Bug free

Today, my kids start their respective summer programs and I start figuring out how to get them to two different places 20 minutes apart at the same time. It's going to be a long six weeks.

I also get all sorts of new things to worry about, like: Will my son's camp counselors be able to handle him? Will he be safe in the pool? Will he come home with the same towel and bathing suit he left with? Will my daughter be safe in her drop-in-at-the-park program? Will her friends be there? Will they want to play with her? Will I forget to pick her up?

But one thing I'm not going to worry about this year are head lice. And why is that? Have I found some new miracle chemical shield? Have head lice been wiped out in my area? Are my kids' heads hermetically sealed? No. I'm not going to worry because Harvard entomologist Richard J. Pollack, Ph.D., says I shouldn't. He says all the folderol about excluding kids and treating kids and bagging up the entire house for bugs is ridiculous. Head lice are harmless. They don't spread that easily, and if they do, big whoop.

Harvard entomologist Richard J. Pollack, Ph.D., is my hero.

We've only had one lice infestation here, but it was a doozy. My daughter had live lice crawling around on her head (Richard J. Pollack says unless you see live lice, do nothing -- and be sure they're lice, not spiders or ants. These were lice, they were live, and they had an attitude.) Because I was a good citizen and had not yet read about Richard J. Pollack, I called her very expensive camp and told them she had lice, and was of course told not to bring her back until she was nit-free. I washed her twice with the insecticide shampoo, I combed, I combed, I combed, I covered her head with mayonnaise, I combed, I covered her head with olive oil, I combed, I sprayed the house, I combed, I bagged the bedding, I combed, I combed, I combed. The camp nurse found nits and commented that Mom wasn't trying hard enough. I combed, and I imagined the camp nurse crawling with lice. Ha!

It was so hard to get rid of those buggers and their every trace that I have been in a complete panic about lice ever since. I've had my family shampooing with tea tree oil long after any last bugs had breathed their last. I left the bedding in bags for over a year. I examine my kids' hair with every little scratch. And I dread the thought of them being sent home from school for as long as it takes me to do this again.

But now, no worries. Richard J. Pollack -- and indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics with him -- say heck no, the kids shouldn't go. They shouldn't be kicked out of school or camp, they shouldn't be stigmatized in front of their peers, and the peers parents should not be notified of an outbreak. Because, you know, it's no biggie. Some cultures even value head lice as a sign that you've got friends.

Now, if only we can sell that to the camp and school nurses of this nation, I'll really be able to breathe easy.

Minor miracles

I may be speaking too soon, but it looks like my behavior-challenged boy may have made it through his two weeks of religious education "camp" with everybody's nerves intact.

This is an improvement over last year, when they asked me to pick him up an hour-and-a-half early every day because that's all they could take. Well, that's not what they said. They said that's all he could take. But I knew what they meant.

This year, he's stayed the whole three-and-three-quarters hours every day without incident. Part of it is that he's more mature. Part of it is that he has a teacher who's not freaked out by him. But most of it is that, instead of having a stray teenager as an aide, he has a paid adult. Paid by us. And worth every penny.

Last year, I did ask his school one-on-one aide if she'd like a couple of weeks extra work. She said no, and I let it go at that. This year, I asked her to help me find someone who would. She hooked us up with another one-on-one from the school, who is doing a fine job (augmented excellently by a very loyal friend who took the first two days while the school aide was still at school). My son's teacher has remarked how having the aide keeps Andy focused, so that he gets something out of the class and all the other kids do, too.

Personally, just our secret, I'm happy if he's just there being nondisruptive. If he learns something, that's gravy. For him, just to be included without incident is enormous.

So today is the last day, and barring a major blow-up at the final ceremonies, we've pulled it off. He's pulled it off, my great little guy. And maybe this means he can pull off all the First Communion and First Reconciliation training, too. Maybe he'll eventually sit still in church, participate in the Mass, stay quiet during Sunday School.

Maybe I better check into hiring that aide full-time.

Health hazards

Put these formerly harmless things on your list of dangers to protect your kids from.

FIREWORKS July 4 is coming up, and with it the risk that your child will lose ... no, not a finger. His or her hearing. You may know that buying fireworks is illegal and handling them personally is unwise, but now even standing outside and listening to them has been found to be actively harmful. A study published in the journal Pediatrics reveals that more than 5 million youngsters have suffered some degree of hearing loss from the overloud sound of fireworks, lawnmowers, and rock concerts. The researchers suggested earplugs. We suggest watching fireworks on TV, with the sound off. And never mowing the lawn.

MERCURY THERMOMETERS For my money, nothing tells your temperature like an old-fashioned mercury thermometer, the kind your mother used to use. Those digital jobs -- how do you know they're not just making it up? And ear thermometers have never worked well for me, always coming up with bizarrely low numbers that are not to be trusted. No, give me that silver bar expanding upwards, slowly but surely. Yet now, that very same precision apparatus is on the verge of extinction, simply because it contains within its glass shell a toxic substance. People are being urged to dispose of their old mercury thermometers because ... well, because when they're disposed of, they're an environmental hazard. Doesn't that mean we should all hang on to them? If we don't, at any rate, we'll never see them again, because they're being taken off the market. Why do I feel I'll never know my true temperature again?

PETTING ZOOS You say they're a charming way for children to get in touch with peaceful barnyard animals. The government says they're an E. coli contamination waiting to happen. The CDC, citing numerous cases of children being sickened by the bacteria after petting petting-zoo denizens and then putting their hands in or near their mouths, advise parents to exercise extreme caution. Alright: Rubber gloves, face masks, family fun for everyone!

COOKING WITH GAS If your daughter's prone to allergies, you might want to switch to electric. In a test of more than 700 Italian preteens, it was found that being in the kitchen while a gas stove was in use reduced lung function in allergy-susceptible girls. Interestingly, no such correlation was found in allergy-susceptible boys, undoubtedly because they were never in the kitchen when cooking was being done.

First Communion counsel

A while ago in this space, I worried about my son's fitness for First Holy Communion and the rite of reconciliation. I thought he might spit out the Host. I thought he might talk about car keys in the confessional. I thought he might scream during the ceremony. I thought he might not be able to grasp the complexities of the whole process (which would, to be sure, put him on par with a large percentage of adults in the congregation).

I wondered if anyone else had been through this with a special needs child. And I got a nice reply from Madeleine, a frequent MWA correspondent. I'll share her note here, because I think she said some things very well, because there may be others who are dealing with the religious education of the neurologically impaired, and because I’m running too late this morning to write much of anything myself. Thanks, Madeleine!

She wrote:

"Relatively little is required of a second-grader in terms of deep religious understanding. If your child can understand that you love him, then he can understand that a host is (the embodiment of) God's love -- a physical thing to remind him of a simple truth. As for the spitting out part, get some unconsecrated hosts and practice. A priest should be able to help.

"As far as reconciliation, you might be surprised what your son understands about doing something wrong. You are not required to drill him in the specifics. Any priest worth his salt should be able to handle it. If he wants to talk about cars, so what?

"My son was diagnosed autistic as a preschooler, and treated as though he were not a moral being. My parish religious educator in Baltimore didn't even want to give him a chance in CCD. But they took care of all of it here in Massachusetts.

"Eucharist is a sacrament of inclusion. That's the point. And my son does turn out to have a moral sense. Most do. In their way."

Hot days, cold feet

Today is the last day of school.

It's very late this year, and I guess I should be grateful for that. Personally, I'd be just as happy if it ran through July. Year-round school, what about that? I'm not ready for summer.

I'm just as bad as the kids in not liking to have my routine disrupted. Maybe I'm worse, because I have to figure out all the ins and outs of the new routine, how to get everybody to the right place at the right time with the right people and the right program. They just have to go along for the ride.

For the rest of this week and all of next they're in church camp, which is at least close and involves both of them being in the same spot. After that, there's trouble: Anybody have a space-time warping formula that can allow me to drop my two kids off at two camps a half-hour apart at exactly the same time?

With school, see, this isn't a problem. Right now, they're going to the same school -- easy. When my daughter moves up to middle school, it will be right up the street; plus, the school district has the good grace to start the middle school earlier than the elementary school, with the high school earlier still. So nobody has to be cloned to do the drop-offs.

Timing aside, it's also hard to leave what has been a very comfortable school environment for my kiddos this year. They both had wonderful teachers, made friends, did well. And now we have to leave that, and try various questionable scenarios for a hot two months, and then start all over again in the fall. My daughter's already panicking about fourth grade: It's going to be hard! I've told her to cut it out. Worrying is my job.

I'm sure everything will be fine. Really. Sure. Why not? And it will be nice to have two months when our lives aren't ruled by homework and studying for tests. There are good things about summer. I guess.

But please, couldn't we just put it off for a few more weeks?

Pray for peace

A bit of a miracle took place when we were at Mass this Sunday. It's something I've long been hoping for, working for; something I never thought would really happen, but something that seemed the very best solution to a difficult situation.

My son fell asleep.

Now, as my father used to tell it, in the old days of the Catholic church, falling asleep would not be tolerated: A man with a long stick would come by and bop you on the head. Even now, the priest would probably not be happy to look out upon the congregation and see a sea of nodding noggins. But for my son, the loud boy, the wiggly boy, the boy who sings the hymns loudly after everybody else has stopped and jingles keys while everybody else is trying to pray, sleep was sweet. I don't think anybody within hearing distance begrudged him that.

