By: Matthew Edward Baker

There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about generals returning to Rome after a successful conquest, who would parade through the city to be showered with praise by the people. As a condition of their glory, the Empire required that someone stand at the back of the general’s chariot and whisper in his ear, “Thou art still mortal. Thou art still mortal.” The moral of the story is simple: avoid hubris.

Last fall—in case you somehow missed it—this ten-year-old fifth grader from tiny West Fork, Arkansas made national headlines after refusing to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Why all the fuss? Because Will Phillips won’t stand for the Pledge until “liberty and justice for all” exists in the real world, particularly for lesbians and gays seeking the right to marry. Since launching this sustained act of civil disobediance, Will has appeared on CNN, was the lead story on Huffington Post, received a special phone call of thanks from a certain movie star (who shall remain nameless), and conquered the hearts of countless Americans with his brave act of civil disobedience.

Getting this kind of attention for taking such a principled stand at such a young age could easily go to a guy’s head. However, his parents, Laura and Jay Phillips, have done their utmost to ensure that Will stays humble. They were the first to teach him about hubris, and Jay reminds him of his mortality whenever he sees the need, like when a satellite-equipped truck pulls up to their front yard to capture an interview. Our interviewing techniques here at thenextfamily tend to be less invasive or ego-boosting, however. Instead, the Phillips family invited me, via telephone from San Francisco, into their home last month, passing their phone around as they hunkered down for a snowy Arkansas Friday night.

On Will’s principled (refusal to) stand

M: It’s a pleasure to meet you.

Laura: Thank you.

M: And congratulations on making it through the media onslaught.

Laura: [laughs] It could have been worse and I’m sure it would have been if we hadn’t put the breaks on. Will was very adamant from the beginning that he had something to say. We just didn’t know that him having something to say would result in John Stewart knowing my son’s name.

Me: It must be nice knowing that Mick Foley is there for you.

L: I actually emailed the CNN producer to ask if she had a contact at the Daily Show to tell John Stewart ‘Thank you,’ because it really made Will’s day after the horrible week he’d been through. She said, ‘Well actually if Will could get out of school and I can arrange an interview between him and Mick Foley…,’ and I said, ‘No no no no no, I just wanna tell John Stewart thank you. No more interviews.’ [laughs]

M: You mentioned that it had been a horrible week for Will?

Laura: The week of November 16th when the CNN interview aired, that Monday, he ended up needing to leave school by about nine o’clock. I had a friend go pick him up and check him out of school and take him to a secure, undisclosed location because the bullying got so bad. People at work were sending me texts, ‘Holy crap! Will’s on the front page of the Huffington Post!’ No, he’s not. Oh my god he is…

So anyway I talked to the counselor and she said, ‘There’s no bullying because I’d know about it.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, because you see everything?’ And I told her my concern and our fear for Will was that we didn’t – the school has an obligation to keep him safe and to make it a safe place for him – but, we wanted her to be aware that all this is going on and he was getting harassed. And I told the counselor, ‘You know, my concern is that if my son the ten year old straight ally is going through all of this, what about the kids who are starting to identify as LGBT?’

M: So, what happened in town? How did this play out for you guys?

Laura: In West Fork, not so great. Again, little bitty town. A lot of people around here I went to school with. They’re on the police force, they teach at the school, they’re related to the mayor, they work at the gas station, they go to church with my mom –

Jay [in background]: We get a lot of support.

Laura: We do get a lot of support, but it’s been farther away we get from town, the more support we get. There have been parents who have told their kids not to play with Will, but they still do because Will’s a cool kid. It’s gotten better, because it’s died down. There were all these rumors going around about stuff Will was doing in school and that we were doing as parents and it was just awful. Social media, social networking sites, they have their place but they’re such fodder for gossips. [laughs]

M: Has your Mom been understanding? She sounds more conservative.

Laura: Bless her heart. Bless her heart. She doesn’t agree with what Will did, but she fully supports him in his right to do it. And she understands our views. She doesn’t agree with them, but she’s supportive with what we’re trying to teach the kids.

M: Has she had any run-ins with people at her church or anything like that?

Laura: No, mostly just people saying ‘I heard what happened and I’ll be praying for your family.’ Because, you know, obviously, we’re linked with the devil. [laughs]

M: It was great that Jay appeared with Will on CNN. I think a lot of Dads wouldn’t have wanted to do that considering the subject matter.

Laura: Oh, no, Jay was so proud of Will. He had the courage to do something, he had the conviction to back it up, and the compassion to go forward with it. …Jay was just proud as can be.

It was so cute, during the interview, they sent a truck from Dallas over night to the house, set up TV cameras, wired the house for sound, found two matching chairs and found out Will was too short, so he ended up sitting on a dictionary and three nursing textbooks.

M: Who decided that Jay would appear with Will on CNN?

Laura: We both talked to the CNN producer and I think they went with Jay because he’s more moderate.

M: They knew he would roll his eyes at the right moment.

L: While I would have been shouting ‘Fight the Power Brother! That’s right!’ And they don’t want that. [laughs]

Jay: One of the things that comes along with being a ‘Yes ma’am, no ma’am, yes sir, no sir,’ kind of Southern type – generally when someone makes a request – ‘Would you mind, we’d like to do the interview with you’ – I’m not going to raise a fuss. Also if we were going to introduce ourselves to a national or international audience, I could see the logic of having the moderate make that introduction and then letting the more radical voice speak after the fact. Y’know, first impressions. When you do the one line blurb about what our family’s about, you really want it to be ‘believes in equality’ not ‘hates America.’ [laughs]

We had a local news station, apparently they ran a really nice story that they’d strewn together from a bunch of different sources on their station once late at night, but their website said, and I quote, ‘Local Boy says Pledge is Lie.’ [laughs] So I called up the station and I spoke with the news director and said, ‘No offense sir, but why don’t you just hire a bunch of goons and have them go down to the school and beat my kid up?’ So, yeah, one part obedience, one part prudence.

M: Did you feel the coverage was fair?

Jay: It’s interesting…My father, the night before, came over and pleaded with us not to go through [with the CNN interview]. And as a father, that was really hard to take. You know, as a father, I’m supposed to protect my family. As a husband I’m supposed to protect my family. I told him, and I told the family, if I was a 1950s dad with the power to bind and loose, which I’m not, even then I don’t think I would’ve felt ethically right to tell my child ‘You need to stay in your arena, you’re just a kid, this is bigger than you are.’ I guess to answer your question I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it but I was absolutely proud as punch of Will and had absolutely no problem having his back. The interviewers were very nice, and it was a good experience.

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M: But it was a tough week.

Jay: It was a tough week for everyone. But he knew exactly what he was getting himself into. I’ve always felt that if a child is old enough to act they’re old enough to know, and if they want to try, within reason, you know, let ‘em! We live in a country where a lot of times you’ll see children are given false confidence, you know, your little league team lost every game in the season and you’re given a trophy anyway. I’m not necessarily opposed to that but at the same time, I know lots of people I knew as a kid who get into the adult world and, oh, wait a second, all of a sudden everyone tells you you’re not special. The world can eat you up. That false confidence sometimes can be damaging.

…I was very adamant about the things he was attempting to do, and going back to when he was little, if he wanted to try something, to give him the option to try and possibly fail. Because if you fail you learn character from that, you learn life lessons from that. And if you succeed, you gain confidence from that, real hard won confidence. And that can pay dividends in the future.

M: Speaking of confidence, have you seen any pride in Will?

Jay: …I would say he’s prideful. Sometimes he can be prideful to the point where if he feels like someone’s talking down to him you can tell it really grinds his ears. But it’s a self-confidence pride, it’s not hubris.

Laura: He really throws people for a loop because he has so much to say. We were both young when we had Will. You always as a parent question, ‘Well, am I doing the right thing? Am I being too strict? Am I not being strict enough? Am I feeding them enough broccoli? Am I potty training them at the right time?’ You know, all these different things that you question yourself on all the time. But I think this whole experience has taught Jay and me that we must be doing something right, and maybe there’s hope for the other two as well. It’s been really gratifying to see these things we’ve been trying to instill in him make a difference. I think as parents that what it boils down to, you want your kids to do better than you and to be better than you.

