Overparenting Over? Hallelujah!!! Great time Magazine Article

I obviously didn't write this but its totally worth reading!

The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting

By Nancy Gibbs
Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency," hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — "helicopter parents," teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and "Kinderkords" (also known as leashes; they allow "three full feet of freedom for both you and your child") and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don't come prepadded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.

We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as "crispies," who arrived at college already burned out, and "teacups," who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress.

This is what parenting had come to look like at the dawn of the 21st century — just one more extravagance, the Bubble Wrap waiting to burst.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they'll fly higher. We're often the ones who hold them down.

A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reflects a new reality. Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids' extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people's relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they'd gotten worse. "This is one of those moments when everything is on the table, up for grabs," says Carl Honoré, whose book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting is a gospel of the slow-parenting movement. He likens the sudden awareness to the feeling you get when you wake up after a long night carousing, the lights go on, and you realize you're a mess. "That horrible moment of self-recognition is where we are culturally. I wanted parents to realize they are not alone in thinking this is insanity, and show there's another way."

How We Got Here
Overparenting had been around long before Douglas MacArthur's mom Pinky moved with him to West Point in 1899 and took an apartment near the campus, supposedly so she could watch him with a telescope to be sure he was studying. But in the 1990s something dramatic happened, and the needle went way past the red line. From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label "Remove Child Before Folding." Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to '97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores offered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child's Intelligence. The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby's Brain Through the Power of Music, after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores by as many as 9 points. By the time the frenzy had reached its peak, colleges were installing "Hi, Mom!" webcams in common areas, and employers like Ernst & Young were creating "parent packs" for recruits to give Mom and Dad, since they were involved in negotiating salary and benefits.

Once obsessing about kids' safety and success became the norm, a kind of orthodoxy took hold, and heaven help the heretics — the ones who were brave enough to let their kids venture outside without Secret Service protection. Just ask Lenore Skenazy, who to this day, when you Google "America's Worst Mom," fills the first few pages of results — all because one day last year she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. A newspaper column she wrote about it somehow ignited a global firestorm over what constitutes reasonable risk. She had reporters calling from China, Israel, Australia, Malta. ("Malta! An island!" she marvels. "Who's stalking the kids there? Pirates?") Skenazy decided to fight back, arguing that we have lost our ability to assess risk. By worrying about the wrong things, we do actual damage to our children, raising them to be anxious and unadventurous or, as she puts it, "hothouse, mama-tied, danger-hallucinating joy extinguishers."

Skenazy, a Yale-educated mom who with her husband is raising two boys in New York City, had ingested all the same messages as the rest of us. Her sons' school once held a pre-field-trip assembly explaining exactly how close to a hospital the children would be at all times. She confesses to being "at least part Sikorsky," hiring a football coach for a son's birthday and handing out mouth guards as party favors. But when the Today show had her on the air to discuss her subway decision, interviewer Ann Curry turned to the camera and asked, "Is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one?" (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

From that day and the food fight that followed, she launched her Free Range Kids blog, which eventually turned into her own Dangerous Book for Parents: Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. There is no rational reason, she argues, that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or-treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same. But somehow, she says, "10 is the new 2. We're infantilizing our kids into incompetence." She celebrates seat belts and car seats and bike helmets and all the rational advances in child safety. It's the irrational responses that make her crazy, like when Dear Abby endorses the idea, as she did in August, that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them. That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing. Once the kids make it home safe and sound, you can delete the picture and take a new one the next morning.

That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with "How can you let him go to the store alone?," she suggests countering with "How can you let him visit your relatives?" (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) "I'm not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn't be prepared," she says. "But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources." Besides, she says with a smile, "a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It's nowhere you'd want to be."

Dispatches from the Front Lines
Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, nondairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. "Our whole culture," says Contey, 38, "is geared around 'Is your kid making the benchmarks?' There's this fear of 'Is my kid's head the right size?' People think there's some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren't living up to and that it's hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that."

The parents seem relieved to hear it. Matt, a textbook editor, reports that he and his wife quit a book club because it caused too much stress on book-club nights, and stopped fussing about how the house looks, which brings nods all around the room: let go of perfectionism in all its tyranny. Margaret, a publishing executive, tells her own near-miss story of how she stepped back from the brink of insanity. On her son's fourth birthday, she says, "I'm like 'Oh, my God, he's eligible for Suzuki!' I literally got on the phone and called 12 Suzuki teachers," she says, before realizing the nightmare she was creating for herself and her child. Shutting down your inner helicopter isn't easy. "This is not a shift in perspective that occurs overnight," Matt admits after class. "And it's not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better."

Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind. Fear of physical danger is at least subject to rational argument; fear of failure is harder to hose down. What could be more natural than worrying that your child might be trampled by the great, scary, globally competitive world into which she will one day be launched? It is this fear that inspires parents to demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third-grader's race for class rep, continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he's headed off to college.

Some of the hovering is driven by memory and demography. This generation of parents, born after 1964, waited longer to marry and had fewer children. Families are among the smallest in history, which means our genetic eggs are in fewer baskets and we guard them all the more zealously. Helicopter parents can be found across all income levels, all races and ethnicities, says Patricia Somers of the University of Texas at Austin, who spent more than a year studying the species at the college level. "There are even helicopter grandparents," she notes, who turn up with their elementary-school grandchildren for college-information sessions aimed at juniors and seniors. (See pictures of Barack Obama's college years.)

Nor is this phenomenon limited to ZIP codes where every Volvo wagon just has to have a University of Chicago sticker on it. "I'm having exactly the same conversations with coaches, teachers, parents, counselors, whether I'm in Wichita or northern Canada or South America," says Honoré. His own revelation came while listening to the feedback about his son in kindergarten. It was fine, but nothing stellar — until he got to the art room and the teacher began raving about how creative his son was, pointing out his sketches that she'd displayed as models for other students. Then, Honoré recalls, "she dropped the G-bomb: 'He's a gifted artist,' she told us, and it was one of those moments when you don't hear anything else. I just saw the word gifted in neon with my son's name ..." So he hurried home and Googled the names of art tutors and eagerly told his son all about the special person who would help him draw even better. "He looks at me like I'm from outer space," Honoré says. "'I just wanna draw,' he tells me. 'Why do grownups have to take over everything?' "

"That was a searing epiphany," Honoré concludes. "I didn't like what I saw." He now writes and lectures about the many fruits of slowing down, citing research that suggests the brain in its relaxed state is more creative, makes more nuanced connections and is ripe for eureka moments. "With children," he argues, "they need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise ... and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It's a useful trampoline for children to learn how to get by."

Other studies reinforce the importance of play as an essential protein in a child's emotional diet; were it not, argue some scientists, it would not have persisted across species and millenniums, perhaps as a way to practice for adulthood, to build leadership, sociability, flexibility, resilience — even as a means of literally shaping the brain and its pathways. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play — who has a treehouse above his office — recalls in a recent book how managers at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noticed the younger engineers lacked problem-solving skills, though they had top grades and test scores. Realizing the older engineers had more play experience as kids — they'd taken apart clocks, built stereos, made models — JPL eventually incorporated questions about job applicants' play backgrounds into interviews. "If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being" in life, Brown has argued, "play is as fundamental as any other aspect.'' The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that the decrease in free playtime could carry health risks: "For some children, this hurried lifestyle is a source of stress and anxiety and may even contribute to depression." Not to mention the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation of kids who never just go out and play.

Remember, Mistakes Are Good
Many educators have been searching for ways to tell parents when to back off. It's a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents' engagement in a child's education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones. The challenge is helping parents know when they are crossing a line.

Every teacher can tell the story of a student who needed to fail in order to be reassured that the world wouldn't come to an end. Yet teachers now face a climate in which parents ghostwrite students' homework, airbrush their lab reports — then lobby like a K Street hired gun for their child to be assigned to certain classes. Principal Karen Faucher instituted a "no rescue" policy at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Kans., when she noticed the front-office table covered each day with forgotten lunch boxes and notebooks, all brought in by parents. The tipping point was the day a mom rushed in with a necklace meant to complete her daughter's coordinated outfit. "I'm lucky — I deal with intelligent parents here," Faucher says. "But you saw very intelligent parents doing very stupid things. It was almost like a virus. The parents knew that was not what they intended to do, but they couldn't help themselves." A guidance counselor at a Washington prep school urges parents to find a mentor of a certain disposition. "Make friends with parents," she advises, "who don't think their kids are perfect." Or with parents who are willing to exert some peer pressure of their own: when schools debate whether to drop recess to free up more test-prep time, parents need to let a school know if they think that's a trade-off worth making.

