If I Were President There’d Be Child Care at Work

08/21/2009

It’s what every new, work-at-office mom dreads more than anything. More than the high-stakes PowerPoint presentation that freezes after five minutes. The crabby colleague kerfuffle. The string of reply-all e-mails that’s lost its beginning.

The grim reality of it sets in when, right in the rosy glow of second trimester, right after you’re finally done with the puking, your mother says, “So, it’s about time you started researching child care, huh?”

Oh crud. Oh no.

Oh yes, there’s no way around it. You’re faced with the dreaded prospect of Finding Good Childcare (FGC).

You put out feelers to your female colleagues with kids, and the news is not good. “Yeah, good luck with that,” is a typical response. Fellow moms are sympathetic, for sure, but also war-torn.  They, typically, have been battling with FGC for years—trying this and that, missing work, and worrying about being mommy-tracked.

Consider the options: You can hire a nanny for the price of another mortgage, especially when you add the insurance and vacation time that’s becoming standard.

Or you can try for an au pair, if you have the extra bedroom, a chunk of change, and the willingness to bet on someone who might think taking your child to watch beer pong is a great idea.

Then there are the nanny shares with other parents, which can save you money but mean a lot of schedule juggling. And if the nanny gets sick or quits? Whoops, you’re SOL.

That leaves one other FGC option: daycare. Ugh. We're talking staff shortages and germs passed around like hot sauce at a chili cook-off. And every time your kid picks up one of those germs, you have to miss work (more on this later).

Another problem with daycare is the mad daily dash to drop off and pick up the kids—and if you're a minute late to collect them, you get fined!

Weighing these dismal options, a good many moms (and dads) decide to stay home with the kids. The benefits are obvious: Guaranteed quality child care. Bonding time. No worries about germs, sick days, traffic, fines, or beer pong.

I'm not saying there aren't also some…issues with staying home. The more time you spend with children under five, the higher your risk of saying things like, "don't spill that" and "no snacks before dinner" to your friends. But the main problem is money.  Many families can't afford to have one adult stay at home, even if that spouse does contract work or runs a side business. In up to 70 percent of families, both adults work outside the home.

So, here comes my pitch. (Drumroll please.) I propose that all employers offer on-site child care. It's the perfect solution: Parents would no longer obsess about FGC because their kids' caregivers would be in the same building.

Gone would be the frantic day-care runs and sick-kid days. The employer's child-care center could nurse sick children in a separate sick ward. And imagine the reduction in parents' guilt about working. They now could see their kids throughout the day. Heck, they could even have lunch with them.

But I know you're thinking this plan is whacked. So let me counter some of the obvious objections:

• Co-workers won't want annoying kids running the halls. Fair enough. But no worries because the kids would be in a separate area of the building. It could even be sound-proofed. And parents would have to visit them at the center, not the other way around.

• It would cost too much. Actually it could cost less, but it would likely take government backing in the form of incentives or subsidies to employers and cooperatives or exchanges. (I'm not saying government-run—for those worried about more rowdy townhall meetings.) Employers could also help fund it as a retention strategy—just like they do retirement and health benefits. And employees using it would pay into it.

• You can't have sick kids around healthy kids. You wouldn't. Sick kids would go straight to the sick ward, where they'd be nursed back to health. Meanwhile, mom and dad could be right around the corner to check on the kid and go to meetings.

Some companies are already doing on-site child care, without any external subsidies. They include AstraZeneca, Allstate, and Aflac, and I applaud them.

Seriously, workplace child care would have made all the difference to me over the past three years. Just this past week my husband and I took turns missing work when our three-year-old twins spiked fevers and puked repeatedly. Then daycare barred T-Rex from returning without a doctor's note because of an invisible rash and "swelling." (Personally, I just think they wanted a vacation.)

Stuff was blowing up at work the whole time that I had a toddler intermittently ralphing, spraying sugar all over the kitchen, and shooting hoops with a snow globe. Plus I worried I might be seen as playing the sick-kid card.

That's when I started dreaming about child care at work. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Who's with me?

Bitten to Bits No More—Mosquitoes Away!

05/27/2009

A couple of days ago the kids came home from daycare with welts on their legs. Well, T-Rex’s were really on his feet.  He looked like he was growing a sixth toe on each of them.

