Oh No! My Kid Has Human Childhood Growth Syndrome (HCGS), AKA Being a Four-Year-Old-Boy

12/10/2009

I headed into my first official “parent-teacher” conference with the feeling I was going to get blind-sided, and I was not wrong.

It all started with Punk’s teacher saying, “Well, he does like to go off by himself. He really gets into those books. And then you can’t tear him away. He doesn’t want to participate in class. He just won’t listen.”

“Oh right,” I say, immediately defensive but pretending not to be. “He is such a reader. I’m so glad. I always loved to read….”

“Yes, but he doesn’t listen. He won’t participate when we ask him to.”

“Right right. Not so good. Well sometimes he needs, some, you know…encouragement…”

“Short of bribing him with obscene amounts of candy, nothing is working.”

It goes around and around like this, with me defending, and her, increasingly, well, railing. Until finally, exasperated, I say, “What, do you think he has a problem? ADHD or something?”

She cocks her head like our dog, Simba, does when she’s suddenly interested. “Not ADHD. He’s not hyper enough for that but….”

“What?? Autism?!”

Great. Now I’ve dropped the A-bomb.

“Weeeeell, I’m not a doctor….but,” she says, suddenly all coy.

So I stagger out of there under the weight of the A-bomb, with only a directive to keep an eye on him—“it doesn’t really show up until age five or six”—and to get his eyes tested in case there’s a vision problem, which we’re already doing (see last blog).

So, of course, I’m distracted, miserable, fuming, and completely useless once I get to work. It doesn’t take much for co-workers to hear why—I spill easily. And they respond as I’d hoped—indignantly.

“Oh hello! He’s not listening? He’d rather be doing something else than your classroom activity? What? A four-year-old not listening and wanting to do his own thing? Unheard of. Let’s slap a label on him and make it his problem. His parents’ problem. Not anything, I, the teacher, am doing wrong!”

This is why I love my co-workers. They say exactly what I’m thinking, only better.

I mean, is a four-year-old naturally inclined to drop everything he’s doing and pay attention to an adult? I think not. A four-year-old just wants to be a four-year-old—fiddling, fidgeting, splashing, breaking stuff, throwing—whatever it is that gets him going. Not adhering to adult-sanctioned classroom activities in 15-minute time blocks.

This whole business of indoor society, with its desks, schedules, and seat time, is a relatively new invention, after all, and is hard enough for adults to stick to—think of all those people at work who wander the halls and take endless smoke breaks.

It wasn’t that many centuries ago that we were all out on the plains stalking our next meal. We adults all had an obvious sense of purpose—putting buffalo on the table.

So there was no worry about finding a vocation and no worry about our kids getting bored, misbehaving, or manifesting some behavioral disability. Like a lioness’s cubs, they ran after us when we hunted or gathered berries, and frolicked around us when we napped, getting the occasional swat when they got too irritating.

OK, I got a bit off track there, but here's the thing: I think we’ve just gotten too civilized, and in the process gone way overboard in pathologizing our kids.

Nevertheless, being a cyberchondriac, I of course have to go online and research the Autism Spectrum Disorders—there's a whole range from mild to severe, all involving social withdrawal and repetitive behaviors.

If you want to know the truth, I see more of myself than my son in this diagnosis. Since becoming a parent, my social life is down the tubes—I spend more time with my nose in a book than talking to people. Socializing is now limited to Facebook. And all day long I type on a keyboard and stare at a computer screen. If that's not a repetitive behavior, I don't know what is.

What I do know is Punk is the most affectionate kid I've ever seen. When I get home from work, he runs up, throws he arms around me and declares, "Mommee, I love you!" Not even our dogs give me that kind of greeting (one pees; the other knocks me over.) I also know he's crazy about music. Nothing gets him dancing and grinning like Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds," or "I Like to Move It," from the movie Madagascar.

Lest I be accused of being in denial, I've gone ahead and made two pediatrician appointments for him in the New Year—one with a general ped, the other with a developmental ped.

And yes, I should go ahead and have him evaluated by the school district. Because, as my mother wisely points out, if he does need special services, you can't get them without the {cough, hairball} label.

But I'm skeptical. Very skeptical. Because to me, Punk is Punk. And he's perfect just the way he is.

