Smith Family Weblog

An article about toddlers and iPhones landed on the New York Times’ homepage this morning, and despite the adorable headline—“Hi, Grandma! (Pocket Zoo hold)“—I was reluctant to read it.

I already know Ava and Olivia spent way too much time with our iPhones, and Olivia is pretty sure Bryan purchased the iPad for her use exclusively. (Full disclosure: That one’s watching Dora on the iMac as I type.) The upshot is that calming a fussy preschooler (or a bored kindergartner) is so darn easy when you have a smart device. The downside? The ever present concern about too much screen time.

From the NYT:

THE bedroom door opened and a light went on, signaling an end to nap time. The toddler, tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed, clambered to a wobbly stand in his crib. He smiled, reached out to his father, and uttered what is fast becoming the cry of his generation: “iPhone!”

The iPhone has revolutionized telecommunications. It has also become the most effective tool in human history to mollify a fussy toddler, much to the delight of parents reveling in their newfound freedom to have a conversation in a restaurant or roam the supermarket aisles in peace. But just as adults have a hard time putting down their iPhones, so the device is now the Toy of Choice — akin to a treasured stuffed animal — for many 1-, 2- and 3-year-olds. It’s a phenomenon that is attracting the attention and concern of some childhood development specialists.

It’s a good (and short) read, and while I continue to feel guilty about our reliance on smart devices as tools in parenting, at least I know I’m not alone.

So, fellow parents, what’s your take? Everything in moderation, or are the risks of too much screen time just too high?

When Ava was a baby, I worried about EVERYTHING. I think my exhaustion as a new parent was due primarily to this stress—even more so than relatively sleepless nights.

I’m not completely reformed, but I do remind myself of two things quite regularly: People are generally good, and my children will be fine. This mantra of sorts puts my mind at ease, letting me focus on what is here and now.

I’m not terribly concerned that the girls probably watch a bit too much TV. I’m pretty darn sure they aren’t going to be kidnapped as they play in the back yard. I don’t drill Spanish flashcards at the dinner table. And, I figure that no matter what their preschool curriculum entails, they’ll probably still have the opportunity to rack up student loans in college.

There’s a catch 22, though, and that’s I sometimes worry that I don’t worry enough. Will my apparent lack of energy and effort on the parenting front will have negative consequences down the road?

Maybe not, at least according to the article “The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting” in Time. The story is long, but I think it’s worth a read if you have kids of any age. Here are a few excerpts that I found especially noteworthy (or at a minimum, self affirming).

Perhaps my kids really will be fine!

“…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.

…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. But too many parents 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.

…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.

…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.”

An article in the New York Times claims “for some parents, shouting is the new spanking.”

I distinctly remember being in Target shortly after Ava was born. She was sound asleep in her carseat in the shopping basket, perfectly still and angelic, and I was completely, helplessly, impossibly in love.

As I shopped, I saw another mom snarl and scream at her adorable toddler.  I was shocked.

Four and a half years later, it’s not so shocking. Toddlers are…frustrating.

For that parents that don’t yell, how do you do it?

I bet I know. Vodka is your new water.

It’s been a hectic few weeks (months) at our house, and a few (many) things have slipped by the wayside.

One of them is appropriate footwear for the girls. Ava has a number of shoes, but her preschool teacher has some very specific guidelines about what’s appropriate (no laces, no flip-flops, nothing that remotely hard to put on). My own requirement? Cheap. Preschoolers are hard on shoes.

Ava’s teacher recently informed Bryan that Ava’s (winter) shoes no longer have functioning Velcro, therefore rendering them completely unacceptable. Since Ava’s other shoes all land in the previously mentioned categories, she needed something new. And, in all fairness, I do usually try to do brown and white sandals each spring, preferably one for play and one for dress in both colors. I just haven’t gotten around to it.

To make matters worse, Olivia should probably be moving on beyond soft-soled Robeez, at least when she’s outside. I did pick up a new pair of interim shoes for her, though they are a bit warm for the recent weather.

