Practical Life

I've been researching Montessori education for a few weeks now. There's so much to learn, and I still have many questions that I need to find answers for, but I'm almost certain that our preschool homeschool experience will have a significant Montessori component.

I've been pleasantly surprised to find that many of the toys we've amassed could fit into a Montessori classroom, but I've also realized that I've not done the best job of helping Linus and Veda to develop what Maria Montessori called Practical Life Skills.

What are Practical Life Skills? They're the skills we all have to acquire in order to act as competent, independent individuals. Practical Life Activities encourage development of fine motor skills, which plays into the importance of the brain-hand connection (more about that here, if you're interested). Practical Life Skills encompass things like tying one's shoes, dressing one's self, slicing a carrot, sorting objects by color, and getting the washing machine started.

Forgive me for sounding like a cranky old man, but kids "these days" suffer from a lack of Practical Life Skills, and often even if they have been taught to do things for themselves, their parents unwittingly handicap them by continuing to do a great many of the things they should be doing for themselves. I saw it and the results of it all the time as a high school teacher - kids who called their parents to drive their homework to school when it was forgotten at home (Parents, PLEASE don't do this. Let kids learn from their mistakes when the consequences are so minor in the grand scheme of things.), kids who wanted the minutes of class change breaks counted down for them instead of referring to their own watches, kids who refused to keep up with a personal organizer because what's the point when their parents and teachers have always done the work of keeping up with their assignments and activities...

I don't want to raise my children to be needy and immature, so it's time to get cracking on Practical Life stuff. A couple of skills we've been working on are drinking from a cup - no sippy and no straw! - and putting dirty clothes in the hamper. It's been so fun to see them get so excited about "hamper time" before the bath, and I think I can almost literally see their confidence in themselves growing when I hand them real cups.

I've been compiling a list of Practical Life Skills for our immediate and near futures:

• setting the table
• sweeping
• dusting
• feeding dog
• opening/closing a drawer
• opening/closing a cabinet
• opening jars
• cleaning table with a sponge
• carrying liquids without spilling
• using a knife (ex. slicing a banana with a plastic knife)
• putting books away
• watering plants
• washing vegetables
• match socks in laundry
• fold washcloths in laundry
• fold socks in laundry
• washing dishes
• drying dishes
• cleaning a mirror
• pulling on pants
• putting on shirt
• combing hair
• putting shoes on
• washing, drying hands
• zipping a jacket

For now we'll work on adding a couple of new skills every week. Trust me, the point here is not to make my life easier. It's not like one day you can just tell a two-year-old that he'll now be expected to set the table. I'll have to show Linus and Veda how to carefully carry the breakable plates, place cutlery around the plates, etc When the coming school year starts, we'll go into preschool mode, adding lots of fine motor, sensorial, language, and math activities to our daily repetoire that already includes lots of reading, music, and arts and crafts.

Looking forward to it!

How Weaning Worked

Oh, weaning. No matter when you do it, someone always thinks you're the Bad Mom.

For me, determining the time to wean was influenced by wanting to make it to the World Health Organization's recommendation of breastfeeding for at least two years, knowing that I needed to start taking non-breastfeeding-safe medication to control the more dangerous consequences of PCOS (heart disease, diabetes and weight gain), and allowing the babies to reach what would be a gentle conclusion for them. For months I was anxious about it. In the end, like so many other things in parenting, everything sort of fell into place on its own.
After months of dropping feedings, we were finally down to just the one before bed. I had decided on a date after their second birthday. But the day before the deadline, Veda caught a case of the middle-of-the-night crazies. Probably waking up from a bad dream, she cried inconsolably for what seemed like hours. I tried rocking, cuddling, shushing, a silly toddler version of kangaroo care that didn't work at all... in the end, the only thing that got her calmed and back to sleep was nursing her down. I took it as a sign. They weren't ready. In truth, I wasn't either. I'd had a couple of private cries after I put them down for bed in the week before. See, for me, this is it. I loved everything about pregnancy and breastfeeding (well, minus the worrying). As much as I know that our family is perfect the way it is, it's still so sad to me that I'll never get to experience those things again.

It didn't help that at my last RE appointment, the RE (who I love) had told me about how weaning works in the cattle he keeps. He told me how for a couple of nights a separated mother and baby would cry for each other, but once breastfeeding had ended, their bond was effectively broken. I knew that my babies would still love me, but I wondered if our bond would be different... somehow less.

