20SomethingMom chronicles of a young mom

TV and AcculturationPosted by admin on June 29th, 2009

It is high on the list of decisions we parents must make every day, right next to when and what to feed our kids, which books to read with them, when the mess becomes too big, and how long to let them linger in the bathtub: whether or not to allow them to stare at the good old boob tube.

I’ll admit that we watch a lot of TV in my house.  Between our morning dose of political news, frequent lazy afternoons spent watching HGTV, and my husband’s beloved Cubs games, our son’s exposure far exceeds the recommended amount of ZERO hours for his age group.  It can no doubt become a habit, providing chatter to fill the silence.  Often, the noise of the TV becomes the soundtrack for all our other activities, even those that we prefer to do in silence, like reading.  But, I wonder: are we prompting a future attention “disorder,” creating missing links in our baby’s brain?  Or are we doing him a service by establishing a habit of worldly exposure and a tool for critical culture analysis?

While I believe my husband when he emphatically (and frequently) tells me that multitasking only provides an illusion of productivity, I also think there is value in having the capacity to process many different types of information at once.  For that is what we have to do in order to keep up our buzzing, 24/7 way of life.  Consider TV, cell phones, computers, and breaking news to be evil if you prefer, but they are all necessary in order to fully function in Western society.

In a recent volume of The Sun magazine, there was an article on the way that life in the era of Google has changed our brains.  It is a debate amongst psychologists and techies alike: are we losing the ability to, for example, read an entire article without losing interest?  If so, is this inherently bad?  Have websites flanked with enticing ads, easy access to search results, and the ability to open multiple browser tabs actually made us higher-functioning?

Neither side of the brain-centered argument is our everyday justification for indulging in pop culture with a side of CNN, though.  Most of us probably have a much more mundane answer for why we spend our evenings with TiVO.  We want to be entertained.  We want to laugh, cry, and be reminded that the world is greater than our living rooms.  Sure, today’s programming is littered with unrealistic portrayals of reality, but it also contains plenty of human-interest stories and unique views into parts of the world to which we would never have access if not for the ubiquity of cable.  It may be in a different form than it was in other periods in history, but this type of connection — think Planet Earth and CBS News Sunday Morning — is no less important than community meetings and village bonfires used to be.

This week’s rash of celebrity deaths and the accompanying documentaries on some of our culture’s most esteemed figures have brought me an opportunity to reflect upon my level of cultural participation.  I watched a good amount of TV growing up, listened to pop music, and read trashy fashion magazines.  I don’t see myself as ruined because of these things.  On the contrary, I am proud to be part of the crowd of people mourning the loss of the moonwalking mogul because of the positive associations I have with nearly every one of his songs.

Maybe I was insulated from the detritis because I always had a book in front of my face blocking out some of the toxic images.  Maybe I was not insulated and I’m completely delusional in evaluating my own level of ruin.  Maybe it’s not detritis at all.

All I know is: I don’t want my kids to be cut off from our world, for all its good and its bad, because of some conservative adherence to the tenets of a simpler time.  I won’t feign innocence if I am someday accused of teaching my son to work my desktop tablet and play the Wii at much too young an age, but I doubt that these are truly the meat ‘n’ potatoes of raising a well-rounded child.

And there’s this:  Researchers at Harvard and Children’s Hospital in Boston recently found that TV is neither beneficial nor harmful to a baby’s cognitive development.  It has only been concluded that TV gets in the way of meaningful conversation and other bonding activities that could be going on in its place.  (Duh?)

As with any mechanized entertainment, TV requires an ongoing judgment call on the part of parents.  I am okay with my son pointing and squealing every time there’s a dog on TV, as long as he goes right back to reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear when the dog disappears.

Technorati Tags: babies, children, culture, Google, Michael Jackson, parenting, pop culture, technology, television and kids, TV

Toddlers and…Discipline?Posted by admin on June 25th, 2009

So, I thought that I would be able to post every day, maybe every other day, when I started this blog.  When I look at my planner, I see plenty of blank spaces where free time should lie.  Why are my days flying by?

Because of this ball of energy and aggression that I call my son.

Nothing is easy these days, or even tolerable.  With a boy who’s almost 18 months, but the size of a 3-year-old, we are literally fighting for our sanity.  We are not a super structured family, and we like it that way.  My husband and I are night owls (it used to be the only few hours of quiet time we got), and we like to sleep in and wake up slowly with our coffee and MSNBC.  Any time we have tried to establish a routine, even if it’s not set by the clock (fake time), our son rebels and becomes even more of a hungry, tired, attention-seeking mess than if we have no plans.