I realize things like this should be a priority, but in my defense, it’s not like you can buy kids’ shoes on Endless.com between meetings—it requires a shopping trip . . . WITH BOTH CHILDREN.

Bryan finally put his figurative foot down Saturday morning, telling me that both girls required new footwear that very day. So, I loaded everyone up and landed at Target. We made it back home two hours later, and given the spoils from the trip, I’m guessing Bryan will voluntarily take care of all future shoe purchases himself.

You may notice Ava has an extra pair beyond the play and dress sets. She found the rhinestone flip flops and HAD to have them. She made a pretty convincing case, and as I was wearing rhinestone flip flops myself at that moment, I didn’t’ have the heart to turn her down. She was ELATED.

This apple did not fall far from the proverbial tree.

Local Mother Breaks Three Cardinal Rules of Parenting

KANSAS – In what parenting experts across the U.S. are calling “unadvised at best,” local mother Rebecca Smith broke three cardinal rules of parenting before breakfast early Wednesday morning.

The incidents, all of which involved Smith’s three-year-old daughter, Ava, occurred between 7 and 8 a.m at their home in eastern Kansas.

Smith recalled the first affront occurred shortly after Ava woke. Smith, admittedly weary from days of wardrobe battles with her eldest child, simply said, “Ava, if you get dressed without argument, I’ll let you watch TV.”

Parenting experts often warn that this type of bribery, while successful in the short term, leads to long term consequences. “Bribery rapidly becomes addictive for the child and the behavior becomes more and more scandalous in the expectations of achieving better and better rewards,” noted a popular parental advice Web Site.

The second infraction also occurred while Ava was getting dressed. Smith explained that in an effort to hurry Ava along, she knowingly contributed to creating sibling rivalry. “Ava, do you think you can get dressed faster than Olivia?” Smith asked.

This seemingly harmless contest has the potential to create a lifelong competition between the two siblings, who are three and a half years apart in age.

The final–and arguably the the most damaging–incidence of poor parenting took place a few moments later. Despite knowing the dangers of idle threats first hand, Smith hollered, “Maybe I should just call Grandma and Grandpa and tell them not to come!”

When asked if she would indeed call her in-laws and request that they postpone their visit, scheduled for later today, Smith said, “God, no. I can’t wait for them to arrive. I need some help.”

Smith’s husband, Bryan Smith, noted that Smith herself has reminded him many times how critical it is to provide only concrete consequences in which follow-through is imminently possible. “She’s always saying, if you’re not going to follow through, don’t threaten it.”

When asked how she could so easily eschew her own advice, Smith said, “Look it’s been a little stressful around here lately. I’m tired.”

Experts might caution her, though, that while these ill advised tactics save time and energy now, they will likely increase the amount of work required of her as a parent down the road.

From the NYT magazine:

The most read story on parenting.com today is “Mad at Dad,” a 4,000-word look at how very angry mothers of young children are at their husbands.

Based on a what author Martha Brockenbrough describes as a survey of 1,000 “nationally representative” mothers from MomConnection, an online opinion panel, the article is a disturbing portrait of motherhood.

“We love our husbands,” she writes, “but we’re mad that we spend more mental energy on the details of parenting. We’re mad that having children has turned our lives upside down much more than theirs. We’re mad that these guys, who can manage businesses or keep track of thousands of pieces of sports trivia, can be clueless when it comes to what our kids are eating and what supplies they need for school. And more than anything else, we’re mad that they get more time to themselves than we do.”

She continues: “We carry so much of this life-altering responsibility in our heads: the doctors’ appointments, the shoe sizes, the details about the kids’ friends. Many dads wouldn’t even think to buy valentines for the class, for example, or know when it’s time to sign kids up for the pre–camp physical, or that curriculum night is next Thursday at 7:30 and you need to hire a sitter and bring a nut-free vegetarian appetizer that can be eaten without a fork. Even moms who work full-time take it upon themselves to store all this data in our already overstuffed heads. We’re the walking, talking encyclopedias of family life, while dads tend to be more like brochures.”

There’s a simple solution to this. It’s called wine.

Tonight we get one extra hour of the kids not sleeping.