Preventing Injuries in Youth Sports by John O'Connor

Sports will supply children with a long list of lifetime values. Some of those values are social in nature, and some of those values are physical in nature. When it comes to social values, children will learn the importance of teamwork and leadership; furthermore, they will learn that losing is part of the game. When it comes to physical values, they will learn that if they practice hard, they will have a better chance of succeeding during the game; in addition to this, they will be able to keep themselves physically fit, and this will help to prevent future health problems. On the other hand, sports can produce some negative results. With sports, children can be injured, and many of these injuries can be quite serious. Therefore, I aim to encourage my kids to participate in several sports, but I also try to make sure that they are safe when they are participating.

Since the implementation of many new rules in the National Football League, many fans complain that the game is not as exciting as it used to be. During past years, people anxiously waited for one player to deliver a vicious hit on an opposing player. However, the NFL has decided to ban big hits from its league because it understood the risk associated with these types of plays. Many offensive players were often the victim of these hits, and when these hits occurred, most players were not aware that they were about to be tackled. Therefore, this made the hit even more dangerous to the players’ physical well-being. Fortunately, since these rules were implemented, fewer injuries have been occurring.

These rule changes not only work towards making the NFL safer but also youth sports as well. Because these rules can be beneficial, the NFL decided to begin the NFL Evolution campaign. This campaign is designed to inform parents about the ways in which children can be injured while they are playing sports, and it gives parents information on ways that they can protect their children from these injuries. These rules are some of the reasons that I continue to allow my kids to play impact sports, and I appreciate the NFL deciding to lead this effort on player safety.

Listed below are the injuries that occur most frequently in the NFL and in youth sports.

Concussions

The main reason that the NFL decided to begin its player safety initiative is because of the number of players who were sustaining concussions. Since concussions are brain injuries, they can be detrimental to the players for many years, and this includes years after they have finished the game of football. The NFLPA has teamed with EarQ, a hearing aids provider to give former NFL players and other sports players advice on how to get treated for hearing loss. Since hearing loss is a symptom of a concussion, players can find a suitable doctor who will allow them to know if their hearing loss is the result of a concussion. For parents of young children, they should always look for signs of a concussion. Some of the signs include hearing loss, slurred speech, blurred vision, and headaches. If the children show any of these symptoms, they should immediately be taken to a physician.

Torn Ligaments

Since torn ligaments can be quite painful, they are usually more noticeable than a concussion. Therefore, if children complain of knee problems, they should see a doctor as soon as possible. Occasionally, knee pain can be a symptom of an ACL tear, which is one of the most devastating ligament tears. In order to prevent these types of injuries, parents should be sure that the children properly stretch before they begin playing a game or practicing. Also, if children participate in exercises to improve their balance and strengthen their leg muscles, they can reduce their chances of sustaining one of these injuries.

Heat Injuries

A heat stroke is one of the most frequent types of heat injuries. In order to prevent this, it is vital that children are hydrated, allowed to take breaks, and do not practice in the middle of the day. In addition to heat strokes, sunburns and skin cancer are examples of heat related injuries. Wearing sunscreen can help prevent these two types of injuries.

Kids enjoy sports, and parents enjoy watching them play. If parents adhere to the advice mentioned above, their children will be assured that they are safe during any type of sporting event. Most importantly, children will have a better chance of having fun.

Hi my name is John O'Connor, I am a father, outdoorsman, sports enthusiast and passionate about living a healthy lifestyle.  Check out my new blog at bloggingwjohno.blogspot.com!

 

My Love Affair with Television

This is one of my earliest memories: I am 3 years old and it is early morning, still dark outside. I get up and quietly go into the living room where our television is enclosed in its wooden cabinet. I stand in front of it and throw open the creaky doors with both hands. The faint smell of polyeurethane from the wood fills my little nostrils. There are two dials on the front right panel of the television: one for the channel and one for the volume.  I grasp the smaller dial on the bottom--the one for the volume--and turn it all the way to the left until it stops. I take the top dial between my thumb and forefinger and turn once to the right. Thump-click, t.v. on. Fuzz...is it snow? I turn the dial again and the side of my forefinger hurts. A dull buzz, the screen is still cold. I press my nose to the glass and turn to my cheek. My hand is still on the dial, the screen becoming a warm static horizon. I stick out my tongue and lick it. I step back. 'Tom and Jerry' is on and it needs to be heard. I carefully turn the volume knob to the right until I can hear it. For protection I close the cabinet doors to the sides of my head. I want to jump inside or be invisible. Inches from the screen I watch like this until my mother approaches, the kitchen light behind her.

