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August 2006
What fall activities are your children doing?
How do you pick activities? How many can they have?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Have you signed up for your fall activities? Did your child ask to do them or did you think they were best for your child? How many is your child allowed to do? Is the number based on cost, time or the number of children you have participating in activities?
Do you try to find activities that sibs can do at the same time? If you can’t, what do you do with younger sibs while the older ones are in class? At what age would you leave your child at the ballet studio or at soccer practice to run errands or head home?
Permalink | Comments (62) | Categories: Family Life
Is vasectomy the answer?
Mom’s body pushed out those babies. Is it Dad’s turn to take one for the team?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I know two Dads that have already had vasectomies and at least four Dads that are considering it (or at least their wives are).
Many of our friends are 34 or older. Many have as many children as they want, and are now considering their birth control options for the future.
Many of the women have been on the Pill since their 20s and after 35 it starts to get a little bit scarier to stay on it. Also it’s my understanding that it’s a much more painful and involved procedure for a woman to get her tubes tied than for a man to get a vasectomy. (Despite this fact, according to the National Institutes for Health roughly 5 percent of married men of reproductive age had vasectomies, but 15 percent of married reproductive-age women have been sterilized.)
I know no guy likes to have his privates messed with (like women do??), but part of the problem for some of our friends is the Dad doesn’t quite understand the procedure and how his revised system will operate. Here is an article that explains exactly what happens.
Vasectomy isn’t on the table at this point in our house, but if it were, this would be my argument: I carried those babies; I put on 35 pounds with each pregnancy and took off 35 pounds; my pelvic floor is shot and any time I sneeze I never know if I’m going to pee or not. I’m not increasing my possible risk of diseases or having a painful procedure to provide birth control for this family.
What do you think? Is it fair for Dad to also take one for the team? Is vasectomy on the table at your house? Have you already had one? How did it go? Would you recommend one to friends (seriously answer the question – don’t give us the macho stuff)?
Permalink | Comments (188) | Categories: Battles between Mom and Dad
Hungering for family mealtime
Do you eat as a family? Does eating together affect child's development?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m jealous of my friend Laura – her husband is home for dinner every night. It takes him just 15 minutes to get home from work. He walks in the door of their house by 5:30 p.m and the whole family sits down to eat together.
Laura is one of the few moms I know who actually has her entire family at the dinner table on a regular basis. They visit, laugh and enjoy one of Laura’s great meals.
For many of our friends, it’s not overscheduled kids with soccer practice or ballet that prevents a family dinner. It’s one of the parents, often the Dad, who works past the 5 o’clock whistle and then has a long commute home.
For our family, no matter how early my husband goes into work, no matter how dedicated he is to leaving on time, a crisis always seems to erupt at 5 p.m. to prevent him from getting home to eat with us.
When my children were babies and toddlers, we operated on a later schedule. I would give them a late-afternoon snack, and we would eat as a family at 7 p.m. They would go to bed between 9 and 10 p.m.
But now the kids have to be in bed much earlier to get up for school, so the three of us sit down to eat around 6 p.m., which is next to impossible for my husband to make.
Somehow both my parents managed to be home for dinner. Every morning and evening my dad sat across from us, sometimes in his business suit, granted sometimes in his underwear, depending on how quickly the meal was ready. We ate on the oak kitchen table that my father and his five brothers sat at with their parents 30 years earlier.
My parents and grandparents knew the value of the family meal, and nowadays everyone from the media, to meal-planning web sites to meal preparation services are reminding us of those benefits.
Here’s what research has shown eating meals as a family does: reduces the chance that your kids will smoke, drink or do drugs; helps kids eat more nutritional foods and decreases their risk for unhealthy weight-control practices; helps kids achieve higher scholastic scores, and makes them be happier with the present lives and their prospects for their futures.
Pretty compelling facts that make me feel even crappier about my inability to get my family together at dinnertime.
