A part of that rarefied world

One of my favorite self-reflective bloggers (hi Ms. Bloodsigns!) has been writing a lot about parenting styles and making deliberate choices (and toddlers and stepsons and lots else) and while I do realize that JD and I are part of that super-competitive Ivy League educated East Coast living hyper-critical and over-stressed yuppies raising bilingual children crowd sometimes it takes a laughable instance to show just how out of step we are with the rest of the country.

So, we have no TV. We have no TV because I just don't see us having the self-control not to watch too much TV if we had one, and I also don't think it's realistic to ask a babysitter not to turn on a TV if it's sitting in the living room. JD manages to watch almost everything he wants on his computer, and we live above a bar (aka 'the basement' which JD has been known to run down to visit in his flip flops and pjs) with several large TVs for big sporting events. But the fusspot was sick this week and as you all know I've been a bit lethargic recently (say the past 10 months or so ...) so I decided that desperate times call for desperate measures and this was the perfect opportunity for her first DVD at home. And we live in a building with 4 other 2-year-olds so I sent out an e-mail asking our neighbors if I could borrow a DVD. And the first 3 to write back were fully apologetic ... but they didn't have any childrens videos in their apartments. Luckily #4 did and the fusspot happily settled into a glazed-eye state in front of Barney's Farm while I desperately tried to both cook lunch and do some work.

Oh, and when JD came home on Wednesday night I finally got the belly/toddler shot I've been wanting (25 months, 36 weeks):


But it turns out that 25 months is a bit of an odd place developmentally. I have been trying to relax more, and part of that for me is reading parenting books. My recent late night reads (i.e. past 1 am. Totally laughed when a WAHM complained about staying up till midnight to get her work done. I don't go to bed before 1 am. Ever. Especially not if I want to see my husband for more than 20 minutes a day) include Origins: How the 9 Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of our Lives (so much press about this book, which makes all sorts of claims about the important of pre-natal environment for health and later development. Skip it. It is science dumbed down to nothing. So disappointing) and You are Your Child's First Teacher: What Parents Can do With and for their Children from Birth to Age Six and Adventures in Tandem Nursing (highly, highly recommend it, quite possibly the best breastfeeding book out there even for those who are not going to tandem nurse).

Ok, I'll admit it. I love You are Your Child's First Teacher. It's a delightful mix of developmental stages and suggestions for developmentally-appropriate activities and games and completely kooky Steiner-inspired suggestions (i.e. Waldorf education). For example, it quite seriously suggests painting your nursery green or brown because newborns are still "descending from another world" and those colors will help them become grounded on earth. Of course, because it has such absurd propositions (plus toddlers communing with angels and babies who are sad because they are imitating the sad expressions on their dolls faces ...) it's easy to just skip over the dire advice on how to balance work and parenting ("Quit your job") and the firm pronouncement that men are best seen as financial support services for loving, devoted (presumably large-breasted and barefoot) mothers. What the book does an excellent job of is outlining age-appropriate development and suggesting activities/toys to encourage creative, independent play (all the usual suggestions about no toy boxes and limiting the number of toys and lots of craft activities and natural objects. Oh, how I have been considering this online class about playful learning spaces. JD just mumbles about 4 people in 600 square feet and ignores me :-)).

What I would really like to find is a slightly-less kooky book to give to JD to read. I was raised by very-hippie parents and went to a lab school and can entirely see the benefit of hours spent playing dress-up or huge baskets of blocks and dinosaurs, but I sometimes forget that JD had none of those activities as a child (although he certainly also didn't have a TV and was surrounded by books). This morning we left the fusspot with her grandparents (finally!) and spent a good 4 hours out alone, mostly talking about finances and parenting. And it brought into relief just how little JD knows about age-appropriate development (and also how open he is to my crazy ideas). And while he was rather skeptical of some of my claims about the importance of both physical development and imaginative play (for the record, at just 2 the fusspot loves her dress-up clothes which mostly consist of funny hats and scarves from goodwill at this point, although she doesn't have the imagination to play with them alone. They mostly come out on playdates), having family friends over tonight did a good deal to sell my argument. Last week our neighbors landed up in a snow-related-canceled-school-day-no-childcare dilemma and sent their 5 and 8 year old to our apartment on about an hour's notice (sadly the fusspot was at daycare and missed the big kids). I was busy and tired and did absolutely nothing to prepare and exceedingly little to entertain them, mostly reclining on the couch and offering suggestions. And this sister/brother pair happily played for over an hour with the fusspot's toddler toys. The little girl set up an elaborate wedding party in a castle using blocks and stuffed animals and board books as building material, and the little boy collected things with wheels from the fusspot's shelf and set up a racing course complete with evil-villains and daring jumps. In contrast, my in-laws had some family friends over for dinner tonight. The 5 and 9 year old brother/sister pair played for about a half hour before melting down in a huge fight and settling in front of the TV for the rest of the evening, despite multiple age-appropriate toys being set up for them (board games, books, craft supplies). Needless to say one set of kids have no TV and live in a tiny apartment, while the other set live in a huge house in the suburbs (and thus all playdates are carefully scheduled with an adult along) with a 'home movie theater'-sized TV. Of course, both are charming and well-behaved and this is not meant to be a critique of anyone else's parenting choices, it's just about what I want to do with the fusspot.