They were bug bites – I know, no big deal on the face of it. But the sight of them set off PTSD flashbacks from two years ago, when I got a call from daycare that went something like this:

“Hello, Ms. LAW!?”
“Yes, hello??”
“Yeah, um, your one twin…..hey, AlexANDER , STOP THAT!!! Stop spitting on Tanya like that. I SAID…”
“Sorry, what??”
“Yeah it’s T-Rex. His leg. It looks weird.”
“Whaaaaaaaat? What do you mean it looks weird?”
“It’s, like, the size of Alaska. Well, compared to the other one anyway.”
“Ugh. Unnnh???!!!  I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
{Click}

It turned out a mosquito bite on Trevor’s leg was infected, and his leg was indeed swollen to an alarming size, with the skin all stretched and shiny and his bite oozing gunk. I dropped his brother off with his dad and rushed him to nearby Children’s Hospital, where we waited in the emergency room with dozens of other hyper kids and beleaguered parents for what was probably two hours but seemed like 20.

I was freaking out, to put it mildly.

I knew the reason T-Rex’s bite was infected was because he’d scratched it – and all that nasty bacterial gunk under his fingernails had crept way in there. And that could only mean one thing: necrotizing fasciitis, AKA flesh-eating bacteria!

By the time the doctor finally saw us, I was in knots.

 “Just look at the SIZE of his leg,” I practically wailed. “It’s….it’s…not flesh-eating bacteria is it?” [I was groveling a bit here.] “Or, is it just cellulitis?”

Cellulitis, I knew, is also an infection caused by bacteria infiltrating the skin, but the difference is it’s still in the shallower layers of the skin (http://health.discovery.com/encyclopedias/illnesses.html?article=288). When the infection spreads to the deep layer of skin called the fascial lining, the bacteria can begin to consume the flesh—hence the name, “flesh-eating” bacteria (http://www.nnff.org/).

So, the key is quick diagnosis and treatment, which T-Rex’s doctor emphasized in her response.

“It’s cellulitis,” she said, looking me square in the eye. “But it’s a good thing you brought him in right away because we need to make sure it doesn’t get any worse.”

They put him on the hardcore antibiotic clindamycin--wipes EVERYTHING out, according to my pharmacist sister--by IV every 8 hours, and he did NOT like that needle, believe me. But the most disturbing part was that they enclosed him in a cage-like thing, supposedly a crib.

 
His grandmother no sooner got word of this than she drove down from West Virginia, no doubt exceeding the speed limit. And it’s a good thing too, because by the next day, T-Rex escaped from the cage thing and began terrorizing all the other poor pediatric patients on the wing. He tore around pulling on IVs, stealing stuffed animals, and sneaking up on medical personnel, then shrieking. We weren’t surprised when they released him early.

Seriously, though, I do not want a repeat of that episode this summer. And I also have a nagging concern about West Nile Virus, that flu-like illness spread when a mosquito bites an infected crow, then a person (http://health.discovery.com/encyclopedias/illnesses.html?article=3386).

So what can parents do to protect their kids (and themselves)?

● Use bug repellent. Apply it to children yourself, and don’t let them get it on their hands, which will likely next go in their mouths. The effective ingredients to look for are DEET (N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide or N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide), Picaridin (KBR 3023), or Oil of Lemon Eucaplyptus (p-menthane 3,8-diol), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But CDC has some caveats:
--Oil of Lemon Eucaplyptus shouldn’t be used on children under 3.
--DEET shouldn’t be used at concentrations greater than 30 percent in infants and children. It’s also not recommended for children under two months old.
--Picaridin is less irritating than DEET and overall appears as safe as DEET, but there has not yet been rigorous research on its safety in children.

● Check your yard. Mosquitoes like to breed in pools of water, so empty any watering cans, buckets, or tires where water may have collected. Outdoors sprays can be very toxic; a less toxic route is the over-the-counter product “Mosquito Dunks” (Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, a bacterial mosquito larvicide) for use in stubborn damp areas like roof gutters and ditches.

● Keep kids’ nails short. The longer nails get, the more dirt collects underneath them, and the more damage kids do when they scratch bug bites. The combination can be cellulitis-inducing, so cut them often.

We learned the hard way with T-Rex. I now view all mosquitoes as toddler kamikazes. I catch a glimpse of those tiger-striped legs, hear that ominous buzz, and “whack,” another goes one down—and T-Rex’s leg stays its proper size.

What Dirty Air Is Doing to Our—Cough—Lungs

05/20/2009

When I was a kid, my parents used to play a song from the ’60s that always stopped me short.  It was the Tom Lehrer number, “Pollution,” and it blew my most basic expectation that our air and water are clean.

Here’s a highlight:

“Just go out for a breath of air,
And you’ll be ready for Medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill.
If the hoods don’t get you, the monoxide will.

