Kids TV Mini-Mystery

Why, without fail, whenever any kid starts watching Dora, do they say "I want to watch Diego!"? When I go to your house, I don't expect your cousin to be there.

Milestones

We have strep throat. It came late this year. Usually, the first child complains of a sore throat and promptly throws up just in time to miss participating in the school's winter concert, or if we are really lucky, they'll hold out for a Christmas Eve onset making them equally cranky and hopped up on candy canes. We are more than a month behind our regular schedule, so I guess I should be grateful (I'm not exactly sure why though, I still have three kids with strep).

Anyway, strep is a pain in that for the six hours between the diagnosis and the amoxicillin taking effect you are forced to deal with a cranky, demanding, exceptionally whiny child who actually deserves to be a cranky, demanding, exceptionally whiny child (and therefore totally delegitimizes your urge to strangle said cranky, demanding whiner). But overall, compared to a lot of other childhood afflictions, strep really isn't that bad. And sometimes, something good can come of it. For example, I hit a major milestone yesterday that I may have had to wait just a little bit longer for and it was only because my kids had strep. For the first time in nine years of pediatric visits, I knew for sure that when it came down to me or the doctor - I had the upper hand.

A little background: I am the type of person who invariably acquiesces to medical authority. When it comes to anything medical, I tend to simply do what I am told. Wait a second, before you give up on me, assuming I am spineless or maybe even too lazy to question medical authority, think about this: I always work under the assumption that I didn't spend my most critical social development years locked away in medical school whereas physicians did, therefore while I gained an ability to relate to mankind during that time, doctors had to have gained something too and since it wasn't necessarily social skills it MUST have been a vast medical knowledge. This reasoning of course supports the related theory that you shouldn't really trust a doctor that seems too normal, too cool (which is why the Olivia Wilde character on House is totally unbelievable and why I would totally let Doogie Howser MD perform neurosurgery on me if necessary).

So what was so different about yesterday's visit to the pediatrician? Well for one, I'm pretty certain that the doctor that examined my children was, well younger than me! This hasn't happened before. When we first brought my daughter, now eight, to this office, we picked the youngest, hippest (use my above comments to qualify the adjective "hip") doc on staff. But she still had a good fifteen years on us and even if she weren't a pediatrician, as a mother of three she knew way more about kids' health than we did as parents of a three-day old. Yesterday, our regular pediatrician wasn't available and my children were examined instead by the practice's new girl-doctor (that's not rude, it’s accurate). As soon as she opened the door to our little examining room, I knew it would be important for me to seize control of the situation. I could tell for certain that, for once, I had more experience with children and common childhood illnesses than this doctor and If I didn't tell her what was wrong, who needed to be tested, and in what order they should be tested, I would be doing a disservice to both my children and the doctor. Moreover, if I didn't demand that -regardless of the test results- all three children would walk out with prescriptions for whatever antibiotic they hadn't had last time (because even I know it’s a good idea to rotate them), I'm sure we would have spent at least an extra hour in that office not to mention the two additional trips I would be making later in the week for the children who didn't appear to be afflicted but clearly were by virtue of their proximity to the eight year old ball of misery they spent most of their time with. Of course, I was as gentle as could be in guiding her to the decision that she would in fact be giving all three children throat cultures and we would not be waiting to confirm the results of the 24 hour test before starting medication.

And that special combination of gentle and firm, disarming and bossy that only mothers and awesome bargain sale shoppers have, really took hold of that doctor. In no time, she was offering me treatment options I never even knew existed. She said things like, "how would they like their medicine?" I tried to play it cool, so as not to give up my hard-won authority, but until that moment I knew of only one style of children's medication - the thick sticky bubblegum flavored liquid that you suspect tastes like earwax (but you would never, ever admit that to your kids.) The newbie also told me that if you wanted you could still have your kids take their strep antidote in a single dose, with a shot - just like I did at least once every winter of my childhood. This was incredible information, the pediatrics version of classified information, I have been inquiring about this shot for at least seven years and all of the older, experienced doctors had sworn it was no longer available. This girl was so new at this, she didn't even know what she was giving away!

In the end, we opted for the liquid version of amoxicillin, because I guessed it was better to spread the hassle out over ten days then to try to get three screaming kids out of the office, down an elevator and through an icy parking lot. And besides, my third grader was smart enough to have figured out that the shot wasn't in fact the only choice.