Even TVLand and Nick@Nite are sending me on a guilt trip. The channel is promoting a campaign called “Family Table – Share More than Meals.� Families are asked to commit to eating together on Sept. 25 and make it a top priority.
So, what do you do when work prevents the whole family from sitting down together at night? I don’t really think it matters whether you’re serving chicken or pancakes. The point is sitting down together to eat and talk. So we’ve been trying to make the family meal breakfast.
The first day of school we gave it a whirl. My husband made pancakes while I got my son up and dressed my daughter. When we all sat down together at the table, I noticed my husband didn’t have a plate in front of him, but his laptop computer. He was kind of missing the point.
We’ve done OK the last two weeks getting up in time to eat breakfast together. Sometimes it’s just instant oatmeal but if we’re all in the kitchen at the same time then I think that’s an improvement.
Are you a football widow?
I’m looking for some Mommies to interview!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m interrupting the bedwetting discussion because I need some help on a future column.
I’m looking for football widows for an upcoming column. Do you lose your husband and family time each fall to college, NFL or even fantasy football? Send me an email if you’re willing to go on record and talk about how your husband’s love for football affects your family life. Also tell me a little about what happens each fall. Email me at ajcmomania@gmail.com. Thanks guys!
How do you stop bedwetting?
At what age did you start to worry? How have you handled it?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A few weeks back, one of our commenters asked us to discuss bedwetting. Here are a couple of articles for you to peruse on the topic. One is from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, but I actually like the KidsHealth for Parents information better. See what you think.
While it took forever to train my daughter in the daytime, her nighttime training went very quickly. We would get up at midnight to take her to the potty at first, but then we realized she was waking herself up if she needed to go.
What have your experiences been with night training? I have heard from a lot of friends that boys finish night training much later than girls. Do you think this is true?
At what age do you worry if they’re still wetting the bed? When do you consult a doctor? What solutions have worked for your kids?
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Health
Are you selling wrapping paper for your school?
Have you been sucked into selling gift wrap or other items to benefit the school? Who do you ask? Where do you sell? How many times a year do you do it?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My husband wants me to just take a stand: Do not sell the Sally Foster gift wrap!
I hadn’t planned on doing it. I think I would rather just make a straight donation to the school than go through the trouble of harassing my neighbors to sell the stuff. And then I remembered that my mom buys wrapping paper from the Avon Lady’s daughter every year. Ah ha I thought — I could sell a little paper with no effort at all and actually look like I was participating. (Sorry Avon Lady’s daughter.)
Do you sell the gift wrap or other items for the school? Do you sell it or does your child? Do you sell to co-workers? Do you find it embarrassing to sell it or more embarrassing to show up empty handed at school? Would you rather the schools just ask for straight donations? How many other sales are there during the year?
Do you walk the star to pitch to the kid with cancer?
Was this a smart coaching strategy or a morally repugnant plan? How do you handle ethical dilemmas involving kids in sports?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A recent column by Rick Reilly in the Aug. 14 edition of Sports Illustrated described a title game in the 9- and 10-year-old pony league in Utah in which a coach decided to walk the star hitter so he could pitch to a child who had just survived cancer and has a shunt in his brain.
The cancer survivor struck out and the other team won the championship.
The coach claimed he didn’t know, but said even if he did know he would have done the same thing. The child’s mother is absolutely incredulous that the coach didn’t know about her son’s condition– that team’s assistant coach had coached her son in basketball before. Plus the child wore a helmet even in the outfield.
This particular league has rules to make the game fun and fair for all – everyone gets to bat, no stealing until the ball cross the plate and there’s a run-limit per inning.
What do you think? Was the coach just playing good strategic ball or was it completely wrong to set the weakest child up to fail? What would you have done if you were at that ball field? Have you encountered anything like that here in Georgia youth leagues?