A certain amount of hovering is understandable when it comes to young children, but many educators are concerned when it persists through middle school and high school. Some teachers talk of "Stealth Fighter Parents," who no longer hover constantly but can be counted on for a surgical strike just when the high school musical is being cast or the starting lineup chosen. And senior year is the witching hour: "I think for a lot of parents, college admissions is like their grade report on how they did as a parent," observes Madeleine Rhyneer, dean of students at Willamette University in Oregon. Many colleges have had to invent a "director of parent programs" to run regional groups so moms and dads can meet fellow college parents or attend special classes where they can learn all the school cheers. The Ithaca College website offers a checklist of advice: "Visit (but not too often)"; "Communicate (but not too often)"; "Don't worry (too much)"; "Expect change"; "Trust them."

Teresa Meyer, a former PTA president at Hickman High in Columbia, Mo., has just sent the youngest of her three daughters to college. "They made it very clear: You are not invited to the registration part where they're requesting classes. That's their job." She's come to appreciate the please-back-off vibe she's encountered. "I hope that we're getting away from the helicopter parenting," Meyer says. "Our philosophy is 'Give 'em the morals, give 'em the right start, but you've got to let them go.' They deserve to live their own lives." (See the 10 best iPhone apps for dads.)

What You Can Do
Among the most powerful weapons in the war against the helicopter brigade is the explosion of websites where parents can confide, confess and affirm their sense that lowering expectations is not the same as letting your children down. So you gave up trying to keep your 2-year-old from eating the dog's food? You banged your son's head on the doorway while giving him a piggyback ride? Your daughter hates school and is so scared of failure she won't even try to ride a bike? "I just want to throw in the towel and give up on her," one mom posts on Truuconfessions.com. "This is NOT what I thought I was signing up for." Honestbaby.com sells baby T-shirts that say "I'll walk when I'm good and ready." Given how many books and websites drove a generation of parents mad with anxiety, a certain balance is restored to the universe when it becomes conventional for people to brag about what bad parents they are.

The revolutionary leaders are careful about offering too much advice. Parents have gotten plenty of that, and one of the goals of this new movement is to give parents permission to disagree or at least follow different roads. "People feel there's somehow a secret formula for parenting, and if we just read enough books and spend enough money and drive ourselves hard enough, we'll find it, and all will be O.K.," Honoré observes. "Can you think of anything more sinister, since every child is so different, every family is different? Parents need to block out the sound and fury from the media and other parents, find that formula that fits your family best."

Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, teaches seminars on how to peel back the layers of cultural pressure that weigh down families. He and his coaches will even go into your home, weed out your kids' stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn't know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul. But any parent can do it just as well. "We need to quit bombarding them with choices way before their ability to handle them," Payne says. The average child has 150 toys. "When you cut the toys and clothes back ... the kids really like it." He aims for a cut of roughly 75%: he tosses out the broken toys and gives away the outgrown ones and the busy, noisy, blinking ones that do the playing for you. Pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child's imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys.

Finally, there is the gift of humility, which parents need to offer one another. We can fuss and fret and shuttle and shelter, but in the end, what we do may not matter as much as we think. Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt analyzed a Department of Education study tracking the progress of kids through fifth grade and found that things like how much parents read to their kids, how much TV kids watch and whether Mom works make little difference. "Frequent museum visits would seem to be no more productive than trips to the grocery store," they argued in USA Today. "By the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children."

If you embrace this rather humbling reality, it will be easier to follow the advice D.H. Lawrence offered back in 1918: "How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning."

Of course, that was easy for him to say. He had no kids.

— With reporting by Karen Ball / Kansas City, Mo.; Alexandra Silver / New York City; and Elizabeth Dias and Sophia Yan / Washington

Link to actual article

Blessings in life and death - Liams Room

A flyer came home with Ari from Preschool. It referenced a softball charity event. I put it down and never finished reading it. In hindsight, I know I often don't read through things in detail when they don't necessarily draw my attention immediately. And if you know me, I'm not sports inclined and our lives are such that time is limited. The flyer made its way into the junk pile and shortly after that into the trash.

