Powerless To Resist The Princesses

Journalist Peggy Orenstein's latest book, CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER, was prompted by her own daughter Daisy's infatuation with everything Princess, brought on almost immediately upon Daisy's beginning preschool. According to Orenstein, who is interviewed in this Sunday's Los Angeles Times, after a week of preschool, Daisy "had as if by osmosis learned all the names and gown colors of the Disney princesses, and that is all she could talk about."  By age three or four, Daisy's peers had already been reached by the Disney Princess marketing machine, which ten years ago began marketing Princesses together who'd never been marketed apart from their individual movies.

Just yesterday, Late Blooming Mom's daughter attended a play date at which one of the main activities was dressing up as, you guessed it, Disney Princesses.

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Dear Tiger Mom: I Don't Need Parenting Advice From The Wall Street Journal

Unless you've been in a media blackout -- which is something that can actually happen to moms who are too busy cooking, cleaning, feeding, bathing, and clothing their kids while trying not to neglect their husbands, and maybe working full-time too -- you probably know all about the Tiger Mom.  But in case you don't, here's a quick refresher:  Amy Chua is a Yale law professor whose parenting memoir, The Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother, was recently excerpted in the Wall Street Journal.  It's caused a bit of a dust-up over parenting methods, at least in the print and online media, with subsequent articles about the book appearing in The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, and it was even mocked satirically in the Huffington Post. 

The controversy it's generated seems to focus mostly on Chua's strict parenting of her tween-age girls, e.g., she didn't allow them playdates or sleepovers, they couldn't participate in school plays, they had to get straight As.  In one instance, her elder daughter was forced to perfect a challenging piano piece while her mom threatened to take her dollhouse to the Salvation Army, and then Chua deprived the girl of dinner and even bathroom breaks.

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A Three-Week Winter Break? Really, LAUSD?

We have -- just barely -- survived the three-week winter break that is mandatory in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Dear LAUSD school board, what are you thinking?   A three-week winter break?  REALLY?

My friends with kids in other school districts gasp in amazement.  Not one of them can believe it when they hear about it.

Taking kids out of their routine and plunging them into the hands of their exhausted working parents, NOT ONE OF WHOM HAS THREE WEEKS OFF over Christmas, is friggin' nuts.

Here's what happened around here.  Late Blooming Mom and Dad enrolled our kids in winter break camp, which while not outrageously expensive, is still an added strain on the family budget.  Winter camp was held the week before Christmas at a school that's not far, but still isn't our home school, necessitating our kindergarteners getting used to a new campus ("Where's the bathroom, mommy?").  Luckily, our workplaces were closed Christmas Eve day and New Year's Eve day, so we didn't have to pay for childcare on those days.  But there was no camp the week between Christmas and New Year's.  What, exactly, are working parents supposed to do?

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Why The Grinch Compels

This piece is going to appear in some form or other in the next issue of the Editor's Guild Magazine, but since most of my blog readers don't get it, I reprint it here for holiday enjoyment:

I know how it begins.  “Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not.”

I know this Scrooge-like, green fellow will try to stop Christmas from coming.

I know he’s going to show up on TV every year, and get his “wonderful, awful idea.”  He’ll disguise his dog Max as a reindeer and suit up as “Santie Claus.”  He’ll steal everything from all the Who houses, even the Who hash.

I know every clever Seuss rhyme, every flawless inflection of Boris Karloff’s narration, every simple yet perfectly story-boarded Chuck Jones’-directed frame. 

Yet I watch it again.

I grew up a cultural Jew on New York’s Upper West Side.  I was taught by my parents to be mistrustful of organized religion – even our own - because religion can divide as much as it can unite.  But I also went to a Quaker school where tolerance was taught.  The holiday lights of Manhattan were hard to resist, whether on Hanukah menorahs or the Rockefeller Center tree.  As a child no bigger than Cindy Lou Who, I reveled in watching the Grinch take his triumphant ride down Mount Crumpet.

The story analyst in me gets why “The Grinch” is so damned effective (and far better than the movie-length, live action version).  There’s the brilliant use of language, whimsical humor, Seuss-inspired animated world.  But what makes it resonate is the Grinch’s character arc.  What could be better than to see a character whose heart is two sizes too small, believably grow that heart three sizes, and find the strength of ten Grinches, plus two? 

Each time I watch – now with my own kids, Thing 1 and Thing 2 - I am as a child, struck anew with hope.  People can change.  Even Grinches.    

Our "Almost" Readers

This week, Late Blooming Dad had two amazing moments with the kids.  The first one was when he went to pick up the kids from school because I couldn't, and happened upon the Girl's kindergarten teacher sitting alone with her, reading a book with her.  The teacher motioned dad to wait a few moments till they finished; then she excitedly gushed, "She's so close!"  Yes, the girl is about to become a reader.  And this excitement came from the school's most veteran teacher, who has certainly seen this happen hundreds of times.  Late Blooming Dad was thrilled.

The second moment came with the Boy. 

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When Is The Make-The-Lunch Fairy Coming To My House?

The kids were tucked all snug in their beds, visions of lunchboxes packed with delicious food filled their heads ... and I was standing in the kitchen, post-work day, after supervising homework/showers/changing into PJs/picking clothes for tomorrow/eating dinner/brushing teeth/reading books, and finally tucking them in, with some help from Late Blooming Dad.  But now I was alone in the kitchen, eyes scanning the fridge forlornly, searching for inspiration.   What to make them?  What to make them they'd actually eat some tomorrow if I made it for their lunch boxes tonight?  It's then I had a vision:  a vision of the Make-The-Lunch Fairy.

Our kids get visits from the Tooth Fairy whenever they lose a tooth.  Why can't we weary moms get a visit from the Make-The-Lunch Fairy whenever we are overwhelmed by life, and underwhelmed by the prospect of making yet another round of lunch box lunches?

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Advice For Twin Moms, Nearly Six Years In

Yesterday, at a kids' birthday party, I was standing by the bouncy house watching my boy/girl twins, now five-and-three-quarters,  bounce themselves into a gleeful state, when a pregnant woman approached me.  Her own kid, a three-year-old girl, was bouncing along with mine, and she'd ascertained mine were twins.  "Any advice?" she asked, explaining, "I'm about to have twin boys."

I was instantly transported back to those early days of twin momhood, when I felt as if I'd been instantly propelled into a giant bouncy house the moment the c-section began.

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