Holly turns eight

Yesterday was Holly’s eighth birthday. Past, present, and future: all three manifestations seem to mingle on children’s birthdays. Each year I find myself thinking again about the birthday child’s arrival, about who they are as they celebrate that yearly milestone, about what might possibly lie ahead for them.

Not very much about my memories of Holly’s birth day has changed over the past eight years. The day before she was born, my friend Nancy met up with me at my parents’ house. We sat out by the pond for hours, both of us pregnant with second babies, while our firstborns played in the water. When I finally stood up as the afternoon was reaching its end, I noticed the strange pull and mild ache of early labor. Holly arrived at two o’clock the next morning.

One thing that amazes me about newborns is how much you as a parent know about them the moment you meet them. I wrote in my journal the day Holly was born, recording my impressions of her personality, so I know I’m not misremembering those early ideas about her; I have them in writing. And at the time I thought I was just projecting, describing the personality I might wish for her to have rather than the one I really expected. But looking back, I see how accurate my perceptions were. I wrote that she seemed like a cheerful, independent, pleasant kind of person who would be easy to get along with as long as you didn’t step on her toes, but that she had a powerful sense of self and would react fiercely when intruded upon. And guess what? Eight years later, that’s Holly. Just ask her brother. Sweet and easy-going as can be until he pushes one button too many, and then she’s a fighter. Somehow I knew. Even when she was just two hours old, curled in the crook of my arm in the hospital bed, her dark curls damp, my body weary from delivery, I knew.

Now she’s eight years old. She learned a lot from being seven. She sang and danced her way through much of the year, she learned to swim and ride a bike, and she created enough art projects to fill the Getty Museum (I’m talking quantity, not quality, of course), but she also learned some hard lessons about friendship, some her fault, some not. She learned that you can’t always trust the people you think are your friends, and that you have to be trustworthy in order to keep a friend, and that hardly anything is more valuable than a true and reliable friend. It wasn’t always fun to watch this process, but I hope she carries all of these lessons forward with her as she grows.

She’ll start third grade next month. She has a teacher who likes to sing with the kids and put on plays; maybe she’ll grow into a little bit more of a performer rather than keeping the singing and dancing to the confines of her bedroom. Maybe she’ll start acting more like an eight-year-old and less like a six-year-old in some ways that would really help me, such as, say, dressing herself in the morning. Maybe if she starts acting older, she’ll get along a bit better with her brother, who has little enough patience for girls and especially those who tend to burst into tears after too much (or any) teasing.

She’s a happy, healthy child, and I’m so lucky to be celebrating this birthday with her. During Tim’s first several years of life I tried to write him a letter every year on his birthday. I don’t do that anymore. I just feel like I do so much writing and recording of our lives as it is that it was almost artificial to pour my thoughts about one child and one age into a letter on one day out of the year. If in the future they have questions about how I felt about them as children, Tim and Holly can read my blog, my essays, my collected writings on parenting. I don’t keep a lot of secrets regarding how I feel about much.

I hope Holly will see somewhere in my words how much I love her and how much I enjoy watching her grow. I scoped her out when she was two hours old and saw things in her personality I knew I’d like. Eight years later, I’m amazed at my accuracy but not amazed at how much I treasure her company. She’s a dear daughter, and I wish her every happiness as she steps forward into her ninth year.

Working with clay: A 7-year-old and her pottery class

Carlisle’s Old Home Day festivities take place this weekend. While I gear up mentally for the 5-mile road race I expect to run and gather supplies for the pie-baking contest I agreed to oversee, my 7-year-old, Holly, spent a good part of last evening selecting the pieces that she plans to enter in the Art Show.

I almost missed out on the idea of having her take part in the Art Show, and this is a good example of how I tend to pigeonhole myself and my family. I think of our recreational talents lying primarily in baking (me) and sports (Rick and Tim); I’m not artistic at all from a “studio art” perspective, so the Art Show simply wasn’t on my radar. Fortunately, a friend who knows how much Holly enjoys her weekly pottery class urged me to look into it.

Holly does indeed enjoy her weekly pottery class, and so do I, even though my direct involvement is restricted to dropping her off at the instructor’s home studio at the beginning and coming in for a few minutes at the end to chat with the instructor and examine Holly’s newest creations. I feel like Holly has found her artistic niche, though, and there’s so much I admire about this class.

Like most kids her age, Holly has long enjoyed art projects, but I quickly grew frustrated with the ever-popular crafts kits she received for presents or asked me to buy when we made a stop at the toy store or the crafts store. Although the concept is good – all the materials needed for a particular craft activity pre-cut, pre-measured and pre-packaged in one tidy box – it didn’t take me long to realize how much waste was involved. The packaging alone usually involves plastic trays, paint cups, and paint brushes within the heavy-duty cardboard box; moreover, when you’re done with these kits, you’ve usually made one thing. One item, with all that material. It’s not that the young artist is disappointed to have one thing to show for her work; it just never seems to me like a very good use of resources.

Pottery, by contrast, is so charmingly old-fashioned. The instructor, Mrs. Lemmerman, has been teaching pottery to kids and adults here in town since I was Holly’s age. She’s a genuine artist herself, a potter, and I like the idea of Holly seeing how an actual artist works and lives. Furthermore, unlike many of the kids’ activities which always seem a little too scripted and organized, they’re very much on their own when it comes to planning out their time with clay. Mrs. Lemmerman shows them all kinds of examples and has books on hand for them to page through as well as various accessories such as garlic presses, seashells and stencils to encourage their ideas, but for the most part, the kids come up with their own individual schemes for what to make each week.

They learn from each other that way, too. Holly once unapologetically told me she spent most of one class watching the other kids work because that day she just felt more curious about what they were creating than inspired to start anything herself. This too seems to me like the perspective of a true artist: sometimes you make the most progress when you observe your colleagues at work rather than forging out on your own. I also value the fact that the class is mixed-age. Unlike school, afterschool sports, Girl Scouts and summer camp, all of which are rigidly organized by age group, pottery gives Holly the chance to learn from older kids and have the fun of helping younger ones.

Now, having just finished her second eight-week pottery course, she has quite an inventory of completed ceramics to show for her efforts. (In fact, one of my friends said she stopped signing her daughter up for pottery when they ran out of shelf space.) Holly keeps them all displayed in her room; that bookcase is the only part of her room she keeps consistently tidy, in order to show off her work to best advantage.

So when I told her about tomorrow’s art show, she took her time picking out the maximum allowable four pieces, examining each item she made recently, selecting some, ruling out others. What I haven’t told her yet, and probably won’t, is that it’s not only a show but also a contest. I’m hoping she doesn’t notice. She’s thrilled with the idea of exhibiting her work. If she knew about the prizes, winning a ribbon would become important. Right now, her only priority is in deciding whether to award her fourth spot to the fish soapdish, the flag tile or the crimson coil pot.

I’m happy to see her take pride in her work. Prizes and ribbons not withstanding, I’m hoping she’ll continue with pottery for a long time. It feels very organic to me and I like what it’s teaching her about art. I can’t wait to see her work on exhibit with the work of all of Carlisle’s other artists, young, old and in between, this weekend at Old Home Day.

Lending a hand

This weekend, the kids and I spent two nights in Portland together. In general, being the only adult and going away with them isn’t my favorite scenario. It’s not that they’re so much work; I just have more fun with Rick or friends along to share the adult responsibilities with me.

But this weekend it worked out well, and one thing I kept noticing was how all three of us were helping each other out. When we’re in the configuration more typical in our family, two children and two adults, the adults tend to help the children; it’s a fairly straightforward equation. This past weekend, with myself, my 11-year-old son and my 7-year-old daughter, it felt more like a symbiotic triangle, as I observed how each of us found ways to help the others.