So began my love affair with television. It had all of the qualities of a right and proper love affair--obsession, pre-meditation, and secrecy.  But like all affairs, eventually it will turn seedy. Mainly because there is so much crap on television right now but also so many more quality shows making it more irresistible than ever for both reasons. When it comes to quality or quantity here I don't have to choose.  Mine has been called the television generation or generation X (born between 1965 and 1980).  Being at the end of that time span I consider myself firmly in the caboose of the Gen X choo choo train which everyone knows is the party car and I am like an addict when it comes to the boob tube (a funny but outdated term since tubes are no longer used inside televisions).  Perhaps mine was not the only mother in 1982 to walk in on her child French kissing the television at 6am. Cartoons were like my gateway drug to Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. Then, The Brady Bunch and Nickelodeon. The Cosby Show, Family Ties, ALF. Cheers and Night Court. MTV and Beverly Hills 90210....Sex and the City...  Television has been my constant friend for over thirty years.  One can therefore imagine my ire towards Mitt Romney when he threw my beloved Big Bird under the bus during the presidential debates last year. Anyone who doesn't understand the importance of PBS to Generation X signified by Big Bird in this case does not know us at all. 

With young children (mine are almost 3 and a young 5) I believe one needs to be careful about limits regarding t.v. time.  This can be difficult for someone like me who has been having a thirty year love affair with the big blue box.  How can I set limits and enforce them when it is sometimes hard to do for myself?  Fortunately, there are some really good shows out there that can be learning tools for young children if you watch with them. There are a half dozen channels and a hundred shows to choose from at any time.  Even so, we tend to stick to the same handful of enjoyable shows.  I love to watch Curious George and talk about it with my kids.  There are indeed some shows I cannot tolerate because they annoy me. The Fresh Beat Band, for example, makes me want to commit hara-kiri. Bert and Ernie as claymation characters is an abomination and infuriates me.  Caillou's parents are perfect in a way that confuses me (does their unnatural patience belie a dangerous ambivalence towards the little pebble head?).  I don't feel bad putting the kibosh on some shows.  There are plenty of suitable alternatives.  If fact, the constant parade of new shows exhausts me.  So, sitting down to watch with them is one way to create boundaries I think.

My kids are too young to make a lot of choices. It gives them ants in their pants if they are faced with making decisions where too many options are available.   The sight of the digital t.v. guide causes them to immediately twitch as they try to identify the various fonts of Nick Jr., Disney Jr., The Hub, etc. and extrapolate the programming time.  When I was a kid, cartoons were on Saturday mornings and Sesame Street (a.k.a. 'Bert and Ernie') was on at 10am and 4pm--"the fussy times" as my Aunt once recalled. Now, children 's programming is on 24/7 and the digital video recorder is our trustworthy tool. My constant friend has also become my favorite fall back activity and sometimes babysitter.  Television sets in the home have increased in quantity and size over the past fifty years.  And yes, my current t.v. has about forty inches on the one with which I grew up but in true lower-upper-middle class fashion we only have one.  Nowadays, technology can also work in our favor when it comes to setting limits on t.v. time since the control lies not in a clunky dial that a toddler can operate but in the remote that can be stored out of reach of children. Perhaps one day soon remotes will even get one of those warning labels:  'Surgeon General's warning: studies have shown that children who consume more than three hours a day of television are at greater risk for obesity, hyperactivity and loss of control of their indoor voices.'   If you have ever seen a five year old after too much t.v. in one sitting you will know what I'm trying to describe--their speaking voice increases many decibels as if they are wearing headphones.  Studies have shown that chronic t.v. viewing can also lead to obesity.  I imagine the reason is that because in order to keep one's interest in some television shows one needs to eat and the pathway to the fridge is usually a direct one. One might also need to eat in order to sooth their anxiety over what they are watching. I encounter this problem myself. If I am up late, too tired to read or write, I end up watching 'Law and Order: SVU' or 'Hoarders' and 'Intervention' which are disturbing enough to require a large bowl of ice cream to assuage my fears. It is the same way with kids. you put them down in front of something age inappropriate, boring, or too scary then they will eventually run to the fridge. "I need a snack! I need a yogurt!" Certain shows are not good for us at all.  They are the dark side of the affair.  Furthermore, crappy reality television shows such as 'The Real Housewives of Your City' seem to have some psychological motive in addition to just being worthless. In this case, middle-class housewives such as myself might become addicted to the dramas of the so-called 'real' housewives: we may feel materially inferior to them during the opening credits but when we watch and see their foolish behavior and dysfunctional relationships at least we can from then on feel moral superiority.  That is the reason the producers cast rich women with narcissistic personality disorders for us to sit there and judge, I surmised after watching one season of TRHW of NJ.  Don't fall for it.  My last strategy in controlling my lifelong television addiction is to try and find some kind of artistic integrity in what I am choosing by sticking to a series like 'Mad Men' and 'Game of Thrones.'  This is a matter of personal taste, but still.  Then do the same for your kids because if you think you feel stupid after watching 'The Kardashians Take a Krap' imagine how your little ones probably feel after watching 'Sponge Bob Square Pants.'
The worst part about letting your children watch too much t.v. is the opportunity cost associated with it.  There is only so much they are going to learn from the educational shows which I think are wonderful but have their place.  When they sit for too long (I think 3 hrs. a day is the upper limit and even I don't watch that much) they are not learning how to play and their energy is being pent up.  I find that the less they watch the better they play, eat, sleep, and behave.  And the less that I rely on my life long lover to entertain them, the quicker they forget about it all together. 

