Right Mothering

This is the question most asked by observers of my baby bump.  (If I were so nosy, I would ask every mother-to-be where she intends to give birth, as this is so much more revealing and important.)  But I answer, “I would like to know, but we aren’t doing any ultrasounds.”  Most people do not ask a follow-up question, but I wish they would, for I never mind an occasion for my own little bit of advocacy – against the invasion of the baby’s privacy that ultrasounds entail and in favor of more meaningful ways of making pregnancy ‘real’ (see my post on Haptonomy).

So, do I have a preference?  Well, actually I do.  I am hoping for a boy (although I have never before articulated this sentiment).  A sister would be a great gift for my daughter – a life-long best friend – so I will not be disappointed if we have a girl.  But I hope for a boy for two reasons.

First, my daughter has set a tough standard to live up to.  I fear that a younger daughter would have too much difficulty emerging from her shadow.  If we have a boy, everyone, second child included, would be much less likely to compare him to his big sister.

Second, I would like to prove to all the parents of poorly behaved boys (including my brother and sister-in-law), that such behavior is not inevitable in boys.  Along these lines, I feel as though I have mastered the art of raising a girl, but a boy offers new challenges and experiences, and I would like to prove myself not just lucky, but rather, instrumental in shaping my children into who they are, primarily through extended breastfeeding and through staying home with them through the first few years.

So, a short post with which to return to blogging after the Christmas break.

We imposed a strict limit on our Christmas gift-buying this year.  The only person for whom we have bought anything is our daughter.  For everyone else we have made cookies, lots of cookies (we feel great affinity with the lady profiled in this essay in the New York Times Magazine, and we bake a fraction of the number of dozens of cookies that she does!).

So, here is what we bought for our daughter:

Gold Dress-Up Shoes

I struggled with the decision to buy dress-up shoes with heels for my daughter.  When my daughter was only three years old and other girls talked about how make-up makes you pretty, I so successfully countered that she was too pretty for make-up, that she even refused make-up at the year-end school show, giving that very rationale (and subsequently we nuanced that stance to allow for stage make-up).  I do not allow nail polish, telling her that she should have better things to do and that it will make her beautiful long eyelashes fall out (something my mother once told me, but the truth of which I cannot establish).  Her fascination with high-heeled shoes initially stimulated a similar revulsion on my part.  But I myself wear heels, and she pleaded with me for them, and I couldn’t argue that was anything wrong with them for women, as I can for make-up or nail polish.  So, I have relented on her copying this one sign of feminine maturity.

Cuddly Kittens Jigsaw Puzzle 100pc

I tried to restrain myself this year in the buying of educational gifts.  I tried to make these gifts about my daughter’s desires and not mine.  But when she asked for a cat puzzle, I couldn’t resist.  I strongly prefer Ravensburger to Melissa and Doug – the former is of much higher quality.

I Spy School Days (Ages 5-9)

I have long avoided anything related to computers or video games.  I never bought toys with lights, especially by Vtech or Leapfrog, because I saw them as preparation for video game usage later on.  We were, of course, given a few such gifts; luckily, they never charmed my daughter, except for one toy computer (Vtech – Tote ‘N Go Laptop Plus, which now looking at the price, I realize was most likely re-gifted by like-minded parents!).  Although I would never have purchased this and was no fan of it, for both educational and aesthetic reasons, I understood why my daughter loved it – I spend most of my day on my laptop, and she just wanted to do like me.  I gave another inch recently – to computer games.  At a recent parent-teacher conference, the teacher mentioned that my daughter liked time on the computer.  I had no idea she knew the first thing about computers.  Then my pride kicked in, and I didn’t want my daughter to be the only one without basic computer skills.  So we borrowed a CD from school, and she loved it.  Now, I won’t purchase any computer game based on a particular character (we don’t buy any such merchandise, with the sole exception of Hello Kitty! and even that only in moderation); I hope that this CD will be suitable.

Stuffed Roxy Red Fox

My daughter loves stuffed animals, and this is all she asked “Santa” for when she saw him at the mall.

Alex Magic Picture Maker – Spiral Pattern Drawing Machine

I have bought this for many a birthday gift.  I  only hope it will be as fun as it looks.

Sleeping Beauty (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)

My thoughts on Disney here.

I have one more gift to buy for my daughter -  the Sleeping Beauty (Two-Disc Platinum Edition).  But, I buy Disney products most sparingly, and my daughter knows why.