Saturday, we went for a long walk around town. I had a street map, and Tim helped me read it to figure out the various ways to get to the post office and the playground. He navigated again for me yesterday when we drove twenty minutes to see our friends at the beach, this time from the front seat of the car. We made a few wrong turns based on his misreading of my handwriting, and we would have gotten there a little sooner had we the advantage of state-of-the-art GPS technology, but we didn’t; we had only the directions I’d scribbled down while on the phone with our friends earlier in the day, and we had Tim’s earnest attempts to make sense of them. GPS is great, I found myself thinking, but this kind of teamwork is kind of fun too.

When we needed milk and orange juice, the kids together walked down the street to the market just a block away. Holly carried the grocery bag both ways; Tim handled the change (and, I admit it, the cell phone, since this independence is new to us and I couldn’t help being just a little leery). And when our bikes started to slip off the bike rack on the back of the car, all three of us had to work together to fix the problem: Holly held the duct tape and scissors; Tim supported the bikes; I wrapped lengths of tape around each juncture until the bikes were fastened tight and ready for travel once again.

I was still weary at the end of the day and had the same feeling I do at home of having spent a lot of the day doing things for other people, but when I reflected upon it, I couldn’t deny that it wasn’t a one-way street this time. When Holly realized after we’d left the condo for a walk that she couldn’t possibly go an hour without her blankie, Tim took the door key from me and sprinted back to fetch blankie for Holly. She in turn offered him all the bacon from her breakfast sandwich that she didn’t want.

The biggest thing the kids did for me was agree to bike along next to me so that I could fit in my daily run. They like biking, but might not have chosen this particular course or time of day. Yet they knew it was really important to me to fit in a 45-minute run before breakfast. And they knew I couldn’t leave them alone for that long. So they agreed to go with me. Holly biked a short distance ahead of us; Tim rode next to me and asked questions about every single boat we could spot in the harbor as we passed by – questions of which I knew the answers to exactly none. But I was grateful to the kids for being willing to make my daily run work out for me.

Later in the day, watching them play a modified game of one-on-one in the courtyard outside the condo (because they had a ball but no basket; the game consisted of dribbling and stealing but no shooting), I thought about how much more reliably they get along together when we’re away from home. It’s not that they quarrel at home, more that they generally go their separate ways. The proximity of traveling puts them unavoidably in each other’s company, and they make it work for them, with games like this one, with help here and there, with enjoying each other’s company and making things easier for me when they can too.

Everyone helped everyone. To use my father’s favorite cliché from his years as a camp counselor, we ended the day tired but happy. And I felt a new appreciation for the kids’ attempts to pitch in when needed. It’s one of the great things about traveling: giving them the opportunity to be more than the people they are during normal everyday life. They came through for me in numerous ways, and I really appreciated it.

Four fussy eaters

“Did I tell you about the Spanish omelet I made yesterday?” my sister Sarah asks me on the phone. “I’m going to send you the recipe. I think everyone in your family would like it!”

Oh, what fantasy words those are. And how utterly out of reach. The thought of making an entrée that everyone in my family likes is a distant dream to me. And I already knew the Spanish omelet wasn’t going to fill the bill; my husband Rick is a fierce opponent of eggs.

Many parents of very young children complain about their kids’ picky appetites, but that’s not really the issue for us. My kids aren’t all that young, and their appetites aren’t exactly picky, in the sense that they’re not the types who will eat only chicken fingers and goldfish, say, or boxed macaroni and cheese. They’re just…well, they’re not omnivorous. They each have several things they like and a few they don’t. The problem is that my husband has his list as well, and I have mine, and if you drew a black-and-white Venn diagram, you’d find very few gray overlap areas. And this is one situation in which some gray areas would be most welcome, but we don’t have many.

My 7-year-old likes fairly plain foods. She likes meat without sauce, starches and vegetables without spice, and so on. This means she can eat a healthy variety as long as nothing has much seasoning, which means I need to remember to separate whatever she’s going to be eating early on in the preparations. I also have long believed she has sort of a biorhythmic appetite: she just sometimes seems too tired by dinnertime to make an effort with eating. When she asks for a bowl of shredded wheat and a sliced apple with cheese while I’m getting dinner ready, I’m usually willing to accommodate her, knowing she probably won’t be interested in anything that nutritious an hour later at the dinner table.

My 11-year-old son has a broader diversity of tastes. Unlike his sister, he likes spices and seasonings, garlic, onions, anchovies. In fact, it sometimes seems that his palate craves extreme flavors the way some people turn to extreme sports because they crave excitement. One of his favorite food items is balsamic vinegar. He’ll pour it on salad, eat the salad, and then finish off the vinegar with a spoon. He’ll refill his salad bowl with straight vinegar once or twice if I don’t stop him, which I eventually do because I think vinegar is bad for tooth enamel.

So his tastes are fairly convenient except that he passionately despises tomatoes. That’s it: just tomatoes. Which brings us to my situation: I’m a vegetarian. People sometimes mistakenly think that means I’m a picky eater, but I’m not: I like just about anything that doesn’t include meat. Still, the kids both like most vegetables, so there are dozens and dozens of wonderful things that I can make for a family dinner, except that my husband dislikes eggs, rice and beans, which are essentially a vegetarian’s mainstay. (He also doesn’t like tofu, but that hardly seems worth mentioning: who unless they are a vegetarian actually does like tofu?) And although he loves pasta, as do the rest of us (as long as Tim’s doesn’t have tomato sauce), for reasons of weight control he has been strongly advised to avoid it.

So making dinner has been a rather wearisome challenge lately. Despite my own vegetarian habits – I haven’t eaten meat since 1985 – I’m comfortable preparing it for my family; I actually think it’s better for the kids to eat some meat than to avoid it altogether. But no spices or sauces on Holly’s. No tomatoes with Tim’s. No omelets or rice-based casseroles for Rick. For years, before the kids were born and then before they expressed preferences, I was fine with cooking for both a carnivore and a vegetarian. That was easy compared to this.

Once in a while I hit on an effective menu, one that everyone eats enthusiastically. Something like pork chops – plain for Holly, sauced for Rick and Tim, none for me – and baked potatoes and steamed broccoli which we’ll all eat, though Rick doesn’t have more than a bite or two of high-carb potato. Tim and I both like salad for dinner; I add some tofu to mine for protein and feel like everyone is in good shape for the evening. But those meals are the minority. So I just keep working at finding the right mix of options for everyone, and sometimes we just all have leftovers and that’s okay too.

In a way, it’s a microcosm of family life. You try to please everyone, and you can’t, and yet everyone eventually finds something they can be happy with. Compromise and flexibility. In menu planning as in interpersonal dynamics. With lots of freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top if at all possible.

Admitting to petty frustrations

I admit this guiltily: I’m a little frustrated.

I’m frustrated because I’ve made no progress in my efforts to instill a new habit in my 7-year-old. All year, she has pleaded with me every weekday morning to help her get dressed. All year, I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to persuade her to dress herself.

And I feel guilty in my frustration, because I completely understand it’s no big deal. I shouldn’t mind helping her. I work from home; it’s not like I’m in such a big rush to get out of the house in the morning that I can’t take the time. And by the time she needs to dress, my other child is already on the bus headed for fifth grade; it’s not like she’s taking me away from caring for other children.

I’m just tired of dressing her. I’ve been dressing her every morning for seven and a half years. I’d like her to dress herself. Which is just how I felt when she was a late walker. She was twenty months old and I was still carrying her and I just wanted her to start walking already.

But all of this makes me feel guilty because it’s such a petty thing to whine about. I’m so lucky to have a happy, healthy child. With so many cases of autism in evidence these days anywhere that children gather, I feel so fortunate that she can effortlessly verbalize her wants. I’m lucky that it’s not a physical disability that keeps her from dressing herself, just stubbornness. I’m grateful that I can afford clean, properly fitting clothes for her to put on every morning, and I’m even more grateful that we have a home in which to dress. Other mothers are dressing their daughters in homeless shelters.

