"Expert" Advice I Can Get Behind

When I was pregnant with my first child, I read one parenting book, What to Expect When You Are Expecting. That’s not even a real parenting book, it’s a manual on pregnancy and it offers no substantial advice for parenting. During my pregnancy, I was so distracted by the horrifying "miracle" that was my incredible expanding body, that I hardly even considered reading-up on what to do with my child once she was extracted from the wasteland that once was my body. After my daughter was born, I was much too busy with or too exhausted by the task of actually keeping my child alive and minimally cared for to read any parenting books. Nine years later, I still tend to frown on parenting advice and the very notion of "parenting experts." The arguments against claims to parenting expertise are obvious: there is no standard requisite for being a parenting expert other than being a parent, and that’s hardly even a requisite any more; children are so vastly different in their personalities that any tips for managing their behavior must be reduced to generalizations; and similarly, the situations described in parenting advice books don’t usually match, or even echo, those I encounter (they do not involve bathing suits in 23 degree weather, or the mini shopping carts at Whole Foods, or 10 am birthday parties at Chuck-E-Cheese with a mother-child combination of hangover and sugar high).

And then there’s the other reason I don’t pay much heed to parenting experts (ok, the real reason), parenting experts make me feel guilty and inadequate. All their wisdom, their tips and tricks for successful childrearing only serve to remind me that I’m not much good at this and I’m not really trying that hard either. For an overachiever acutely aware of the fact that she’s underachieving, that feeling I get when reading what I should be doing with my kids is pretty icky.

Imagine my surprise then, when I came across this article "No, You Shut Up! What to do when your kid provokes you into an inhuman rage" on Slate. Although the author, Alan Kazdin, is billed as a parenting expert, the title alone was enough to make me think that just maybe this expert actually knows a little something about parenting. Not 20 minutes before reading the article, I had been provoked into an inhuman rage by my very own toddler! Kazdin gets me.

As its title implies, the article discusses that oh-so-common predicament we have as parents - the total loss of self-control (quickly followed by self-loathing, confusion, and an overwhelming sense of failure) that is so easily unleashed by our very own flesh and blood. Kazdin walks readers through the most common reactions to those times when your child does something that makes you so angry that you want to… well, you want to destroy them. As a psychologist Kazdin is equipped to analyze these responses - considering their immediate, long-term, and side effects - and recommend the most useful responses for parents who are experiencing an immediate need to manage (kill) their misbehaving child. He gets most of the response choices right. From "Shock and Awe" (full scale rage) to "The Mona Lisa" (approach your child’s behavior with the same disinterested skepticism that Daria would use) Kazdin accurately covers the gamut of reactions to bad behavior.

For my purposes, Kazdin’s reasons why most of those responses don’t work isn’t really important. What’s crucial is that he includes and acknowledges the total inefficacy of one response in particular - "The Rational Saint." According to Kazdin, "exhibiting inhuman restraint, go[ing] to the child and in a gentle voice explain[ing] why she’s misbehaving so terribly" is just as ineffective as screaming at your child until your throat is soar (which actually doesn’t take that long). This is the best news I have ever heard from a parenting expert. It confirms everything I have always suspected, but never quite been able to explain, about the mystifyingly calm and sweet mother we all know - she’s doing an equally shitty job raising her children and she has to smile about it the whole time!

I should thank Kazdin for the article (we all should), I’m a better parent already! The next time one of my children provokes me into an inhuman rage, which is likely to be any time after 3:15 p.m. today, I won’t waste any time gently explaining with fake smile and clenched teeth how "not nice" their behavior is or "what bad choices" they’re making. That way I’ll save my children from the complete disorientation that comes from seeing their mother channel June Cleaver - saccharine doesn’t go over well in my house. Likewise, I probably won’t employ any of the other responses Kazdin discusses. While the longterm effects may be better, a cost-benefit analysis of these techniques shows that they won’t really get me what I’ll need to navigate the immediate situation - if I give my kid a relevant consequence in response to their behavior, I’ll have listen while they whine about the injustices of that consequence which will likely catapult me into an even deeper rage. Instead I’ll probably yell like I always do (I just have to remember to close the windows first).