The gravity of the situation dawned on me on the way home from the doctor's office (just before I got totally distracted by the hell that is Target with three sick kids), suddenly I am older than someone. Suddenly, I have more experience than someone. Suddenly, I might know just a little bit more than an expert. And that expert someone isn't one of my own kids. I'm not sure if this is depressing or enlightening or both.

Probably I'll ask for our old doctor back the next time, afterall, she is our “old” doctor.

Pokemon Gone Wrong

We have a problem in our house, it's of the Japanese, anime style and it's called Pokemon (if you don't know much about pokemon, it's worth investigating if only so you can understand my pain and prevent the sickness from invading your house). It started with some trading cards - no actually I think it started with some playground discussions which evolved (pardon the pokemon pun) into the trading cards and then again into the TV show. At Christmas it showed up under the tree as a Nintendo DS and a Pokemon Diamond and Pearl game. Dammit Santa! Anyway, suddenly it's everywhere in my house. Which would be ok, if it were just me, my husband and the eight year old. And I would even be alright with it if it were the three of us plus the five year old. But the pokemon obsession has taken hold of my two year old - my sweet baby-doll loving, dress-up wearing, cuddly two-year old.

Focus here, this is my last baby, and she is obsessed with pokemon!

Anyway, this morning she told us that when she grows up to be "Dawn" - the girl hero of pokemon (not to be confused with feminist-type girl heroes, just the one of the three main human characters that happens to be a girl), she will have a piplup (a penguinesque creature). Actually what she told me first was that when she grows up to be a gym leader she'll have a piplup. Gymnasiums are where most of the pokemon battles take place and the gym leader is the top trainer at each gymnasium (for some reason this all reminds me of karate kid).

Yes, on its face this isn't all that disturbing, preschoolers pretend things all the time. But my little one isn't pretending to go on a picnic or ride a unicorn, she's deeply engaged in complex and imaginary battles in which she plays one of two roles. The first is the role of an unsupervised preteen wandering the Japanese countryside with a gang of other unsupervised preteens (one who is named Brock and is some sort of an oversexed, undersatisified chef) in search of a mythical city inhabited by ever-evolving monsters and their "trainers". I should be honest and tell you that these kids aren't entirely free of adult supervision. Every now and again they do seek the counsel of various professors, an army of sexy nurses named Joy, and sometimes they even skype with their parents back at home. The second role is that of an actual pokemon. When in this character she runs about making shooting type noises and holding her hand, palm forward, as if something were shooting out of it. She is helpful enough to explain these noises as she is making them by yelling things like "Piplup use bubblebeam!" in her tiny voice. Both types of pretend play are equally disturbing, but the latter is definitely more embarrassing when it emerges in such peace- loving- hippie-hangouts as the produce section of Whole Foods.

I've grown used to this behavior, although through this post I readily admit I have not completely accepted it, but today was the first day I figured out how to leverage the fantasy to my advantage. You see today was the last day of this semester of Little Gym (the $400 tumbling class that lasts for 20 weeks, but in which your child is terrified the first six, interested the next three and then utterly bored for the remaining three months). On the last class of the last semester the children put on a "show" and invite guests to come and watch all they can (but refuse to) do. My daughter had two guests coming this morning, her lovely grandparents, and absolutely no interest in going to Little Gym. That is until I pointed out that she would be going to a gym and not only would she be going to a gym, she would be bringing home a medal just like Dawn on pokemon. That kid was ready to go in no time.

Now I just have to wait until my daughter rejects Dick and Jane in favor of Manga.

Why TV is bad for kids (and worse for parents)

I have a friend who doesn’t let her kids watch any TV. She doesn’t even have a cable hook-up. She gets most of her news online and her kids get theirs, well frankly, they just don’t get any news. This no TV rule says a lot about my friend. It says that she is obviously a brave woman who lives by her convictions, we’ll see how this pans out for her once her boys reach middle school. It also says, quite obviously, that she is a better mother than I am (and probably you too). But it also says that somehow she knew something, something that the rest of a missed along the way and that is, Noggin and Nickelodeon and Disney and even PBS Kids are all in a brilliant conspiracy to screw us, the parents of their target audience.

I know it's a grand assertion and I don’t usually put much stock in conspiracy theories, but stick with me. I am confident once you read the following couple of paragraphs, you’ll agree that there is incontrovertible evidence that kids' television is designed to completely undermine parents in general and mothers in particular.