None of this gratitude eradicates my frustration. I wish she would stop asking for help getting dressed. There’s no reason I can’t help her; I just don’t feel like it. It’s one job I’d like her to take on for herself. Even as my kids grow and become increasingly independent, parenting still involves a lot of daily tasks. I make breakfast for them, pack their school lunches, nag them to bathe and put their dirty clothes in the hamper, remind them of the time they need to leave the house in order to catch the school bus, tuck them into bed at night. I’d like to give up just this one thing, the daily task of putting Holly into her clothes.

Fortunately, just as when she showed no inclination to learn to walk when she was well past eighteen months, I know this will eventually change. She finally started walking after twenty months, and after that I almost never needed to carry her anymore; someday she’ll finally decide she’s ready to dress herself.

And it would be easy here to lapse into the familiar language of “…and then I’ll miss this morning ritual of helping her dress.” But you know, I don’t think I will. I have always loved being with my children and taking care of them, but I can’t think of any phases I really missed when they were over: not because I’m such a grudging parent but because kids are always growing into something new, something more interesting, something just as fun as what they gave up. True, when Tim was a toddler and pushed around a toy grocery cart filled with random household items or when Holly pulled all the canned goods out of the cupboard every day and climbed in, closing the door behind her, it was adorable, but other equally endearing activities replaced those. I’m just as happy watching Tim play baseball as I was watching him ride his trike; I like hearing him tell me about his favorite new science fiction series just as much as I once enjoyed reading Goodnight, Moon.

Earlier this week I was reading a blog entry by parenting expert Michele Borba reiterating the familiar fact that it takes 21 days to instill a habit, and that’s how long you need to expect your children to take to acquire a new practice as well. If I started tomorrow simply insisting that Holly dress herself, maybe in just three weeks it would be second nature to her. As with walking so long ago, I know it’s going to happen eventually; I just have to decide how hard I want to push for it.

Someday I might be appalled by her taste in clothes or her personal style. And I might get sentimental about those days when she was seven and still depended on me to dress her every morning. But if I could get that to change in three weeks’ time, I would. And I don’t think a day will ever come when I’ll ever be sorry to see her emerge from her bedroom, fully dressed.

Letting the kids wander a little - while I sit and worry

Yesterday was a beautiful warm sunny May day. My 7-year-old invited her friend Samantha over to play. They asked me if they could go out to the barn. This is something fairly new for Holly. We live on the edge of my parents’ farm, and although she likes climbing rocks and playing in the pastures, Holly has generally showed little interest in the barnyard. But this was the second time this spring she and a friend had asked to play there.

I said yes with the usual caveats. “You have to be either in the barn or somewhere between there and the house; no wandering farther away. And you have to play together. No dividing up, even for something like hide-and-seek.” The girls agreed readily to these terms and headed out. I sat outside trying to read the newspaper, but because they were out of my eyesight, I worried.

I knew how silly that was. I knew this was exactly the kind of thing many parents love to see their kids do: play outside, take a friend by the hand and go do something a little bit adventuresome. My next door neighbor, Gail, introduced me to the book “Last Child in the Woods,” which essentially posits that it’s a big problem that we give our kids so little free rein anymore, both in terms of time – they are always scheduled for some activity or another – and in terms of physical independence. And recently I’ve discovered Lenore Skenazy’a popular Free Range Kids blog, devoted to this same idea. In fact, Skenazy is currently planning a fairly controversial event for next weekend called “Take Your Kids to the Park – And Leave Them There!”, intended to raise parents’ consciousness about being a little more lenient with our kids and allowing them to benefit from a little more physical freedom.

So as I sat there trying to read the paper, I reminded myself that it was a wonderful thing that Holly and Samantha were off exploring the barnyard. I knew they both had good judgment, just as my son Tim does. Neither of my kids is a daredevil: when I tell them to be cautious, or even if I don’t tell them to, I know they will. Both are diligent about following rules, and I’ve always trusted that if a friend does something my kids know to be wrong while playing at our house, my kids will tell me.

Still, I was uneasy with Samantha and Holly over in the barnyard, because I couldn’t see or hear them. The fears I have, based on the specifics of where we live and what they were doing, aren’t the typical worst-case scenarios. It’s extremely unlikely that there are child abductors, or anyone else for that matter, lurking in our pastures. The girls weren’t visible from the main road. And all the animals who have access to the barnyard are friendly, gentle and shy, so that wasn’t a concern either. Instead, I worry that one of them will wander into the woods, maybe even into a stream, which is why I insist they stay within eyesight of each other when they play and why I specifically disallow hide and seek. I also worry about stings. Twice, I’ve been in a situation with kids where we accidentally blundered into a hornets’ next, and it’s an awful situation to be in. While I trusted that if one of the girls had a minor accident like a fall, the other one would come get me, I couldn’t imagine how they’d manage if they stumbled onto a nest of hornets.

So I waited for a little bit, and then I wandered over just to check. A short distance from the barn, I could see them exploring the area together. They were fine. They were doing exactly what every mother should be lucky enough to see her seven-year-old doing on a beautiful spring day: enjoying the outdoors, discovering new elements of nature, exerting her independence to find ways to have fun. In this way, Skenazy’s idea about having kids spend some time at the park with other kids and without adult supervision makes a lot of sense. But still, I worry about emergencies: not abductions so much as bee stings.

After checking on the girls, though, I made myself stop worrying and just be happy that they were enjoying themselves. It can be hard to reach a state of mindfulness as a parent. You watch your child run off toward the woods and want to relish the Kodak moment but instead you’re worrying about hornets’ nests. Finding a balance is always the challenge: assure yourself they’re safe, and let them have fun. I know the girls had fun yesterday, and I believe they were safe. And I’m just really grateful that they got to play outside on such a magnificent spring day.

A compliment, a question, and a few minutes of worrying

My seven-year-old daughter and I were on the Minuteman Bikeway, a paved-over rail trail just four miles from our house. Named one of the country’s best rail trails, it attracts dozens of walkers, runners, bicyclists and in-line skaters on sunny weekend days like the one on which we were using it.

I’d wanted to fit in an afternoon run, and Holly wanted to go for a bike ride, so I suggested we try to do the two activities in tandem. Holly is still fairly new to a two-wheeler, so we hadn’t tried this combination before, but I’d seen other parents doing it lots of times, and it appeared to me that as long as the bicyclist has fairly short legs and a small bike and therefore couldn’t ride very fast, it could work out reasonably well.

We made our way two miles down the path, with Holly just a short distance ahead of me. I could see her the whole time, and at the few road crossings on that two-mile stretch, she stopped to wait for me so we could cross together.

After we reversed direction at the two-mile marker she must have accelerated, though, because I started finding it harder and harder to glimpse her in the distance. She was way ahead of me and quickly widening the gap.

“Nice job!” said a jogger who looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties as he ran toward me. He pointed back toward Holly. “Very good work!”

I’ll take a compliment wherever I can get one, but for the next ten minutes or so I puzzled over just what he meant. What were we doing that constituted a nice job and good work? Was it that I was out exercising with my child? When my son and I used to go running together regularly, strangers would often comment because it’s a little bit unusual to see a nine-year-old boy jogging, but Holly and I weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. Lots of kids her age ride their bikes. Did he just mean that she was a good steady rider? Maybe. She is small for her age, so although most kids at seven and a half are competent riders, perhaps he was impressed with her skill, thinking she was younger.

Or, I thought, did he mean because I was letting her get so far ahead of me? As I’ve come to realize, there are a lot of adults from earlier generations who think parents my age hover too much. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, on this trail where many parents were biking so close to their kids that their wheels almost touched or else pulling them in bike trailers, that he was complimenting me for letting her ride at her own pace.

