Parental Misguidance

Last Saturday night, my 10-year-old Gabby went to a friend’s house for a sleepover. At about 8 pm, I saw an incoming call from the friend’s mother. Uh oh. Is it the puke virus? The flu?

   

“Hey,” the mom asked me, who happens to also be a friend of mine, “the girls want to watch ‘Pitch Perfect.’ The preview doesn’t really look that appropriate, but Gabby said she’s seen it already, so I figure you’ve seen it and that it’s totally fine.”

“Um. Well, yeah,” I started stuttering, “yes, Gabby has seen it, but I actually haven’t.” I didn’t tell her that I didn’t even watch the preview, and that I had just let her watch it since another friend told me she had allowed her kids to see it. I also didn’t tell her that not only had Gabby seen it, but so had Gabby’s younger sisters, ages 8, 7 and 4. The twins have not seen it yet. 

 

The fact is I was busted. Outed as a mom who clearly does not carefully preview the movies and TV selections that her children watch.

I used to be better. When Gabby was 3, even 4, she was watching all the typical preschool programming—“the Wiggles” (are they around still?), “Dora,” “Blue’s Clues,” “Barney,” you name it. Six years later, my now four-year-old Lily would laugh at those shows and say they’re “for babies.” Actually she’d say they’re “faw babies.” She prefers shows like “H2O,” “iCarly,” “Ant Farm,” and even some reality TV programming like “Dance Moms” and “Cake Boss.”

This is what happens between child number 1 and child number 4. We become more lax as parents, and our younger children get exposed sooner to the things we never would have shown our first.  It’s always funny when Lily, our four year old, has a playdate with a child who is an oldest and asks her friend if he or she would like to watch “Victorious” or “True Jackson VP”.  On a recent playdate, I tried to convince Lily and her friend to watch the “Smurfs” movie, but Lily looked at me in shock and said, “hey, this doesn’t have real people.” It’s been two years since she’s seen animation. Even my twins seem to have quickly outgrown Baby Einstein, and are already obsessed with “Yo Gabba Gabba” and “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.” Yes, they’re very advanced.

Obviously, these changes are my fault, or my husband’s fault. Truth is, I could argue he is more to blame, because he seems to enjoy these shows as much as my girls do. Sunday mornings when all my kids sit around in a TV coma, he is sitting right there with them, holding Barron’s but not actually reading it, laughing at Gibby in “iCarly,” or as entranced in an episode of “Good Luck Charlie” “Austin and Ally” or “Big Time Rush” as my kids are. You know the trance—no one seems to hear anything I’m saying and I have to repeat my questions or commands five times before anyone actually responds.

The fact is with TV shows my husband and I tend to scan an episode or two before allowing our kids to watch. And there are a few we have put on an off-limits list. Shows like “Homeland” and “Californication.” No, seriously, we don’t let them watch “House of Anubis” either. I’m sure there are others, I just can’t think of them right now.    

But movies are harder to monitor for some reason. When I was a child and my parents went out on a Saturday night, a movie was something we had to go to a video store to rent. Today, movies are a click away. Between DVR, Netflix, Apple TV, my children are constantly “searching” for movies, spending hours scanning the selections as if they might uncover some unknown masterpiece of tween cinema. 

And the truth is, it’s hard to know what is appropriate or not. I had encouraged them to watch the movie “Big” but my seven year old told me the next day it really wasn’t appropriate for them. You know you’re doing a great job when your child has to tell you that the movie you selected really wasn’t appropriate for young children. I said, “What do you mean? ‘Big’ is the kind of movie you should be watching.” And then they replayed for me a scene I had forgotten about when Tom Hanks discovers or should I say uncovers the bra of his co-star during a slow dance.

“Don’t worry mom,” my seven-year-old Sophie reassured me. “We covered Lily’s eyes.”

I had a similar experience with the movie “Overboard”—a movie I had loved as a child. I bought it for my kids for a long car trip we had last year, and, you know how it is in the car, our kids are watching what we in the front seats can only hear. Well, I heard one character asking his wife “why she’s not in the mood tonight? Does she have her period?”—“What’s a period mom?” Sophie asked. I heard another character discussing a young boy who likes to look at pornographic magazines in the bathroom. And another scene where a pair of women’s lace underwear are found in the dashboard of a car. That was a good parenting moment.