All his life with us, his in-church behavior has mostly been a matter of fighting sleep. Thanks to sensory integration problems, he's a kid who has to move to stay alert, no two ways about it. Put him in an environment where movement and noise are not allowed, and he feels himself slipping away. I've tried to encourage that slipping, assure him that alertness is not a necessity, that indeed the majority of adults are not at their most alert during a long church service. I've tried to get him to stop fighting and sleep, but he's fought the good fight. This Sunday, he lost.

And maybe I'm a bad mom to let him lose, too swayed by the harsh looks of worshipers disturbed by my boy's disruptive behavior. Especially now, when he's on the track toward First Communion next year, I should be encouraging him to participate in the Mass, stand up, sit down, say prayers, pay attention. I should do this even if it means everybody in a ten-pew radius has to listen to him talk and complain and scream and kick and rock and roll. But oh, just for the moment -- just let me enjoy the quiet and the peace. He's so peaceful when he's sleeping. Surely peace isn't an inappropriate thing to enjoy in church.

My hope, anyway, is that if we can make this sleeping a habit -- if he gets a little peace and quiet in church, too, and doesn't constantly experience it as an hour-long epic battle -- God's house will be a less stressful place for him. And if it's less stressful, he will be more calm even when he's awake. And eventually, as his religious education increases, his interest in the proceedings will, too. The formula works in other areas of his life: Less stress + more interest = better behavior.

That's what I'll be praying for, anyway, during those quiet, sleepy times.

The Music Mom

Next year, by virtue of being a fourth-grader, my daughter is eligible to take instrumental music. She can choose any instrument she wants, and learn to play it at school.

Her choice was the violin.

I had a few problems with that.

First, I've read enough stories about pint-sized violin virtuosos starting on the strings at age three or four to know that if you start playing at age 11, you are at a significant disadvantage. It's like starting ballet or gymnastics in your teens. Your time has passed.

Second, my secret aim with this instrumental music is to position her to be in the band in middle school and high school. Since we live next door to the high school, we see (and hear! Boy, do we hear!) the marching band practice virtually in our backyard, and she thinks it would be fun to be part of that. As one who was involved in choir throughout high school (and yes, my daughter is starting chorus next year, too), I remember how life-consuming music is at the high school level, and how it eliminates the need for other pesky forms of social planning. This seems to me to be a good thing for a girl who will be two years older and taller than everybody else and perhaps a little bit less mature. A built-in social life is good. A built-in social life that plays out outside my window is better. Unless our high school suddenly develops a Strolling Strings Corps, it seems unlikely that the violin is going to get us there.

And third, the sound of beginning violin. 'Nuff said?

My choice for her would have been the flute, because I play one and I own one and she could have a little head start. But I also know that in any given elementary school, a majority of the little girls will want to play the flute. That's a lot of competition when you have fourteen or fifteen elementary schools converging on one H.S. Since my daughter is hard-working and good-hearted but probably not virtuoso material, competition is something we'd like to avoid.

So I asked the instrumental music teacher to recommend something not a lot of kids were taking. He showed me the applications, and sure enough the first 25 of them were girls wanting to play the flute. The next 25 were boys wanting to play the saxophone. There were a smattering of other instruments, then one particular brass number that had only two aspirants.

And now, three. She's going to play the trombone.

A decent choice for a tall, strong girl, I think. More likely to be played by boys, which she will one day appreciate. Necessary for a marching band. And a gateway into other brass instruments that are even less popular. French horn! Flugelhorn! Tuba! A mother can dream.

And yes, I know that beginning trombone is probably every bit as unpleasant as beginning violin. But we can open the windows, and maybe she'll blend in with the marching band blasting away outside.

Father's Day celebration

Some dads get wined and dined on Father's Day. Some receive elaborate gifts. Some are released from dad duty to go participate in their favorite sporting events, or to lounge lazily in front of sporting events on TV.

Our dad got to go to a church carnival.

It wound up costing about as much as an expensive dinner, anyway. The ticket prices for the kiddie-sized rides seemed exhorbitant, but then I'll admit to not having been at a church carnival for a long, long time. We would not, for quite a while, have even considered bringing our son to one. I mean, you might as well post a sign over the entrance saying, "May be overstimulating to small boys with sensory-integration and impulse-control problems."

But he's coming along, and he did okay. It's in the little stupid things like carnival attendance that the progress a kid like my son makes becomes apparent. He was very excited; he jumped and sang and talked to himself; but he held it together. He went on the little merry-go-round car ride about six times; the roller coaster, ferris wheel and teacups once; the obstacle course three times. He walked and ate popcorn at the same time. He only grabbed people's keys twice. And when he'd had enough, he used words to tell us it was time to go. Can't think of a much more successful day than that.

During his first obstacle course run, he balked a couple of times -- at the bottom of a rope ladder, at the beginning of a high, wobbly bridge -- but he quickly figured out how to go about each one. The third time, at the start of a small tunnel near the beginning of the course, he ran into a small boy who was afraid to go in. I yelled for him to help the boy, and the boy's father, standing nearby, asked for my son's name and then yelled for the boy to follow him. And he did, through the tunnel, up the ladder, across the bridge, much to his father's amazement. "He's never gotten that far before!" the dad marveled. He revealed that his son is good in school, quiet and well-behaved, but is hesitant with physical things like rope ladders and high-in-the-air bridges.

No one has ever accused my boy of being quiet and well-behaved, but now, after years of hesitancy, he can do rope ladders. He can do bridges and slides. He can do carnivals. And he can lead the way for others less sure of themselves.

A pretty nice Father's Day present, for both his parents.

Nothing to sneeze at

Well, this is just dandy.

A recent study has found that exposure to cats, dogs and dirt reduce allergies and asthma in kids. Those who grow up sanitized and dander-free, the theory goes, have extreme reactions when they do come in contact with allergens. Start that exposure at age 1, and the immune system grows up rough, tough, and ready for anything.

Let's hope my daughter doesn't hear about this.

She, as anybody who's visited this site recently knows, is lobbying hard to get a dog and to stop taking showers. She's 11, and undoubtedly well past any possible respiratory benefit, but logic is not a fine point in her pleas. Anything good about dogs and bad about showers is fair play.

Yet I feel certain that, a year from now -- heck, the way research is going these days, maybe a week from now -- there will be another report saying, "Whoops, what we really meant is to have no pets, bathe hourly, and surround your home with a plastic bubble."

The current report suggests that exposing children from age 1 to "two or more cats and dogs" may reduce their likelihood of allergies and asthma. And increase their likelihood of scratches and clothing covered with animal hair, but that's another study. The animal-exposure theory fits in with a "hygeine hypothesis" that says that excessive cleanliness and a lack of contaminants in the environment screws up kids' immune systems.

Well, I don't know about the dog part. But I am certainly making my contribution to contaminants by pedaling back on the household hygeine. My house has always been a mess, this side of filthy but not by a whole lot, and I thought it was just irresponsibility and laziness on my part. But now I know the truth: I'm doing this for my kids' immune systems. And I refuse to use all those antibacterial soaps and hand rubs and moist towelettes for exactly the same reason. Hey, a little dirt isn't going to kill them!

But that doesn't mean certain 11-year-olds don't have to shower every day. There are limits.

Meanie me

I am the meanest mom in the world.

That’s a pretty hefty title, I’ll grant, and I’d never claim it for myself. Modesty, you know. But my daughter is pretty firm these days that I deserve the honor, and since she claims knowledge of how EVERY other household in the world is run, I’d say she should know.

EVERY third grader but her gets to stay up until midnight. It’s a known fact.

EVERY girl her age gets to watch whatever she wants on TV.

EVERY kid gets to pick what she wants to eat, where she wants to eat, when she wants to eat and how much she wants to eat. NO other kid in the world has to finish her vegetables.

EVERY child gets to play outside after dark. In the cold. In the rain. Without a stupid sweater.

EVERY young person is allowed to determine her own personal hygeine needs. NO one else has to take a shower ever night, or brush her teeth. Especially when they’re just not in the mood.

EVERYone who wants a dog gets a dog. You could look it up.

EVERY student in her school has a backpack with wheels, except, don’t you know, the daughter of the meanest mom in the world.

As you might imagine, it’s not a lot of fun right now being mom to the daughter of the meanest mom in the world. It’s not easy bucking trends like this; it doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve always thought of myself as a conformist. And now, here I find myself doing things differently than EVERY other mother in the world. It gives one pause.

And then I remember: What I really am is mother to the whiniest daughter in the world. Were I not so mean, she would lose her title. Isn’t it amazing, the things we do for our kids?

Lethal weapon

Is peanut butter an inalienable right?

That's the question schools face when a child with a peanut allergy joins the student body. Any exposure to peanuts or peanut oil can cause an extreme reaction, even death, in these children. Their parents rightly want those products banned from the premises, so their children can have a normal school experience without fearing for their lives. Yet other parents feel it's unfair to change the dietary habits of the many for the needs of the few.

It seems silly on the face of it -- with so many foods to choose from, why cling to peanut butter when it might kill your kid's classmate? It is easy for me to say this because my kids don't like peanut butter. If they did -- if it was the only thing they'd eat, and the choice was between PB&J or an afternoon of lightheadedness and hunger -- it might not seem so silly. Adults can make decisions for all good reasons, but getting kids to eat what they're supposed to is another matter entirely.