Any parent will tell you that every time you think you have your kid figured out, he changes.  I think that’s what we’ve been going through for the past 8 months.  I remember thinking, when he was about 10 or 11 months old, that this phase just needed to be over.  Well, it’s still going.

It’s the phase of amazing physical and cognitive development, a phase in which parents are left in the dust by the astounding pace at which their little one is growing and becoming his own person.  In everyday terms, this means that you will not only be chasing an unstable toddler when he steals your wallet and kissing the gigantic knots that form on his forehead, but you will no longer be able to sit in front of the computer with him in your lap or read a book without having him slap his own book on top of it.

Much of this is normal, except for the fact that our baby is gargantuan and we cannot hold onto him when the meltdowns occur.  Our dilemma, though, is a convoluted one because of our unique work situations.

Since my husband and I both work from home, we each need peace and quiet to make phone calls, send e-mails that have not been ruined by toddler-typing, and meet in virtual conferences.  Herein lies the problem: our office is actually a pantry, with two computers and two office chairs squeezed into it.  There is no door.  Thus, when I am tutoring online and my hubby’s in the other room with the baby, my clients can hear every squawk that he makes.  He has tried taking him outside or to the park during those hours, but he consistently falls asleep or gets incredibly cranky.  When my husband finally gets around to doing his own work, it’s dinner time, bath time, bed time, and we’re both exhausted and frustrated at never having any ME (or US) time.

We are conflicted at this moment, because we feel lucky to be spending every moment of every day with him.  There is a lot of quality play and bonding, but there comes a point when any adult needs to be able to make lunch without having to pull her child out of the refrigerator.  We use occasional babysitters when we’re both occupied, but can’t afford one every day.  It is impossible to fully child-proof an old apartment, and it wouldn’t matter much with our daredevil of a son.  So, when outdoor adventures, new toys, and an entire day of undivided attention isn’t enough, we encounter the true problem: saying NO.

Consistency is important, we know.  There are certain conditions my husband and I agree upon (i.e. our son should not be allowed to throw markers into the air conditioner).  The hard part is deciding together on a strategy of discipline that allows us to preserve our sanity and gets across a stern, but fair, message to a growing person who may not fully comprehend our reasoning.

I don’t believe in smacking, since anyone who has ever done it on a consistent basis can see that it doesn’t get to the root of the problem.  It masks, and often exacerbates it.  Yet, there are certainly moments when I don’t know what else to do, and my frustration gets the best of me.  My husband always says NO first, and then when he sees outright defiance, he pops our son on the hand.  Sometimes, it annoys me, and other times, I am glad that he’s doing it so that I don’t have to.  We have had plenty of discussions about how best to discipline him, yet we come to no conclusions and end up winging it.

Truly, that’s what most parents do: wing it.  All parents are first-time parents at some point, and when you’re in the middle of those long days, all advice or research you’ve ever heard goes out the window.  You end up just surviving.  Perhaps we are naive, but we continue to wonder if we are doing something “wrong,” or if we just have an unusually boisterous child.

My current interpretation is that he trusts us enough to be vulnerable around us, and that’s a good thing.  With others (friends, family, sitters), he is an angel.  The early onset of the Terrible Twos is an important stage for building independence, but where do we set limits?  I have always believed in this statement by Kahlil Gibran:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you

The question, to me, seems much larger than whether or not to spank the child for minor indiscretions.  How much right do we have, as caretakers, guardians of a separate soul, to interfere with his personal development?  And when is that line crossed — when does it go from just teaching your child to get along in the world to ignoring who he is?

Technorati Tags: children, discipline, family, Kahlil Gibran, marriage, parenting, spanking, toddler, work at home

Glorification of the Starving ArtistPosted by admin on June 21st, 2009

On this cloudy Father’s Day, my hubby and I took our little one to his favorite toddler park and grabbed a bite to eat at a local burrito joint whilst enjoying the mountain views.  While it was a fun family outing, it also served as a reminder of our misconceptions about Asheville.

Every time we leave the house, we are conflicted.  This is the perfect place to live in so many ways: there is a lively downtown, you never have to drive more than ten minutes to go anywhere, and it is surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and all that they have to offer in the way of aesthetic entertainment and nature-filled fun.  Still, it is a place swarming with (literally) starving artists.  Housing is affordable, but not when you’re making minimum wage working at the organic grocery (at which, ironically, you can’t afford to shop).  There are plenty of fun activities, but they all require at least a little bit of money, and free time, neither of which you have if you are slaving away to support yourself or, more likely, a family.