On their family, and its commitment to equality

M: Tell me a little bit about your family’s story.

Laura: I’m from West Fork, and Jay is from Fayatteville…

Jay [in the background]: Whoo-hoo!

Laura: …which is about ten minutes north of us. West Fork has about 2,000 people.

M: What do you do there?

L: I have a degree in nursing and currently work at the University Health Center for the University of Arkansas. …And Jay works for the transit department and drives disabled passengers and does paratransit in Fayetteville. So we carpool back and forth to work.

M: And clearly support access to healthcare and public transportation.

Laura: I also wear a lot of tie-dye and wear lots of Birkenstocks. [laughs]

M: Do you stand out?

Laura: Yes, but there’s a small pocket of people that we’ve found. People hear Arkansas

Me: You said [in an Arkansas Times article that appeared after the Pledge incident] that you had always raised Will “to be aware of what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s fair.” You also mentioned that you have taken him to Pride parades. Reading this, I could imagine a sort of stereotype person from the Bible Belt – you know the stereotypes…

Laura: Oh yeah. We’re related to the stereotypes, okay?

M: Fair enough. I imagine a person like this saying, ‘Well there you go, you’re just brainwashing him.’

Laura: Well, yeah, obviously. [laughs] …Jay is the conservative one of the two of us. I’m the one who says, ‘Let’s make a poster and do something about this! Go chain ourselves to a tree!’ Jay’s the moderate. If you can believe it, I married a moderate.

…But he goes with us [to the parades]. We started going to the Pride parades—

M: Where was this?

Laura: It was in Fayetteville. West Fork does not have a Pride parade.

M: But Fayetteville, Arkansas has a Pride parade?

Laura: Fayetteville has a pretty good-sized Pride parade, yeah.

M: See, this is one of those things that you don’t think about when you spend all your time on the coasts.

Laura: We’re lucky that Fayetteville is a college town and it’s a pretty liberal town. It’s been referred to as the Athens of the Ozarks. There are a lot of artists, there are a lot of musicians.

…Anyway, we explained the Pride parade to him. He’s always grown up knowing

that some people are gay and some people are straight, sometimes you grow up to marry a girl, sometimes you grow up to marry a boy, you’ll know what’s right when the time comes. When he was about six he came home and said, ‘Well, I’m pretty sure I’m straight.’ I said, ‘How do you know that?’ He said, ‘Well, I met a girl named Roxie….’

…He’s always known there were differences. So when we went to the Pride parade it was, you know, just another thing. He’s gotten more and more proud of it over the years because he’s showing his support for people he cares about. He’s showing his support for people who are often left out of things or can’t be themselves. So he takes great pride in making posters and making signs to put on floats and doing his part to be that straight ally in the area.

M: When did you come to be supportive of gay rights?

Laura: 1993, when I was a junior in high school. I was eating lunch one day in a classroom by myself and a friend of mine walks in, bursts into tears and says, ‘I’m gay and I want to kill myself.’ Of course, there’s no handbook for a girl who grew up an evangelical Christian in West Fork, Arkansas to deal with this. All I could do was tell him, ‘Yeah, you’re gay. We all kind of guessed that. It’s no big deal, please don’t kill yourself. I’m gonna talk to some people and figure out the right thing to tell you.’ So we talked about it and he felt better because somebody else knew. And then a week later somebody else came out to me.

M: Were you still a practicing Christian at the time?

Laura:  I had stopped going to church by that time. I still believe in basic Christian tenets with a few caveats. Jay was raised Catholic and is recovering. [laughs]

Our family right now goes to a Unitarian church, which really fits what we need for our kids because we want our kids growing up with the ideals of a Judeo-Christian religious education without the hate. In the church I grew up in the pastor told racist, sexist, homophobic jokes from the pulpit. He encouraged us to love the sinner and hate the sin, but we don’t have to be nice to the sinner. If you know anyone that’s gay just write them off. Our youth group had a ‘slave auction’ as a fund-raiser once, and when I griped about the name he told me I was being picky and told my mom about it. You know, stuff like that.

…So early on I was like, I just can’t deal with this. But we love the Unitarian congregation. The first time we went we got back in the van and asked Will what he thought and he said, ‘It’s great! It’s like a church for nerds!’ So it got the Will seal of approval.

…Anyway, I wanted to be able to do the right thing and not raise my kids with this horrible veil of homophobia that just hangs over this entire state. Jay and I had talked about this even before we knew Will was coming along. I had very strong views about how I wanted to raise our kids when we had them. I didn’t want any racial jokes – of course, Jay would never do that, which is how I knew he was perfect. He never made any off-color jokes about ethnic groups, about women, about gay people, about anything you would find offensive. There are never any derogatory terms used in our household. We don’t do that and that was something I was always very adamant about. It’s not nice. Just be nice to people! That’s the basics.

M: Tell me about Will? Were there any warning signs that he might do this sort of thing?

Laura: He’s always been very verbal, very outspoken, ridiculously spooky intelligent and Jay and I try to feed that as much as we can. …

He had a friend when he was younger who had a lot of speech development problems. And the kids would make fun of him. He asked why they were teasing him and I said ‘They think he talks funny.’ He said, ‘But that’s not fair, he can’t help it.’ I said, ‘I know, but some people just make fun of people who are different.’ And he said, ‘But they shouldn’t do that, that’s not fair!’ I said, ‘I know, that’s just the way people are!’ He said, ‘Well I’m gonna talk to them and make them stop!’ So he went on this little five-year -old rampage around his preschool to make them stop teasing his friend because he couldn’t help the way he talked. I mean, it was nothing that attracted national media attention, but he has always been very fair-minded.

M: So Will has clearly had exposure to progressive values and beliefs, but, living in Arkansas, he has obviously had to deal with opposing viewpoints.

Laura: Here’s a good way to illustrate this: When we go to my father’s house or to Will’s great grandmother’s house, we pull into the driveway and we say, ‘Okay, what are the three things we’re not going to talk about?’ And Will very obediently says, ‘Politics, religion and smooching.’ …So you don’t discuss anything of a heterosexual or homosexual nature in polite company, you don’t discuss religion in polite company, and you don’t discuss politics in polite company, even if they start it. And this is the credo that we chant all the way up to grandma’s house because we have such different views, and we just bite our tongues because we love the family, and we don’t want to offend them with our crazy liberal ways. So, he’s learned the hard way that you can have different views, but you can’t cram them down peoples’ throats, because they’re not willing to listen sometimes.

…Eventually you learn the skill of broaching these subjects delicately – I’m still learning those skills.

M: But Jay, you’re more moderate?

Jay: When Laura said I was a moderate, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool committed moderate. One of the hard things about that is that it’s really easy for me – and of course I’m a left of center moderate, and way left on social issues – but I very much enjoy talking with people with whom I don’t agree and who I don’t understand and not just engaging and discussing with them but genuinely trying to put myself in their shoes.

One thing I’ve found is, especially with the older generation, I have people that I know and love who when they were kids, in their world, homosexuals did not exist. And when they did find out about them, they were either a dirty joke or were spoken of in the same way we discuss pedophiles today. So, culturally, for these people who feel like this, it’s like for you and me, if fifty years from now pedophilia was considered normal and we were expected not only to respect it but, you know, from our point of view, cherish it. It’s that big a shift, it’s that big a mental leap for some people. All I can say is we’re not going to be able to change some peoples’ minds.

But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed it’s that progress is very much an American trait. It’s something culturally that Americans have in common. Tolerance is an American virtue. It’s maybe not one we always exemplify to the best, and throughout our history there’s been an ebb and flow, but there’s always been an incremental march of progression toward more tolerance. It’s really hard sometimes when you’re in the boat rockin’ back and forth to keep your eye on the high watermark, but rising waters lift all boats. So eventually I have absolutely no doubt that we will get there.

