How Do I Talk to My Kids About Violence in the News? Simple: I Don’t

“Why are you wearing a poppy today, Daddy?”

My son whispered this question to me as I picked up my bags to head off to work. In Canada, we wear poppies in the days leading up to November 11 to remember fallen soldiers. I had mine on early and my son’s curiosity was piqued. I bent down and looked him in the eye. “A soldier died yesterday, bunny. I want to remember him,” I whispered back, tousled his hair, picked up my things and left.

It was the first my son was hearing of the dramatic shooting in Ottawa this week, when a lone gunman shot a reservist standing guard at Canada’s National War Memorial before bursting into our houses of Parliament and dying in a firefight with security just outside the door where the Canadian Prime Minister was meeting with his caucus.

It was a very tragic day. A day that didn’t need to be explained to a 4 and 7-year-old.

Here’s the thing: I don’t shy away from answering the difficult questions my kids ask, but I don’t actively seek out opportunities to open up Pandora’s Box. Why should I go out of my way to explain rape, murder, and war to a 7-year-old?

The news is never on when my kids are around. Never. We’re past the point where my wife can spell words out or even talk over the kids’ heads at the dinner table. They’re aware. They understand. So a current events cone of silence has descended in our house.

After the events in Ottawa this week, the “how to talk to your kids about tragedy” stories are now coming up. The same kind that showed up after Sandy Hook. The same kind that showed up after Boston. The same kind that … you get the routine.

“Kids talk on the playground. They understand more than you think,” is usually the response I get when I say that I avoid exposing my kids to tragic headlines.

“I believe in raising well-informed children,” a news anchor friend of mine challenged. “When they are ready is up to the parents.”

And there’s the rub.

You can wrap your kids as tightly as you want in your own ideology and philosophy, and do your best to keep their world filled with sugarplums and rainbows, but the moment they get in the real world, it all comes crumbling down. Stories are told. Facts are misinterpreted. The lowest common denominator reigns.

Of course, if that playground talk happens and my kids come home with questions, a straight answer will be given. I’ll explain it language they can understand. I’ll give the bare bones of facts, and I’ll look to Fred Rogers for inspiration.

“When I was a boy and I’d see scary things on the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helps. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words and am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

Until then – why would I try to open up that nasty, evil, fear-filled can of worms?

Not now. Not yet. Not at 7. Not at 4.

Why would anyone want to do that?

As always, this is my take and yours may vary. I hope the piece gives you pause to think about how you do things in your family and perhaps even new insight. Respectful comments are always welcome. 

Photo credit: Thinkstock

Is Running Out of Time Any Reason to Have a Baby?

So a lot has happened to make me feel, *ahem* older lately. I had a birthday. My son turned 12. I celebrated my 20-year high school reunion. And while any one of these things is enough to make you wonder whether you’ve done Oprah proud, one big question continues to nag at my consciousness: should I have another baby?

This mental tug-of-war has been going on for a while now. First there was the year when “No more babies!” was replaced by “Well, maybe one more baby,” followed by the year of, “Should we really? Could we really?” which ultimately led to last year’s pregnancy loss and general mistrust of the universe.

October 4th marked the one-year anniversary of my miscarriage and I’m sorry to say that I’m no closer to reaching resolution on the “maybe baby” front than I was three years ago. In fact, I’m probably further away than ever. And it’s cruel, ya know? The inevitable expiration of my fertility. And that’s what I’m struggling with. I’m 38 years old dealing with some female issues and my eggs are getting tired. I’m getting tired. But despite these unyielding truths, I can’t quite shake the suspicion that I’m not done having kids.

That said, I haven’t so much as talked about another baby with my husband in the last 365 days. I haven’t pinned a single adorable thing to my secret Baby #3 Pinterest board. And I especially haven’t so much as allowed a twinkle to flash within my eyes as I cradled friends’ newborn babies. Yet for some reason on October 4^th, the very day I lost my baby last year, my husband said to me, “You’re not done having babies. I just know it.”

Trust me when I tell you he didn’t realize it was the anniversary of my miscarriage. He wouldn’t. This is a man who regularly misplaces his wallet and can’t remember his social security number. And while our loss surely affected him, I know he didn’t mark his mental calendar the way I had. He didn’t remember the exact day and time the bleeding started. He wasn’t privy to all the tearful conversations and prayers between me and my maker. Sure, he remembers me crying. He remembers telling the kids about the pregnancy almost as quickly as untelling them, but doesn’t remember the details of our loss — at least not the way I do.

