Best Summer Ever: Day 30

July 30
Do Some Big-Picture Thinking

Start thinking about the kind of fall you'd like to have with your family.

Summer won't last forever, after all. (Sob.)

It's a great time of year to start musing about changes you might want to make to your family's usual school-year routine - changes that might help to make the work-school-family juggle a little less crazy.

You might want to consider...

....decluttering now to reduce the amount of stuff in your life. The more stuff you have, the more stress you have.

....setting a budget for back-to-school shopping so your kids will know how much they have to spend on necessities and anything-but-necessities before they step foot in a store. It's easier to have this conversation at home than in the middle of a mall.

...limiting the number of extracurricular activities each kid can sign up for so that time for outdoor play doesn't get squeezed out of the schedule altogether. Unstructured play is what childhood is all about.

...acknowledging the effect that over-scheduling has on you as a parent; and how that, in turn, affects the rest of the family. (If you're stressed out because there's no breathing space in your schedule, what are you going to have left for yourself and everyone else?)

...spending at least 30 minutes together as a family every day is important. It doesn't matter when or where you reconnect -- over dinner or a book. What matters is that it happens.

Related:

Bankrate.com: How to survive piano lessons and hockey practices

Best Summer Ever: Day 13

July 13
Get Cycle Smart

Host a bike rodeo in your driveway or at a nearby park so your kids can work on their bike safety skills.

Then teach them how to do some basic maintenance on their bikes so that their bikes will be ready for the next family cycling adventure.

Related:

Canada Safety Council: What to Teach Your Children About Bicycle Safety

Utah Department of Health: Bicycle Rodeo Skills Packet (.pdf)

Cascade Bicycle Club: Organizing a Bicycle Skills Rodeo (.pdf)

Photo Credit: amandabhslater "Cycle Path," 2008 (Creative Commons).

Best Summer Ever: Day 12

July 12
Share Yourself

Share an important personal experience with someone you care about.

Not only will you be connecting with that person in a powerful way: you might even inspire that person to find creative ways to use his or her own experiences to help others.

Who knows? You might even manage to trigger a life-changing chain reaction amongst the people you care most about: one in which once-painful secrets lose their ability to control and limit lives.

Related:

After Baby Body.com is an example of a website that was born out of two mothers' desires to help other mothers:

"What the heck happened? So that’s basically how I felt after I popped out my first kid nearly seven years ago. I had a forceps delivery with a third degree tear. Of course at the time I had no idea. I thought the resident just REALLY enjoyed perineal needle point. I did know this: things “down there” were NOT THE SAME."

That's how the first entry in the After Baby Body blog begins. Website founders Andrea and Kira explain elsewhere on the site that they created After Baby Body to offer information and support to other moms experiencing post-childbirth complications like urinary incontinence, anal incontinence, a prolapse, or painful sex.

The result is a mom-friendly, informative site that will reassure you that you're not the only one feeling like your pre-baby perineum has gone AWOL, while offering helpful advice on getting it back.

Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009.

Barbie vs. The Moms

So Barbie has been painting the GTA pink in celebration of her big 5-0. You had to know she'd mark this milestone birthday in style.

She may be an icon, but it's difficult to know whether she's best described, at this point in her life, as

1. a retro doll on a comeback tour
2. the great pink peril (an eco-feminist disaster)
3. a mega-brand doubling as a fashion industry stimulus package.

Maybe she's all that and more.

That got me wondering: has Barbie managed to make peace with the modern mom? Or is she still the iconic symbol of every feminist mom's worst nightmare come true. (Nancy White’s classic song “Daughters of Feminists” instantly comes to mind.)

Let's face it, Barbie didn’t do much to further her cause as a toy you'd want around your daughter, what with the math incident and the lingerie Barbie line. ¹ What were those people at Mattel thinking?

And yet, young girls have always been (and still are) drawn to Barbie.

