Diapers are Forever

I think that any two-and-a-half-year-old who knows the sound each letter makes and can decode 3-letter words should be able to pee in a toilet. Alas. Turns out one can develop reading skills before mastering bladder control. Apparently the former is not a prerequisite for the latter. Who knew?

So, although she is academically ready to attend school, Sophia is barred from the local preschool program. I got the call from the director two days ago while aimlessly wandering the streets of Target.

The call took me by surprise. A month ago the director told me that the school had been filled since last January. I had only half-heartedly placed Sophia on the waiting list, figuring we'd just have to wait until next year.

I could feel her smiling through the phone. “We’re pleased to let you know that we have an opening, and Sophia was the next one up!” This is a school that is several blocks from my house. One that has really flexible scheduling options. One the neighbors have been raving about.

Sophia was dismantling a display of sun block. “Really? That’s wonderful!” I shot Sophie a look and mouthed PUT THEM BACK.

“So, as long as she’s toilet trained by September….” And then lightening flashed across the ceiling and it started to rain. Right there in Target. I think someone was playing an organ over the loudspeaker.

Six months ago...

It had all started out so promising. We bought her a potty. There was a picture of a girl on the box who looked very much like one of her friends, a bigger girl she looked up to. Sophie nicknamed it the “Callie Potty.” She sat on it. Put her dollies on it. Even made realistic sounds as she pantomimed their toileting behavior. Then, while we were out to dinner one night, the babysitter called, ecstatic, “She peed on the toilet.” We cheered in the restaurant, called my mother and almost missed our movie.

She went again, once or twice, and then…nothing. Worse than nothing. Flat out refusal. If I casually suggested that she sit on the toilet before a bath, she’d screw up her face so that her lips stuck way out and her eyes got all squinty and she’d shout, “No. I. Don’t. Want. To!”

I adopted a “just ask, don’t push” policy, hoping that when she was ready, she’d go. But secretly, I worried that I missed my window of opportunity. Now, her heels firmly dug into her general oppositional 2-year-old stance, she declares, “I do not want to pee on the toilet. I want to go in my diaper like a little baby.”

Again, if you can articulate that…shouldn’t you be able to sit on a toilet and do your business? I am convinced it is not a matter of skill, but of will.

And without the will, she won’t. Regardless of how much one can spend in pursuit of potty training.

For those who are not there yet (and others who were in my shoes many years ago) you will not be surprised to learn that potty training, like all other aspects of child development, is an industry. There are small, free-standing receptacles children “go” in that you have to empty into the real toilet and clean, adaptive rings that you can set atop the real deal so tiny tushies don’t fall in, and folding travel seats that have been known to pinch babies’ butts. There are potties that praise, cheer and sing. There are toileting books, videos and dolls. There are how-to manuals and charts and stickers.

And the programs. Oh the programs. Three-day Potty Training. Potty Training Boot Camp. The No-Cry Potty Training Solution. Early Start Potty Training. And yes, even Toilet Training in Less than a Day.

But, according to research (and, anecdotally, parents I know) you can push and cajole and praise and reward and work at it. Or you can wait. Apparently, left to their own devices, children will train themselves. Free of pressure and expectations they typically wake up one day and decide, that’s it. No more diapers for me. This usually happens around three years of age—give or take. I have even had parents of these children tell me that their kid never had an accident…and they never looked back.

This method (or lack thereof) is really appealing to me. No confrontations. No M&Ms. No props. No programs. No sweat.

But it also means…no local nursery school. At least not this one; not for now. Well, so be it. I was prepared to wait another year anyhow. Let's just hope it isn't that long before Sophia decides she's ready to ditch the diapers.

Wanting to Not Want

This post is inspired by This Is Not the Story You Think It Is... by Laura Munson, the choice-of-the-month of new online book club, From Left to Write.

Laura Munson begins her 335-page Summer of Discontent, This Is Not the Story You Think It Is..., with the declaration that, although her husband left the previous night to go to the dump after announcing that he no longer loved her and that he hasn’t returned or called since, she’s “choosing not to suffer.”

She claims epiphany…the end of wanting: “That’s how it finally happens—in a blink.” It is a brave proclamation. A brilliant discovery: one’s happiness should not depend on things beyond one’s control. Only it’s fleeting. Munson suffers throughout the book. She ruminates. She reminisces. She moons. She waits. And she wants.

