Period Literature

Here's something you probably don't know about me. I collect vintage health and facts-of-life books and booklets aimed at preteen girls. My favorite subspecies of these types of publications? The "you're about to get your first period" booklet (which was typically given a much more subtle and/or gushing title): "You're growing up!" "You're becoming a woman!" One day soon I'll take you on a guided tour of my collection (I really am loving my new video camera just a little too much, aren't I?), but for now I want to tell you about two terrific new books aimed at the preteen or young teen girl, circa 2010.

My Little Red Book, edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2009. Hardcover, 225 pages, $16.99), is an anthology of stories about first periods contributed by women of all ages from around the world. Nalebuff, who put the book together during her gap year, before heading off to study at Yale, has managed to do for menstruation with my little red book what Eve Ensler did for vaginas with The Vagina Monologues. By combining powerful stories (a mix of both funny and poignant) both authors manage to illustrate how the personal and the political can't help but intersect whenever women's bodies are involved. This is a smart and savvy book that mothers and daughters will enjoy sharing and discussing. Highly recommended. Visit the book's website for videos and other additional resources.

"What I remember most about my period is not getting it. And not getting it. And not getting it. I just could not get the thing, no matter how many white bikinis I wore, even on boats, without bringing a pad along just in case' no matter now many phantom cramps I willed into my uterus. Nothing."
- Rachel Vail, Not Getting It, 1980.
An essay in My Little Red Book, edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

Girl in the Know: Your Inside-and-Out Guide to Growing Up by Anne Katz, RN, PhD. Illustrated by Monika Melnychuk (Toronto: Kids Can Press, 2010. Hardcover, 112 pages, $18.95) is a comprehensive guide to growing up for preteen girls. The book, which features fun-and-funky illustrations, covers everything from what you can expect when you get your first period to sensible advice on caring for your rapidly-changing body (fitness, nutrition, stress management, skin care, sexual health) to managing relationships. The book is packed with information that would never have found its way into a book of this type a generation ago - and that some folks would like to keep far, far away from girls of this generation, too. Masturbation and the possibility of a same-sex crush are discussed. There are even tips on choosing eco-friendly menstrual products, like menstrual cups and cloth pads. I tell you, this author is thorough. Highly recommended. See this teacher resource guide and tip sheet for moms for more info.

Ann Douglas is the co-author (with her daughter Julie Douglas) of Body Talk: The Straight Facts on Fitness, Nutrition, and Feeling Great About Yourself (Toronto: Maple Tree Press, 2006. Paperback, $9.95, 64 pages).

The War on Moms: An Interview with Sharon Lerner -- Part I of II

Sharon Lerner has some reassuring words for you, if you're struggling to pay your bills, find time for your family, and do a good job at work, too: this problem is so much bigger than you.

 "Perhaps you yourself work so hard, you don't have enough time for your family, let alone for yourself," she writes in the introduction of her brand new book, The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation (Wiley, 2002). "On the other hand, you might have ample time with your children but feel edged out of professional life, unable to earn any money -- or enough of it to avoid sinking into a financial hole. Or maybe you work hard and still find yourself barely getting by. Any of these scenarios is common. What's far less likely is that you have both financial stability and all of the time you need to care for your family. That's because such balance has become a rare privilege in this country. And while it's easy to feel personally responsible for failing to achieve the elusive mix of work and family within your own life, the problem is far bigger than you....

"To say there is a sinister plot against American women is both overblown and exactly right. Technically speaking, there is no War on Moms, of course. There is no concerted effort to kill or main women who have children. But if some sinister think tank had spent the last thirty years cooking up the ideal way to make American women miserable, it likely couldn't have served up more unpleasantness than women now encounter on a daily basis."

Lerner is an American journalist who specializes in writing about women and politics. The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation (Wiley, 2002) -- a meticulously researched book that should be considered required reading for every mother or mother-to-be on either side of the border -- is her first book. I had the opportunity to interview Lerner via Skype earlier today. What follows is the first part of our interview.