Competitors with the most noble of intentions have found it almost impossible to steal away any of Barbie's customers, as I discovered for myself when I tried to do the feminist mom thing when my daughter was of Barbie age. I bought my daughter the Barbie alternative (a more realistically proportioned doll named Happy to Be Me that promised to enhance girls' self-esteem), only to have my daughter hand her back, pronto, complaining that Happy had a big butt.

I headed online to chat with some moms on Twitter (a great way to sample opinions on any topic, by the way). I wanted to know where things stood in the battle between Barbie and the Moms. Here's what I found out.

Barbies aren't as bad as Bratz. “As an aunt, I'd much rather my nieces play with Barbies than Bratz.” says @twhitneyshan. “I find Barbie a little more wholesome.” @cathyempey shares that view. “I am okay with my daughters playing with Barbies. [They are] way better than Bratz. I do not allow those dolls [Bratz] into our home.”

Your house, your Barbie rules. Depending on how you feel about Barbie, that may mean hanging a Barbie welcome sign on your front door; having a no way, no how policy where Barbie is concerned; or allowing a Barbie or two to inflitrate the premises (to stop Barbie from becoming forbidden fruit). “I'm not keen on my daughter (age 3 1/2) playing with Barbie,” says @traceyibrahim. “But I don't [prevent] her.

You don’t have to buy into the (cradle-to-grave) Barbie marketing hype. “The consumer part bothers me the most," says @radmama. Her solution? Make way for vintage and hand-me-down Barbies rather than buying new.

Remind yourself that Barbie is a plastic toy, not a cult leader. Our daughters have the power to make their own choices (with us providing them with guidance in becoming strong, happy, healthy girls who won't let an artificially-proportioned toy mess with their heads). And sometimes what they choose to do with Barbie makes Sid from Toy Story seem like a toy-manitarian. (“I only cut off my Barbie’s hair,” confesses @radmama. “My sister painted hers silver and wrapped her in wire.")

So don’t write off those “Daughters of Feminists” too soon, Moms and Dads. They may be marching to the beat of their own drummer -- and using their Barbies as drumsticks.

Note:
1. The official Barbie Collector site features some demure looking pictures of lingerie Barbie - with suitably demure copy (Barbie "looks darling in delicate pink. Intricate pale pink lace accents her heavenly bustier ensemble. Pink peek-a-boo peignoir floats over soft pink, feminine underpinnings. Sheer pink stockings and sling back high heels add flirtatious finishing touches" etc.) - and indicates that lingerie Barbie and other Barbies in the Fashion Model Collection are no longer available.
     A commentator at the Blog Sisters blog reacted to the parental outcry at the launch of lingerie Barbie in November 2002 as follows: "I've long been a big UN-fan of Barbie in general, but this new model doesn't bother me so much: she's kind of just a blatant example of what, to me, Barbie is about anyway. The angry dad on the news was upset about the sexual suggestiveness of the toy, but apparently has no problem letting his daughter play with lots of blonde, unrealistically shaped dolls that promote sexism in a more insidious way."

Related:

Body Talk: The Straight Facts on Fitness, Nutrition, and Feeling Great About Yourself: A self-esteem book for preteens and teens that I wrote with my daughter, Julie. (Maple Tree Press, 2006).

* * *

I'm hoping you'll continue the conversation with me, adding your two cents in the comments section below, taking the discussion to your own blog, and/or catching up with me via Twitter (@anndouglas).   >> This may be my space, but it's our conversation. <<

Use Your Super Powers: A Workshop for Girls 8 to 12 - April 18, 2009

I've just developed a brand new workshop for girls 8 to 12 years of age + the very influential females (VIFs) in their lives. I'm going to be delivering the workshop for the first time on April 18 from 2 to 4 pm at the Uxbridge Public Library. Tickets are $15 (for a girl + a VIF). Full workshop details can be found below.

