Mendolonium

When you are the parent of a preschooler your weekend social scene revolves around birthday parties.  Perhaps I am hopelessly lame, but I am starting to rather enjoy many of the parties:  someone else provides entertainment for my children for a couple of hours, I get to eat food I did not have to make nor clean up after, and there’s always cake.  We attended one of the more enjoyable parties this past Sunday morning.  It was held outside in a shady, quiet park.  The kids ran around with their friends and I actually found the time to chat with other parents.  The hosts provided brunch, cake, crafts, and a pinata that they had thoughtfully filled with organic treats and goodies such as art supplies and accessories.  After the post-pinata melee Thomas presented me with his bag of loot and as I perused it I sighed; not because it was filled with unhealthy hyperactive-inducing treats (it wasn’t) but because every single non-food item was clearly branded with either a “Spiderman” logo or a “Disney Princess”.  There were rubber Spiderman bracelets and erasers, a heart shaped locket filled with lipstick and emblazoned with Rapunzel, and packages of crayons either boxed and wrapped in red and blue with Spiderman or boxed and wrapped in pink and purple with princesses.  I wondered whether Thomas had noticed the overt gender stereotyping of the goodies – perhaps not.  He had, after all, picked up an equal number of “boy” and “girl” items.   He stuffed his haul into my bag and ignored it until we got home.

Once at home he quickly remembered and began to sort through his treasure.  “Oooo fruit snacks!”  “Oh a necklace…can you put it on me…wait (as he turned it over and saw the smiling face of a princess)…never mind.   Here Mama, you can have it.  It’s for you”  “What are these…crayons?  Oh I thought they were something to eat.  Well, I’ll take these [the Spiderman crayons] and I’ll give these two packs to Theo [the princess crayons].”  I couldn’t help but ask Thomas, “Why don’t you want those [the princess] crayons?”  His answer was direct, “Because, you know, princesses are for girls and Theo doesn’t care yet.”

Thomas has never seen a “princess movie” nor has he seen “Spiderman”.  But he goes to school three days a week, he plays with neighborhood kids, and he is quite observant.  I wasn’t suprised that he had absorbed the pervasive “princesses are for girls” and “superheros are for boys” messages of our cultuure.  And as much as I want to, at times, keep my kids in a bubble free from cultural influences; to do so is neither practical nor truly desireable.  It would be an awfully lonely bubble for all of us and eventually they would inevitably break free regardless.  Instead I am attempting to choose a middle path.  I rather viigallantly control what the boys see in our own home:  no cable TV, very limited viewing (an average of 30 minutes per day) of a pre-approved PBS show or a DVD, no toys that are weapons (they do make some out of Legos, etc. which I have made my peace with), no princess/diva/superhero/action figure toys, books, or movies, no clothes that have gender steroytyped sayings on them (“Daddy’s Little All Star”, “Shopper in Training”), and the boys go to a very gender cooperative/neutral school (they’ve even got two male preschool teachers there which is all kinds of awesome).  And when they are exposed to something like gender packaged crayons I start asking questions.  And so I inquired to Thomas, “Why do they have different packages of crayons for girls and boys?  Are girl and boy crayons different?  Do you know both girls and boys who like art?”  As much as I was annoyed by the stupid crayons by that point, it was gratifying to see Thomas work through the answers to my questions, “I don’t know.  Why are they different?  That doesn’t make any sense.  Art is for boys and for girls.  I don’t think all girls like princesses.”

While we’ve talked about anatomy and gender with both boys time and time again (it turns out that when you are a little boy the concept that not everyone has a penis is quite mind-blowing) we’ve had mercifully little interaction with gender stereotypes.  It seems that we’re just on the cusp of a big change in awareness of gender and culture in general.  I think its going to be a difficult road to walk – at some point at least one, if not all, of my kids are going to test me.  Thomas is going to denounce the pink shirt in his closet, Theo will tell me that there is something that girls “can’t” do, and/or baby girl will tell me that she wants to look “hot”.  In the end the crayons were quickly forgotten for other pursuits.  I hope that some of the questions will be remembered though.  I can’t stop our consumer-driven culture from penetrating our lives but I will keep asking questions, teaching our children to challenge what they see and hear.   Because, damn it, crayons should not have a gender attached to them.  Let’s just let a crayon be a crayon.

Last week we gathered our paperwork and headed to Thomas’ new school to officially enroll him for kindergarten.   In between filling out our address at least a dozen times and asking basic questions such as if there was a kindergarten orientation (“Yes!  The day before school starts.”) an old issue reared its ugly Medusa-like head:  Food allergies.

We’ve relaxed considerably about food allergies in our home over the past two years.  Thomas is now old enough to understand his allergies and is quite reasonable about the restrictions that they impose.  Even better, Thomas is no longer allergic to eggs, garlic, and pepper – three ubiquitous foods that we all sorely missed having in the house.  But the fact the remains that Thomas is still allergic to soy, peanuts, and sesame.  And because having children with the same food allergies would make life just too easy, Theo is allergic to onions and cashews.