Yet I'm always amazed at how vehemently, even hatefully some people will argue for their child's right to eat peanut butter in particular, and anything they darn well please in general. It's a little frightening, as a parent of two children with special needs of their own, to see how quickly people will stop being concerned about the well-being of others when it requires a change in the way they do things -- even such a small thing as packing a lunchbox. I think, if faced with a peanut-butter ban, I'd use it as a way to show my children that we as a society care for all our members, and if giving a little something up allows someone else to be safe, that is a good and worthy act. I think I'd do that even if my kids adored peanut butter. I think I would make it a project, even if it was hard.

It's a project many parents are likely to have to take on, as the number of children afflicted with the allergy appears to be increasing. For goodness sake, giving an allergic person peanut oil as a way of murdering them has already been featured on "Nash Bridges," so we know it's getting common. And in light of that -- in light of the fact that every school will likely have to deal with nut embargoes in the near future -- may I make a suggestion to the food manufacturers of America?

Synthetic peanut butter.

If they can make fruit juice without any fruit in it, surely they can make something that looks like peanut butter, smells like peanut butter and tastes like peanut butter without actually having any of those pesky peanuts. Work on it, folks. The lunchrooms of America are calling.

Some enchanted evening

A rite of passage is coming up for us this summer: My daughter has tickets to her first rock concert.

Well. Rock concert is a little strong. She's going to see pop pipsqueak Aaron Carter along with a group called A*Teens, four young Swedes who cover ABBA songs. Woodstock it ain't.

But she's going to hear her first excessively amplified music, stand in her first screaming crowd, and dance for the first time amongst strangers. And of course, I'll be there with her.

I was sure she'd be thrilled with the idea of going, since she's recently declared that she loves Aaron Carter and wants to marry him. When I mentioned that my co-worker and her daughters were going and we were going to go along, my girl had two requests: She wanted to sit in the front row, and she wanted to go backstage afterward. I had to break the bad news that she was not, after all, adopted by Rosie O'Donnell.

No, we'll be standing on the grassy lawn way, way behind the seats, way up to where it could be any blond child lip-synching to Aaron Carter tunes instead of Aaron himself. This is an appropriate spot for a first concert. If she doesn't like it, we're not out a lot of money. Honey, I'm not springing $75 for NSYNC tickets until I know you can make it through a show.

She finally allowed as how it would be cool to at least be in the same general vicinity as young Mr. Carter, and listening to his music, and jumping around. Then she wanted to know if it was this weekend, and was aghast when I told her it wasn't until August.

"August?" she declared in disgust and confusion. "August? Then why are you telling me now?"

To an 11-year-old, I know, August seems a lifetime away. To her geriatric Mama, though, I'll tell you, just two months to an evening of "I Want Candy" sounds entirely, entirely too soon.

Mow? No!

Well, here's another thing to add to your list of summer safety no-no's for kids: using the lawnmower.
Now, at first I expected that maybe this safety tip was being put out by, say, the Tom Sawyer Institute for Juvenile Work Avoidance. But in fact, it's the American Academy of Pediatrics doing the suggesting, and there are legitimate safety issues involved. Apparently, nearly 10,000 kids are injured by lawnmowers each year, and that's not even counting the ones whose allergies are too severe to be around all that flying grass. Hey, that's my excuse, anyway.

The key seems to be to wait until the child has shown the necessary judgment and strength to push a potentially dangerous instrument. You would not, for example, put your four-year-old in charge of a whirling blade. Yet a quarter of the annual lawnmower victims are under five. The AAP advises keeping the wee ones inside while the mowing is in process. And of course, mamas need to stay inside with them.

In addition to the AAP warning, the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute has some safety tips of its own. To quote from the official site:

* Do read the manufacturers operator's manual before operating.



* Do use extra care when approaching corners, shrubs, and trees.


* Do handle fuel carefully and avoid spilling when you're filling.

* Do wear the proper clothing -- long slacks and sturdy shoes.

* Don't drive a riding mower like a race car -- it's a mower, not a racer.

* Do keep small children out of the mowing area, and preferably indoors under adult supervision.

* Do be alert and turn the mower off if children enter the area.

* Do, before operating in reverse, look behind and down for small children.

* Don't carry children. Riding mowers are designed for one operator only.


* Don't allow children to operate a riding mower.


Of course, any suggestion that kids shouldn't be mowing is a major disappointment, because one of the chief advantages of having children in the first place is having someone to do things like mow the lawn. I would like to report that the American Academy of Pediatrics, in the interest of child safety, offers a lawn-care service by which a pediatrician mows your lawn while you lie in your air-conditioned house watching videos with your children, but alas, they just give the advice, they don't help you follow it. And beside, I'm guessing the HMOs would never pay for it.

Exceeding expectations

You know, I spend a lot of time tailoring my expectations for my kids, making sure that, although I hope for the best, I don't expect more than their miswired neurological systems can deliver. I try to keep things realistic. But then comes a morning like we had a couple of days ago, and I wonder if my expectations aren't still far, far too high.

For example: Why should I expect my son to actually eat grapefruit, just because he begged for it in the store? Just because I'd spent five minutes on a hectic morning cutting it to his specifications, why should I expect him to do anything different than touch a piece to his tongue and deny it further entry? Why should I not have seen that coming a citrus grove away?

And why should I expect my daughter, who normally pops out of bed full of energy at 6:30 a.m., to do the same when she knows she has last-minute homework to finish? Goodness knows I don't pop out of bed when I know I have work to do; why should she? Expecting too much, I am.

And speaking of homework, just because my girl is meticulous about doing everything on her homework list, and requires very little supervision to remember to do her homework, just because of that, why should I be surprised when, on the worst possible morning, when we already have unfinished work to do, she suddenly turns up a math worksheet that she had all weekend to do but didn't? Why should I expect her to be on top of things just because she always is?

And why, just because math facts are her one shining academic strength, should I expect her to do the addition and subtraction problems on that math worksheet correctly? Why should I expect my complete lack of time to correct that sheet and have her re-do any wrong answers to influence her ability to do it right the first time? Expecting the impossible, is what I'm doing here.

After all, why should I expect that, on any given horrible, time-driven morning, at least one of my children will do what I say and keep moving? Why should I expect one of them to always get ready on time? When my son is acting up of a morning, any given morning really, his sister can usually be relied on to rise, dress, eat, prepare backpack, and get in the car. But when that sister is having an unexpected homework crisis, can I expect her brother to pick up the slack and just do one bleeping thing that I tell him to do? Surely not. Do not expect a thing.

Though, along those lines, why should my children expect that I will keep control of my frustration at such a frustrating time? Why should they expect that I will keep a smile on my face and tears safely tucked in their ducts? Why should they expect me not to lose it, when I have lost it in such situations before? Unreasonable expectations of me they surely have. We'll all have to work on that.

Squeaky pipes

I've worried about my son's speech a lot over the six-plus years since we adopted him.

First, I worried because he didn't have any. He was speechless when he came home at age almost-two, and he stayed speechless for about a year after that. Would he ever talk?

Well, yes. Of course, he did eventually start. But his vocabulary was still delayed. And then, as it grew, as he began to tell stories and make requests and interrogate people about their cars and keys, it became apparent that his articulation was lousy. I've always been able to understand him just fine, but those who don't know him don't know what he's talking about.

I've worried that he says "mines" instead of mine, and that he has no language to express his inner emotions, and that he picks up unsavory comments made by his parents in the heat of traffic and repeats them in the worst possible situations. I've worried that he doesn't talk enough, and I've worried that he'll never shut up.

And now, after a meeting with his school speech therapist, I have something new to worry about: When he talks, he talks too high.

Not high volume, mind you, although that is certainly the case on many, many, many occasions. No, her concern is his squeaky, high-pitched tone, which she fears may harm his vocal cords. She's urging him to talk in a normal register, not bass necessarily but not first soprano either.

It's a little amusing because, back when he didn't talk at all, any noises he made were low and gutteral, and I was sure he would be a tiny peanut-boy with a deep, deep voice. Instead, he's a tiny peanut-boy with a tiny peanut-voice. It probably does not help that he's usually needling someone with questions, and his voice naturally rises with inquisitiveness.

I sure don't want him to hurt his vocal cords, but boy, I can't see following around telling him not to talk so high. It's a cute little high voice, and there are so very many more important things I should be following him around telling him not to do. Maybe I'll just worry about it instead.

Suffering fools

When someone approaches you in a supermarket and asks a poorly phrased question about your adopted children in front of said children (something like "Where are their real parents?" or "Are they really siblings?"), do you:

a) treat it as a "teachable moment" to enlighten a stranger in the true wonderfulness of adoption;

b) fire back a clever comment that puts the rude questioner in line;

c) hit the person about the head with the nearest blunt instrument.

Personally, I would like to say my answer is "b"; sometimes, "c" definitely does seem to be appropriate; but normally, all I can think of is a relatively straight and overly informative answer that would probably place me in category "a." The "b" answer, I think of a couple of hours later.