Over the next month those bedtime nursing sessions got shorter and shorter. The babies were becoming more and more ready to not need that time to physically reconnect with me. And that month felt like an overtime bonus to me.

When the next deadline I had decided on came up, I briefly considered extending it another month. But it was time. They were ready, and I knew it. I was mostly ready. I left their room on that last night knowing that it was the end of something special between us that will never come back, but it's okay. That's how parenting goes. We have to engineer countless transitions - starting solid foods, potty training, entrance into social arenas that extend beyond our families, learning to operate as an independent adult...

Yes, our bond is different now, but I realize now that it was changing all along. No matter how old they get or how little they come to depend on me to meet their physical needs, I'm always going to be Home to them.

The Trouble With Princesses

These days, the princesses are everywhere - on lunchboxes, t-shirts, kiddie furniture, backpacks, potty seats... you and I both know this list could go on and on. I'm not saying the princesses will never make an appearance in our house (you know what they say about saying never), but I'm not going to be the one who brings them in. This is one of those battles that's a little harder to fight than it should be, in part because I think that other people think I'm just being difficult and silly about it. What you do with your family is your business, but I want to explain my problem with princesses.

What is it about princesses that appeals to little girls?

1. The wardrobe
2. Marrying up/being rescued by a handsome guy
3. Having whatever you want, whenever you want it

#1 is the princess thing I have the least issue with.

It almost seems a little silly to try to explain my problem with #2, but I guess that's why we're here. I don't want Veda waiting around for some man to deem her worthy of investing in her. I want her to invest in herself - prepare herself for the future she wants via education and work and actively pursue it. Maybe Veda will choose the stay-at-home mom path, and if she does, I can get behind that choice 100%. After all, I consider myself pretty successful, at least by my own definition of success. But whatever she chooses, I want her to always know that she's enough - exactly as she is. She's not waiting on someone else to complete her. She's not counting on someone else to hand her a bright future. I want her to know that her happiness is up to her - not a man.

I suspect that this contemporary celebration of princesses is mostly about #3. When a little girl wears a message t-shirt that labels her as a princess, what's the message there? That she's spoiled? That she gets what she wants? That her parents sacrifice their own financial health to indulge her? No doubt, we live in a time when materialism is celebrated. We all know so many people who are clambering to maintain a facade of luxurious prosperity at the cost of shackling themselves to loads of debt. My children certainly have all of their needs met, and they have/will have many of their wants met, BUT I want it to always be clear that in the this world (at least for the class of people to whom we belong) money represents work, that the things they want cost money, and that they must work in order to earn the things they want. Tell my daughter she has the princess power to snap her fingers and have her father and I scrambling to meet her every desire? No, thank you.

So there you have it - the summary of my problem with princesses. Where do you stand on the princesses? Why? Hoping for some good comments on this one... maybe even a good discussion.

Read. This. Book.

MotherStyles: Using Personality Type to Discover Your Parenting Strengths by Janet Penley

If we're being really honest, and I try my very best to be, we all have secret shames about ourselves as mothers - things that make us feel inadequate and guilty. Likewise, we all have things that we feel we're great at, and doing those things makes us feel on top of our game.

You've probably taken the Meyers-Brigg Assessment at some point. It's the one that gives you the result with the four letters (E or I, N or S, T or F, and J or P). All in all, there are sixteen personality types, and knowing which one yours is can help you capitalize on your parenting strengths and make peace with, even develop strategies to bridge your weaknesses.

What do I mean? I'm an INFJ. This means I'm Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging. What I perceive to be one of my greatest strengths as a parent is my drive to seek out information, to find the "best" way to do things, to have a vision of where we're going. This is thanks to my Intuitiveness. Then again, my flakiness? That's also part of being Intuitive. Another (confessional) example? My great shame as a mother is a function of my Introvertedness. I feel a lot of guilt about not being able to always be "on" for my little guys. Being the excited, bouncy, big-smiling playtime mom of young children is exhausting for me, and I'm envious of moms who seem to have endless energy for toddler play. But my Introvertedness also lends itself to the relaxed, comfortable demeanor I will admit to getting compliments on. As much as I feel guilty about not being the other kind of mother, I know that my serene presence will be a gift to my children in other ways. MotherStyles wisely suggests strategies to bridge my shortcomings. For example, Penley suggests enrolling in Mommy and Me-type classes both to provide my babies with a type of stimulation I'm not gifted at providing and to give myself a break.