“How do you know I’m not done having babies? What makes you think as much?” I asked with raging indignation. “Nothing,” he said, “I just know you.”

Know me he does, but what he doesn’t know is that the root of my baby fever matters to me. It matters a lot. In fact, it’s everything. Is another baby what my heart really wants or is it a “Quick! Get you a baby while the gettin’s still good!” Is there a way to know for sure? Is there some BuzzFeed quiz I can take? Is it a gut feeling? Or does it not matter at all?

I know a baby, whether born to this earth or only living in my tender heart, means forever. Forever joys, forever sorrows, forever fears, and forever blessings. But am I ready for another forever? The answer is as much “no” as it is “yes,” even one year and 9,000 spins around the biological clock later.

Image courtesy of ThinkStock

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We Can’t Let Our Kids Inherit a Broken American Dream

All Americans are born equal, and with hard work and perseverance, each one of us has a shot at living better, fuller, and richer lives. That’s how the story of the American Dream goes, anyway. And as parents, it’s what we tell our kids: You can be anything that you want if you apply yourself.

But a distressing new study from the Brookings Institute shows just how far off the American Dream is from the American reality. In this clever video by economist Richard Reeves, who authored the report, Reeves uses LEGO figures to illustrate how people in the top 20% of our economy hold more than 50% of the overall wealth in our country, while people in the bottom 20% only have 5%.

To put that into paycheck terms, families in the lowest economic bracket survive on about $18,000 per year. Families in the highest make over $100,000.

Those are grim numbers, but what’s truly distressing is how hard it is to move up in America. Let’s say you’re born in the bottom 20%. On average, you have a one in ten chance of rising to the top tier, but it’s most likely that you’ll remain in the bottom your entire life. Your chances improve if you’re white, and/or have married parents, and/or go to college, but they get significantly worse if you’re either an African American, a high school dropout, or a child of unmarried parents.

The depressing bottom line is: the majority of Americans will reach the age of forty in the same economic bracket they were born into, no matter how smart they are, or how diligently they work.

Why is this? Just like poor kids tend to stay poor, rich kids tend to stay rich, even if they drop out of high school. Wealthy parents hoard opportunities for their children: they can afford to nab spots in good schools even if their child doesn’t merit them, they have connections in business that ensure their kids will do well as adults, and of course they leave behind valuable assets when they die. The rich can afford to invest heavily in their kids from birth, spending more time with their babies, and sending their children to programs that give them an educational leg up that poor kids don’t have.

What can we do to ensure that all of the children in this country have a fair shot at succeeding? The answers are not likely to be politically popular. As I’ve written before, instituting federal family leave policies is one thing, so that all American children can receive bonding time with their parents at the earliest stages of their life. And a universal Pre-K program, if done right, would provide exposure to literacy and mathematics for all.

As Reeves wrote in The New York Times, the President has proposed giving colleges bonuses for accepting kids who are eligible for Pell Grants, as an incentive for schools to accept more kids who aren’t in the top economic bracket. Colleges themselves could stop privileging alumni applicants. (Your chances of getting into Harvard are about five times better if you’re the child of an alum!) I would add that we should also address the crippling cost of a college education, which continues to rise, making even state schools a burden for many Americans.

The bottom line is, we as a country need to institute some changes, otherwise the stories we tell our children about their ability to succeed in America will be about as fanciful as tales about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. This is something to keep in mind with midterm elections on the horizon. Don’t just think about the policies that are going to benefit you today, think about the ones that will be better for your children, and for all children across America, in the long run.

Image courtesy of ThinkStock

A Public School Dad’s Plea to Private School Parents

Now that my daughter is in Kindergarten, I’m suddenly thrust into this position that so many parents find themselves eventually. I’m a parent of a public school kid now, with two more sons following their sister’s lead in the next few years. I have to decide now if I want to be the parent who really cares about the schools they attend, or if I’m the parent who drops them off at the bus stop and helps them with some homework, but ultimately doesn’t give the whole schooling thing much further thought. (You know, until the day comes when college tuition bills bust through my living room wall like The Hulk.)

In my case, I can’t help myself. I care. A lot. I’m not alone either and I know it. We want the very best for our kids. We want them to have all the chances that we never had. Part of the gig as parents has always been to hope that our children have at least a slightly better life than we’ve had. Even if our life has been grand. It’s just human nature. It’s just the way love works.