I keep reminding myself when I get frustrated that Martin Luther King couldn’t have done what he did in the twenties. The culture wouldn’t have gone along. The civil rights movement couldn’t have happened in the twenties. That’s frustrating in a way, and I think most of us feel that, but on the other hand it’s encouraging to see that there is progress being made. Even if we take two or three steps back at a time, we’re still moving the ball forward and we’re still making that incremental progress that over time adds up. It’s aggregate.

M: In getting into other peoples’ shoes, have you ever managed to get them into yours, gotten them to change their minds?

Jay: Honestly, I would probably have to say no. I’ve had times where I’ve probably given people a moment’s pause. Actually, here’s an example I know. I know someone who is going through a divorce, and it has the potential to be an ugly divorce, and he was complaining to me the other day about it. …My general understanding is that the guy is pretty conservative. …[He] was telling me how his lawyer told him he’s gotta give up his dog. He’s been married to his wife for ten years and he’s gotta give up his dog which she brought into the marriage. His lawyer’s telling him that that’s pre-marriage property, she gets it. And I commiserated with him that that sucks, that’s bad. But I also said look on the bright side, you could be like my other friend [a gay man in the process of ending a fourteen year relationship that likely would have been made official had it been an option]. He’d kill for a lawyer and a judge. He’s just kind of gotta make due. There’s a mortgage to deal with, and it’s like two commanders on a missile sub: If they both don’t turn their keys….

…I think that gave him a moment’s pause. He didn’t really have anything to say. But the problem with most people I talk to is that you’re dealing with a belief. When you believe that homosexuality is wrong, when you believe that these people aren’t like us, whoever we are, then, that’s a belief, and beliefs are really hard to change because they don’t have to be rational. You can offer all the rational arguments you want and at the end of the day they’re just gonna say, ‘Well, you need to read on the Bible,’ or ‘You need to pray on that.’ When you get down to details and get them argued into a corner, they can always hit the ‘Well, this is what I believe’ ejection switch. So, I would say I’ve given people a moment of pause now and then, but by and large a belief is a belief and it takes something life-altering most often times to change someone’s belief.

On the future

M: Is Will still sitting out the Pledge?

Laura: Yes.

M: Has anyone joined him?

Laura: [To Will] Has anyone joined you? [To me] Yes, five kids that he knows of. Then a friend of ours has a twelve-year-old at a different school in Fayetteville that is sitting down. There’s a school somewhere in Maryland where there’s a group of thirty to forty high schoolers who are sitting down in solidarity with Will. So there’s this sort of grassroots ‘We’re gonna sit out the Pledge’ movement.

M: Has Will done anything to persuade people one way or another?

Laura: No, because that sort of incites the bullies. He talked to his friends about the First Amendment and free speech and that they didn’t have to, but there’s a lot of peer pressure at that age and so when everyone else is doing something you don’t want to be the minority. Except if you’re my son. But it’s still hard.

M: Does this feel like a catalyst for you in any way, or for Will, going forward?

Laura: You know, you sit here and you can say you’re an ally, but how many of us really make that big an impact? How many of us can say, ‘I made a difference?’ Will has made a difference… We’re going to San Francisco at the end of April. The National Center for Lesbian Rights is presenting him with an award, the Fierce Ally Award. Judy Shepard, Matthew  Shepard’s mother, is presenting it to him. And so, he died in ‘98, so my entire adult life, our whole relationship, has been overshadowed by this. Judy Shepard has been such an inspiration to me. But, of course, Will isn’t really focused on the award. He heard we were going to San Francisco and was like, ‘Do we get to ride the cable cars?!

Jay: Will had what he wanted to say and Will got his bully pulpit and was able to get his message out. I’m more of a, ‘Well, it’s Friday night, I’d like to sit back, watch some TV and drink a beer,’ and she’s like ‘Let’s go to a protest rally!’ She and Will are both activists. And while I’m very strong in my beliefs…

Laura [in background]: You drive us there!

Jay: Yeah, I drive them there… I kept reminding people that…we’re just tourists in the land of intolerance. There are people who live this every day of their lives and there is no respite for them, there is no turning the phone off and making it all go away.

After speaking with Laura and Jay for a while, they handed the phone over to Will. For some reason, he was fairly reticent. Perhaps my questions were dull; or perhaps he was tired, as it was starting to get late and he was getting over a cold; or perhaps he was just bored with the topic after listening to his parents go on and on about it for so long. I asked him if he knew that he was lucky to have such great parents, and he assured me that he did know. “I like them,” he said, adding coyly, “and only to a certain degree am I just saying that because they’re in the room.” We briefly discussed his love for reading—particularly alternate histories, science fiction and anything non-fiction—and theater. He says that people are still treating him differently at school, but that they are not as blatant about it now as they were at first, and he sounds as if he knows quite well that the problem is theirs, not his. He is just focused on getting people to see that racism, sexism, and homophobia “are all related, and they are all pieces of one person being treated differently because they are different. One group of people is different so they’re treated differently, and it’s not good.” His message is simple: “People are people.”

As to the future, he says he wants to encourage people to talk, “in any way possible,” but that he isn’t making any plans: “The future just happens,” he says, curtly reminding me of what I suppose I should know. And since we spoke, the future has continued happening for him in a big way. This month, Will is helping launch a new project called GetEQUAL to organize regular folks all across the country to demand full equal rights for LGBTQ folks. The entire family recently spent time hanging out and collaborating with one of the group’s founders, and all are very supportive and excited to help GetEQUAL get off the ground. And, of course, there is the trip to San Francisco to look forward to in April.

One can hear Jay whispering now: “Thou art still mortal. Thou art still mortal…”

Another version of the story about the Roman conquerors suggests that rather than whispering “Thou art still mortal,” the phrase repeated instead was “All fame is fleeting.” While this sentiment seems like another potentially effective way to combat hubris, were Jay to whisper this to Will, it might seem slightly disingenuous. Will, the mortal, has a lot more conquering to do, and not just of the fifth grade. We’ll likely be hearing about it.

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To find out more about Will’s new project check out GetEqual.Org

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By: Ann Brown

Boys are odd. There, I said it. I mean, I love them; I’ve had hundreds of them in my classroom over the years, I even married a grown up one and gave birth to two of them, whom I adore.  But I really do not get them.  I have a sister. We had a very female-y household. We never once thought about breaking our toys over each other’s heads or running into the street, or organizing a neighborhood contest to see whose pee could reach the furthest. My mom kept the cookies on the top shelf in the kitchen, knowing that my sister and I would never consider climbing up there to get them. That could be dangerous. Granted, my sister and I were pretty much on the wimpy, nervous, hand-wringing side, as kids go, but still. Our moxie emerged later, in the teenage years, when – coincidentally – my father had the first of his many heart attacks.

As a parenting instructor and consultant for almost thirty years, I came of age as a teacher when the nature vs nurture debate weighed heavily (if not wholly) on the nurture theory. I recall, now with more than a modicum of cringing, spouting off my blah blah blah to parents about merely sitting their little boys down and explaining to them why a behavior was unacceptable, and voila! the behavior will cease if the little boy is a good little boy. Explain and talk; talk and explain. It’s very simple to raise an obedient child, I told them.

Every once in a while, I wonder if I should try to find all the parents from those classes, and refund their money. I kinda stunk at my job.

I wish The Way of Boys had been written back then. I could have understood that sitting a little boy down, putting my face close to his, and talking, talking, talking about an issue is not going to get us anywhere. And when the little boy squirmed to get away or (as once happened in my class) continued to slug his friend while I was talking to him as though I wasn’t there, I could have realized that it was my strategy that was off-target, not the reaction of the kid.

It can be hard to remember this. Especially for moms.  As women, we pretty much trust that if we have a problem with a friend, we can call her up, ask her to meet us at, say, Starbucks, and talk it out. In fact, we will probably stay at Starbucks for hours, whatever it takes, until we have talked out the problem. We will leave satisfied, maybe having cried a little bit, inviting all of the room to join in on a chorus of “Kymbaya”, and buying a round of soy lattes for the house. Talking, especially talking for long periods of time about feelings, works.