Yet life has a way of bringing things to your attention again. And an e-mail came in today from Linda, whose twin boys go to the same preschool as Ari. The subject: charity event.

http://www.liamsroom.org/

We received a flyer from the twins preschool about a softball charity event and I went to the website to read about it, and am now crying at my desk. Liam's fraternal twin brother is in school with Tyler, Ari, Jonathan and Matthew- his name is Nathaniel. Reading Liam's Mom story is just soo heart wrenching, it took me back to the pain of losing a child. Our boys can't participate in the softball event, but thought it would be nice to go out and support the activities that will be going on that day.

I went to the website. I read Liam's story. And like Linda I struggled to maintain the tears as I sat at my desk at work. Being a mother makes reading stories such as this so much harder. And knowing several individuals who have gone through similar experiences, I always marvel at their strength. Liam's parents and family have such a bright outlook and such zeal to let their child's legacy live on.

If you are in the NJ area and would like to participate in the event, the 2nd Annual Softball Tournament Event (Children Grades 3-8) & Home Run Derby (Children & Adults) will be held at Tamaques Park, Westfield, NJ on Saturday, March 28, 2009 (Rain date March 29.)Games will start promptly at 1pm. If you cannot play, please attend and if you cannot attend feel free to go to the website and support the cause.

Homework for parents

Ari comes home weekly with small home tasks to do. Rob and I call them homework but that’s not really the right thing to call them. They are requests to decorate pieces of paper in the shape or theme of the week. Putting together the things of interest to Ari, letting him run squiggle lines of crayon around. Activities where we get to sit with him and do something together.

I will admit to not being so diligent when it comes to this. I sometimes feel as if I’ve lost the capacity of having unbridled fun doing things without direction. Have I grown up so much that now I have issue just letting go of the way you’re supposed to be and the obligations that life dictates to you? Have I lost the ability to go along and not think, but rather just do because you can? Why do I look at these projects that should be great together time and much fun like another task that I just don’t feel like doing? And the answer is simple. I’m tired. After a long day, I want to really relax, but being a parent doesn’t come with that luxury. And my negative attitude is at times selfish and certainly of no benefit to my children. So, I’m striving to better appreciate those times. To not look at them as work because my apathy towards it, I’m sure, is visible to Ari. Rob is far more game to these kinds of activities. But he is not without his faults. He can’t get over the need to keep everything clean and organized. It should come as no surprise for those of you who know him that he favors a very ‘stay with the lines’ kind of mentality. So the use of glues and paints, glitter, sand and crayons are on a limited basis because of the ‘mess factor’

In essence we both have to learn to let go of our preconceived notions of what should and should not be done and allow our kids the liberty to explore on their own. I’ve decided that I have to make a concerted effort to provide some of this creative time for both Nilsa and Ari and simultaneously let go of our trying to ‘figure out’ the meaning of everything, correcting the way things should be done and putting too much thought into the simplest of tasks.

Case in point, we received homework the other day. For their Valentine’s Day celebration, we as parents we asked to decorate a paper heart to give to our children. On it was printed the simple phrase
We love Arias because ________________
I sat in the kitchen once the kids were asleep and stared at that piece of paper. I stared at it for 10 minutes. I wondered throughout what the RIGHT statement would be. What the correct answer to the blank is. I took it, walked into the living room and announced that not only was I having writer’s block, but I feel as if I’m failing miserably as a parent for not being able to write one sentence. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know what to write. I could write novels on every little bit of Ari and why it is that I love every last quirk and piece of him. My problem was not expressing the sentiment. It was expressing it in the limitations of one sentence and in a way that he would understand it. I didn’t want to let Ari down.

Now, I know you are all reading this and saying, Dianne you are insane! Why are you putting so much thought into a simple sentence? And you know what? I am insane. And I have no idea why the whole thing got to be from a ‘fun’ activity to a overwhelmingly and miserable project. But it did. And so after writing down something I found trivial and a cop out, I was exhausted. Rob in turn proceeded to the decorating with use of pictures and clip art he methodially resized and printed then cut and clued. The end result was absolutely beautiful. But evoked the sense of meticulousness that is my husband. It was wonderful - but clearly over-thought. And this is a PRIME example on why we need to start letting go of our own expectations and moving to JUST being. And the best way to do it is by not making the entire thing a task to be completed.WE have to bring fun back into life. Hopefully, you’ll be seeing more of us/me embracing this ideaology in the coming weeks.