And one last bust—and perhaps the biggest in recent memory-- was “Look Who’s Talking.” Again, I remembered it as a cute kids movie. In fact, we decided to all watch it together for a family movie night. From the very first scene—which clearly I had forgotten about—when we watch a pool of sperm swim towards and penetrate an egg, Rob and I spent the majority of the movie answering a lot of questions. “What are those fish?” What are they trying to squeeze into?” “Hey I thought you had to be married to have a baby”? and “How can you be married to one person but have a baby with another person?”

All Rob said to me was, “thank God you were the one who suggested that movie. If I had suggested it, you would not be speaking to me right now.” Correct.

Thankfully there are some helpful tips and websites for parents like me—sites like Commonsensemedia.org for those parents without any real common sense for these things. And in fact it came in handy for me a few months ago when one of my daughters coerced me into the most dreaded parenting event of all time, the “sleepover party,” and where in what seemed like a cute idea she wished to watch the move “Sleepover.” (If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry. It was not nominated for any Oscars.) I had said no to the movie “Sleepover” a few times because I really didn’t know anything about it—see, I told you there was a time I was better, maybe, come to think of it, it was right before I had children 5 and 6. And then the begging started. The whining that “So and so has seen it, and this one’s seen it, and this one saw it at this one’s house,” you know the drill. Your child convinces you that every other kid in the world has seen it, and you are the one, and only one outlying villainous mother. What can I say? I caved. I said fine. That, and it was rated PG, so I figured how bad could it be?

Luckily I spoke to my sister that night moments before I was about to begin the movie, and she told me about commonsensemedia.org. Here’s what I read, as a roomful of girls sat in the dark, munching on popcorn and waiting for me to press play.

Parents need to know that this movie is filled with the kind of parental concerns that aren't factored into the MPAA's rating system. The main characters -- young teenage girls -- sneak out of the house after promising not to. They make a date with a man they met on the Internet with the plan of getting him to buy one of them a drink. They then sneak into a club and drink alcohol. One girl secretly watches a boy undress (from the rear, nudity off screen). They vandalize property, imprison a security guard, drive without licenses, make an overweight girl feel bad about herself. Many characters lie, including adults. One of the girls loses a boyfriend by refusing to "hook up" with him but apparently brags to her friends that she did. There is also some bathroom humor and intrusive product placement.

Sounds perfect for an 8 year old. (Don’t worry, I didn’t show it. I had to bribe the hell out of my daughter afterwards, but I did hold my ground. )

The website also gives parents a scale for measuring “positive messages” “positive role models” sexual content, violence, drug abuse, bad language and consumerism. “Sleepover” scored a 0 for positive messages and positive role models, but racked up three stars for sex and drugs and alcohol.

I know that access to media is at my children’s fingertips, and that every day, some new show, or movie, or app, or digital form of communication is popping up. There’s no question, as parents it is hard to stay on top of it all, hard to know what is ok, what is a little advanced but essentially harmless, what is completely out of whack.

The good news is, according to commensensemedia.org, “Pitch Perfect” scores four points (out of 5) for positive messages and three for positive role models. See, I knew what I was doing when I let 4-year-old Lily watch it, even though it’s rated PG-13, and she now runs around calling everyone “Fat Amy.” 

Six in the Sky

It had been a few years since I’d traveled with a diaper bag. Since I’d packed up the bottles, the diapers, the burp cloths, the multiple changes of clothes and layering pieces, the thermometer, infant Tylenol, Motrin and Benadryl, the topical ointments like A and D, Desitin, Neosporin, Cortisone, Lotrimin, Vaseline and Aquaphor, the Purell and antibacterial wipes, the extra Ziplocs and garbage bags in case someone gets sick, and a bag full of teething toys to entertain a seatless child for a flight. Or in this case, two seatless children.

 

Yes, we decided to brave it this winter vacation and fly our flock of six south where many oversized Jewish families go to escape the cold—Miami.