I promise that if you read this book through, you'll be rewarded with numerous "Aha!" moments, and you'll probably also be more understanding of your spouse/partner after you learn more about why he/she does the things he/she does. Maybe best of all, you'll be a little more kind to yourself when you're evaluating the job you're doing as a mommy.

Bottom line: Yes, this is a parenting book that's about the parent. But taking a realistic appraisal of who you are and what you bring to the table of motherhood is well worth the time.

13 Months Schedule

We've now been back home for a week and a half, and just yesterday did I feel like we had "clicked" back onto a schedule. That, friends, is the dark side of travel. Here's the schedule we've settled back into, at least for now. Our activities vary from day-to-day, but here are the constants.

7:00 - Wake, nurse, cuddle, dress and change babies
7:45 - Breakfast
11:00 - Nurse, nap
1:00 - Wake, lunch
3:00 - Snack
5:30 - Dinner
7:00 - Bath and bedtime routine
8:00 - Nurse, bed

Somewhere in there, I make sure that we leave the house EVERY DAY. This is so, so important for keeping all of us happy. And as they're getting older and more mobile, I'm fitting in as much play outside time as possible. I also schedule "Structured Activity" into each day (the most valuable thing I took away from Toddlerwise by Gary Ezzo). Examples of Structured Activity are finger painting, working with puzzles, reading, or playing a rudimentary version of Simon Says - just something that's led by a parent to help direct learning.

Wait until I tell you about the baby classes I've found for them. They're super dreamy.

Greek Gods and Cow's Milk

    Teaching The Odyssey was fun. Teaching it to ninth graders was hilarious. After background lessons about Greek mythology, some baby-faced kid would usually ask, "Did this stuff really happen?". If this question was asked in front of the rest of the class, you can imagine the response of the other kids. Partly to help the first kid save face and partly because it's true, I'd remind them that one day people will think some of our beliefs and practices were quaint and outlandish. The toddler sippy perpetually filled with cow's milk will be among those practices heaped in the odd pile.

   I told you in my January challenge post that I'm transitioning to veganism and am in the research stage of making a dietary decision for the babies. In the pro-vegan corner is my desire to save them from the ill-effects of animal protein. Even though there's no history of Type-1 diabetes in our family, I'm still afraid of them consuming the casein in cow's milk, which is linked to the onset of Type-1. In the pro-vegetarian corner was every pediatric dietary recommendation I've been handed at the doctor's office about the 16-24 oz. of cow's milk toddlers are supposed to be slurping down on a daily basis.

    But how does that work with extended breastfeeding? Was I supposed to be cutting feedings to make room for cow's milk? What did my breastmilk lack that they needed from cow's milk? How many times a day should I be nursing them, anyway? Turns out this information isn't as easy to find as you might think.

    Here's what I found out: There's absolutely NOTHING that cow's milk provides (except for added Vitamin D) that human breastmilk doesn't. In fact, human breastmilk is still the best choice for human toddlers. It's species-specific and is richer in the brain growth-friendly fats that humans need.

    So to break this down for you, our culture encourages:

1. Weaning babies from human milk, the best nutritional choice for human babies and toddlers
2. Replacing an ideal, species-specific nutrition source with one designed for baby cows

   This brings me back to a fun fact about human gestation. Why are human babies are born at 40 weeks? It's because our giant-brained heads get too big. Think about it. What's the hardest part to push out? The big 'ol head. Humans are kinda special like that. We also have such a long juvenile period because our brains are so complex that they need all of that extra time to develop.

    But we replace a nutrition source designed for advancing brain development in favor of one tailored to fast-tracking the growth of a four-legged critter to several hundred pounds within a matter of months. Huh. How... quaint.


 

Sleep

Last night Veda woke twice, and Linus woke three times. It was a "good" night for us.

It's been a year since I slept all night. That's not counting pregnancy sleep disturbances.

On the days after a "good" night (i.e., a night where I feel like I've completed at least one sleep cycle), I can laugh about it.

On the days after a bad night, sure, I'm pretty cranky about it. Desperate middle-of-the-night utterings of "I can't do this anymore" have been made. Still, you know what? I keep doing it.

But here's the point of this post: It isn't my fault.

Maybe you disagree, but hear me out. I've read many sleep books. I've read practically every bit of baby sleep information available on the internet. And I've tried everything I felt I could do in good conscience. Here's the conclusion I've come to:

I can do my best to lead the babies to sleep, but that's all I can do.

It isn't my fault.