We moved here partly to escape urban sprawl and yuppiedom, and partly to integrate into what seemed to be an artistically supportive community.  Four-plus months into our new life, and we’ve had almost zero luck with our tutoring and photography businesses.  Call it a sign of the times, but we’re learning a hard lesson: if you don’t have the well-paying job, living in paradise will be for naught.  We have many opportunities to go to the park together, and I am fortunate enough to be able to leave my son with his Papi during the few hours when I tutor in the afternoons.  But this freedom means that we are scraping by, and if the amount of weekday foot traffic in our neighborhood means anything, we aren’t the only ones.  There are NO jobs in Asheville, except those in the hospitality industry that pay $6/hour.  Even the medical field, once the economic beating heart of this mountain town, is dissipating quickly.

So, we are faced with a sad choice brought on by the combination of a capitalist vacuum and the desire to live more simply.  Depressed America seems to be telling us: either dive into debt and don’t look back, or compromise your values.

Last weekend, we went on a Studio Stroll through the River Arts District.  Over 100 studios were open for browsing.  The River Arts District is one of many attractive aspects of this town, with its dilapidated, graffiti-stained warehouses full of creative people.  It is old, rustic, and beautiful in character and looks.

Jonas Gerard, a world-renowned painter, owns a large studio there.  He gave a demonstration in a stuffy, packed room full of tourists and a few locals.  As we watched with intrigue, he flung coffee grounds on a wet canvas, scraped designs into layered paint, and almost inadvertently created a valuable work of art, all while dancing lazily to Latin music.  He was funny, and clearly talented.  My husband and I couldn’t enjoy it as much as we would have, though, had we not been surrounded by wealthy art patrons who fancied themselves experts.  There was more snide commentary than reverence in that room.

Coupled with the glimpses of the less-than-modest sleeping quarters and tattered clothes of the artists whose names draw sightseers to this part of the country, the paradox of the art world was too much to handle.

Like we did after today’s quaint afternoon in a struggling city, we came away with a bad taste in our mouths.  It seems that there really is no way out of cowering in the face of those who will ultimately hand over your livelihood.  Art, of any medium, is respected in the sense that it gives the well-to-do a steady stream of conversation pieces, but is otherwise looked upon as the poor man’s pursuit.

I want to be a writer, but I have bills to pay and a one-year-old whom I love too much to send to daycare.  So, I write this blog to satisfy my own craving for language, teach my tutoring clients to be good communicators, and plan for life as a professor, when perhaps my way with words will be given credibility.

My husband is a photographer, a trained and talented one.  Yet, he is forced to compete with people who have a running start in the resources department: the housewife who turned her hobby into a business, the traveler who spends thousands on equipment and advertising.

Dreams and reality do not mix, though we desperately try to mold them into one life.  The “starving artist” can live his dreams until he wants to settle down and start a family.  Then, he will realize that the very corporations whose existence he used to protest will be providing for his children.  Twenty or thirty years later, he can pursue his passions again when he has a fat 401(k) to depend on.

Is this what we want to become of our culture?  I’d venture to say no, and that we can stop the trend now, but I would be dreaming.

Technorati Tags: America, art, artists, Asheville, corporations, culture, family, Jonas Gerard, life, photography, River Arts District, stereotype, tutoring, yuppie

The Social Stigma of Contraception and AbortionPosted by admin on June 18th, 2009

My musings about yesterday’s post on unplanned pregnancy continued long after I clicked “Publish.”  As the content of sex ed classes is a water-cooler topic in NC right now, I have been thinking about the pregnancy prevention issue from a variety of angles.

It should come as no surprise that I despise the abstinence-only approach.  I see no value in skirting the issues altogether.  Since when has that been a true solution to anything?  Hoping that teenagers forego risque makeout sessions in favor of hand-holding and deep conversation is a leap of faith that is grounded in worse logic than any organized religion.

As someone not so far removed from several years of “sex ed” (just another term for giving kids an excuse to giggle and tell dirty jokes), I know there are plenty of questions that need to be answered that are never even given a platform.  A sterile classroom is about as comfortable as a gynecologist’s office.  For one thing, there seems to be an unspoken rule that sex ed teachers must be the oldest, most out-of-touch members of the faculty that the administration can track down.  Who wants to ask a woman who no longer menstruates how to use a tampon?  Even if valid information is put forth, kids will not take it seriously unless it is taught with a hip sensitivity, and that includes acknowledging the role of technology in young relationships (sexting, anyone?).