First, she understands that there is a difference between classic Disney animation and new Disney animation.  For me, the The Little Mermaid marks the beginning of new, less gentle Disney.  It was the first to use live action reference, but the last to use the traditional hand-painted cell method of animation, so it stands at a turning point.  Unlike Wikipedia, which labels the Little Mermaid the start of a Disney Renaissance, I see it as the end of the beauty of Disney animation.

Second, she knows that individually the classic movies of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella are beautiful, but the grouping together of these “Disney Princesses” with the newer ones in order to sell stuff is “gross.”  So, Cinderella the movie is beautiful, but Cinderella on underpants is gross.

My list of approved Disney cartoons, in chronological order.  We certainly don’t have all of them, and I tend to favor the non-Princess titles, just to balance out what she sees outside the home:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney Special Platinum Edition)

Pinocchio (scheduled for release in March!)

Fantasia (Special 60th Anniversary Edition)

Dumbo (Big Top Edition)

Bambi (2-Disc Special Platinum Edition)

Cinderella (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Alice in Wonderland (Masterpiece Edition)

Peter Pan (2-Disc Platinum Edition)

Lady and the Tramp (50th Anniversary Edition)

Sleeping Beauty (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)

101 Dalmatians (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)

The Sword in the Stone (45th Anniversary Special Edition)

The Jungle Book (40th Anniversary Platinum Edition)

The Aristocats (Special Edition)

Robin Hood (Most Wanted Edition)

The Rescuers

The Fox and the Hound (25th Anniversary Edition)

We also distinguish between classic Mickey Mouse et alii cartoons and the cartoons such as one sees on the new Mickey Mouse Club.  As a family, we love the cartoons in the following collections:

Classic Cartoon Favorites, Vol. 1 – Starring Mickey

Classic Cartoon Favorites, Vol. 2 – Starring Donald

Classic Cartoon Favorites, Vol. 3 – Starring Goofy

Classic Cartoon Favorites, Vol. 4 – Starring Chip ‘n Dale

I think it is important to create an aesthetically-discerning mind, even, if not especially, when it concerns Disney.

The  intersection of practical parenting and the theorizing of human behavior in the recent discussion of teasing makes me think of another useful-to-society, but shameful-to-the-individual act, that of cursing.  I recognize that cursing is eternal and universal (Swearing, The Anatomy of Swearing, Cursing in America: A Psycholinguistic Study of Dirty Language in the Courts, in the Movies, in the Schoolyards and on the Streets, Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language), but am repulsed by the printing of English expletives on clothing in non-English-speaking countries and and the free use of these non-English speakers of these same expletives in their everyday speech.  If I ever hear someone curse in front of my daughter, I say something.  I also believe that cursing, like teasing, is best learned in the home.

But I myself curse.  I live in the metropolitan area with the worst drivers in America, where ‘right of way’ has no meaning, but I learned to drive in a place where civility and driving are not mutually exclusive.  My keen sense of justice (inherited by my daughter) makes driving the greatest source of stress in my life.  Cursing enables me to expel that stress at the moment when I encounter the stressor rather than later, when the stressor is absent but not my husband or daughter.

Unfortunately, my daughter is often in the car with me at these critical moments.  My cursing is rather tame – I never go beyond calling the other driver a jackass or idiot.  But my husband doesn’t curse.  Really.  I have never heard him utter a profanity, in any of his multiple languages.  He is more controlled than I am and doesn’t approve of even my PG-rated cursing.

When we visit the local aquarium, I nevertheless blush when my daughter points to the penguins and correctly calls them jackass penguins.  She even knows that a jackass is a donkey.  But in a context conducive to misunderstanding, I, admittedly, squirm when she correctly and inoffensively uses the very same word that I use offensively as a curse word in a bubble without any possibility of misunderstanding.

So, very early on (we didn’t have a car before she was three years old), I explained that jackass is only to be used to call the bad drivers we encounter on the road roads and only in the car as we encounter them.  And, by the grace of God, I have never heard her use the word in any context.  When baby number two arrives, with his or her far-more impressionable mind, I may need to find another outlet for my stress.

The cover article of the September Issue of Vanity Fair, “Paris Match,” contains at its very end (the final page of the article, in its web form) a gem of a quote from its subject, Carla Bruni.

Nevertheless, she has ruled out fertility programs. “If it comes, I’d be the happiest person in the world, but if it doesn’t come, I’m not going to tempt the Devil.”

Something like this could never be said in the States, and I risk great offense by expressing my agreement.  I wonder, however, why such interventions are accepted so unquestionably in our society.  At the least, shouldn’t those who are pro-life oppose intervention to create life just as fervently as they oppose intervention to terminate life, for both are playing God?  For this reason, I find the Vatican’s Dignitas Personae a breath of fresh air.

