It’s Grandma! Hide the Froot Loops.

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

When I got out of the shower, there was a message from my mother. “Call me when you get a chance,” she said, serious-sounding. “I want to talk to you about something.” I felt a twinge of foreboding. So I did a bit more work before I called her back.

Turns out, it was a trick. She simply wanted to call my attention to the front-page New York Times story on the dangers of food coloring. Clearly she knew if she mentioned that in the message, I’d never call her back. Now I was trapped. I had mentioned that my 3rd grader was not a great reader: she picked babyish books, often misread words, and worst of all, didn’t enjoy it. But my mother had the answer: too many popsicles! She reminded me that the last time she visited, her darling granddaughter had sucked down ice pops–before dinner–until her lips were blue. At the time, I waved off her concerns: just water and sugar, Mom. Well, clearly I had forgotten about the Green No. 3 and Yellow No. 6 dyes. And now here was the New York Times, validating what she’d long believed: food coloring makes children hyperactive! No wonder her granddaughter wasn’t reading Dostoevsky yet.

This was big vindication for my mother, who didn’t buy junk food or soda when we were growing up. As a result, I guzzled Coke whenever I went to anyone else’s house, and once ate seven donuts in one sitting.  It even vindicated her mother, who–as she reminded me on the phone–religiously checked ingredients and spurned anything artificial, putting her well ahead of her time. Mind you, this was a woman who could ruin a perfectly good homemade chocolate chip cookie with wheat germ and sunflower seeds.

I have chosen to be a little more relaxed–some might call it lazy, or perhaps stupid–in monitoring what my children eat. When I go grocery shopping, for instance, I usually buy whatever they want–provided it’s written on the list–with a few arbitrary exceptions, like yogurt with little containers of M&Ms or sprinkles on top and neon-colored sugary cereal, except on their birthdays. Also, I personally do not believe that a cookie at 5:30 will “spoil your dinner.” As I see it, cravings for sweets exist in an entirely separate category from cravings for protein and vegetables, which even popsicle-addicts experience now and then.  Eventually everyone has to figure out the whole food thing for themselves, so why not start sooner rather than later?

In any case, I decided to confront my mother head on rather than mumble distractedly and get off the phone as soon as possible. “It feels like you’re criticizing my parenting,” I said.  This is what she replied (I wrote it down): “It’s not a criticism of your parenting; it’s just to help you improve on certain issues that you don’t have time to follow.” Then, after my uproarious laughter had died down: “I’m just trying to help your children be even more wonderful.”

OK, Mom, you win: I read the article, which is all you really wanted in the first place. But funnily enough, the piece I read found no conclusive evidence linking food coloring and behavior.

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Bring Back the Talent Show

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

'Billy Elliot'

I made the mistake of seeing the Broadway production of “Billy Elliot” while helping my eight-year-old plan her act for the annual elementary school Variety Show. No matter how self-righteously I  deride those theater parents for pushing their children too hard, those kids are still amazing and my daughter is performing in a production that’s no longer even called a “Talent Show.” Back when I was in elementary school, that’s what it was: a competition with a clear winner. I know, because I didn’t win. A boy named Tommy, who happened to be an outstanding tap dancer, beat out my guitar-picking, country-twanged version of that perennial Helen Reddy favorite, “Keep on Singing,” which I don’t believe has been played on the radio since 1973. Was I scarred for life? No–but clearly I haven’t forgotten it, either.

My little one need not suffer so. No one loses in the modern-day Variety Show, except maybe the parents who have to sit through the interminable rehearsals and pay Express Delivery for the costumes they forgot to order. Or maybe I’m projecting. It reminds me of one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons, which shows a kid bursting through his apartment door, bearing a smile and a giant trophy. “We lost!” reads the caption.

In any case, I wasn’t initially in favor of my daughter appearing in the Variety Show. I have endured these things before and there isn’t even much variety: it’s mostly groups of little girls dancing clumsily to inappropriate songs by Madonna or Shakira or Rihanna or one of those other one-named phenoms. Plus the show is about four hours long, mainly because the kids are allowed to perform in as many acts as they want, and it’s often hard to see the stage over the giant 800 mm zoom lenses the other parents have trained on their superstars. Last year, luckily, my daughter was part of a school-organized group of Hip Hop Jumpropers, which I liked because it was cute and athletic and I didn’t have to do anything. (Though I did balk when she wanted to be part of a “commercial break” for Nair, singing “Who Wears Short Shorts?” Call me a spoilsport, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of seven-year-olds touting the benefits of a hair-free bikini line.)