Freedom from wanting. I have felt the switch—brief moments of transcendence when my perspective has shifted. When I say to myself, I could be triggered by this or I could choose to not feel (responsible, defensive, resentful, etc., etc.). These moments are liberating. But they are ephemeral.

Freedom from wanting is a constant practice of drawing attention to the wanting, the emotion, the things we hold dear and noticing our deep, tortured investment without judgment. Taking the “how interesting” stance. It's at once unbelievably simple and impossibly hard. Particularly when it comes to my daughter, Sophia.

There are so many things I want for her. Safety. Kindness. Joy. Health. Intelligence. Friendship. Most of these things are beyond my control. I can create the conditions but I cannot determine the outcome.

When she trips on bump in the hardwood floor between the kitchen and the living room, falls and bleeds, I suffer . When she is restless with fever and barfs in her crib, I suffer. When she runs up to another child on the playground, asks to play and is rebuffed I suffer. Another parent said to me the other day that she must have these experiences, as we all have had, in order to learn caution, appreciate wellness, understand the distinction between right and wrong.

Ugh. Really? Isn’t there some other way?

But I recognize that torturing myself doesn’t do anyone any good. It doesn’t make her better, less clumsy, more likeable. It doesn’t bring me satisfaction. It is a trap that keeps me from being happy, and may even stand in the way of Sophia’s resilience.

My own, internal dialogue around this is tedious. It does not make for good literature, or even a good essay. It is rumination, not revelation.

I long for a quiet mind. One in which I am not judging/kicking/fighting myself. Wanting not to want. I read something extraordinarily helpful in this pursuit. Change the have to’s to get to’s. I get to soothe my sick child (read: I have a child to care for).

I do not claim to do this well. Or to be able to help others attain personal freedom. But, hey, it’s a start.

Ooops. I did it again.


The book, This Is Not the Story You Think It Is…, was provided to me free of charge by the publisher as part of the former Silicon Valley Moms Group and the new From Left to Write Book Club. I was not paid for this review. See how other moms were inspired by this book here.

Feels Like the First Time

I hardly slept a wink the night before Sophia’s first day of camp. Larvae squirmed in my intestines. Butterflies hatched and struggled against the walls of my stomach in a desperate attempt to push their way out. At least, that’s how it felt as I lay there, sleepless and anxious.

It’s not like I haven’t had her out of my sight before. She’s been with a babysitter from infancy, though it’s always been someone in the home, while I worked a few feet away in our study. The arrangement allowed me to breastfeed and later...to be a constant, semi-unobtrusive presence.

I had control. I knew what was happening. I had relationships with the people caring for her. Even at my mother’s nursery school, where I sent Sophia two days/week this past year, I was downstairs, working out of the church basement, on hand for diaper changes, “look what Sophia just did” moments, and preschool productions. I had known the teachers for years—some since I was a preschooler, myself. And, of course, there was my mom just one classroom away, a frequent-peeker who couldn’t resist the lure of her granddaughter so close.

But this was different. Earlier that day we had orientation at the camp. I walked into the room and was surprised to count off twenty toddlers. Yes, there were five “counselors” as well, two certified teachers and three smiling college students. But the chaos—the noise—it felt like a baby warehouse.

I couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving her alone there. Three days a week. Three hours a day. During which, I had no access to what she was feeling or experiencing. Or how she was treated. Or how she treated others.

This feeling was familiar. I hadn’t felt it in years, but I recognized it right away. It was the same feeling I had before MY first days of school. Every year. As long as I could remember. If I’m really being honest with myself, it’s the same feeling I had every Sunday night—the anxiety of having to return to school. A place I dreaded, where I felt anonymous and alone.

I still don’t have a lot of insight into this. I’m not sure if it was simply separation anxiety, my introverted personality, a degree of social unease, jealously of the one-on-one time my mother was spending at home with my younger sister, extreme boredom, the gradual grinding down of the spirit that school seems to exact on most children, the family discord that leaked into all corners of my life. But it was persistent. Intractable. And now it’s back.

After my restless night, I fetched Sophia, changed her diaper, coated her with sunscreen, snapped on her bathing suit, dressed her, fed her and secured her in her carseat. She proudly held her new pink polka-dot backpack and was smiling broadly. As we drove the 10 minutes to camp, I verbally prepared her, with fabricated enthusiasm, “Today is your first day of camp! You’re going to have so much fun. They’ll be swimming, and other kids to play with. And that beautiful kitchen you played in yesterday. Mommy will drop you off and I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours, OK?”

