Sun and fun - and, even better, no parents!

"Application deadline." A phrase you've no doubt been hearing a lot of, if you have a Grade 12 student in your household. Along with talk about marks, job opportunities, and what all the buddies are doing next year.

But here's another phrase likely to spark just as lively a discussion: "Grad trip."

Have you heard those words?

These are trips organized for students in their last year of high school who have either saved their own cash from part-time jobs or happen to have parents with deep pockets willing to foot the bill. They present an opportunity for kids to see new sights, test their independence and be with friends. They also tend to feature:

1) Hordes of 17 and 18-year-olds, often from many schools
2) Minimal supervision
3) Exotic holiday locations ranging from the Caribbean to ski resorts
4) Easy access to sun, booze and risky situations
5) Preceded by a lot of teenage lobbying commonly in the form of "well, EVERYONE is going" or "this could be the trip of a lifetime!" (taken directly from the brochure of the organizing companies).
6) Formal letters of clarification from a growing number of high schools that they do NOT sanction the trips and are in no way involved. Hmm.

Grad trips are often put on by companies like "S-Trip" - which stands for "Student Trips" but I'm sure the acronym won't elude you. They sometimes hang around outside choice schools "giving out" information. Generally they get a few students on board to pitch the idea to their friends and sell the spots, which call for downpayments months ahead of time.

While common at the more affluent schools, they are not exclusive to them. Parents from P.E.I. to New Brunswick to downtown Toronto are familiar with the trend.

There is a lot of cluck-clucking about the risks inherent with sending underage kids to foreign destinations with often questionable medical systems and unknown supervision. But there are also plenty of kids permitted to go - somebody keeps these companies in business - and who reportedly come home with splendid memories and in perfect health.

Nevertheless, it seems a lot of parents are starting to get edgy. The New York Times recently reported a trend among fretful parents who don't like the idea but can't bring themselves to say no to their teens. Their solution: taking the rest of the family to the same destination, maybe down the beach or something, so they can keep an eye out from afar. Nice solution if you can afford it.

Would you permit your teenager to go on a grad trip? If so, under what conditions?

A good place to start

The following also appears in the Life Section of today's Toronto Star, as part of a regular monthly column.

Today is not exactly a Hallmark holiday. Perhaps you've never even heard of National Child Day. But there are a lot of grown-ups around who would like to see it get at least a fraction of the attention paid to those commercial extravaganzas held in the name of mom and dad every spring.

Among them is Lorna King, president of an organization called Women for PACE Canada, a non-profit organization that has been working to support early childhood education in Jamaica. National Child Day was originally set by the United Nations and formally adopted 13 years ago in Canada after we signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

To King, a day in honour of children is the ideal time for reflection on how we can better meet the needs of the next generation and identify the gaps.

And perhaps a good place to start is with the related issues of early childhood education and universal child care. While PACE — Project for Advancement of Childhood Education — set out 20 years ago to raise funds for poor schools in Jamaica that teach the youngest children, today it seems Canada may be the country that's lagging behind when it comes to recognizing the importance of the early years.

"In Jamaica, at least there is a system where 97 per cent of children are attending schools from ages 3 to 6," says King. "Now we, as advocates of early childhood education, would like to see that in Canada."

There are about 2,000 schools delivering subsidized early childhood education in Jamaica, she adds, and the current government is working to implement standards for things including teacher training, facilities and nutrition. Many are destitute, with not much more than a piece of chalk and a blackboard as teaching tools. So groups like PACE arrange donors to sponsor schools and raise money to send school supplies, and refrigerators for food and water.

"At least there is hope on the horizon," says King, 52, and a grandmother of five who lives in Markham.

Here in Canada, we have a lot more material things, but no systematic approach that provides children across the board with reliable high-quality early childhood education and care. So, many kids from families with few resources are being left behind. This matters because we have plenty of research to show that early learning affects the brain's ability to learn later on. And that positive educational experiences early in life are key to future success in school.

We've had the studies. Ones that demonstrate why this is important for kids, and others laying out why it's important for the economy and future productivity. More than enough of them from such experts as Dr. Fraser Mustard, a groundbreaking researcher and advocate.

We've had inspiring pilot projects such as the Toronto First Duty Project, which integrated early education, family support services and child-care activities in five neighbourhood schools.

We've also had the harsh realities pointed out by a number of international organizations, including the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which recently ranked Canada 14th on the list of industrialized countries when it came to public spending on early childhood care and education, behind Scandinavian countries and the United States.

