Go To Sleep

Last night, I read to my kids, kissed them goodnight, turned off the light, and guess what? Miracle of miracles, they went to sleep.

For the nine years of our twins’ lives, bedtime has been something that we’ve often dreaded and delayed just to put off the kids’ delaying tactics (how pathetic is that?). The delays and the arguments exhausted us to the detriment of our relationship.

Not surprisingly,  I’m one of the many parents who loved the book  “Go the F**k to Sleep” by  Adam Mansbach and Ricardo Cortes  and this hilarious YouTube video, narrated by Australian actress, mother and host of Australian kid show, Noni Hazelhurst.

So why are our kids sleeping now?

Three months ago, we moved home to Australia from the USA, where the kids were born and raised and where we lived for 16 years. Since starting school in early July, our boys are going to sleep faster and sleeping longer.

Why? There are many reasons, but mostly, it is Australia’s emphasis on sport within school, which means the boys get double the amount of time outside doing sport during the school day. By night, they are plain tuckered out.

In Montgomery County, MD, where my kids went to school in the USA, most children had sport/physical education at school once a week.  This is pretty much in line with 2003 findings by the Eunice Shriver Kennedy National Institute of Child Health and Human Development showing third grade children received an average of 25 minutes a week in school of moderate to vigorous activity.

At the boys’ school in Chevy Chase, MD, they were outdoors for only 30 minutes a day for recess after eating lunch indoors if the weather wasn’t too hot, too cold, too humid, etc. or just too too something.

In contrast, in NSW, where my boys go to school now, my sons have school sport for 90 minutes twice a week during the school day. They also have daily outdoor recess at 11 a.m., about 20 minutes, plus playtime after lunch at 1 p.m., of about 50 minutes after they’ve eaten sitting in the school playground. In summer, the kids do swimming lessons at school for an hour each week. This adds up to about 100 minutes of sport each day in Australia versus about 50 minutes in the USA.

Unlike the US, where my kids rode the bus, they start and end the school day by walking to and from school. It’s about 850 metres. (To my amazement, after the tight leash which kids are kept on back in the USA, the streets here are full of unaccompanied children, some as young as five or six,  who walking, scootering or biking, to and from school or to a friend’s place.)

The Aussie emphasis on sport at school flows on at home. One homework assignment here was to go outside to play for 30 minutes a day, or run or bike, or whatever.

In the USA, the boys did exercise after school (basketball, swimming, trampolining, kicking a football), but on some days that was the only exercise they got.

Another bonus: The kids eat more, they’re less fussy (they’ll wolf down a head of broccoli when hungry) when hungry and exercised,  and at last, they sleep.

So go to sleep my darlings. You deserve it. And so do I.

You can buy the book, Go the F..k to Sleep, here in Australia and on Amazon in the USA.

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The latest game among my group of friends?

Rating each other on a scale of zero, a pushover, to Tiger Mom, a fierce mom like Amy Chua, who sprung to fame via The Wall Street Journal about her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

“Oh yeah, she’s tough. She’s a tiger mom, we whisper.”

One friend was relieved to find another mother who she knew was tougher than her.

How do you rate your parenting style? Take the survey at SkinnyScoop.

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Arizona victim Christina Taylor Green was nine years old

I want my kids to have the right to call you a slime bag or an idiot and not get shot. I want them to be able to attend a political debate as nine-year old Christina Taylor Green (see photo to left) did on Saturday morning in Arizona when she was shot dead along with five others. I want them to be able to engage in debate over the most vexed of issues:  abortion, gun control, health care, etc., and still feel safe.

Is that the case here? Is our freedom of speech being whittled away by other people’s freedom to carry arms, even semi-automatic weapons?

After more than 15 years living in the United States, we are returning to live in Australia later this year although we are all  U.S. citizens.

We’d already made our minds to leave before Saturday’s shooting, which left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford in a medically-induced coma after an innocent meet and greet outside a local Safeway in Tucson, Arizona.

But somehow the shooting has added fear to my long list of why it is  really time to go.