“OK!” said Sophia, completely unperturbed.

“I want you to listen to your camp counselors and do what they say, OK?” I hate how I end every sentence in OK?

“OK” said Sophia. Did I detect a note of adolescent exasperation in her voice?

I felt the familiar sting in my eyes when I pulled into the parking lot. Holding back the tears made me sneeze. “Let’s go!” I hoisted her out of the car with more false enthusiasm.

I walked into her “bunk” and instantly felt overwhelmed. There were toddlers milling about, some crying. Parents were coming and going. I helped Sophia hang up her things, reminded her counselors to please reapply the sunscreen, and bent down to kiss Sophie good-bye. “Mommy’s going to go now, OK?”

“OK,” said Sophie, distracted by the considerable activity in the room.

“Love you.” I walked out the door and hung around for a minute, peeking in. Sophie just stood there, surveying the scene. I imagined her feeling the way I did. Abandoned. Scared. Unsure how to join in what was swirling around me.

I left just as the tears started flowing. I called my friend Nancy first. She could barely understand me through the sobs. She was reassuring. Not in a bland, “she’ll be okay” way, but in clear, specific ways that really did make me feel better—reminding me of what other friends have said about the program. That I’ve left her before. That Sophia is generally happy everywhere, with everyone.

Then I called my own mother, who recalled her experience of dropping me off at nursery school for the very first time. She had cried too. I hadn’t even looked back. What happened to me between that first time and Kindergarten? When I resisted crossing the four-lane highway in front of our house to get on the bus in the morning and my mom had to drive me to school. Where, she would leave me, both of us sobbing; Mrs. Kuzma gently taking my hand, assuring my mother that I would be fine. I remember she once said to me, “Melissa, you’re going to cry so much you’ll fill the classroom with water and all the kids will float away.”

On this, the fourth day of camp, as we were eating breakfast, I asked Sophia if she liked camp. “Camp is amazing!” she told me. And later, after camp, she sang me the “balloon song” they had learned, and said she took turns with her friends on the slide, and that they swam in the indoor pool, and ate pretzels without cream and sprinkles. And it occurred to me that she might actually be having a good time—no matter how large or chaotic it seemed to me. And maybe the separation anxiety was mine and mine alone. And maybe it should stay that way. And maybe I have nothing to be anxious about after all.

If You Knew Mary Evelyn (1943-2006)

If You Knew Mary Evelyn… is inspired by If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Reporter's Notebook by Katherine Rosman, the choice-of-the-month of new online book club, From Left to Write. It was difficult to read this keenly-observed, beautifully-writ memoir without reflecting on my own relationship with my mother. How would I eulogize my mom? What do I treasure and remember about our relationship? What do I know about her and what remains a mystery? I sat down, prepared to write an essay that addressed these questions, but a very different essay poured out of me—a processing of and meditation on the death of my mother-in-law, Mary Evelyn, who died four years ago, on July 5th, 2006. Following the lead of Rosman, I have written a letter to Mary Evelyn that is part eulogy, part a preservation of memory, and part a communication that her legacy lives on.

Four years ago this weekend, my husband’s mother passed away. Though she had suffered from MS for decades, it was ultimately not the MS that stole her, prematurely, from us. She was preparing for a Fourth of July picnic--I can picture her in the kitchen, sitting on her stool, impossibly deep dimples framing her smile as she cooked for the people she loved—when suddenly she got the worst headache of her life. She went to the couch to lie down. Moments later, her husband couldn’t rouse her. He called an ambulance.

The aneurysm in her brain had already ruptured and was hemorrhaging, leaking blood into the surrounding tissue. She did not regain consciousness.

Halfway across the country, we received the call from his father. Still childless, we quickly made the decision to get in the car and drive. I drove all night, not wanting my distraught husband to take the wheel. It rained, making a dark night even darker. Mist, blackened hills, and sadness. We listened to Paul Simon’s Graceland.

Losing love is like a window in your heart.
Everyone sees you’re blown apart.
Everyone hears the wind blow.

And now, I cannot hear that song without thinking of her. Without remembering the feeling of that night, the wind blowing through the hole in my heart. Driving, hoping, fearing. Viscera clenched with anxiety.

