Strollerderby : growing up

Class Rings for Your Pre-Schooler?

JeanneSager — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:37:00 GMT

Who knew? All this time I was saving up my money to pay my daughter's pre-school tuition, and I should have been setting some aside for a class ring.

Because every toddler needs a shiny piece of metal they will either lose or grow out of within the next six months, right? I said right?

Thanks go to Jackie Burrell over at About.com's parenting blog for pointing this one in my direction, because I'm definitely an unfit parent here (apparently). I have not ponied up the $19.95 for a "day care" ring "Handcrafted from the finest .925 pure silver." And somehow I get the feeling we won't be plunking down the cash for the kindergarten version either (although that .925 pure silver is sounding awfully tempting).

Seriously, I am ready to shed buckets of tears at my daughter's pre-school graduation. I even expect to put down the money for a teeny gown an mortarboard as parents around here have done for generations (I recently found the picture of my daughter's nursery school teacher at HER graduation in said gown and board in back issues of the community paper where I'm on staff).

But I draw the line at class rings. Especially considering I haven't seen my high school ring since . . . um, pretty much since high school. Probably tenth grade? About two weeks after I got it and abandoned it on my dresser?

And don't get me started on those keychain tassels. How many latchkey pre-schoolers do you know? They're at least twelve years away from a rear view window to drape it over folks (sixteen years from the day they arrive on a college campus and yank it OFF the rear view before any of their new uber cool roommates catch sight of it).

What do you think Babble readers? Silly or sounds like a must-have?

Image: Oak Hall Cap and Gown

When Mommy Becomes Mom

JeanneSager — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:04:00 GMT

I never thought I'd be that sappy kind of mother. You know the type. She buries her face in old onesies when she finds them at the bottom of the closet and doesn't come up coughing from the scent of mold growing on super-old spit-up stains.

OK, I'm NOT that kind of mother.

But I am the kind who hates being called "Mom." I prefer "Mommy," thank you very much.

I just realized it recently, when my three- (almost four-) year-old stopped, looked at me and said "Moooom" in a voice that sounded almost teenaged. No, I decided, Mom is not for me. At least not yet.

As long as she is still saying "Mommy," we are pre-pre-menstraul, pre-pull that skirt down so it covers SOMETHING and pre- Lady, you may have been on earth for several decades, but you know nothing about life.

My colleague Madeline laid out the Mom, Mommy, Mama, Mother and all their male alternatives discussion last week, but I realized there isn't just one in most families. If yours is anything like mine, you went through at least two names for your parents, maybe three or four.

I'm still on the first name, and I'd like it to last a good bit longer. Call it a little girl desperate to grow up and a mommy desperately trying to hold on to time.

Image: Amazon

Not Another Tween Beauty Crisis

JeanneSager — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:26:00 GMT

Want to know if another generation of kids is headed for holy hellfire? According to Salon's Broadsheet, just check out Newsweek.

Broadsheet's Amy Benfer has pulled Newsweek articles from now, the late nineties, early nineties and the eighties that all say the same thing: today's tween girls are growing up too fast, they're skankier than the previous generation of tween girls, they know too much about naughty things, aaaack. Avert your eyes!

What prompted the rant? A Newsweek article on Generation Diva, a comment on the trainwreck that is TLC's Toddlers and Tiaras that attempts to define the new normal as "a generation that primps and dyes and pulls and shapes, younger and with more vigor."

Author Jessica Bennett says, "Girls today are salon vets before they enter elementary school. Forget having mom trim your bangs, fourth graders are in the market for lush $50 haircuts; by the time they hit high school, $150 highlights are standard. Five-year-olds have spa days and pedicure parties. And instead of shaving their legs the old-fashioned way—with a 99-cent drugstore razor—teens get laser hair removal, the most common cosmetic procedure of that age group."