Unlike a lot of adoptive parents, if a recent go-round on an adoptive parents' e-mail list is any indication, I don't have strong feelings about this. I've often said more about my kids' adoption than was really necessary, and it's often turned out well -- people who were considering adoption or know people who are get some encouraging information from me, and I get to feel like a good little adoption evangelist. I've advocated in this space for people not being afraid to tell their adoption stories, and I meant it. At the same time, I'm a little alarmed by the notion that adoptive parents have to be good little adoption evangelists every waking moment, always ready to say a good word, even when they're at the supermarket and the kids are screaming and they really just want to go home.

Sometimes, it's true, people who make insensitive comments are really good and interested people with poor language skills. Sometimes, they're just nosy and rude, and if someone is quick-witted enough to fling a barbed comeback their way, my hat's off to 'em.

In fact, maybe they could come shopping with me.

Wrong for rites

Last night, I went to a meeting at our church to register my son for First Communion. I did it with trepidation, because I was sure the religious education director would spy me from the front of the room, reach out with an enormous cane, and yank me outta there. "You? What are you doing here? What makes you think your noisy, jumpy little boy could be eligible for First Communion? He can't be in church for five minutes without screaming! He'll ruin it for everybody!"

Let's just say I'm feeling a little defensive about my son just now. He's been getting sad faces on his behavior chart at school, the special-needs summer camp he's gone to for two years is sounding a bit testy about dealing with his behavioral issues, and with summer religious education classes coming up, I know I'm going to be debating with the director about just how inclusive their inclusion of my little special-needs kid is going to be.

Plus, have I mentioned his behavior in church? It's hugely, hugely better than it used to be. But it's still awful.

My worrying, at least about last night, turned out to be for nothing. There were no enormous canes in evidence. My son's name was on the list of prospective communicants, just like everybody else's. If the director and her assistant thought, "Omigosh, not HIM!", they did not say it to my face. For one evening, at least, he was just another boy.

Which leaves for me, apparently, the job of discerning if he's really ready. And raises the uncomfortable possibility that the people responsible for turning him away from this spiritual rite of passage may be his very own mom and dad. It's so much easier when administrators do that sort of thing; it's so much easier to be a righteously indignant mother bear. I'm really good at that.

But not so good in examining my son's spiritual side. I'm not sure he has one. He may be able to cognitively grasp the facts associated with the Eucharist, but can he understand the significance and the solemnity of the act? Can he be trusted not to, say, taste the Host and then spit it out if he doesn't like it? Can he have any understanding of what taking the Host means, beyond just putting a wafer in your mouth? I have my doubts that most seven-year-olds can, but they will eventually; will my neurologically impaired guy ever?

Then there's the issue of First Reconciliation, which in less enlightened days we called confession, and penance. We are to prepare our children for this by discussing the things they do wrong and talking about the need to confess our sins and ask forgiveness. I don't even know how to consider the notion of sin with my son, who is impulsive not out of sinfulness but because of prenatal brain damage, and doesn't have a clue why he does what he does. All the reading I've done lately on fetal alcohol damage suggests that the worst thing you can do is make the child feel like he's "bad." I don't think the church is interested in doing that anymore, either, but you can't talk about sin without at least tiptoing in that direction. The religious education director indicated that, if a child is not ready for First Reconciliation, he can delay it for a couple of years and still make First Communion. Maybe we could delay it indefinitely? At this point, we suspect that our son would go into the confessional, ask the priest what kind of car he drives, and request to see his car keys.

In a way, it seems silly to be worrying about my boy's religious development when there are so many basic developmental issues in fret-worthy condition. It must seem silly to any readers out there for whom religion is not important. It is important to our family, and finding a way to help my son participate fully in the life of the church is an ongoing challenge. If anyone else out there is meeting that challenge with a special-needs child, drop me a note. Maybe God will grant us a little inspiration.

Oh, to be young and in New Hampshire

Where's the very best, tip-top place in the U.S. to spend your childhood? If you said New Hampshire, you're ... well, you're right, but you've probably already read about the new Kids Count report put out by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Or else you're the governor of New Hampshire.

The report tabulated looked at such child-well-being factors as infant, child, and teen deaths; child poverty; teenage motherhood; and high-school dropout rates. And the findings for the nation at large look pretty good. Improvement has been seen in all the above-mentioned areas, and the only negative trend was an increase in dangerously underweight babies. Otherwise, being an American child is looking pretty darn good.

Especially if you're in New Hampshire, which was ranked first for children's welfare among the fifty states. Rounding out the Top 10 were the great states of Minnesota, Utah, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Jersey, Nebraska, Washington and Maine. And the places where youth is most mispent? Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico, Louisiana and, coming in dead last, Mississippi.

A look at the U.S. Census Web site confirms that New Hampshire is a fine enough place grow up. It ranks 50th in infant mortality, 49th in violent crime, 49th in unemployment, 45th in motor vehicle deaths. Interestingly, it also ranks first in the nation in "retail sales per household." Which makes me think there are a lot of very happy teenage girls tipping the scale in the state's favor.

All joking aside, it's nothing but good news to read that infant mortality has fallen by 22 percent nationwide, deaths among kids 14 and under by 23 percent, teen deaths by 24 percent, teenage births by 19 percent, high school dropouts by 10 percent. May those trends continue. It's good news, too, to read that only 16.9 percent of American children live in poverty ... and appalling to think that any do. May the next Kids Count report find that statistic wiped out entirely.

Fetal felony

I think we could all agree, especially those of us parenting children with fetal alcohol exposure, that the damage done to a developing fetus by a birthmother's substance abuse is a tragedy.

But should it be a felony too?

That's the question raised by a case in South Carolina in which a mother who used crack cocaine during her pregnancy was convicted of homicide after her baby was stillborn at 35 weeks. The prosecutor declared that her continuing to smoke as much crack as she could despite its effect on her child showed "extreme indifference to life." And, undoubtedly, to what that child's life would have been like had he or she lived.

Which leads one to wonder, with great trepidation, whether, if a person can be charged with murder for killing a fetus, should they be charged with assault for knowingly and deliberately causing grave damage to that developing child? FAS is a completely preventable birth defect, with lifelong implications for the child, the family, and for society. If you did the kind of brain damage to a child by shaking him or hitting him or beating him about the head with a stick that you do by drinking alcohol during pregnancy, you would be looking at some serious jail time. Ought there to be some culpability for that alcohol-induced damage? And would it make any difference?

Probably not. Probably it would just result in less prenatal care, less honesty about alcohol use and more secrecy for FAS/E. Given the amount of damage that can be done before a woman even knows she's pregnant -- and given the fact that many birthparents of FAS/E babies are FAS/E victims themselves -- that "knowingly and deliberately" gets a little hard to prove. All around, it's a tragedy. That much is beyond debate.

Maybe it's offensive

The jungle drums are beating in the adoption community about a new fall offering on The WB. This is probably the most attention a show on The WB has received from grown-ups in a long time, but the fact that the netlet caters to the young is one reason everybody's so concerned. Another is that people in the adoption community tend to be on sharp lookout for things to be offended by. Which doesn't mean they're not right to be offended. I'm just saying.

On the face of it, the show looks promising for a couple of reasons: Julia Sweeney and Fred Willard play the parents, and the executive producer is a "Frasier" veteran. And it looks not-so-promising for a couple of reasons: The main character is an adolescent, there are twins in the cast, and the plot sounds like yet another recycling of "Malcolm in the Middle." I could get offended that there's not more interesting work on the tube for Sweeney and Willard, or that we may be seeing the dawning of another set of Olsens, but that's not what all the other adoptive parents are getting offended about.

They're getting offended about the title, which is: "Maybe I'm Adopted."

An e-mail writing campaign has already started against the title, and The WB's online message board is predictably hopping. Some message titles, to indicate the depth of righteous indignation at play here:

• I am embarrassed for WB
• Tacky and offensive title
• Maybe......this is an offensive title!!!!
• Lose this TACKY title!
• Maybe I'm Adopted....PULEEZE!!!
• Maybe I'm Adopted...YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED WB
• Maybe I'm not Black; Maybe I'm in a wheelchair; MAYBE...
• OFFENSIVE to families formed by adoption!!!
• Absolutely Unacceptable!
• Does Rosie know about this show?
• Did you actually pay someone to come up with this title
• Adoption is nothing to joke about!
• Not a very thought out title
• Get RID of that OFFENSIVE title!!!!!!!
• The title is completly horrible....assuming that a crappy confused life must be like being adopted...

On that last point, I think that actually being adopted is positioned as preferable to having a crappy confused life, "Maybe I'm adopted" being wishful thinking for this young lady. But that's nitpicking. It's a foolish choice for a title, and makes me think that either the creators genuinely didn't know that the adoption community had a hair-trigger, or they did know and wanted to get some publicity for a show that sounds mediocre and unmemorable at best. Personally, I'd say the best policy is to ignore it, and given the fact that it is on The WB, it will most assuredly go away. But then, I'm not feeling particularly righteously indignant this morning.

Juice rationing

The American Academy of Pediatrics, my new favorite whipping boy, recently issued guidelines on the drinking of juice. Now, if you're like me, at this point you're hoping that what the American Academy of Pediatrics said is: Juice is good! Let them drink juice! Juice in the morning! Juice in the evening! Juice any old time at all! Lots and lots of delicious juice for everybody!

But of course, they didn’t say that. They hate parents. What they said was that we have to limit our children's juice consumption to 4 to 6 ounces a day for kids up to 6, and 12 ounces a day for kids up to 18. By the time they reach 18, goodness knows, we’ve long stopped worrying about them drinking juice and started worrying about them drinking other things.