When we arrived around 6am, it was already too late. The operation to stop the bleeding—an endovascular coiling—was unsuccessful. Her body was still alive, kept so by a respirator that rose and fell with mechanical breaths beside her, but her brain was not. In the hospital bed, she was a doll-like version of herself, her muscles flaccid, limbs flopped to the side, facial features bland. It was all that I could do to look at her. She was no longer Kevin’s mother. Her life force, her capacity for joy, the light in her eyes was gone.

We wanted proof before we made any decisions. They gave her an EEG and showed us the evidence that Mary Evelyn was gone. “Okay,” I remember saying.

She had made it easy for us, preparing a living will with a do not resuscitate directive. She wanted to be an organ donor. And so, different parts of her were shipped across the country to anonymous recipients. Her body was incinerated, the ashes given to us in a box.

The next day, friends and family members came to spread her ashes over the lush, vibrant gardens she had lovingly cultivated. They reached into the box with their bare hands, scooping out what physically remained of her. I couldn’t do it. I felt sick. I sat on the sidelines and watched, remembering my mother-in-law.


Dear MaryEvelyn,

I remember the first time I came to visit. You showed me every photo, every scrap book, and every video of Kevin that you had recorded and catalogued over the years, thrilled to have found an interested audience at last. I remember how, that first Christmas, you gave me my own stocking, a felt angel. And how I wrote on it, “Melissa, the token Jew.” I remember our talent show, your beautiful, wordless signing of “Morning has Broken,” by Cat Stevens and your completely unselfconscious improvisational dance that you paid for later in pain. I remember driving away and thinking that I felt like I was leaving home. I cried as you waved goodbye.

I remember when you showed me your dissertation. Telling me how you, the child of a dirt famer-turned insurance salesman, a little girl who hunted squirrels with a stick, became a professor of speech and language pathology. I remember when you told me how difficult it was to spend years apart from Kevin, when he was only 11, as you pursued your doctorate in Indiana.

I remember your devotion to Kevin. Your unrelenting desire to know every detail of his life, and the frustration you felt when he painted pictures of his days in wide swathes. I remember how I could bring you such satisfaction, sharing these details, when we talked on the phone.

And I remember all the things Kevin told me about you. How you read him feminist, gender stereotype-free fairy tales. How you dressed him up as a leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day when he was home sick with the chicken pox—and then took photographs. How the days you spent at home with him when he was young were some of the happiest days of your life.

I remember your voice that sang words more frequently than spoke them. I remember you holding your tongue when agitated, your mouth a thin line. I remember how you could toss of a musical “oh well” with a graceful gesture of your arm. I remember never really knowing how you felt about anything.

I remember your last visit to us in Philly. How you asked me if we were “trying” when I didn’t have wine with dinner. How I lied and said that we weren’t, and that I wasn’t drinking because I was driving. I remember your look that said you didn’t believe me. I hope you didn’t. I wish you had known. I wish I had told you about the miscarriage I had just suffered. I wish you had been there for the two subsequent miscarriages that followed our conversation. And I wish you could know that I did carry a baby to term. And that you now have a grand-daughter, Sophia, who is so much the image of you. She dances, not walks, from point to point. When she smiles, her dimples are holes that go all the way to China. She embodies joy. She speaks with a fluency and clarity that would have made you proud.

I feel a kinship with you as a mother. I sense that what I value as a mother, you valued as a mother (minus the leprechauns). I have wanted to call you—to ask you a question, to share something amazing Sophia just said, to hear the ways in which Sophie reminds you of Kevin at that age. But I can’t.

Nevertheless, you are here with us. Every time Sophie smiles, every time she dances, every time she speaks with a clean Mid-Western dialect, we are reminded of you. And we keep you with us. We tell Sophia she has two grandmas. One who she can see in real life, and one she can only see in pictures. Both of whom are very much a part of who she is.

Love,
Melissa


The book, If You Knew Suzy, was provided to me free of charge by the publisher as part of the former Silicon Valley Moms Group and the new From Left to Write Book Club. I was not paid for this review. See how other moms were inspired by this book here.

A Good Babysitter is Hard to Find

On the last day Katherine was with us, she was putting Sophia down for a nap as I was on my way out the door for a run. I paused at the bottom of the staircase, caught by Katherine’s voice drifting down from the landing. She was singing a sweet, unfamiliar lullaby as she closed the door to Sophie’s room. Her voice was filled with affection and reassurance. I stood, transfixed, suddenly struck by the fact that she was singing to her for last time. That’s how Katherine found me, in spandex, rooted to the floor, wiping tears from my eyes.