I knew we’d get some looks in the airport. We looked like the Von Trapp family singers as we pulled up in a commercial size van—you know, the ones where the seatbelts descend from the car walls, not the seats—and child after child after child stepped out. Once inside the airport, I’ve never heard the number 6 said in so many different languages. Everywhere we went, the double snap n’ go (my stroller of choice so I’d have car seats to and from the airports as well as makeshift bouncy seats for the hotel) flagged by two girls on one side and two on the other, jaws dropped, and passerby travelers were whispering and trying to count us—

“Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq,” a French woman observed.

“Cinq? No six,” her companion corrected her.

Or “Cinco ninos?” I heard someone ask his wife.

“No, hay seis.”

“Seis? Dios Mio.” (translation: OMG)

The good part, though, is that when you are traveling with two or more infants on your lap you are actually considered “special services” for check in purposes. I didn’t even know there was such a counter. Who needs First Class when you are “special services”—in fact our line was even shorter than theirs. And once we, and our luggage, were checked in (I did a good consolidation job, only six checked bags, and only three were overweight), a special guard came to escort us through security. Like the Red Sea, the holiday season crowds just parted to let us through. And no one dared to confiscate my flouridated Poland Spring bottles. “For the babies,” I just said, and no one said boo. I really did feel “special.”

Mothers who were huffing and puffing at their husbands at security while trying to fold a single umbrella stroller, hoist it onto the conveyor belt, and carry one toddler through the scanner stopped in their tracks and started breathing more calmly again, as they watched us getting our crew through. “Thank God that’s not me” is what they seemed to say, watching my husband struggle to collapse the double snap n’ go, while I put two car seats on the conveyor belt, and my older two girls each carried a twin through the scanner.

The plane ride itself was interesting because unfortunately we were not able to get six seats together. Apparently, to reserve six seats together we would have had to book it before the twins were even conceived. Oh well. Instead, we were three and three, and 15 rows apart.

I took the older two girls—my 10 year old and 8 year old—and the harder twin (the boy obviously). My husband took the easier twin but the younger girls. Oh, and he got bulkhead—a huge advantage for anyone with a baby on their lap. In the end, though, I really had the winning horse. My son slept on me most of the time, and my older girls were reading and playing Subway Surfer on ipods the whole time. They didn’t need me at all. My husband did ok, until Lily, my four year old, had to go the bathroom and he had nowhere to put the baby, who was now screaming, and decided to give her to our 7 year old. Seeing a 7 year old standing in the aisle trying to rock a baby who is about to squirm out of her arms, without any adult in her vicinity, is actually a little frightening and passengers were all looking at each other, shaking their heads, and raising their hands as if to ask “where are these baby’s parents?” A steward ended up coming over and taking the baby for a few minutes until my husband returned. Remember, I was watching all of this from 15 rows back, powerless because I already had a baby in my arms. I tried not to make eye contact with my 7 year old and just shook my head and pretended to be another disapproving passenger.

Traveling with kids—any number of kids—is not easy. It’s a trip, not a vacation. From taking the young ones to the bathroom 10 times a day, covering the seats with an environmentally offensive amount of toilet paper and watching the child still manage to rub her bare bottom or her leggings on the seat, to it always ending up being a number 2 on the plane or at a restaurant, to changing a baby’s diaper in the claustrophobic airplane bathroom and trying to tell a five month old not to touch anything, to packing and unpacking, to always having at least one child who gets sick during the vacation, to the children who don’t sleep well on vacations—in this case my son who woke up every morning of the trip at 4:30 am and screamed until 6:30--it’s always surprising family trips ever happen. But the kids have a blast, or at least that’s the way we parents justify the expense and the shlep. We do it for our kids. And the truth is my older kids did have a great time, and it was nice to take the babies out of snowsuits and let them be wheeled around barefoot a little.  They’re at that stage of eating their feet, so it’s much more efficient for them to be sockless.  