Then, there are the facts that males and females are no longer separated for sex ed in most schools, there is no mention of homosexuality as a reality (much less an option), and the positive side of a healthy sex life is pushed under the proverbial rug.  No wonder teens learn everything they know from glossy magazine pages aimed at deluding the truth, then practice it in movie theaters, dorm rooms, or worse, on street corners.

There is something to be said for learning through experience, but if you have no background information to apply, nor any standards by which to measure that experience, your vision of a complete or normal relationship becomes clouded by the few in which you play a part.

So, what needs to be done to mend the frayed wires of communication?  Adults, especially parents, need to get over their own hang-ups about talking to their kids at a young age because, as the evening news has documented, sexual experimentation is beginning earlier and earlier.  You can’t blame subliminal messages when your child contracts an STD at 13 if, at 9 or 10, you never bothered to inform them of its existence.  Sex ed needs to be real.  While that includes giving teens contraception or access thereto, it also means straying from the syllabus and getting them to talk to each other.  Instead of moderating a stark, embarrassing discussion about anatomy, educators need to leave kids to their own devices.  If an honest setting is provided, teenagers will be surprisingly frank (see the Dr. Drew show Sex…with Mom and Dad).

Another, much more rugged piece of this attitude-shifting terrain is the grand irony that lies in our contraceptive views.  Many (old, prudish, conservative) people like to look down upon those who are met with a less-than-desirable fate, like HIV or unexpected pregnancy, as a result of a sexual act.  Yet, these same people refuse to distribute condoms to teenagers, much less demonstrate how to use them.  They say it is the kids’ choice, and leave them to their meager means when crisis strikes.

It is all very epic, very Spanish Inquisition, to label the sexually active heathens and menaces in a world of order.  When they cannot afford (or stealthily acquire) birth control, and their parents and teachers are trying to suppress their hormonal urges, teenagers will do nothing but have lots of unprotected sex.  The only difference between them and the snobs telling them to control themselves is that the consequences are written all over their young bodies and future decisions.  I saw firsthand in my tenure at a ritzy liberal arts college that to the wealthy and powerful, the next best thing to plastic surgery is abortion.  Yes, those are the same wealthy and powerful who donate to pro-life charities and turn a blind eye when duct-taped protesters set up camp (or go on a rampage) at an abortion clinic.

Either we arm our offspring with the tools they need to maintain sexual health, or their own misinformed offspring will show us why we should have.

Technorati Tags: abortion, abstinence, birth control, contraception, Dr. Drew, NC, parenting, pregnancy, relationships, sex, sex ed, sexting, teenagers

Attitudes About Young ParenthoodPosted by admin on June 17th, 2009

I  follow a high-traffic parenting blog called Motherlode, from The New York Times.  Recently, the author and her readers have been discussing and responding to the predicament of a 22-year-old who found out she’s pregnant.  She’s unmarried and recently got accepted to a competitive graduate program.  Her boyfriend is not in the picture.  She wrote to get feedback about whether she should choose to raise the child, give it up for adoption, or get an abortion.

After hearing from more than 700 readers, and discussing the issue with her friends and family, the young woman decided to abort the baby.

I am pro-choice, with no reservations.  But, I have some issues with the way that her story (and the one I recently saw on MTV’s new show 16 and Pregnant) was presented and approached.  It is not the parameters of the decision that I disagree with, but the framework in which it was placed.

As a 22-year-old who went through the ups and downs of pregnancy, a budding relationship, and a new baby while in college, I fully comprehend the intricacy of finding oneself at the intersection of all these facets of life.  I never once questioned whether or not I would keep my child, because I was in a happy relationship and I desperately wanted to be a mother.  I know that not everyone is so lucky, nor has a web of support like I had to get through the endless days of sleep deprivation.

However, the group of parents who did everything in the so-called correct order (college, career, marriage, house, baby) need to pass a tad less judgment on those who make different choices, or fall into a different set of circumstances.  Some of the people who responded to this woman were downright pretentious.  With a tone of disdain, and twenty years of hindsight, they spoke to her as though she were a child who should know better.  How dare she neglect to use birth control?  How dare she jeopardize the future of America by birthing a child out of wedlock?  How dare she count on the support of her school, her parents, her government in raising a baby?  (But,*gasp*, she will be a murderer if she chooses not to.)