Four to 6 ounces. Twelve ounces. Think about those amounts for a moment. That’s less than a cup a day for the little ones, and a cup and a half for the big kids. Or, if you measure like I do, one-and-a-half small juiceboxes for the under-6 set and one big juicebox and most of a small one for the 7-and-ups.

Let's all enjoy a hearty laugh now, shall we?

There are days my daughter exceeds her limit at breakfast. She drinks juice like some people breathe. It's always been that way, since we adopted her at age 4.5; I think maybe "juice" was her second English word, after "cookie." She has an unlimited capacity. We have to ration the stuff at dinner to make sure she eats, but 12 ounces a day? There would be open warfare.

Now, I've fought the good fight on beverages before. I sharply restrict soda intake, I forbid flourescent Gatorade, and I stand firm against the ditzy drinks advertised on Nickelodeon (No, you may not have the Koolaid that changes colors. I don't care if it's cool. Because I'm the American Academy of Pediatrics, that's why).

When we serve juice, we generally serve 100% fruit juice, just like the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests. Although, I’ll admit, my husband does have a weakness for those wacky Tropicana Twister flavors (Kiwi strawberry! Guava grape! Raspberry Kumquat!) and brings that sugar-supplemented stuff home more often than I’d like. The American Academy of Pediatrics needs to go to the supermarket with him and slap his hand.

But even when it’s the good stuff ... one-and-a-half cups max? Puh-leese. Does the American Academy of Pediatrics have children itself? What are the kids supposed to drink instead? Water? Is that really safe and pure enough? We all know about tap water, and recent reports have said bottled water isn’t so hot either. Milk? I’ve recently upped my daughter’s milk to two glasses a day, at her pediatrician’s suggestion, even though a gentleman on one of my e-mail lists has recently suggested that Milk Is the Root of All Health and Nutritional Evil. So what exactly do they drink? My kids are a little young for coffee and diet soda, which is how I personally drink my way through the day.

The concern with juice seems to be that it 1) keeps kids from eating whole fruits, like they need an excuse; 2) provides too many sugary calories, thereby rotting their teeth and promoting obesity; and 3) all those carbs can cause diarrhea. It’s nice of the American Academy of Pediatrics to be concerned, but frankly, my kids eat fruit (well, okay, my son eats fruit), both of them have good teeth and slim builds, and we’re pooping just fine, thanks. Fruit juice appears to be doing us no harm. Limiting fruit juice, on the other hand, would increase our household stress rate by 566%, and that can’t be good. I think we’ll have to opt for family sanity over optimum nutrition.

That is, unless the American Academy of Pediatrics wants to come over and babysit.

Field tripping

This is field trip week at my kids' school, apparently, because my daughter went on hers yesterday and my son has his on Thursday. That takes care of grades 1-3, so I'm guessing grades 4 and 5 are heading out today or tomorrow. The schools must just rent those buses by the week.

It took three buses -- not sweaty old schoolbuses but sleek, air-conditioned tour buses with videos in the front and bathrooms in the back -- to transport my daughter, her third grade classmates, and all the other third- and second-grade classes to the Bronx Zoo. There are closer zoos, but I suppose if you're going to spring for the fancy buses you might as well drive them somewhere.

I tried to find out whether my daughter liked the zoo, and what she did there, but of course that sort of information is top-secret from a third-grader, and distributed on a need-to-know basis. So I resorted to specific questions: Prettiest animal? Fish. Ugliest animal? Lion. Biggest animal? Elephant. Smallest animal? Fish. Love those fish.

Her least favorite place in the zoo was the World of Darkness display. Her favorite place was the gift shop. Ahhh ... she may be adopted, but she's my daughter, alright.

When my son takes his field trip, I won't have to pump him for info, because I get to go with. As Class Mother, it is my privilege to spend two hours each way to drive with a bunch of first grade kids and my son's special-ed class to some Crayola factory the next state over. Again, there must be fun places closer by. The buses better be good.

Endless bus rides with small children aside, I do enjoy going on my son's field trips, if only to see how he interacts with the kids and the staff. There's no way to really spy effectively in the classroom, but field trips are perfect for stealthy observation. If I'm lucky, the teacher will make his aide deal with my son's behavior and I'll get to know some of the other kiddos. Otherwise, if I'm having to wrangle Behavior Boy on a day when routine is out the window and chaos reigns, I'll worry that the other grown-ups are busy observing me.

And that's scarier than the World of Darkness any day.

Time for the kids

At last, miracle of miracles -- a report on the time children spend with their parents that doesn't beat up on working moms.

In fact, the study, conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, suggests that today's working mothers spend as much time with their kids as stay-at-home moms did 20 years ago.

Overall, parents are finding more time than ever: Kids studied in 1997 spent 31 hours a week with their moms, as opposed to 25 hours in 1981. Time spent with Dad increased more markedly, from 19 hours in 1981 to 23 in 1997. That average increase is impressive enough, but when you factor in that the number of working moms has increased, from 50 percent in 1981 to 63 percent in 1997, it's gratifying to note that far from their dragging down the average, the average has increased. Either those moms are making an effort to be there for their kids, or the 1997 stay-at-home moms were on top of their offspring every waking moment.

I'd guess the former, though many stay-at-home moms probably feel it's the latter. I've seen the debate flare up more times than I want to think about on e-mail lists, where either side can become wildly defensive at the merest turn of a phrase. I probably shouldn't even be bringing this up here. People are already probably preparing to write me mean e-mails for suggesting that working moms can spend the kind of time with their kids that stay-at-home moms can. Or vice versa.

The fact is, I feel like I have a foot in both camps. I've been lucky. When we adopted our kids back in 1994, I was able to work out a schedule with my employer by which I worked from home four days a week and went into the office only on my husband's day off. So although I was working, I was also a stay-at-home mom, able to interact with my developmentally delayed twosome and schlep them to early intervention and evaluations and doctors appointments and enrichment opportunities. What this mostly meant was that I wound up cramming my eight hours of work into the hours when they were sleeping and I should have been. But we spent time together.

My days in the office eventually expanded to two, necessitating a one-day-a-week in-home child-care person for my son one year and an after-school program the next; both of those, I think, were beneficial to him. Now that both kids are in school all day, I've taken a different job that lets me leave the office at 3 p.m. and finish my work at home. So as far as the kids are concerned, I might as well be a stay-at-home mom. I'm there before school and after school, and am usually available for things during school.
I'll admit, though, that while my kids have my time, they don't always have my mind. Work is undeniably a distraction. There are things I'd like to do for the kids that don't get done because I'm at work during the day, and because I can't really spend unterrupted alone time planning things out. Whether I'd actually do them if I had the opportunity is another matter entirely, but doesn't affect my capacity for guilt.

Actually, though, the more distracting thing about work is that I do it well. It's concrete, it's do-able, I know how to do it, and when it's done there is a feeling of satisfaction and competency. That is something that, day in and day out, it's very hard to get from parenting, especially special-needs parenting. With my kids, I'm constantly guessing and flailing for answers and worrying and wondering what I should be doing. Something that works one time is a disaster the next. Experts tell me different things, some of which I disagree with. There is nothing concrete. The outcome is a million times more important than anything I deal with at the office, and yet I don't feel competent to do the job at all.

And so, when the choice comes up between struggling through yet another homework assignment with my learning disabled daughter -- seeing again how impossible it is for her to do math word problems, or say what a story is about -- or gluing myself to the computer to do "my work," it's all too easy to slip into work mode. Work is so much easier.

Writing about my kids, in forums like this, is easier than dealing with them, too. So is reading books about kids that I'm sure will help me deal with them, but often give me an excuse not to deal with them. Does time spent thinking about your children count as quality time, or do you actually have to spend time with them?

Sometimes I feel guilty about all the distractions that come between me and my kids. And sometimes I feel those distractions are the things that let me keep my grip. Kids need parents to spend time with them, goodness knows, but everybody needs a time out now and again, some days more than others. I won’t judge your way of doing that, and I’ll try not to judge mine too harshly, either.

A visit to the doctor

My daughter had her 11-year-old visit with the pediatrician yesterday, and there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that she's growing like crazy, jumping nearly five inches this year, up to 5 feet tall and the 85th percentile on the height chart.

The bad news is that we now have official confirmation that she is two inches taller than me. And that when you're two years behind in school, being at the 85th percentile in height for your advanced age is probably not such a good thing.

The good news is that she is no longer shy with the doctor and answers questions, so that I don't have to provide running commentary throughout the visit.

The bad news is that she babbles. And giggles when the doctor examines her.

The good news is that the doctor thinks she's still six months to a year away from her first period, and goodness knows the later with that, the better.

The bad news is that even with the doctor's mom-suggested speech about how important it is to keep our bodies clean as we get older and start to smell bad, my girl still doesn't want to take a shower every day.

The good news is that she now sits still for shots and blood drawing, no longer requiring staff to come in from all over the building to hold her down.

The bad news is that instead of buying her some cheap little toy for being good during shots and blood drawing, I now have to buy her a $20 video.

The good news is that it was a good visit, with a clean bill of health at the end, and much less stressful than going through the same routine with my son.

And the better news is that we don't have to do it again for a year.