First thing Broadsheet's Benfer points out is exactly what I thought when reading the article - how many parents have the money for $50 haircuts for themselves, not to mention their kids? Granted, I'm now bald, but even before that, my haircuts have always been under $20. Throw in an occasional eyebrow wax (which, yes, is a luxury that I have clung to more as a mom who needs SOMETHING of my own), and we're still under $30 - with tip. My daughter, meanwhile, has had two haircuts in her three, almost four, years of life: one when she was under a year to cut the dark colored newborn tips off the ingrowing blonde baby hair, the second to clean up her own "fix it" job to her hair.

Frankly - I don't see a problem with having taken her to a salon.Technically, neither cut cost us a dime because the hairdresser was a close friend, but I would have paid (tried to pay) to have my daughter's hair cut by a professional - in part so I could do the mom thing and take pictures of her first cut and in part so I didn't have to hold her still, concentrate on cutting in straight lines, make something out of the mess she'd made. It was WORTH IT to me to take her to a salon instead of doing it myself. Does that mean I've set her up to put beauty above brains or made her vain? Nonsense!

She gets her toenails painted too - usually by my mother, who delights in their at home girls night bonding sessions. I guess that's technically a pedicure party, but is that really that bad either? I loved having my toenails painted when I was her age too - by my babysitter, who ironically now owns her own nail salon - and if you'll remember, I'm the mom who shaved her head . . . I'm hardly your beauty-obsessed airhead.

Which is the real issue here - how a mother looks at beauty. If she's struggling in this economy and pulling out $150 for highlights, she's the monster creating a monster. If she's putting her kid on Toddlers and Tiaras, she's just a plain old monster.

But if she's letting her three-year-old wear nail polish because it's sparkly, and she just wants to sparkle . . . she's letting kids be kids.

Image: Amazon (read it - it's hilarious)

Can Facebook Cut the Apron Strings?

JeanneSager — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:28:00 GMT

While we adults are caught up in catching up on our past on Facebook, there's a possibility our kids are going to miss out on one of the great joys of late teenagehood. Escaping.

An interesting piece by Peggy Orenstein in the New York Times this week ponders whether kids will be able "to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity" with four hundred of their old high school buddies watching over a T-1 line.

She's got a point. While I kept up with several of my high school friends when I left for college, it was mostly via e-mail and AOL's Instant Messenger, maybe the sporadic phone call. Although more technologically advanced than Orenstein (who admits she grew up in the "postage stamp" age of college communication), the advantages to all these forms of communication were clear - I could start . . . and stop . . . them at my will.

Facebook is non-stop action. Change your relationship status, and everyone knows . . . now (and trust me, those shockwaves can resonate - ask the cousin who accidentally erased her husband when she was trying to update her favorite books list.). As long as they're your "friend," anyone can and will see - and can and will comment.

Orenstein posits kids will remain tethered to home much longer via technological apron strings, tied to the kids they were forced to spend time with in high school and might otherwise naturally distance themselves from come college. Except, thanks to Facebook (and to be fair, Myspace), now they're tied . . . for good.

I think she might be crediting Facebook with a little more power than is warranted, however. Surveys have found that even users with a friends list in the thousands traditionally only interact with a solid core of "friends." I'd hazard a guess that's the same core today's kids will take to college with them - like the high school friends we kept contact with back in the day. She's also overestimating kids' fidelity. The teenagers I know "friend" and "un-friend" one another with the speed of an eyeroll, to an extent I doubt will change much in the early days of college.

The truth is that old saying, "you can never go home again," will never die. Because leaving your parents' house, even if your friends follow, changes you. Often for the good, sometimes for the bad. But kids grow up - even kids with a Facebook.

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Slideshow of Malia and Sasha Growing Up

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

I can't believe I'm saying this, but on Day 4 of my post-election elation, I think I may be started to get fully satiated with hope and change. I'm not sure I can stand weeping one more friggin' tear of joy. Still, I can't help myself from sharing some of the sweetest baby photos I have ever seen. That they happen to be of the Obamas' daughters, Sasha and Malia, is almost beside the point. These girls are just too precious. And seeing photos of a First Family exhibiting such genuine closeness and joy is pretty inspiring.