And so I’ve been wondering about something lately. Even if we choose to ignore the staggering problems facing so many American public schools, most of us still know they’re there. It’s a reality and that’s that. But what I’ve been pondering as of late is whether or not the presence of private schools (and let’s be brutally honest here, private schools are often better schools) really messes with the ability of public education to ever move forward.

Sometimes I think that maybe private schools are a big part of the education problem in America. I know, I know, that sounds completely ridiculous on the surface, a grotesquely uninformed statement made worse by the following facts:

a) I’m no expert on education (far from it, actually).

b) I’ve never attended a private school.

c) I don’t have a child in private school (but I do have a daughter in a public one).

But bear with me here, people. My theory is simply my own and is just a gut feeling, but there might be something in it to at least think about.

It occurs to me that while private schools are tremendous places to attend (from better facilities, to smaller teacher-to-class ratios; from drafting the cream of the educator crop into their fold, to obscenely high success rates for graduates) there is also the notion attached to all of that which hints at an ugly fact. In order to get the best education possible in the land of the free, you better have the big bucks to pay for it.

And I think that sucks on a bunch of levels. Look, we certainly aren’t a poor nation (not by a long shot) and yet, there are maybe a few dozen or so special-case public schools in the whole of the land that can compete with even your basic private school education.

What’s up with that? How do we look ourselves in the proverbial mirror and feel okay with that knowledge?

Doesn’t it seem odd for a country that sells itself as the single greatest one in the world for opportunity to stand and watch most of its young people locked outside the gates of the the best education possible? I mean, it seems to me that the elite privilege of a private school education is based on this unspoken agreement amongst us all where we allow that a truly great education, and the true success that comes with it later in life, are both a sword best swung by the wealthiest among us.

But the problem isn’t the fault of private schools.

And it isn’t public schools that are to blame, either.

The problem is that one exists and thrives because the other one suffers. See, every time a kid enrolls in a privately owned house of learning, he or she is, in essence, walking away from an epidemic (failing public schools). And fair play to that. It makes sense if you can afford it, right?

That said, maybe the decision to send your child to a non-public school is also feeding the problem itself by having nothing to do with it, by walking away from it. That’s not any child’s conscious decision, of course, and I understand perfectly well that there is no ill will within the hearts or minds of private school parents either. But still: there is a growing gulf between public schools flapping around in the undertow and all the other education success stories enjoying the sailboat breeze.

Here then, my friends, is the trouble with all of this.

Private schools are the places where the most likely to succeed congregate. They are chock-full of kids from very good homes, for the most part. (And by “good homes,” yes, I mean homes where things have been working out pretty well financially.) Financial success, or any kind of success for that matter, is most often enjoyed by the smartest and the brightest, or at the very least, the most ambitious in the land. So when we look at the fact that so many of those successful American’s offspring will never ever set foot in a single American public school, it becomes fairly staggering to consider what that actually means.

Because not only has the public school system lost the chance to have another kid enter into it, it has also lost some potentially life-changing friends in the form of many top-notch teachers and faculty members. They go where the money is, too. That’s perfectly understandable. Who wouldn’t want to make more money and work in a healthier environment?

That’s not all though. What about all of those well-educated and successful parents who could probably make a vast difference in the plight of public schools? Well, chances are that all of those brilliant minds and potential leaders for every child in our country, they’ve probably lost any hint of interest, you know? I mean, why should they be concerned with the fate of American public education when their kids have nothing to do with it?

The endless cycle thus continues and many of our nation’s brightest parents, teachers, and students never ever rub shoulders with the masses. As a result, they don’t witness what so many public school systems are up against.

Then, when they don’t see what’s really happening, well, they don’t contribute a damn thing to changing it.

And so it goes.

Image courtesy of ThinkStock

You can also find Serge on his personal blog, Thunder Pie. And on Facebook and Twitter

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Toys R Us Removes “Breaking Bad” Action Figures After Parents Freak Out

Even if you haven’t seen the AMC show Breaking Bad, you’re probably familiar with the character Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston), a high-school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking crystal meth after he’s diagnosed with lung cancer. Toys R Us recently sparked outrage among some parents when their website began selling figures of White and his sidekick Jesse Pinkman, complete with guns, bags of cash, and a tray of blue crystal meth. (Sadly, it appeared that you could not strip White down to his tighty-whities, an iconic image from the now classic series.)