So when my daughter said she didn’t want to be in the Variety Show this year, I happily deposited the sign-up form in the recycling bin. Then I overheard her singing a catchy tune called The Water Cycle  by Stevesongs. Before I could stop the words from leaving my mouth, I said, “Hey, you should do that song for the Variety Show!” Don’t ask me why; I found the song funny and educational, and it required no belly shirts or gyrating of any kind. Plus, it perfectly fit this year’s theme: “Schoolhouse Rock,” no doubt intended to inspire parental nostalgia for the old pre-Cartoon-Network days of “Conjunction Junction” and “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” Amazingly, my daughter agreed, and before I could kick myself, she had organized two friends and a rehearsal schedule at our house.

For the first two rehearsals, they mostly ate crackers, chased the dogs and shot down any suggestion I made for their act. So I hooked them up with the show’s organizer, a saintly woman with enviable reserves of patience, and her 12-year-old daughter, a theater kid who could certainly act in any local production of “Billy Elliot.” They demonstrated all kinds of dance steps and gestures, a few of which the girls may have adopted. I wouldn’t know, because they are no longer letting me watch them practice. We shall see soon enough; the dress rehearsal is tomorrow. At least the costumes–oversized black t-shirts bearing rain clouds–arrived in time. Well worth the $15.99.

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The Co-Ed Sleepover

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

My 16-year-old was in a van heading home from Johns Island, SC, where she’d been on a school-sponsored house-building trip when the first text came in:  could her friend, who I’ll call Taylor, sleep over the night they got home? They wanted to watch all five seasons of “Hey, Arnold,” whatever that is. I am not a big fan of sleepovers–at least not at our house–for my eight-year-old (too much shrieking and arranging of stuffed animals) or her 13-year-old brother (too much soda and staying up all night watching horror movies), but for the big one, I really don’t mind.  Her friends are mostly pretty great, and I figure they’re old enough to know when to stop drinking Coke and go to sleep. Besides, as I pictured her reading texts in the van surrounded by her peers, I imagined this as the perfect opportunity to win points for being cool, laid-back mom. “Sure! What an excellent use of time!” I typed back ironically. “Really?” she responded. “You’d let him sleep over?”

Luckily we were texting so she couldn’t see how pale I turned. Apparently “Taylor” had one of those names that can go either way, like Jordan or Kendall. I had the vague sense that I’d heard about him before and should have known that. So I couldn’t back down now. Here’s how our text-message conversation proceeded, verbatim:

Me (recovering quickly): “In the guest room.”
Her: “We couldn’t sleep downstairs?” (Usually the kids prefer to hold slumber parties on the big sofa in front of the TV in the family room.)
Me: “Hmmm I’ll have to check with dad …. Have you hooked up with him and/or is he hot for you?”
Her: “No and I don’t think so ….  He’s just a good friend.”
Me (after mentioning to my incredulous husband): “Dad is not thrilled with the idea. It would be better if he were gay!”
Her: “Dad would love if gay guys were the only ones I talked to!” 

 

So true. What is it about fathers being unable to deal with their daughters as sexual beings? I find it alarming that they can so clearly recall how horny they were as adolescents, and therefore consider it essential that all teenage boys stay far, far away from their daughters. When I told my husband our daughter had assured me that Taylor was just a good friend and not hot for her, he scoffed. “Of course he is!” he said, though I wasn’t sure if he meant how could anyone not find his baby beautiful, or how could any straight teenage boy not be attracted to any straight teenage girl–especially one with whom he was lying on the couch watching “Hey, Arnold” all night?

In the end, I told her to take it up with her father–and she never did. When I texted her later to see if she still had plans with Taylor, she wrote: “No we were just seeing if it was allowed.” So it was a test! Personally I’m inclined to allow it: if she doesn’t want anything to happen with Taylor, it certainly won’t in our house. And if she does, well, I’d rather have them in our family room than in a parked car or public place. But the former teenage boy living in our midst may have another view.

