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Impulse Control
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Is It Working Yet?
Teenie Weenie Town
Santa Guilt
It's Not EST, But It Could Be
Not Offensive at All. It's a Trend
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After the Candy
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Impulse Control
I'm coming to you this morning from deep deep deep in the belly of birthday season, where things are sort of like a casino. You're never sure what time it is or even what day it might be but you're high on cake and some sort of entertaining activity and only briefly troubled by the tug of obligations and a huge pile of neglected work, forgotten chores. Even the terrier has caught birthday season fever and is trying to get his dinner time permanently shifted to the mid-afternoon-- the time of pizza and cake.
As hostess, I survived one of the two parties I have to take care of this season and I dealt with the whole issue of present weirdness (which I wrote about in the context of Emily Bazelon's unsatisfying solution to her own "present guilt" a while ago) by only opening presents gradually, having my kid say something about each present for use in a thank you card and then putting almost everything away, so that this embarrassment of items can be dealt with slowly. (I can't let myself get behind on thanks, but I do feel the need to institute some sort of perspective.) Oh, and while I write the notes, my boys need to sign them, so they can get a sense of the writer's cramp their mother sustains.
Maybe this is as bad as the Bazelon Solution, but I think we all make crazy deals with ourselves to make these uncomfortable things bearable.
So it was with some interest that I spotted last night, when I was neither watching the Super Bowl nor doing anything productive, another couple of pieces on Slate about teenage recklessness and how to get the kids-today-with-their-hair-and-their-clothes to act with a little more regard for life and limb. Both were written by Alan Kazdin and Carlo Torella and are pretty interesting. (Here is the first installment. This is part two.)
The interesting thing, to me, about the recommendations, is that what these psychologists advocate is extremely normal behavior: rigorous but gentle monitoring of kids, strong parent child relationships, encouraging skills in children.... that sort of thing. Not surprisingly, as with the preschool set, explaining why dangerous activities should be avoided doesn't tend to be successful.
What does this have to do with birthday parties and present opening? Nothing too much really, except that I realize that the more complicated and strained one's efforts are to have good kids, what one should probably do is strive to be reasonable-- which is not as interesting as some of the more wild techniques, and is sort of difficult and boring.
posted by Elise at 6:41 AM
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Happy Returns
Birthday season has arrived. Due to the way my childrens' school arranges classes, these occasions tend to bunch up within a couple of months and every year I'm a bit blindsided by the sudden furry of social activity. Many dread these happenings but I don't really see the point in getting worked up. If my kids clearly hated the things it would be another story but as I see it, at this age, it is something to do on a cold weekend afternoon and the child who doesn't attend the party can hang out with whichever parent is free. The only real drag is trying to keep track of things, but that's the drag of everything, isn't it?
So with all this in my mind (and having just purchased a semi-educational "matching" game for the most recent birthday party), I was interested to read Emily Bazelon's piece in Slate this week about the deep conflicts she has about her sons' birthday parties (mostly the aggressive consumerism involved in present giving) and the unsatisfying way she tries to resolve her distaste. She and her husband instituted a semi-complicated birthday book swap tradition in lieu of having their children get presents and this worked for a while until her kids realized it made them different and they wanted a more standard present getting set-up. In her article, Bazelon details the strained compromises, her sons' upsets, and the conversations she and her husband have with each other about their position on presents.
I read all of this and was left with an almost despairing feeling. This often happens when what seems to be a non-issue (or at least a non-pressing issue) gets turned into something very large and intractable. I throw up my mental hands and resign myself to being corrupt and dissipated and accept that I am guilty of some secondary sin. I don't have it in me to conjure stilted present giving rules for my kids and I don't want to make my children the vector through which my guilt and confusion gets filtered. I'll try to work that out on my own without them having to deal with it.
What is it that makes birthday parties so complicated? I'm guilty of this myself in non-present-related ways. I am a late summer birthday myself so the party thing was never much of an issue since no one was around much and even now, my annual dinner out is always several weeks after the actual birthday to accommodate two of my dinner companions' vacation schedule. But I always forget to plan the thing, scramble at the last minute, vow to bake a cake from scratch, chicken out and order something from the tolerant (and happily accommodating) bakery in the neighborhood. Is there something about one's child's birthday party that makes some of us desperate to control (even if, in my case, it is control through procrastination) instead of just getting it over with? Why should this thing have to contain a grand statement as it does for Bazelon? Or in my case, why should it bring on such bouts of indecision?