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.

It's Time to Give Sleep Its Due—For the Health and Sanity of the Whole Family

06/24/2009

I once had a co-worker who considered sleep a total waste of time, and complained bitterly about having to do it.

“There are so many other productive things I could be doing,” she’d grouch. “Why spend eight hours of my day completely unconscious and drooling?”

So she didn't. She stayed up way past midnight watching “Sex and the City” reruns and Magic Bullet infomercials, shopping on eBay, and pursuing other such productive activities. And every day at work, she was, well….cranky.

My three-year-old twins are the same way. They resist naps and bed-time because they’d much rather be lobbing carrots at each other, jumping on the coffee table, or breaking the printer. The older they get, the more they refuse to settle down—and the crabbier they are later, when their sleep debt catches up with them.

Poor sleep. It doesn’t get much respect from folks at all points on the age spectrum. And in a caffeinated world driven by instant messaging, real-time news, and texting—and with collapsing boundaries between work and leisure—sleep is first to get the shaft (with healthy eating and exercising close behind). It doesn't help that our Type A culture tends to associate sleep and naps with laziness.

I am just as guilty of dissing sleep as everybody else. But unlike my twins and former co-worker, it’s not because I consider sleep a waste of time. I am, in fact, a huge fan. My problem is that, as a mom who works full time, I don’t have nearly enough time to spend on it. Consider an average week day:

• 6 a.m.  Shower, extract kids from cribs
• 8 a.m.  Haul kids to daycare, do potty duty
• 9 a.m.  Stagger into work, smelling vaguely of pee
• 5:15 p.m.  Leave work, make mad dash for daycare
• 6:30 p.m.  Feed kids dinner, argue about eating veggies, bribe them with post-dinner cookies
• 7 p.m.  Cajole kids onto potty with promises of Wii (no pun intended)
• 7:30 p.m.  Coax kids in and out of tub, emerge soaked
• 8 p.m.  Administer pre-bed milk to kids
• 8:30 p.m.  After series of empty threats, brush kids’ teeth and put them to bed
• 9 p.m.  Absently prepare parents’ dinner while attempting to watch "House"
• 9:30 p.m.  Eat dinner while watching rest of "House"
• 10 p.m.  Wash peed-on pants, attempt to clear walkway amidst toys in living room
• 11-11:30 p.m. Collapse on bed, stare blankly at book for two minutes…BLACK OUT…zzzzzzzzz

I know.  Sounds like my own personal pity party. And I don’t know how I’d do it without my husband, who shares these duties. But on this schedule, we’re lucky to get six or seven hours a night; forget the recommended eight. I realize it’s a typical schedule for parents of young children. But it’s one that can take a toll because, as noted in Harvard’s Healthy Sleep Guide, too little sleep hurts our health. 

Specifically, lack of sleep:

• Impairs our judgment and ability to learn and retain information.
• Compromises our mood and emotional well-being—hence the crankiness we associate with fatigue.
• Can raise our risk of serious accidents and injury.
• May, if chronic, lead to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even premature death.

On the flip side, plentiful, restful sleep—averaging about eight hours a night—helps boost our learning capacity, mental performance, and memory, not to mention our mood (and, not surprisingly, our relationships with the poor folks who have to deal with us every day). Good sleep can even help us lose weight and bolster athletic performance, according to a recent New York Times blog post.

Great. But the question remains, how do you get the sleep you need when your job and kids are running you like Jillian Michaels on "The Biggest Loser"? Discovery Health's Ten Tips for Better Sleep offers useful guidance, including advice to soak in a warm, relaxing bath and avoid caffeine near bed-time.

But parents of young kids need even more drastic measures to take back their sleep. For me, at least, it's going to require hard-core action. Here's my give-sleep-a-chance to-do list:
 

• Eat dinner when the kids eat dinner. I need to swear off cooking after they've gone to bed. The risk here is that I'll end up eating corndogs and mac 'n cheese along with them—I’ll have to watch that.
• Turn off the TV. Ouch, this one is going to hurt. But I know myself. Once I get sucked into a "House" episode, it's all over. I'll keep watching them as long as they roll them.
• Procrastinate on household clean-up tasks. This one I really like. Why didn't I think of this before?