American Haiku

One night I was bored and looking online for inspiration.  I found myself reading and in some cases, listening to, poetry.  I have been a lifelong lover of poetry and still remember the first poem I wrote in 4th grade, a Haiku assignment:

Autumn leaves are in the trees/wind is blowing hard ...  I guess I can't remember the whole thing.  Maybe I never finished it?

Anyway, I was curled up with my iPad (this was over the summer) and came upon some American Haiku recorded by Jack Kerouac (I'm a big fan of the beat poets) and I was LOLing like a real nerd.

American Haiku is unlike traditional Japanese Haiku poetry.  The only resemblance is the 5/7/5 syllables and sometimes poets don't even stick to that.  I find American Haiku very therapeutic because I can express my feelings concisely.  The American version seems to have this sense of humor that some might find mocking but it is unintentional.  I hope they provoke thoughts and laughter.  Some of them are about parenting young children.  One of my New Year's resolutions for 2013 is to write every day, even if it's just one of these.

Enjoy


AMERICAN HAIKU
by Elise Calisi


Humidity, yuck
Children and mosquitoes bite
iPhone in the pool


Generosity
A girl's mental tug-of-war
Who will love me most?


Don't drink the water
Wait in line to buy plastic
No survival skills


Hair in the bath tub
It must come
From the inside out


Handprints on the glass and walls
Annoying but sad
We gruffly wipe them away


You remind me of someone
I won't tell you whom
It is not a compliment


My entire life
Stressing
About the needs of others


Sometimes I wonder
About my old professors
Are they still alive?


When I think of things
Inspiring
Theater tops my list


I need to forget
Music be my drug of choice
No bad side effects


It can take a lifetime
To accept
That crying is futile


Where are you hiding?
Daylight reveals your droppings
Creatures of the night


Only a true narcissist
Believes
He's entitled to much help


What ever happened
To my beret
It was brown and wool


Better safe than sorry
Those passers by cannot be trusted
Dogs are paranoid


Only the lustful
Believe everyone's
Thinking about sex


Man comes home from work
A forty-five-minute dump
His special privilege


Oh child of mine
So perfect in every way
We have the same feet


Two disparate souls
Paths crossed by adversity
Bound by their beliefs


Drivers brake for moose
For the next fifty miles
Hundreds of collisions
(this is not my work, it is a sign in NH..nonetheless an American Haiku!)


Like any evil
Our fear and anxiety
It needs to be fed


Do not feel sorry
The disappointment is ours
If the horse can't race


Do not steal my poetry
A pitiful crime
Punishable by karma
(ha.)


President Reagan
Had good parenting advice
Trust but verify


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"Don't Worry, There Will Still Be Ham"

The title of this post is a quote from season 2 of the hit 1960s period drama on AMC, Mad Men.  In the episode, the show's post-war feminine mystique, Betty Draper, has just expressed to her husband her desire to pursue work as a model after a long absence from the business.  The absence being due to getting married and raising three children of course.  Her husband, Don, expresses some support for her but little confidence in her and after all, there is his infantile worry--will there still be dinner waiting for me when I come home?  (If you watch the show, you know that Don's dinner is usually cold by the time he gets home, if he does at all).  Not one to shirk her household responsibilities or disrupt the division of labor, Betty assures him with a child-like smile that yes, dear, there will indeed still be dinner!  Ham, specifically, and it will be studded with cloves and draped in canned pineapple slices and maraschino cherries, just the way you like it!  She seemed pretty energized by the thought that she could "do it all."  But I couldn't help feeling sorry for her standing there blushing in front of her distant husband like a little league player asking coach for a chance at bat.