It saddens me to know that Sophia will not remember Katherine. I am sure she left an impression on Sophia, the invisible imprint that all significant people leave on our lives. Impressions that live on as lessons, values, beliefs, schemas and ways of perceiving. Imprints that persist long after the memory of a face fades. But one day, should she run into her on the street, she will not know Katherine. Once so close, they will be strangers.

(Sighing) A good babysitter is difficult to find.

It is a leap of faith, putting your child into someone else’s hands. We do it regularly in our culture…babysitters, nursery schools, day care. But as evidenced by school web cams, nanny cams, and I-caught-your-nanny websites, we do it cautiously. We know that no one will ever care for our children exactly like we do…

…though perhaps that’s a good thing. Kids need exposure to a variety of different styles. They need to learn adaptability. And let’s face it…as parents, we get tired. We don’t always want to pull out the paints, play outside in the blaring sun, listen to the Elmo song 32 times in a row. Still, we hold the expectation that the babysitter will intuit our child’s needs; be loving but firm; engage them and protect them. It’s a tall order for barely a living wage (e.g. Philadelphia is $9.05 an hour).

(Matter-of-factly) A good babysitter is hard to find.

We had a string of loving, highly competent graduate students who worked for us for a summer or a semester, but wanting more stability I decided to look for a longer-term option on Craigslist. The first babysitter came for a time and was fine, but one day she didn’t show up. And then the next day she didn’t show up. No notice. No explanation. Didn’t return my calls. So I hired a replacement, perhaps a bit too quickly. She often came late or cancelled at the last minute. She asked a million questions, but never retained what I told her. I tried to be flexible and understanding, but the final straw came when I checked my facebook newsfeed and saw that she had just posted, “I’m SO bored,” WHILE SHE WAS WITH MY CHILD, ONE ROOM AWAY. Intolerable.

(Frustrated) A good babysitter is hard to find.

They say that the litmus test for goodness-of-babysitter is whether or not your child is happy to see them. But since Sophia is happy to see just about anyone who walks in the door, including the guy who checks the electric/gas meter, I had to rely on other evidence. Thus I put up with behavior I shouldn’t have, for longer than I should have.

When Katherine walked into our lives, I couldn’t believe our good fortune. She was playful, caring, and bright. She aspired to start schools in developing countries. She spoke fluent Spanish (and Chinese). She read with inflection and voices. She pulled out the paints. Played the Elmo song 32 times in a row. Went to the park in the blazing sun. And she loved Sophia like family. She let Sophie wear her jewelry. Built her lego thrones. Read her Jorge el Curioso en el hospital. Cooked her quinoa. Katherine was loving but firm, intuited Sophie’s needs, actively engaged her. Sophia was not simply safe in her care, she was loved and happy.

(Appreciatively) A babysitter like her is a rare find.

But, of course, someone of her caliber cannot remain a babysitter for long. She has more children to impact. More joy to spread. A greater calling in the world. And, similarly, Sophie is ready to be with her peers, exchange the quiet intimacy of her one-on-one relationship with Katherine for the boisterous, bustling energy of nursery school.

We had a farewell get together at the zoo. It was a bittersweet goodbye. After visiting the big cats, Sophia spontaneously turned to me and said, “I’m having a great day!” Though I felt weighted down by the sadness behind our excursion, she did not. Despite our attempts to prepare Sophie for this moment, she didn’t seem to grasp the finality of it. As we parted at the trolley, Sophia casually tossed off a “good-bye! See you soon.” I had to turn away: I was crying again.

I am grateful for the time we had with her. There will be other babysitters, good ones I hope, but there will never be another Katherine.

Ode to Dad

I could not do what my husband does.

Most of his nights are restless. He gets up, showers, dresses and comes upstairs for a dose of Sophia before he leaves for work.

She is elated to see him. She asks him to read to her. To play with puzzles. She hands him pretend lollipops. She shares her stuffed animals. “This is YOU, daddy,” she tells him, handing him a large panda. “This is me,” she says, snuggling a smaller one.

Whether he has slept 8 hours or 8 minutes, he turns it on for her. He reads her a book, between bites of his breakfast. He combs her hair, while I wash my face. He puts on a tiger puppet show, while I change her diaper.

And then it’s time he should be leaving. She begs, she bribes; she wheels and deals.

But he has to go to work, so she lets him go.
Yes, he has to go to work, so he lets her go.