But her own pace grew faster and faster, and after she disappeared into the distance, I grew anxious. Compared to most parents we know, I give my kids quite a lot of leeway when it comes to personal safety, but not being able to see her at all in this setting alarmed me.

Still, I needed to keep running. I had over a mile to go before I’d be back at the park where the trail begins. I dearly hoped I’d find her when I got there, but there was nothing I could do in the meantime but keep moving forward. Stopping or slowing down certainly wouldn’t help the situation any when all evidence pointed to the likelihood that she was well ahead of me.

I worried that she had fallen and was hurt. I worried that someone had jumped out of the thick woods bordering the trail and snatched her. I worried that she had reached the park but then wandered into traffic there. And, too, I worried about what other parents must be thinking now that there was a child riding along the path with no accompanying adult anywhere in sight. The man who complimented me earlier might have been impressed that I let her go at her own pace, but that was when she was still within eyeshot of me. I wasn’t sure anyone would compliment me on this bit of recklessness.

The two miles unspooled as I ran at my usual steady but slow pace. I told myself all I could do was continue on to the park. When I got there either Holly would be waiting for me and everything would be fine or she wouldn’t and I’d need to act quickly to get help. One or the other.

So I had nearly twenty long minutes to worry about Holly’s well-being. Then I arrived at the park and there she was, standing next to her bike and beaming. The relief was tremendous, but I didn’t let on that I’d been worried. Nor did I want to scold her for riding so far ahead of me. She’s still new at biking and still developing her skills; if anything, I was impressed at how well she’d done. Although she’d soared far ahead of me, I didn’t really feel she’d done anything wrong.

But had I done anything wrong? I wasn’t sure. I thought again about the jogger who said “Good job!” Good job teaching her to ride a bike? Good job getting out together for a workout? Maybe. Not so good letting her get so far away from me, though – and then worrying about it for the remainder of the run.

But it all worked out. So I’m not sure what I’ll do differently next time we head to the Bikeway together. But whatever it is, I hope someone lifts my spirits with a quick, if ambiguous, compliment along the way.

Rise and shine -- but at the moment it's not easy

In one of those countless phases of child development that wax and wane, taking on paramount importance when you’re in the midst of them and then becoming forgotten within days after they subside, my 7-year-old and I are in a Difficult Mornings phase. For the past several days, it’s been torturous to get her out of the house in the morning, and it never fails to amaze me that after eleven years of parenting, there are situations like this to which I still haven’t figured out a solution. I’ve been getting kids ready to leave the house for daycare, preschool or regular school for well over a decade, I remind myself. How is it that I still have a problem with it?

When I complain about my own ineptitude to my husband, he’s always quick to remind me that for the two years I was working outside the house and he was responsible for morning departures, it all ran like clockwork. It always does when he’s in charge, because he simply brooks no dissent and takes no prisoners. Children are dressed, groomed, packed and ready to go when he starts the car because it never occurs to him – nor therefore to them – that there’s any other option.

Alas, not so with me. Now both Rick and Tim are gone by 7:30, and I have a whole fifty minutes alone with Holly to get her out the door. Yet the past several days have found me practically bursting a blood vessel as Holly stalls and dodges, sometimes for reasons of her own and sometimes for reasons I impose. She’s not dressed warmly enough. She’s wearing the same shirt as the day before. She didn’t brush her teeth yet. (My reasons.) She forgot the stuffed animal that she promised a friend could play with at recess. Her ponytail is fastened with a pink elastic and she likes only purple now. The dog needs to have her stomach scratched. (Holly’s reasons.)

I remind myself over and over again to choose my battles. Holly insists on fixing her own hair these days, and I tell myself it’s okay if her part is crooked and her pigtails mussed. But what about wearing the same shirt she wore the day before? Is that a battle worth fighting? I’m not sure. The ineffective tooth-brushing and my insistence that she go upstairs and do it again is definitely a battle worth fighting, as poor dental hygiene is serious business, but that doesn’t make it any less awful when we’re about to miss the bus and Holly is arguing with me about whether or not the use of toothpaste matters.

One problem with finding a solution to the challenge of leaving the house on time is that it’s hard to find an immediate bargaining chip. Unlike, say, not being ready to go to the playground, it’s not like I can say to Holly “If you don’t get ready immediately, we’re not going.” She has to go to school, and we both know it. Incentives based on after-school activities often seem too far off to have much impact, and at the age of seven, she’s a little beyond being motivated by a sticker chart. The fact is, she knows I’m going to be sure she gets to school one way or another, so it often seems like the onus is on me to get us out with any kind of efficiency, and without major temper tantrums on either of our parts.

Yesterday wasn’t much of a success, but maybe today will be better. Last night when all was calm before bedtime (interestingly, bedtime is not an issue these days; we read and then Holly goes to sleep, easy as that), she and I had a talk about it. I told her why I think it’s important to wear different clothes from one day to the next and why I’m certain it’s important to brush your teeth. She promised to get an earlier start on all of it next time.

The consolation as far as obstacles in schoolday morning routines is that you have so many chances to get it right. Five days a week, ten months out of the year. If yesterday didn’t go so well, I know I have the chance to make today go better. We’ll see if I can. And if not, I just remind myself that each stage passes in time. If now I’m getting apoplectic every morning insisting that Holly brush her hair and wear a fresh clean outfit, the day will quite likely come when she spends hours on her hair and clothing, and I’ll wonder what I ever worried about.

When Tim was just a few weeks old, a mother of a baby just a few months older said to me, “The bad phases pass quickly, and the good phases pass quickly. Whatever is going on with them changes, for better or worse.” True today just as it was eleven years ago. Today’s battles will yield in time to tomorrow’s battles, whatever they might be. And when that happens, I’ll remember that they too will pass in time. For now, I need to focus on the fact that it’s more important to have clean teeth than clean clothes, and that as long as I get the kids to school on time and safely and remember to kiss them before they climb onto the bus, the rest is just details.

What the dog did on our April vacation

Considering how many school vacation weeks have found our family traveling absolutely nowhere – due to my work schedule, financial restrictions, or both – I was thrilled that this year’s April vacation, which fell last week, saw the kids and me hitting not one but two different destinations. First, we traveled south to Washington, D.C. for four days to visit my sister Sarah; then, after a brief layover at home to check in on Rick and the dog and do some laundry, we headed north for an overnight stay in Portland, Maine.

I was delighted that we had these opportunities. Mostly, I was happy to be able to offer the kids some new experiences and cultural enrichment and adventure, but I have to admit a tiny part of me was also happy that they wouldn’t once again return to school to hear about all their classmates’ adventures and admit that we hadn’t gone anywhere. Not that this has ever seemed to bother them in the past – they always pull up accounts of a daytrip to the aquarium or a hike at a local nature preserve to shore up their end of the “what I did during vacation” classroom conversation – but in truth, I was a little smug thinking that they too would name cities in other states when it came time for class sharing.

Eagerly, I asked my 7-year-old about how school went as she ate her afternoon snack yesterday. “We all talked about our vacations,” she recounted cheerfully. “Sammy went to the Caribbean, Jamie went to California, and Maggie went to New York City.”

“And did you tell about our trips?” I asked.

“No, I told about how Belle threw up.”

“You mean you told that she threw up,” I corrected automatically.

“No, I mean how. What she had been eating before and what it sounded like and everything.”

Wonderful. I took my kids to our nation’s capital and all Holly got out of it was that it almost caused her to miss being there when the dog threw up.