And we bring that talent to raising our kids. But kids, especially boy kids, are not able to sit for hours, dissecting the minutiae of every interaction they’ve had for the last week, analyzing, reframing and concluding. They pretty much cannot sit and do that for three minutes. Which pisses us off even more because we read that behavior as, “he just doesn’t care” or “he likes to be naughty”. And then we make them sit for three more minutes, just to make our point.

It’s not particularly effective.

Just perusing the titles of the thirteen chapters of the book – Your Problem is Spelled B-O-Y; Little Girls Aren’t Like This;  He Doesn’t Have Any  Friends;  He’s A Bully;  He Won’t Sit Still;  He Runs The Household;  He Has To Win;  He Wants To Be The Bad Guy;  He’s Suddenly Fragile;  He Hates School;  The Teacher Thinks He Needs Testing;  He Has Already Been Labeled; and What Will He Be Like As A Grown Man? – can be reassuring to a parent.  Reading through the chapters and learning that behavior outside the dominant paradigm of preschool is not necessarily aberrant, will certainly help you sleep better at night.

Dr. Rao’s strategies speak to the child’s higher self. It’s ancient, and yet quite revolutionary: find out what your child is trying to tell you, instead of focusing on what you think you need to tell your child.

The theme of power runs throughout the book (as it does throughout our parenting journey, yes?) I found a new, perhaps inside-out way to look at it while reading the chapter, He Runs The Household. Dr. Rao writes:

As a parent, you have to earn your power. When you get overwhelmed, it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself. You begin to tell yourself, “He’s doing this on purpose. He’s trying to make me angry.”

Yes, he is trying to make you angry. He wants to see what happens next. You can take the upper hand here by refusing to take his….behavior…personally.

Choosing to see our child’s tantrum as an experiment in cause and effect allows us to let go of the need to find the solution. An experiment, by definition, does not set out with a known solution (at least, that’s what I presume. As an ethnomusicology major in college, I only took one science class and even then, well, I may as well just spit it out here – I paid a friend to take the final for me. So the fact is, I have no idea what the definition of an experiment is. I probably have no business using any sort of science terms in my writing but, frankly, if I avoided writing stuff about which I have no knowledge I’d pretty much be looking at a lot of blank paper.)

I loved all the anecdotes in that chapter. Well, mostly, I loved them because they weren’t happening to me but I also loved them because so many parents can identify with them. For example:

Boys are driven by their internal engine, their brain, to investigate, grab and take apart the world around them. They are so driven that they may shrug off disapproval from their parents. Sometimes they seem impervious to shame and often ignore nonverbal social cues in their quest to get at things. As a result, most tactics for maintaining order and discipline in the home just don’t work…… Megan didn’t know this…(she once) sat (three-year old) Ryan on a chair to impose a time-out and then physically restrained him for three minutes…..Ryan considered this to be a kind of wrestling match. While Megan got angrier….Ryan wiggled and laughed.

Can’t you just see Megan in your mind? With a bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand and three Advil under her tongue, counting the minutes until Daddy gets home so she can lock herself in the bathroom  until Ryan is asleep. Or in college.

The concept of young boys not reading social cues in the same way young girls do should be reassuring to parents, especially parents who have active young boys and who are friends with parents who have docile, obedient young girls.  This leads me to a tangential moment where I must offer my suggestion that after you have children, never befriend anyone with children who:

1) do not misbehave

2) go right to bed with a cheerful, Walton’s Mountain “goodnight, John-Boy” and sleep through the night

3) happily eat anything put on their plates

4) are better in any way than your children

It just makes life easier for you. Trust me. I spent most of the years my boys were little, either alone or making new friends through prison pen pal programs. Who needs the pressure of having friends with perfect children?

Okay, then, back to the book.

Understanding that young boys do not read the social cues as easily or early as young girls is good to know. Even better to know are the suggestions Dr. Rao and Ms. Seaton offer for the times when just understanding it isn’t enough. For instance, give up on time-out’s. Keep explanations extremely brief and accompany them with an action (taking away a toy your child is using to hit his brother, for example). Walk away if you can instead of engaging.

I was pleased and relieved to find a sense of hope and optimism in every page of The Way of Boys. Too many parenting books leave us with a clenched stomach and a daunting “to do” list to fix our kids, or ourselves. This book relies on the passage of time, along with reasonable strategies and clear vision, to get our boys through the most challenging stages. In “Some Final Thoughts”, we read:

I wish the parents who come to my office could meet Brett, Kenny, Ben and Ronny. These four would show them that things turn out well for most young boys…..I have come to appreciate what good parenting can accomplish in a child’s life, especially with boys who are struggling with one or more developmental lags…..I give (parents) the three basic tenets of parenting great boys: clear rules and boundaries; consequences before lectures; rewards for each milestone. But these work and work well because boys learn primarily by experience, and because boys remember experiences before words. Young boys can’t just be told what to do; they need to beat their path through boyhood and adolescence.

These words instill confidence in me, both as a parent and a parenting instructor. And the more confident I feel about myself, the more confident I feel about my child. And that’s good for the whole family. Our kids need to know that we believe in them, that we believe that they are going to grow up to be okay.

This book helps me believe that it just might really turn out okay.

The Way Of The Boys: Raising Healthy Boys In A Challenging And Complex World by: Dr. Anthony Rao can be found on Amazon

By: Susan Howard

Between conducting studio sessions with 80 plus musicians for his upcoming score in the film Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and being admonished by his 2 ½ year old son for simply not being “mom”, I got a moment to speak with Theodore Shapiro. We talked about everything from having children, cool projects and chilling in the backyard.

Susan: Have you noticed a change in projects you are interested in taking after having kids?

Theodore: Before becoming a father I was more concerned with what my contemporaries might think. Having kids definitely made me interested in working on films that might be meaningful to them.

Susan: Has the motivation to do your job or the way in which you write altered after having a family?

Theodore: No.  As important as my family is, my desire to make music is a burning passion for me.   The music acts independently of all those other things. (Some of his favorite projects have been The Devil Wears Prada, Marley and Me and Girlfight)

Susan: Is it hard to juggle being a noted composer, father and a husband?

Theodore: I really like routine so having a family has forced me to be even more regimented and I am just as productive as when I didn’t have kids.   When I am at work I am really focused and then I get to walk away and spend time with my family.

Susan: Did you always want to be a working dad?

Theodore: I always knew I would be a working dad, and my wife works fulltime.

Susan:  Did you have a hope that your wife would be a stay at home mom?

Theodore:  No.  It’s important to me that my wife be happy and feel fulfilled in what she’s doing and if the thing that had made her feel fulfilled was being home then that would have been fantastic, but in her case it’s not so I’m happy that she’s able to strike a balance that she wants with work and home and that’s the best possible situation.

Susan: Is it nice sometimes to work out of town and get a break from family life?

Theodore: I would much rather work in town and go away on a weekend with my wife.

Susan: What’s a fun family activity?

Theodore: We bought a new house that is being redone and it has a backyard that we fell in love with.  So we get food from the Farmers Market and hang out in the back yard even though the house is empty. With two kids under the age of 5 a chance to freely run around without the worry of cars or other people is a great way to spend a weekend.

Susan: What’s the difference between you as a father and how your dad fathered you?

Theodore: My father was less engaged with my sister and me when we were young and when we got older he got more engaged and coached soccer and all that and was a great dad.  It’s a shame for fathers of his generation, many of them anecdotally I’ve heard stories didn’t do a lot of diapers and they weren’t “in there” in the same way.  It’s one of those things that I can relate to, having a baby and holding a new baby, there is a scary element –it’s this little thing and I think that one possible way to deal with that is to let someone else deal. On the other hand, my dad is getting a second chance with being a grandparent.

Susan: Are you seeing any musical promise in either of your kids?

Theodore: Kate my daughter makes up some really hilarious songs.  She sings to herself, it’s a song but the lyrics are meandering and it’s all one big long story.  She likes the piano.  She’s been to the studio and watched me edit music to Tropic Thunder and weeks later remembered the composition and even pinpointed the scene that goes with it.