This scene is funny and dramatic and so of its time, of that era.  Still, it makes me think about women today and the struggle we go through to balance work and life and I wonder if its really such a thing of the past.  I mean, I feel like whenever one dons another hat we are all having to reassure the people in our lives that "there will still be ham" or, perhaps the more modern, "boneless skinless chicken breast."  That is to say, I will still be there for you.  A piece of me, measured in time, will still be all yours.  No one will have to suffer because I have to work to earn a paycheck (or want to) outside the home!  Or do anything else outside the home for that matter.  No one will go without boneless skinless chicken breast on my watch!  It will be marinated and grilled to perfection just the way you like it too.  Sometimes the responsibilities expected of wives and mothers are too much, unrealistic, and even laughable.  In the Mad Men episode, Betty Draper eventually fails in her bid to get back into the modeling business having given up prematurely which is part of the point.  Her skin has become too thin.  She returns home, is a good sport, and tries to convince herself to be satisfied keeping Don's ham dinner warm.

No one wants to be a Betty.  But I feel that as the post-feminist generations go on, we are learning that it is likewise unrealistic to "have it all."  I recently read a quote from a famous female chemist that said something to the effect that a woman can have a family and a career but can't have 100% of both.  She can have about 80% of each.  That is to say, when you are spread too thin, someone suffers or something is lost in the work.  That may sound bad but in my opinion, a lot more is gained for oneself by having 160% of a life rather than 100% of either family or work.  Either way is a sacrifice.

A few months ago, I was watching The Anderson Cooper show and he had as his guests three stay-at-home mothers and three mothers employed outside the home.  I could forsee just by looking at the guests that the producers had chosen that it was not going to go well.  The lineup was so stereo-typical and ripe for a blow-out.  The three stay-at-home mothers were plain and doughy looking while the working moms were polished and assertive.  As soon as the conversation began it involved name-calling.  Can you guess?  The stay-at-home mothers were calling the working moms "selfish" and the working moms were calling the stay-at-homes "lazy."  The stay-at-homes maintained that the working moms were selfish because they spent too much time away from their families, hiring professionals to meet their needs, while not only indulging in a career but squeezing in extra-curricular activities like an hour at the gym!  And for this, they should feel ashamed.  The stay-at-homes were purported to be lazy because they avoided responsibility (i.e., earning a paycheck) and looked like crap because they didn't take care of themselves lest it take time away from their families.  And for this, they should be ashamed.  As the camera flashed to Anderson, he was lunge-ing on the stairs of the studio, microphone at the ready while his facial expression seemed to wonder not about the predicaments of these women but about what kind of martini he would like to order when he meets Kathy Griffin later for dinner.  He seemed out of his element--he didn't know what to say.  Besides the guests, the audience did most of the talking.  All of the points were what one would expect.  Stay-at-homes argued that caring for the needs of their families was a job despite the fact that it is not remunerated.  If it were, they would be paid the combined salaries of a day-care provider or teacher, a housecleaner, and a cook!  I was disappointed that no one addressed the dig about being afraid of responsibility--I am hard-pressed to think of a responsibility in this world that is greater than the proper care of children but alas, all these women could think about was a monetary value of things--that barometer of  middle-class emotions and the very thing for which they were criticising the working moms.  And this was the problem as I saw it with the stay-at-homes on the show, they were defensive yet lacking in confidence and clarity.  Their skin was growing too thin.  They had one hundred percent of their family life but zero percent for themselves.  The working moms were on the other end of the spectrum.  They were judgmental and harsh of their counterparts.  They had an air of superiority and were also focused on money.  They failed to notice the hypocricy of some of their statements.  One working mom insisted that her nanny was very worthwhile because she brought to the table a "valuable skill set" that she herself did not have.  Apparently to this woman, doing such work as making crafts with a preschooler, changing diapers, or even enforcing disciplinary boundaries is considered a "skill set" as long as she's paying for it rather than the misery-inducing grunt-work she insisted it was when deriding the stay-at-home mothers.  These guests were polarizing, if not delusional.  They were on different ends of the spectrum for good reason--its t.v.!  There is some truth as to what they suggest, however.  There are working mothers and stay-at-home mothers alike who neglect the needs of their families or themselves.  The women on this show were a plum example of these divisive extremes.  Most wives and mothers fall somewhere between the two.  But at the end of the day, all women are expected to, of course, provide ham.  And herein lies the problem for modern day women and something I ask myself: can you live with 80/80 and still have enough boneless, skinless chicken breast for everyone?