Office Politics for Parents

Someone in your family is totally bummed that the March Break is almost over. They've been moping around the house all day.

This person is a grownup.

While most of us get hit with the occasional urge to go AWOL from work (that blast of spring weather we enjoyed last week could have lured even the most die-hard workaholic outdoors), if you find that you consistently dread going to work, office politics could be to blame.

But I don't want to play the game....

Given that office politics are a fact of life in most workplaces, learning how to play the game (at least enough to avoid being taken out of the game) has become a necessary evil. As Rona Maynard noted in a recent article written for the popular workplace behavior site OfficePolitics.com:

"Now more than ever, niceness won’t get you very far. How much do higher-ups really know about what you do and why it matters? ... The rewards in any organization go to those who are seen to succeed, week in and week out. You don’t have to be a shameless self-promoter who hogs all the credit for shared achievements. But if you don’t share good news about your work, you can’t expect anyone to notice."

And as for dealing with bosses or co-workers who bully, twist the facts, or hoard information?

Those have become workplace survival skills, too.

Franke James, founder and CEO of OfficePolitics.com has produced a fun and informative guide to mastering those those games you wish people wouldn't play.

The book (which can also be played as a game) allows you to try your hand at playing HR guru as you confront one nasty political situation after another. Themes include office princesses, coworkers who steal all the credit, and bosses who tolerate office bullying.

The parenting connection

So what do office politics have to do with parenting?

More than you might think.

Spending your day playing political snakes-and-ladders can zap you of your energy and your patience by the time you switch into family mode. So the more skilled you become at avoiding the snakes and holding on tight to those ladders, the happier you'll be both on and off the job.

There could also be an added perk, as you become more politically savvy. The better you become at dealing with power plays at work, the better you'll be able to coach your kids on dealing with Machiavellian moves on the playground. Or at preschool. After all, politics aren't just for grownups (unfortunately): they're a kid thing, too.

Dear Office Politics: The Game Everyone Plays by Franke James. Nerdheaven, Ltd: Toronto, Ontario, 2009. Winner of a 2010 AXIOM Business Book Award (Bronze, Human Resources and Training). Paperback, 138 pages. $36.49 U.S.

Related:

Job Stress Can Affect Your Children

How to Frog-Proof Your Daughter

"Until you value yourself, you'll probably be afraid to go out with a Prince. Subconsciously, you understand that life is a mirror: if you don't feel good about yourself – if you don't like yourself – you'll make choices that reflect that lack of self-worth. You'll see a Frogette in your reflection if you're insecure, and a Princess if you know you deserve a Prince."
- Kaycee Jane, Frog or Prince: The Smart Girl's Guide to Boyfriends

It can be frustrating – even heartbreaking -- to watch your daughter date a frog.

You know she deserves better, but until she figures that out for herself, she's likely to be drawn to the fly-eating guys rather than anyone even remotely resembling a Prince.

But what's a frog-phobic parent to do?

Pick up a copy of Frog or Prince: The Smart Girl's Guide to Boyfriends by Kaycee Jane – a fun, tell-it-like-it-is guide to loving yourself enough to insist on being treated well in relationships. Read the book yourself (to gain insights into what your daughter may be thinking and experiencing so that you'll be better equipped to support her) and then pass the book along to your daughter (in the hope that she'll read it). Then have a heart-to-heart conversation with her about healthy relationships and self-respect. (You can't have one without the other. Really.)

Frog or Prince – which is aimed at young women who are trying to make sense of the often crazy-making world of dating relationships – encourages young women to figure out what they want for themselves in life; and what they are (and aren't) willing to accept in their dating relationships; and then gives them the tools they need to evaluate their relationships in those terms.

Jane includes a series of fictionalized relationship scenarios to illustrate relationships gone – or going – wrong and to demonstrate how women can dig themselves out of relationship ruts by rewriting the scripts that have led to unhappy outcomes (and attracted a steady stream of frogs) in the past.