When asked about his tips on parenting, Theodore said, “there is no such thing as a perfect parent.  There is a fear that develops about doing the wrong thing, but everybody makes mistakes. You can have a general code that you live by, but the process of making parental decisions, the variables are always changing so it’s tough to know what to do.  It never gets easy.”

Theodore makes it all look easy!

Diary of a Wimpy Kid opens March 19, 2010 20^th Century Fox.

This is the first of our working father series on The Next Family

TV

By: Tosha Woronov

“We don’t own a television.”  That’s what she said -“We don’t own a television”  -like it was no big deal.  To me, the concept is so foreign she could have said, “my husband is an astronaut” or “we have no indoor plumbing.”  I assume she felt the need to make such an announcement because her little boy was approaching a comatose state —staring at the TV in the swim school office with his pupils dilated, mouth agape, a string of drool dangling just above his t-shirt.  The other kids (mine included) looked up occasionally at Dora the Explorer, but then went on to whatever else they were doing –eating snacks and killing time before swim lessons began.

I am very much aware that arguing the Pro-TV angle doesn’t exactly set me up as a candidate for Mother of the Year.  It’s only slightly more acceptable than defending hormone-injected chicken or the benefits of sautéing it in Teflon.  And so I put this article off, afraid that upon reading it all you “good” mothers will judge me.  The Editor-in-Chief of The Next Family continues to bug me about this submission as well, because of course, the Anti-TV mom (who is obviously not wasting time watching reality shows on Bravo) got hers in weeks ago.

Should I ever get past my initial shock and confusion upon meeting a parent of a non TV-household, I would ask,  “How did you do it?”  Because television watching for our child became a necessity when he was a baby.  When I was pregnant, my husband and I did not wax poetic about the television hours our boy might some day log.  But within few weeks of his birth, I found myself alone – husband away on business, no family, no nanny -with a newborn.  Had I not propped up our son in front of a Baby Einstein video (I know, I know, the horror), I wouldn’t have been able to pump, or wash the dishes, or feed the dog, or take a shower –ever.  He chilled to the occasional slow-paced video scored to Mozart, and I got stuff done.

When he turned two, he found Sesame Street. Those were sweet TV days in our house.  He would climb into our bed at 7am, and together we would watch, all cuddled up and cozy.  I marveled at my little man clapping and singing to the very same show that had rocked my own small world some 30 years prior.  He cared so much then about the Number of the Day -the only person I ever met who preferred the Count over Cookie Monster, or Elmo.

Since then, we’ve watched Clifford the Big Red Dog, Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, Max and Ruby, Jack’s Big Music Show, Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends, and, as much as it freaked me out at first, Yo Gabba Gabba.  We’ve had picnics on the living room carpet, enjoying lunch along with Curious George.

As with all things, moderation is the key.  He knows he can’t watch too much TV, just like he knows he can’t have another cookie.  But he’s still a kid, and we’re his parents, and it’s our job to take the bag of cookies away.  Accordingly, we monitor and limit his time in front of the television.  He doesn’t want to watch that much TV anyway.  He’d rather shoot some hoops in the backyard with his dad or make an art project with his mom.  Maybe it’s just who he is and we got lucky, but I think it’s also because we don’t make such a big deal out of it.

Usually he’ll watch TV after preschool, where he has spent a full day at Montessori reading, painting, dancing, writing, sharing, sculpting, catching, throwing, collecting, compromising, singing, running, falling, laughing, tumbling, growing, missing, gluing, crying, building, and feeling –lots of feeling.  TV is his down time.  He needs some.

Lately, when our television is on it seems to play only sports–any of it: baseball, football, basketball, X-Games, Winter Olympics.  My boy’s a sports nut.  We have a blast, watching together as a family.  I’ll admit; it’s a little freaky that he knows which network will air a specific NCAA basketball game.  And I’m not thrilled that he can man the Tivo remote like a pro, rewinding to show me a slamdunk I’ve missed.  But he is actively and passionately watching, not staring off idly into the blue glow of the television set.  If he does, we’ll turn it off.  Simple as that.

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No TV

By: Lisa Cole

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Before my son was born I vowed I’d never use TV as a babysitter.  But, I never dreamed I’d adopt a ‘no media’ policy for my child.  Not until we enrolled at Waldorf. Founded in 1919, the school’s principles are based on the philosophies and teachings of Rudolf Steiner.  Tantamount to their program is a ‘no media’ guideline especially for infants through grade five.  No media includes:  TV, DVD, films, computers, internet, cell phones, games, iPods, etc!  I wasn’t fully aware of this aspect when we began the parent/toddler class this past fall.  Truthfully, I was drawn to the school for its bucolic setting, hippy-dippy teachers in floppy hats, sweet little songs and the knitting, woodworking and hand-woven lunch boxes.  I also love that Waldorf kids are encouraged to dance with fairies in forests whenever possible.

Waldorf strives to preserve the dream-like state of childhood as long as possible.  Protecting children from television is one way they claim to achieve this goal.  But when our teacher began talking about no media in the home, I felt my wall of resistance go up.  My husband and I work in the entertainment business.  We’ve been content creators for over a decade.  That we should suddenly turn off the television in our home seemed ludicrous.

Needing to know more, I read the research behind Waldorf’s findings on TV exposure, which include:  TV promotes gross consumerism, can impact neurological development and stunt imagination, as well as prevent children from forming their own mental pictures and imagery. There’s also the risks of:  Visual & hearing damage, obesity, diabetes, body image issues (anorexia/bulimia), violence desensitization, vulgar behavior and promoting a culture of fear and disrespect.  Yikes. Their arguments also raise the valid questions:  Who is providing the commercial content our children view?  And do we trust them? Okay, okay!  I was starting to get it.

We decided to try the no media route for our twenty-month old.  We went cold turkey on Sesame Street in the mornings and cut out the educational videos we’d used some evenings to entertain our son while we tried to prepare dinner.  Removing his TV viewing was not so easy but after a week he didn’t even ask for it anymore.  But, then I developed the nagging feeling I was somehow depriving him of some inalienable rights of childhood.  Many of my memories as a young one are foggy, but I do recall with fondness most of the TV shows I watched — Zoom, Sesame Street, H.R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, A Charlie Brown Christmas, etc.  And later, Gilligan’s Island, I Love Lucy, Friday night’s double- header of Dallas and Dynasty, and Luke and Laura on General Hospital.  Growing up in a fairly rural Southern town, TV was our main form of entertainment.  I remember my friends and I so excited with the advent of MTV…  and then our complete outrage when we learned we’d never see it!  Living in the ‘Bible belt’ meant those in charge could pull the plug on the fledgling network and ban it from our county.  It wasn’t until college that I saw my first music video.  Ironic, I moved to Hollywood and majored in Film & Television?  Not really considering the back-story.

So now I’m the adult pulling the strings and I worry my kid will grow to resent me for depriving him of the conduits to his own zeitgeist.  It’s not as if I can hide TV and computers from him forever.  He already knows what they are and screens are found virtually everywhere today – gas station pumps, grocery store check out lines, etc. Plus, its not like we removed the flat screen from our home like some Waldorf families have, I’m sure.  One day soon my son is likely to consider us the blatant hypocrites we are the moment he realizes mommy and daddy watch TV after he’s gone to bed.

For now, while I can still control most everything he does, I will attempt to protect him from what I’ve come to believe are the negative effects television has on a person his size.  Does this mean I’ll never let him watch again?  I’m only human.  Just this morning I was guilty of using TV as a babysitter.  Yes, it’s true.  The Thomas the Train video saved my ass.  As I hurried to finish a work email, fifteen minutes began to stretch into twenty… then thirty… I began feeling incredibly guilty.  As I finally pressed ‘send’ on the computer my toddler grabbed the remote and announced to my surprise, “No more Thomas”.   Off went the TV and so did we… outside into our urban forest in search of fairies.

By: Brandy Black

We drove down the hill in search of our hotel, Inn At The Market for our weekend getaway in Seattle.  Our bags were light and the car toddler-free.