• I do not want my children to grow up with the right to carry semi automatic weapons.
• I do not want them to grow up thinking that this is a reasonable right.
• I don’t want them living near people who want to exercise that right.
• I don’t want them near people who think that it is their right to carry a concealed weapon as they go about their shopping at Safeway, Walmart, pick up their kids from childcare or borrow books from the college library.

I fear for my children’s safety in a land where the response of many politicians to Saturday’s massacre in Arizona is to carry their own concealed weapons.

I fear for their lives if they attend an American college, where random shootings seem to have become routine.

I do want them growing up in a society with a lively debate. And I don’t want them thinking that if they call someone “brain damaged,” “a slime bag,” “a pig” or “a gutless spiv”  —- some of the least offensive words used in the Australian Parliament by former Prime Minister, Paul Keating —- they could get shot. See Keating Insults Archive.

I’d prefer they keep their cursing to a minimum, or at least to the car .when they’re old enough to drive .. and respond to people with civility.

But we shouldn’t have to fear that if you get angry or call someone a name, you’ll get shot.

That’s a fear I’ve known since arriving in the U.S.

I remember a time in Philadelphia when my husband and the driver of another car came to a dead stop in the middle of an intersection.  Neither could agree on who had right of way.

Both men got out of their cars, and started yelling at each other.

My biggest fear was that the other man had a gun. When I looked over at the other man’s girlfriend, she was trembling. She was equally afraid that my husband was carrying a weapon. We both begged them to get back in the car.

No matter what someone calls you, or you call them, it doesn’t warrant picking up a gun and shooting that person.

As mothers don’t we tell our kids that? At least we do. “It doesn’t matter who called you stupid, or an idiot, you can’t hit back.”

As Gail Collins said yesterday in The New York Times, “A Right to Bear Glocks?”:

“The amazing thing about the reaction to the Giffords shooting is that virtually all the discussion about how to prevent a recurrence has been focusing on improving the tone of our political discourse. That would certainly be great. But you do not hear much about the fact that Jared Loughner came to Giffords’s sweet gathering with a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their sale expired in 2004 and Congress did not have the guts to face up to the National Rifle Association and extend it. ”

It frightens me that anyone can walk into a gun shop or a supermarket, in some parts of this country, and pick up a gun and kill six people easily as Loughner shot nine- year old girl, Christina Taylor Green.

I love living in the United States, and am terribly sad to be leaving, but the high incidence of gun violence (the U.S. is just behind Brazil, Mexico and Estonia) makes me fear for my children’s safety.

Australia isn’t perfect.  Far from it. It has shootings, too. But the gun controls are much tougher. The stats show that gun related deaths in the U.S. are nearly six to seven times as great as in Australia and New Zealand, and about 12 times higher than Japan.

I know many foreign-born U.S. citizens like me just don’t get the Second Amendment.  I could tolerate the right to bear arms — although I’d disagree with it — but I agree totally with Gail Collins. The right to bear semi-automatic weapons is ludicrous.

Don’t we value the lives of the people who lost their lives  in Arizona more than that?

Photo credit: CNN

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Today, the 55th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ historic stand against racism, is also the day when my sons started the school day by calling using the N-word.

Around 10 a.m., I got a call from the elementary school to say my twin eight year old sons had been heard calling another boy, an African American friend of theirs, the N word.

The principal and her assistant explained the history of the word to them, stressing that it is a word of hatred. When I spoke to them, they were crying and ashamed. So was I.

On some level, I know their mistake is innocent, one of ignorance and testing boundaries. They know it is bad without understanding why.

On another level, I feel sick with shame and fear. We’ve already had the discussion about the N word after one of them asked me about it a few weeks ago. It is not a word we use or a word we would ever condone.

rosa parks

When one of them used it in a conversation several weeks ago, I pounced on him. Screaming.

“Why are you using THAT word?” I asked hysterically.

Some kid at camp had used it.

I told him that it was a word of hatred, a word used by people who hated African Americans and how in the old days people had treated his friends … like the very boy involved today … as animals, as chattel, simply because they had different skin color. Update: Tonight, when I told them about the history of slavery, they nearly cried again. Asking me, “How can people be so mean?”

As a parent, I have been pleased to see how the boys don’t describe other people by their race or their religion. They simply say things like:  “Oh Jenny, she’s the one with the brown skin who wears the Nationals sweatshirt EVERY day.”