All for naught.

Now, thanks to the Harper government, a national child-care strategy has fallen off the agenda. Parents get $1,200 a year for each child under age 6 — which hardly puts a dent in the costs of high-quality child care for working parents. Is this supposed to convince us that kids are a priority?

Today there will be events in various parts of the country to mark National Child Day. In Vancouver, UNICEF Canada will release two major reports on violence against children following three years of study and will include recommendations for action and prevention. In Whitby, the Positive Discipline Coalition of Durham launches a campaign to promote strategies for parents to guide and teach their kids without resorting to physical punishment and force.

The announcements are in line with the UN's aim to promote children's rights — the right to protection, education and care, play and rest, health and to have their voices heard.

But to recognize children's rights, adults have to shoulder responsibility. And not just for their own kids but for all children.

When you look at it that way, the question of early childhood education and child care seems like a no-brainer. The bigger question is who will be responsible enough to take action?

Teens online - what's your limit?

If you have teenagers and a computer in the house, none of this will surprise you. A researcher at the University of British Columbia who's been tracking teen Internet use has found the average 14-year-old spends more than two hours a day online.

Jennifer Shapka cites this as part of her preliminary research into her new project called Teenagers @nd the Internet, which will involve tracking 500 youth in 400 households from now through 2009. The purpose is to study how Internet use affects kids' cognitive development, social skills and physical fitness. You can read a story about it here.

Shapka said this week the results from her small pilot project of 25 teens found that the way they interact online and how much time they spend surfing varies hugely. But on average, those age 11 to 13 spent an average 0.38 hours a day on the Internet. By 14, that had jumped to 2.5 hours, which included sending and receiving an average of 40 instant messages. The most avid users, however, were online for more than eight hours and handled 160 messages.

There are plenty of good reasons for a project like this. Our kids are essentially the first generation raised amid a technological revolution said to rival the Industrial Revolution in terms of its impact on society. But scientists are still a long way from understanding how MSN, social networks like MySpace, blogging and virtual games are shaping the way these kids think, behave and interact. Does instant communication and access to each other affect their ability to think ahead or plan? Are online diaries a positive vehicle for creativity - or a means of encouraging exhibitionism? Do kids fully grasp the implications of hitting the "publish" or the "send" buttons?

We also can't ignore the positive impact the online world can have on teen relationships. Kids who change schools or move away and who would have lost touch in previous generations, can now stay in contact and be part of a social network. We hear about how instant communications means teens can assemble a "mob party" in a matter of minutes. But the flip side is that when tragedy strikes and they need each other, they can also quickly locate their friends, send messages of comfort, and quickly show up where they can help. In some ways, the technology enables them to be there for each other in ways they previously couldn't.

But there are still reasons for concern. In a newspaper story today about Daniel Goleman's new book Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, the psychologist notes the importance of social interaction and the development of empathy, co-operation and altruism - not only to our emotional, mental and spiritual health, but also to our physiology. Our reactions to others and theirs to us "have a far-reaching biological impact, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate everything from our hearts to our immune systems, making good relationship act like vitamins and bad relationships like poisons," he writes.

But Goleman warns that technology has led to a "creeping disconnection" when it comes to developing these flesh-and-blood relationships. The social brain designed for relationships "has no channel online," he says.

Shapka says she worries most about teenagers at either end of the spectrum in their Internet habits. She's concerned that excessive users may be missing valuable face-to-face socializing and using the virtual world as a substitute. And that those who don't use instant messaging may be at risk of social isolation.

If you are interested in participating in the Shapka's research project, visit the website, email teentech or call 604-822-3000.

Do you regulate how much time your teen spends online?

The many ways to remember

Author Linda Granfield's website is a wonderful place to visit this Remembrance Day, or for that matter, any other day of the year.

Even better, get your hands on one of Granfield's extraordinary picture books - including In Flanders Fields and Where Poppies Grow. The former, written in 1995, is a stunningly illustrated story of the poem by John McCrae. The followup, published six years later, is a collection of photos, memorabilia and anecdotes of the Great War. The books are written for children but suitable for any age and especially for sharing.

The Massachusetts-born Granfield, who lives in Toronto, is a shining example of how it's possible to make the Remembrance Day message relevant to a generation who can't remember. And not only on Nov. 11 but throughout the year.

Yesterday, an article in one Toronto newspaper cited a recent poll as evidence that a growing number of Canadians are tuning out Remembrance Day along with knowledge and interest in military history.

