Dads needs balance, too

Lauren Young

As fellow bloggers David and James have made clear, work/life balance isn't just an issue for moms. Cali Yost's Work+Life Fit Blog has an interesting post today on what dads want, and how they can get it.

When the Kids Grow Up--Part 2

Cathy Arnst

Yesterday I posted an entry on this blog about the importance of developing good eating habits in our kids early on, so they'll grow up to be healthy adults. In response I received an email from Jennifer R., and I've decided to make her a guest blogger and reprint it here (with her permission), followed by some of my own comments:

Continue reading "When the Kids Grow Up--Part 2"

When the Kids Grow Up

Cathy Arnst

I recently came across some tips on parenting that contained a phrase that struck me as brilliant, and oft-forgotten: We are not raising children, we are raising future adults. If we could keep that thought front and center in our interactions with our children, I have a feeling many of us would change our approach. How many times have we heard other parents, or ourselves, excuse bad behavior by saying "it's just a phase" or "she's just a kid, kids act like that," and thus shrug off any attempts to exert parental authority. Then the next thing you know, they grow up to be the kinds of adults you can't stand because they are so self-centered, or unwilling to accept responsibility, or manipulative, or..well, the list could go on and on.

Many of us also forget that the food we feed our kids can have just as big an impact on their adult lives as a lack of discipline. And remember, WE feed our kids--they do not buy and cook the food themselves. We're responsible, not them. This is brought home week after week on the TLC cable channel show Honey We're Killing the Kids, which I've blogged about before. A reader, Jacqueline, recently made a comment about the show that raises the issue of the future adults we're creating:

I just think Lisa (the nutritionist on the show) needs to address the parents a little more on the pattern they are showing their kids. Saying yes is always easier than saying no....but No will save their lives.

Exactly. The eating habits our children are developing now will stay with them well into adulthood--and for many kids that means a pretty grim future. I recently had dinner in a restaurant with friends and their 7-year-old daughter. They ordered her bacon, french fries and a ginger ale! Their excuse: she won't eat anything else on the menu, and anyways, she's thin and very active, so it's not like they have to worry about her weight.

What they are ignoring is that she may be thin now, but with those eating habits she can definitely look forward to an unhealthy and probably overweight teen and adulthood (not to mention the lessons she's learning by being allowed to eat any junk she wants). Studies have shown that giving candy to children under the age of two makes them crave sugar to a heightened degree for the rest of their lives. A lack of calcium in the diet of young girls is one the greatest risk factors for developing osteoporosis as an adult, and exercise can likely lower the risk of developing certain cancers--but only if started early in life.

So feed your kids some vegetables, no matter how much they scream for french fries. Hopefully, they'll thank you when they're grown--or else they'll invite you over for bacon and ginger ale.

Leaving the Nest

Amy Dunkin

My mother always reminds me that one of my main roles as a parent is to teach my children to be independent so that one day they will leave home. I thought about her words last Sunday while I watched a big coach bus drive off with my smiling, waving 9-1/2-year-old son as he began his first sleepaway camp adventure.

Just a few weeks earlier, he sat up in his bed as I was saying good-night and announced that he had made his decision: He was not going to sleepaway camp this summer. I immediately tried to reassure him, telling him that I understood he might be anxious, that it was normal to feel that way, but that he would have lots of fun and it would be a great experience. I guess it did the trick, because I heard nary a protest after that. And that didn't look like an unhappy kid through the window of that bus.

If anything, my husband and I were the unhappy ones, or at least the ones with very mixed emotions. Watching him ride away for two weeks, realizing this would be the longest separation we'd ever had, thinking that before long, he'll be going off to college and then what? In retrospect, I realized we'd all been a bit out of sorts in our house the week before, even my 6-year-old who was going to get that only-child experience of our undivided attention for the first time in his life. It really felt like a limb of our family was being severed.

In the days since, I've begun to relax more. I'm sleeping better, no longer checking the weather report for camp every half hour, and looking forward to coming home from work to the demands of one child instead of two.

Before we know it, the two weeks will be over and we'll be driving up to camp to take him home. I cherish the thought of seeing his proud, smiling face as he catches the first sight of us and shows us around like a big man on campus. I'll also know he's not yet ready to leave home for good, but assuming we're doing our job as parents right, he's one important step closer.

Grading Myself

Toddi Gutner

We’ve all done it. Found ourselves doing to our kids the very thing we vowed we would never do because of how it made us feel when our parents did it to us. Well, I had an “ah ha” moment yesterday when I opened my kids’ report cards and stopped myself from repeating one of my father’s notorious comments to me when he used to open my report cards. He would scan my grades—usually all As and B—and then ask, “What’s the B for?”