Just in Time for Valentines... What Women Want

My friends and I have been passing around the recent New York Times article, "What Do Women Want?" We’ve talked about it in the pick-up line and during pilates. We’ve whispered about it on playgrounds and in our driveways. We have been thoroughly intrigued and shocked by Daniel Bergner’s article detailing the scientific community’s forays into the enigma that is feminine sexual desire. Each of us has plowed through 12 pages of scientific data and anecdotal evidence in hopes of discovering what it is that will ultimately satisfy us. And we’re so flattered to know that science is even thinking about us, trying to figure us out and more important, how to get us off. But to tell you the truth, when we reach the end of page 12, and find out that scientists still don’t really know the secret to female desire, we can’t help but feel a little bit frustrated.

The article opens with a description of one of the more recent projects attempting to discover the key to female desire. Apparently Meredith Chivers, a leading sexologist, asked subjects (men and women) to watch video clips of all sorts of sexual (and non sexual situations) involving people and even involving apes (with other apes) and measured their physical and emotional sexual responses to the clips. What Chivers discovered is that men know when they are turned on - they can feel it, they can see it, they know it. Men are simultaneously emotionally and physically aroused. Women on the other hand aren’t, the thoughts in their head and the physical cues for arousal can be absolutely not in sync. If a woman’s head isn’t in the game, it doesn’t matter what her body is telling her.

According to Chivers (and consequently Berger) this idea is somehow a really big deal in the science of sex. It’s a discovery! I’m no sexologist, but I can tell you that the idea that women’s brains are key components in their pursuit of sexual satisfaction is no breakthrough. At least it’s now a scientifically established idea.

The problem is that’s all these scientists have. After years of research they can now confirm that women and men are turned on in different ways, but they still aren’t quite sure how it actually works for women. While I can’t speak for all women, I can offer a little insight into the subset of mommies (and maybe save us all from government-funded study on the sex lives of housewives). I am willing, for the sake of science of course, to offer up my own deepest desires for review. And we can skip the plethysmographs - a seriously ineptly named vaginal sensor (can’t you just imagine a lispy perve whispering that?) - altogether.

So this is it, a short summary of what gets women (or at least 21st century mothers) off. Before we begin though, here is the definitive list of what doesn’t do it for us. First, contrary to popular belief, we don’t want to be touched. We’ve been touched, pulled on and prodded, handled in every possible way you can imagine since the moment we found out we were even entering motherhood. It’s been hands-on ever since. And all this touching has completely destroyed any nostalgia for all the touching that may have gone on to get us there. No matter how you spin it, foreplay is touching. Second, we don’t crave emotional intimacy with our husbands and partners. We absolutely don’t want to hear their deep inner secrets and fantasies, they’re probably boring and will only make us feel worse about ourselves or mad at our significant others. Besides we spend all day with secrets and fantasies, we deal in the pretend and imaginary. And third, contrary to the myths perpetuated by Hollywood, we don’t want to take up with the pool boy or the landscaper a-la Desperate Housewives. We don’t want to share these post-baby breasts with anybody, let alone with a stranger in the garden shed.

Legend has it that for many men the ultimate sexual fantasy/sexual experience is centered on oral sex. Well you know what’s on par with oral sex for a woman, what makes me feel the same sweet ecstasy men enjoy? It’s when anyone, another mother, a grandparent, anyone tells me that they’ll take my kids for a couple of hours just so I can go to the grocery store without them. That’s right, that’s my fantasy.

Here are the dirty details: I’m in the grocery store, in the produce aisle and I’m pushing a regular cart - there isn’t one of those ridiculous car carts anywhere near me (which of course means that no one can give me a dirty look for pushing the monstrosity without actually having any kids in it ). Anyway, I’m in produce and looking at tomatoes and picking out the ones I actually want, there’s no toddler throwing tomatoes willy-nilly into a produce bag while I try to keep count of each tomato out loud. Gradually, slowly, almost seductively, this fantasy will take me all the way through the grocery store. And here’s the hottest part - it will all be uninterrupted, there will be no potty stops, no screaming fits about not being able to ride in the elevator. I won’t even notice the elevator. I’ll be able to sign my own name with the magic Jeopardy pen at the check out line. Sometimes in this fantasy (and this feels really dirty even just typing it) I imagine it so that some other woman is there, maybe in front of the deli counter, standing helplessly as her preschooler flails himself onto the floor because she will not him allow another sweaty cheese sample. And the whole time the only thing on my arm is my purse, I’m not carrying a child, or a giant bag with wipes, extra underwear, a sippy cup, a potty seat, mismatched socks, a book and a crumpled up babydoll. It’s just my purse. That’s what turns me on and takes me all the way. Talk dirty to me say "I’ll watch the kids, you go to the grocery store." Shit, my heart is racing already.