As the school said today,  it takes time to reinforce these ideas with kids. They need to hear the same lesson a few times to get the message. And as it turns out with my kids, they really don’t understand the broader implications, the history of a word … any word really.

But today I feel like it is going to take another 55 years to purge our lives of the insidious racism that still exists. I am asking myself: Why was some kid at camp using this word, who had he heard it from, did his parents use this word or had they heard it on radio or TV?

Today, Google is marking Rosa Parks’ historic act of courage with the “doodle” above. Parks refused to give up her seat so a white passenger could sit down. She  was arrested for violating racial segregation laws. Her arrest triggered boycotts lead by Martin Luther King, Jr. that lasted 381 days. You can read more at the Christian Science Monitor.

How would you handle this sort of behavior? Has your child ever used racially charged and highly offensive language like this?

Yours …

a failed and shamed parent

Julie Power

Update: One of my boys asked tonight: “What makes it so bad? We can say Tigger like in Winnie the Pooh and that rhymes.”

P.S. More Google doodles.

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Got a smelly coworker who just doesn’t get the hint when you suggest breath mints? Want to tell that loudmouth in the next cubicle to shut up about her personal life?

These days, revenge isn’t served cold but quickly and anonymously via email. If you want to send an anonymous message, try one of these six services, ranging from passive-aggressive, pseudo-helpful to downright rude enough to get your head beaten in if you said it in person.

I tried six, prompted by reader who asked for advice on how to tell a colleague who wore too much perfume.

“How do I tell my friend or my coworker that her (fill in the blanks) makes me sick?”

She's a devil in disguise

They were:

• AnnoyingCoWorker: My thinly-disguised message to a colleague (to say hi and not criticize) was thought funny. Another person was annoyed when I fessed up.  She’d deleted it immediately.
• NiceCritic.com: As the name implies, the site provides a range of pre-written messages that are so polite and trivial to be downright asinine. My favorite: “You may not realize it, but you tend to touch the monitor screen when you are pointing at something and it leaves a smudge.” Where I come from that’s a hanging offense. Smudging the computer! Oh dear. I wouldn’t want to tell someone that to their face. They could be carrying a gun or, let me think, some Windex.I sent one to a loud but lovely coworker, John Walston, telling him to pipe down, and got this message when I asked for his reaction: “If I piss you off, then have the guts to tell me yourself…. don’t send me some stupid anonymous message, you f..ing wimp. Stand up and be a man (or woman). So I’m loud…. buzz off…”
• ThePayback: This service, perfectly suited for the passive aggressive moaner who doesn’t dare to be honest, promotes itself as “revenge at its best.” It lets you choose between naughty and nice e-mails and letters. For $3, you can send someone who’s always later a “nice” e-mail with a  watch enclosure.” All the letters begin: “Someone who really cares about you wants you to know …”| Yes, they care so much they don’t want to be fingered or blamed for making the criticism. Or you can go the whole poison pen route and send something in the mail. At least, USPS will get some moola for your meanness.
• Venompen is not as nasty as it sounds or the green logo suggests. My test email to MomstoWork cofounder Joy Larkin arrived within seconds.
• Betterme is the pick of the sad and cowardly bunch. It tries to position itself as a tool for employees, or anyone for that matter, to give and receive feedback anonymously. It has some big name companies using it, like Citrix and Disney.
• CrazyCoworkers … by now I was running out of friends to annoy so I was happy to only stop by this site, a slimy place where you can “rant, complain, vent about your co-workers/bosses anonymously.”

Really think your advice is helpful to a friend or colleague? Say it,  or write a letter. Owning up or putting your name to something shows you care enough to put yourself at risk.Just need to rant and rave? Get a blog. I did.

Have you ever used one of these services? Do you think they have a place? Or do you think they’re slimy, lowdown, cowardly-custard tools of the weak and pathetic?

We asked Slate.com’s Dear Prudence: “Are Anonymous Email Services for  Cowards?”

Photo credit: I just love the photo above by Lisa Dragon on Flickr.com. Check out some of her other beautiful pics. Available under the Flickr Creative Commons License.

