Motherlove

Amid the zillions of column inches about what gadgets and bouquets to buy Mom, the endless recipes to cook for her and the long list of books you might buy her on every conceivable facet of motherhood, this Modern Love column from the New York Times is in a class of its own.

Treat yourself on Mothers Day and read it.

Have a good one.

Who rigged the mommy sweepstakes?

According to this poll, the most popular moms on television are:

1) Kitty Fornan of That '70s Show

2) Marge Simpson

3) Clair Huxtable (The Cosby Show)

4) Carmela Soprano

5) Marie Barone of Everybody Loves Raymond

6) Brady Bunch matriarch Carol Brady.

This is one strange list, if you ask me. And I'm not just saying that because my own personal favourites didn't make the top five. Those would be Lois from Malcolm in the Middle, naturally - the one with four wild boys and a screech like nobody's business. And the grand dame of maternal martyrs Ruth Fisher (Six Feet Under) who won my heart early on when she ham-handedly tried to have the sex talk with her grown sons at the breakfast table.

Of course, no one with an ounce of humour or perspective would dispute the presence of the glorious Marge or Carmela on that list, their personal flaws and frightful mates notwithstanding. But seriously, Clair Huxtable? And wouldn't you rather hear Estelle Costanza shrieking at George (Seinfeld) than listen to Carol Brady chirp away at her three cloying daughters and three perky stepsons?

Lists, eh. Everybody's got an opinion. What's yours?

Career interruptus - two sides to the coin

If you are really, truly, mind-numbingly weary of the Mommy Wars, I suggest you refresh your browser right now.

If, on the other hand, you are one of those mommies like me, who claims to be skunnered on the topic and yet can't resist gobbling up the latest instalment like a bag of Miss Vickie's, you might care about the following.

That is, a few further points I can't stop myself from making about Ms. Bennetts' book. You know the one. Since we last talked about it, several intelligent reviews have come out, including one in last Sunday's New York Times and before that the New Yorker.

Both note two of Bennetts' recurring arguments for why women should not give up the prestige and money of decent jobs to stay home with children. They are:

1) Too many mothers who don't like their jobs are using their kids as an excuse to quit, she says.

2) The high-maintenance years of sleep deprivation, childcare crises and spitup on the power suit pass quickly. Hang in there, Bennetts urges. Hardcore mothering is "a temp job."

I believe both these arguments are true. I just think they cut both ways. In other words, you can use them to make a case for moms who want to stay home, rather than just to pillory them.

Since when is quitting work you hate a bad thing? Are we just supposed to stay with an unfulfilling or stressful job because the title or perks are good? Often those of us lucky enough to hit the career pause button - whether or not children are part of the equation - end up a lot better for it. The result can be a job switch that might never have happened, an entrepreneurial venture from home or an eventual return to the workforce with a renewed sense of purpose.

Bennetts is right about the early years. They represent one short chapter in a lifetime (though you might not believe this in the middle of a February night when your toddler has an earache and the baby is colicky). That's why some parents choose to be the primary caregiver during that period, even if the longterm tradeoff is a mortgage that will never be paid off and no progress on the RRSP balance.

In The Feminine Mistake, Bennetts urges women to respect what we've accomplished, and to honour our hard-earned education and professional qualifications by staying at work and ensuring our financial independence. But you know what? We also shouldn't forget how incredibly resourceful and resilient mothers can be in all spheres of their lives.

When it comes to work and kids, we are mixing and matching, changing lanes, launching businesses, starting new careers and picking up the old ones where we left off. Let's honour the creative and complex choices that mothers are making every day to strike the balance that works for them and their families, instead of judging each other so harshly.

Mama, pass the remote

Granted, the middle of the Stanley Cup playoffs is not the ideal time for me to dispute the merits of television.

Let's just say that the regular thundering of Don Cherry from the family room and never getting a crack at the remote - even for a glimpse of Dancing with the Stars - can make a person a mite testy.