Playing by the rules

I finally managed to sign my kids up for classes run by our town's Parks and Recreation department -- have always meant to in the past, and always missed the deadlines -- and after one session each, I can report that the kids are doing fine, and I'm feeling dumb.

My daughter is taking a baseball skills class, and did pretty well with catching and throwing. I frequently heard the coach say "Excellent!" when she did something, which is majorly gratifying. She's been saying that she doesn't do well with catching and throwing at recess, while I think she does pretty well with it at home; my theory that the other kids are really the ones who are bad seems to be supported now by her class performance. Good for her.

My son is taking a gardening class run by senior citizens, and as I'd hoped, some nice lady has taken him under her wing. A few of the women clearly wondered why I had inflicted this jumpy, distractable, impulsive, noncooperative little demon upon them, but his new friend just took him with her and worked with him one on one and unflappably waved me away when I tried to make him shape up a time or two. She later explained that she had a grandson with ADHD, who shares a name with my boy, and that she also worked for a nursery school. So it looks like he's going to be okay, and he sure liked digging in dirt.

So why am I feeling dumb, when things are working out so well? See, here's the thing: My daughter is the only girl in the baseball class, and my son is the only boy in gardening. I don't know if this makes them look like bold gender pioneers, or like kids whose mother doesn't know the gender rules.

I'll hope for the latter, though my daughter reports that her on-again, off-again best friend is mad at her for taking a baseball class because everybody knows girls play softball. Maybe she's just worried that my girl will find out that she's not the one who doesn't know how to throw.

Ranking motherhood

Hate to break it to you competitive types out there, but the U.S. is no longer among the Top 10 places to be a mother.

Now, considering the number of Hallmark stores per square mile, the frequency of florist commercials, and the constant flow of “I Love Mom” art projects that come home from my kids’ school on Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day and any old day at all, you would think that this was a pretty darn fine country for mothers. But Save the Children would beg to differ. The foundation’s latest “Mother’s Index” ranks the U.S. as an also-ran 11, behind Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, Australia and the United Kingdom but above 83 others, including bottom-dwellers Benin, Central African Republic, Mauritania, Burundi, Gambia, Yemen, Mali, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and, last and least, Guinea Bissau.

Clearly, the foundation is not making these assessments on the prevalance of lovely floral arrangements and handprint art. Their interest is health, and their ratings, according to an Intelihealth report, are based on “a mother's access to health care, use of contraception and family planning, literacy rate, and participation in government.” Which makes me wonder: Wouldn’t use of contraception and family planning lead to fewer mothers? Maybe happier ones, too, but still, it seems like a technicality.

The U.S. loses rank because, although its health care abilities are state of the art, good health care is inequitably distributed. That, I can’t argue with. It’s inequitably distributed along racial lines, as the foundation notes, but also geographically and among different abilities. Parents who may have been pleased with the health care their normally developing children received may find themselves battling and struggling and drowning in paperwork when trying to get appropriate services and coverage and even respectful attention for a child with special needs.

America sinks even lower on the “Girl’s Index,” largely because of the large number of teen pregnancies. That number is less large than it used to be, but apparently large enough to sink us to 22 out of 140 nations, on a par with Greece and Hungary. I guess the rationale that motherhood is so wonderful here that even the very young want to try it doesn’t hold much water with the Save the Children folks.

My daughter would no doubt agree that being a girl in the U.S. is not such a great thing, but her criteria would be: 1) We won’t let her drive at age 11; 2) We won’t let her have a dog, but we make her have a younger brother; and 3) We won’t get her a wheeled backpack even though EVERYONE ELSE at her school has one. I believe in her “Girl’s Index,” our household would rank dead last, way behind all those households where the mothers let the daughters do whatever they want.

I don’t know what those moms are thinking of, but they’re sure dragging down my personal “Mother’s Index.” Maybe we should move to Sweden. Do they have wheeled backpacks there?

Have a safe summer

It must be almost summer, because the weather hereabouts is getting hot, camp deadlines are approaching, both my kids IEPs have been planned for next year, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a set of summer safety tips.

We're going to print them here, in the interest of parent education and all that good stuff, but we also have to admit that safety tips like these assume a perfect world that we personally don't live in. A world where children stand still for sunscreen application. A world where adults have nothing to do but supervise their kids. A world where every decision made from dawn to dusk, is made with safety in mind, and not with, say, just GETTING THE KIDS TO SHUT UP.

So along with the AAP's suggestions, we're adding a few of our own. Stay cool, okay?

FUN IN THE SUN

AAP says:
* Babies under 6 months of age should be kept out of the direct sunlight. Move your baby to the shade or under a tree, umbrella, or the stroller canopy.
* Dress babies in lightweight clothing that covers the arms and legs and use brimmed hats.
* Apply sunscreen at least 30 minutes before going outside, and use sunscreen even on cloudy days. The sun protection factor (SPF) should be at least 15.
* Try to keep children out of the sun between 10 am and 4 pm - that's when the sun's rays are strongest.

MWA says:
Keep the kids out of that bad old sun altogether, locked in a dark room with the air-conditioner blasting, all the snack food they can eat and a 30-day supply of videos. They'll be fat and out of shape, but cancer-free.

POOL SAFETY

AAP says:
* Never leave children alone in or near the pool, even for a moment.
* Make sure adults are trained in life-saving techniques and CPR so they can rescue a child if necessary.
* Surround your pool on all four sides with a sturdy five-foot fence.
* Make sure the gates self-close and self-latch at a height children can't reach.
* Keep rescue equipment (a shepherd's hook — a long pole with a hook on the end — and life preserver) and a portable telephone near the pool.
* Avoid inflatable swimming aids such as "floaties." They are not a substitute for approved life vests and can give children a false sense of security.
* Children are not developmentally ready for swim lessons until after their fourth birthday. Swim programs for children under 4 should not be seen as a way to decrease the risk of drowning.
* Whenever infants or toddlers are in or around water, an adult should be within arm's length, providing "touch supervision."

MWA says:
Pools are expensive, messy, hard to maintain, and dangerous to kids. Why bother, when they'll probably be just as happy running through the sprinklers? If they must have a body of water, let them play in the bathtub.

BUG SAFETY

AAP says:
* Don't use scented soaps, perfumes or hair sprays on your child.
* Repellents appropriate for use on children should contain no more than 10 percent DEET because the chemical, which is absorbed through the skin, can cause harm. The concentration of DEET varies significantly from product to product, so read the label of any product you purchase.
* Avoid areas where insects nest or congregate, such as stagnant pools of water, uncovered foods and gardens where flowers are in bloom.
* Avoid dressing your child in clothing with bright colors or flowery prints.
* To remove a visible stinger from skin, gently scrape it off horizontally with a credit card or your fingernail. You can also remove a stinger by pinching it out with a pair of tweezers or your fingers.

MWA says:
Dressing your child in drab clothes, bearing only the scent of bug spray, does not sound like a recipe for a fun summer. Better to avoid those insect-intense areas by staying indoors, maybe in shopping malls or movie theaters or bowling alleys. Any place with air conditioning and no mosquitos.

PLAYGROUND SAFETY

AAP says:
* Carefully maintain all equipment.
* Swings should be made of soft materials such as rubber, plastic or canvas.
* Make sure children cannot reach any moving parts that might pinch or trap any body part.
* Make sure metal slides are cool to prevent childrens' legs from getting burned.
* Even in supervised training programs, the use of trampolines for children younger than 6 years of age should be prohibited.

MWA says:
No jumping on the bed, either.

TRAVEL SAFETY

* Buckle up car seats and seat belts.
* Keep supplies with you, such as snacks, water, a first aid kit and any medicines your child takes.
* Always use a car seat, starting with your baby's first ride home from the hospital. Help your child form a lifelong habit of buckling up.
* Read the manufacturer's instructions and always keep them with the car seat. Read your vehicle owner's manual for more information on how to install the car seat.
* Put your child in the back seat. It is the safest place in the car because it is farthest away from a head-on crash (the most common type of crash).
* The harness system holds your child in the car seat and the seat belts hold the seat in the car. Attach both snugly to protect your child.
* Children in rear-facing car seats should never be placed in a front seat equipped with an air bag.
* Children traveling alone to visit relatives or attend summer camp should have a copy of their medical information with them at all times.

MWA says:
Of course we know that there is no safe way to travel with kids. The very addition of kids makes the travel unsafe, if only because after hearing "Are we there yet?" 536 times adults may be rendered not responsible for their own actions. You want safe? Stay home, and have somebody from the American Academy of Pediatrics come over and watch your kids.

Hitting the heights

At his annual pediatric visit last month, my son approached a major milestone: He's brushing the bottom of the height and weight charts. For a boy who's been cruising along well beneath the lowest percentile all his life, this is big news. At age eight, he's thrillingly close now to being in that lowest percentile. Whoo-hoo, maybe next year he'll only be smaller than 99% of his peers, instead of 100%! We may have to have a party.

My daughter goes for her 11-year-old exam this week, and she's on the opposite end of the spectrum. I expect we'll find that her height exceeds five feet; her height certainly exceeds mine, which is only 4' 10". I'll be interested to see where that puts her on the growth chart, and if her height and weight are average or above.

Getting accurate measurements for our records and our amusement has always been one of the nicer things about these pediatric visits (as opposed to, say, shots). But now I read that it may all be an illusion. According to a recent report on the Intelihealth Web site, doctors aren't all that good at measuring children, and may in fact miss diagnosing a problem due to these mismeasurements.