But personally, thanks to Granfield and other writers, educators and historians, this isn't my experience. From an early age, my own kids were far more informed about Remembrance Day and interested in war history than I ever was as a child. I credit a combination of factors: recent initiatives taken by public schools to honour Remembrance Day, including visits by young soldiers to talk about history and peacemaking; a wealth of children's literature, including non-fiction books and novels set in war time; museums that offer hands-on experiences and engaging websites for kids.

This Toronto Star story includes examples of high school iniatives going on in the GTA this week, including a letter-writing campaign to families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Among the books that got my own children asking questions were: novels by Canadian writer Kit Pearson, especially her trilogy set during the Second World War that started with The Sky is Falling, Marie Mcswigan's classic Snow Treasure, and the Breadwinner trilogy, set in wartorn Afghanistan and written by prolific Ontario author Deborah Ellis.

Last spring, I accompanied a Grade 5 field trip to Ottawa and among the highlights was a visit to the Canadian War Museum, where the 10-year-olds were awestruck by everything from tanks to Hitler's limousine to the recreated World War I trenches and streetscapes. If you can't get there, visit the museum's online youth site.

In a newspaper story last year, Granfield said young people have shown a resurgence of interest in military history and a yearning to "take the torch and hold it high." She figured she'd spoken to 250,000 schoolkids in the 10 years since In Flanders Fields was published.

So maybe polls showing fewer folks can identify military heroes doesn't really paint a full picture. As military historian Terry Copp was quoted as saying, a lot of the details aren't important to kids' daily lives. “Learning bits of information about Canadians in the two world wars does not imply understanding,” he added.

Do you have any books, websites or exhibits to suggest? If so please post them in the comments link below.

From feast to famine

Two reasons we need the fourth estate:

1) "Now that's what I call a birthday party!" in today's Montreal Gazette. (Thanks to Nancy at Blog Pourri for pointing it out.)

2) My recent article on the same subject, aided and abetted by many of you readers who commented and emailed, under the headline "Let them eat cake".

You can't get much more diametrically opposed than these - even if the subject isn't exactly of national import.

From toys to tag, kids need to play

There's nothing like the staying power of classic toys and games. Adults love them for the memories, and kids just can't stop playing them.

The classics are on my mind for several reasons. As I mentioned earlier, this is the week that the Strong National Museum of Play in the U.S. inducts two new toys into its National Toy Hall of Fame. The criteria: a toy's longevity over multiple generations; the ability to foster creativity, learning or discovery; and innovation in changing the nature of play.

And the winners, announced today, are . . . .

Easy Bake Oven, the toy I always longed for and never got. Launched in 1963 and inspired by the pretzel vendors of New York City, it's the toy stove that actually cooks things. And it's still going strong.

Lionel Trains, which have been chugging around in circles in family basements and dens for more than a century. Little boys love trains. I'm sure girls do too, though when Lionel tried to lure them by introducing a pastel train set in 1957, it flopped. Mind you, who wouldn't turn up their nose at a pink train?

There's a lot more to the art of playing than simply having a great toy though. Take the game of tag, for instance. It has all the right elements: no equipment, no age limit, no time constraints, and hardly any rules.

Sad then, that the beloved childhood pastime has come under such fire lately. Earlier this term, a school in Massachusetts officially banned the game, setting off debates across the U.S. and here in Canada.

I'm not surprised. A few years back our local school routinely sent out lists of all the things kids were not allowed to do in the playground. "Chasing" was always among them. Which is pretty much the only way to define the game of tag.

As this article in the Los Angeles Times explains, the whole brouhaha is at the nexus of three competing interests: "giving kids freedom to play (what many teachers and kids want); keeping them safe from harm on large, unruly playgrounds (what concerned parents want); and avoiding band-aid related depositions (what all administrators want)."

Of course, as anyone who has ever spent time with a group of kids knows, there are some games - like tag - that kids just seem hardwired to play.

"It's one of the few games left where the adults have absolutely nothing to do with it," psychologist Fred Frankel of UCLA told the Times. "Kids transmit it from generation to generation and spontaneously organize it."

So it's hard to imagine the game of tag will ever become extinct, no matter what the grownups say.

In the meantime, I hope before any other organizations rush to pull the reins on children for safety reasons that they at least pay attention to the latest research from the Canadian Council on Learning.

The not-for-profit research group said today that Canadian kids are involved in so many organized lessons and structured sports that they are losing out on the benefits of spontaneous free play, which is critical to healthy physical and psychological development.