I am not Catholic, and I write from the position of fertility.  But, even after reading story after story about struggles with fertility, I am still not compelled that what these women do to bear their own child is right.  Carla Bruni expresses what I think each time that I read such a story.

First, I believe that the moment of conception is significant, at the least, on some spiritual level.  Our daughter was conceived at the height of passion, in a moment of extraordinary pleasure.  I believe that this has shaped, in no insignificant way, who she is and what she means to us.

Second, shouldn’t we be attentive to the messages that the universe sends to us?  I would consider infertility a pretty loud message from the universe.  Perhaps there are reasons – very often biological – that we shouldn’t reproduce.  What happens to the health of the human race when we storm this once-effective blockade?

Okay, I have said it.  No offense intended.

Two weekends ago, the New York Times Magazine published an essay on teasing that has generated a good deal of buzz.  The article is relatively academic and could just as well be left in that rarefied air, until the author delineates what he views as the practical implications of his research:

In seeking to protect our children from bullying and aggression, we risk depriving them of a most remarkable form of social exchange. In teasing, we learn to use our voices, bodies and faces, and to read those of others — the raw materials of emotional intelligence and the moral imagination. We learn the wisdom of laughing at ourselves, and not taking the self too seriously. We learn boundaries between danger and safety, right and wrong, friend and foe, male and female, what is serious and what is not. We transform the many conflicts of social living into entertaining dramas. No kidding.

As a mother of a five-year old girl, I have already seen her negotiating the world of queen bees and am relieved that she has assumed that role this year, for it is much easier to influence her exercise of that power than it is to react to the abuse of that power by others.  Teasing has not yet entered into the equation, or least enough for my daughter to discuss it with me, but I would not be happy to find out that another girl was teasing her.  I would be even less happy to find out that she was herself doing the teasing.

I believe that teasing needs to be done with love, and, therefore, that, especially with children, the proper place to learn about teasing is in the home.  My husband and I tease each other regularly, and it does ease tensions, when they arise, and my husband uses teasing most effectively in this way.  We also involve our daughter in our teasing of each other, but we only tease her ever so gently, because if we tease with too heavy a hand or at the wrong moment, we upset her, and we have too much respect for her feelings and for her emotional maturity to push it.

One type of teasing to which I am very sensitive, and which the essay does not refer, is the teasing that arises from jealousy.  My brother has always teased me in this way, and I now realize that he has always done it out of weakness and not affection, and for me, that makes it indefensible.  As a sort of virtue-theorist, I look to the motivation to judge the goodness of the act.  Teasing to ease tension is good; teasing to bring someone down a notch is bad.

Among the ideas highlighted by the New York Times Magazine in its year in ideas issue is the notion that “Kindergarten Redshirting is Bad in Many Ways”.  I am intrigued by this trend of redshirting (but didn’t know it was called this until today) and have conflicting instincts with regard to it.  The “many” (actually two) negatives that the brief essay in the New York Times Magazine presents do not compel me in any way.  First, I would consider the hastening collapse of social security resulting from the reduction in workers supporting the system a good thing.  Second, the shortening of the education of those who both begin late and drop out as early as legally possible seems a poorly thought-through theory.  Isn’t it highly likely that those children who start later have greater success in school and are therefore much less likely to drop out when they are older?

My own perspective on this issue is based on my daughter’s contrasting experiences in her school and her summer camp.  Her school has a December cut-off, so each grade has very young children, at least for what the school expects from them (such as full-day schooling from age 2.9).  At her summer camp, a day school during the academic year, the policy is to hold children back, especially boys, so that they enter kindergarten often at age six, and most of the children in her group also attend the school during the academic year.  Of the many differences between the two environments, the good behavior of the boys at the summer camp most impressed me.  The boys at the summer camp, who were all on the older side, were little gentlemen, in sharp contrast to the boys at my daughter’s school, especially those who are clearly on the young side, who constantly misbehave.  This, of course, is purely anecdotal evidence, but considering that the misbehavior of those boys (and some of the young girls too) has a noticeable negative effect on my daughter’s schooling, I am not inclined to dismiss this observation so quickly.

My own perspective is also informed by the prospect of enrolling my daughter in our town’s public elementary school.  My daughter’s birthday is in September, and the town has a strict cut-off of September 1st.  I will keep her in the private school at least through the first grade, because only for enrollment in the second grade will the school accept the lateral transfer from another school of a child whose birthday comes after the cut-off.  Although socially, I wouldn’t mind putting my daughter in a classroom where she can dominate by virtue of her seniority, intellectually, repeating a year would be stultifying for her.  And I have recently discovered that for gifted children, early enrollment in kindergarten is essential (see A Nation Deceived), and in fact, that skipping grades is actually not as detrimental as commonly believed.