Sure, they raise valid points.  It is tough to go it alone.  Society is not nice to single mothers.  Maybe her life will be simpler, fit more easily into a mold, if she chooses to give up this child.

Guess what?  Society’s not nice to young parents in general.  Even if this woman were married, and lived next door to her parents, she would have gotten the same answers.  People who waited to have children are uncomfortable with the idea of challenging that norm.  They wonder what will become of the world if more and more people begin sacrificing school for parenthood, career for family…

Where will the money come from?

I realize I’m generalizing here — about both older parents and young ones.  From my perspective, sitting at the bottom of this parental food chain, though, I see self-righteousness raining down on me, and on this conflicted woman of the hour, every time I look up.  Those who presume to have it all together tend to look at the young ones and say (think): How will they handle it?  They don’t even have health insurance.  That poor child. And later: What do you mean, he’s not in preschool yet?  He doesn’t have his own bedroom?

There was a time, not too long ago, when parents did not plan their children like they plan for retirement.  They didn’t space them out the ideal number of years, and have a perfectly painted bedroom awaiting each newborn.  They did not stick embryos in a petri dish and fiddle with their eye color.  Most importantly, they were not outraged by their teenagers’ hormone flux, and prepared them to be parents AKA normal reproductive humans, rather than bombarding them with scary tales of an STD-ridden life post-virginity.  Our grandparents’ lives may not have been easy, but most found them rewarding on a daily basis instead of at some indeterminate point on the horizon.

We need to let go of the notion that prioritizing family, especially at a young, threateningly fertile age, is uncivilized.  Not everyone who starts a family in his/her late teens or early twenties is afflicted by society’s ills.  This is what we chose, not what we deal with because it landed in our laps.

We all change diapers and give baths, whether we are 22 or 42.  We do not all use protection religiously, though we may lie about it vehemently.

This particular woman’s story did not prompt much pondering about how we can change our attitudes (and hence the future of impregnated twentysomethings), but made people indignant about finding some way to give to her or other women in her position.  All I can say is: you don’t get it.  What is subsidized childcare or free formula going to give this woman, or her baby, in the end?  If she is well-fed, yet completely alone in her struggle, we may as well have patted her on the head and shoved her into the lion’s den.  The child and its needs are not what would test her the most; a lack of emotional support from her community would.  It is those things that cannot be spent or eaten which drive us into despair.

We young ‘uns do not need handouts and advice, or charitable activism.  We need love and cameraderie, to sense that we are not alone in our nap time frustrations and our moments of joy.  Let’s stop making young parents feel as though they are undeserving, and help them get ready to bring their tiny bundles home to tiny bassinets in tiny apartments.

Technorati Tags: abortion, adoption, career, family, Motherlode, New York Times, parenting, pregnancy, sex, young parents

The Family Dynamic of MoneyPosted by admin on June 11th, 2009

It’s the buzzword of the year: “economy.”  Money, finances, credit.  The scary facts of life.  As Americans, we implicitly learn that money makes the world go ’round.  Whatever class we belong to, we recognize class division for what it is: the socially acceptable antithesis of everything that America symbolizes.  Yet, we choose to be led by staunch supporters of the free market, believers in the myth that hard work is all you need.

We all know this isn’t true, though some of us would rather not admit that.  Hard work cannot buy you inheritance, familial networking, or multiple vacation homes, except in the rare instances when luck is involved.  In this economic climate, hard work amounts to a greater potential for disappointment, and month after month of prioritizing payments just to stay afloat.

I was raised to understand the importance of saving money.  My brother and I earned $10-20 per week (it increased with age, or as we argued, the value of our labor).  Half of it was spending money.  The other half had to be split between short-term and long-term savings.  I had my labeled cookie jars in the closet, and always looked forward to buying great Christmas presents at the end of the year with the long-term pot.  Quarterly, I extracted my small chunk of change to buy a CD or a new pair of jeans.  It worked swimmingly well for me.  My brother, however, inevitably ended up with slim pickings at the end of each term — he borrowed from himself along the way and never paid it back.  Because we preferred different lifestyles, though, neither of us regretted our decisions.  And, we would both give the shirts off our backs for anyone in need, which is also a result of watching our parents give umbrellas to people waiting at bus stops in the rain.