Maybe one day Chivers and the rest of the sexologists will solve the mystery of female sexual desire. Maybe they’ll map the g-spot and all the other hot spots of the female anatomy and somehow link them to perfect rationality and overwhelming passions that make the female mind. Maybe if they keep working at it, keep taking surveys and showing women (and men) animal porn and tracking their heart beat and swelling and blood flow, they’ll figure the whole thing out. And then what? We’ll still be at the grocery store knee deep in toddler and selecting tomatoes against the background of a temper tantrum.

Another Mini-Mystery

Why does it irk me that my daughter insists on pretending that her one baby doll (12-inch, bald head, mouth poised to hold a pacifier), is the mother of another baby doll (a smaller facsimile of the first)? I've tried to explain that babies can't have babies, but she's not buying it.

You’ve Been Tagged! - 25 Actual Reasons I Don’t Have Time to Play Facebook Tag

1. I’ve got three kids. Ok, so it’s not that good of a reason, because clearly I’m doing everything I can to avoid that fact. But on it’s face, and if my husband were to read this, three kids require way too much attention for me to be able to participate in facebook tag.
2. I need to clean my oven. Seriously, it’s on my list for this week. I even bought the Easy-Off.
3. I need to drive back and forth to Target 17 times for no particular reason but mostly because I forgot my list.
4. I have to go through the Sunday circular to cut out coupons that I will never use.
5. Then I have to file those coupons in a little envelope that I will loose until mid-September 2009, at which point any coupons I may have actually been interested in using, will be just expired.
6. I need to get myself LinkedIn, which will require me making up a career and adequately embellishing my education. I need to get LinkedIn so I can finish stalking the people I couldn’t locate on facebook.
7. I need to sort two laundry baskets full of socks, most of which are black gold toe dress socks, of varying weaves.
8. I need to check the lot numbers on the two economy-sized jars of peanut butter I got at Costco in July of 2005, to make sure that they’re not involved in the great Peanut Butter Recall.
9. I will then need to do some internet research to confirm that salmonella can not live for more than three years, so that I feel better about the fact that I made six peanut butter sandwiches for my kids’ lunches just this morning.
10. I need to clean the bottom left-side of the base of every toilet in my house, because my five-year old son does not believe in a hands-on approach to urination.
11. I need to check my facebook account every 12 minutes, to make sure that I haven’t missed any chances to snicker at someone’s status update.
12. I need to get up, walk to my refrigerator, open it, stare at the food and wait for something that is both delicious and magically thinning, to surface. I will need to repeat this action 27 times.
13. After 27 attempts at healthy eating, I need to go to the refrigerator and eat two polly-o cheese sticks in rapid succession, while standing in front of the open door.
14. I need to spend approximately 4 minutes feeling really annoyed that I ate those cheese sticks. Then I need to make myself feel better by returning to the refrigerator and eating another one.
15. I need to empty my dishwasher and then reload it with the same dishes after I realize that I never ran it last night.
16. I need to reassemble the playmobile zoo without the instructions.
17. I need to search epicurious.com for a wholesome kid-friendly recipe featuring one over-ripe granny smith apple, a giant bag of pepperoni, green beans, blueberry-flavored greek yogurt, and 2/3 of a cup of orange juice.
18. I need to catch up on four episodes of Top Chef (if you know who won restaurant wars, don’t tell me), finish season 2 of the Tudors, and figure out why Tamara got Gretchen so drunk on The Real Housewives of Orange County.
19. I need to check if my daughter’s mali uromastyx (that’s a lizard) is actually still alive. This requires more time than you might think, since the critter doesn’t visibly breath.
20. I need to search craigslist for a gently-used calico critters house, an ottoman, and a bench for small children to sit on and remove their boots before tracking slush all over my house.
21. After I look for those things on craigslist, I’ll need to spend a significant amount of time reading other posts, just to make sure I’m not missing out on anything really good.
22. I need to find all my missing sports bras. I would check the laundry chute first, but that seems so unlikely.
23. I need to quick run my vacuum cleaner long enough to make some lines in the carpet so it’s obvious that I "just cleaned."
24. I need to read my husband’s parenting blog to make sure he’s not taking credit for everything again.
25. I need to figure out how to poke all the people that tagged me. And then I need to figure out how to buy them lots of "drinks" and "gifts" and shower them with unwanted facebook attention.