Cotton-Pickin’ Days

How would you complete this sentence?

There’s only one thing better than having a baby, and that’s having a ____________ baby.

Kristina at Autismland said:

…there’s nothing better than having a baby, “whatever” he has, and especially when that baby was a gorgeous brown-eyed handsome boy named Charlie Fisher.

And I said:

There’s only one thing better than having a baby, and that’s having a HAPPY baby.

A competitive mom said in The New York Times:

There’s only one thing better than having a baby, and that’s having a SMART baby. [emphasis mine]

What would you say?

NB: I wrote more about the NYT article at Play Library.

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During our first week in Vietnam, we were invited out to dinner at one of the fancier restaurants in town. Besides us, the dinner party consisted of the two managers of our apartment building, one of their spouses, and another couple. Oh, and I almost forgot, Stephen was with us too.

We had no idea the other couple wasn’t bringing their two young girls. Not that it would have mattered because we were new in town and didn’t have a babysitter. If we had known, I might have stayed home with Stephen. But everything turned out fine because Stephen slept on my lap through the entire dinner.

Stephen is usually with us whenever we go out. We know he enjoys it and also think it’s part of learning appropriate social behavior. Most often, he’s as well-behaved as a three-year-old can possibly be. Occasionally, he throws a tantrum because he’s overly tired, but a break outside gives him the breather he needs to get everything under control.

The most important consideration when eating out is choosing a restaurant that welcomes or at least doesn’t frown upon children. Last week, the New York Times had an article about restaurant and cafe owners who think they’re promoting good manners by putting up signs that say:

…children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven.

So what’s their standard of good behavior? Some people, like my dad, enjoy kids and think they should be free to “express” themselves. I keep a close eye on Stephen when we’re in public because we are considerate of other people’s privacy and personal space. But, I don’t think the solution is to shut kids up and sit them down. In fact, there are plenty of ADULT customers I wish would do that.

And so simmers another skirmish between the childless and the child-centered, a culture clash increasingly common in restaurants and other public spaces as a new generation of busy, older, well-off parents ferry little ones with them.

The Supreme Court Justice John Roberts had the nerve to bring his son and daughter to a White House press conference at which the four-year-old boy did the lambada right in front of President Bush making his announcement. When Justice Roberts keeps his children at home, I may consider it too.

Pointer from New West Bozeman.

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Researchers report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that children as young as two years old mimic their parents’ smoking and drinking habits. (Forbes, September 6, 2005)

When told to “shop” at a doll grocery store,

• Children were nearly four times as likely to buy cigarettes if their parents smoked
• They were three times as likely to choose wine or beer if their parents drank alcohol at least once a month.
• Kids who were allowed to view PG-13 or R-rated movies were five times as likely to choose wine or beer while shopping than kids restricted to watching G-rated movies.

Since we don’t smoke or drink, I think if Stephen were asked to go shopping, he’d probably buy some cake and gummy candies first. And if it were a store that had non-food items, he’d probably pick up some DVD’s too and maybe a laptop for himself.

What do you think your kids would buy at the pretend store?

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Today foot fashion is big. Toddler shoes come in the same styles as adult styles.  In the 1980’s it was difficult to find an infants shoe in anything besides the traditional strapy white leather shoe.

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Just for today, can we love our kids for who they are, not what we wish them to be?

Don’t wonder why they won’t use the potty.
Don’t wonder why they won’t eat fruits and vegetables.
Don’t wonder why they won’t “sleep through the night”.
Don’t wonder why they insist on being carried.
Don’t wonder why they’re always clamoring for our attention.
Don’t wonder why they can’t be like other kids.

Don’t judge them. Don’t criticize them. Don’t find fault with them.

Just love them, cherish them, and accept them.

If we won’t, who will?

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We travel with Stephen at least five times a year. Four of those times are on short-haul flights to Singapore, each flight lasting about 2 hours. At least once a year, we make the journey back to California and that trip usually takes around 20 hours. Luckily, we fly Singapore Airlines, which has a great inflight entertainment system with dedicated kids’ TV and radio channels that Stephen loves. And, the flight attendants are more than helpful and attentive.

As much as we love traveling on Singapore Airlines, though, they don’t have a Sky Nanny like Gulf Air. Each Sky Nanny is apparently trained in childcare and childhood education at Norland College. Check out what they do for you:

• When you arrive at the airport, your Sky Nanny will be at the boarding gate to meet and escort your family onto the aircraft and take you to a dedicated seating area in the aircraft.
• They?ll also organise drinks for children and do their meal service during the main bar service so you?re free to assist your children if necessary – without interrupting your own meal.
• They?ll also find lots of things to keep your children occupied throughout the journey. We even have our own games we can loan them.
• …a Sky Nanny will be keeping a watchful eye on your child should you doze off or just want to get engrossed in a book or a movie.

Maybe David Brooks of the New York Times should have considered hiring his own Sky Nanny. His family had trouble keeping it together on flights that were only four hours long.

…the pilots emerge to complain that because of the kids’ crying they can’t hear the air traffic controllers (this actually happened to my family).

Pointer to Sky Nanny from Asia Travel Blog, pointer to NY Times article from Blogging Baby.

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The closest I’ve ever gotten to an F is a C in physical education (which I’ve criticized before) and a college philosophy course (ack!). My parents never put any direct pressure on my sister or me to get A’s, but that’s what we knew was expected of us and my parents helped us to achieve it in whatever way they could. Actually, I wonder if my teachers gave F’s to anyone at all.