This is more than just our personalities in a nutshell; it is an example of money management free of all market forces except consumption and the desire thereof.  We were insulated from economic fluctuations, our paychecks were regular, and we had no dependents (save the occasional hampster).

Fast forward a decade, and both of us are in the midst of a period of grand revelations about all things money-related.  Though he has only his own mouth to feed, his sense of adventure and more-than-occasional stroke of misfortune steer him toward financial disaster over and over again.  But, he’s happy and well-adjusted no matter the contents of his pantry.  I, on the other hand, have to worry about the dreaded monthly bills, diaper refills, and discretionary spending that come about when one is trying to build a happy home.  I am one part my mother, allowing myself a weekly splurge (read: soy latte), and one part my father, feeling guilty for not having put that $4 in my cookie jar.

What we are all learning now, though, is that we cannot place our faith in a medium that exists purely on the basis of faith.  Ironically, stashing away money for a rainy day provides little peace of mind.  Americans are spiraling out of control, precisely because we have no control, over the powers that rule our retirement savings, property investments, and mountainous debts.

So, who’s to say that there is one right way to allocate funds in a household?  I remain convinced that my husband and I are far happier, as individuals, a couple, and parents, because we do not fret about taking our son out for ice cream or going to the bookstore (our weakness) once a month.  We consistently verbalize our gratitude for the fact that we don’t care about having the four-bedroom house, the mini-van, the illusion of a secure future.  Sure, we dream big, but our dreams come true in tiny bouts throughout the years of living in one-bedroom apartments.  If the day comes when we do have plenty of money to spend, I will be glad that I appreciate its comforts.

Living in the moment does not mean being irresponsible, but recognizing that responsibility is not the only virtue.

Technorati Tags: America, bills, capitalism, control, credit, dreams, economy, faith, family, finances, financial, free market, household, job, money, money management, responsibility, savings, siblings, work

You know he's not a baby anymore when…Posted by admin on June 9th, 2009

• he grabs the Wii remote, hops on the Wii Fit board, and starts swaying back and forth like he’s exercising. He could probably beat my Super Hula Hoop score already!
• you open the fridge and he chooses his own food, then walks to the drawer (which he’s tall enough to open and dig through) and grabs a spoon. Now, if he would only be consistent about eating, life would be much easier.
• he comes up to you, holding his diaper, and says “YUCK.” I thought this day would never come.  Though we are far from potty training, it’s nice to have a sign that I might not have to wrestle a giant to change diapers someday.
• he drags the broom out of the closet every time you wash dishes, and proceeds to push it around every inch of the house, including in the bathtub.
  
• he walks up stairs by himself, holding onto the railing. Thanks to the diligence of my aunt and uncle, and only one horrific fall (under my watch), he is a pro stair climber.
• you ask “cuantos anos tienes?” (“how old are you?”) and he holds up one finger. Yet, he refuses to say “uno.”
• he swipes your BlackBerry every time you’re not looking, and marches around the house pretending to text or jabber on the phone.  The extent of his technological knowledge is already astounding — what will he be doing as a teenager?
• he “oohs” and “aahs” like a monkey from the backseat of the car until you turn on the music. As long as he has a soundtrack, he will sit in his carseat forever — a far cry from the days of giving myself a neckache from tossing him toys.
• he no longer tries to touch the other baby in the mirror, but simply smiles mischievously at his beautiful face.
• he turns on the bathtub faucet at every opportunity, but gets annoyed when it’s not hot. I’m still trying to explain the idea of conserving water, but Asheville’s environmentalist stance has yet to rub off on him.
• he claps every time the president is on TV. He started doing this during the election, actually — a sign of hereditary political leanings?
• he scatters GRE vocab flashcards all over the living room, and sometimes makes ugly faces at them. He’s already learned to hate standardized testing.
• he wants to push the ON button on the coffeemaker every morning. What’s not quite as exciting, however, is his enthusiasm for lighting the gas stove at dinnertime.
• he gets closer to climbing out of his crib every day. This is another reason it’s only used for playtime.
• he tries to hug the ducks at the bird sanctuary instead of running from their scary beaks.
• he stands on the coffee table and dances to the Toyota Prius commercials. Our music man has always had a favorite commercial, and it tends to change about once a month.  He was particularly irked when the one for Nasonex (with the animated bee) went off the air.
• he slips on Papi’s sandals and tries to run away, despite repeated falls. Oh, the confidence of being one year old and on top of your world.
• he rebels against not going straight to the kid’s area of the bookstore by yanking large books off the shelves and crawling ever so slowly, instead of walking, to the exit.