You can download copies of this poster to share with a friend or to post at your workplace or local library. Please note that enrollment is limited to 24 girls and the VIFs (very influential females) in their lives, so please sign up early to avoid disappointment. Poster Page 1 (.pdf) | Page 2 (.pdf)

Great Sexpectations - Parents as Lovers - Part II of II

In the follow-up to Part I, Ann Douglas asks sex educator Trina Read, author of the recently published Till Sex Do Us Part, for the lowdown on scheduled sex, sex and body image, and how flirtations can impact on a couple's relationship. Here are the highlights of our interview.

AD: We're back -- and I thought we'd start out by talking about something really practical: scheduled sex. What's your take on that whole issue: couples making dates to have sex? Act of desperation or smart solution?

TR: Scheduling sex is the easiest way for a couple to keep their sex life on the radar. It may not seem romantic and a couple usually feels like failures because they can no longer have spontaneous sex; however, chances are if they don't schedule it, it's not going to happen.

AD: One of my friends (who shall remain nameless, so that she will still be my friend after today) insists that scheduled sex saved her marriage.

TR: Scheduling sex takes away any negative feelings about who is going to initiate sex; or walking around on egg shells wondering if tonight is the night when I'll have to have sex. Research proves that couples that schedule sex have more sex that is mutually satisfying.

AD: Let's move on to another hot topic. What can couples do to get past the body image trap? She may be struggling with her body image after baby or maybe her partner has made some comment about her post-baby body that she has taken to mean that she's no longer attractive. Once that comment, however slight or unintended, is out there, it can be hard to erase it from her brain. And, of course, there are all kinds of comments that she might make that could be equally devastating to his sexual self-esteem. Sometimes we women have been known to joke about things that men would sometimes rather we not. And as for what we speak heart-to-heart to our girlfriends about.... [Zipping lips.]

TR: Body image is such a tough topic to cover because it is an intellect versus emotion issue. When I lecture about body image, intellectually women nod their head and agree with what I'm saying. Emotionally though, when she looks in the mirror and zooms in with what is wrong with her body, it's game over. Emotion will win every time. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle.

It's been my experience that when men don't find their female partner attractive anymore due to weight gain, the men are usually just as overweight. Women tend to be a lot more forgiving about his weight gain. Of course, men are a lot more visual [when it comes to sexuality].

Partners need to look at their current lifestyle choices and as a team with the team part being the key to this equation. Start doing things to become healthier like going for walks together. Doing a shared activity will create an alliance and deepen intimacy.

AD: A lot of parents go through a lonely time at some point during their relationship as a couple and as parents. It might be right after the baby is born. It could be when they aren't seeing eye-to-eye on parenting issues and other things are going wrong in the marriage (maybe fights about money, arguments about sex, work-life balance struggles: you name it). At times like this, it's easy for someone other than your partner to look like Ms./Mr. Wonderful. So here's my question: what kind of effect are flirtations (both online and in real life) having on couple relationships? What advice do you offer to couples who want to have fun connecting with others, but who don't want to torpedo their own relationships?

TR: I would suggest never do anything outside of your relationship in secrecy. It's only going to blow up in your face, even if what you are doing is perfectly innocent. Secrecy is seen, justifiably, as lying. My best advice is this: if you can't tell your partner what you're up to, then don't do it. If you can chat easily about the flirtation then it should be okay.

Every [couple] has its own value system around what constitutes an acceptable flirtation. You need to have a conversation with your partner with what is acceptable and not acceptable. If you can chat easily about the flirtation then it should be okay.

AD: We've covered a lot of ground here. Thanks for speaking with me so frankly and openly. (Then again, I guess this is all in a day's work for you.)

Related reads:

• FamilyMan.com: Sleep is the New Sex: The Not-So-Secret Sex Lives of New Moms and Dads
  
• BabyCenter Sex Survey

Parenting Predictions: The Top Three Parenting Trends for 2009

Here are my picks for the top three parenting trends for 2009.