Apparently though, my teenage sons are in good company when it comes to over-the-top TV consumption. This week, two studies revealed they're starting young these days. According to the May issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 40 per cent of babies age three months old watch TV. Can't you just picture legions of the barely-born, strapped into bouncy chairs and pointed at the telly?

Not only that, another study published in the U.S. journal Pediatrics found that 20 per cent of children younger than age three have televisions in their bedrooms. No doubt this is good news for BabyFirstTV, the U.S. satellite channel aimed at infants and slated to be available in Canada this summer.

Experts like the American Academy of Pediatrics discourage television for kids under two, citing the importance of face-to-face interaction and evidence that it increases the risk of attention problems. But they are up against a formidable opponent - companies peddling DVDs with names like Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby, which equate screen time with baby smarts. In other words, they give mom and dad the perfect excuse to use TV as babysitter.

As a parent, I have, on more than one occasion, appreciated the value of tot television. Sometimes it's the only way to a) wash the three days worth of dishes piled in the sink b) run to the bathroom to assist your toilet-training preschooler or c) read the paper for 20 minutes with your cup of tea. Just don't go telling me it's the sure path to Harvard.

As for those developmental experts advising parents to watch TV with their infants or toddlers, what can they be thinking? If you're sitting down with the little ones, why not sing, or read a story, or build a castle out of blocks. The days of being glued to hockey playoffs will come soon enough. Trust me.

Standing up to mean girls

Rose loves make-your-own pizzas and pink nail polish and inventing silly games at recess. She's beside herself with excitement over planning her sleepover birthday party. Until the two most popular girls in school announce they're not coming. At least not unless Rose uninvites her best friend Stacey.

If you have a little girl or have ever been one, prepare for pangs of recognition. This is the dicey realm of girl bullying - subtle, manipulative and hard for the grownups to detect. And it's brought to life in My Worst Best Sleepover Party, a new chapter book aimed at kids grade 2 and up and written by Toronto sisters Anna Morgan and Rachael Turkienicz.

It's a world where exclusion, ultimatums, bribery and jokes at someone else's expense are the weapons of choice. For the protagonist Rose, who's caught in the crossfire, the agony and guilt and confusion are all-consuming. Torn over what to do, she hides under her blankets, crying "I DON'T GET THIS!"

While bullying has become an increasingly frontline topic in the media and among parents, educators and others who work with kids, most of the literature and resources focus on either the victims or the perpetrators. Turkienicz and Morgan, drawing on their personal memories and experiences as mothers, wanted to address the gap.

"There didn't seem to be much for the kids who are caught in the middle who are the vast majority. And yet those are the ones with the most complex decisions to make," says Turkienicz, a professor in York University's Faculty of Education who has five kids.

As a discussion point for children, parents and teachers, My Worst Best Sleepover Party touches on all the key issues in a way that will keep kids (including boys) and grownups interested. There's the allure of the popular girls, who are so funny and crazy when they're not being mean. Rose's tortured attempts to guess what might be provoking them and fix it. The astonishing way that well-intentioned adults can make everything worse. And the cold, hard fact that while Rose is neither aggressor nor victim, her role as innocent bystander is in many ways the most difficult and important.

The 120-page paperback doesn't sugar-coat the issue. When Rose decides to do what she knows is right, things get worse before they get better. And there's no happily-ever-after ending where life goes back to exactly the way it was.

But what the authors manage to do is illuminate a pathway out of the situation that Rose can navigate - as long as she has the support of her mom and some of the friends and adults around her. Rose will probably be the hero to most readers. Her mom is mine.

And the sleepover? In Rose's words, it was the birthday party "where I only turned one year older but I felt like I really grew up." Even though it came with a tinge of sadness.

My Worst Best Sleepover Party ($7.95) will be available in major bookstores this month.

Milk matters

Now that the issue of breast versus bottle no longer merits much discussion, new moms have another question to consider: "Your breast - or mine?"