Parent-Teacher Conference

“He’s only 3” is what Rob reminded me when I expressed anxiety about my first ever parent-teacher conference. As is common for him he chuckled at what he thought was an exaggerated reaction to a very perfunctory role of parenthood. And we are after all talking about pre-pre-school. A school he only attends 2 days a week and for 2.5 hours at that. Yet there I was, alone as Rob could not attend with me, in his class awaiting my opportunity to sit with Ms. Citron to discuss my little man’s character in school. I found myself unusually warm and I took a seat in the pre-school chairs with my knees uncomfortably high cursing my heels and wondering why there were no adult sized chairs to sit in. I fiddled uncomfortably with my purse handles.

Ms. C handed me a piece of paper, then walked away to take care of something and being me, and impatient in waiting to review anything, I read what was on it. It was the 2nd page, the area which the teacher writes her own thoughts and I laughed.

has a problem sitting still for any period of time
I have to say, it's hard to sit at a parent teacher conference as a parent. It’s hard to hear about your kid and not have some odd nagging noise in the far recesses of your mind blaming you for not being able to have your kid achieve a 'PERFECT' scoring. And this is what I am feeling with a 3 year old. Can you imagine how much louder the noise gets as the years go by?

Ari did well. It brought smiles and no real surprise to me that he’s advanced in his letter and number recognition. The teacher was surprised to hear how early on in age he has been able to recite the entire alphabet as well as his current ability to know their respective sounds and count numbers up to almost 20 in both English & Spanish. He recognizes his name, and some small words. He’s fairly impressive to that end. Ms. C said that the full day preschool will be extremely beneficial to Ari next year and that the Spanish camp will help tremendously in his language skills, even mentioning how her own twenty-something son was learning Spanish. Although, admittedly, the dual language has him using both languages to express himself even when people (i.e. his teachers) don't understand him, and is slightly delaying his ability to express himself (but not negatively so.) Where he lacks seems to be in some other areas.

Now, to hear the opinion of your child from an external source, an objective individual who has no experience of your lifestyle at home is interesting. You spend a lot of the meeting time giving them a deeper explanation of your child, the differences in environment they live in and are taken care in with the school environment. The languages they speak and to whom they speak them. The relationships they have and the socialization they receive. You learn how each of these translates to and affects their behavior at school, their ability to understand and focus. You start realizing how much and how valued your guidance is to the development of your child.

Ari seems to have a bit of an issue in focus. Completing tasks to fulfillment before moving on to something else (i.e. puzzles) or even sitting during story time is something he’s not good at. He much prefers to walk around, do what he wants to do when he wants to do it and selectively listen. But through this all, he’s not disruptive. He just doesn’t follow a routine and that is why we put him in the school in the first place. Life at home and at grandmas’ is free play with whatever it is that he wishes to do without limitations. Things that need not be touched are out of reach. He basically gets to class and finds himself in sensory overload and goes right into the ‘I want to do this so I do’ attitude. He is very much a free spirit. His other negative is that he doesn’t put on his coat; pull down his pants for the bathroom, etc. And it’s not because he doesn’t know how. He’d done it with coaxing. But he does not freely do it. So we need to have him do this stuff more often on his own.

And although there’s no concern over any of this its hard not to wonder if there’s something you are doing wrong. We went over many of the things he seems to enjoy at home that he doesn’t seem to focus on at school and over the course of the conversation we noticed that things he doesn't focus on at school but does very well at home are always done in a environment when Ari is in control of the situation. He generally likes being in control of the situation and would rather do as he pleases then follow direction if its not something of his interest at the moment. It questions our behavior and philosophy on the amount of liberty and restrain that we need to give him. It makes me believe that we should be more structured but we battle this ideology. We like his spirit right now. How do we build structure without stifling his fire and creativity. There are benefits in both directions. And that’s where I begin to over think the situation.

And then I hear Rob laughing. “He’s only 3” he says. And I’m reminded, Ari’s learning and improving. And simultaneously, we as parents are learning and improving. And I laugh. It's then that I realize that our children will teach us more then anything else we've have learned so far in life.

Random Ramblings...

I was in Brooklyn last night. I had a meeting at Café Vox Pop which I will totally recommend for great coffee, delicious whole wheat chocolate chip cookies and great music. I entered to jazz playing, an adorable and attentive barista (is there a male version of that word?) and just a mellow vibe that was ideal. I almost lamented having to perform a meeting as I would have loved to just sip on my coffee and listen to the music and relax. So for the 5 minutes that I did have to myself in the café I soaked in the atmosphere. The drive out to Brooklyn was uneventful. Because the meeting was late (8pm) and I left New Jersey early, I didn’t hit a barrage of traffic en route. Some congestion in China Town which is to be expected and I opted the more scenic side streets of Brooklyn rather then the Gowanas/BQE/Prospect Parkway. I find that I’m in Brooklyn often lately, meeting with potential clients, handling weddings, etc. For a Queens girl I have grown to truly love Brooklyn as it seems has everyone else as it’s like “THE” place to be right now.