I felt my overall accomplishments were minimized and I was forced to focus on what seemed like my failures. I know my father only meant to encourage me to do my best, but in the moment, that wasn’t the message I got.

Granted my kids are just finishing first and third grade, but when I looked at their grades, I zeroed in on their lower marks. And then, I stepped back. I slowly went over each mark and focused on the highest grades and then looked at where there was improvement over the course of the semester and the year. Then I sat down with each child and asked how they felt they did in school this semester and reviewed their grades with them. The message I tried to impart was: Did you do your best? If not, think about how you can do better. I’m not sure if the change in my reaction and behavior made any difference to them, but it did to me.

LIST MANIA

Anne Tergesen

An incredible thing happened to me yesterday. At approximately 6:00 last night, I crossed the last item off my typically jam-packed “to do” list.

I’m a big list-maker. In high school, I made a daily list of my homework assignments. My reward for finishing each task? The satisfaction of crossing it off my list. (I plead guilty to having been a rather nerdly teenager.) Now, I have lists everywhere: At home, I keep a grocery list taped to the kitchen wall. At work, I post lists of useful blogs and passwords next to my computer. Each time I research an article, I make a list of people to call and questions to ask.

But the list I refer to most often—my official “to do” list—is the one I keep taped to my date book. (List? Datebook? Can anyone say Luddite?) This is where I keep track of everything I have to do to keep my household functioning: Pay the babysitter, send a birthday present to my nephew, buy milk, sign the kids up for swimming lessons, fill a prescription, get the car inspected, return books to the library. You get the picture.

Without this list, I’m convinced my life would descend into chaos. Every time I pull my date book out of my purse, there's my list, like a nagging mother, to remind me of the things I can’t afford to let slip through the cracks. The List also helps me keep focused. Rather than get distracted at the thought of some annoying thing I forgot to do, I simply add it to The List—with a star next to it if it’s really urgent. Then, I go back to what I was doing, confident that it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be able to cross it off, too. Yes, this is the inner life of an organization-freak. But, hey, it works.

So, now that my “to do” list is blank, does this mean I have nothing to do? Yeah, right. The List only includes things that aren’t a part of my daily routine. So, I still can look forward to an evening of laundry, lunch-packing, and bill paying. But for the first time in years, I don’t have any extra odds and ends hanging over me.

So, how did I manage to conquer my “to do” list? I honestly don’t know, but I assume the fact that its summer has something to do with it. With school out and friends away, there’s just not much going on. Whatever the reason, I’ll savor my freedom—at least until the next birthday party invitation arrives.

Sex and the City: The Working Parent's Version

Lauren Young

Last night I got together with a group of women for a late dinner. Three out of five of us are working moms. One is a stay-at-home mom. And one is still looking for Mr. Right. We toasted ourselves over Prosecco for juggling crazy schedules, and childcare to find the time to whoop it up without kids clinging to our legs.

For a bunch of mommies, we looked hot: T* had on a long flowing red dress that hugged her yoga-toned body. M was wearing a beaded halter top. J was wearing an adorable eyelet skirt. C’s hair was down, and she was wearing sexy, wedge sandals. I had on my groovy Marimekko-inspired pants. The scene was a happening Italian restaurant across from New York City’s Lincoln Center. Paul Schaffer and Felicia Michele Collins from the “Late Show with David Letterman” were just a few tables away.

Such a beautiful night. Such a glorious setting. So what did we gossip about? Angelina and Brad…Nah? Sex? Well, maybe a little bit. But the big topic of the night: Parenting.

Continue reading "Sex and the City: The Working Parent's Version"

Delighted to Drive, Walk, or Catch a Few ZZZs

Amy Dunkin

I agree with Toddi. Give me the wheel of the car and a chauffeur's hat any day when there are young 'uns in the back seat. You're sure to learn something interesting about the secret lives of your children.

The same can be said about walking with them. I'm lucky enough to live in a suburb with sidewalks, giving us what I consider to be one of the great advantages of city life--the ability to walk everywhere. On most nice days during the school year, I walk my kids to school, and in those six blocks down the hill, I get more of the scoop on their teachers and classmates, friends and foes, than I'd ever glean through a direct query. (In all fairness to our kids, think about how you respond when someone--your spouse, perhaps--asks "What did you do today?" I could have had the most exciting or stressful day of my life, but my mind immediately shuts down and I turn into a blathering idiot.)