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Ethics of rearing kids today
Teaching Generation On-Demand patience
How do we teach children, who are used to instant gratification, patience, perseverence and fortitude?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My children have never known the anticipation of looking at the clock waiting for their favorite show to start. They have never had to hang around the house because I was expecting a phone call, and they rarely have had to sit quietly while I shop at the mall because I do much of that online.
The Internet, cell phones and digital video recorders have given families unprecedented freedom to control their own schedules. But are we raising Generation On-Demand because of this time-saving technology?
Will these children who have grown up with computer mouse in hand, an iPOD headphone in their ear and with DVD players in their backseat become chronically impatient adults? Will they expect everything handed to them whenever they want it?
Growing up as part of the original MTV Generation, my husband would sit in front of his TV suffering through four-hour cycles of Motley Crue, Wang Chung and Wham videos just to see one clip from the Cure or to catch a glimpse of Madonna prancing around in her lace skirt.
Today’s teenagers don’t need that kind of patience or any patience at all in fact. They can just click on any videos they want on MTV’s Web site and create their own rotation.
While these teenagers have grown into this life of instant gratification, our small children have never known life to be any other way. Today’s children have rarely, if ever, waited in lines at the DMV (online registration), waited on a letter from a pen-pal (e-mail or even faster IM), or even waited in a crowded exam room at the doctor’s office. (We sit in the germ-free comfort of our car, and the doctor calls our cell phone when they’re ready for us.)
I fear my children’s lack of patience and their expectation of instant gratification will be even worse than the teens I see today.
When my daughter was 2, we bought a TiVO. It seemed like the greatest invention ever. I had instant access to multiple episodes of “Dora the Explorer” whenever my daughter wanted to watch it or whenever I needed her to.
However three years later (with a TiVO downstairs and a DVR upstairs), my daughter has grown up with no concept of how to watch live TV. She never sits through commercials. She’s certain I can replay, pause or fast-forward anything she is interested in, and believes if she has watched a show once that it is stored somewhere in our television.
She was absolutely miffed a few years back when I couldn’t pull up a dance sequence in a Judy Garland movie we had watched the day before. “What do you mean you don’t have it?” she asked.
“We didn’t record it, honey. TiVO didn’t save it. We’ll have to wait for it to come on again.” Wait for it to come on again — a totally foreign concept to my child.
Today, small children don’t even have to wait in line at Disney World. The Fastpass cuts out hours of wait time on the most popular rides. That waiting was how we knew as children that this must be the greatest place on earth. Why else would you stand there for so long?
Generation On-Demand also has appointments to see Santa Claus. No more standing in line in your Sunday best hoping to catch a glimpse of the big guy. You phone ahead, and walk in at your scheduled time. Now, it’s like picking up a jolly red pizza.
While less wait is more convenient for parents, how will these children ever learn to be patient?
In the past, the grocery store could be counted on for at least an hour-long lesson in tolerance, but not anymore.
About two weeks ago, we discussed on the MOMania blog the advent of DVD players in grocery carts. Publix is testing the carts at its Suwanee and Alpharetta stores. Many of you logged on to say that needing the TVs in the carts is symptomatic of a bigger problem: that today’s children are not disciplined enough to sit still for their parents to finish a task.
So how do we teach Generation On-Demand patience, perseverance and fortitude? How do we teach them that good things come to those who wait?
Do we cut technology out of their lives — no computers, no Tivo, no hand-held games? Do we inconvenience ourselves to make them learn to wait? Want to make a trip to the old DMV to pay your car tag even though you know you can do it online? Want to head over to the cable company to settle up your bill when you know you can have the bill automatically deducted from your checking account?
I’m still working on my plan for this. So far, my only idea is to write letters to old relatives and make my kids stand in line with me at the post office. We can always count on the U.S. Postal Service for a long, boring wait.
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Ethics of rearing kids today
Should schools do background checks on volunteers?