Beyond that it was time to myself. Something that does not come as often as I wish but such is life and I’m not complaining about it. The lack of that time makes me truly appreciate the moments I have in silence, alone, and in my own thoughts. It’s nice to have a few minutes that are not filled with the expectation of adulthood, the attention seeking of children or the responsibilities of wife and co-worker to my husband. In the drive I took in the energy of the city. There is an energy here and it really awakens my spirit and gives me a sense of euphoria that I can not accurately explain. I’m excited that I’ve scheduled meetings in Manhattan on Saturday and will be visiting friends briefly out in Queens to get rid of offer my baby gear for their triplets! So I’ll have more of this time alone with the city. It re-energizes me. I know some people just don’t understand my strange affinity towards NYC but that’s ok. It’s not easy to describe. And I’m not asking people to know what I’m talking about, but I do appreciate those that totally ‘get it.’

I’ve been immensely busy lately. Not in the sense that the schedule is packed in every moment of the day but in the reality that things are in need of my attention. Ari will turn 3 next month and Nilsa is now 13 months old. This is a great age for both of them although Ari still is a bit too rough with his sister. Not to be outdone, Nilsa does NOT let herself be taken advantage of. She has started to rebel back to Ari so they will both be quite an interesting bunch in the coming months. This age separation they have is something I now count as a blessing. I won’t lie, at first it was rough. A toddler who was not able to really explain himself and a newborn was not an easy task. But we got through that and we’re onto the next stage. Age 3 is proving to be a battle of the wills for Ari and I’ve been told that talk of terrible twos is false and it’s should really be terrible threes. I’m inclined to believe that’s true. Nilsa, who I thought would suffer from the stereotype second child syndrome of being left out of things, is actually quite the opposite. I’ll reluctantly admit that I think the girl is spoiled. In attempt to not disrupt Ari’s usual routines we failed to really establish one with Nilsa and suffer the consequences. Everything we didn’t do with Ari and said we wouldn’t do with our kids we’ve succumbed to with Nilsa. Teaches you to never say never right? It is fun to see how very different they are and how very much alike they seem at times. There are the good times where I’m practically brought to tears of happiness and then the bad times where I’m driven to drink. But I’m enjoying this as much as I can.

I’ve started having a very interesting following online due to my recent Colorblind jobs. It’s like I have my own personal fan club and I have to say if feels good to really get recognition for the attentiveness I give my clients. So much so that I wish I could do more, be more and try more. My mind races with ideas and innovations and so many different things that I seemingly want to implement. I have huge spurts of motivation where I want to act on my intuition and ambitions and unfortunately find myself limited in time and resources to really accomplish my objectives. I’ve resolved that I shouldn’t get down about that and that although I can’t do what I want to do right this very moment that I can pull it off over a longer term period at a slower pace. That’s better then not doing it at all right???

Managing life with so many variables in it is never easy. Rob and I have managed to get backlogged in some things but nothing has become more delayed then the basics of life (i.e. laundry & housekeeping.) I will tell you that the largest negative to having a home based office is the fact that you are battling the priority of the jobs you need to do with the priorities of the household you need to keep. Should I be working on photos or washing clothes. Should I vacuum now or answer e-mails? It’s a constant pull in one direction or the other and everything seems to come to a decision as to what needs more attention now. And then there are the times where we want to blow off all responsibilities and build puzzles, snuggle little ones till they giggle uncontrollably or head out to the park and watch them just be. I secretly yearn for a housekeeper, a laundress and a secretary. Instead Rob and I trade off these hats depending on what time affords for them.

In general, things are well. They can always be better and we are working at getting them there. Looking at the overall scheme of things – our society as a whole, the economic conditions being what they are and the general volatility of life – I think we’re doing okay. And right now, that’s the best I can ask for.

Behind the 8 ball…

I have a lot I want to say and so much to review. I have such great pictures of Nilsa’s first birthday to share with you and this one is by far my favorite of Ari and Nilsa.