She also makes the crucial point that you don't have to have a Prince in your life in order to be happy. (Consider the Prince a nice bonus, if, in fact, you want a Prince at all. Being happy with yourself and the life you're creating for yourself is what really counts.)

Kaycee Jane. Frog or Prince: The Smart GIrl's Guide to Boyfriends. Kaycee Jane Enterprises Corp. 2009. Paperback, 230 pages, $29.95. Available from Amazon.ca and other outlets.

Highly recommended. An iPhone app featuring the various relationship analysis tools that Jane has developed would make a perfect companion to the book. If the app were programmed in a way that allowed the user to set his/her own and his/her partner's sex, more youth could benefit from Kaycee Jane's excellent material.

Ann Douglas is the co-author (with her daughter Julie Douglas) of Body Talk: The Straight Facts About Fitness, Nutrition, and Feeling Great About Yourself.

Finding True Friendship and Using Your Voice the Themes of These Fab New Picture Books for Kids

Family Day is a great day for reading to (or with) someone you love. (There's no age limit on sharing a great book, after all.) You may want to pick up copies of these two brand new picture books -- new from Kids Can Press for spring 2010.

C'mere Boy! by Sharon Jennings. Illustrated by Ashley Spires. Kids Can Press, 2010. Hardcover, $18.95 Canada. $16.95 U.S. Ages 3-7.

Dog wants a Boy in the worst way possible, and won't be deterred by any attempts to dissuade him. The story is fun (because it's the opposite of the usual boy-wants-dog tale) and the illustrations are awesome (hint: nothing in the world is as colorful as Dog until he meets the Boy who finally wins his heart). This is a feel-good tale of love and friendship that you'll enjoy as much as your kid.

Willow's Whispers by Lana Button. Illustrated by Tania Howells. Kids Can Press, 2010. Hardcover, $18.95, Canada. $16.96 U.S. Ages 3-7.

Willow has a quiet voice. Her words come out in whispers that are too tiny to hear. She wishes things were different because her quiet voice is leading to all kinds of missed opportunities at school. Fortunately, a creative solution (and some wise words tucked away in her memory) save the day for Willow, who finds her "own big strong voice" and the courage to be a leader. If you know a shy child (or you ever were a shy child!) you'll be cheering for Willow every step of the way.

Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids: Review of Documentary (Airs on CBC Next Week)

The Art of Parenting

Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids zeroes in on what is commonly referred to as helicopter parenting: the tendency of some parents to hover over their kids. (Did you know that helicopter parents are known as curling parents in Sweden? That's one of the interesting pop culture tidbits that you can pick up while watching this documentary.)

The documentary describes the phenomenon in detail and features interviews with parents, a psychiatrist, and other cultural commentators, including Carl Honore, author of Under Pressure: Rescuing our Children from the Culture of Over-Parenting. Notably absent is Lorene Skenazy, whose book Free Range Kids is widely considered to be the unofficial manifesto of the anti-helicopter parenting movement.

The documentary is at its best when it focuses on the lives of kids who are heading off to university or landing their first job. According to a variety of sources who are interviewed on camera, hardcore helicopter parenting types apparently think nothing of calling up their kids university profs (or the president of the university) to argue about grades; or of making contact with their kids' employers, if junior's performance review hasn't been sufficiently glowing.

The documentary is less convincing when it focuses on the lives of the over-privileged (parents who can afford to drop $4000 on birthday bash for a one year old) or the just-plain-clueless (parents who don't seem to be able to think critically about any product or service that promises to give their kid an advantage over the next family's kid). Very few parents bought into the helicopter parenting phenomenon to this degree, even when the trend was at its peak. Becoming a parent isn't correlated with a sudden increase in wealth or an immediate loss of your critical thinking abilities, after all.