For years I have known that there is something inherently wrong with kids' television but I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. No it isn’t the bizarre mix of muppets and humans in walk-about costumes that defines shows like the Doodlebops and Yo Gabba Gabba. And it isn’t the absolute lack of any plot (or real dialog for that matter) characteristic of the Teletubbies or Boobah. It's something less obvious, something I could never quite put my finger on, but something that always just felt wrong about kids shows. And then it hit me earlier this week. These shows deliver unreal -no, poisonous -expectations about parents and mothers in particular!

This may not surprise you when I tell you that I came to this conclusion while watching the Noggin/Nick Jr mainstay Franklin. You know it's the one about the turtle with that insidious theme song "Hey it's Franklin, comin’ over to your house"? Here’s what I noticed, Franklin does a lot of really dumb stuff, including lying to his parents (or not telling them the whole truth right away) quite often. And I don’t mind that, that’s the part of the show that is real. What bothers me is that Franklin’s mother never, ever loses it on Franklin. She always talks to him in the same sweet turtle voice no matter what they are discussing. She never throws up her arms in complete exhaustion and then blurts out something she wishes she didn’t - hey I’m not looking for an expletive laden send-up of the little turtle's behavior or anything - but she never even says "Gee Franklin you’re acting like a complete brat right now and I can’t be held accountable for whatever happens next if you don’t get it together by the time I count to three." Franklin’s mother, in all her sweet, even tempered supportiveness, is misleading my kids into thinking that mothers like her exist in the world. That somewhere in a little paradise filled with talking animals and clubhouses, mothers don’t get mad at their kids ever, no matter what. This isn’t just a problem with television turtles. It's everywhere, think about it, the mother on Little Bear is the same way (even worse really) and it's just as bad on Clifford and Dragontales too.

And Dora’s mom never says "Take this map and go play with your monkey because mommy - I mean mami - has to clean up the mess you and the super babies left behind and then I’m going to lie down for a little while because I couldn’t sleep a wink last night because those damn babies kept waking each other up and your papi got pissed off because I haven’t washed any of his dress socks for the past two weeks so I’m feeling a little grumpy and underappreciated and overburdened this morning"

TV sets us up to fail. It lies to our kids convincing them that the rest of the mothers in the world are patient and comforting all of the time, that they always know what to do and how to solve whatever problem the kids might be having.

Children’s television isn’t bad for mothers only. Its pretty hard on father’s too. For the most part, the dad’s on kids' tv shows are strangely available, involved. I have never seen father turtle actually do any sort of work, except in the garden. He’s always around. Yes, the dad on Little Bear does travel for work sometimes, But he’s a sailor - daddy off to sea to fight the sea monster (and catch fish) is infinitely cooler than daddy off to work to look at the computer and talk on the phone (although my youngest would get a kick out of speaker phone).

The parents on the shows for older kids aren’t much more realistic. Hannah Montanna’s dad is, well he’s Billy Ray Cyrus for chrissakes! And the dad on the Wizards of Waverly Place is a wizard. On Corey in the House the father works in the white house. What’s a regular parent left to do when we’re not talented, magical or cooking for the President?

This isn’t even counting the shows where the parents are altogether absent. What kind of message is this sending to my kids? Is it saying "your mother is smothering you because she doesn’t let you go outside and rescue wild (and traditionally carnivorous) animals like Sra. Diego does?" Is it saying "your mother is a a total spoilsport because she makes you clean your room and practice piano instead of hanging out with your crew of weirdly matched bugs and animals in the backyard like all five moms on the backyardigans?" Or, "your mother’s a bitch because not only will she not let you have a giant dog the size of your elementary school, or even a wonder pet, she won’t let you have any pet at all?" I think the answer is all of the above.

I think its obvious. These shows, or there writers, are working together in some sort of underground movement to destabilize parenting in the United States. I suspect that the same thing is happening in Britain and the rest of Western Europe. The British imports I’ve seen - Thomas, Teletubbies, Jakers - all have no parents and an uncomfortable amount of autonomy for their main characters. And let’s not even go there with the Scandanavian offerings like Lazy Town. I haven’t figured out the hidden plan yet but I know there is something wrong with that show.

Japan is not even on the table at this point. I mean c’mon, pocket monsters?

Its undeniable - tv makes us look bad, really bad. The only problem is, it's so, so easy. I’ll risk my reputation and sell my soul for a couple of minutes (ok hours) of actually productive time.