Still it’s always nice to come home. My neurotic son is at peace again and sleeping soundly (apparently he has travel anxiety; could he please man up????), everyone is back at school, and the biggest relief for me, no more public bathrooms—I know, I’m a little bit of a germy. The best part is my husband and I are starting to think about a short trip without kids (thanks to offers from grandparents who don’t know what they’re in for). It will be our first time leaving our six in the city, and though I know I will miss them, or at least I think I’ll miss them, I am counting down the days till I board a plane with no diaper bag, no bottles, no Sophie the suckable giraffe, no A and D, and no Benadryl. Just a small handbag, big enough for my photo id, my sunglasses, and a good book (without pictures).

OK, and a small Purell.

The Hunger Games

It’s been a little while I know.  Maybe having six kids is finally getting to me. Truth be told, I was about to post something right before Hurricane Sandy hit complaining about dieting and weight loss, about how hungry I am, and how skinny everyone is in this city, and how no one actually eats. “The Hunger Games”—cute, right?

But then in some ways—not to sound too dramatic-- the world changed.  A major disaster hit, and I did what everyone does at a moment like that, I remembered what’s really important. Health, my family, safety, survival. How could I think about something as trivial as weight loss and body image when people were without homes, power, and clean water?

And yet, as always happens with these national or international disasters, before we know it, we pick up right where we left off—worrying about all those things that we had just sworn off as completely frivolous.  This is how life works. And so, I am back to where I was wondering how everyone around me can possibly be so thin and what I need to do to look like that too.

The truth is, many New Yorkers found their exercise routines and eating regiments really thrown off by the hurricane. I mean, even Soul Cycle was closed for a half day, and many friends of mine told me they put on a few pounds during Sandy—nervously eating and munching on all the carb-heavy non-perishables they haven’t indulged in since college.

But that alternative universe we were in is over—at least in these parts. Thank God everyone is back on non-eating, heavy exercising, looking perfect track. I’ve been doing the South Beach diet, a diet that is a blast from the past, and might be laughed at by today’s Dukanites and those who swear by private practice nutritionists, but worked for me the four previous times I’ve had to lose baby weight. Although lately I’ve been f’ing it up a little—you know, adding some pieces of the F factor diet to it because there’s only so many days I can go with only eggs for breakfast; I need cereal, even if it’s Fiber 1.    

Anyway, here I am working on my own weight loss program and thinking I will now be a party pooper, the one who’s on a diet, the one who’s not really drinking, the one who does not even pretend to eat dessert, not even a “sliver,” the one who shoos away the busboy with the bread basket in horror, the one who’s doing sashimi only, quinoa no rice, light meat chicken no skin, turkey burgers without buns, lots of green tea, you know the type. But for better or worse, I am not the party pooper, I am actually not standing out at all in my food restrictions, I am fitting right in—I’m just not fitting into what anyone’s wearing.

Stay focused, no carbs. . .no fries. . .no sugar

When did everyone stop eating? When did everyone discover spicy tuna hand rolls without rice? It wasn’t always like this.  When I turned 30, my husband threw me a surprise party at Bowlmore Lanes and he ordered food from Dougie’s, kind of like a kosher version of KFC—wings, poppers, French fries, one of those places where everything more or less tastes the same. And everyone seemed to eat it. But those days are long gone. We wouldn’t make a dent in a spread like that today. In fact, people in my circle might actually be offended by it. Something has changed dramatically in those 6 years—I guess it’s age, which is depressing. As we get older, waistlines are examined more closely because they are tougher to maintain, cholesterol levels are watched, sugar levels, blood pressure, and the like. Men, women, makes no difference. Eating is out.

You know things are bad when friends of mine want to come over and catch the stomach virus that has spread through my house this week. Though, I must admit, it’s a good one, 24 hours, quick and to the point—I lost three pounds from it.

It’s sad what’s happened in these six years. I recently went to my 30 year old cousins’ karaoke party and the food spread included candy and pizzas. No, it wasn’t a typo, pizza. There was no crudité in sight. It was actually disorienting to see young adults eating pizza. In my age cohort, no one eats pizza. At children’s birthday parties, when the host walks around offering leftover slices to the chaperoning adults, it is social suicide to take it. You even get funny looks from the kids.