The Year of the Parent Activist

2009 will be the year of the parent activist.

Now don't get me wrong. Parents have always been activists: the ones organizing playground fundraisers and food-drives at schools; advocating for their kids' within the educational, social service, and/or health care systems (a slightly crazy-making experience at the best of times); and showing up at city hall en masse to work for the betterment of their neighborhoods.

But we'll see that mom-and-dad activist activity ramp up like never before as the 60's-style citizen activist and political movement from south of the border catch fire up here as well.

Frankly, it can't come quickly enough -- at a time like this when economic change is fast-moving and ruthless and the environment is being seriously harmed; we need to reinvent our cities and suburbs; social justice issues are demanding attention; and one of our most valued sources of information is under siege -- again.

Who can afford the luxury of standing on the sidelines at a time like this?

As Dan Carter, a one-person activist movement based out of hard-hit Oshawa, likes to put it: the time is now. In other words, if you're waiting for the economy to improve to start working for change, forget about it. Bad times are the best times to work for change. (Watch for my profile of Dan in my next column.)

A Get-Real, Let's-Work-Together Parenting Style

Parents will continue to gravitate to what can best be described as a progressive parenting style.

This style has been emerging since the mid-1980s and now it has become a full-blown parenting movement that recognizes that all family members, especially children, deserve to be treated with respect; and that family life is immensely richer when relationships are based on love, not fear.

This style of parenting recognizes that there are real problems to be deal with in our society and in our families and that the only way to deal with these problems is by acknowledging that they exist (as opposed to playing ostrich).

This style of parenting is consultative rather than dictatorial (input from all family members is sought, where appropriate: the three year old doesn't get to choose her bedtime because she doesn't have the same understanding of child development as the grownups who've been given the privilege and responsibility of raising her); and parents welcome input from a variety of sources so that they can benefit from a variety of ideas and then decide what will work best for their families.

Celebrity Baby Bumplets

The celebrity baby bumps will dwindle into celebrity baby bumplets. Consider what this LA plastic surgeon had to say about the nouveaux conceived recently: "Women are just not gaining as much weight as they used to. Particularly in LA - you can't even tell they're pregnant." That will either increase the pressure on ordinary moms to look freakishly non-pregnant from conception through delivery day -- and to bounce back Hollywood-style. (That means with the help of a nutritionist, a personal trainer, and -- if necessary -- a post-baby "mommy makeover" plastic surgery package.) Or it may convince ordinary moms that celebrity pregnancy has finally gone to far. (Or not far enough on the weight gain front.)

The Stepford Guide to Getting Your Body Back After Baby

I figured by now I'd stumbled across most of the advice that could be offered about getting in shape after baby.

Guess what? I was wrong.

In this article, a cosmetic surgeon shares the advice that he offers to celebrity moms who are determined to lose their baby weight by the time their baby announcements hit the newswires. Here's what he has to say, in a nutshell.

• If breastfeeding and using a breast pump don't produce the desired results, consider a "mommy makeover" featuring "a tummy tuck, breast lift, and lipo combo."
• Wait six months before scheduling your surgery. You'll be working with your nutritionist and personal trainer in the meantime and you probably won't have that much weight to lose. ("Women are just not gaining as much weight as they used to. Particularly in LA—you can't even tell they're pregnant.")
• Be grateful for small weight loss miracles, like a c-section. When you have a caesarean, you're on a liquid diet for a few days and your body burns extra calories while your tissue is healing. Lucky you!

The entire article makes for fascinating reading (in the most bizarre anthropological sense). However, it's disturbing to think that some women (celebrities or otherwise) might stumble across this advice and think it represents the current thinking in the world of pregnancy. (As if.)

The fact that advice like this can still find a home in the mainstream media tells us that the women's health movement still has a lot of work to do in raising awareness of what real women look like after they've just had a baby and in helping new moms to love and accept their bodies for the living miracles that they are.