Anyway, for my part, the first of the parties I need to plan is almost upon me and since I snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by suddenly remembering not to schedule it for a long holiday weekend, I should be feeling ahead of the game. Bazelon has a lot more arguing to do.
posted by Elise at 10:49 AM
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Is It Working Yet?
On one of my too-brief jaunts on a treadmill before New Year's, I saw someone on the morning "news" saying that for them to be successful, we should really call our resolutions something else like "goals." I am not particularly sure how necessary the semantic difference really is (though the interview subject went on so long about it, I wound up on another channel, catching up on the top ten "weirdest" television moments, sadly for shows I wasn't aware existed, of 2009).
Anyway, I tend to make resolutions and then not tell anyone (a mistake according to the long winded lady) and then eventually they slip away and I then start resolving on a weekly basis. Sorry, making goals, until the year wraps up and the cycle begins again.
This year, in a fit of winter vacation frustration, I made an effort to at least start on the right foot and had the children create a sign for my door. (If it works at all, someday I'll needlepoint something or at least have a sign that doesn't need to be wrapped in plastic wrap due to the volumes of glitter it sheds.) One of my many large problems with focus lately has been kid interruption. I am a bit of a pushover so that even when there is a designated time for me to work, things for the boys eat into it and I find I'm back to the early morning/late night work schedule which doesn't do it at all.
So the sign. It is a simple glittery creation, a little abstract, but even Sebastian has learned at school what "red" and "green" mean when it comes to proceeding across a street or through a door.
Is it working? Not so much yet. There's a bit of a learning curve in which they barge in and then pull up short asking: "Oh what did the sign say?"
But I'm not exactly going great guns either. School returned this week, though, so perhaps it is all a matter of getting the engines oiled again, and being pleased I thought to contain the glitter shedding before I put this practical masterpiece to work.
posted by Elise at 3:29 AM
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Teenie Weenie Town
With the holidays comes no school and somehow a pile of work, so forgive please my long silence. My resolutions for the new decade will involve enhanced productivity and focus. What I will say now is that for a number of reasons, writing here has been quite difficult of late and I hope some new strategy or two will loosen me up a bit more.
What is it about the holiday season that inspires traditions predicated on making the world very very little. I am guilty of embracing this myself with an annual gingerbread house that I have scrambled to produce (with assistance) for the last nine years. But this town is full of binky universes. I have gone now to multiple train shows which miniaturize Manhattan. One is still chugging along in Grand Central Station and depicts all sorts of trains zipping around a sort of compressed city in which King Kong labors up the Empire State Building while Santa sails over some mountain on the far side (very far side) of shrunken Grand Central Station and fragments of street scenes have a kind of Edward Hopper-esque quality, in spite of being surrounded by shiny twinkly things. My children can both spend hours mesmerized by this scene (while I find my mind is often quickly overtaken by thoughts of H1N1 flu).
But this being Winter Break from school, larger excursions are required to keep the kids from pulling my hair out (that's for me to do), so we embarked yesterday on a grand train mission and went up to the Bronx Botanical Garden for hours of fun at their universe of New York (and its environs) landmarks made of botanical bits and pieces around which all sorts of trains chug along. This is a spendy excursion, though it can be extended (as I did) by getting the kids to run around through the gardens and into the "Gingerbread Adventure" area, but the highlight is the trains. It is pretty remarkable to see these likenesses of centuries-old buildings (93 Reade Street, for instance, is there) and impressive structures like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the George Washington Bridge all looking as if they sprouted out of the hothouse soil they're stuck in, while little electric trains service them. I don't know what my children found so astounding, but they were mesmerized. (It is odd, because I think the very young can be entranced and adults can be interested-- though they might not go if they weren't in the company of children) but kids old enough to really "get" what is going on with the buildings being representations of the buildings they see around town might find it too babyish and uncool.
So what is it about little worlds and this time of year? Is it some sort of reaction to so many Nativity scenes all over the place that we want to shrink or reinvent something quotidian? Is it just that much more amusing to see the world as a manageable set of toys?
I'm not complaining at all. I'm wracking my brains for more tiny things for the children to see before school blessedly starts up again and order can return.
posted by Elise at 11:32 AM
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Santa Guilt
I think it was the fifth time in seven days that I heard from someone that he (or she, but yesterday it happened to be a he) felt bad for lying to his children about aspects of Christmas, namely Santa Claus. In this case, again, he said that he felt reasonably all right telling the story initially but his child began asking detailed questions about how Santa operates, how he gets around, his personal interests, that sort of thing.