It may not seem like a big deal to you, but that little revelation was a BIG DEAL around here. Giving in to that idea meant that I got to stop feeling guilty about some mistaken idea that I was depriving my children of the sleep they need to grow. It meant that I got to stop the pointless research that wasted time I could have spent doing something enjoyable. It meant that I got to stop feeling like a failure.

So, Internet People, some kids aren't good sleepers. You do what you can do, and that's what you can do.

Booby Traps

I'm little, but I'm spunky. So during my pregnancy when other women said discouraging things about breastfeeding, I gave that smile that Southern women do and fortified my resolve to succeed at breastfeeding. Maybe it's not exactly inspiring to say so, but my desire to prove those women wrong got me through some of the tough titty times.

Where I'm from, there are three big cultural deterrents to breastfeeding:

1. The belief that it's weird and gross
2. Scandal at seeing breastfeeding in public
3. The belief that breastfeeding an older baby or toddler is somehow perverse

Number one never really bothered me so much. I mean, that's what boobs are for. No matter how vigorously the Victoria's Secret models writhe around in their underwear, the fact remains that breasts are baby-feeding equipment.

Number two was a little harder for me to get over. I don't like making others uncomfortable unless they really, really deserve it. But as time went on and breastfeeding become more of the status quo to me, I worried less and less about others being offended by the very normal act of a mother feeding her child. I do, however, make sure to cover up.

As we approach the one year mark, I find number three cropping up in my thoughts from time to time. People educated in the benefits of breastfeeding understand that those benefits extend into toddlerhood. But the problem is that so many people AREN'T aware of the benefits of breastfeeding. Will it deter me from continuing what has thus far been a fantastic experience with obvious positive results? Absolutely not. Because I'm spunky. But I do think a lot about others who have no support.

Once upon a shopping trip at Target, the babies and I were meandering about the baby section. In the next aisle, I heard a pregnant woman telling her friend that she might be interested in breastfeeding. The friend laughed and said, "You're not going to breastfeed!" in that I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself sort of way. The pregnant lady sighed and said, "I know."

Sad.

In ten years, I hope that breastfeeding will be the cultural norm in this country (as it is in so much of the rest of the world), but in the meantime, there are lots of "boobytraps". Here's an article that meant a lot to me when I was struggling with my anger at situations like being told the only place available to feed my children was the bathroom.

http://www.bestforbabes.org/breastfeeding-booby-traps/

Here's to being a spunky mommy!

5 MORE Parenting Lessons I Gleaned From My Teaching Career

1. Kids behave as they are dressed.

As a teacher, I loved a good field trip, especially one to the theater. As part of the day’s participation grade, I would require theater-going students to dress up (i.e., shirt tucked in, wear a belt, no holey jeans, preferably no jeans at all). Aside from getting to share the fun of attending a performance, I loved theater field trips because the students were automatically better behaved. It’s both wonderful and surreal to see a farty freshman boy holding the door open for someone and walking about like a normal person. (You do understand the normal ambulatory manner of a fourteen-year-old boy can best be described as a galumph, right?) It happens at prom, too. Well, until the dancing starts. Don’t make me remember the “dancing”.

Naturally, there are limitations to this. A fussy baby in a tuxedo is still a fussy baby. Maybe even a screaming baby. But for older kids, I swear it works.

2. Avoid humiliating a child whenever possible.

Nothing good will ever come of it. All it does is teach the child to humiliate others and to resent you. When I was teaching I did as much discipline as I could with a whisper, a brief conversation behind my desk, a one-on-one conference right outside the door, or with a post-it note discreetly placed on a desk as I patrolled the room.

All people want to save face, children included. Besides, you’re just a bully if you use your power over a child to humiliate him or her (on purpose).


3. The hallway tactic

There’s a very popular classroom management book called Teaching With Love and Logic (and there’s also a parenting version called Parenting With Love and Logic). With a lot of success, I used the book’s major strategy. To avoid humiliating the child, to avoid a power struggle, and to avoid letting the child evade acknowledging his or her mistake, you follow these steps.

• When a conflict begins, refuse to participate in front of the entire class and ask the student to step out into the hallway.
• When you’ve collected your thoughts and can be non-emotional, step out into the hall for a brief conference. Ask the child why he or she thinks you were angry/upset/whatever.
• If the child understands that what he or she did was wrong and apologizes, step back in and move on (but not if this is a repeat offense - in that case, more severe action is needed).
• If the child says “I dunno” or some variation of this, calmly say, “Well, I’m going to go back in and teach the class while you think about it some more. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
• Almost always, the child is ready to admit his or her mistake and apologize by the second time you go out to the hallway.