Another place I get to steal some valuable talk time is in their bedrooms, right after the lights go out. My boys are 9 and 6, but I admit I still lie down next to each of them for a few minutes each night before they go to sleep. It's an innocent ritual we all enjoy, and during that short time in the dark, the kids can get quite chatty. The only danger is that I can easily fall asleep mid-sentence--either theirs or mine.

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WEB SITE ALERT:

I'd like to call your attention to a neat Web site for working moms: Mommy Track'd: The Working Mother's Guide to Managed Chaos. It was started by Amy Keroes, a Mill Valley (Calif.) mother of two who left her job as senior corporate counsel for Gap Inc. last year to spend more time at home. She hasn't given up lawyering completely: She still does freelance legal work for Gap.

"Our mission is to provide a helpful and entertaining resource for all the time-crunched moms managing the daily tug of war between work and family," the home page states.

The site has links to Hot Topics, Survival Guide, Message Boards, and Tales from the Mommy Track, among others. If a recent Hot Topic, "Kids & TV: The Boob Tube is OK," sounds familiar, it's because it's a reprint of a Working Parents blog entry by BusinessWeek's own Lauren Young.

Daycare Decisions

James Mehring

I read the New York Times article "The Price of Daycare Can Be High" by David Leonhardt over the weekend. This article was mentioned in the blog entry "The Price of Daycare" by my colleague Cathy Arnst. Lyn and I leave our daughter with my mother-in-law each weekday morning. Neither of us feel the marriage is less satisfying or that we are depressed because of this decision. But we feel pangs of guilt each morning as we walk down the steps looking back at our daughter and waving goodbye for the day.

Unfortunately, we weren’t in a financial position that allowed Lyn to stay home. We realized this before our daughter was born and made a conscious decision to stay close to Lyn’s parents. Besides the expense of daycare, the thought of turning over our baby to a stranger was too upsetting for us.

In this day and age, relying on relatives to watch children seems less common, although Lyn and have two other friends who rely on grandparents to watch their children during the workweek. I also hear persons from earlier generations lament about the fragmentation of family. With siblings, parents, and grandparents scattered all over the country, the web of family support that was once common seems to be disappearing. I remember growing up within a few miles of my maternal grandmother, and several aunts and uncles.

It’s a shame considering how many families now have two working parents because of economic reasons. While my wife would love to stay home, we see how our daughter gets the individual attention and love from her grandmother that she really needs right now. We are fortunate to have such an arrangement. There may be many families that couldn’t rely on the setup that Lyn and I have for reasons other than geographic distance. At the same time, there must also be acceptable ways to encourage or incentivize more families to form the villages that children, and parents, need.

The Price of Daycare

Cathy Arnst

The New York Times ran a thought-provoking column on Tuesday by David Leonhardt titled "The Price of Daycare Can Be High." It ran in the business section, and it's a must read for working parents. Leonhardt writes about a bold social experiment in Quebec: in 1997 the provincial government decided that it needed more women in the workforce to fuel economic growth. To get them there it started government run daycare centers that cost only $7 a day. The centers were flooded with applications, the number of children in daycare rose almost 50% and the mothers who returned to work in droves did give the economy a lift.

Almost a decade later three economists, two Canadians and one from MIT, decided to take an in-depth look at what it meant for the children. Their dismal conclusion:

"Across almost everything we looked at," said MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, "the policy led to much worse outcomes for kids."

"Young children in Quebec are more anxious and aggressive than they were a decade ago, even though children elsewhere in Canada did not show big changes. Quebec children also learn to use a toilet, climb stairs and count to three at later ages, on average, than they once did. The effects weren't so great for parents, either. More of them reported being depressed, and they were less satisfied with their marriages — which also didn't happen in other provinces."

Continue reading "The Price of Daycare"

Delighted to Drive

Toddi Gutner

Get a group of suburban parents together and you’re bound to hear grousing about the time they spend behind the wheel chauffeuring their kids around.

I have a secret for you: It’s the best place to learn about what your kids are thinking and feeling. Somehow, my sons seem to forget that I’m in the car with them and their friends. It’s as though there is Plexiglas between the front and back seats. I admit, I absolutely love to eavesdrop on their conversations. What girl they have a crush on, which girl they think has a crush on them, which boy causes trouble in the lunch room, who plays the bully at recess and so on. I get so much more insight into the rhythms of their day than I do when I ask them, “So, how was school today?”

It also seems to go both ways. I’ve noticed as my kids get older, we do most of our serious talking when I’m driving them somewhere. For example, the other day, both my kids (ages 7 and 9) were asking me questions about the facts of life—in detail. We’ve also covered what G-D looks like, where do people go when they die, how do you find someone to marry and more. It could be that the car is just where they think of these touchy topics. But I also think they feel less threatened and are more willing to ask difficult questions when my attention isn’t directly focused on them. Whatever the reason, I cherish my role as chauffeur.