Everything/Nothing (The American Dream)

It has been over a year since my last blog post.  It has been almost 20 years since my last confession.  I personally feel more disappointed in myself about the first one.  Not that everyone in the blogosphere is sitting behind their computers every day wondering--when is she going to update her blog!  But still, I love it.  What happens in a year?  Everything and nothing really.  Some years leave much more of an impression on me than others.  It is the reason that 2009 the year I coasted along pinching pennies can feel like a million eons ago when 1998 the year I rocked those black leather platform boots to all the clubs on Lansdowne St. feels like yesterday.  Another everything/nothing feeling is experienced by parents and can be summed up by this wise old saying:  "When you are raising children, the days are long but the years are short."  Tina Fey recently remarked in her book "Bossypants" that this adage is true for two groups: "stay at home mothers and sex workers."  Does that mean that time is passing us by?  Perhaps, but I like to think it is worth it (as a stay at home mother, not a sex worker that is.)

So what I mean to say is that over the past 14 months since I last wrote here the year has gone by very fast but the days have indeed been long.  My daughter, Pixie Pie, is now 4.5 years old which means that she says things like:  "The biggest number in the world is a googolplex!" and "When Busy Boy grows up and I'm gonna marry him..."  Everything/nothing.  Busy Boy recently turned 2 and all that that implies.  If you are a stay at home mom and perhaps also a sex-worker (hey, don't judge) then you will know what that means.  I realize now that last year when Busy Boy was 6 to 18 months and Pixie Pie was 3 years old that the entire 12 months of mellow behavior was really supposed to be some kind of a mercy or grace period in which I should have been gathering my strength in order to deal with the forthcoming mental and physical growth we were to experience;  growth that was on par with the previous year in which Pixie Pie was a toddler and Busy, a newborn.  I missed it, though.  I was coasting and thought the fun party would never end.  While I perhaps should have been investing in safety proofing and reading up on discipline techniques, I spent my free time watching seasons 1-4 of Mad Men on DVD, crocheting a variety of brightly colored winter hats which would ultimately be worn by no one, and of course, blogging.  In the calm before the storm, as it turned out, we found it was the most perfect time to realize the "American Dream": home ownership.  A home that a family of 4 could actually fit in and for us that had to mean the suburbs.  Plus, we could have a yard!

Leaving Boston when we finally did it was like leaving a boring and emotionally distant relationship, that is to say, easy.  I lived in various neighborhoods in Boston for 14 years, including the yuppie-infested North End (again, I'm not judging--I was one in my 20s)  where I could walk to work, listen to garbage trucks 3 mornings a week, and endure the open heckling of perverts young and old as I walked home every night carrying the exact same Italian sandwich I would have for dinner the entire time I lived there.  All I can say is that I didn't love it.  For me, a certain income is required to fully enjoy urban living and I didn't have it.  Hence, the sandwiches.  (Eggs and peppers, by the way, delicious.)  During this time I met my now-husband and after a few months of dating and a whirlwind engagement and marriage culminating in a pregnancy at Disney World (come share the magic!) we ended up living in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston which meant that we had to drive or take the T to work, the garbage truck only came to collect once a week thank goodness, and there were no good sandwiches.