This sort of self-consciousness and guilt is a little bit alien to me because my family did a lot of storytelling and had a very non-literal approach to . . . most things. So I don't think my parents would call any discussions of Santa and his activities "lying" any more than they would think about the questionable truth behind my father saying: "If you raise your hand to your mother, it will fall off."
My memory is that talk about Santa's abilities to be everywhere at once were explained with the single word "magic" and we all tended to make up our own stories about what might be going on as we saw fit, but overall, I probably believed in Santa about as much as I believed in the Greek and Roman gods (with whom I had an obsession) or any other mythological thing.
I didn't ask any of the people I talked to who felt queasy about the Santa fabrication if part of their discomfort came not so much from the problem of lying but from a conflict between religious beliefs and utter fabrication. Since I was raised with no religion, but was taught many of the fundamental Jewish and Christian narratives (and took the New Testament as Literature in college), my own conscience isn't plagued by telling my kids about Santa. Santa stories aren't so wildly different from the things we make up about our terrier's activities when we go out and he invites his dog friends over or has crazy adventures.
But I am curious about the problem. People feel terribly strongly about this and I am surprised, not that people do care so deeply about speaking the truth to their kids, but about how I am only now, in almost the fifth year of being a parent, becoming aware of this particular conflict. Is it a newer bit of guilt or was it just waiting until my kids were old enough to appear? (This is not to say that I feel guilty about this thing. I don't. This is one area where I surprisingly have no feelings of conflict. And to be honest, it is way too early in the season for me to even talk out loud about Santa. I still don't know what to do with the children over winter break.)
posted by Elise at 8:06 AM
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It's Not EST, But It Could Be
Someone once told me about the experience of being a waitress for a table of people who were all taking an assertiveness training class. Apparently it took forever to get through the ordering process because each person would aggressively announce his or her desire and then forcefully change his or her mind several times before finally settling.
At the moment, it is as if Sebastian is engaging in his own sort of assertiveness training, although it wouldn't have been the first course I would sign him up for, given the choice.
Sebastian did not speak early, though is comprehension is excellent but now that speech has arrived, in more of a flood than a trickle, it turns out he has not been silently contemplating or engaging in the sort of quiet internal debates I thought I was observing. No. As it turns out, he has been impatient with everything.
No. I am not wearing a coat.
I want to go home. I want to go home now! (Generally said when he is at home.)
Mommy, go away.
Mommy, go to the gym. (He's right on that one. I should be there more often.)
That's not funny. (He's usually wrong there.)
I don't like that.
Months ago, I had been warned that with language comes a bit of "oppositional behavior" but I was unprepared for the volume of argument and the depth to which this kid is willing to go to prove his point. Happily, there are a number of possible careers that involve this sort of skill set, and I can always bludgeon manners into him.
I can, that is, unless I have some sort of conniption from the incessant "Why," which he has also embraced. Isn't he a little ahead of the game on that? How long does the "why" phase end? And I have tried answering "why" with a question. That does nothing to shut down the "why" quiz.
posted by Elise at 11:02 AM
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Not Offensive at All. It's a Trend
I'm not exactly sure why it is a revelation worth a big story in the New York Times "Style" section, but here it is: people have been applying Cesar Millan's dog training techniques to their children. Now, I'm not arguing because I actually love The Dog Whisperer and use his (I hope not patented, because otherwise I'd owe him a ton of money) "Shht" noise with the terrier all the time, and because I think I have, both consciously and unconsciously, used dog training techniques on the children.
I mean this in the broadest sense, needless to say, but all the stuff about being calm and assertive and asserting control through positive reinforcement of good behavior works well on young children and on animals. One is, presumably, looking for different end results and neither my dog nor my kids are perfectly perfect by any means, but I don't find the "discovery" that animal behavior modification techniques cross species. Actually, wasn't it the New York Times that started this meme with the hugely popular article (soon to be a book I assume) "What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage"? Yes, it was-- way back in 2006.
What I dearly wish is that someone could show me how to train myself in the ways of being internally calm and assertive so I could school myself in the ways of getting more done, eating less candy, being tidier, and wising up.
posted by Elise at 11:45 AM
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