We pulled up to the valet and were literally a stone’s throw away from the famous men in orange rubber suits tossing fish and yelling at one another.

The sea salt air and aroma of baked pastries beckoned us to the bustle of Pike Place Market.   The hotel is tucked away in a warmly lit square of restaurants and shops right in the center of it all.  We tugged our coats in tight and followed the bellman in to the inviting lobby with comfy couches and a fireplace.  The view in our room was the perfect postcard snapshot of the Pacific Northwest overlooking the glistening water. We jumped in our bed and kicked back to soak in the scenery that lie beyond our windows.  After a few minutes of basking in our newfound freedom and a call to the grandparents to make sure our daughter was happy, we were off to taste our way through town.

First on our agenda was coffee for the fabulously brisk afternoon.  Just steps from the hotel is the first ever Starbucks.  I know, I know, there are many other amazing coffee houses in Seattle with much better beans than this, but who doesn’t want to take a few snapshots of the once nascent caffeine prodigy.  Along the way we stopped for a nibble of fresh crabmeat with a squeeze of lemon, then on to one of my personal favorites: Piroshky,Piroshky.  These Russian morsels of insanely delicious combinations are the very essence of the market experience.  With our bellies full of warmth we were ready to do a little boutique shopping.

Strolling through the cobblestone alley we found our way into an adorable children’s store to pick up a gift for our little one.  Miniature hipster t-shirts reminding us of our sweet bundle of joy called to our touristy hearts.  We thumbed through raincoats and petite dresses and took a moment to mourn the weekend away from our daughter.

It was an ideal toddler-free vacation, roaming aimlessly down Seattle’s charming winding streets and ending our afternoon with a glass of wine on the rooftop deck of our hotel overlooking the Puget Sound.

Dinner could not have been more fitting to cap off our perfect day.  Just across the street from our Inn, down a set of stairs, tucked away under the Pike Place Market sits Il Bistro.  We felt as if we had arrived in Tuscany.  We were greeted by a friendly host who showed us to the candlelit bar where I ordered my all-time favorite 20’s drink- a Sidecar.  We sat sipping our old-school drinks, soaking in the fabulous arches and exposed brick that warmed the place and stole our hearts.  We could have skipped dinner and sat at our window table in the bar all night sampling their vast menu of tequila and stumbling back to our hotel, but we chose to go the distinguished route and partake in Chef Nathan Luoma’s fine cooking.  The wine menu wasn’t as enticing as the food; personally I would have liked to have a wider selection of full-bodied reds, but that certainly wouldn’t stop me from coming back to “Il Bistro” again.

The next morning we went to Le Pichet for a chocolate croissant and coffee and meandered around the market as the hum of people began to descend upon the merchants.

Pike Place market is known as “the soul of Seattle”

The market has been around since 1907 and is now home to roughly 200 commercial businesses.  It is internationally recognized as America’s premier farmer’s market.  Walking around the various vendors, sniffing flowers, surveying fish, and sampling wines made me wish that I lived in this lovely city. I imagined myself shopping each morning for our family dinners and bringing home fresh calla lilies every day.

We got our exercise in –walking up Seattle’s finest hills to Pacific Place Shopping Center.  Downtown Seattle is everything you want it to be: twinkling lights, street musicians, local art, restaurants and shops galore.

We could have easily stayed another night to explore the museums, Experience Music Project, Seattle Center, a cruise on the water, and much more, but we are new parents with a toddler and could not keep ourselves away from her.  Had I had another night, I would have loved to check out 94 Stewart, a quaint little restaurant across the street from Inn at the Market that won me over while window-shopping.  I would have also taken the complimentary car service from our hotel to Belltown for dinner at Flying Fish.  The food prepared by Chef Christine Keff is known to be nothing short of fantastic.

My requirement in a vacation as a new parent is location, location, location.  Make it easy on yourself and let the fun come to you.  The Inn At The Market located in Pike Place with a Tuscan bistro across the street is just what this mommy ordered.

Although it was short, we experienced the charm of Seattle in every second of our time there.  I encourage anyone to cruise out for a lovely stay and enjoy this fine city’s delicious food and coffee that will surely toast your toes.

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Travel Tips For Parents:

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-If  it’s your first trip away from your little one -make it easy on yourself -go on a vacation in the same city.  A hotel 15 minutes from home is still a vacation for a parent

- We all know that you want to check on your kiddo while you are away- don’t call- text!  This way you get the update without the guilt of hearing your child’s voice in the background

- Call in the evening once your child is asleep so that you can get all the details of the day

- Ask the sitter/grandparents to text you a picture a day

-If you can’t bear to leave your child/children- take them with you- The Inn At The Market has Town House Suites that are two levels- perfect for a family.

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[Travel tips photo credit: Flikr- Rosweed]

[Head's up photo credit: Flikr- POD]

[Space Needle photo credit: Flikr- Papalars]

By: Brandy Black

Sperm Donor X trailer from Deirdre Fishel on Vimeo.

Sperm Donor X is a documentary that explores the underbelly of 4 different women choosing to be single moms, each taking different paths to pursue their dream of having children. It delves into the processes of picking a sperm donor, artificial insemination, adoption, and the opinions of outsiders. This is an insightful documentary filmed in New York and directed by Deirdre Fishel. I caught up with her over the phone last week between our mommy schedules and a 3-hour time difference to discuss the film, her life with twins, and what exactly she needs to get this film out in theatres.

Brandy: How did you come to the decision to make Sperm Donor X?

Deirdre: I was not at all convinced that I was going to make this film. But I knew these really pivotal moments were happening, and that I had to be shooting them if I was ever going to make a film. I shot for about 2 years and then I stopped for about 2 years. I was very ambivalent; when it came down to it, it was very personal. But I kept meeting these amazing, gorgeous, fabulous women who were in their late 30’s and they were so terrified of going out and having kids on there own, and it,… really motivated me to see, do I have a film? Then, once I felt like I did have a film- to keep working to get it out. So it’s been 7 years total.
If I hadn’t met those women, I don’t think I would have made the film. I just really felt so lucky and was so scared. There was such a radical difference before I did it and after it, and I guess I’ve been really motivated to try to inspire more women who are so scared to realize that it’s doable if you really want kids.

Brandy: Why did you decide to use a sperm donor?

Deirdre: Well, my initial thought about a sperm donor -I remember I was really dead-set against going through an anonymous sperm donor. I thought it was very creepy and weird and I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it. So I sought out to, you know, it’s a hard question to ask, and there are not many people, but there was one friend who had a family already, and didn’t live in the area, and I thought maybe he would do it. I thought he was healthy and sane and he said, “I’m flattered but I had a vasectomy”. And then I asked another person, a friend, and he was all excited and then he didn’t want to do it. Pretty quickly I just felt like, wow –it was so awkward and embarrassing…Plus, I have a friend who’s a lawyer, and she was really counseling me that rights are a big issue. The more I got into the process, the more I started to see that there are really some advantages to using a sperm donor. Now I’m so glad I went this route, and my kids are so great. I really know a lot of women are very uncomfortable with that; it’s not what you think is going to happen to you. You’re getting on the internet, you’re looking at profiles. It’s a little strange. You gotta get over that hump, but what I’ve come to see 7 years later is that we’re really lucky in this country. We have really good reproductive rights. I mean, there are a lot of countries in the world where you cannot, as a single woman, just go and order from a sperm bank and walk into a fertility clinic.  So what I feel like right now is that there’s more of a lag -a sort of cultural lag- where a lot of women feel like “how did this happen to me?” But I also feel like we have a lot of choices and a lot of people are choosing not to partner with someone that they don’t feel great about.

Brandy: How did your friends and family feel about your decision?

Deirdre: I live in a pretty progressive world, so nobody said “you can’t do that.” My mother was very anxious about it, but when I started to really make the decision, she got behind me and had a paradigm shift and realized we don’t have forever. In some ways the biggest issue was myself and coming to terms with it and not feeling like I somehow failed. I’m so on the other side of that now. I feel so lucky and really empowered, and I feel like we have a really great family.