It's also a reminder that as a media consumer, you have to think critically about the information you're consuming -- in the very same way that you carefully scrutinize product labels. You want to know what food you're feeding your body -- and what information you're feeding your brain.

Onwards!

Related:

Mommy's New Face -- a children's book about cosmetic surgery (article from blog archive)

Mother Metamorphosis

My first year of motherhood was all about change: watching my daughter wriggle and crawl from baby stage to baby stage and feeling myself make the mind shift required to move from the intimacy of the-two-of-us to the much more complex family that is born the moment baby makes three. It was no longer me and him: it was me and him and me and her and her and him: three times as many relationship combos to maintain in the same small space. No wonder the house suddenly felt so much more crowded. The house wasn't simply overflowing with piles upon piles of baby stuff, piles that grew by the day as new parcels arrived by mail, courier, or baby-obsessed neighbor. The house was fully charged with the high voltage energy of new relationship possibilities, possibilities that were both brilliant and dark at the same time.

I remember feeling this strange mix of anxiety and joy: being simultaneous head-over-heels in love with my daughter and freaked out about how much my own life was changing, particularly my relationship with my husband. I couldn't believe that a person could be so happy and so sad at the same time. Were he and I destined to drift apart at the same time that we had the best reason in the world to want to stay together? If we couldn't even carry on a conversation without arguing about something,would we ever come out of this dark place as a couple?

I've been thinking back to this time a lot lately, because I've emerged from another year of growth and introspection. At first everything seemed scary and uncertain in the wake of my youngest son's Aspergers diagnosis, but now my husband and I have found our way back to something resembling the new normal again. In the early days, weeks, months, I remember feeling like a new mom again; realizing that I didn't even know what questions to ask in order to figure out what I needed to know.

For the longest time, I felt like I was walking around in a daze that was eerily reminiscent of the isolating fog of new motherhood: unable to concentrate and yet thinking all the time. My husband felt much the same way, and yet we were each in our own, separate fogs. This time, with the benefit of knowledge gained over 20 years of parenting, we groped through the fog until we found one another. We knew we needed to remind ourselves that we were on the same team, not at war with one another; that we needed to support one another while we were supporting our son.

When I signed up for this motherhood gig 20 years ago, I thought that being a mother was all about raising children. I had no idea that my children would also be raising me – providing me with opportunities to learn and grow more than I ever thought possible, particularly during those times when I was challenged to the max as a mother.

Don't get me wrong. I certainly wasn't grateful for those soul-wrenchingly painful parent development opportunities while I was living through them, but, looking back, I know now that I wouldn't have developed the ability to care deeply for parents and children in all kinds of circumstances nor would I have evolved into the person I am today if I hadn't been given the opportunity to experience so many different types of highs and lows myself. If I'd set up parenting digs at 123 Easy Street, I might easily have assumed that all parents and kids live on streets like that street. I would have been terribly wrong.

Because our family has spent time on Infertility Crescent and Stillbirth Street and Learning Disabilities Lane and Eating Disorders Drive and Depression Drive and Aspergers Syndrome Street and at other assorted addresses, I know that Easy Street is a very tiny street; and that some of the families who have houses there are living in a state of self-delusion. They aren't really living the picture-perfect existence they think they are living. At any time, the foundations of their houses and their lives could come tumbling down.

Parents who've lived on the streets that spiral off from Easy Street know what it's like to feel as emotionally downtrodden as a partially stepped on or totally flattened caterpillar -- the kind of feeling you get when your something worrying or terrible is happening or has happened to your child. At first you think you're going to stay in flattened caterpillar mode forever. And then you decide that what has happened to your child will not be in vain: you will find a way to make something positive come from this experience. And so you start to inject life back into your squished caterpillar body even though, at first, your body says, "What's the point?" At some point, you find the courage to wriggle out of the what's-the-point cocoon you retreated into when you were at your most vulnerable. You reach out to the only ones who can truly understand (a group of formerly squished caterpillars who have somehow morphed into butterflies). You work hard to heal yourself and the rest of your family and to recreate your life in a new way. Then you watch yourself soar above the worries of the day, knowing you have what it takes to help yourself and your family weather the next storm.