I am truly blessed with 2 fabulous kids. I know not how I got as lucky as I did. And you can see all the pictures from the party by clicking here and a very special thank you for photo contributors to this gallery – Diannie & Kathy. You can if you want buy prints from that site to if you guys fall in love with them. I’m not in the mindset to go into the party in detail but I did document it here at the colorblind blog if you want to read about it and lucky for me it’s been picked up by other websites already! How awesome is that?

Peppers & Pollywogs

Everyday Celebrating

Crash this Party

Swanky Tables

It really was an absolutely fabulous time and I’m grateful to those people who helped me put together the insane little details I came up with and joined us to enjoy fresh from the dairy milk, delectable cookies and the coolest balloon guy ever.

Yet internally I’m trying to figure myself out yet again. I’m overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that NEEDS to be done and the lackluster ability to really achieve it all. I hate to see the kind of stress and anxiety take a hold of Rob and it leaves me with an inability to help him through it. We try very hard to balance things in our household but it’s getting increasingly harder. Finding time to find what the bottleneck in our lives is while simultaneously giving our kids the attention they need leaves us trying to decipher what the best route to go is. And there’s barely time to even think about what that means or what we can do to help it. And in this all there’s flat out NO time for us as a couple. Monday is out 6 year wedding anniversary. It still feels like our wedding was only yesterday and yet it was 6 years ago. And how much has changed. So many good things have entered our lives and so many other things have occurred. I love Rob more then ever now. So much so that I worry immensely about him.

I’m hoping we can gather ourselves on Monday and not only enjoy each others company but start making a plan of action for our lives. The stress levels we are living with right now is unhealthy for us and will have a negative affect on the kids as I fear it’s at the brink of slipping over into them. There has to be a better way of doing thing then what we’re currently doing. We’re not failing. Things are well. We are just in a state of disorganization and disarray and that needs to change. So after the insanity that is this weekend (the most busy fall wedding weekend of the year out here in the North East) I’ve decided I need to really hash out what needs to be done to bring our lives to a more comfortable place. And I will do it. For us.

Busy-ness & Daddy Types

It’s wedding season again so it’s been busy and that’s the excuse I’m using for my absence in posting. For those of you who don’t already know, Rob’s mom underwent surgery to clean out her carotid artery again. So in the interim Rob is the full time caretaker of the kids. As much as he loves them though he’s getting NOTHING done and finds himself in a perpetual state of unproductiveness which leads him to frustration. I don’t blame him. It’s rough and although I’ll admit to being jealous of the time he has with Ari and Nilsa, I understand the kind of time and attention kids that age need and how much of your ambition is absorbed and sidelined because of it. So the to do lists get longer and longer and less gets accomplished.

My mom tells me time and time again that I should be grateful for a husband who does so much for his children. I forget that the old school philosophy of yesteryear left children to the responsibility of their mothers and not so much a shared endeavor of both parents. Rob and I talked at length about how some people still adhere to that idea. It amazes me how what woman do and have done for so many years goes without acclaim and yet now that men have a more active role in the same responsibly, they are praised and put on pedestals. Not that they don’t deserve it. I’m thankful to Rob every day for the support he gives. I can honestly say that in our household, we share responsibility quite evenly as neither one of us does more or less then the other with respects to Ari & Nilsa. We both give our 100% to them (and yes I’m one of those people who do not like the term 50/50 because really, that’s only giving ½ of you – I like using 100/100.) I just think woman deserve as much praise and cheer for the same. So this is my praise to all you mother’s out there who do so much because you truly deserve it!

And to make it clear, I’m totally not downplaying Rob’s general greatness as a father. I know that he takes on so much without complaint, and that does deserve praise. I know I’m truly blessed and lucky to have him in my life. I could not ask for a better husband and father. I love how the philosophy of child rearing has crossed the grounds to fathers. I’m proud to say Rob has such an active role in his kids’ lives. I’ll take this time to also give our friend Eddie praise of his role as Tyler’s caretaker and dad. And although I know both him and Rob commiserate in the ‘this is not what I really had planned on doing’ way of life they live, they take on the task. I totally plan an appropriate father’s day post to acknowledge all the daddy types out there.

PHOTO DUMP

Nilsa with hair up




Ari @ the park

Monchi! Remember him? Ari loves him. Nilsa is fine with him up until he licks her then you get that last picture as a reaction.




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