And this is a part of the food story—what are our children thinking about all of our dieting and exercising?

In school last year for my first grader’s mother’s day program, they played a cute game testing how well the children know their mothers. Each child asked his or her mother a question, the mother answered, and then the child read what they had predicted the mother would say. Kind of like the Newlywed Game but for mothers and children. “What is your favorite food?” every mother was asked and nearly every mother responded with something like “pizza” “ice cream” French fries,” or some other food they might have eaten recently--in a dream that is. The children looked confused by the answers, and when it came time for the child to read what they thought their mother would say, one child after another said “salad.”  Except for one boy who thought his mother’s favorite food was falafel. Yikes.

It’s a tough place the Upper East Side. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but those of us who live here have to admit, it’s hard not to care, and hard not to compare. There’s a bit of a playbook here—you’ve got to be thin, you’ve got to spin, you’ve got to have your hair perfectly blown, it’s not easy.

Just Sunday, I was jogging in the park, as a light rain was falling, and two young women were jogging alongside me. “I’ve got to stop,” one of them said, ”and tuck my hair inside my hood, I don’t want to have to wash my hair.” And in a hair salon this past Friday, one woman booked an appointment for 2 pm every day that week. “What can I do?” she asked with a giggle. “I’ve gotta exercise.”

Indeed it’s hard to juggle it all.

Truth is, I had my own dilemma this week. It was my 4 year-old’s Chanukah-themed mother’s visiting day in school. And in a true Upper East Side moment, she—my four year old-- asked me if I was going to have my hair blown for the big day. I had actually been thinking about whether I could sneak in a run at 8 am and arrive in time for the 9 am start of the program. What to do? Exercise or hair? And so I set my alarm for 6 am so I could run before any of my six kids were awake, and at 8 am I would have time to blow my hair. Myself by the way.  

“You’re going to be the fanciest mom there,” my seven year old said to me on her way out to school,” as she saw me in a non-sweat pants, non-ponytail get-up.

Yeah, right. That’s a good one.

The Curse of the Nurse

I’m sure you didn’t really think I was managing my six kids without a baby nurse. I mean come on--I’m human. And I live in the city where for almost every new mother a baby nurse is a duh. Although, when I first found out I was pregnant I decided I wouldn’t need a nurse this time around. I figured I have a good babysitter who would surely be able to help me with the baby and my other four girls are in school all day. Piece of cake.

But that was when I thought I was having one baby. With the news that two were on the way, the circumstances changed. “You must get a baby nurse,” everyone said to me in panic. You see I had to be convinced because I never really was a baby nurse person. I’m a little bit of a control freak, especially with training a baby to sleep, and since as I told you before I was always a breastfeeder, determined to nurse through the night and not skip any feeds, there really was never a compelling reason to have a nurse for very long. If you don’t use them at night, what’s the point? 

I also had never really had much luck with baby nurses. For Gabby, I had a nurse who was very sweet, weighed over 300 pounds, and had a bad hip that rendered her borderline immobile. She went back to sleep in the morning till about noon, snoring like a rhino on the living room couch (we had a one bedroom then), and liked to eat dinner with me and Rob every night. Still, she introduced me to the Johnson and Johnson lavender scented bedtime bath, my favorite baby smell in the world, and for that I’ll always be thankful. After eight days I told her I thought I was ok on my own, and we parted quite amicably. She even took the recipe for my mother’s cholent as well as the Kosher Palette cookbook, whose dishes she had loved so much during her time with us.

My next baby nurse never showed and sent another 300 pound, gold-toothed replacement instead. My third baby nurse I caught smoking in the bathroom. And my fourth baby nurse, I really liked but had a job two weeks after me, and so there was no opportunity to extend her stay.

Still, I knew twins were a different story, and anyone I knew who had twins had used a baby nurse, often for very long periods of time and so I decided I should not try to be a hero.  I found someone who said she “loved doing twins,” told me she’s “very easy,” “happy to eat anything” I have in the house, and I booked her for three months.