The house we eventually bought and are now living in was as whirlwind of an experience as our nuptials and child rearing.  Even though things have moved fast for us over the past 5 years, my husband is actually very logical and thorough.  He has an ability to think things through in a way that makes me so jealous (I think I just stole that line from Bossypants).  I am the type of person that while not completely impulsive, relies more on gut feelings and "energy" to make decisions.  A combination of these two perspectives is what brought us to our dream.  My husband, who is almost constantly in front of a screen and online, diligently monitored home prices, sales, etc. and loved this website called Redfin from which he would e-mail me listed homes to which I would unenthusiastically respond with comments such as "yeah but I love wallpaper", "what's wrong with ranches?", and his personal favorite "I can see why aliens would want to land there."  I'm just not an online shopper--I need to see things in person before I can even think about them.  So instead of hiring a realtor, we just plugged a bunch of addresses from online postings into our GPS and did drive-bys.  We actually did this on numerous occasions over a period of 9 months before we even stepped inside a house for sale.  During our drive by of the house we now live in I had a premonition.  In my memory it happened in slow motion: we turn the corner near the house, a corner I now know well, and across the street a little girl in a pink coat runs across the front lawn.  It could have been Pixie Pie.  I thought it was a sign and my heart jumped.  I was thinking: this is where we should be, we could be happy here, we could fit in here.  The next day I decided to browse online so I went to the first web site I found and the house I had the butterflies in my stomach about was the featured property.  My heart jumped and I e-mailed my husband for the first time with something like "oh no it's our house--we need to go buy it before someone else does!"  We contacted the realtor and got inside the house.  It had everything we wanted including a decently finished basement for the toys we would be hauling there, presumably in a separate truck.  We saw 2 more homes that day but my mind was made up and we made an offer that night.  Over the next few days which included 28" of snow in Roslindale and a few more nervously crocheted ugly hats we were home owners.

Our town (I can call it our town now because we've been here over a year) is about 20 miles northwest of Boston.  It is what I consider the perfect place for my family.  It is a charming New England town but also very progressive.  It has a lot of Revolutionary War history which appeals to me because I love history and also, ghosts.  Another plus is that we can remove our own trash and recycling to a very organized transfer station which is at once disgusting and somehow satisfying.   Elizabeth Warren and President Obama would both totally dig our town.  I imagine them walking down the street, holding hands, and smiling at us in approval of the strong middle-class and also our political support (its pretty blue here).  Its also pretty diverse culturally, as small as it is (population 20,000).  The schools totally rock in all of the rankings which makes me look forward to the opportunities my children will have and also glad that I will not need to pay to send them to private school which is probably what we would have wanted to do if we stayed in Boston.  About a day after we moved, I enrolled Pixie Pie in preschool.  When she left her old preschool, I gave a month's notice.  The last week she was there in the crowded coat and cubby room Pixie's cubby was being forcibly taken over by a new name tag that read "Sam."  That's how it is in the city--there's always somebody waiting to take your place, even at 3 yrs. old.  At the new preschool there were a few differences I noticed right away.  1. Adults are called Mr. or Ms. Firstname or Lastname instead of simply by their first name.  At first this was weird to me because it made me feel uncomfortably old but then I noticed that the children seemed to me a little less precocious when the pecking order was supported by this convention.  I liked that.  2.  With the other couples it was a little less eye contact, a little more shyness at first.  This seemed discouraging.  Will I make any friends here, I thought?  In the city everyone acted very confident.  Introductions were made immediately, everyone knew everyone else, but then never talked again.  Here it took a little warming up but once comfortable formed actual friendships.  Which is great because socialization is key in this town because there are seriously No Good Sandwiches.  You have to grow your own vegetables and bake your own bread and make them yourself.  Now that's organic!

Ah, suburban living.  I have to say, I do love it.  It is quiet.  It is safe.  The biggest dangers here are mosquitoes, falling trees, and boredom, in that order (Bossypants...).  It is the perfect place for an aspiring writer.  The spirits of Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau among others are here because this is where they lived and now have streets named after them.  I feel that the American Dream has been realized for me at a time in which this idea or milestone is becoming increasingly distant and unrealistic for many Americans, especially people of color and single mothers (as a Catholic, it is hard not to feel guilty about that).  My husband and I both come from poor areas of the state and when I first moved to this town I sadly wondered for a minute, am I good enough to live here?  I mean, the people I have met seem so diplomatic and perfect.  Vice is at an all-time low.  I've yet to see someone smoke a cigarette (outside of the local Kmart parking lot) or loudly berate their children (outside of the local McDonalds). It is just a lot different from where I grew up.  I guess you could say I've gone from being upper lower middle class like the Simpsons to being lower upper middle class like George Orwell.  That's how it feels.  The upward mobility I learned about in college can still happen but it is small and requires a lot of hard work and sacrifice.  I feel that I have everything now but still plenty of room to grow.