The Huffington Post has posted slideshows of 10-year-old Malia and seven-year-old Sasha growing up in the political limelight over the last four years. They will be the youngest kids in the White House since JFK's presidency. Here a few highlights:

Photos: Huffington Post

Young, Alone, and Riding the Subway

Madeline Holler — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:33:00 GMT

Do you let your child ride subways alone?

I wish my answer was yes. I wish my daughter did something -- anything! -- alone in the outside world, but she doesn't. And I'm more than willing to accept that it's because of me and her father. We're those parents and chances are you're one too.

Which is why I love this story of a NYC mom who dropped her 9-year-old son off somewhere in the city, gave him twenty bucks, a Metro card and some quarters and let him find his own way home. It was his idea. And he loved it!

Of course, I'm not surprised at the fallout either: she says about half the people she tells think she should be turned in for child abuse.

What do you think? Here's a great history of overprotective parenting. Seems is started in the 1920s, when kids stopped working, by and large, in factories. Yet that doesn't explain the 1970s, where my sister and I were quite free to run around, a ton, unsupervised, for hours. And you probably were too.

Anybody have a middle ground? How much freedom do you give (or expect to give) your kids? What eyebrow-raising things do you let your kids do alone?

Photo: lifelikepundits.com

When Kids and Taste Collide: Room Decorating

Karen Murphy — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:57:00 GMT

I grew up in a pink room. Light, insipid pink. I hate pink. Pink walls, pink curtains, pink rug, pink bedspread. Pink, pink, pink. Who invented that awful color and assigned it to girls? Ugh. So when I turned 13 I asked to paint my room, offering to do the work myself. Problem is, the walls had to match the existing curtains, which left me a choice of a deeper pink or the-seventies-are-so-over avocado green.

I went with the green.

You would have gone with the green, too, wouldn't you?

When my middle two began sharing a room I lovingly lazured the walls in a glowing outdoor palette of sun yellow, grass green, and a deep blue sky on the ceiling. I so wanted to give them a beautiful and peaceful space to sleep and play in. I think that parents tend to want to create cozy and beautiful spaces for kids when they're little and have less say about how their room looks. But then those kids start growing up.

My almost-12 son is asking to redecorate his room. I can tell it's mostly about wanting to express who he is. Kids don't have many venues for self-expression: rooms, clothes, and hair. That's about it. And I have decided to let my kids make their own decisions about all of it. Blue hair? As long as it meets theschool's standards, fine with me!

But some parents have some difficulty with this. My son wanted to paint his room black, naturally, but I had to demur, blaming the landlord. And he has quite good taste and so led me through Ikea showing me what would work, but in reading this article I got the idea that parents aren't always comfortable with their kids having complete control over the self-expression of their rooms. Rental issues and cost (which can obviously be a big issue) aside, what's the big deal? Especially if the kid is willing to do the labor and change those black walls to something more neutral when they eventually move out? I say let kids make mistakes. Let them live with crushed-velvet animal prints. As long as the room's not a health hazard, who cares?

Strollerderby : growing up

Class Rings for Your Pre-Schooler?

Don't Let Your Kid Call Me Missus

Another Four-Letter Word My Kid Can't Say

Don't Give Me Your Tired, Your Stained

When Mommy Becomes Mom

Ten of the Best Lines from Kiddie Lit

Out of the Mouths of Families

Mom Uses Breastfeeding as Weapon in Custody Battle

Are You Mom, Mommy or Mother?

Not Another Tween Beauty Crisis

From Playboy to Medical School: Jenny McCarthy Now a Doctor

When a Mother Goes Bald

Half of Black Girls Think White Skin is Prettier

Why Teen Girls are Taking Drugs Meant for Cows