I watched Sperm Donor X with no color correct and no sound mix because it is not yet finished. In fact, Deirdre only needs $10,000 to complete this documentary. I was inspired to interview her because this enlightening film should be available as a resource. It is not only edifying for single women, but also for anyone who is enduring the process of choosing a sperm donor and taking the non-traditional route of creating a family.

If you would like more information on this film or would like to donate  Sperm Donor X go to
Sperm Donor X

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Crib Sleeping

By: Megan Dobkin

“What do we do now?”

It is 11pm which, to my sleep-deprived husband and me, feels more like 3:00 in the morning.  In between us lies a 3-week-old Jake, swaddled in the Snuggle Nest – a co-sleeping aid that provides a walled incline for the baby.  Jake has been restless all night, but now he is outright crying.

He just ate.  He has a fresh diaper.  He had some gripe water, so we’re pretty sure it isn’t gas.

“Let’s try the co-sleeper.”

As soon as we settled Jake into the co-sleeper next to the bed, he settled down and fell into a deep sleep.

It’s been like this for awhile.  He’s only liked the co-sleeper when it has all four sides up, i.e, standing alone, NOT when it was actually attached to the bed.

It took us another week or so before we finally admitted that Jake was, in fact, more comfortable having his OWN SPACE.

We were not prepared for this.  Being the over-researcher that I am, I had spent the latter part of my pregnancy reading up on a grand spectrum of early childcare books.  My husband and I were moved by the concepts behind Attachment Parenting, and I read them all: The Continuum Concept, Jay Gordon, William Sears.  We were very taken with the concept of being the baby’s consistent pillars for as long as he might need.  Not in that RUNAWAY BUNNY way, where the parent keeps following the kid who just wants to explore.  But in a way that would help build a sense of security, allowing him to feel free in the outside world.  “We are here.  We are in no rush to stop being the ones on whom you depend.  You decide when you are ready to explore.  We will be here if you need us.”

I breastfed for as long as I could.  I wore Jake in a sling for the first year of his life.  I gave him infant massages at night before bed.

But that little bugger just did not need us while he slept.  Perhaps a different baby would have.

So, in this way, I am really not Pro-Co-Sleeping.

Nor, am I Pro-Crib-Sleeping.

I am, however, PRO-LISTENING.

It was the best and most fundamental lesson I have learned so far as a parent.  Two and a half years later, the need to listen and be flexible still comes into play at least once a day.  Like when I have decided that Jake and I are going to have a really fun afternoon at the museum, but he really is just in the mood to stay home.  Or when I don’t think he has eaten enough, but he tells me “all done.” And like when I try to put him in a nice button-down shirt for our holiday card, but he has other fashion plans.

They all come into this world as different beings with different needs.  All we can do is better understand our own interests and philosophies, and then listen really closely for theirs.

PRO-LISTENING.

All around.

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Co-Sleeping

By: Rebecca Martin

We have two cribs in the garage. They are wooden, perfectly set up, gathering dust and webs. One of them was a gift; the other we bought at Babies R’ Us when I was overcome by a feverish nesting urge, unaware at the time that I was four hours away from early labor. We didn’t plan on it, but two babies (still in the bed) and two cribs (still in the garage) later, we are a fully committed, co-sleeping family.

It just felt so natural to have Noah, our first, cuddled between us in our bed. Someone told me it’s best for babies to hear the heartbeats of their parents through the night. Maybe they fall asleep to the rhythm, or maybe it’s like a cheering section saying “Yay! You were born! Keep going! See how great it is to have a heart?!”

We bought one of those “snuggle nests” so he would be safe between us, and read all the articles on how to do it right. Everyone was so worried about rolling over on baby, but that just didn’t seem possible, with the way our sleep lightened (for better or worse) to awake at our baby’s smallest need or movement. And once I discovered the wonder of night nursing –where I could just roll over and we could all stay in a semi-dreamy state of sleep –I didn’t want to move him to a crib where I would have to actually wake up to get him. I felt so overwhelmed at this new person being here with me permanently; to sleep with him helped me tune in to his needs and helped me to feel more confident about reading his cues. It deepened our bond.

Somehow I thought we would still use that shiny crib and get back on the path with most of our friends, but instead it became the best unfolded-laundry-holder ever. And Noah stayed in the bed.

We loved waking up to his smile. We loved being able to give in to the unstoppable early-parenting urge to check his breathing. We got to make a nest for him and it felt right.

Living in a one-bedroom house also supported this.  A kids’ room was not an option. But what started out as a space adaptation became a choice. I think we’re like animals -  we like to sleep in packs, we like to feel each others’ warmth. Maybe kids don’t really want to be down the hall. All those hours alone in a room, on some level, must register in a negative way. Whereas all those hours with the people you love, hearing their breathing, knowing they are right there, must register in a positive way.  It’s especially nice if the parent is away most of the day working; they get their secret sleepy baby hours. My husband surprised me -he ended up loving it as much as me.

Now Noah is four, and his little brother is 22 months old. We put the largest memory foam mattress we could find on the floor. We all pile on it, like a big raft in the middle of the room. My husband and I stay up later than they do for a little grown-up time and when we go to find our place, it’s amazing that two small boys can take over a whole bed. We did have a co-sleeper crib when our second baby was brand-new, mostly to protect him from rollovers from the big brother. But once it seemed like time, we were all back in it together.

This makes traveling much easier. Wherever we go, as long as there is a bed, no routine is broken. We go camping and throw a mattress in one little tent – just like home! So far, they seem to be more adaptable than separate-sleeping kids. And they don’t wake up as early. I feel secret guilty pleasure when people complain of early wake-ups from kids who maybe just want that extra cuddle.

As much as I love it, I do feel a little jealous when friends talk about putting their babies to bed, closing the door, and going to their own rooms. There are probably less kicks in the night, and it probably teaches kids to be independent sooner. But then, I think our culture rushes everything anyway, so slowing things down probably might bring it closer to balance.

If someone had told me when I was buying that crib that I would be like this, I would have laughed. But now I treasure the feeling of safety, the closeness of the family, and the fact that I gave into something that, even though I didn’t plan it, felt completely natural. I know the days of co-sleeping are numbered, like everything in this parenting journey. So for now, I am looking forward to another cuddly night with lots of warm toes in the bed.

To Doula

By: Heidi Biddle

I have been blessed with three babies.  Well, I say ”babies”, but they are nearly 17, 14, and 9.  I remember each one of their births like it was yesterday. Without saying I was naive, when it came to the births of my children, I thought I had it all planned out.

For my first birth, I wrote out a birth plan and looked forward to going through this with my support people.  I assumed the doctor would not only explain everything to us, but would also assist me through my whole labor and birth, all the while talking to me in a soothing voice, and urging me to go on. I thought the nurses would be there to support me and help me through this wonderful time. I knew that I wanted my husband, my sister, and my mom in the room when I had my baby-they would help me, too.  My birth plan was simple: “no drugs unless I am in pain and ask for some.” I prepared myself and my husband for what was surely going to be the most beautiful, sweet, peaceful, and incredible birth ever.

Then, I went into labor. I had an epidural at 3 cm. (as early as you can), but it didn’t work.  I felt it all, including the vacuum that was used to get him out.  My beautiful, perfect, cone-headed baby.

With my second, I got to the hospital at 8 cm. Then she just fell out! There was no doctor, no nurse – just my husband (who was freaking out and saying “is this supposed to be happening?”). Papers flying, husband holding baby in with his hand, my mom looking for help, and my sister -my poor sister -her jaw was on the floor and she looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Where were my support people?

By my third time around, I found a new doctor. I explained that I was a natural at this, and I knew how I wanted it. I wanted no drugs. My babies came fast!  My husband was going to catch this one, he was going to cut the cord, and I would have a mirror so I could watch my baby be born. I wanted my precious baby placed immediately on my chest – skin to skin – and I wanted to breastfeed right away. Period. I reminded my doctor of my plan at every single visit; this is how it was going to be. I explained that my husband was my coach, and we wanted to labor alone. It was going to be beautiful (in hindsight, I was my own doula!).  I wanted NO intervention.