Coming Clean

In the spirit of new beginnings, fresh starts etc., I am taking this opportunity to admit to the following (in no particular order):

1. I sometimes forget to feed my children breakfast. More often than not they are well fed and I always feed them on school days. But now and again, I'll find myself at 11 am on a Saturday wondering why the hell those three are so cranky.
2. Noggin is my nanny.
3. I subscribe to US Weekly. I also subscribe to Atlantic Monthly. I read every US Weekly cover to cover, I read the cover of Atlantic Monthly.
4. I can sing the Hanna Montana theme song.
5. Last week, I didn't get dressed until Friday (I did however potty-train one toddler, do 14 loads of laundry, clean a bathroom, feed my children roughly 3 meals each day, finish one article, play calico critters and puppy in my pocket, and load and empty the dishwasher no less than 25 times.)
6. I sometimes pretend I can't do things just so my kids won't ask me to do them. For example, my children believe I have no idea how to hook the wii up to the tv. Its a shame how long it took me to realize the power of playing dumb.
7. Once I let my stove stay broken for three weeks so I didn't have to cook.
8. If you have a new baby, I'm totally faking it when I offer to hold your baby (and if your kids are older, I probably don't like them either).
9. I don't care about the environment as much as I seem to, I'd just rather spend my money on a new anthro sweater than paper towels.
10. I buy Gap jeans because they run big and I can pretend I'm a size six and not an eight.
11. I "ran into" my college boyfriend on facebook and he pretended he didn't know me.
12. I am one of the people who will over analyze your Christmas card.
13. I actually think Kathy Griffin is pretty funny.

News From the Trenches...

I'm still not ready to say the "less than one day" method worked. I think it may have, but that feels way to confident, almost braggy to acknowledge it. And any girl who survived sixth grade knows that bragging will screw you in a myriad of ways, not the least of which is that it will totally undo whatever feat you are bragging about. Therefore, I am not going to say that the method worked. I am going to say, that as of right now (10:30 a.m.), my daughter has had zero accidents today and has taken her self to the potty three times (that's called self-initiation in 1970s male-psycho speak).

This may sound like great news, but really its not. Because this whole process has catapulted me into a state of stress that can only be compared to the hyper-awareness a soldier must feel during down-time in the (you guessed it) trenches. If you have ever spent time with a child in their first few days, or months, or let's face it first year, in underwear, you know exactly what I mean. I can not relax, I can not let my guard down. I can not stop my head from snapping sideways to check for sudden pee deposits. I see shit everywhere I look. I sense wetness at all times. When I close my eyes at night, I wonder if she is dry. I never reached deep sleep last night for fear that my child would notice she had peed in her pull-up and not like the feeling (granted, that was crazy, but you can't help crazy when you're in the trenches). This hyper-vigilante state must be what Bush had in mind when he created the color coded alert system after 9/11. Except that I've gone beyond red, I'm at a deep, deep magenta.

And suddenly, I can remember exactly why potty training sucks. Its not the pee on the family room rug, or the living room couch, or on my own socks for that matter. Its the constant fear that there could be pee anywhere at any minute. And the delusion that I can somehow, if I try hard enough control that pee. And its not the living with this fear for a a day or even a couple of weeks that breaks you down. Its the living with it for months on end and just when you finally say screw it, I don't need to be afraid anymore, I don't need the extra pair of underwear in my purse and the potty seat in the trunk of my car, finding a warm turd on your foot. Kind of like when they would be having a big old barbecue on China Beach and then theViet Cong would come screaming out of the jungle.

Potty Training Update

Ok, it is 2 o'clock and I'm still not ready for the full report. The book says five self-initiated, successful attempts (that doesn't seem entirely semantically correct but whatever) and your kid can count as potty-trained. We have had three or four, but we are approaching hour number five...
Here's what I can report at this time:
1. I have never paid so much attention to my daughter - ever. That in itself is a total coup for here.
2. She is currently friends with her excrement and obsessed with wishing it a goodbye with a quick flush of the toilet.
3. Bunneri and Pikachu are really, really proud of what a good girl she is.
4. Spicy Chip buffet is disgusting when paired with juicy-juice fruit punch.
5. The fisher price royal potty seat may be the best potty training tool ever (ours is obviously pink). Seriously.

Potty Training

Yep. In T-minus one hour, the potty training will begin. You might think, that as a mother of two well-toileted children, this last time around would be a breeze. Alas, you do not know the hell that was potty training those first two. Let me just say this, thanks to my son, I have been shit on in every possible way. We will not even mention the pee. This time around I am bravely trying something new - the original (1974) method - "Toilet Training in Less Than A Day." More on that later, but here's what you need to know: apparently if I ply my my daughter with delicious potato chips, candy and more drinks than her little bladder can handle; use the voice of a robot who says things like "You are such a big girl, Polly. You use the Potty. Are your pants wet?"; and stay in my kitchen for at most four hours, my daughter should be potty trained shortly after lunch.