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After the Bar Mitzvah: Spending the Dough

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

For his bar mitzvah, my son asked guests to make donations to the Anti-Defamation League in lieu of gifts, but a lot of people have given him cash instead, or in addition. Naturally, he is thrilled. He gets the best of both worlds: credit for being charitable and selfless, and money to blow on himself. He’s been itching all week to go to the camping store REI to indulge his latest passion, rock climbing. Well, calling it a “passion” may be a stretch since he’s never actually been rock climbing before. But he will; one of the best presents he received is a private outdoor rock climbing lesson for him and a friend.

The instructor apparently brings all the necessary equipment so the novice climber can learn what he needs and how to use it. But that didn’t stop my Mr. Impulsive from insisting he first buy a bunch of gear with the wad of cash burning a giant hole in his pocket. I didn’t even try to stop him; it wouldn’t have worked, and in any case I haven’t really discovered a good way to teach my children about money beyond talking a lot about the value of things, and then letting them figure it out for themselves. When I suggested to him that he open a savings account, he scoffed: “Why? So I can earn 30 cents a year in interest?” Just try to come up with a sound rejoinder to that. He knows we think saving money for college is important, but should we force him to? And if so, how?

Our REI trip was almost derailed when the middle-school nurse called me 15 minutes before the final bell to say my son was in her office feeling nauseated. I was inclined to leave him there; a stomach virus is my most dreaded illness in a child–a fever with no other symptoms is my favorite–so I reasoned that if he were about to throw up, better the school nurse deal with it than I. Yet when I got him home he proceeded to eat two bags of popcorn and a bunch of candy left over from the Bar Mitzvah, and by 6:00 had miraculously recovered enough to make the excursion. I was surprised and a little suspicious to hear him bandy about terms like “top roping” “trad” and “belay” with the REI clerk, who mercifully sized him up quickly and offered welcome advice on relatively affordable “starter” equipment. Approximately $375 later, my boy was in ecstatic possession of several ropes, a harness, carabiners, and quickdraws, some of which he may actually learn how to use someday.

I think I’ll make him watch “127 Hours” before I let him go.

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Leaving No Panty Line

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

I was helping my 16-year-old daughter do her laundry the other night–in a hurry, as she was packing for a spring break house-buildng trip to South Carolina–when I noticed a small piece of red fabric caught in the bottom of the washing machine. Shoot, I thought; one of her t-shirts or pajama pants must have ripped. When I yanked it out, however, I was shocked to see that it was actually a tiny, lacy red thong–which I had never seen before and which seemed to me to have no purpose beyond arousing a sexual partner. I mean, if you just wanted to avoid a panty line, why make it red and lacy?

Now, I am quite confident that my daughter is not sexually active; we have a close and unusually communicative relationship. So when I asked her–with feigned nonchalance–about the offending panties, she explained matter-of-factly that she wanted a thong to wear under leggings, but when she searched through the 7 for $25 sale pile (that’s my girl!) at American Eagle, they didn’t have any gray cotton ones. Makes perfect sense. Still, the whole episode made me aware of how much I don’t know about her world. When did she buy it, and who was she with? And why is American Eagle–a store aimed at teens and pre-teens–selling stuff like that anyway?

When your children are babies, you know every single thing they do: burp, sneeze, poop, roll over. As they grow up, they gradually begin to do more things in private: pick their noses, get undressed, use the bathroom. By the time they are teenagers, they are living a significant portion of their lives out of your sight. Maybe they write in journals, masturbate, tell their friends things that they used to tell you. And come home from shopping trips with sexy lingerie that they don’t need yet but will soon enough. Good thing her father doesn’t know how to do the laundry.

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Countdown to the Bar Mitzvah: The Day After

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

Well, I made it through my son’s bar mitzvah without killing a single member of my family. Mazel Tov! Not only did my husband’s back go out two days before the blessed event, rendering him completely useless in all the last-minute shlepping, but my older daughter, who had volunteered to put together the slide show as well as chant one of the Torah portions–all while studying for finals–had a total meltdown the day before. I thought it was my turn to fall apart, after a week of uninspiring detail work (filling candy jars, personalizing chocolate bar wrappers, purchasing plastic forks for the kid party). But I had to hold it together to keep everyone else from losing it– including the bar mitzvah boy, who fell into a nervous silence, punctuated only with such loving sentiments as, “Mom, stop talking.” My eight-year-old was the only one not under stress, so she spent the week making unreasonable requests like, “Can we go to Target to buy a new Pet Shop?”