This translates to timeouts. I don’t like discipline plans where the parent straightaway tells the child what he or she did wrong (although this may be appropriate for some situations, such as when dealing with a very young child). The lesson from the timeout will be much more effective if the child has to come up with the answers for him or herself.

4. When something boosts a child’s self-esteem and gives him/her joy, do not take it away as punishment.

If only I had a dime for every parent-teacher conference I sat in where the parent threatened to take an extracurricular activity away if the child didn’t start doing his or her homework. First of all, this is not a logical consequence. Secondly, kids don’t not do their homework because they love a subject and feel confident in their ability to master it. Taking away an activity a child feels successful at only digs the down-on-myself hole deeper. More logical consequences would be going to a tutor, not being allowed to watch tv/play video games/play outside/do much of anything until all homework is done. If the child is lying about homework, then honesty is one of the issues in play here, and the consequences should also be geared toward demonstrating that trust is important. Leave the area of life that the kids feels like a winner in out of it.

5. You never know when something you say will forever be etched into a child’s consciousness.

If you give it some thought, you’ll realize that the things adults said to you when you were a kid that stuck with you probably weren’t things the adult planned out to be what you would stow away with you for the rest of your life. This means that you’ve always got to be very careful about what you say. The exceptions to the you-never-know deal are saying things like “You’re just not very good at math” or “You have ugly feet.” People remember stuff like that 100% of the time.

What about you? How did your career prepare you for parenthood?

5 Parenting Lessons I Gleaned from My Teaching Career

Before I was a professional mom, I was a teacher for about seven years. Nobody's going to make a Hallmark movie about me, but I did have a sense of mission about it. Here are a few things I learned in the classroom that translate to the family room.

1. Make plenty of deposits to cover the times when you have to make withdrawals.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey (as in Franklin Covey) writes about an emotional banking system. Praise and positive interactions are examples of emotional deposits. Criticism is an example of an emotional withdrawal. To keep a relationship warm and fuzzy, you’ve got to make more deposits than withdrawals. This means you’ve got to tell a child you love him or her, praise him or her for a job well done, and tell the child about the good qualities you observe in him or her. Doing this builds the relationship so that when you have to dole out some discipline, the relationship and the child’s self-esteem remain intact. If you’re short on deposits, you risk the child resenting you, believing him or herself to be “bad”, or, in the long run, giving up since there seems to be no pleasing you.

2. Create an environment that encourages success.

Students are more successful in a classroom that is structured, designed to be used by about thirty clumsy people, and in which they have access to the resources they need. Rather than trying to maintain a pristine home in which you have to say no constantly, you’ll keep the stress level in your house much lower if you make your home kid-friendly.

3. You have to let people be who they are.

Back in teacher school, I believed that my great love of reading would likewise ignite a passion for literature in every student I taught. Are you laughing? I watched a lot of teacher movies, and I was quite young. Reality is that not everyone is going to become a Shakespeare scholar or go to college, and that’s perfectly okay. Some people are good at music, some people are good at math, and some people are good at fixing stuff. We need all kinds of people to make society jive. So many parents want to create mini-me’s or mold their children into the people they wish they had become, but the child will be much, much happier if you help him or her to become him or herself.

4. You are the decisive factor.

A popular teacher quote goes like this:
"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized."5. Routine, routine, routine.

People, kids included, want to know what to expect. Flexibility is its own virtue, but having a general idea of how the day is going to go makes everyone feel more comfortable. In my classroom it was bellwork, reading time, lesson, closer. Kids liked being able to anticipate what came next. Similarly, my babies are much happier (and much better nappers) when we follow our eating, playing, sleeping routine. And happy, napping babies make Mommy very happy.

Nine Months Appointment

The Stats:

Linus
　

	Measurement	Percentile
Length	28.5”	50%
Weight	18# 5 oz	15%
Head Circumference	45.5 cm	50%

　
Veda

	Measurement	Percentile
Length	27”	25%
Weight	14# 11 oz	<5%
Head Circumference	42 cm	5%

　
　
Both babies have made huge progress in length since their last check-up. I’d been suspecting that their height was in a greater percentile than their weight since they both tend to outgrow clothes tall-wise before they do fat-wise. Considering where we started out on the growth charts (as in not on them), we’ve come a long way. Note that Linus's giant head is now allegedly of average size. Ha! The hats I just bought for him were 18-24 months.