Wet nursing, cross-nursing and communal breast milk supplies have gone mainstream. Can there be any doubt, now that such topics have made Time magazine? And then today, this.

Sharing the boob (or the milk) was not something people talked much about when my kids were hungry infants. Mind you, nobody was using fancy phrases like "co-sleeping" or "attachment parenting" back then either, even though plenty of folks were doing those things.

To me, anything that promotes the idea of breastfeeding and makes it easier for new moms isn't a bad thing. But the latest discussion is jumbling up a whole bunch of separate issues. First, there are moms who can't nurse but want their babies to have the nutritional benefits of breast milk. So they may turn to a "wet nurse" to breastfeed their infants. Or fill their bottles with breast milk from other nursing moms or breast milk banks. Then there's "cross-nursing" - when mothers breastfeed each other's babies, largely for convenience, or when they're looking after them for an afternoon.

But aside from the health risks, which even the breastfeeding support organization La Leche League has expressed concern about, this issue is about a lot more than nutrition. As someone who nursed four babies, I'm not sure I'd be willing to share those intimate moments with another mother, convenient or not. It's also understandable why a mom who's unable to nurse might not want to hand her baby over to someone who can. Just because a baby drinks milk from a bottle doesn't mean feeding time can't be an intimate time of bonding and closeness.

And here's one more thing. Let's make sure this trend doesn't become one more way to pass judgment on what makes a "good mother." Or to start laying the guilt on moms who decide to skip the milk bank and feed their babies formula instead.

Yes, we know breast is best. But not at the cost of a mother's physical or mental health. Or her right to make this very personal decision.

Making the connection on school bus safety

I drove under that sign again on my way to work today. The electronic one straddling the 401 that warns:

Make the Connection
Seat Belts Save

And just like every other day for the past two weeks, I thought of 10-year-old John Pham. The Brampton boy died of a head injury last month when the school bus transporting his class on a field trip veered off a highway onto the median, hurtling him and many of his classmates out of their seats.

Following John's death, there was a brief surge of public outrage over the lack of seat belts in school buses. But that was so many news cycles ago. Conrad's finances, Virginia Tech and Afghanistan have replaced those headlines.

Similar questions about bus safety were raised three years ago when four-year-old Allyceea Ennis of Thunder Bay was strangled on the school bus taking her to daycare. A coroner's inquest couldn't determine whether it was the result of her clothing getting caught or the actions of another child. But the coroner called for trained adult bus monitors to supervise kindergarten buses and suggested safety restraints for children under 73 pounds. Neither of which have been imposed.

I'm no transportation expert, nor a physicist. But something about a law that forces everyone on the road to buckle up - except kids on buses - seems ludicrous. Any parent who has ever accompanied a bunch of eight-year-olds on a field trip to the zoo can tell you the way kids are ferried around on these old yellow barges (with shock absorbers that feel as if they're past their best-before dates) just doesn't feel safe.

The decibel count alone is enough to provoke a Tylenol 3 headache, so how drivers are supposed to concentrate is anybody's guess. And the most common refrain heard from adults is generally along the lines of "get your bum on the seat!" and "Turn around! Turn around! Face the front!" Which tells you all you need to know about how effective a cushion the padding on the seat in front will actually be if the bus stops suddenly. And imagine the scene among kids bused to school daily - without adults there to remind them every 10 seconds not to bounce on the seats or spin around or steal each other's baseball caps.

Transport Canada says lap belts can do more harm than good. There's also the question of whether kids will put them on properly. And some experts warn they could trap kids in the event of a bus evacuation. The National Coalition for School Bus Safety in the U.S. counters that the transportation companies just don't want to face the high costs of installing belts.

Yet in California, seats are now equipped with mandatory three-point shoulder belts. According to this Star story, the American Academy of Pediatrics support three-point belts. So does the American Medical Association, the injury prevention centre of the Winnipeg Children's Hospital and other medical groups.