It wasn’t the first time that the kids’ penchant for literary realism has made it difficult for me to look their teachers in the eye. Earlier this year, Holly wrote a short story about how eating a particularly juicy and delicious pear made her reflect on how she often wishes she could run away because her mother (that’s me) acts like she doesn’t really love her. Holly’s teacher was troubled enough to call me before Holly brought the story home. She wanted to forewarn me. “Oh, that’s okay,” I said breezily. “It’s not as bad as the story Tim wrote in kindergarten.” Tim’s epic account of life in our household had started off like this: “I had a bad cough, so I took a long shower with my dad and then got into bed with my mom.” He even illustrated it.

Fortunately, I suspect our kids’ teachers grow accustomed to these too-close-for-comfort snapshots of their students’ domestic lives. Still, I feel like protesting that we really did have a very culturally enriching vacation. We visited the Natural History Museum. We biked all along Portland’s waterfront.

But Holly’s right; the dog threw up also. All were components of our week off, and I suppose I’m glad she doesn’t have my tendency to focus on only the show-offy parts of our vacation.

Besides, it does somewhat take the pressure off me as I look ahead toward summer. Ideally, I’d like the kids to spend some time in day camp, take musical instrument lessons, and sign up for a reading group at the library, plus the four of us are planning to go to Colorado at some point. But if Holly has her way, something gross will happen, and that will be all she needs to make it another great summer.

Sharing, including everyone: Do the principles we espouse when they're 7 still make sense at 40?

Earlier this year, my seven-year-old daughter Holly talked to me about a schoolyard problem she was experiencing.

Holly’s problem was, as I understood it, simply that she was a little bewildered by the revolving-door aspect of girls’ friendships. She has a lot of friends, and although she’s definitely closer to some than others, I’ve long encouraged her to play with many different kids for just the reason that she is now encountering: sometimes a girl who seemed to be your best friend one day wants to play with someone else the next.

I don’t consider this bullying or meanness. No one was deliberately excluding anyone else. At worst, they were being fickle; or to put a less negative spin on it, they were seeking variety in their recess encounters. I can’t fault any of the girls for it, but it was confusing to Holly, who felt that even with a dozen or more girls at school whom she considers good friends, she should still be able to count on playing Tuesday with the same friend she played with on Monday.

Her teacher, who has plenty of experience in the ways of second-grade girls and was remarkably willing to do what she could to nip incipient problems in the bud, went way beyond the call of duty in confronting this problem when I sought her insights. She invited all the girls in her class to a weekly lunch club where they could talk about friendship strategies. Her discussions with the girls have focused on the importance of not leaving anyone out, confirming my sense that no child was guilty of being unkind, just negligent, likely without realizing it. If there was anything at all to identify as a fault, it was one of omission, not commission.

But as Holly and her classmates talked about how it’s more fun to include everyone, I couldn’t help feeling a sneaking sense of hypocrisy that I sometimes get when I find myself encouraging my kids to uphold standards that I don’t feel I’m held to myself. This was a big issue for me when my older child, Tim, was three or four and we talked about sharing. I just couldn’t help thinking about how the way we expect small children to play together is not exactly something adults would be comfortable with for themselves. Even while I’d be saying to Tim, “Give Ryan a turn with your tricycle,” I’d think to myself how odd it would be if Ryan’s mom asked to take my car out for a spin or use my iPod. I’d say yes, of course. It wouldn’t be a problem; it would just be unusual. And yet we expect kids to be generous with their toys all the time.

A few years after going through his own tribulations associated with sharing and playgroups, Tim would sometimes come home from school to see one of Holly’s friends playing with his train set or nerf football. I’d urge him not to see make a fuss over it, but I couldn’t help thinking that it would be a little awkward if, say, my husband came home from work and found one of my friends sitting at his desk using his computer.

Now that both kids are in grade school, the sharing of material goods isn’t so much of an issue for them. These days when they have friends over to play, it’s usually with the goal of enjoying a toy or activity together, rather than avoiding that. But with Holly’s friendship challenges, I find myself again comparing my expectations of her with my expectations of myself. If every single time I wanted to talk to my friend Nicole over a cup of coffee I was required to include a half-dozen other acquaintances in the conversation, I wouldn’t be too happy about it. When I visit with Nicole or any of my close friends, I value the one-on-one time. It’s not the same when someone else shows up unexpectedly. We’d never leave anyone out, but it’s only fair to admit I wouldn’t expect to enjoy the visit as much.

On the other hand, when I hear that a couple my husband and I enjoy spending time with is going to someone else’s house for dinner, I don’t usually feel slighted. At this point it’s just second nature to me to see that if you’re fortunate, you have a range of different friends and enjoy their company at different times.

So maybe it’s not a matter of different standards as much as learning lessons now that will help them later. As I tell Holly, it’s good to have a wide variety of friends so that you never feel left out if any one friend doesn’t want to play with you. It’s just as true for me now as it is for her; the only real difference is that I’ve had a lot more years to learn it.

Singing for joy, singing while vacuuming

My 7-year-old sings as she makes her way around the house. When she is playing, she sings quietly, long rambling sequences of fairly abstract phrases, as opposed to songs with melodies and lyrics of the sort she might learn in school. When she and her friend Samantha get together, sometimes they sing together in a more organized fashion – verses of a favorite from music class or a Disney movie – but when she’s by herself, she sings just as sort of background noise to keep herself company while she plays.

She also sings questions or observations sometimes. “Mommy may I please have some more orange juice?” becomes its own little melodic sequence, and so does “I can’t find my shoes today; they aren’t where I left them.”

I love hearing her sing. I love the good cheer it connotes, and its gentle yet joyful way of communication. I seldom sing myself because I have a scarily bad voice. When I do break into song, it’s usually to amuse the kids and it’s usually a matter of making up ad hoc lyrics intended to motivate a specific action on their part, such as the song I made to get us out the door on time, paying homage to “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by The Animals: “We’ve gotta get out of this house, if it’s the last thing we ever do! We’ve gotta get out of this house. Or we will miss the bus, and have to walk to school.”

In the past few days, my son has started singing, and it’s a mystery why. Tim, who is 11, never sang around the house. On Sunday, we needed to clean the house quickly, and Rick asked him to vacuum the upstairs bedrooms. With the vacuum running, we could hear him belting out “Row, row, row, your boat!” On and on he sang as the vacuum ran. I suppose it’s like singing in the shower: with noise and rhythm to back you up, it’s easier to let it out. Still, it’s not typical of Tim, and I was amused. When the vacuuming was done, he continued singing.

So much so, in fact, that Holly grew annoyed. She’s not used to having to talk over the background noise of Tim singing and asked him to stop. He reported to me that Holly was crying because of his singing. Then Holly started to cry. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “I wasn’t crying! Then Tim told you I was crying because he was singing, and that made me cry!”

Oh what a tangled web we weave, I thought to myself. My usually withdrawn and rather downcast son seemed to be brightening up and had discovered his loud singing voice for the first time in my memory; meanwhile my usually sunny daughter was crying over false accusations of, well, crying. Parenthood is never dull, even when the details seem to be.

Tim continued singing frequently in the days that followed. Could his cheery outbursts of song be an unexpected change with age? Some of the other boys we know who are his age or just a little older, immersed in pre-adolescence, seem to be growing moodier and more sullen. Wouldn't it be ironic if my son, who has always had a moodier mien than most of his friends, did the opposite as his teen years approached?

Another interesting angle is that a new pediatrician we visited for the first time last month when Tim had a slightly sore throat that I erroneously thought might be strep recommended that Tim start taking vitamins with iron. He’s been taking them for about two weeks now. Hence, singing? It seems like a stretch, but the evidence is bellowing its presence in front of me. Chalk one up for Fred Flintstone grape-flavored chewables, and someone please find me a tuning fork.

Why is bedtime still the most tiring part of the day?

My friend Anne told me an anecdote several years ago that I think back on often. Anne’s sons were about one and three at the time, and she recounted a scene that plays out every few months between her and her husband. Just as they are about to head upstairs to get the boys ready for bed, she or her spouse will say, “You know, it’s still early. Why don’t we plan to do something after the boys are in bed, like watch a movie or have friends over to visit?”