Pollution, pollution,
Wear a gas mask and a veil.
Then you can breathe, long as you don’t inhale.”

Sure enough, at age nine, during a family trip to Pittsburgh, I woke everyone at midnight with an explosive asthma attack. My father slammed shut the sliding door, uttering oaths about the cloud of stink that had permeated our hotel room. He seemed to take it as a personal affront. “This city’s air is so filthy, we’re being forced to freeze in the confounded air conditioning,” he muttered. “So much for the big effort to clean it up.”

This was the late ’70s, around the time Pittsburgh got tired of bad publicity about its lung-busting smog and started cracking down on polluters. Nationwide, regulators put controls on emissions from industrial plants and vehicles, and appeared to get results. By 1985, Pittsburgh had cleaned up its air enough to be rated America’s most livable city in Rand McNally's "Places Rated Almanac."

Fast forward to the present, and it’s déjà vu all over again—except in Washington, D.C. This spring rolls around, and my three-year-old son T-Rex gets hit with nonstop asthma attacks. We’ve no sooner turned off the lights, and he’s wheezing, coughing, and spluttering. It’s so bad that the urgent-care doctors have prescribed a combination of Pulmicort (the preventive med) and Albuterol (the “rescue” med) four times a day (for more on asthma and its treatment, check out this guide: http://health.discovery.com/centers/allergyasthma/asthma/guide/asthma-attack.html).

It’s a pathetic sight to behold—your three-year-old with a plastic mask strapped to his head, sucking air through plastic tubing like an emphysema patient who’s smoked his whole life.

Here’s the thing: I’d thought we’d cleaned up the air since Tom Lehrer recommended we wear masks and Pittsburgh was smog-ridden.

I was wrong. Yes, the country has better regulated emissions, and those who can afford them are driving Priuses (is that the plural?). But we’ve got more people than ever burning fossil fuels that generate greenhouse gases; the U.S. population alone has grown by over a 100 million people since the 1960s. As for the D.C. area, it’s got more cars than its roads can handle, besides which it’s a humid, swampy basin, so there’s poor air circulation. Factor in warm weather, and you get a blanket of brown smog that won’t budge.

And here’s the kicker: Right across the Potomac River is the coal-burning Mirant Plant, belching its fine-particle emissions into our air. Luckily, members of Congress literally just got the nearby Capitol Power Plant to convert to natural gas; here’s hoping they can do the same with Mirant.

The D.C. air is so bad, in fact, that the American Lung Association has consistently given it an “F” in its annual State of The Air report. The association cites and defines two major types of air pollution:

 

• Particle pollution: A mix of very tiny solid and liquid particles that are in the air we breathe…. Particle pollution can damage the body in ways similar to cigarette smoking. Short-term exposure to particle pollution can kill. Peaks or spikes in particle pollution can last for hours to days.
• Ozone: An extremely reactive gas molecule composed of three oxygen atoms. It is the primary ingredient of smog air pollution and is very harmful to breathe. Ozone attacks lung tissue by reacting chemically with it. Ozone is capable of causing inflammation in the lung at lower concentrations than any other gas. Breathing ozone…can alter the lungs’ ability to function.”

D.C. has problems with both pollution types, making top 20 lists of the country’s most ozone- and particle-polluted cities. And unfortunately, these pollutants put older people and young children like T-Rex at especially high risk for asthma and other respiratory problems.

The most dangerous time of the year for asthma sufferers is spring and summer, when heat and sunlight trap polluted air near the earth’s surface. Breathing that air is more irritating for children because their lungs are still growing and they’re more active than adults, according to the American Lung Association’s Web site. Throw pollen allergies into the mix, and it’s no wonder T-Rex has been having frequent attacks.

Other than medicating him, what can we do to help? Well, we could move to Billings, Montana, the least ozone-polluted city in the country. But job-wise, that isn’t an option. So, we’ll keep him inside and minimize his exercise on high air-pollution days. (I’ve signed up to get daily air-quality e-mail alerts from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; you can sign up for air alerts for your area at http://airnow.gov/.)

But the real solution is up to society at large. It’s up to all of us to drive less, walk more, seek alternatives to fossil fuels, push for stricter emissions regulations, and take public transportation.

Because it’s obvious we have a lot of work to do. Pittsburgh, for example, just made the top spot of a very different list from livable cities—it has the country’s worst particle pollution, finds the State of the Air report. The city has, it appears, has lost the ground it once gained. Too bad. If only Tom Lehrer’s musical jab at our dirty air were no longer relevant. Instead, it still makes us laugh uncomfortably. Because it’s still all too true.