The conclusion seems reasonable enough, mentioning kids with high hairdos and big sneakers and the wiggles and measuring devices with floppy arms as impediments to proper measurement. Goodness knows it's not easy to get my son to stand up straight and still, and my daughter's been known to add a bit of tiptoe height if no one's watching.

Then again, the study in question was sponsored by a company that manufactures growth hormones, and we imagine they're not too happy about kids looking taller than they are. How frustrating it must be to think that children are looking average when they’re really not! When they need a shot of growth hormone to be average, darn it! They’d love my son. They’d throw him that party for making 1%. Then they’d offer some of their fine pharmaceuticals and suggest he go for 20% ... 60% ... to the moon!

It’s kind of like Jenny Craig commissioning a study that says doctor’s scales weigh people too light. When in fact, we know that doctor’s scales are seriously, seriously off in terms of making people appear far heavier than they are. Who will commission that study for me? Give me conclusive proof that the weight you see at the doctor’s office is always 20 pounds more than your actual total, and I’ll throw a party for myself.

Amazon's parenting top 10

Since I became a parent, I seem to be unable to shop for myself. When I look in clothing stores, I gravitate to the children's section. When I cruise the mall, I'm drawn to the toy stores. When I buy videos, they're always from the kiddie section. And at the bookstore, if I'm not looking at children's books, I'm browsing the parenting shelves.

Checking the latest in parenting expertise is something I try to do regularly, if only to smile at how clueless people are or marvel at the ever-increasing numbers of ADHD guides. I haven't made it to the bookstore in a while, so this morning I decided to do the next best thing: surf over to Amazon and see what's selling. In case you're curious, too, here's Amazon's Top 10 for today, with their comments and ours.

1. Aging With Grace : What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives by DavidSnowdon.
About the author: Snowdon is a noted Alzheimer's researcher.
What Amazon says: "Both cutting-edge science and a personal prescription for hope. Aging With Grace shows how old age doesn't have to mean an inevitable slide into illness and disability; rather, it can be a time of promise and productivity, intellectual and spiritual vigor, and continuing freedom from disease."
What we say: May be interesting as all get-out, but one wonders what a book about nuns is doing at the top of the parenting list. To let us know that the way to reduce stress is by not having kids and men in your life?

2. I Only Say This Because I Love You : How the Way We Talk Can Make or Break Family Relationships Throughout Our Lives by Deborah Tannen.
About the author: Tannen previously authored "You Just Don't Understand," about male-female communications.
What Amazon says: "You won't find quick, easy answers for improving communication in your family, but you will discover another dimension of understanding what's really going on."
What we say: Hey, I'm short on time here. If you're not offering quick, easy answers, I'm not interested.

3. The Girlfriends' Guide to Getting Your Groove Back : Loving Your Family Without Losing Your Mind by Vicki Iovine.
About the author: Iovine has written many hip "Girlfriend's Guides" to various parenting stages, including pregnancy, infancy and toddlerhood.
What USA Today said: "With great humor and frankness, Iovine addresses the topics most women talk about only with their best friends."
What we say: Oops, we lost our minds already. Too late for us, Vicki, too late for us.

4. Little Bits of Wisdom : A Collection of Tips and Advice from Real Parents compiled by Josie Bissett.
About the author: Bissett played Jane Mancini on Melrose Place ... and she's giving advice?
What Amazon says: "Out of the mouths of real parents and grandparents come priceless tips for thriving and surviving the everyday adventures of raising your children."
What we say: Real parents, maybe, but ... oh my goodness, haven't we all had enough know-it-all tips from grandparents to last us a lifetime?

5. The Rules for Marriage : Time-Tested Secrets for Making Your Marriage Work by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider.
About the authors: They wrote The Rules for dating, too.
What Amazon says: "Ellen and Sherrie show you how to make that sometimes bumpy journey known as marriage as smooth as possible."
What we say: One secret I've found for making my marriage work is to not sit around reading self-help books all the time.

6. Baby Bargains 4 Ed: Secrets to Saving 20% to 50% on Baby Furniture, Equipment, Clothes, Toys, Maternity Wear, and Much, Much More! by Denise and Alan Fields.
About the authors: They've moved up from their first book, "Bridal Bargains."
What Amazon says: "Well researched and written in a witty and comfortable tone, Baby Bargains should be required reading for every safety- and money-conscious parent-to-be."
What we say: But at $12.26, can you really afford it?

7. Don't Make Me Stop This Car : Adventures in Fatherhood by Al Roker.
About the author: He's the Today show's weatherman.
What Amazon says: "Light and involving, 'Don't Make Me Stop This Car' talks frankly about fertility problems, parenting, divorce, adoption, and... 'toons. "
What we say: If we're going to read a humorous book about fertility problems, parenting and adoption, we'll write it ourselves.

8. The Pregnancy Journal; A Day-To-Day Guide to a Healthy and Happy Pregnancy by A. Christine Harris, Ph.D.
About the author: Harris has also written a book on child development, but it costs $73 and probably isn't as cute as this one.
What Amazon says: "Whether this is pregnancy number 1 or number 10, nothing makes it easier to connect with a growing baby than knowing exactly what magical development is happening every day."
What we say: If this is pregnancy number 10, what are the odds that you'll ever get a chance to sit down and read?

9. Real Boys Workbook by William S. Pollock, Ph.D.
About the author: Pollock has created a small cottage industry writing about real boys.
What Amazon says: "Designed to stand on its own, "Real Boys Workbook" revisits material covered in Pollack's other books: spot-on anecdotes about boys and their parents, boys suppressing emotions, boys and sports, plus a humbling dose of smart suggestions for using empathy, shared activities, and respect to nurture their loving qualities."
What we say: Would a real boy really stand for all this rigamarole?

10. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.
About the authors: They also wrote "Siblings Without Rivalry" together.
What Amazon says: "... a step-by-step approach to improving relationships in your house."
What we say: The problem in our house is not getting kids to talk. It's getting them to stop.

Drive a kid, go to jail

Heard something on the car radio yesterday about a law targeting "distracted drivers," and while I certainly support the supposed aim of getting people to stop gabbing on the phone while they drive, I have to wonder: Wouldn't such a law also effectively make it illegal to drive with children?

I mean, compared with managing unruly youngsters, a phone conversation is a minor distractional blip. Show me a parent who can drive without being distracted by offspring, and I'll show you a parent who left them at home. From adjudicating squabbles to providing appropriate musical accompaniment to monitoring seat belt and window usage to answering the question "Are we there yet?" 4,682 times, driving with young ones is one distraction after another. If we're now bound by law to concentrate on the road and nothing but the road, it looks like families are going to be doing a lot of walking.

And you know, that might not be so bad. We'll have to build more schools, of course, so everybody will be within walking distance (because, well, bus drivers? If they're not distracted, they're comatose). Sports programs will take a hit because there will be no way to get kids from one town to another to play, and in many cases no way to get kids to the field to practice, but I think we can all agree that a slowing down of the relentless pace of activities would be good for a lot of kids. Families will get a lot of good, positive together time. And though incidents of household injury may increase, roadside injury will doubtless plummet.

If parents do dare to drive with dependents, the police now have the power to get them off the road, given the Supreme Court's recent agreement that motorists can be jailed for even minor traffic offenses. The mere sight of children in a vehicle will be cause enough to pull the driver over and take Mom or Dad to the pokey. And if Mom and Dad has been listening to children's tapes for minutes on end, Mom and Dad will probably be grateful.

Of course, that's only if this distracted driver law passes. Like I said, I heard something about it on the car radio, but I didn't catch much actual information about it. I was distracted by trying to find my exit. Terrible when driving distracts you from more important things, like listening to the news.

The terrible tweens

When we adopted our daughter from Russia at age 4.5, we went through, as most parents do, a period of testing. Nothing bad, nothing scary--no fears of attachment or serious emotional problems. But certainly tearful protests at bedtime. Spirited debates on the palatibility of certain foods. Bouts of willfulness for no other reason than because she could. Maybe she was just enjoying the option of opposition, willfulness not being encouraged in an orphanage setting. Maybe she was frustrated by our lack of a common language. Maybe she was scared, and trying to control what she could. Or maybe, since she's always been about two years developmentally delayed, she was just going through the Terrible Twos.

Whatever it was, it faded, and she's mostly been a good girl since--my child who could be counted on to cheerfully do as she was told. In fact, she so liked doing what she was told that our main problem was that she had no idea what to do with herself if nobody was telling her. Far from being willful, she's sometimes seemed will-less. And so it's come as a surprise to her father and me to find her testing once again, at age 11, in a new-and-improved preteen way.

Still, she's not a bad girl. But we're starting to hear, when we ask her to do things, answers like "I'm not in the mood." "I'm not up for it." "Nooooooooooooooooo."

We're starting to hear a lot about what other mothers let their kids do. Have wheeled backpacks. Wear shorts when it's over 50 degrees. Do absolutely whatever they want.

We're starting to notice a reluctance to move just because we say to. It's almost to the point where I'm going to have to start counting for her like I do for her brother. But her brother has a laundry list of neurological reasons for his slowness to make transitions. She's just tuning us out. Because, you know, she's not in the mood to listen.