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This is a post about nothing much except blogging and my fat bum. That’s what we call our derrieres in Australia, where I come from.

I am sitting here again in my exercise clothes on my fat bum on my uncomfortable office chair without having cleaned my teeth, brushed my hair or done anything else other than work, write and tweet this morning.

I am the very model of a modern major cliche. The unkempt blogger.

It is now 10.15 a.m and I have missed the 8.30 a.m exercise class.

And so it goes. Most mornings. Really. I have the intention. I have the right exercise shoes. I have the ugly exercise pants. (They must be vinyl, they’ve lasted so long.) I have 40lbs of reasons.

Every morning the virtual world sucks me in. I go down, down, down, down into the fatty, BMI-increasing depths.

It is now 11 a.m.

Another class is over.

If I want to exercise, I have to stop reading posts like  Babble list of top 50 mom bloggers on Twitter (and have guilty, snarky, envious thoughts interspersed with awe and wonder …)

That prompted me to waste precious exercise time contemplating how I could become a more serious blogger,  like  PHdinParenting’s  “Babble’s Whitelist of Twitter Moms: Where’s the Diversity?”  or MamaBee ‘s post on sexism directed at moms.

Maybe I could be funnier.  MotherhoodNYC’s  post on being Internetless made me choke on my coffee.

My bloom, watered

Or I could be more useful. I got distracted by Pioneer Woman, and her 10 Important Things I’ve Learned About Blogging, which urged:

“Blog often: Whether you write a sixteen-paragraph essay about the cosmic implications of a free market system, a one-paragraph description of what happens to your soul when you walk into your godforsaken laundry room, or a simple photo and caption, consider your blog a precious bloom that requires daily nurturing.”

Okay, bloom, consider yourself watered.

Maybe I should aim to be a skinnier blogger. On that note, it is not too late to try the lunchtime class.

Bye.

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Happy Labor Day. Hope you enjoy this newish music video of “Rosie The Riveter” by The Four Vagabonds, with subtitles.

Virginia Miola, crane operator at Watertown Arsenal in Water Town, MA

How can you explain Labor Day to your kids? Try The Washington Post’s The Answer Sheet here.

For more info: Rosie the Riveter: Women Working During the Second World War. Photo from NPS.

Background: Why do we get Labor Day off? Slate’s Brendan Koerner explains.

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They'll be such a hit at the playgroup

Our children are special, to us, but this is going too far.

We can now buy designer Huggies or Pampers’ diapers, including some by designer Cynthia Rowley,  but you’ll be paying 60% more for the cute factor.

Your baby as a fashion accessory?

Diapers or nappies are nothing more than a parcel of poop, a pouch full of piss or a very heavy anchor restraining an energetic toddler from breaking out of home.

One of the loveliest things about babies is their complete disregard for convention:  their delight in the wrapping rather than the parcel, the dirt rather than the flower or the dog’s dinner rather than the carefully prepared and pureed organic vegetables steamed in a beautiful Le Creuset pan.

Babies are perfect as they are.  Old-fashioned white, cloth diapers make us look at the beautiful round baby and not what’s inside the package.

Cynthia Rowley says about her designer Pampers diapers for Target:

“As a mom, I wanted other moms and dads to have more options in every part of their lives — even diapers. It’s the first piece of clothing your baby will ever wear, and it should be special.”

Yes, it’s special because it is an effective way to move poop from a bottom to the toilet.

Cynthia, your baby is special. The diaper isn’t.

My friend Dr. Julie Donovan,  says this is turning babies into a fashion accessory, a bit like Paris Hilton carrying a little chihuahua in a plaid Burberry coat. OOOOHHHHH so cute!!!!!! puke.

And then we started talking about why babies wear white nappies, about how kids in China have slits or zips in their pants, and learn how and where to go very early, and how babies in Africa just do it on their mommy’s knee — and then the mom cleans it up with an old corn husk.

Would you pay more for cute diapers? Do you use cloth diapers? Is your baby your best fashion accessory?

Read more about this trend to turn diapers into a fashion accessory in The Born Identity by  Rob Walker of The New York Times.

Click: Target to see how the prices for Rowley Pamper diapers are  much higher on a per unit basis.



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