Links:
• Video of Tom Lehrer singing “Pollution”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPrAuF2f_oI
• The American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” report: http://www.stateoftheair.org/

The Opposite of Internet Addiction: Web Sanity

05/13/2009

Last evening was typical: I’m clacking responses to e-mails, my husband is shooting Orcs, Evil Men, and monsters in his Lord of the Rings computer game, and T-Rex and Punk are sitting on the sofa next to me, trying to find Nemo on their hand-held Leapsters.

The scene brings to mind a recent Parenting.com article on ’net- addicted new moms. The article describes a disturbing increase in mothers of young children seeking stress relief and adult interaction online. Some of these moms (this next part came across as a stage whisper) even stop bathing and skip doing laundry to spend more time online.

Could this be me—actually, could it be my whole family? Maybe I should watch for signs: My kids might scale back their playground time due to Leapster withdrawal. My husband might officially give up trying to grow grass in the alley clay out back and devote himself to conquering Middle-earth.

Next thing I know, Punk plunks himself down next to me. “Momm-eeeeeee!” he comments, scanning my iGoogle screen. “Want THAT one!” He jabs his grubby index finger on a blinking Pac-Man icon.

I click on the game, and he's instantly enthralled. “Momm-eeeee, faster, faster!” he screeches. “They gonna GET yooooo!” He jiggles enthusiastically whenever I get killed by the little ghost things—can't get enough of the “squish” noise. T-Rex soon joins in, saying "Again! Again!" after each game.

That's when it occurs to me that the three of us are ….interacting! That's not a bad thing. And there are other pluses:

1. Nothing is getting broken. Compare and contrast with that morning, for example. By 9 a.m., the following had occurred: Punk had whacked T-Rex in the head with a Chinese yo-yo, snapping it in half in the process. T-Rex had gone marauding in the kitchen while I was changing Punk’s soaked underwear a second time. He zeroed in the sugar bowl, upsetting its contents on the floor and shattering its top. Soon after, while I was prepping breakfast, they discovered a scotch-tape dispenser and proceeded to tape up the sofa. Then, T-Rex knocked all the DVDs off a shelf and somehow managed to encase his head in one of the DVD covers. It was all the way over his eyes. I would never have thought such a thing possible, but we have a photo as evidence.

2. The future generation is getting educated about the key to the universe—computers. And their techno-indoctrination already appears to be paying off: The other day, in a hurry to print out directions to a doctor’s appointment, I clawed open the printer door with much difficulty (a mini basketball bounced out of it—and T-Rex said, “Oh! That’s mine”).  I clicked the print button and was ready to grab the printed product, when T-Rex slammed the printer door shut. “Teeeee-Reeexxx!” I wailed, steeling myself for another round of the clawing routine. He just shot me an odd look and hit a button on the side of the printer. The printer door slid open, just like that.

Still, this cyber addiction thing has been bugging me. I know we ought to get off the sofa more and exercise, so I’ve resolved to take the kids on at least two field trips each weekend. I was especially gung ho about our recent outing to National Train Day at nearby Union Station. Punk is bonkers about trains, and the ads promised interactive exhibits and a tour of the Georgia 10, the train Obama rode to his inauguration.

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. And sure, our first stop at the local playground went smoothly enough. But as we walked to the train station, T-Rex dawdled and Punk sprinted ahead.  In seconds, he disappeared from sight, sending me into relay-race paroxysms to corral him again. There was no relief at the station. The place was packed, bristling with deluxe strollers, frazzled parents, and spastic, sweaty kids.

I knew my squirming toddlers weren't  going to wait in the mile-long line for goodie bags, so we went to check out Amtrak’s ARTE the Environmental Engineer—a giant, furry green…something completely unidentifiable. We were told he was a leaf. In any case, the kids didn’t like him; in fact, he sent Punk running in the opposite direction. Bruising my shins on strollers and dragging T-Rex, I nabbed Punk in the general vicinity of the Obama train. Unfortunately, you had to walk through several crowded trains to get anywhere near it, and the twins were done cooperating. T-Rex repeatedly plopped down and lay in the train aisles, kicking and tripping people up. Meanwhile, Punk ducked into cabins and hid out in bunkbeds.

When we finally made it to the Obama train (which, by the way, you weren’t allowed to enter), both were in full-on tantrum mode. I knew what had to be done: We picked up a cinnamon pretzel and headed back to the sanctity of home. Or maybe I should say the sanctity of our computers. Because as soon as we got there, we climbed on the sofa, flipped on our machines, and calm was restored to the universe, sanity to mom. The laundry, I figured, could wait.