Does your school do any type of background check if you’re going to be helping in the classroom? Do you think it’s necessary? Would you submit to one?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My girlfriend called yesterday to say that she had been handed a large packet of information to fill out before she could help in her daughter’s classroom. It asked for driver’s license information, residential history, driver’s violations, criminal violations — especially sexual offenses, and asked for permission to do a background check. Her daughter attends a large parochial elementary school in Atlanta.
I signed up to be a volunteer in my daughter’s classroom and at the school but so far have not received any paper work to fill out. My other girlfriend who has been helping at her daughter’s public school for the last three years says helpers are never left alone with the kids, and she suspects that is why many of the schools don’t feel the need for background checks.
What has your experience been? Have you ever been asked for any type of background information to work in your child’s school? Do you think it is necessary? Would it make you feel better to know the other parents have been checked out?
Permalink | Comments (55) | Categories: Ethics of rearing kids today
Would you recommend your child-care provider?
Help us make a resource list for other moms of the best child care providers in Atlanta by telling us about yours.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I would love to put together a comprehensive list of mom-recommended child-care providers all over the metropolitan region. Help other moms make this important decision by telling us about your care giver.
Do you love your child-care provider? What do you like the best? What do you like the least? Would you recommend them to other moms?
What age children do they take? Are they in-home, at a center or at a church? How much are you paying?
How did you find them? What questions did you ask? How did you know they would be good when you found them? What are tell-tale signs that you don’t want your child with a certain provider?
Permalink | Comments (59) | Categories: Family Life
Weeping mom sends first-born off to kindergarten
My mostly companion is thrilled to start school, but I’m left trailing a school bus crying my eyes out. How are you holding up?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I can’t stop sobbing.
My 5-year-old daughter starts kindergarten Monday, but it feels more like she’s going off to college. When she was born, I was her whole world, but each day she gets a little more independent. Tomorrow, that independence takes a giant leap.
I know it’s irrational to be sad, and that this is just a normal part of growing up, but I am sad. I feel like a special time for us is ending, one that I will always remember as a very happy period, and I hope she will, too.
When my daughter was small, a friend gave us an “Eloise� book. In it, the little girl calls her nanny her “mostly companion.� I love that term and latched onto it. For the last five years, my little girl has been my “mostly companion.� We played together, talked together, cooked together and ate together. Later, we cared for her younger brother together, as she helped teach him everything from walking to talking to riding a Big Wheel.
I don’t believe we will ever spend as much time together as we have during these first years of her life. I don’t believe we will ever share as many experiences or our emotions as openly as we have. I believe her friends, teachers and what she sees in the world will gradually influence her more than me and her father, and that process speeds up tomorrow when she starts kindergarten.
I think for every parent, the first day of school is bittersweet. When our 5-year-olds strap on those too-big backpacks and walk into the classroom or onto that bus for the first time, we realize that our children are building their own identities outside of the home. I think it’s even more jarring when we realize that we are more scared than they are.
Is she prepared? Did I teach her as much as I could? Did I squander our precious time together? Will she ever be able to write that lower-case “q� properly?
While I’m a wreck, my mostly companion can’t wait to move on. She is so excited to go to school, meet new friends, eat in the cafeteria and learn from her teacher.
As I’m going through cases of tissue tomorrow, my daughter will literally be jumping up and down with excitement.
If I have to let her go, there’s no other place I would choose for her than the school she is attending. It was my elementary school back in the late ’70s. Now, my little girl will be walking down the same halls, eating in the same cafeteria and playing on the same playground.
Even though they have renovated, I can still point out all my old classrooms. I know which room I struggled in to carve a clay moose during art class. I vividly remember choosing my library books and lying down to read in the cool, carpeted “pit� of the library. I remember careening down the 25-foot red clay incline toward the playground each day for recess. (Sadly, they have installed stairs, no more kids careening.)
The principal and the teachers are different, but amazingly the P.E. teacher is still the same. He doesn’t remember me, but I remember him forcing us to climb that crazy rope and to square dance. And, I vividly remember him carefully carrying me to the office when they thought I broke my arm.