But my biggest coup would be getting the kids to sleep in later, past 6:30 a.m., or even (dare I say it) 7. That way we'd all get more healthful sleep. Anybody got any suggestions?

Meat: Memory Booster or Mortal Threat?

05/06/2009

Lately it seems like I keep having moments when I space on a word—what brain scientists call tip-of-the-tongue moments. The other day a co-worker asked what treat I wanted, and I just couldn’t come up with “Godiva,” even though I walk past their obnoxiously decadent ads four times a day.

Another co-worker has a picture of the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore in his office, and I’m snapping my fingers going, “Hey, that’s whatshisname….you know, that Weather Channel guy?....Always getting blown about by hurricanes…really knows his weather disasters?”

I’m sure these tip-of-the-tongue moments have nothing to do with the fact that I have three-year-old twin boys, a brain crammed with ever more useless information, a demanding full-time Web job, not to mention a husband. Right?

No way. As usual I’m entertaining the more catastrophic possibilities—early Alzheimer’s, amnesia, most likely a brain tumor. It’s against my nature to look at a simpler fix, like say, get more iron (research shows that lack of iron can inhibit oxygen delivery to the brain, hurting learning and memory).  But just for the sake of argument, let’s investigate this possibility. Forget Godiva. Maybe what I need is steak.

After all, I like a rare fillet mignon as much as the next person. That is, I do until I contemplate cows overgrazing the planet and releasing enough methane gas to blast a gaping hole in the ozone layer.  And then there’s the study that came out a month ago indicating that eating red and processed meats daily raises death risk by 30 percent. Big government study of 500,000 middle-aged and elderly Americans. Published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Nothing to be trifled with.

And that brings me to my big dilemma: One of my three-year-old sons has a confirmed iron-deficiency problem. Both he and his brother were born premature and anemic—they were seven weeks early and weighed just under, and just over, four pounds. T-Rex, younger by 30 seconds, looked smaller and paler but got his iron up in a matter of weeks. Punk, the more strapping twin, has continued to be mildly anemic, yet another never-ending source of worry to his hypochondriac mother.

Punk’s iron problem just magnifies my meat quandary: Do I ply him with meat because, as noted on the American Academy of Family Physicians Web site, the body absorbs meat’s iron the best? Or do I instead try to give him other sources of iron with a view to a greener, de-cowed planet, and to reducing Punk’s dependence on meat—thus adding years to his life?

Looks like Punk may be starting to answer that question “all by self,” as he insistently puts it. The kid just isn’t nuts about beef. And there is no way he is eating the number-one iron delivery vehicle recommended by his pediatrician:  beef kidneys. Not gonna happen. He sends back chicken breast, won’t touch roast beef, and recently barfed up a sloppy joe right after eating it. (His father commented that it looked just the same coming up as it did before going down. I know, TMI.)

Still, there are a few—not exactly lean and healthy— meats on Punk’s short list: turkey lunch meat, chicken nuggets, and sausages.  And according to the CDC Web site, Vitamin C enhances iron absorption from both meat and non-meat sources like fortified cereals, fortified breads, and  kidney beans (all of which Punk likes!). So I’m trying to mix in lots of Vitamin C-rich fruit juices, fruits, and the Punk-favored veggies, carrots and green beans. I’m also sneaking iron supplement drops into his cran-apple juice. He hasn’t noticed yet, or believe me, I’d hear about it.

We’ll see how it goes. The proof will be in his next blood-test result. Once his iron levels go up, my longer-term Punk plan is to reduce the meats and increase the produce.

Wait. Wasn’t there someone else with an iron problem? Oh yes, me. As much as I’d like to attribute my tip-of-the-tongue moments solely to “twin head” (my husband’s name for what dual toddlers do to the adult brain), I guess I should probably be upping my iron as well. After all, a recent study by Johns Hopkins’s Laura Murray-Kolb found that iron supplementation markedly helped women improve their memory performance.

Given the red meat thing—the threats to mortality and the planet—I figure I’ll try to get most of my iron from white meat, seafood, and non-meat sources and pills. That is, I will once I get around to it. When you’re a mom, your own health is largely neglected. But that’s the subject of a whole other blog post.