So, if I had a boy born near the cut-off, and he had behavioral difficulties and showed no signs of giftedness, I might be inclined to redshirt him.  But with a girl born at the cut-off with impeccable behavior and signs of high intelligence, if not giftedness, there is no way that I will restrict her in this way.

With Christmas approaching, my daughter and I frequently discuss Santa.  I feel uncomfortable cultivating too deep a belief in his existence, because I feel she is too smart to be fooled so completely and because I don’t want her to realize in one brief moment that Santa doesn’t actually exist.  So, I follow a multi-pronged strategy.

First, although I am agnostic (with tremendous respect for Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic tradition) and although my husband is of another monotheistic religion, I make certain that my daughter understands, first and foremost, that Christmas day is the birthday of Jesus (not necessarily Christ).  She knows that Mary and Joseph were his parents, that he was born in Bethlehem, and that he was crucified in Jerusalem.  She also knows that he was a great teacher and leader.  Actually, we discuss the story of Jesus all year long, because she is fascinated by these basic facts.

Second, my daughter knows that Santa Claus was actually a religious leader by the name of Nicholas who lived more than 1600 years ago in what is now Turkey.  She knows that he was a good man, which is why he is called Saint Nicholas.

Third, she knows that he was greatly missed after his death.  Also, because he lived at a time before cameras and because we have neither descriptions of his appearance nor portraits, we don’t really know what he looked like, and because there were no journalists we do not know much about his life.   All the stories we hear about Santa Claus and all the pictures of him that we see are the product of people’s imaginations, including those about his reindeer.

Fourth, my daughter knows that all the Santas that she sees are not actuallyl Santa, just that they pretend to be Santa.

Finally, regarding all the details – how Santa gets into  people’s homes, how he travels, where he lives – are up to my daughter to imagine for herself.  This means seemingly endless discussions, but I enjoy watching the working of her imagination and her critical thinking skills.  She actually thinks that he is invisible, that he is something like a ghost or spirit, which I rather like and can almost believe in myself.

My second cautionary tale has made it into the mainstream press, but that does not necessarily mean it has made it into the mainstream consciousness.  First, check out this old interview of Dr. Drew by Tucker Carson.  (Just gloss over Dr. Drew’s statement that “pregnancy is a diseased state and can be quite dangerous to women”) and this almost three-year old article from the New York Times based on the publication of then-recent research.

Now, my pill-clouded experience of long-term relationships was not the most positive.  Passion subsided soon after the first flush of excitement, and now I know why –  the pill.  I was lucky to escape those relationships, but I was even luckier to have been off the pill when I met my husband.

Since being off the pill for many years, I now appreciate the natural hormonal fluctuations of my body.  When I am ovulating, arousal is wonderfully overpowering.  I do not know how a marriage would remain physically fulfilling without this monthly ebb and flow of desire.  And more importantly, how can one truly fall in love if ovulation and its accompanying hormones and the resulting arousal are suppressed?

And we should not forget yet one more generally unacknowledged danger of the pill: as a contaminant of nature.

** Update **

Just came across this old news about how the pill interferes in other chemical ways with falling in love.

I spent a good chunk of my twenties on the birth control pill, and given the lack of an open discussion of its downsides (see the recent article in the New York Times) and the concomitant promotion of its supposed benefits in advertising, this should pose no great concern.

However, I wish I had known what I know now, and I will share this knowledge with my daughter when she comes of age.

First, a little over one year ago, my not-so-conventional doctor tested me for various food sensitivities and found that I had an overgrowth of Candida. I had noticed no digestive problems, and my complaint was severe seasonal allergies. Mainstream doctors will not diagnose Candida, nor its less flattering name – leaky gut. Well, I healed my gut through a diet eliminating yeast and anything that feeds yeast as well as all the foods to which I apparently had sensitivities, and my seasonal allergies disappeared, never to return, even after returning to my pre-diagnosis diet.

Now, of all the possible causes of Candida, my instinct tells me it was my multiple years on oral contraception. Playing games with your hormones comes at a cost. (See the following article on the website of Dr. Mercola, a great source for information on alternative medicine).

The pill is not harmless, and the trumpeting of its benefits in commercials and the mainstream press does, at least thus far, immeasurable harm to women.