And Sophie and I are left to our devices (vices) for the day.

Her father is never far from her thoughts. If I point out a mother and baby in a book, she corrects me, “Actually, that’s the DADDY penguin.” I am not offended. I am touched. I am pleased.

After her nap, her expectation begins to rise. If he has walked to work that morning, and his car is still in the driveway, she’ll exclaim upon seeing the car, “Daddy’s HOME!” And I’ll have to correct her, “Actually, he walked to work this morning. His car is here, but he is not.”

She is disappointed. She consoles herself with thoughts of what she will do when daddy comes home. “When he comes home, he will play doctor with me.”

“Yes,” I say, “he will play doctor with you. You will lie on the couch and pretend to be the patient. He will examine your leg and find that it is broken.” (I’m not being morbid. She loves this.)

“Because I was doing this,” Sophie fills in, spinning around the room, dizzying herself. “And I fell down.” She mock-slumps to the floor.

“Yes,” I continue, “you fell down.” I scoop her up and lay her on the couch. “And so you need a needle shot.” I aim the medicine syringe at her knee and pretend to give her the shot. (Not medically accurate, perhaps, but it makes her happy.) “And he’ll wrap up your leg,” I add, winding an ace bandage around her.

She leaps up from the couch, satisfied with the promise of future medical attention by Doctor Daddy, and we get absorbed in some other meanwhile activity. Something that fills the time before Kevin comes home.

It is six thirty. He comes in through the back door while I am cooking dinner and Sophie is stealing slices of pepper off of the cutting board. “Pepper thief!” I exclaim.

He has had a hard day. I see it in the curve of his shoulders. The circles under his eyes. He’s tired. He’s sweaty from the walk home. He’s in a t-shirt, his work shirt wrapped around his waist. His face breaks into a smile. “Who’s a pepper thief?” he asks, grabbing her.

“I am!” she shrieks gleefully. She follows him into the bedroom to watch him change, and I can hear their sweet conversation from the kitchen.

“How was your day, Daddy?”

“Hard. How was yours?”

“Good. Mommy played doctor with me. She said YOU would play doctor with me when you get home.”

“Are you all healed?”

“No. I fell down. I need a needle shot.”

They go to the living room with an energy that has long left me, he plays with her. They pretend, they chat, they read until dinner is ready. I call them to the table.

He wrestles her into her high chair. He brings her a glass of milk. He sets the table and pulls out a bottle of wine.

“Can I have some vino?” Sophie asks. “No,” we both answer in unison. “Its an adult beverage,” he adds.

“Oh! That’s sounds good.” Sophie replies.

When we try to talk, sharing bits from our day…news heard, the “That Baby” report (as in, “you wouldn’t believe what that baby said today…”), our own experiences, Sophie interrupts, “Mommy, Daddy talk to ME, please.” (What we have trained her to do, rather than have her whine for attention.) He finishes his thought, turns to her, and incorporates her in the conversation.

“We are a whole family,” Sophie observes, happy to be included.

After dinner, I march us upstairs. “Let’s go, maggot,” I bark at Sophie, “Hup two three four, hup two three four.” And she marches up the stairs, her daddy at her heels.

“Read me a STORY, Daddy,” Sophie begs. The day has come full circle. We are all in my bed. I am changing Sophie out of a soggy diaper, her legs flailing in the air, as Kevin reads to her, holding the book over her head so she can see the pictures. I go to get the toothbrush and I hear Kevin tickling Sophie who alternately cries, “NO STOP TICKLING ME!” And, “MORE TICKLELS PLEASE!”

Part of me could be exasperated. It’s bedtime and he’s working her into a frenzy. But it’s THEIR time. And they are so happy together. I used to interrupt these moments. Now, I try not to (except when its really really late, or we have to wake up early the next day; then I play the heavy), because I have all day. But he has this.

We talk about work-life balance as if it is a female issue. As if we women have cornered the market on a divided self. Men are squeezed out of the debate by our resentment. It is assumed that they are fortunate to have the defined role of provider. It is assumed that they will accept their lot, working a second shift, playing second fiddle to mom, parenting around the edges of the day. As if they didn’t care every bit as much as we do about being present for and being a part of our children’s lives. As if they don’t feel that ache every time they walk away. As if they don’t wish they could “have it all.”

I appreciate your struggle.
I love who you are as a father.
I admire all that you do.