I know the teachers and administrators will take great care of my daughter, and I know she will blossom there. In a few days I’ll be excited for her, but for right now — at least for a little while — I’m going to cry a little bit more.
How old should kids be to ride the bus?
What grade did you let your kids ride the bus? Did you worry about the bullies, the bus driver or your child getting run over?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When did you start letting your children ride the bus? Is kindergarten too young? What were your fears about letting them ride the bus? How professional do you find the bus drivers? How much do you think they are really looking out for the little ones? How safe is it?
I’ve got less than a week now to decide if I’m going to let my 5-year-old daughter ride the school bus. She says she wants to. My husband thinks she should mainly because I was late getting her to preschool pretty much every day last year. It would be convenient but I’m just not sure about letting her go.
The bus drivers assign seats and the little ones are always up front away from the big kids, so I don’t think she would get bullied. But other than my parents, no one else has ever driven her any place. I would wait at the bus stop with her, but I still worry about her getting hit by the bus getting off or on. (We’ve been practicing school bus safety acting out getting on and off the bus – I’ve been playing the bus driver.)
What do you guys think?
Do we really need TV in grocery carts?
Are TV shows in a grocery cart brilliant or teaching our kids they don’t have to be patient?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Publix is testing out new TV Karts in Suwanee and Alpharetta. They look like the race car carts but in the car compartment is a little TV screen on which the kids can watch “Barney,� “The Wiggles,� or “Bob the Builder,� depending on which cart you choose. The show lasts for about 48 minutes. The special cart costs $1 to use, and Publix will get a cut of that money. (You can read the story in full.)
What do you think Moms: Is this a great idea or a terrible one?
I don’t want to sway anyone but I can’t help but give you my two cents. I personally think this is a terrible idea. Now, my kids were born 25 months apart so believe me I have had some terrible times at the grocery store. However, we watch more than enough TV at home that we don’t need to be watching it when we’re out places (like in our car, at the Y or the grocery store.)
Other issues with this: I think the grocery store can be a fantastic learning experience for children. I love talking about the different foods and cultures that eat different things. I love showing them fruits and vegetables, looking at the birthday cakes and talking to the bakers, seafood guy and sushi lady. (No wonder if takes me more than 48 minutes to shop.) Preschool teachers will tell you that grocery stores are great places for kids to learn about sorting, counting and classifying. It would be so sad if they missed those learning experiences because they are watching TV.
Plus, if this comes to a Publix near me, all I’m seeing is fights in the lobby because I don’t want them watching TV and I’m not going to pay $1 even if I did. We already have sadness if all the car carts are in use. I don’t want to add any more drama to the picking of the cart.
Children bring unique style to clothes shopping
How do you handle back-to-school shopping? Who gets to choose -- mom or child?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The last time my children came clothes shopping with me, they decided it would be fun to try to poke their fingers at my breasts while I tried on bathing suit tops.
Sounding like the guys on the old “Kids in the Hall� TV show doing their “I’m crushing your head� bit, my 5-and 3-year-old chanted, “We’re poking your boobs. We’re poking your boobs� as they swarmed around me with their little fingers jabbing at my chest.
Shopping with children is rarely a treat and something I try to avoid. However, sometimes – when you can’t get a babysitter — you have to bring them along.
Last spring, I needed a dress for a dinner and had no choice but to take them on the excursion. While trying on a few items, my daughter decided to act out the scene in “Cinderella� where the evil stepsisters discover Cinderella is wearing some of their discarded clothes, and they rip them off of her.
My daughter began pulling at the skirt of the dress I was trying on, yelling, “You little thief. No, that’s mine. Take it off.� My son decided this seemed like fun and when he wasn’t busy escaping under the door of the dressing room; he helped her with the de-frocking.
The sales ladies were snickering outside the door but I’m sure it was jarring to the other customers. I left so quickly, I had to return the next day to actually buy the dress I needed.