What an interesting three months it has been. And by interesting I mean maddening. Nearly every day I cried to my husband about something she was doing or not doing. She made no attempt to get the babies on any schedule. Any time they woke up, she immediately rocked them back to sleep, shouting at them to “shush, shush shush.” And when they were sleeping she woke them to eat. (My twins were not preemies who needed to be wakened.) She’d lower the shades to begin their “night” at 5:30 pm. From her very first night in the house, she insisted both babies needed a “top off”—and remember I was the dairy queen. Nearly every night that I walked into her room—their room—one or both babies was sleeping on a boppy pillow on her bed, while even in the darkness I could see the words printed in bold letters “No Para Dormir” (not for sleeping). Most nights when she brought one or more into my room to breastfeed, I was handed a baby with wet clothes. “I think he’s wet,” I told her. “It’s just sweat,” she told me. Sweat? That’s a first, a newborn sweating in my 67-degree air-conditioned house. When I asked her when she would expect my babies to start sleeping through the night—my other kids slept 12 hour-nights by two or three months--she responded with a philosophical question, “does anyone really sleep through the night? Even adults get up to get some water or go to the bathroom.”

And as for being easy? Yes I suppose she was, so long as we loaned her our ipad, made sure she had full selection of cable channels on her TV, gave her small advances of pay, and didn’t ask her to go for any walks. (Though from the Caribbean, she did not like the sun.). And as for eating anything? Yes, I suppose she did that too—so long as it was freshly sliced nova, baked salmon salad, baby lamp chops, or the sunny-side up eggs she’d ask me to make for her every morning.

I knew pretty quickly I was in big trouble and I made a bunch of calls to other nurses, who either wanted more money per day than Lebron, or they weren’t available, or they needed every Sunday off, or they asked me to describe the room they’d be sleeping in, and so I never made the switch. And unfortunately, as much as I wanted to send her on her way and do it on my own, with twins I knew I couldn’t be down a man. I needed her so I could leave my babies freely during the day and help my older girls get back to school. I needed her so I could pull off meals and synagogue attendance over the Jewish holidays.  I needed her so I could try and get a five or six hour stretch each night to make it through the next day.

In the end, with two weeks left in her term, right before a long Jewish holiday weekend where I was having a lot of company, she left for her day off, saying she felt a little “sick” and never returned. Like a boyfriend I knew I should have broken up with first, I felt stung, but the truth is, my babies have never seemed better. Over the past week, one twin is sleeping the 12 hour night a baby should, and my other one is getting close. They are cleaner, they take naps, in cribs, they have not slept on pillows, and the whole tempo in my house is actually a lot calmer.  I am surely more tired, but at least I feel my babies are being well cared for.

What a weird thing the whole baby nurse phenomenon is.  The majority are not nurses. They have no nursing degree, they are just willing to give up a lot of sleep so we don’t have to. And the strangest part is that those of us lucky enough to afford a baby nurse are normally so critical and micromanaging of every other aspect of our children’s lives—we search for the perfect babysitters, the perfect doctors, the perfect speech, physical and occupational therapists, the perfect teachers, tutors, what have you, and yet along comes some woman wearing scrubs with teddy bears on them, and we hand over our newborn child to them, at his or her most vulnerable, precious and important time. 

The whole three months I felt like a character in “The Help,” leaving my little ones out of earshot, down the hall in someone else’s quarters, only in my real-life scenario that someone has no nursing degree, or knowledge of babies for that matter. She didn’t even know the words to classic lullabyes. From down the hall I’d hear her singing “the itsy bitsy spider climbing up the wall.” And as for simple tasks like preparing a formula bottle, she believed that the instructions printed on the back of the powder box to “add 1 unpacked scoop to each 2 fl oz of water was actually mistaken, and that you have to put less water in since the liquid rises once the powder is added. Hmm. Go figure, the makers of Similac and Enfamil have a lot to learn.

But it’s over. The babies are all mine, and I’m crying a lot less. When the twins are older I’ll enjoy telling them funny stories about the “nurse” who took care of them for nearly three months, and with whom they watched nearly every moment of the 2012 Summer Olympics and the US Open on HD TV. But in the more immediate future, I’ll make sure they know that the itsy bitsy spider actually went up the water spout.