The Work of Parents is Play

Sophia and I have fallen into a relaxed routine in the morning. I make breakfast and she plays beside me. It allows me to have subtle input into her play, without actively directing it. I can help her sustain the play activity, adding voices, suggesting ideas, while taking care of some necessary tasks.

I never thought this day would come.

I have long been Sophia’s playmate. I’ve sat through countless (and endless) pretend meals served by the surly waitress at Sophie’s café. I’ve received questionable health care (and been charged outrageous co-pays) by Dr. Sophia at the hospital. I’ve been turned into a cat, a cow, and a car, under the spell of The Great Sophini and her magic wand. Sophia didn’t come up with these activities on her own (though she was always an enthusiastic participant). I taught her how to engage in these possibilities, to inhabit these fantasies, to pretend. And then she ran with it.

One might think that play comes naturally to children. And it absolutely does. Children imitate in play the activities they observe in the world around them. It was no surprise that Sophia’s first attempts at make believe involved talking on a cell phone and food preparation, two things I do on a daily basis, multiple times a day. Play is how children begin to make sense of the world and their place in it.

But there is so much in our society that serves to inhibit play, that squashes and replaces innate play impulses: two of the biggest offenders, I believe, are toys and television.

Here is my beef with modern toys: they have become so sophisticated that they have essentially put children out of a job, rendering imagination obsolete. A kitchen that sizzles, a ball that giggles and rolls on its own, frogs that have several pre-recorded rote responses in English and in Spanish—the very toys that appear to inspire play, in reality, wind up subverting it. They play FOR the children. Kids merely have to push a button to get a response. Parents may notice that these toys are not played with for any length of time. They are picked up, admired momentarily, and discarded. They fill basements, playrooms and garbage dumps. They do nothing to inspire creativity, wonder, and discovery (except perhaps in a few future engineers who disassemble them to see how they work). At best, they are boring. At worst, they’re annoying as hell.

I find TV particularly insidious because, at first glance, it appears that it inspires ideas for play. In reality, television is a thief of imagination. Kids become the characters they see. They act out scenes from their favorite shows. They indulge fantasies of other worlds, other ways of being. But if you listen carefully to this kind of play, you come to realize that the children are working off of scripts. They have no imagination outside of the images they have been fed. They don’t know how to develop a unique character, a novel world. This phenomenon, in turn, feeds the toy industry that produces all the figurines, props, and costumes that allow children to recreate what they’ve observed on TV.

This is not to say that all toys (or even all television) is bad. In fact, many low tech toys that are facsimiles of real objects—or better yet the REAL OBJECTS themselves—are great props for the imagination.

Case in point: Sophia is obsessed with all things medical. Perhaps she’s trying to master her fear of needle shots. Perhaps she is trying to emulate her grandfather, who is a doctor. Or maybe it’s simply inspired by her great love for Curious George, who often finds himself in the hospital with a broken limb or an ingested puzzle piece. Regardless, as medicine is her current interest, I decided to try to find her a doctor’s kit. I quickly became frustrated with the expensive packs of molded plastic I found even in the best toy stores. Nothing looked “real” or remotely worth the money. I decided to look online and found a blog written by a mom who shared my frustration. She said that real stethoscopes and blood pressure machines could be purchased for less than what some toy companies charged for the fake stuff. Turns out, she was right. I quickly assembled a doctor’s kit that consisted of a light pen, a real eye chart, a stethoscope, a blood pressure machine, an old ace bandage, a pin that read Dr. Sophia Moore, a medicine syringe that looked satisfyingly like a needle shot, a child-sized lab coat, and a tendonitis elbow brace—all for under $30. I haven’t brought out all of the pieces yet, but already, the ace bandage is the number one utilized “toy” in our house.

That ace bandage was sitting in my dresser drawer for years. It only became a toy when it was introduced as such.

Play is a life skill; it brings joy into relationships, transforms work into passion, makes life worth living. Those who know how to play have the ability to think and act creatively. They are fun to be around. When I watch Sophia initiate a play activity with a peer, I can see the foundation of leadership skills taking hold.

But like most life skills, play needs to be taught. There is nothing simple about being a teacher of play. It requires a certain lack of self-consciousness and a lot of silliness, a willingness to get down on the ground and become everything you’re not, an ability to transform the everyday into the extraordinary. But of all the responsibilities I have as a parent, it is the one in which I take the greatest pleasure and reap the greatest rewards.