Of course, what I also really don't want to do is to put any extra academic pressure on the fusspot. I am truly horrified by the amount of (almost entirely useless) homework that our daycare provider's 5 year old daughter receives every afternoon. I see quite a bit of it because it is just absurd enough that her immigrant mother can't help her with it (i.e. she had to draw a picture of a hedgehog recently. You can live happily in the U.S. for over a decade and get 2 advanced degrees without needing that particular word) and so when I pick the fusspot up I am often asked to look over her homework. In the first place, it is awful that this 5-year-old is not allowed to go outside and play until her homework is done, and that often takes an hour or more of foot-dragging (oh, and she leaves for school at 7:15 am. It's a long day for a 5 year old). The worksheets are boring and repetitive and way too hard for any kid that age to do alone, so they are largely a test of whether there is an involved parent home every afternoon to help. I presumed that this must be a brand new teacher and suggested that Y. go complain to the principal, but she assured me that this classroom is in line with the other ones (the other 5-year old at daycare also has quite a lot of homework but I'm not asked to look over it because his parents do every night). Which is all to say that when I read blogs that are oh-so-proud of starting phonics with their 2-year-olds I sigh and click away. It's tempting, it's an easy way to "prove" my devotion as a mother, it makes for nice boasting, but it's just neither age-appropriate nor beneficial in any way in the long term (trust me, I didn't read until I was 11. And I find myself quite sufficiently literate and educated. And JD didn't even learn the Roman alphabet until middle school ... Of course, that may be why I find the Montessori/Waldorf child-directed learning quite so appealing. The standard Waldorf line is that some children are ready to read at 4 or 5 or 6, but all children within normal developmental bounds should be ready by 7, so what's the rush? Children before age 7 should be busy working on physical development and imaginative play and social skills).

So, any suggestions on good parenting/child development books? Mostly looking for either a good outline of age-appropriate developmental stages or suggestions for toddler/preschool activities. My #1 pick at the moment is still First Art for the toddler set. Although it does leave me dreaming about warm, summer days when we can play outside on the sidewalk ...

Final book review: Adventures in Tandem Nursing. Put simply: I really like this book. It is by far the least judgmental book I have read about breastfeeding. It probably helps a lot that the author herself weaned her toddler, then unweaned her, then worked hard to set very clear limits on nursing which worked for both of them. (Aside: My other favorite breastfeeding book is Nursing Mother, Working Mother because it actually tackles the real challenges of breastfeeding rather than using rose-tinted glasses to paint a picture of non-stop-Rafael-Madonna-style-bliss. It also has a really good chapter on the real benefits of breastfeeding for baby and mother, which I keep trying to get my in-laws to skim ... of course, still a lost cause). Even if tandem nursing is not your issue, I think that sections of Adventures in Tandem Nursing would be a good read. It's in my going-to-doctors-appointments-and-need-light-reading pile so I have been reading it during NSTs and waiting for acupuncture and in the midwife's office and it's interesting to see the reactions. I am still entirely undecided about what I'm going to do, but I'd rather read up now while I have time. The midwife I saw this week suggested letting the fusspot have colostrum because it's kind-of yucky as a way to discourage her from unweaning. The big, famous doctor I saw this week also said not to worry about letting the fusspot jump in to nursing from Day 1, although he's pretty sure that she's going to want to nurse for a good while.

Speaking of big, famous doctors, I saw the one who supervises practically every non-homebirth midwife in NYC last week. He is super-relaxed and poked fun of my bi-weekly NSTs, reassured me that this baby will not be 10 lbs (currently about 6.5 lbs, estimated at delivery 8) and generally pronounced me safe to deliver (despite that .3 margin on my iron levels). But much more importantly when I asked him about my insomnia and 'stomaches' overnight, he concurred that it was almost certainly 'false labor' (new motto: all contractions are productive. all contractions are productive) and quipped that he'd be happy to write me a prescription for ambi.en if I'd like it. I asked about the slightly-more-natural alternative, and he totally ok'd a glass of red wine before bed every night. So at least there's that.