The current issue of the council's online publication Lessons in Learning looks at how parents can support development of their kids' intellectual, emotional, social and physical skills by ensuring there's enough time for free play that serves the child's purposes - and not the adult's.

You could take that to mean tag in the park over organized soccer. Or maybe even some time fiddling around with a train set or an Easy Bake Oven.

The confines of cool

This post was updated to add the names of mom lit books I linked to.

The conference was called Motherlode. So it seems fitting that I required a period of gestation after it was all over, just to absorb the many thought-provoking presentations and discussions on motherhood that were featured.

Feminism, mom activism, why parents blog and whether dads can mother were just a few of the many topics covered at the four-day event held by York University's Association for Research on Mothering.

I'd like to talk about a few in this space over the next few days. Because though the conference is long over, the issues won't go away.

What better place to start than with Andi Buchanan and her talk on how "The Escalation of Cool" among modern mothers is just another way moms are being pressured to conform. You can read the whole presentation here on her blog.

One thing you should know about Buchanan is she's not afraid to tell it like it is. Or I should say, write it like it is. Three years ago, the Philadelphia writer broke ground with her book Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It, which didn't shy away from how scary and bone-numbingly exhausting and lonely new motherhood can be. And in doing so she warmed the hearts of others who found comfort knowing they were not the only ones feeling lost in a foreign land.

Mother Shock hit the book stores at the height of the so-called "intensive mothering" trend, when the prevailing middle-class notion of the "good mother" was one who happily immersed herself in pureeing prunes, writing her own lullaby lyrics and skin-to-skin contact with baby 24/7 - at the expense of her own identity. Buchanan dared to write the truth about her own ambivalence and the fact that while she adored her infant daughter, life was not all bliss and Kodak moments.

Fast forward to 2006 and suddenly, the downside of motherhood has come charging out of the closet and hijacked the mainstream media. Now, if we are to believe the latest spate of mom lit, it's de rigueur to favour litchi martinis with the girls over reading Dr. Seuss. (See books like Confessions of a Naughty Mommy, Peanut Butter, Playdates and Prozac and Mommies Who Drink to name a few. Or the recent rant by a mom in Britain's The Guardian (oops, the Daily Mail) under the headline "Sorry, but my children bore me to death!")

As Buchanan puts it, "if you aren't a bored mother, a depressed mother, an I-could-care-less mother, a mother who drinks, you are not a mother who is having an authentic experience."

Perhaps the glamourization of the "bad mom" is simply a natural overcorrection by those resisting the earlier pressure to hyperparent. But it still ticks Buchanan off. Because it's also just one more dangerous way of generalizing about the experience of motherhood. As she notes:

What does this mean for mothers who don't have this kind of "cool," "hip" experience - or whose actual experience of addiction and depression is not glamorous and trendy - and aren't they as excluded from the landscape as others were when there was a similarly non-diverse lens aimed at motherhood? And what does this say about the scarcity of our options when it comes to being a good mother?

Whining about motherhood sells. So does sniping. That's why books and newspapers fan the flames. They've done it with the increasingly irrelevant mommy wars between at-home and working moms (See Linda Hirshman, Caitlin Flanagan's To Hell With All That, Leslie Morgan Steiner's Mommy Wars, and Happy Housewives by Darla Shine). And now they're doing it with drinking, partying, naughty and unhappy mommies.

Why should we care? Because by polarizing mothers and turning them into cartoon characters, the authentic stories of the majority who fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum get lost.

You don't have to look far to see the trend is flourishing. The cover of Chatelaine's November issue pitches a story called "Why I Hate Breastfeeding,"  on the heels of an earlier article in defence of the "too posh to push" trend of Caesarean sections on demand.

But read this month's story and you find it's not an "anti-breastfeeding" story at all, or a motherhood whinge. Instead it's an important perspective from a woman who struggled through months of pain feeding her babies and felt abandoned and judged by those who should have been helping and encouraging her. So why the misleading headline?

Because as Buchanan points out, there's something juicy about the image of a bunch of mamas duking it out. Whether it's breast versus bottle, Caesarean versus natural childbirth, working versus stay-at-home, or cool and bored versus happy and matronly.

Shame really. Because it doesn't do most of us perched somewhere between the extremes much good.

Be cool by all means. Or don't be. But let's just stop pretending that one is superior to the other or any more legitimate.