Thomas’ allergy to sesame is anaphylactic and thus, requires an epi-pen.  During the enrollment process I casually asked, “I am sure you see this all the time, but how do you deal with food allergies?”  Given that the prevalence of childhood food allergies in our society is rampant, the answer I got was shocking to me in its ignorance.  The office staff cheerily explained to me that we could meet with the school nurse to go over the specific food allergies and an action plan and that school staff were trained in using an epi-pen.  Sensible and reassuring.  The office staff then went on to tell me that at the beginning of the year each classroom teacher would send a letter home to each student listing the food allergies in the classroom to inform the other parents of what foods were not safe for classroom treats or lunches.  I started to get nervous.  I immediately wondered, how could other parents – most with no experience of food allergies, half of whom do not reside in homes where English is the primary language, be expected to read labels the way that we do?  How many parents know that hummus, a favorite lunch item, is chock full of sesame seeds?  How many parents know that soy resides in nearly every processed food item in this country?  Even our own parents and close friends, who are well aware of the risks, have made mistakes from time to time.  It unfair and unrealistic to expect other parents to carry our burden.   And with multiple food allergic children in the same class does the collective diet of the class become so restrictive that parents are left sending their children to school with lunches of rice and potatoes?  The very notion was ridiculous and dangerous.  I told the office staff as much and they then offered that if I was really concerned, there was a special table in the cafeteria for food allergic kids.  It was then that I began to get upset.   A “special” table simply because my son, though no fault of his own, cannot eat some common foods.  He doesn’t need to sit at a special table full of kids with food allergies.  Every day, at his current school, he eats next to children who bring items in their lunches that he is allergic to and in over two years at school he has never had an incident.  Why?  Because his school has a strict no-sharing policy.  Students eat only what their parents provide them.  Period.  Snacks and treats are baked on site at the school and the school is responsible for every ingredient in the provided food.

The solution for elementary schools is similarly simple.  If outside snacks or treats are allowed parents should be able to state that they do not want their child receiving food that they [the parents] did not provide and should be allowed to provide an alternative.  Most importantly, while I am sure it would be met with protests of “not enough money in the budget to pay for adequate lunchtime supervision” the school should implement a strict no-sharing policy for all students.  Food allergies or not, I actually think that most parents want to know what their kids are eating at school and would be happy to know that their children are eating what they [the parents] provided or paid for (in the case of hot lunch).  While implementation may indeed require extra supervision at first, such a policy would quickly become routine if implemented from kindergarten on and if penalties for infraction (maybe the offending students could go sit by themselves at a “special” table) were adequately persuasive.

Clearly it is my job as a parent of a food allergic child to prepare him for the real world.  Thomas already knows not to eat food at a party or play date without checking the ingredients first.  He is as scared of his reaction to the forbidden foods as I am.  It does not do him any good to pretend to eliminate the his forbidden foods in the world around him – he needs to learn how to manage his allergies.  But his school must help him in his quest.  I worry that Thomas, taught not to share food by me, will be tempted by another student’s offer to share a cookie at lunchtime, or will one day encounter a birthday treat brought in by a parent at school, or will be offered a cracker used by a teacher as a reward.  He might protest the food, but the adult will reassure him, “We know about your allergies – this is safe.”  But that adult will be mistaken.  They won’t have thought to check for soy in a cookie.  They won’t have thought to look for sesame seeds as an ingredient on that box of crackers.  And Thomas, not even five years old when he eterns kindergarten, will experience an understandable lack in judgement and eat the proffered food.  Such mistakes are, of course, what the epi-pen is for, but every effort must be made by the school to ensure that that scenario never happens.

Life-threatening food allergies are a particularly frustrating problem for parents to deal with.  Food allergies are misunderstood, downplayed, written off as hysterical parenting.  But I have seen my childrens’ skin explode, in a matter of seconds, into red angry hives.  I have seen my son struggle for air mere minutes after a skin exposure to one of his allergens.  I have held my child in my arms as he projectile vomited over and over again utnil his stomach was empty of the offending food.  Food allergies are a serious medical problem and deserve the same intelligent response as any other medical condition a child might have.   I think my sons are the most special boys in the world, but they should never have to be excluded from other kids, forced to sit at a “special” table, just to keep them safe.