Updating the blog around 2 pm, should be totally doable as that is OVER four hours from now.

I don't mean to have a bad attitude (I know that can kill these sorts of things), but I can see one problem so far - the child in the book's example is a boy... there's no wiping anywhere in the instructions!

New Year's Resolutions

This year I took a different approach to resolutions. Instead of focusing on just one thing that will never happen - run more, starve and miraculously regain my pre-three-baby body (which isn’t exactly dreaming big, trust me) - I decided to shoot for making over my entire life, thereby giving myself multiple areas in which to fail on the off-chance that I might actually meet one or two goals. Its no secret that if you write down your resolutions, or otherwise share them, you are more likely to follow through with them. So here they are:

1. Drink Less. In fact, due to an unfortunate series of events involving red wine and family gatherings, I’ve gone dry for all of January. So far, so good, but as you’ll see below this may have impacted some of my other resolutions in some not-so-unexpected ways.

2. Play more. That means play more with my kids. After stumbling upon a written complaint categorizing my parenting style as a lay-about, I have vowed that I must shake the perception and do everything I can to engage with my children in their play. Unfortunately as I do not regularly wrestle with my children, I will never unseat their father as the ultimate play-mate. I can, however, do my best to do a little more in the area of pretend play. After a full day of playing every kind of small figure in the house (including but not limited to Little People, Puppies in My Pocket, Calico Critters and doll house), this much is clear - resolution #1 was a bad idea.

3. Commit to an exercise routine. Back before my husband left me for the glamorous life of a bankruptcy attorney (he has been gone almost every week since mid September), I was an avid runner. Without fail, I would wake up at 5:45 am to meet a friend (another mother of three, also running to get the hell away from her kids). When I became a single parent that routine became impossible. Thus I have vowed that 2009 will be the year for me to create a more flexible and somehow successful exercise regimen. I can tell you already that I will not be using the Hollywood plan by which you stay fit and trim by simply "chasing your amazing children around."
4. Stay on top the laundry. It seems like such a simple resolution, but really its huge. Think about the laundry involved with three children, all of whom have trouble keeping their food on their plates or in their mouths. And then there are the special laundry deadlines involved with gym uniforms and traveling spouses, these garments always cut to the front of the line, often leaving me without something like a clean sports bra for weeks at a time. So far I am not on top of the laundry, unless you count the fact that the laundry is backed up in the chute all the way to the first floor and as I write this I am on the second floor.

5. Do more outdoor stuff with the kids. This goes under the "what was I thinking" category. It is currently 24 degrees outside with the added bonus of a winter storm warning. None of my children has the ability to keep a mitten dry or the tolerance to soldier on with a wet one. Its January and we live in Cleveland. And again - if resolution #1 is going to stick, #5 is going to have to go.

6. Read more with the kids. I love books, I do. In fact reading to my kids is one of my top three parenting activities (giving baths and coloring are my other two). Its just that I don’t like reading the same book over and over again. Especially when the book is awful. For example, I have read Dora Loves Boots 17 times today. The fact that I have alternated reading that book with reading Meet Backpack, doesn’t really help.

7. Cook more. I put this resolution into action almost immediately. The first thing I did was survey my children to figure out if I were to cook, what exactly would they eat. Luckily, because there are 7 nights in a week, we came up with six meals that they each would be willing to eat. They are: spaghetti, although only the youngest eats actual spaghetti, the other two eat variations such as undressed noodles or in the case of my son, garlic bread; soft tacos, again not all my children eat the full taco, my son eats only the shredded cheese; hot dogs and oven fries, I say oven fires so you can be sure that I am extra- committed to good nutrition; Ham; Pizza; and "Plate of Choices", this is a variation on cheese and crackers in which I place all sorts of cheese, crackers, and pepperoni and salami on table and let the kids fill their own plates. Obviously fruit and vegetables are included at each meal - we’re big on baby carrots and red grapes. Armed with this information, I have been doing some serious menu planning so far this year. We have indeed eaten at home most nights and the best part is, I really haven’t had to cook a thing!

If I can keep any of these resolutions that will be fantastic. If I can keep any of these resolutions and keep number one, that will be a miracle.