Around that time my mother and I took the two kids to pick out Easter outfits. We thought my daughter would have fun trying on frilly dresses with puffy crinolines bouncing underneath. However, she wasn’t in the mood that day. She yelled in the dressing room like we were cutting off her hands, crying “This is the worst thing ever.�
Meanwhile, in the next dressing room, my then 2-year-old was channeling Cary Grant as he modeled for his grandmother a delightful little outfit of white pants and sailor sweater. He cried too – only he was upset about taking the outfit off.
Now I’m hearing from friends that not being able to find a babysitter isn’t the only reason to take my daughter shopping with me – she may actually want to weigh in on what she wears to school this year. Apparently kindergarten is when they start to develop opinions about what they want to wear based on what they see their friends wearing.
Up until this point my daughter hasn’t been picky. I would buy the clothes, give her a few choices in the morning, and she would wear them. No problems.
But my friends warn this is the year peer pressure begins, and she may not want to wear the adorable classic outfits I want to see her in. They warn there may be no more striped dresses with coordinated comfortable leggings. No more clothes embroidered with bees and flowers and no more floppy grosgrain bows adorning her little head. And buyer beware: If I do purchase these things, they may just sit in the closet.
One experienced mom has advised me to let her start school in her summer clothes, and then wait until she sees what everybody else is wearing before buying her fall clothes.
But I don’t want her to dress like everyone else. I don’t want her to look like she’s 13 when she’s 5.
I wouldn’t have any problem telling my daughter “no� if I thought an outfit was inappropriate (too short, too tight or too impractical).
But what do you do if you just don’t like the style of an outfit? How and when do you let them develop their own sense of style? Do you take the child shopping with you to buy the clothes, or do you show them pictures in catalogs and order from home?
So many questions to answer. It feels like I’m back in school.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: General Frustrations of Motherhood
Did you hold back your kids with summer, fall birthdays?
How do you know when you should keep your child behind a year in school? What year is the best to hold them back? What year is the worst?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
How do you know when you need to hold a child with a summer or fall birthday back a year in school? Do you make them repeat a grade or just start them a year after their peers – so they start the 2-year-old class when they just turn 3 or the 3-year-old class when they just turn 4.
What year is the best to hold them back? What year is the worst?
What signs should you look for to make that decision? For those who have held them back, did you regret it or did it turn out well?
Permalink | Comments (40) | Categories: Education
Did you use the state’s Pre-K program?
Did you like the pre-k program if you used it?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of our education reporters Chris Reinolds is working on a story about the lottery-funded pre-k program that is free to 4-year-olds across the state. Apparently a lot of parents don’t participate.
If you have a 4-year-old child and opted not to do the state’s pre-k, please tell us why. And if you did have a child in pre-k, how did you like it?
Chris may pull comments from the blog, but if you would be willing to use your name in the story you can contact her at creinolds@ajc.com.
Do you pay all the ‘voluntary’ school donations?
How much do you normally give to the school each year and just how voluntary is it?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We received a list in the mail of all the “voluntary� donations asked for by our daughter’s elementary school. I don’t mind paying it, but I was just a little surprised by the long list. Here’s what they’re asking for:
Technology contribution - $10 per family
School supply contribution - $10 per child
School clinic contribution - $5 per family
PTA membership - $5 per person
Student directory - $5 per family
Instructional enhancement/enrichment - $10 per family
Classroom activity/Party - $5 per child
Arts in education contribution - $5 per child
Accelerated reader - $3 per child
If I did my math right it’s a total of $63, including both parents joining the PTA. They sent a nice explanation of what each fund goes for, but I’m just wondering if all public schools ask for these same items? What do you usually contribute to? What happens if you don’t contribute? How voluntary are these contributions truly?
Another side question, do we want to be included in the student directory? Does it make life easier to organize play dates or just give lots of people you don’t know your address and phone number? What do you guys normally do?
Permalink | Comments (150) | Categories: Ethics of rearing kids today