Note:
I've just given my personal blog -- The Mother of All Blogs -- a major revamp. I've moved it over to TypePad and added links to hundreds (there may be over a thousand) of links to parenting resources and articles (with many more to come). If you're used to linking to http://www.motherofallblogs.com, you don't have to do a thing. You've moved with the blog. If you used to link to the blogspot address, you need to change your link for my blog over to the new address.

Playing for Keeps

This is the second part of a two-part series on kids and sports.

In my previous post, I talked about a really important study ("Kids and Sports") published by Statistics Canada back in June. That study talked about which kids are most likely to participate in organized and informal sports in Canada -- and which kids are most likely to be left out of the game.

In this follow-up post, I want to talk about why there's so much more to this issue than initially meets the eye.

It would be easy to assume that this issue is simply about helping kids to stay fit. If that were the case, you might argue that there are plenty of other ways for kids to get fit than by participating in the local soccer league or shooting some hoops after dinner with a group of neighbourhood kids. Kids could jump rope or work out to an exercise video. In other words, you'd be focusing on ways of getting kids' bodies in motion. 

What isn't obvious at first is that being involved in organized sports like soccer or taking swimming lessons allows kids to acquire important skills that are as much about learning about life as they are about learning to play a particular sport. Playing sports allows kids to channel their energy, competitive, and aggressiveness in constructive ways; to develop teamwork and leadership skills; and, starting from when they are very young, to develop important school readiness skills (skills that can help to ease their transition to school). Kids who participate in organized sports and lessons in physical activities score more highly in such school readiness measures as receptive vocabulary, communication skills, number knowledge, and copying and symbol use. What's more, kids who participated in unorganized sports at least once a week score more highly in cooperative play than other children.

Studies examining school readiness have demonstrated that children from lower income households often lack some of the skills that are associated with readiness for school. All but one of the skills that children from lower-income households tend to be lacking (as compared to children from more affluent households) can be gained through participation in organized sports (receptive vocabulary, communication skill, number knowledge, copying and symbol use) or unorganized sports ( cooperative play). There isn't any research to demonstrate that the other skill that children from lower-income households tend to be lacking (attention) can be gained through participation in sports.

There are also significant health consequences to be considered. Researchers at Simon Fraser University conducted an eight-year longitudinal study of Canadian children, focusing on the relationship between early neighbourhood environment and children's body-mass index percentiles. They found that young children living in the lowest income neighbourhoods face an increased risk of becoming overweight or obese between childhood and early adolescence as compared to children living in more affluent neighbourhoods. The researchers concluded that reduced food choices and poorer opportunities for physical activities were responsible for the unhealthier outcomes. They recommended that "policies to prevent neighbourhood disparities in overweight...focus on young children."

There are other compelling reasons for dealing with the childhood obesity problem, too. Researchers at Queen's University found that children who are overweight or obese are more likely to be the targets and the perpetrators of bullying than other children whose weight falls within the normal range. If we are aware of factors that put a particular group of children at risk of becoming overweight or obese (and therefore at greater risk of being bullied or becoming bullies), wouldn't it be socially irresponsible of us to choose to do nothing?

There's no denying it. Sports is serious stuff. It's about giving every child a fair shot at growing up healthy and strong and ready to learn. When some kids are denied access to the types of opportunities that they need in order to develop in healthy ways,  everyone pays the price later on. So knowing what we know now, we have some questions to ask of ourselves: what kind of world do we want for our kids? A winner-takes-all society, where some kids aren't even allowed in the game—or a level playing field, where every kid is invited to play?

Remember, we're playing for keeps.