Attention first-time parents

Right from the second my water broke with the first baby and jolted me out of an afternoon nap, nothing unfolded the way the prenatal classes had suggested.

Not the contractions, which went from non-existent straight to three minutes apart. Not the transportation plan, as my spouse was out of range, holed up in a press box covering some CFL game. Not the arrival at the hospital - when the sight and sound of me, clad in ratty housecoat and doubled over with a towel wedged between my legs, sent the tour group of horrified expectant parents bolting from the delivery room.

And definitely not my bouncing baby who, upon arriving, decided the world was sufficiently interesting that he wasn't inclined to miss out on any of it by sleeping. At least not for more than 20 minutes at a time.

All of which is to say that however well-intentioned, the "Be Prepared" motto doesn't always work when you're pregnant. Because you just can't be.

That's why you may be interested in a new program for first-time couples to help them navigate this strangely exhilarating, exhausting, mind-boggling, emotional transition into parenthood and through the first two and a half years of raising baby.

It's called The Parenting Partnership and it's open for enrolment to anyone expecting a baby next month (December), and in May or July of 2007. Created by Invest in Kids, a national non-profit organization aimed at helping parents and children through the early years, it's available to parents in the GTA, Hamilton/Niagara and Ottawa-Carleton regions. All you need is an internet connection.

New parents are always busy, so lots of the coaching, discussions and Q and As are done in weekly online meetings, while monthly face-to-face sessions are also held at partnering centres in the community. Not only do new parents get direct advice and information, they also get to connect with others who have babies the same age.

"New parents tell us that while they were filled with happiness and excitement about the arrival of their first baby, they also felt concerned and insecure about their own parenting knowledge and skills," says Dr. Carol Crill Russell, senior research associate with Invest in Kids.

The program will provide information on everything from labour and delivery to finances, infant nutrition, establishing routines, child development and how a baby can alter a couple's relationship.

For more information, visit the website or call Invest in Kids at 1-877-583-5437 or 416-977-1222.

Another dose of nostalgia

If you're in the mood for another trip down memory lane, check out the website for the Strong National Museum of Play. The Rochester museum is devoted to the study of play and is a fascinating place to visit online or in person as part of a family holiday.

Especially cool to kids - including grownup ones - is the National Toy Hall of Fame, which features playthings with multi-generational staying power, and which foster learning, creativity and discovery. Raggedy Anne, Silly-Putty, alphabet blocks, the wagon, the jack-in-the-box, the teddy bear and the rocking horse have taken their rightful places there, to name a few.

This Thursday, two more toys will be inducted from a list of a dozen nominees that include:

Atari Game System
Big Wheel
Easy Bake Oven
Lite-Brite
Fisher-Price Little People
Hot Wheels
Lionel Trains
Operation (the game)
PEZ Candy Dispenser
the rubber duck
the skateboard
Twister

Care to guess which two will make it? Check back here Thursday for the results.

The way kids were

Not to glorify the past. Not to idealize bygone eras. But just because you may smile in recognition, if you're of a certain age. That is, a kid who grew up in the '50s or '60s.

A time when, as Bill Bryson describes in his new memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, days were so long and so little occurred, "you were prepared to invest long periods in just sitting and watching things on the off chance that something diverting might happen."

Children lived outside. They were barely supervised. They were somehow seen as indestructible, with no car seats, bike helmets, safety caps on medicine bottles, air bags, or smoke detectors to protect them. They ate red meat and sugar and drank water from the tap.

And they had time. Precious time. Which Bryson illustrates masterfully:

Other long periods of the day were devoted to just seeing what would happen - what would happen if you pinched a match head while it was still hot or made a vile drink and took a sip of it or focused a white-hot beam of sunlight with a magnifying glass on your Uncle Dick's bald spot while he was napping . . .

Thanks to such investigations and the abundance of time that made them possible, I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy-five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted - damp washclothes, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course - in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father's small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom.

I knew how to get between any two properties in the neighborhood, however tall the fence or impenetrable the hedge that separated them. I knew the cool feel of linoleum on bare skin and what everything smelled like at floor level. I knew pain the way you know it when it is fresh and interesting - the pain, for example, of a toasted marshmallow in your mouth when its interior is roughly the same temperature and consistency of magma. I knew exactly how clouds drifted on a July afternoon, what rain tasted like, how ladybugs preened and caterpillars rippled, what it felt like to sit inside a bush. I knew how to appreciate a really good fart, whether mine or someone else's.

Remember?