In the end, my boy pulled it off.  Looking stiff but proud in his new suit, he did an excellent job chanting and reading the speech that I “helped” him with (ie fleshed out considerably and removed all plagiarism). I decided the ceremony itself really has nothing to do with him affirming his Jewish identity or becoming a man, and everything to do with we, his parents, feeling utterly sentimental about his growing up. This reading from Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet” always resonates with every parent in the house: 

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, they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bow from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.             

But everyone’s favorite part of the ceremony is the parents’ speech, which in our synagogue at least involves the parents talking directly to their children. I believe these talks are most effective when they are honest, funny, and as specific as possible. To see how I succeeded on that score, read My BM speech.

Five years until the next one.

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Countdown to the Bar Mitzvah: The RSVP

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

It's a cake!

We’re at BM minus 16 days–otherwise known as the period when I bolt awake in the middle of the night, panicked about things that seem utterly manageable in the daylight hours, such as flowers. Or cake. Lucky for my son, the focus of my attention is no longer his Torah portion or speech, but rather ensuring that the guests will be handily compensated with food, drink, and entertainment for sitting through them.

As the RSVPs trickle in, I find myself hoping for “Regrets.” Partly it’s about the cost, but also I have convinced myself that the fewer people who come, the less polished the whole event needs to be. As someone who revels in informality and enjoys scrambling to meet deadlines, I find the whole notion of the bank-breaking, over-the-top “Bar Mitzvah Wedding”–complete with ice sculptures and first dances–extremely distasteful. In fact, I am compelled to take almost the direct opposite approach: home-grown and low-key. Somehow, the more slapdash it all is, the better I feel about it. He’s just a teenager reading a little Hebrew from the Old Testament, for God’s sake. 

Plus I generally like to do things differently from everyone else. When I was 13, for instance, all my friends were having Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, so I decided not to. Then, when I was 15, no one was having a Bar or Bat Mitzvah; they were getting confirmed, or just getting drunk, so I decided to have a Bat Mitzvah. This time around, I opted to save hundreds of dollars by sending my son’s invitations strictly by email, through a wonderful website called Paperless Post, which blows Evite away. The email arrives as a replica of an authentic envelope, complete with fancy calligraphied names. When guests click on the envelope, the flap opens and the invitation pops out. There are hundreds of designs and fonts to choose from. My son, who does NOT like to do things differently from everyone else, was vehemently against this plan, in part because it meant he had to ask some of his friends for their parents’ email addresses. But he lost that battle. And as the responses started coming in with all sorts of comments complimenting his “green” invitation, he quickly changed his tune. The site tracks who received the invitation, who opened it, and who responded, and will automatically send updates and reminders. Incredibly, the only person who didn’t get ours was my mother-in-law, who is 85 and has not been on email since her mammoth desktop computer became obsolete about  five years ago. I hope she knows she’s invited.

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Happy Sweet 16, From Far Away

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

Today my dear, sweet, firstborn daughter turns 16, and I am away on a business trip. This seems entirely fitting,  since I wasn’t around 15 years ago when she took her first steps, either. I was at work in the Newsweek office when my husband called, elated, with the news. I was heartbroken–and furious. Couldn’t he keep pushing her down until I got home?

These days I am much more likely to travel for a girls’ weekend than for work, but from an abandoning-the-kids standpoint, it’s all the same. In my house, it involves leaving “the list.” I have never gone away from home for more than a day or two without leaving my husband (or babysitter, on the rare occasion when we’ve traveled together) a detailed list of instructions, including things some might consider obvious, such as “Bathe kids” or “Make breakfast.” When it comes to child care, nothing is too obvious for my beloved. (For an example of this week’s list, see Sue Away Schedule Feb 16-19. And that’s a relatively straightforward one, given that we’re between sports seasons.) It’s always interesting to come home and see which items haven’t been checked off. Once when I went away, my youngest daughter didn’t take a bath for four days–though in defense of my husband, I’d forgotten to write it on the list.