Half an hour later, one or both of them will stagger back down the stairs looking like a cartoon character that’s been in a fight: glasses askew, skin smudged, clothes torn. “Oh yeah, that’s why,” the one who earlier suggested a post-bedtime plan will say wearily.

My daughter is seven, but I still think back on Anne’s story a lot because in some ways it still feels that way to me. Putting Holly to bed isn’t like dealing with a difficult toddler’s bedtime. She doesn’t scream or struggle or run around the house. She just takes so long and wants so much interaction from me. She wants help putting on her pj’s. She wants me to read to her. She wants to talk about the dream she had the night before and what might happen at school tomorrow. There’s the obligatory glass of water, along with a discussion about the adrenal system and how much I think it’s okay for her to sip before bed without the risk of a bed-wetting incident. There are the traveling rounds throughout the house: goodnight to Daddy, goodnight to Tim, goodnight to the dog, goodnight again to Daddy. And then there are the few details on which I insist: brushing teeth, using the bathroom (sometimes both before and after aforementioned sips of water), and the laying-out of tomorrow’s clothes, which inevitably leads to a discussion on meteorological forecasting, because how can Holly be expected to decide what to wear tomorrow, she says, if we haven’t precisely pinpointed the probable high and low temperature for the day as well as the likelihood of every possible kind of precipitation?

Lights out at last. It’s only eight o’clock. Surely I could finish drafting an article or fold some laundry or –

No. Like Anne and her husband, I can’t imagine how I thought I would get anything productive done after Holly’s bedtime.

The thing with Holly’s rituals is that in general, they are all not only reasonable but fairly enjoyable. I still like reading to her just as much as she likes being read to. I like the orderly feeling of laying out tomorrow’s clothes. I like tucking her in. I just wish it didn’t all have to happen at 8 PM when I’m starting to have an energy crash of my own.

But at the same time, as with so many aspects of parenting, I appreciate on an intellectual level that this too shall pass, and someday I’ll miss all these bedtime rituals. My son, at the age of 11, has long since forsaken the wish to have me help him get ready for bed or read to him. Without discussion, he takes a shower, reads or plays a computer game for a little while, and calls for me to kiss him goodnight (though of course he’d never use those words). And in a way, that’s really nice. I like the fact that getting him to bed no longer takes thirty minutes or more out of my already overscheduled evening. It probably won’t be too much longer before Holly is at the same stage, bathing and changing on her own, maybe even not only content to read to herself but actually not wanting me to be too familiar with the content of what she’s reading.

So as I drag my tired self through another protracted bedtime routine, I remember all of this, and I think too of all the mothers who cannot tuck their children into bed at night: those moms who work the night shift, are inmates or hospital patients, serve an overseas deployment.

It’s a privilege to help Holly get ready for bed. It’s tiring, but it’s one of the best parts of daily life as a parent. And of course, a successful bedtime routine is almost always followed by that most unforgettable gift of all: getting to creep back into a dark bedroom to watch your child sleep, a sight that grows no less adorable from the first night after the baby’s birth until, I would imagine, the night before she leaves for college. And beyond.

So, like Anne and her husband, I’ll continue to have selective nightly amnesia, thinking at 7 PM that there’s no good reason why I can’t still have hours of productivity or at least fun left in my evening, only to be reminded by 8:30 of just why nothing ever happens at that time of night. Someday, my kids will no longer need bedtime rituals, and I’ll have all the time I want. For now, I’ll keep trying to savor the moment.

Family homework: not my favorite part of second grade

Family homework. The bane of my existence these days.

Most weeks, the kids come home with straightforward assignments they can do on their own, and my job is to make sure they apply backside to desk chair and execute the required task: researching Malcolm X, say, or filling in a multiplication table, or logging the reading they did for the week. Once in a while, though, they arrive from school brandishing the dreaded “family homework” – which means me giving up my evening for something their teachers insist will be fun for all of us.

I adore my children’s teachers – every single one they’ve ever had, in fact – and it’s very unlike me to vent so irritably about anything done by the faculty or staff at our school. After all, not only have my children had six and three great years there, respectively, but it’s the very same school that generated me, so how can I complain?

Well, if you saw the condition of the inside of my microwave this morning, you might understand.

Holly’s homework last night (and, in fairness to her teacher, I have to admit she brought home the assignment four days earlier, but no, we didn’t actually get it started until last night) was the ever-popular “giving specific instructions” exercise. I remember doing the same thing in elementary school: the kids called out instructions for making a peanut butter sandwich while the teacher generated hilarity by sticking the bread peanut butter side down on the counter, thereby pointing out the gaps in specificity (“We forgot to say ‘Use a plate!’ We forgot to say which sides of the bread to stick together!”). Now it’s a written, take-home assignment rather than an in-class one, and I think I know why. Why should the teachers get themselves covered in messy ingredients that they then have to clean up if they can stick the parents with that job instead?

I know this all sounds unduly cynical. My kids have truly wonderful teachers and they learn so much at school. I’m just crabby because Holly decided for her “recipe” to have me make her favorite chocolate-coconut haystacks, and the homework sheet she brought home encouraged parents to take the kids’ words as literally as possible and, yes, to “be silly with it.” So when Holly said to put a half-cup of chocolate chips in the microwave but didn’t mention a mixing bowl, I dumped the chocolate on the bottom of the microwave and pressed start. Yuck. When she said to mold the melted chocolate into balls but didn’t refer to spoons, I stuck my hands on in. Yuck again. And when she incorrectly said to sprinkle on the shredded coconut after cooling the chocolate lumps rather than while the chocolate was still molten, I watched coconut drift all over the kitchen counter.

Ah, family homework. I don’t mind helping with the big projects – the Native American village dioramas or the photograph-local-landmarks assignments – because I understand a seven-year-old couldn’t do those alone, and the school always gives us several weeks for those projects. It’s the regular weeknight assignments that frustrate me. I routinely come across quotes from college administrators complaining about so-called helicopter parents – and yet how much can they blame parents for being overly involved with their college-aged children’s work if the precedent is set in grade school that schoolwork is a family affair? As I grumble to my kids, I don’t ask for their help writing articles; that’s my job, and homework should be theirs.

Our pediatrician sympathizes with my griping. Fortunately for me, she has kids the same ages as mine. She told me that in a recent fit of pique during a family homework exercise that she didn’t feel she had time to do, she said to her daughter, “Guess what? I’ve already done second grade! And I passed it, too! It would have been really hard to get into medical school otherwise!”

In any case, Holly completed her homework. And as soon as I finish scrubbing burnt chocolate off the inside of the microwave, I know we’ll both feel a great sense of accomplishment. I just hope we get a really good grade.

Holly can't drive

Just before the alarm clock went off, I started dreaming that Holly wanted to drive the car. She cajoled. She pleaded. She whined. She demanded. I conceded, then realized as she took the wheel that it really wasn’t a very good idea to give a 7-year-old control of the car. “Holly, please, be careful, be sensible….” I fretted as we veered across the road.

The alarm went off and I woke up amused rather than frightened, with these simple words in my head: “Holly can’t drive!”

The light of day showed the dream-conflict for all of its absurdity: Holly is seven! It doesn’t matter how much she demands, pleads, or cajoles: she can’t drive!

The reason I dreamed this seemed clear to me. Holly still has occasional tantrums and I still sometimes find it challenging to stand up to her. Tim was the same way at her age. Though I generally associate tantrums more with the preschool years, both of them at around the same time hit a streak of iron will that enabled them to stand up against every force of parental reason.

But now when it happens I just remind myself: Holly can’t drive. No matter what, it’s not an option.