To Nip a Bully in the Bud

In the past few years it has dawned on parents, teachers, and administrators that bullying is not normal human behavior.  I couldn't agree more.  Bullying, which is basically repetitive negative actions towards a person who has difficulty defending himself is not part of growing up.  Neither is verbal abuse, euphemistically called teasing.  These behaviors do not build character.  Bullying is a pathological behavior, which is to say sick, and therefore, wrong.  Parties on both sides pay a high emotional and often physical price as a result of this kind of behavior.  It is damaging, even into adulthood, and everyone suffers.  If you were being "bullied" in the workplace, it would be called harassment and there are legal ramifications for the behavior.  Children and adolescents deserve the same kind of protection.  If your boss were sending you unwanted, inappropriate e-mails, for example, it would interfere with your ability to do good work.  Likewise, kids have a job to do at school--to learn--and peer bullying takes away from that.  The underlying causes of bullying are beginning to be examined which is a good thing and many public campaigns have taken aim at stopping the problem.  Heretofore, bullying has been excused because young people unlike adults simply don't know any better and the compulsion to be cruel is just so strong in their still-growing brains.  In my opinion, bullying is usually a symptom that something else is wrong.  This gives parents and teachers the opportunity to educate youngsters that bullying is wrong and won't be tolerated just like any other destructive behavior.  But before that can happen, we need to look inward.

When I was growing up in the 80s there was little real concern about bullying.  At least, that was my experience.  In the first grade I was bullied by a boy in my class who would kick me in the shins while we were boarding the school bus and do other things like pull my hair and push me down.  No one in the school did anything about it; if they even noticed and of course, I volunteered nothing at first.  He was a boy and therefore, bigger, stronger, and faster.  I couldn't effectively defend myself even if I tried.  Thankfully, my parents did notice the bruising on my legs and confronted the boy's parents.  His angry father basically told my mother that she was making a big deal out of nothing and that his son was "just being a kid."  The bullying did not stop that year.  Finally, one day at recess, the boy started with me and somehow, on this day, I got the upper hand.  The playground was covered in snow and we were playing in our puffy winter suits.  Somehow, I fought back and pushed him into the snow.  Perhaps the added awkwardness of the weather worked to my advantage.  At any rate, it was extremely satisfying to turn the tables at last and "give him a taste of his own medicine."  Finally, on this day, the teachers noticed.  Prior to this day, I believe, my teacher had been too preoccupied with her own petty concerns such as "working for the weekend" and "waiting for her skinny mullet-head boyfriend in his red hot Iroc to finally propose" to pay much attention to the students.  She dragged both of us into the principal's office where we were both punished for fighting.  It did however, put an end to the bullying that year.

If you think about this anecdote, so irreverently told by me, the messages are so detrimental and I am hopeful that things have changed over the past 25 years.  The lax attitudes and culture of denial in my mostly poor community were a recipe for disaster and underscore our current need for more quality, dedicated teachers in our schools.  The take home messages to my young self may be summed up as:  If you stand up for yourself and fight back, you too will be punished (the world is unfair).  If you suffer in silence, no one will notice (the world is negligent, i.e. no one cares about me).  Not the kind of thing you want your kid learning at school, eh?

Two years after being bullied, I bullied a schoolmate on the bus too.  The same bus #5 where I had been victimized.  My target was a boy a year younger than I.  He was big and awkward and intelligent; easy prey.  My abuse towards him was verbal.  It went unnoticed until he told his parents and they called the school principal (not my parents).  One day when I was boarding the bus, I was ambushed by the Mr. Belvedere lookalike principal who sounded like a fat, winded version of Dennis Leary.  As I ascended the stairs onto the bus, he grabbed me by my coat and pulled me down to the sidewalk.  He pointed in my face and told me that he knew what was going on and that I should go "pick on someone my own size."  Not only did this comment make no sense (the boy was technically bigger than me) but it was both intimidating and bad advice.  One more take home message: administrators cannot be trusted.

Whatever was going on in the development of myself as a victim and a bully and the boy who bullied me was never addressed.  Indeed, something may have been going on in our home lives that prompted such hurtful behavior towards our peers.  The most astonishing thing about my stories however, is the response of the adults in the situation: parents, teachers, administrators, and bus drivers.  There was no sense of accountability on behalf of the children about whom they were supposed to care.  As responsible adults it is our job to nip bad behavior in the bud and that includes bullying.  As any gardener with a green thumb knows, when something in your garden, say it is a basil plant, is not pruned for a while, it begins to grow buds at the top, where the edible parts should be.  If left unchecked, the buds will grow and multiply and the healthy part of the plant will not grow.  So when you nip your basil plant in the bud, it not only prevents it from going to seed, it encourages it to grow even bigger.  It is the same way with our children.  Tend to the garden in your home if you want it to grow to it's full potential.  And don't forget to nip it in the bud. 