I could continue, but that’s a good synopsis of the things we find simultaneously irritating and hilarious every day.  Those of you with toddlers will sympathize, I’m sure.  This stage is mostly fascinating because it makes me contemplate what I was (apparently) like at that age, and who I am now.  I used to be wholeheartedly on the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate, but I’m discovering that some things are innate and inexplicable.  Or, they just came from the other side of the family!

Technorati Tags: Asheville, baby, BlackBerry, children, family, growing up, milestones, nature, nurture, one year old, parenting, toddler, Wii

Bilingual as a Baby? I Wish!Posted by admin on June 7th, 2009

Often, a long phone conversation with a family member or friend is the best part of my day, because I get to speak English.  After speaking nothing but Spanish all day long with my little one (with a few exceptions, including when I’m too angry or frustrated to come up with a Spanish equivalent for what I need to say), I am usually more mentally exhausted than I like to admit.  I am jealous when I see how easy it is for my son to acquire new words, to understand commands and questions in two languages.  I also envy my husband, who spoke Spanish at home and learned English in school.  For me, bilingualism is a priority that I work to maintain every day — otherwise, it slips away.

It took about seven years of grammar-centric Spanish classes and several more years of exposure for me to truly call myself fluent.  In the interim, I traveled to Italy and replaced my Spanish with Italian, much of which I proceeded to forget due to a lack of opportunities to practice it in the U.S.   Thus, I’ve had a varied experience with language learning, a combination of formal schooling and immersion, which has allowed me to realize the fluidity of the brain in its use and acquisition of a second (or third) language.

Sometimes, the concentration just isn’t there and I fail miserably at communicating with my in-laws.  Other times, I’m completely relaxed and find myself using words that I didn’t know sat idly in my word bank.  There isn’t a day that passes in which I don’t ask my husband how to say a particular word in Spanish or why he says it one way when I learned something completely different.  The combination of dialects that exist in the Spanish-speaking world fascinates me.  While it can cause misunderstanding and even pure confusion, it is an exercise in real-world application that is incomparable to any other.

Along with simply knowing what a struggle it can be to learn languages later in life, I want my child(ren) to witness the subtleties of human communication and have the capacity to view the world through two or more lenses.  When you know several words for one concept, your world is less concrete and you tend to question the accepted reality.  In my eyes, this is a gift, and I am lucky to have a chance to bestow it upon a person I love.

On days when Spanish doesn’t come pouring out of me easily, I remind myself that my child does not judge the grammatical correctness of my sentences, the authenticity of my accent, or the origin of my vocabulary.  Who knows what his language capacity or preference will be?  And, in the end, it matters little.  I am happy to share in his exploration of the world in whatever language he chooses to mimic.

I would love to hear others’ experiences with or thoughts on the journey of multilingualism.

Technorati Tags: bilingual toddler, bilingualism, brain, dialects, English, grammar, Italian, Italy, language acquisition, languages, multilingualism, parenting, raising children, Spanish

An Age of Technological BondingPosted by admin on June 4th, 2009

Tonight, I helped my awesome aunt work on her assignments for an online computer class (irony?).  It was ridiculously tedious, and the content of many of the exam questions was about as relevant as Morse code in civilian 2009.

The process made me realize that technology is not fad-like, but requires true skill that can only be acquired through kinesthetic means.  Rote memorization and textbooks full of screen shots will not make someone the next big blogger or a Twitter networking pro.  When my dad asked me the other day what exactly Twitter was, I stumbled over my words and miserably failed to capture the phenomenon in a few sentences.  To us young folk, who first perched our fingers on a QWERTY keyboard in preschool, social networking is fun, fascinating, and absolutely necessary.  What could be more exciting than knowing what your friends across the world are having for dinner?  Or, more importantly, receiving everyone’s life-changing news just a few seconds after they find out themselves?  Yet, trying to answer my dad’s valid inquiry about the purpose of knowing someone’s “status” 24/7 was so difficult that I could only resolve my confusion by blogging about it.