NURSERY SCHOOL ADMISSIONS WARS

Anne Tergesen

I recently wrote an article for BusinessWeek about consultants who charge astronomical sums--in some cases, as much as the cost of a full year’s tuition, room and board-—for advising on the college admissions process. There are many reasons for the growing popularity of these counselors, who were retained by an estimated 22% of this year's crop of freshmen at private, four-year colleges, according to the Independent Educational Consultants Association. One reason is simply that as the number of high school graduates has grown, from 2.46 million in 1994 to 3.15 million today, it's become that much harder to stand out in a crowd.

The consultants are also capitalizing on dual career households. Unfortunately, I know all too well how hard it is for working parents to find time to navigate the admissions process. You see, before my kids were out of diapers (and long before they could read a word), I learned the joys of the New York City private school admissions process. Each school has its own requirements. But in general, most New York City nursery schools mail applications only to families who call the day after Labor Day. With thousands trying to get through at once, you've got to spend hours re-dialing until you get a human on the line. Fail to get through on that day? You’re out of luck.

Continue reading "NURSERY SCHOOL ADMISSIONS WARS"

Alert! Strict Parents NOT LINKED to Fat Kids

Cathy Arnst

A new study in the medical journal Pediatrics got a lot of buzz last week, because it seemed to be saying that strict parents would end up with fat kids. That's not what the study says at all, however, though you'd never know it from much of the media coverage. Just take a look at the headline on the Reuters story: Disciplinarian Parents Have Fat Kids-US Study. Or this one, from the AP: Strict Parenting Linked to Overweight Kids

In fact, the study, by researchers from Boston University, found that authoritarian parents--that is, inflexible, controlling, and very strict --were five times as likely to raise children who were overweight by age six. Permissive parents (defined as indulgent and without discipline) weren't off the hook, however--their kids were twice as likely to be overweight, as were those of neglectful parents.

So who had the healthiest kids? Authoritative parents, defined as those who set clear boundaries and rules, have high expectations for the child's self control but are respectful of the child's opinion.

Continue reading "Alert! Strict Parents NOT LINKED to Fat Kids"

Sleep Time

James Mehring

Whenever I am in the BusinessWeek pantry to get a glass of water or heat my lunch, I am still frequently asked about sleep. I am happy to report that my daughter’s long episodes of crying in the evening (our doctor said it was colic) have been replaced with restful nights. We give most of the credit to our daughter but I would like to think some of our early parenting decisions played a role.

I bring up the subject of sleep again in reaction to my colleague Cathy Arnst’s blog entry. My wife Lyn and I are not very familiar with Dr. Ferber’s methods. This is one of the few topics we didn’t research. However, judging from Emily Bazelon’s piece on Slate and listening to others who have employed his system it makes sense. Based on observations and our own upbringing, Lyn and I agree that being consistent and firm is much better for a child.

Continue reading "Sleep Time"

Soledad O'Brien: "Learn to say no."

Amy Dunkin

We've blogged a fair amount about the time pressures we all face, and how difficult it is to accept volunteer projects on top of everything else we do. Soledad O'Brien, who co-anchors CNN's American Morning program from 6-10 a.m. each weekday, has some clear-cut limits she shared during a lunchtime speech at a "Balance Seekers" conference sponsored by Working Mother Media in New York today.

To put things in perspective, Soledad has a job that regularly requires her to be in the office at 3 a.m. In the past two years, she has traveled to Phuket, Thailand to cover the tsunami disaster and to New Orleans to report on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is also the mother of four children under the age of six, including 21-month-old twins, and her husband is an investment banker who often travels as well. To say her life is busy is an understatement. Yet if occasionally she has to miss an event at her daughters' school or rush out of the office to attend to a sick child, she refuses to feel guilty. "Guilt is something you feel when you're ambivalent about your choices," she says.

Being in such a high-profile job, she often gets asked to appear at various functions. Whether she accepts or declines depends on her answers to the following list of questions she keeps at her desk:

* Do I know the asker well?
* Is the person a close friend?
* Are they paying well? (She asks this not because she seeks personal financial gain, but because she donates all her speaking fees to charity.)
* Can she walk to the event from home or office?
* Does it require high or low effort?
* Is it of personal value to do this?

If she can't reply yes to most of these questions, she'll say "thanks, but no thanks." No ambivalence, no guilt.