We shouldn't let this issue fall by the wayside again in Canada. We need to explore all the options. Because it makes no sense to advise everyone else on the road to "make the connection" while leaving scores of school kids vulnerable.

As Suzanne Tylko, chief of crash-worthiness research at Transport Canada, said: "As long as there are children being injured, we have work to do."

Do you worry about the safety of school buses?

Reverberations from Virginia

This post has been updated to clarify comments cited in the letter to the editor.

Last week, two days after it happened, I hid the newspapers. When four bleary-eyed boys arrived at the breakfast table, only the sports sections were available for consumption along with their cereal.

This is not something we do lightly in our house. But the youngest is a curious and sensitive 11-year-old. Although he was fully aware of what had transpired 48 hours earlier at Virginia Tech University, he didn't need to see a photograph of the perpetrator brandishing his guns on the front pages. Sure, maybe he noticed them on the newspaper boxes when he walked to school. But I couldn't stand the thought of these images strewn around among the latest food and fashion news.

The question of how to limit kids' exposure to violent news media is a tough one for parents in an era when information and pictures travel at light speed and kids can't wait to tell each other the latest developments in the school yard. (This Associated Press story has some hints about that.)

To me, what's equally challenging is helping children and teens decipher the breathless and unceasing TV coverage, columnists' outrage and sensational headlines that they glimpse or hear about at school or from friends. And encouraging them to question it.

Because when the talking heads can't explain the unexplainable, they too often resort to over-the-top rants about evil, wickedness and mental illness all in the same breath. As if we are somehow safer if we can just believe the perpetrator is something other than a person in grave distress. If only we can convince ourselves he or she is a monster separate and apart from the rest of humanity.

Just recall the words used by pundits and news anchors to describe the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, in the immediate aftermath of the Virginia shootings: demented, deranged, lunatic, evil, "unintelligible moron," to name just a few.

It took almost a week before there was any acknowledgment that Cho's deeply disturbing life story was also a tragedy, and that his family were victims too.

As one irate newspaper reader complained in a letter to the editor, the coverage showed little understanding of mental illness. Rather than presenting it as an illness of the brain, the reader said, it portrayed mental illness as "a wilful choice to do evil."

Some of the most telling lines were buried in many inches of weekend copy about Cho's life story. But they were fodder for our household discussions. From the Globe and Mail:

What the family had undoubtedly hoped for Mr. Cho was a track mirroring that of his sister, who, playing the stock role in an almost stereotypical immigrant success story, was propelled by hard-labouring parents within easy reach of the American Dream.

Instead, Mr. Cho seem to wilt in her shadow, as if stuck in a parallel, failed universe. He was the embodiment of isolation, a loveless man for whom not a single person has come forward to say, "He was my friend."

There was silence in our family room after that passage was read aloud. "Sad. That's so sad," murmured the burly 17-year-old, to whom a life without friends is unfathomable.

A next-door neighbour told the New York Times that when people spoke to Cho, he ignored them as if they were not there. "Like he had a broken heart."

Even as his own mother fretted and prayed over him, other relatives showed disdain toward the silent, haunted child.

"Why couldn't somebody help him?" wondered the 14-year-old curled up beside me on the couch, posing the essential question at the heart of the tragedy - the one question that has no answer.

I read these snippets aloud to my children in an attempt to counter the black-and-white/good-and-evil/monster-versus-human messages so often peddled in the press. Because life - and stories - are much more complicated than that.

You may not believe the perpetrator deserves an ounce of the sympathy accorded his victims. And the details of this story will likely take years to unravel.

But there's one thing you can't argue with, and it's what I hope my kids will remember: Seung-Hui Cho was once a little child, just like the 32 other people whose lives were so tragically cut short. That's something we all have in common.

Beware the fun-wreckers

I hope you aren't thinking that final exams are the source of all that mounting anxiety among the teens in your household. Because pre-exam jitters are nothing compared to the stress that goes hand-in-hand with high school's other spring ritual. We're talking about Prom. Or as we used to call it, "the formal."