Reading Eileen Calandro’s blog entry about the importance of saying no and considering some issues absolutely non-negotiable reminded me of that dream and the part its message has played in my life over the past few months. We parents encourage our children to be articulate and analytical, and then sometimes, to use an expression of my father’s, we hoist ourselves on our own petard. “Use your words,” we say over and over again when they are small in an attempt to get them to verbalize their feelings. But eventually, we reach a point where we have to remember their words aren’t always relevant to our decision-making process. Waking from the dream, I realized there was no amount of seven-year-old eloquence in the world that could convince me to let Holly take the wheel; and yet in waking life I still, after eleven years of parenting, have to remind myself sometimes that some decisions are universally mine and not up to discussion.

At 11, Tim is past the tantrummy stage; he may still disagree with my edicts but he doesn’t try to change my mind through force of will. But back when he was Holly’s age, there were similar struggles, and sometimes I found it helpful to ask myself this rather coarse but straightforward question: “He’s still, like, half your weight, right?” It’s not that I would really use physical force against my children; it’s just that reminding myself of this fact underscored the fact that it would be physically impossible for Tim to force me to, say, let him play another half-hour of video games or invite a friend whose presence I found disruptive for a sleepover. No mother really wants to think of parenting as a contest of physical might, but the obviousness of it always jolted me back to reality.

My husband’s simple sense of logic sometimes provides a useful reality check as well. Once when Tim was seven, Rick was present for one of Tim’s and my near-daily arguments about whether I would pick Tim up at school (which he vastly preferred) or whether he should take the bus (my preference). Tim was insisting that I had to pick him up, and I was dithering and arguing and protesting until Rick simply said, “Fine, Tim. You stand out on the school plaza until Mommy arrives to pick you up, because she already said she’s not going to!” And Rick was right, of course. If I wasn’t there to pick Tim up, he’d have to take the bus home. End of discussion.

Not that it’s always easy. But keeping these basic principles in mind helps in the heat of the moment. Just this past weekend, Holly and I were in my bedroom and she wanted me to read to her before bed – but she wanted me to go fetch the book from her room, and I wanted her to do it. She fussed and screeched; she pointed out that she often fetches things for me when I need them. But I simply didn’t feel like it. I was already lying in bed and I was comfortable, and she was the one who wanted the book. So I said no.

She was right; I do often ask her to go grab my phone from my purse or a stamp from the desk. But this time it didn’t matter to me; I wasn’t willing to back down. Because for one thing, when I back down on trivial things with the kids just to avoid prolonging the argument, I end up really irritable. If I went to get the book, I’d be feeling cranky the whole time we were reading. “Fine,” I said to Holly. “If you won’t go get the book, we won’t read. I’m going to do some deskwork. If you change your mind, come get me.”

Holly hates to lose face by backing down. She disappeared into her room, then reappeared a half-hour later to announce frostily, “I’m ready for bed now, if you would please come tuck me in.” So we missed out on reading that night. And I understand it wasn’t all that important an issue. But maintaining willpower against the kids’ demands is a good exercise for me. And so I’m glad once again for the practice. Because Holly can’t drive. And to contemplate allowing her to do so would just be bad parenting.

Of course you look cute in that; now get out the door

Because I was at a meeting during Holly’s bedtime last night, she broke our cardinal rule about picking clothes for the next day before bed. So we were back in fashion chaos this morning ten minutes before the bus was due to arrive.

Well, to me it was chaos. To my 7-year-old it was just another day of dress-up. She seemed utterly unflustered as she held up one shirt after another. “Do you think I can wear my fluffy pink scarf with this blue shirt, or do you think it will look too fancy?” she asked.

“I think it will look nice,” I replied, and then heard the unspoken retort of my conscience – which sounded startlingly like myself at age 12 – saying “I knew you were going to say that!” It’s true; I now do exactly what I once accused my mother of: claim that any outfit Holly picks out looks “nice.” As a child, I was so skeptical of my mother’s fashion choices that her proclamations of approval were akin to George Bernard Shaw’s comments about not wanting to belong to any club that would accept him as a member: if you think it looks nice then it’s obviously too dorky to leave the house in.

At the time, I really thought my mother had a hopeless sense of style, because I assumed she was telling me the truth at all times. Similarly, when my first grade teacher said I looked “very sharp and really smart” in glasses the first time I wore glasses to school, I assumed he had terrible taste in physical appearances because I took his words at face value. Only years later did I realize he probably thought I was self-conscious about the glasses (in fact I was not) and it was his attempt to build my self-esteem.

Now that I hear myself reassuring Holly that the fuzzy pink scarf will look great with the blue jersey, though, I realize there’s another motive at play. It’s not that I’m aesthetically clueless as a mom; it’s not even the inherent bias that most moms really do think their young children look adorable in almost anything. It’s that I have a vested interest in getting her out the door, and it wasn’t looking too promising this morning.

But it turned out approving the pink scarf was insufficient for achieving that goal. “Okay, I’ll wear it,” she announced. “Now I just need help finding it.” It wasn’t with her dress-up accessories or her outerwear; nor was it on the door handle where she sometimes drapes decorative items. “The last time I saw it, Ella and I were pretending it was a leash and had it tied to a stuffed dog,” Holly recalled.

Watching the minutes tick away, I checked her toy box, then remembered that for some inexplicable reason, she and Ella like to cart things around in suitcases when they play. With one minute left to departure time, I unzipped a purple butterfly-patterned suitcase from Holly’s closet. Out tumbled the pink scarf.

“Yay!” she exclaimed, grabbing it and knotting it loosely around her neck. She climbed up on the bed so she could see herself better in the mirror. “Nope, it looks silly.” Nonchalantly, she removed the scarf and flung it into the dress-up box.

So off to school Holly went in just a regular blue shirt and jeans. She looked cute in the outfit; she had also looked cute in the scarf for which I’d squandered precious morning minutes searching her closet. But now I know: some things remain unchanged, and a daughter’s reaction to her mother’s sartorial observations is one of them. “You like it? It must look silly on me.” I don’t mind the oppositional response; I just wanted her out the door on time. Si as of tonight, it’s back to the rule of picking out school clothes the night before.

Cell phones, nail polish and other requests that throw parents

Amy Suardi wrote an interesting post about children and cell phones on the Frugal Mama blog today. I wrote earlier this fall about our decision to give Tim a cell phone now that he is 11. Tim didn’t ask for one; what he asked for was more afterschool freedom in the form of going to the library or the school’s “homework club” after dismissal, and when Rick upgraded his phone, it made sense to give the cast-off to Tim.

He doesn’t particularly like to talk on the phone, nor do his friends, so I wasn’t concern that he would misuse the privilege. It’s just helpful for making last-minute changes of plans, and eliminates problems caused by miscommunications or other complications that can result in missed connections, such as the day I told Tim he could go to the library for an hour after school and he arrived there to discover the library was closed.

As Amy points out, a lot of people equate cell phones with accelerating the growing-up process for kids. Although this hasn’t been the case for us, in that Tim’s cell phone is strictly a practical aid, there are other ways in which the debate about acceleration of childhood raises questions for me. For example, my 7-year-old loves nail polish, and I have no particular problem with her putting it on occasionally, especially since it’s something she often does as a social activity with a friend, but one of her closest friends is allowed only toenail polish and not fingernail polish. What is the message I am sending her by allowing nail polish? Is it that she has to add artificial color and shine to her appearance in order to look pretty, that what nature bestows on us is not enough? Or is it just that painting is fun, whether it’s on paper or on your nails?