I have a confession to make…

Like most of us, I enjoy a nice hot shower in the morning.  To tell the truth, enjoy isn’t a nearly a strong enough word – I revel in the nearly scalding water on a chilly morning, I love the way I am enveloped in cloud of steam, I relax as I can hear nothing but the sound of the water cascading down around me.  When I am home with the kids by myself, the shower is a quick, perfunctory affair – merely a means of getting clean and ready for the day.  But when Jeff is home in the mornings I take long, luxurious showers – peaceful with the knowledge for that for a few blissful minutes no one will bother me.   Unfortunately, my moment of zen is often rudely interrupted mere seconds after I turn off the water.  I hear the exuberant thud, thud, thud of tiny feet on the wood floor followed by a bang as a little person throws himself against the door and begins to pathetically moan, “Mama…”  I stand there dripping wet, sigh, and then quickly dress.  By the time I am brushing my hair and putting on make-up my number one fan at the door has reached a frenzy.  You would think we had been apart for 20 days, rather than 20 minutes.  Reluctantly I open the door and I then try to juggle putting in contacts and a toddler attempting to figure out if mascara is edible.  Jeff is home, but the boy wants nothing to do with him – the Mama is available now and only she will do.

For me, having children has been wonderful.  Being with them has gives me more happiness than I knew was possible.  But…for me, having children has also given me a taste of celebrity status and the stalkers to go with it.  The boys follow me around, hanging (quite often literally) on my every move.  If they had cameras I have a feeling they would be flashing at me all day long – like tiny paparazzi on the hunt.  They lie in wait for me wherever they think I might turn up:   pouncing on my bed in the morning; blocking the front door when I return home from work; outside the bathroom door while I ready.

Which brings us back to the shower.  You see, Theodore has figured out that while he hears the water running Mama is unavailable, but the moment he hears the water stop he takes it as an invitation to rejoin his long-lost Mama.  So in the interest of taking the time to properly dry myself off and choose a hairstyle other than a ponytail I have taken to stepping out of the shower and allowing the water to continue to run.  That’s right:  I, the committed environmentalist; the woman who uses cloth toilet paper for crying out loud, the woman who exhorts all of you to live sustainably, the woman who lives in a water stressed area allows perfectly good water to run down the drain just so I can get a little break.  And yes, I feel some well-placed guilt; to save energy I even turn the water all the way to cold (I don’t think Theodore’s superhero-like hearing can detect the difference the sound the water makes at different temperatures.)  But I can’t, in good conscience, continue any longer.  So this morning marked my last “extended” shower – ever.  I write about it here to keep myself honest.  From now on I’ll get ready with Theodore at my side – perhaps I can convince him to sweep the bathroom while he in there or maybe I’ll teach him the art of applying blush?

What are your most egregious environmental sins?  And is anybody willing to pledge with me to end them?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

We are officially changing our baby’s name to Theodore…

My last pregnancy was a difficult one; filled with a pervasive never-ending “morning” sickness, punctuated by anomalous test results.  When our baby boy was born unexpectedly and unnaturally a few weeks early I was at a loss as to what to name him.  Feeling as if I owed him a proper name at the very least we settled, somewhat uneasily, on the name Henry, the name we had most often discussed during my pregnancy.

What most people don’t know is that for a time, when he was a day or two old, we called him Theodore.  The idea of Theodore as a name was a relatively late addition to our pregnancy discussions and I was unsure about choosing a name for our baby that I thought I had not mulled over sufficiently.  I also didn’t want to be one of those families who named their children with names all beginning with the same initial.  Never mind that there was no rule that if I named our second child Theodore, that the third child would then be required to have a name beginning with T as well.  So Theodore was out and Henry was in.  And although his name read Henry William on his birth certificate, at night I sang Theodore to sleep and every so often I used the name Theodore in the light of day.

When I was pregnant with our baby I worried that I didn’t know him as well as I knew his brother.  This second child was more of an enigma; he moved less in utero, more deliberately, less frantically than his brother had.  I was distracted by the demands of caring for a toddler.   I longed to make a deeper connection to him and I hoped that it would come naturally after his birth.  About two hours after he was born, I rested in my hospital bed, the baby swaddled beside me, Jeff sleeping in a chair.  The baby began to fuss.  I tried nursing…pretty much my one infant calming trick.  No, he wasn’t interested.  “Now what?”, I thought considering waking Jeff, the baby soothing master.  I hadn’t slept properly in thirty-six hours and I was  suddenly overcome by a wave of exhaustion and a slight edge of panic.  What did he need?  I am his mother, I should know how to help him.   And then a thought came to my mind, “Pick him up and hold him up against your chest.  Rub his back.  He will like that.”  I did so and he instantly calmed down and contentedly fell asleep.  It was like magic; completely out of the blue…I had never held Thomas like that, to this day Thomas is not particularly fond of being touched much less massaged.  But somehow, somewhat inexplicably,  I knew this new little baby, I knew that he would like being held just like that.  I leaned back with my perfect new baby against me, the morning sunlight streaming through the window onto us and I thought, “I know you…”.

I did know him and I should have trusted my instincts about him and his name.  He is not Henry.  He is Theodore and he knows it.  And when I call him Theodore he comes to me smiling.