Last fall I had my own opportunity to nip a bully in the bud.  It was the week that Busy Boy had started to crawl.  To Pixie Pie, this posed a huge threat.  Now that he was mobile, he could reach her toys.  Who was to know what he was capable of?  That week, I got a report each day that my daughter had been pushing and yelling at one of her little friends.  On the last day of the week it was apparent that it wasn't a fluke and that Pixie was doing a 3-year old's version of bullying.  Her victim was a girl much smaller than she, a perfect substitute for the anger she had towards her brother.  This made me think.  If a preschool child can identify a vulnerable peer and take out her aggression on him than perhaps it is the same way with older children.  Perhaps adults can start by asking themselves who or what the bully is really angry at.  Pixie's behavior changed for the better once I started giving her more of the undivided attention sans Busy Boy that she was so desperately needing.

So, as a parent I am concerned about what I read in the paper about some of the extreme examples of bullying that have happened in the past few years and I worry a bit but like all of my worries, there is hope.  I know that parents today are more tuned in and eager than ever and let's face it, you can't get any worse than the way the adults handled bullying in my youth.

What Does Your Bumper Sticker Say?

A few weeks ago I was driving home after dropping off Pixie Pie at preschool and on the Jamaicaway a big, tawny minivan passed me on the left just as I was taking a right.  In that instant, I noticed a pink bumper sticker, or just, a sticker, since it was stuck on the bottom of the rear left window instead of actually on the bumper.  It read "You don't work full time until you're a mother!"  Ha! I thought, no kidding!  That is so true...  I kind of chuckled because I felt instant camaraderie with the other driver.  It was 9am and I had already been up for 3 hours just to get the children and myself ready to leave the house.  The previous night, I had been up twice, once to tend to a sick baby and the other time to assist in a midnight potty break.  The humor of this particular comment lies in the word "full time" since when one becomes a mother, the phrase takes on a whole new meaning.  Time itself is redefined by motherhood.  One is always on-call and the demands of the job are constant.  I worked at a full time job in my former life as a quality assurance something (person?) and the challenges of that kind of work day had nothing on my current life as an at-home-mother.  Even if one has a really demanding job in advertising and works on Madison Avenue like Don Draper it does not compare.  Even in season 3 when Conrad Hilton calls him at all hours of the night to talk shop it cannot hold a candle to the needs of a baby or child.  After all, there are options, one can just decide to not pick up the phone.  Hard to do that with your baby.  (Why can't I stop comparing life to Mad Men??)
Although I initially agreed with this comment on the pink not-on-the-bumper sticker on the big tawny minivan, there was something about it that struck me later as sort of, I don't know... bitter?  I sensed in it a bit of a defense.  Or, as a ploy for some well-deserved respect.  Perhaps, as a rebuke to those whose work is remunerated and thus somehow believed to be more difficult.  A rebuff to those who assume that the stay at home mother sits around all day eating bon bons (okay, I do that, but only when the children are napping--it's how I refuel...)
So, if motherhood is indeed the most difficult job one has ever known, there must be a better way of getting that message out there to the world (or at least those stuck in traffic).  I can think of some bumper stickers that more accurately describe what a mother's life is like without sounding so bitchy.  How about something all mothers can relate to such as "You don't know what tired is until you're a parent!"  That gets the point across without hopefully offending any really really tired people.  Or perhaps something more cryptic, something that only other mothers would understand, like, "2am isn't what it used to be!"  For the nursing mother I like this one:  "Honk if you're hungry 12 times a day!"  You see, it is so important to find the humor in motherhood.  It can make one feel an instant connection to those who share life's most confusing experience.  Humor can heal us and it is so funny when it's so true but when the joke is at someone else's expense, it's really cheapened.  And when you're a mother, there is no shortage of honestly funny material and no room to put others down.  It's just not motherly.  I don't have any bumper stickers because when I drive, I like to be private.  I do however, have a "baby on board" sign in the rear window.  For all the good that does, especially on the Jamaicaway.  I don't plan to put any bumper stickers, motherly or otherwise, on my vehicle because they are in my opinion tacky, obnoxious, or pointless.  Like a tweet or facebook status that never goes away.  That is, until Pixie comes home with a student of the month one or something and I have no choice.  That's called sacrifice.  And you don't know what that is until you're a mother either.