There's also the issue of timeliness. This documentary would have been more timely a few years back, when parents were more inclined to want to micromanage their kids' lives. Since that time, there has been a growing backlash against helicopter parenting. The recession has accelerated this trend by giving parents something else to worry about (finding the money to pay the bills) and reducing the income available to fund that faux-perfect family lifestyle.

Since environmental concerns heightened and the recession hit, parents have been simplifying their lives (including managing the avalanche of parenting advice information that can leave them feeling helicopter-parented by the parenting experts), simplifying their kids lives (allowing lots of time for unstructured outdoor play: an old-fashioned idea that never quite went out of style), and enjoying time as a family (relaxed time for fun, not time that is driven by an agenda). And I can tell you one thing. No one is eager to hop back on board that helicopter anytime soon.

The documentary is worth watching, if only as a reminder of where we've been and how far we've come in rejecting the consumerist parenting style that views parents as manufacturers and kids as products to be paraded before the neighbors and the relatives. They are individuals in their own right: not branch plants belonging to Mom or Dad Inc.

Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids airs at the following times:

Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 9 pm on CBC-TV

Friday, February 5, 2010 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC News Network.

Five Parenting Predictions for 2010

Most crystal balls haven't kept pace with the pace at which the world is changing, so you have to be feeling brave to try your hand at predictions of any kind these days. I guess that means I'm starting out 2010 in gutsy mode. Here are five parenting predictions, which span the world of parenting and pop culture.

1. Family dinner conversations will become livelier, thanks to Twitter and Facebook.
With family members joining social networking sites where they hone and share their opinions online, dinner conversations can't help but become a little more lively and opinionated. Fortunately, research has shown that discussions around the family dinner table help to make kids smarter.

2. Parents will gravitate to e-books and e-readers as their budgets allow and as parenting e-books become more interactive.
As parenting e-books become more interactive, they'll have more to offer a generation of parents who are used to interacting with text as opposed to digesting it word for word.

3. Even more reality TV shows will focus on families.
Jon and Kate Plus 8 may have faded to black, but Octomom Nadya Suleman will soon be bringing her 14 kids to air, along with Canadian stunt family, the Dunns. This kind of begs the question: what reality TV show format for a family with kids remains to be tapped? Perhaps someone should pitch NASCAR Family, A Baby and a Bakery, or This Family Can Sing. Or maybe not.

4. Parents surfing the web will be subjected to increasing SEO-world vs. real-world parenting disconnect.
The battle for ad dollars and eyeballs can lead to cheesy headlines and bizarro-world stories, even on parenting websites. The net result? It will become increasingly difficult to find a simple answer to a garden-variety parenting question – unless, of course, all the baby sleep questions are asked by readers named Tiger or Britney.

5. The journalism robots will fail miserably as they attempt to play parenting expert.
They're already out there, apparently: -- the journalism robots, that is: harvesting text so that articles can be generated out of loosely related facts without hands-on help from any humans. We can only hope that the journalism robots have legal robot buddies willing to help them out if the parenting advice, as mashed together, happens to short on common sense or missing a safety caveat or two.

TIP

Give yourself a parenting advice timeout. Being bombarded with advice about every aspect of parenting 24/7 can leave us feeling like we'll never learn everything we need to know to do even a half-way decent job as parents. Unplugging gives us time to consider how much we already know and to reach our own conclusions about parenting, without being distracted by all the expert voices competing for attention in our heads.

The Mother of All Parenting Blogs: Watch for Big Changes Starting Thursday

The blog will be undergoing a makeover, starting this Thursday. Here are the new departments that I will be introducing to the blog. You won't find all of them each time I post. (That would make for a very lengthy post.) I'll be rotating these departments in and out of the blog, two or three at a time, to keep things fresh and interesting.

Newswire

A roundup of essays, opinion pieces, and noteworthy news stories about all thing parenting. I'm hoping my picks will prompt you to contribute some suggestions of your own.