Florida mom Susan Schrivjer started a petition on Change.org calling for Toys R Us to pull the items because they represent a “dangerous deviation from [the store's] family friendly values.” She said that, “While the show may be compelling for adults, its violent content and celebration of the drug trade make this collection unsuitable to be sold alongside Barbie dolls and Disney characters.”

The company argued that the figures would be sold in the “adult action figure area of our stores,” and that the toys are clearly marked for ages 15 and older. But as the story spread, they finally decided to remove the toys from their stock. Bryan Cranston got more than 30,000 retweets when he went on Twitter and responded to the controversy with, “I’m so mad, I’m burning my Florida Mom action figure in protest.”

I don’t usually find myself feeling sympathetic toward a company, but in this case I agree with Toys R Us. We applaud children’s movies that slip in jokes and references geared toward adults, so what’s the big deal with a toy store carrying products aimed more for the parents accompanying their kids than at the kids themselves?

Because, have no doubt, that’s who the Breaking Bad toys are for: fans of the show, toy collectors, and adults who want their own ironic figures with which to play. I certainly wouldn’t purchase one for my son. But then again, I wouldn’t buy any little girl a Barbie doll either, whose unrealistically sized figures, light skin tones, and “fashionista” branding impart restrictive, demeaning stereotypes about femininity which girls all-too-often absorb without question. Apparently, according to the petition, these representations are “family friendly.”

Moreover, the petition doesn’t address the fact that Toys R Us sells superhero or Star Wars figures, many of which come with guns and fake money, and are meant for violent imaginative play. They also sell robots based on the Transformers movies, the most recent of which (Transformers: Age of Extinction) received a PG-13 rating for its depictions of violence, and toys based on first-person shooter games like Halo. Personally, I would be much more concerned about my son coming across the line of figures based on the R-rated Aliens franchise, all of which are creepy and scary, and some of which burst apart into a pile of gross guts.

Ah, but these are all make believe, right? Whereas Breaking Bad figures puts parents in the uncomfortable position of explaining to their children why drug dealers are being glorified in plastic (I’m paraphrasing from the petition here).

Having a toy spark a discussion about the perils of drug use and the immorality of the drug trade — both themes of the show — sounds like a teachable moment to me. Is it likely that my son would actually want to buy such a doll himself? Of course not, because he hasn’t seen the show and so has no connection to the figures. I would easily redirect him toward toys that he’d find more interesting. No worries on my part.

What does worry me is that parents find violence and depictions of evil doers okay, as long as they don’t resemble the violence we actually see in real life. The two are part of the same spectrum, and it seems hypocritical to protest a store for carrying toys based on real-life bad guys without also asking them to stop stocking the pretend bad guys. Just like we keep our kids from streaming certain shows on demand, so too can we keep them from buying the toys that we don’t want them to have.

This isn’t the store’s responsibility, it’s ours.

Images courtesy of Toys R Us and The Associated Press via ABC News

I Hate My Need for Validation as a Stay-at-Home Mom

There’s a popular piece floating around right now about how being a stay-at-home mom is a luxury … for your spouse. Perhaps you’ve read it. When I first read it, I wanted to fist bump the author (one of my fellow writers who I love) and say, “YEAH! This is it! You’ve got it!”

But the more it sat with me (like good writing tends to do) the more I realized why I loved the piece at first, and then came to hate it – not so much the piece itself, but the feelings it elicited and even more, how it was being shared.

If you haven’t read it (you should), it explains how nice it is for spouses of stay-at-home moms to have someone who’s always there – someone to take care of the kids when they’re sick without worrying about missing meetings, someone to have the cooking and the cleaning done, the errands run. You know, the kinds of things stay-at-home moms do so their husbands can work. (You know, work, that thing that makes the money so your family can do pretty much anything. Like eat. And go to the doctor.)

See, I wanted to love this article. I wanted to immediately copy and paste the link and passive aggressively shoot it over to my husband’s Facebook wall. Because I wanted him to read it. I wanted him to appreciate me and see the value in all I do and how I make life so grand for him.

What the heck is wrong with that? He’s out there every day working his butt off, and I want him to thank me for not having to miss a meeting if our son gets sick? That’s screwed up. But still really true. Despite acknowledging the reality, I still wanted him to know some of those hidden benefits of having me so readily available all the time. That’s when I realized what it was really about:

The need for validation.