While Canadians aren't quite as carried away yet as their American counterparts when it comes to this rite of passage, just take a look at all the rules that the poor kids in Arizona have to put up with. Parent contracts, alcohol checks, ID at the door, dress codes and full pedigrees of guests who don't attend that particular school. Imagine the indignity. Especially after they've forked over their part-time job earnings for expensive tickets, fancy dresses a la Reese and Scarlet, and limos to schlepp them there and back.

There are even restrictions on how they dance. On how they DANCE? Yep. Kids these days. They bump and grind. Freak and gyrate. Nut and butt. A form of entertainment that prudish chaperones refer to as "vertical sex." Though I can't imagine how easy any of this is when you're wearing skin-tight satin or a cummerbund.

According to this eye-opening Star story, dance restrictions are a trend happening across the GTA too, where teachers have been known to poke sticks at offending twosomes who are enjoying themselves a little too much on the dance floor. I'm not kidding.

All I can say is if the grownups don't lighten up, kids may just decide to skip the Proms and school dances. Who needs the hassle, when you can still play dressup and go to the before and after parties?

Why must we muddle through the middle

A children's advocate I know gets apoplectic every time the subject of a national childcare program is raised. Not just because there isn't one. But because the debate is conducted as if it's only an issue for parents with kids under 6. As if once they hit grade 1, the whole dilemma disappears - poof! - like the trail of soapy bubbles from a toddler's wand.

Any parent knows this couldn't be further from the truth. While some moms and dads figure out a way to take time off, telecommute or work reduced hours during their children's early years, 80 per cent of Canadian moms work full-time once their kids are in school. And most do not have the luxury of arriving home in time to meet their children after the bell rings.

After-school care - whether through recreation programs or school-based childcare programs - can be expensive, hard to find and, for the older kids who figure they've outgrown it, a tough sell. No wonder the window between 3 and 6 p.m. is one of the most stressful for families. But as today's Star story notes, it's also the perfect time to engage school-age kids in healthy activities and relationships.

As that advocate notes, it would take considerably less money to address this enormous need than a program for the under-6 crowd. And it would probably help a lot more families too. With an early years strategy in stall mode, why not start here?

Discussion on the middle years and after-school care is still fairly new in Canada, but here are some useful websites to find out more and to exchange strategies and information:

The National Alliance for Children and Youth is hosting a conference on the middle years this week. Or read the discussion paper Issues Affecting the Well-Being of Canadian Children in the Middle Years - 6 to 12.

Doorsteps Neighbourhood Services provides a range of services including after-school care and has been pioneering the development of resiliency-based programming in Toronto. Research funded by the United Way of Greater Toronto and in partnership with Resiliency Canada, Toronto Public Health and Flemingdon Neighbourhood Services is summarized in a report on their website.

Resiliency Canada and the International Resilence Project are leading the way with research on strategies and programs built on relationships children's strengths and aimed at developing skills that will help them cope with adversity and risk in their teen years.

Research highlights from UBC professor Kimberly Schonert-Reichl's survey of 9 to 12-year-olds - what they do in out-of-school hours, and how they feel about themselves, their family and community - is available on the United Way of the Lower Mainland site.

Schonert-Reichl, who notes the U.S. is way ahead of Canada on the issue of after-school care, points to the wealth of research on the websites of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time and the Afterschool Alliance.

A framework to promote healthy development of kids ages 6 to 12 called Middle Childhood Matters was developed by the Child and Youth Health Network for Eastern Ontario.

To find after-school care providers, try the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada, YMCA Canada (for both, go to your region and click on child care), or check out the PLASP Child Care Services, which offers school-based care throughout Peel.

There are many smaller organizations providing care and engaging youth in their communities such as Bridging the Gap, which is based in Belleville, Ont. As someone from that region pointed out in an email, "useful sharing" among organizations working with kids in the middle years would benefit everyone.

Please suggest additional links to help facilitate sharing by posting them in the Comments below.