Earlier this week Holly handed me her Christmas wish list, which included the line item “makeup kit.” This, I admit I balk at. Should a 7-year-old be taking an interest in makeup? But upon further reflection, I can see how a case could be made that letting her play with makeup at home wouldn’t be so different from letting her play dress-up, which she and a few of her friends do by the hour. I wouldn’t let her go out in public wearing blush or lipstick any more than I’d let her go out in my grandmother’s floor-length yellow silk gown, but in a way, both seem to me like reasonable ways of practicing the fun of masquerade. I’ll probably veto the makeup idea simply because unlike silk gowns, makeup has the potential to damage rugs, countertops and other hard-to-clean household surfaces, but not because I’m convinced it’s inherently wrong for Holly to play with.

When Holly was five, she started asking to get her ears pierced, something she was finally permitted to do on her seventh birthday. Some of our friends were surprised we allowed this, but for me, the reason to say yes ultimately had to do with Holly’s reasons for asking. It wasn’t that she wanted to look like an adult; it was that she likes the way earrings look and she thought it would be fun to start collecting them. She’s allowed only stud earrings or tiny hoops, no dangling earrings, and I think they look pretty on her. Moreover, getting her ears pierced for her birthday seemed to me a far more satisfying gift for both value and timelessness than a toy or other object easily outgrown. (Holly’s case was also helped by the fact that when I asked our pediatrician for her advice on ear piercing, she responded, “You forget, I’m from a Hispanic background. My daughters had their ears done at nine months.”)

Maybe cell phones, nail polish and makeup all come down to the child’s intent in wanting them. As with so many things, the objects themselves have no intrinsic meaning regarding who should have them and when; the debate really emanates from how the kids perceive them or plan to use them. Is the value of a cell phone in its use for communicating last-minute changes of plans, like in our household, or is it for furtively getting in touch with friends while bypassing the oversight of parents? I heard a commentator on NPR recently speaking about the small but seemingly critical component of etiquette that has been lost now that kids can call each other directly. No more, “Hi, Mr. Hatch. This is Tim. May I speak to Cole?” now that Tim can reach Cole directly on Cole’s individual phone. When I was growing up, if you couldn’t handle the challenge of speaking politely to a friend’s parents on the phone when you called, you didn’t dare call. (But for counterbalance, I read an essay in which the writer described the unexpected joy that his wife’s cell phone brings him: now that her mother can call her directly rather than through a house phone, he is forever free from the obligation of making awkward small talk with his mother-in-law.)

So in a way, it comes down to a riddle. When is a cell phone not a cell phone? When kids want it to send inappropriate pictures, offensive text messages or arrangements for meet-ups they shouldn’t be having, I suppose. When are clothes and makeup not just clothes and makeup? When girls Holly’s age want to feel and act like teenagers, rather than just like children in costume. If Holly wanted to dress like Britney Spears, it would bother me. But she doesn’t: she wants to wear my grandmother’s long silk ball gown. That’s not about growing up fast; it’s about playing make-believe. And as I see it, there’s nothing about make-believe that’s going to do her any damage at all. And Tim has a cell phone he didn’t even particularly want so that he can let us know when the library is closing early. Every decision comes within its own context, and parents learn to assess, evaluate and decide, one request at a time, over the course of many years.

10-10-10, as applied to a seven-year-old

Late last month we stopped at the library on our way to the beach. On impulse, I grabbed Suzy Welch’s book on decision-making, 10-10-10, and read it that afternoon while the kids swam. I admit that I didn’t study it too thoroughly. With how-to books, I often give them what I call the NPR treatment – I skim them and learn about the same amount that an hour-long interview with the author on “On Point,” “Talk of the Nation” or “Fresh Air,” to name three of my favorite NPR shows, would cover. I realize there’s more to it than what I gleaned, but two hours of skimming was enough for me to pick up the general idea of how 10-10-10 works as a decision-making tool.

And then just a couple of days later, I found the opportunity to put it into practice. 10-10-10 posits the utility of making decisions based on viewing them from three perspectives: how the outcome will play out in ten minutes, in ten months, and in ten years. It can be applied to countless situations: at work, in the household, with friends, when making big decisions about career changes, housing or other lifestyle issues.

But it also works pretty well with parenting. What happened on that particular day was that Holly and I were driving home from somewhere and she started chattering away about the birthday party she was going to throw for a particular stuffed animal when she got home. At the age of seven, Holly still has a remarkably multi-layered imaginary life, so it didn’t surprise me that she went through the whole scheme: which other stuffed animals would be invited, what the food and activities at the party would consist of, what kind of gifts the birthday girl (or birthday pig or whatever it was) was going to receive.

But when she named the guest of honor, it was a new one to me. She wasn’t talking about any of her half-dozen usual favorites. And when I asked her who “Buttercup” was, she said “You know, that one I got for Christmas a long time ago.” I didn’t know, but didn’t think it was a problem, until I asked her if Buttercup was in the big basket of stuffed animals in her room. “No,” she said nonchalantly, “I think she’s in the box in the attic.”

Oh, that box in the attic. The one I brought to the swap shed at the transfer station last month.

When we got home, Holly hurried upstairs to start setting up the party. I made a silent wish that I might be wrong about Buttercup’s locale, but it wasn’t long before I realized I’d have no such luck. “Mommy, I can’t find that box anywhere!” Holly wailed. I followed her voice to the attic. As I’d assumed, she was standing at the exact spot that – unbeknownst to the kids – I consider the “wait-and-see zone.” When they haven’t played with something for a while, I put it in that corner of the attic and then “wait-and-see” if they ask for it. If six months or so go by and they don’t, I truck it to the town’s swap shed. The space was cleared; I’d done a big transfer station run on a recent Saturday morning when they were both out of the house, taking advantage of their absence to fill the back of the truck with outgrown toys.

“Oh noooo!” Holly wailed. “How can I have Buttercup’s party if I can’t find Buttercup?”

I considered my options. If I faked a search for Buttercup, she’d be pacified for a little while, and maybe I could somehow smooth things over or distract her while we were searching, but maybe the search would just be endlessly drawn out. If I told Holly the truth, I’d have to endure a raging meltdown, but at least the discussion would be over.

And then I remembered Suzy Welch and the 10-10-10 rule. If Holly found out I’d tossed Buttercup (who I’m quite certain I never saw her play with and never heard referred to as “Buttercup” or anything else), she’d still be furious in ten minutes. It was possible, though not too likely, that she’d still resent me for what I’d done in ten months. But it was nearly impossible to believe that she’d care about this in ten years. It wasn’t like I’d thrown out her beloved blanket or a favorite stuffed animal – just one that for some reason popped into her mind on this particular day for the first time in more than half a year.

On the other hand, if I faked a search, I’d still be at it in ten minutes and wouldn’t have gotten to any of the tasks I needed to try to get done. It was even remotely possible, were we not to resolve the situation, that she’d still be looking in ten months. And ten years? Same as the previous scenario: I couldn’t imagine she’d still remember it.

There was another alternative too, I then realized: the one I genuinely wanted to pursue. The path of complete evasion. “Holly, I have to get dinner started,” I said. “I’m sorry I don’t have time to help you.” Again, I was thinking 10-10-10. In ten minutes, she might still be storming over the disappearance of Buttercup, but I’d be halfway through the dinner preparations. Ten months? Probably would have blown over. Ten years? Not an issue.

So I did what might seem unethical but was definitely expedient: ducked out. Went downstairs to start making dinner, figuring I’d go check on her in 15 minutes or so. But not even ten minutes had gone by when Holly came clomping into the kitchen, cheerfully humming the happy birthday song. “So what happened?” I asked. “Oh, I decided it would be a different animal’s birthday instead,” she said pleasantly. “The guests are all lined up on my bed waiting for cake. Want to come see?”

So the party was in full swing, Buttercup having been replaced as guest of honor. I’d done what I needed to do, and Holly was happy. I still don’t know the process by which she worked the whole thing out in her mind, but it reminded me of one of her best qualities: resilience. And it made me determined to try to use this 10-10-10 thing again next time.