Despite bringing in a paycheck while still being home with my son, I have this yearning to be validated externally. I know I’m doing important (if unglamorous) things for our household, like teaching my 2-year-old letters and manners, keeping our family fed with nutritious meals, and being there for doctor’s appointments and field trips. But no matter how much I know I’m doing needed things, it doesn’t always feel like enough. I desperately need other people to know — to really know — that I’m doing important things.

While the need for external validation may be dumb, it’s real; it may not be logical, but it exists and it persists. It’d be my guess that’s why the aforementioned piece is resonating so deeply with my moms everywhere. We all need some sense of validation, appreciation, necessity.

As I hinted earlier, what struck me so deeply about this piece wasn’t actually the piece itself but the rampant wildfire in which it was shared and the captions that came along with it. I saw it pop up repeatedly in various mom groups I’m in on Facebook, and the comments that accompanied the link didn’t have as much to do with the content of the piece so much as how it made the moms feel about their stay-at-home role. It wasn’t that the moms suddenly discovered they were an asset to their families, it was that they finally felt they could justify it and had words to explain it. You could practically feel the desire for validation in each of the simple comments on the threads. Someone had finally found a way to say stay-at-home moms were important, beyond simply being there for the kids. I wanted to reach out to each of them and give them a big hug, saying “Yes, you are needed.” Yet at the same time, it seemed to somehow discredit my former role before “mom.” That my husband’s job was so much more important than mine that not only should I stay home to raise our kids, but also make sure he doesn’t have to miss anything important work-related himself. (That’s probably a different argument for another day.)

While the post is making a lot of moms feel good about their roles, I’m personally being cautious about telling my husband I’m a luxury to him. It is helpful that he doesn’t have to take sick days or miss meetings, but I wouldn’t say clocking in a 40+ hour work week at the office is exactly luxurious no matter how you spin the bonuses of having a wife at home. Still, I do think it’s rather important that husbands are reading this piece. If not for the gentle reminder of what duties their wives take on, then for the underlying sentiment of expressing the maternal need for gratification, acknowledgement, and thanks.

(And just to be clear, because I know how the Internet is, the need for validation is not the same as a lack of gratitude.)

10 Signs Your Son Has Next-Level Sneaker Obsession

One day I was checking my phone’s photo stream and I saw a picture of three pairs of sneakers. They were too big to be my daughter’s and I don’t own so many athletic shoes, so I realized my own son had immortalized his beloved shoes. Just like I have shared a picture or two of shoes that I love, my tween was showing his own small collection to his friends. When I checked with other moms of preteen boys, we realized all of our sons took pictures of their running shoes!

When we think about shoe lovers, we tend to think about women and girls. However, boys can also be obsessed over their sneakers. As a mom of a preteen boy, I have learned that not all running shoes are created equal and that a guy can never have enough sneakers in their closet. Yes, really.

Here are the top 10 signs your little man is a shoe hoarder:

1. He takes photos of his shoes.

2. He posts said photos on his Instagram and gets more likes than your last two posts combined.

3. He refuses to throw away the shoeboxes, so they are easier to resell.

4. He’s requested access to your eBay account so he can bid on collectible sneakers, usually from a famous athlete’s limited-edition collection.

5. For his birthday, all he wants is a new pair of sneakers or running shoes. Or at least, he requests gift cards that he can save for a new pair, which can easily cost over a hundred dollars.

6. Suddenly his shoes are neatly lined up in his closet, so he can see and find them easily. (There’s always a silver lining, right?)

7. He sets up an alarm or reminder so he can check out new collections or shoes from his favorite athlete as soon as they are released to the public.

8. His conversations with his friends are peppered with mentions of everybody’s wish list of Lebrons, Kobes, or Jordans.

9. When he says “You’re so lucky!” to one of his friends, he probably is referring to the fact that his friend got a new pair of running or basketball shoes. Then he proceeds to beg you for the same pair his friend got.

10. He willingly goes to 10 different shoe stores in the crowded mall during a weekend to find “the perfect pair.” He’ll even wait patiently if you need to buy anything for yourself.

Next time your son starts begging for a new pair of athletic shoes, at least know you’re not the only parent who has that problem.

Find more of Jeannette’s writing on Hispana Global or check out her blog in Spanish. And reach out to her on Twitter and Facebook. She loves it!

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