Just in case F’s were being liberally used to oppress our children, two teachers plan to propose to the Professional Association of Teachers in the UK that the F grade be abolished. (The Guardian, July 20, 2005)

Conference believes it is time to delete the word “fail” from the educational vocabulary, to be replaced with the concept of “deferred success.”

“Failure,” says Liz Beattie, a retired primary school teacher, “is a word that should be deleted from the classroom dictionary, because it can put children off learning.”

Something tells me that kids who get F’s have already been put off learning long before getting an F. But, of course, wiping F’s from report cards will motivate them without the need for any other types of support. What a nice and easy solution.*

*sarcasm

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The 4-year-old son of Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts,
doing the lambada during a press conference at the White House.
Looks like his mom’s pretending she doesn’t see him.

Of course, Judge Roberts is now being criticized for bringing his pre-schoolers to a late-night, formal event. But what parent hasn’t done something similar?

While in Singapore last week, we were out all day with my in-laws. By the end, Stephen had clearly had enough and kept asking to go home. But the needs of the few do not outweigh the needs of many and I did my best to placate him. Nevertheless, he still had a couple of meltdowns that were contained using some strict lecturing (no spanking!) in a semi-quiet corner of the elevator lobby. We were exhausted by the time we wrapped up the day, but we still had a good time.

Carrie Devorah of Human Events, The National Conservative Weekly, wrote,

The judge reinforced–with his decision to bring pre-schoolers, 5-year-old Josephine and 4-year-old John, past their bedtime, into the media spotlight–that the laws of child rearing are as individual as common sense, telling as to where Roberts’ priorities lie.

For PR purposes, Judge Roberts probably wanted to show off his smart wife and beautiful children. But I also think he wanted include his kids in one of the biggest events of his life. Being in the White House with the President of the United States saying wonderful things about their father will be an amazing memory for his kids.

Our life includes our kids. If it were up to some people, we’d maintain a strict separation between the world of adults and the world of children. What a cold and harsh world that would be. Thanks for injecting a bit of humanity and humor into our world, John Roberts, Jr.!

Pointer from Blogging Baby.

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Knowing when to stop is one of my weakest abilities when it comes to snack food. I avoid the problem by rarely eating any form of chips, Corn Nuts, or cookies because I know I’ll want to finish the whole package. Thankfully, Stephen seems to take after Marv and is able to feel satiated without gorging.

Every day, Stephen gets a limited amount of gummy candy as a reward for using the potty. He rarely asks for more than his allotment. The same goes for chocolate covered stick cookies or any other junk food. He eats some (sometimes more than I’d like) but usually stops himself before he consumes everything.

Researchers have found that just like adults, kids usually stop eating not because of self-control but because they’ve eaten it all. (Medical News Today, June 16, 2005)

Contrary to what many people believe, preschool children do not adjust how much they eat in response to how much they ate at their last meal or in the past 24 hours or how calorie-rich their meal is. By far, the most powerful predictor for how much children eat is how much food is put on their plate, concludes a new study by Cornell University researchers.

“We examined all the predictors we could of how much a child eats at a meal,” said David Levitsky, professor of nutritional sciences and of psychology at Cornell. “We found that portion size is, by far, the most important factor in predicting how much a child will eat. These findings suggest that both the onus of controlling children’s weight — both in causing overweight in children as well as in its prevention — must rest squarely in the hands of parents and other caregivers.”

Generally speaking, I don’t have a problem with Stephen eating too much. More often than not, he eats very little at any one sitting. But I think I may be overcompensating for his smaller appetite by allowing him to eat more snacks, some of them not quite as healthy as I would like.

Time to review what I learned from Ellyn Satter’s Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense and re-evaluate my strategy.

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From my latest post, Less Well-Known Toddler Books,

You’ve seen them everywhere. At Costco or BJ’s, baby showers, and birthday parties, some books make their appearance again and again. Almost everyone has Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, and Sandra Boynton books in their collection. Here are a few gems that we discovered, which don’t seem to get much fanfare.

…See the books I recommend…

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Edward Tufte aka “the da Vinci of data” summarized for Scientific American the way he thinks data should be presented. I thought I’d apply his technique to potty training Stephen.

(1) documenting the sources and characteristics of the data

Pee pee comes from your p*nis, looks like water, and is wet.

Doo doo comes from your b*tth*le and looks like mushy chocolate.

(2) insistently enforcing appropriate comparisons

Babies pee pee and doo doo in diapers.

Big boys pee pee and doo doo in the potty.

(3) demonstrating mechanisms of cause and effect

If you pee pee or doo doo in your diaper, it can get hot, stinky, and uncomfortable. Sometimes, wearing diapers can make your b*tt red and itchy too.

If you pee pee or doo doo in the potty, the pee pee and doo doo won’t stick to your body and you’ll feel fresh and clean all the time.

(4) expressing those mechanisms quantitatively

Every day, we use at least three diapers and many wet wipes to clean up your pee pee and doo doo. They fill up the garbage can and make it very stinky.

Potties and toilets don’t get full because we can flush everything away with clean water.

(5) recognizing the inherently multivariate nature of analytic problems

There are many different kinds of potties and toilets. You have one potty that we put on the floor. You also have a Winnie the Pooh toilet seat that we put on top of the big toilet.

Because you’re just learning and practicing right now, you can try going without a diaper at home and wear one when we go out.

(6) inspecting and evaluating alternative explanations

Boys can pee pee standing up or sitting down. Girls usually sit down.

Yes, you can wear diapers until you’re an old man. That’s your choice. But I think you’ll want to use the potty and diaper because you’re getting to be a big boy now!

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