Like why did the lady in Kathy's Song go away? Unless Paul Simon is willing to take a call from a three-year-old, I don't think we'll ever know.