My husband and I met through Facebook when I was studying in Italy.  We chatted via e-mail, instant messages, and expensive phone cards for over two months before I returned to the homeland.  Unlike couples who meet on intoxicating terms in a downtown club or frat house, we had a chance to discover each other’s true selves before ever worrying about physical attraction.  Well, that’s not entirely true: I’ll admit to saving one shirtless photo of my mystery man to my desktop.  Still, our first date (at Starbucks, of course) did not feel like a first date at all.  We had long since gotten the pleasantries out of the way, and were ready to move on to politics and pipe dreams.  Without our ability to virtually project our personalities in a genuine way by creating a profile of just the essentials, we would never have come together to create this family.

So, the role of technology in my life and that of other twentysomethings is undeniable and indescribable.  We research, discover, dream, and fraternize in one place, which is really millions of places.  Can a computer class teach non-members of this connected Generation Y the true value of that?

Technorati Tags: blogging, computer, e-mail, Facebook, Generation Y, instant messages, Italy, online dating, online school, social networking, status, technology, twentysomething, Twitter, virtual

What will college mean for our kids?Posted by admin on June 3rd, 2009

Today, I’ve voraciously read two books that are at once profoundly disturbing and wildly inspiring.

The first is one I’ve had my eye on since I began to refer to The Natural Child Project (naturalchild.org) for great parenting articles and advice, but only now got around to reading: The Unschooling Unmanual.  It’s a compilation of essays from famous educators and thinkers, as well as average parents, who have experienced the stark contrast between a child who is “educated” in a stifling classroom and one who is trusted with his/her own learning in the safe environment of his/her own home.  Unschooling is not homeschooling in that there are no textbooks nor state standards to follow; it is the antithesis of structured learning.

Along with some thought-provoking observations about the arbitrary choice we make to suddenly send our children off to be taught, after they have naturally learned to walk, talk, and interact as babies and toddlers, the book provides an historical context for the education debate.  In particular, a piece by Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael, one of my all-time favorite reads) plots the timeline of public schooling.  He states that, following the Great Depression, schooling beyond 8th grade was introduced primarily to keep large numbers of teenagers out of the work force — i.e. prevent them from creating competition for newly-enthused workers.  The secondary school years provided nothing practical, and, he argues, still don’t.  They are simply an extension of the inane grouping of subjects in which students have little interest and will likely not remember.  Public school (which now encompasses any form of compulsory schooling) fails in its original intent to prepare our citizens for success and happiness, and instead supports a capitalist market that needs plenty of people to fill the bottom rungs of the ladder.  This is why we find it so difficult as parents, teachers, and tutors to answer those inevitable questions that pop up during algebra homework: “When will I ever use this?”  Those of us who have suffered through those years know the answer: YOU WON’T.  And that’s the answer upon which unschooling advocates expand when they let their children guide the learning process.

In a surprising bit of synchronicity, I discovered the same theme in Barbara Ehrenreich’s This Land is Their Land.  As the voice of the middle class, and a superbly entertaining writer, she litters her bits of economic and social commentary with loads of appalling statistics.  One chapter that had me fully enraptured, probably because I am sitting in the middle of the post-college period to which she refers, is entitled “Party On.”  It discusses her recent trip to UConn’s commencement ceremony, at which plenty of the graduates were visibly intoxicated.  She wonders if they have discovered the sad fact that college “is becoming less of a stepping stone and more of a holding pen,” and encourages them to “party on” for the last time.  Though it was an afterthought in the piece, her mention of the reality that no college would mean for our unemployment rate (30 percent of 18-23 year-olds are currently attending college) was strikingly similar to Quinn’s piece in the book I read this morning.  What would we do with a bunch of young people floating around in the work force?  They are better off wasting away behind desks — after all, they will be doing that in some form or another for most of their lives.

School has become one more piece of the giant myth that there will always be something better to strive for in America.  While America is falling far behind the rest of the world on many counts, and as the income gap is growing, we sit around in denial and take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans so that our children can have the ultimate college experience, praying that it will amount to a lavish, or at least fulfilling, career.  In fact, it means much less than either of those things: taking whatever $8/hour job comes along because the grace period has expired on those loans.  What are we really preparing our children for?  What kind of country creates a generation of young adults with big dreams and few skills, only to send them off to face the reality of lifelong debt?  If today’s BA is yesterday’s high school diploma, what will a Ph.D. mean for our babies in 20 or 30 years?

We have to stop the cycle somewhere and admit to ourselves that we have all been fabricating this “American dream.”  Or, we can just take Ehrenreich’s advice and spend our last pennies on means of escape.

Technorati Tags: Barbara Ehrenreich, children, college, Daniel Quinn, economy, education, Natural Child, parenting, public school, unschooling