Now, in a way this is all good. It's developmentally appropriate, like her newfound obession with insipid pop music. Because of that, I'm willing to let her sit in her room and listen to CDs--she who until so recently was afraid to be in her room alone!--and do her homework to the soothing sounds of "Now That's What I Call Music 6." I'm willing to let her watch her little Nick and Disney Channel teen shows. And I'm happy that she's interested in what her peers are thinking and doing and watching. At the beginning of this school year, she was still loving Barney the dinosaur, so this is an improvement.

But when I say to something, missy, you snap to it. You're not a teenager yet. And no wheeled backpack. I don't care what the other mothers do. I'm not that other girl's mother, I'm your mother. No. I mean it.

It's going to be a very long decade.

Reading 'Rosie'

One of the few remaining nice things about air travel -- especially if you are seated with the child who is happy to listen to her Aaron Carter CD for five solid hours instead of the child who mostly wants to talk, kick, fidget and scream -- is the opportunity for uninterrupted reading time. And so it was on our vacation last week that I finally got caught up on reading the magazines that had been piling high in recent weeks, including the inaugural issue of Rosie O'Donnell's new publishing effort, "Rosie" magazine.

When I first heard that the Queen of Nice was going into the magazine business, I had no intention of actually taking a look at it. First of all, who needed another celebrity magazine, or celebrity-led one? I've never read Oprah's or Martha's magazines either, and although Rosie is someone whose show I've watched and enjoyed from time to time, her foray into the written word seemed less an interesting brand extension than another step in a disturbing trend. Then, too, the fact that she did it by taking over the venerable "McCall's" made it easy to sniff about tradition and the dismantling thereof. Although, to be honest, I'd been less likely to buy the fusty old "McCall's" than about any other magazine on the newstand.

It was the kind of magazine my mother-in-law would read, and indeed she had a subscription, and since she lives downstairs her issue of "Rosie" turned up in our mail. I'd never have picked it up in the supermarket, but since it was there in my house, I flipped through. And what I saw made me ask my mother-in-law to send the issue back upstairs when she was done.

As I should have expected, the magazine nicely reflects not only Rosie's celebrity connections but also her causes, and that means a fair amount of adoption-related material. There was a profile of four waiting children, a story about a foster-care community, and a very nice essay by Rosie about adopting a foster child. There was a story on gun control, creditably enough a pro and con and not just a pro. There were the triumph-over-adversity stories, as required in a women's magazine, but in this case they both involved children, making them instantly of interest to this special-needs mom. And even the celebrity content was targeted, not fluffy: an interview with Fran Drescher centered exclusively on her battle with uterine cancer; an article featuring Uma Thurman was really about a program she supports for giving toys and supplies to parents who can't afford them; the parenting-advice column was staffed by guest celebrities Jane Seymour, Marilu Henner and Tracey Ullman.

It struck me that this was the parenting magazine I'd been waiting for since I adopted my kids six years ago. I'd always loved "Child" magazine, but when I finally had children I found that there was surprisingly little in its pages that applied to me. Lots about typically developing infants and precocious children, lots about post-pregnancy, little about adoption and special needs. "Adoptive Families," on the other hand, was rather too adoption-intensive; only a few pages in each issue actually applied to any situation I was dealing with at any given time, and I'd have to sort through pages and pages of information that was irrelevant to my children's age, origin and needs to find it -- not to mention pages and pages of ads for adoption agencies, which is like putting ads for fertility treatments in parenting magazines.

"Rosie" seems to me to strike a nice balance, though I wonder if people who have no children will be interested in it at all. It is really more a parenting magazine than a women's magazine, and while that pleases me greatly, it might not please my mother-in-law. Which means that when it comes time to renew, it might start coming to my part of the house first.

Party paranoia

My daughter is having a birthday party in a little over a week, and I'm a nervous wreck. By all rights, she should be the one concerned over whether her friends will have a good time and continue to be her friends. She should be the one concerned over whether the girls who weren't invited will be hurt, or the ones who were invited will be rude. She should be obsessing, and I should be calmly singing Que sera, sera. But of course, that is not the case.

The one thing I never realized about parenting is how thoroughly you transfer your own social anxieties over to your child. I should have known, because my own mom did the same thing, living vicariously through my painful social encounters. I know there was a period in my youth where these things didn't bother me, as they don't bother my girl now. If my mom passed that anxiety to me through our shared genes, then my daughter, adopted we might hope from more self-confident stock, is in luck. If I got it through exposure to her pre-emptive hurt for me, then she's in big trouble.

Which is why I have to stop now. If there's anything I want to pass to my children, it's the ability to not worry endlessly over what other people think of you. And then, by extension, what other people will think of you if you do a particular thing. Because once you get there, you wind up not doing many, many particular things. And then people think you're standoffish, or snobby. Hyperconsciousness is not a good social strategy, and I'd sure like my two to learn from my mistakes.

So far, so good, because if anything, these kids are hypoconscious. They seem largely oblivious to peer opinion. My son's FAE inspired behavior is not what any eight-year-old would call normal, but he's so self-contained that he sort of rolls on through life on his own little wavelength. Since he rarely seeks approval, the lack of it doesn't irk him, and kids seem to treat him gently as a result. This is a blessing that will no doubt wear off with age, as he gets weirder and kids get meaner. If he's unable to use peer disapproval as a signal to curb his behavior, then I wish him continued obliviousness.

Then there's my daughter, who appears to have raised obliviousness to an art form. It should bother her to be two years older than her classmates, and it should bother them, but from all reports--hers and the teachers and what I have seen from other kids--it's a non-issue. She knows she's older, they know she's older, they're a little surprised, but if anything it makes them think she knows things she doesn't. The tears and taunting I imagine occurring in these situations are apparently occurring only in my head. Let's hope they stay there.

Except that it makes my head a very busy place, and a place where it's hard to just sit back and enjoy party planning and look forward to an event with anticipation rather than dread. The outcome of this event will probably neither make nor break my daughter's social status in any particular way, and the other moms are probably not waiting to mock me for my poor planning skills. It will probably be moderately successful, not wondrous, not disastrous. They'll eat pizza, they'll play, they'll eat cake, they'll go home. How hard can it be?

Still, I worry. According to my mother, that's a mother's job.

Fat is good

Hey, great news about fat!

Those are words you sure don't see together often, but it's true. Right now, at the forefront of medical research, at the crux of cures for diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, at the healing edge, stands good old fashioned blubber. And if anything can make spare tires desirable, this is going to be it.

According to a recent research study, fat -- yes, that fat, the stuff making your pants tight and your arms floppy -- contains stem cells. Stem cells, those nifty little building blocks that can become any kind of human tissue with the right inspiration, are thought to be the key to cures for a smorgasbord of formerly intractible ailments. It's previously been extracted from bone marrow and, controversially, fetal tissue. But now, it looks like just a little liposuction is all you need.

So right now -- stop exercising! Eat a chocolate bar instead. The research suggests that our own body fat may be a resource for healing our injuries and treating our diseases, and don't you want to make sure you have plenty on hand, and waist, and thigh? How tragic to be so tight and toned you can't take advantage of this precious natural resource.

Just picture it -- picture a world where the overweight aren't viewed as unhealthful, but as potential fat donors. A world where doctors tell you to keep those extra pounds right where they are. A world where liposuction is a public service. A world where ice cream is medicinal.

Tomorrow, a news report will undoubtedly come out that overturns all these fine fantasies, but for today, I can dream. And eat a few extra cookies.

Wanted: Trying tots

Is your preschooler a little restless? A little overactive? Does he have trouble sitting still or shutting up? Have you ever thought he might be hyperactive or attention deficient? Has your doctor resisted prescribing him Ritalin because he's only 3? Then the National Institute of Mental Health might be looking for you.

The institute is funding a $6 million research study on the effect of Ritalin on the very young, and is looking for 300 good kids in the preschool age range to be their little guinea pigs. It's hard to know what's more troubling here -- that Ritalin is already being prescribed to kids that young without having been tested for safety, or that we're now going to test it.

Screening for the Preschool ADHD Treatment Study will be careful, to be sure. A kid who's a whirling dervish sometimes but in control others won't make the cut. Qualified applicants need to be able to speak in three-word sentences, and of course they need to be able to swallow a pill. Children whose behavior can be traced to traumatic stress or Oppositional Defiant Disorder will get the boot.

No, only kids who really have ADD/ADHD will be involved, though the medical profession is deeply divided on the question of whether you can even diagnose the thing in children so young. Researchers will put parents through a 10-week training course to try to increase their behavior modification skills, and if that brings the squirminess under control, the little test subjects will go on their way, pill-free. If not, they will be administered the medication and monitored for side effects over an 18-week period. The Food and Drug Administration is making a small-dose pill up special.

It will be interesting to see what the results of this little experiment turn out to be, but I can't say I expect anything to turn up that would keep the drug from being a regular feature in nursery schools and day-care centers across the land. Which -- without even getting into a debate here about the appropriateness of Ritalin or psychiatric medications for any child -- disheartens me greatly.

Is proper deportment now so important for 3 and 4 year olds that we must medicate them into it? There may be an argument for school-age children needing to be able to get with the program, but toddlers? Are infants who keep Mommy and Daddy awake too much next in line here? What an easy drug trial that will be -- they can screen the newborns right there in the hospital and send the teensy pills home with them.