Resource Swap

The best places to gather info on the hot topic or issue of the day. If you've got resources to share, link up via your blog or have your say via the comments section below the post. More brains: better resources.

Parenting Lab

Short items summarizing noteworthy research from the world of parenting.

The Art of Parenting

Art (literature, visual art, film, theatre, etc.) that addresses some aspect of parenting or family life.

Parenting Grapevine

Tap into the online world of parent wisdom via my roundup of highlights from parent blogs and Twitter.

One Question Interview

Pretty self-explanatory. A one-question interview about something to do with parenting. What will keep this feature fresh and interesting is that you'll never know who will be answering the question. (Expect the unexpected.)

What I Did With My Summer Vacation

September 1st is here, which means it's time to put the best summer ever series to bed. (This is Day 63, if you're still keeping track.)

The summer of 2009 may not be officially behind us for another 21 days, but there's something about the arrival of September that signals that it's time to shift modes.

Those of us who have kids heading back to school in another week (or who have already heeded the call of the school bus or the carpool) are already marching to the beat of the fall routine.

I like the routine and structure of fall, and yet I'm already missing the more improvisational rhythm of summer. I love the spontaneous, unexpected, the unplanned.

My main goal, this summer, was to indulge in the freelance writer's equivalent of a sabbatical (self-funded, of course). I set up a reading and writing program for myself, one that took me boldly where I had not gone before as a writer, but where I will be hanging out on a regular basis from now on. There's no going back once you've sample certain writerly delights, you know.

But before you get the idea that this summer was All About Me: well, reality check time. I'm still very much part of a family. (Status Update: Mom of four; married; many other relatives; etc.)

It was an awesome summer on the kid front. I had the opportunity to watch my four kids thrive and take bold steps of their own. My daughter decided to listen to her inner artist and start studying photography this fall, abandoning the college program that might have put money in the bank, but that would have made her miserable. My oldest son took a journey that demonstrated that he is willing to put heart and soul into going after what he really wants out of life. His passion really shone through as he found a focus – a motivation – to move him to action. My next youngest son demonstrated that he is able to juggle multiple commitments without missing a beat, online or offline. And my youngest son took a giant step from childhood to that in-between stage that will soon lead to the teen years. He can drive a boat, he can build benches and sheds, and he can advocate for himself and others in powerful ways. How far he has come in the past two years. I am so grateful to the people who helped cushion his fall and helped him find his way again.

My husband, who desperately needed some downtime this summer, managed to escape from the office every now and again to spend time at the cottage. He continues to try to cope with the pressures of being an only child caring for aging parents in another city (a complicated situation that won't be easily resolved). Maybe, now that all our kids are doing well at the same time (a major miracle in this family), we'll be able to enjoy more time as a couple this fall. Sure there are my pregnancy book revisions (very tight timeline) , his job (insanely busy at the best of times), and our volunteer commitments (we are both active volunteers in our community), but I have this feeling that we're coming back into our own again. It will be our 23rd wedding anniversary in October – and we've together since I was in Grade 10 and he was in Grade 11 (that was in 1978).

I think I'll make this my goal for fall: to find ways to spend more time with this fellow who gives so much to our family; to try to lighten his load a little; and to let him know in my oh-so-subtle ways (like that blackboard-sized neon pink heart that I drew on the blackboard in his Grade 11 math class one Valentine's Day long ago) that after four kids and all these years, I still want his coffee cup next to mine.

Best Summer Ever: Day 59

August 28
Become the Poster Parent for the Joy of Learning

One of the most powerful things you can do to raise a child who is is to model that excitement yourself.

You want your child to see you reading books, newspapers, and magazines on a daily basis; researching issues that matter to you; and watching documentaries on topics that you are passionate about.

With you as a living example of the joy of learning, how can your child help but get the message that learning is something that takes place anytime, anywhere; and that it continues throughout your entire life?

Image: Created using the motivator tool at BigHugeLabs.com.