'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?

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.

Good-Bye to Sex and the City Literacy

09/03/2009

Sometimes, when you least expect it, you’re reminded how out of it you’ve become.

That’s how it was, recently, when I went to lunch with two svelte, single, child-free girlfriends. One of them escorted—more like pulled, I didn’t realize there were stairs—me into a chichi sushi restaurant I’d never heard of, and marched right up to a hostess she appeared to know.

“Don’t YOU look fabulous,” said the hostess, stating the obvious. This girlfriend, who I’ll call GF1, was decked out in a white empire-waist mini-dress with three-inch heels, a matching umbrella, and coiffed, cropped hair.

 

I sidled up, I hoped unnoticed, in my orthopedic Dansko's, khakis, and brown tank smeared with deodorant and milk. The deodorant was a result of my poor aim and chronic inability to remember to apply it after I get dressed.  The milk was from Punk’s morning ritual of testing his bottle’s spray arc.

Once seated, GF1 said she would have the usual, and didn’t bother opening her menu. I, meanwhile, sweated over hundreds of options and babbled about how I’d eat sushi all the time if I could.

Right then, GF2, also spectacularly attired, breezed in. And the conversation proceeded as follows:

GF2:  You know, I’d also eat sushi all the time, except I don’t want to end up like Jeremy Piven.

GF1: Ha ha ha ha ha.

Me:  [Blank]

GF2:  Yeah, we were all set to see Speed-the-Plow on Broadway when he pulled out.

GF1:  Oh please. Like he really got mercury poisoning from sushi. Whatever.

Me: Umm. Who’s Jeremy Piven?

[Pregnant pause]

GF2:  C’mon. You know who Jeremy Piven is.

GF1: [To the rescue] Entourage. From Entourage.

Me: Uh. I don’t watch Entourage.

[Longer pregnant pause]

To help me save face, the girlfriends launched into Piven’s filmography. The Kingdom? Nothing. RocknRolla? Nothing. Grosse Pointe Blanke….from like 1997? Vague flicker of recognition.

OK never mind. The conversation turned to GF1’s recent girls’ trip to South Beach:

GF1: It wasn’t DC, for sure. Our hotel had a topless bar on the roof.

GF2:  Must’ve been lots of plastic at that bar. And not just in the credit cars buying the drinks.

Me:  Blank.

Me:  Is South Beach in Florida or California?

I can’t even describe the looks that comment prompted: a mix of pity and horror.

Look, sorry, but I’m a journalist. I will always ask the stupid question.  Always.  I think people are often amazed at the stupidity of my questions. I’m sure they’re thinking, “For crying out loud. I would never ask that out loud. How embarrassing. I would just go home and Google it.”

 

I just ask the question. I don’t care. I’m not going to sit there and pretend I know something I don’t. If I weren’t a salt-aholic I would ask what that white stuff is.

Still, pre-kids, I was respectably pop-culture savvy—I could quote whole scenes from Sex and the City—so I felt pretty square after that lunch. To test my level of fossilization, I posted a question on Facebook: Am I the only person on the planet who doesn’t know Jeremy Piven got mercury poisoning from ODing on sushi?

Within seconds, I got this response from three different people: “Yep.”

I thanked them for the vote of confidence.

The comments continued, with a co-worker saying I needed to hang out in her office more, and me casually responding that, being a mother of two three-year-olds, I am seriously in need of anti-Teletubbies intel.

Within minutes, there was flurry of responses from parents. Apparently, I am not the only parent suffering brain rot from kids’ programming.

 

The gist of the comments was this: First, no more Teletubbies. Banish them from the house. Do the same with any Barney or Boohbahs. One friend noted that comedian Lewis Black said he went back for a second vasectomy after seeing Boohbahs.

Second, the parents said, get yourself HBO and get yourself some Entourage.

Sheesh. I thought I’d get an outpouring of support—sympathy for being sentenced to watch a barrage of under-five programming and being screamed at to change the channel when feebly attempting to view adult shows. From my three-almost-four-year-olds, the charge is always, “It’s too scareeeeeeeeee!” And it’s hard to argue with that.

But these parents were telling me to take back the television. Trouble is, I have no idea how.
Maybe the parents’ point is that, after the kids go to bed, we should stay up and ram in every possible popular program—Entourage, Mad Men, Weeds, you name it—so we can talk the hip talk as needed.

For me, not gonna happen. The kids exhaust me, so I go to bed right after them. And if I do happen to stay up a bit later, I go for geeky nature and medical shows. Or the Weather Channel. I freakin’ love the Weather Channel.

So, what parents like me need is some sort of pop-culture coach. Or a Web site—a Cliffs Notes on pop culture for parents of small children. I, for one, would be on there all the time, orthopedic shoes propped up on my desk.

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?