She was fine, of course, if a little stinky. They always are. And whether or not my husband follows my instruction to “Fete the birthday girl appropriately,” she’ll be fine, too. (We had a mother-daughter lunch-and-shopping celebration earlier this week.) Really, the leaving of the list reflects my guilt more than it does my husband’s ineptitude. No one would ever accuse me of being a control freak, but there is something about leaving the kids–even if it’s for work, and even now that they’re 16, 13 and 8–that makes me want to ensure that things get done, regardless of whether they get done when I’m home. In Tina Fey’s Personal History column, “Confessions of a Juggler,” in this week’s New Yorker, she argues that the worst question you can ask a woman is not how old are you or how much do you weigh, but “How do you juggle it all?” No one knows, of course, because no one ever really does. Something always gets neglected–like an important birthday.

 Happy Birthday, baby. I’m sorry I’m not there.

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Countdown to the Bar Mitzvah: The Project

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

My middle child and only son is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. Well, “preparing” may be overstating it; he knows the blessed event will happen March 12, and he usually manages to commit the required lines of Hebrew text to memory each week during the car ride between school and his lesson with the Cantor. Beyond that, I can’t get him to focus on much beyond which hats and sunglasses the DJ should distribute at the kid party.

After weeks of threats and nagging, however, I did finally get him to commit to his “Mitzvah project,” the act of  community service or charity that is meant to be voluntary but has become practically a prerequisite for the modern-day ceremony. The idea, I suppose, is that a child should look beyond himself and demonstrate philanthropy and commitment to the community as part of his passage to adulthood. This is a relatively recent development, and a welcome one. Kids do anything from collect supplies for a local animal shelter to raise money for UNICEF or The Central Asia Institute, as my daughter did. My son decided to support the Anti -Defamation League, an organization whose mission of eradicating bigotry resonates with him. He is working with his middle-school guidance counselor to bring a speaker to school, and will attend an ADL youth conference in April.

What strikes me about these mitzvah projects is that they usually come to a crashing halt when it’s time for the kids to collect their loot. While some ask guests to bring children’s books or pet food to the service, shockingly few ask for donations to a particular cause in lieu of a gift. Why don’t more parents force their kids to do this? The assumption seems to be that the Bar Mitzvah kid is entitled to mountains of gifts and wads of cash, which as far as I am concerned, contradicts the whole point of the exercise. A friend of mine has devised a good way to force the issue: she typically writes two checks, one made out to the Bar or Bat Mitzvah kid and one with the “Pay to” line left blank, with instructions for the child to donate it to a favorite charity. It’s fun to see where the checks come back from–and tax-deductible, too.

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No Slave to School Pictures

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Susan H. Greenberg

Picture Day is the biggest scam going in public schools  today. It’s tyranny by the photo studios, abetted by school administrators, and foisted upon mind-numbed parents who will mechanically fill out any form that comes home via backpack. The pictures are almost never any good–just check out  badyearbookphotos.com. In my house, we routinely forget to mark Picture Day on the calendar, so my kids are invariably wearing holey t-shirts and cowlicks. And the array of available packages and options–16 wallet size or 32 trading size? retouching? blue or purple background?–is incomprehensible. The only good reason I can see for purchasing school pictures is so your child won’t feel left out when the photo packets are distributed in class–a parental insecurity the studios have no qualms exploiting.

In fact, the studios are making such a killing they now extend “Picture Day” to sports teams; while a team photo is generally included for free with registration in any given league, for an exorbitant fee parents can order individual photos, trading cards, even bobbleheads of their young athlete, in full uniform, posed before a fake backdrop of The Professional Stadium in Your City. I finally learned to just say no: when my 8-year-old  daughter’s basketball team had its Picture Day this winter, I restrained myself from following the other parents to the table where they dutifully filled out forms with little golf pencils and wrote big checks for photos–and stickers! and key chain attachments!–they will probably never use. My little Rondo was the only player on her team not called for a close-up. I started to waver, but then remembered the stack of photo envelopes shoved in a kitchen drawer, the pictures still uncut. Bless her heart, my daughter just shrugged and insisted she only wanted a team photo anyway.

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