According to the alternative vaccine schedule we’re following, the babies were in for the polio and flu vaccines today. Polio went well - whimpering from Linus and minimal crying from Veda. I decided not to do the flu vaccine today since the practice doesn’t usually offer the thimerosal-free version for babies. (Thimerosal is the mercury preservative in most flu vaccines.) They’re going to order doses for Linus and Veda. Did I mention that I am LIKING this practice?

I’m so, so grateful that my babies are healthy and perfect. Only three more months until our next weigh-in fix!

She Who Does Not Sleep

Observe one of the only existing images of the rare Sleeping Veda.
　

Simply put, Veda doesn’t sleep. On the bright side, that’s how I’m able to write this blog. After her brother has gone to sleep, Veda and I sit in the living room. I do all of my computer business and bounce her, usually until I go to sleep myself. She spends her time fussing/staring into space/babbling/drifting off. And, yes, I did say bounce - not rock. When they were both little night owls, I couldn’t rock them at the same time, so we came to rely on the bouncy seats. Consequently, one of the things about the singleton experience I feel I’ve missed out on the most is rocking my babies to sleep. Maybe I’ve idealized it a bit, but the idea of cradling my little one in a still, dark room, slowly rocking him or her off to sleep sounds absolutely heavenly. But we got used to the bouncies, so that’s what we do.

Since she sleeps less than Linus at night, you might expect that Veda would be a champion napper. No. No, no, no, no. She almost always goes down for her naps later and wakes up sooner. Don’t even get me started about the days when they take staggered naps. Those days. Are. EXHAUSTING.

When it’s time to turn in, Ray will take over for a bit so I can brush my teeth, take out my contacts, do all of those bedtime chores that seem so dreadful when you‘re drowsy. And then I’ll carry Veda up to bed with me and nestle her next to me. Linus is content to sleep alone - prefers it even. But for this time in her life, my little girl wants me close, needs me to help her feel safe enough, buttoned up in love enough to drift off. There are plenty of “experts” who would tell me to let her cry it out. In fact, a pediatrician did. We didn’t see her again. In just a few years my little pearl of great price will marvel to her friends at my behind-the-times ways and think I’m rather foolish. I know these things; I did teach high school. But I’ve had enough time to myself and did crazy things to my body in order to not have the rest of my life to have too much time to myself. She will have plenty of opportunities to cry it out: when her heart is broken, when she finds out that wanting something isn't enough, when she learns that everything ends. For tonight it’s me and my girl, and I know how to fix it...

I Hate Elmo

I also hate Dora, Pooh, Spongebob, Thomas, Bob, and especially the Disney princesses. I hate them for appearing on junky toys and sugary cereals that my children will beg for in the not-too-distant future. I hate them for brainwashing my babies with brand loyalty before they’re capable of critical thinking. Dang those clever, self-serving marketers!

It’s not that I’m opposed to the babies having toys that they love or reading about or watching characters who capture their imaginations. On the contrary! It’s just that I think the joy should come from the good times that playing with the toy provides or from the bliss of a good story - NOT because of the familiar face on the package.


My hatred of the princesses is compounded by another issue (which is a whole other blog post), but aside from those two-dimensional anti-role models, perhaps I most hate the characters who claim to love our children. Elmo doesn’t love you. Elmo wants the contents of your wallet $19.99 at a time. Your Nana loves you. Put her face on a t-shirt and wear it.

So far we’ve avoided any licensed character apparel, toys, or television, but I know that it’s inevitable. The licensed character tidal wave is coming, and I’m going to have to decide whether it’s a war worth fighting. Making unpopular choices is exhausting. So much avoidance and so much explaining… And will it be a barrier to making friends for my little ones? I’m pretty sure mutual favorite cartoon characters can qualify as a friendship requirement for preschoolers.

In the end, I think we’ll just avoid the onslaught as long as possible. The television will remain turned off, and the grocery shopping will be done in places that don’t sell character cereal or character apple slices (which is just a low blow on the part of that industry, don’t you think?). It’s only a matter of time, though, until they watch cartoons at a friend’s house or spot an action figure from a beloved childhood movie when we’re out for toothpaste and dishwasher powder. Perhaps you will see me one day at a big box retailer trying to reason with a child seduced by the siren call of “Collect Them All!”. I do hope, however, that you will not see me in a drive-thru awaiting a side of fast food with my toy. In that event, please stop me and remind me of all that I once loved before the whining began.