At 43 weeks pregnant (yes, that’s right, world’s longest pregnancy), I had to be induced. The doctor was afraid my baby would be 10 pounds. I cried all the way to the hospital…I didn’t want to be induced! I knew my baby would come when he was ready. I didn’t understand why they wanted me to get him out if he wasn’t ready. So what if he was 10 pounds?  I was sure my body could do it! I sulked all the way through the pitocin drip. I labored away with no pain meds. I was offered drugs frequently, and turned them down every time.  I owed this to my baby. I was 9 cm. dilated and ready to push when my doctor came in and recommended an epidural; he thought it would slow things down a bit and give me some energy for pushing (it turned out he was delivering twins right next door, and they were coming fast). I rolled over to my side, ready to do what he asked, because he recommended it.  Before they had time to administer anything, out came my baby’s head!  The doctor ran back into the room, caught my baby, cut the cord himself, handed him to a nurse to clean him up, dumped my placenta, then left to deliver the twins next door.

My husband missed the whole thing. My husband – who couldn’t wait to catch our baby -missed the whole thing. I missed the whole thing. There was no mirror, no control, no husband cutting the cord, no respect, no birth plan, no empathy, no baby placed skin-to-skin on my chest, and most of all, no 10 pound baby.  He was 7 lbs, 6 oz.

I can’t help but wonder how different these births -especially my third -would have been if I’d had someone knowledgeable in my corner who understood both the medical lingo and the process of labor and birth, someone who knew exactly what I wanted and would help me to achieve that.  Someone not emotionally tied to me, who would have stood up for me -my very own advocate. I vowed immediately after my third and final birth that I was going to do something about that.

When I meet with clients, they are usually only entertaining the thought of a doula.  They mostly want to know why they should hire another person to assist them when they already have a support person – whether it’s a spouse, a friend or a partner.  Furthermore, most couples believe that the doctor (whom they have grown extremely close to), midwife, and nurses will be in the room, by their side, supporting them through their entire labor and explaining everything as it is going on.  Experience has shown me that this is not always the case.  Next to the partner, a doula is the only person looking out for the mother’s best interests 100% of the time.  Whether it is a precipitous (very fast ) labor, or a 70-hour labor, a doula is there the entire time to help the mother achieve the birth experience she wants to have. While the nurses (and I have seen many good ones) do offer support, their primary job is to chart, document, and monitor both mom and baby at all times.

I help my clients come up with a birthing plan.  The parents outline their perfect birth and together we address the “what-ifs” (”should you end up having a C-section, let’s make the environment as pleasant as we can”).  Most people don’t think about these things on their own.  A doula also helps to remind the parents of the birth plan. When the unforeseen happens, or if chaos arises, the doula is an advocate -the ONLY advocate –for the parents. At a time when women are the most vulnerable, usually in pain, and the oxytocin (often called the ”trust drug”) levels are high, a woman will typically do whatEVER the healthcare providers say is best, which can often veer away (sometimes unnecessarily) from the original plan.

I explain to the partners that one of the many benefits of having a doula is it allows them to do their job –to love and support the mother.  Partners (men in particular) do not realize how hard it is to see the mother in pain;  they want to fix it, take the pain away. With a doula, the partner can focus solely on the mother and be reassured that everything else is being handled.  I remind the support person to eat, drink, and take care of themselves, which is the only way they will be able to take care of a laboring mom.

My most important job as a doula is to remind parents that this is their birth journey. You will never get a do-over on the birth of your baby. Doulas do not speak for the parents – doulas explain the parents’ options as well as the actions of the doctors, midwives, or nurses. We remind the parents to ask all the questions….what are the benefits? What are the risks?  My favorite question to remind my clients to ask: “What happens if I just do nothing?”

Those who know me know that I am very passionate about what I do.  I feel very strongly about women and the healthy function of our bodies.  We were meant to birth.  And I have no regrets about the way I birthed my babies.  The only regret I have is not educating myself about pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. If I could have ten more babies, I would, and I would have a doula every time.   Now, as a doula myself, I am the liaison between parents and their perfect birth. You dream the dream, and I help make it come true.
More on Heidi Biddle at Your Birth Journey

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Not To Doula

By: Ernessa Carter

Here’s the thing about being a woman who knows she wants an epidural, taking pre-natal yoga classes in Silver Lake: You’re the only one.

So here’s me having to listen to a zen-ruining running monologue from every single prenatal yoga teacher about how certain exercises could help you through the worst of the birthing pain and prevent epidurals. And how yoga helped you to really BE in the experience of giving birth, even though I saw no reason at all to really BE one with the pain, just because that’s how my ancestors did it. At a few points I wanted to ask the prenatal yoga instructor to just shut up, so that I could get my stretch on in peace, but that wouldn’t have been very yogi of me, would it?

After class was even worse. I wanted to make friends. I didn’t know any other moms in Silver Lake, and this seemed like a great place to strike up friendships with like-minded people — only they weren’t like-minded. In fact, it was hard for me to join the conversation when it so often went like this:

“How are your doula interviews going?”

“Great! I found this really wonderful woman named so-and-so, but she doesn’t know if she’s going to have my due date open yet.”

“Oh, I’ve heard great stuff about so-and-so. Doesn’t she use a tub?”

“Yes, and she also chants out these primal rhythms…”

“Oh, she sounds nice. Mine does massage, but she doesn’t chant.”

Okay, obviously I can’t join this conversation, because just the idea of a stranger in the room giving me gentle encouragement while I’m in tons of pain makes me want to rip her head off.

Also, deep down inside, I’m just too nice. I would feel bad about snapping at someone who wasn’t married or related to me. Even if they were getting paid to get snapped at.

But most of all, I didn’t want a doula because there was absolutely nothing a doula could do that my husband couldn’t. Also, my husband wouldn’t insist that I do breathing exercises when I didn’t want to. My husband would rub my back just like a doula would — even better: he wouldn’t rub my back, because I don’t like to be touched when I’m in pain. See, he already knows that, whereas a doula doesn’t. No matter how nice she is, she would try to help me when I didn’t want to be helped and push me when I didn’t want to be pushed. And quite frankly, that’s my husband’s job. He already sorta said he would do everything a doula would in his vows, and I wanted him to make good on his promise.

He did everything right. He retreated when he was supposed to and though we had attended birthing classes, unlike my first charge nurse, he didn’t try to force me to do the stupid breathing exercises, when I told him I didn’t want to.  He didn’t question my need to blog through my contractions, but he did forcibly take the iPhone away after my epidural, so that I could get some sleep. He didn’t sleep, though. And he was by my side as soon as I woke up. He held my hand and changed the TV station and fed me ice chips and promised me Fig Newtons as soon as I was done with the labor. “You’re doing so well, honey” he answered, when I told him “I can’t! I can’t!” And then he cried when our daughter Betty finally came bursting into this world. Now would a doula have done that?

I watched him over at the scale, giving Betty soothing words as she screamed about getting weighed. And though I did most of the heavy lifting, I knew he was just as happy as I to finally meet her. That’s when I realized something for the first time in nine months: It was his pregnancy, too. And his support during my labor had created a bond that would never be undone. Be it Death or Divorce or Disaster, we would always have these hours holding us together, a forever memory. And I’m so happy I didn’t let a doula cheat me out of that.

Ernessa T. Carter is the author of the novel, 32 CANDLES, which will be released by HarperCollins/Amistad on June 22, 2010. Pre-order your copy on Amazon here.

More on Ernessa Carter at Fierce and Nerdy

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Email us your birth story and we may post it the week of Mother’s Day

momsday@thenextfamily.com

An Exclusive Interview With The Bachelor’s Jason Mesnick on “Jason’s Place” and Being A Single Parent

By: Allison Norris

Jason, from ABC’s “The Bachelor”, is late because he was pitching an idea to the network on how to raise money for Haiti in my driveway. He apologizes and launches, passionately, into his idea. I remind him that I only have a babysitter for the next 20 minutes and unless he wants input from a 5 month old on his interview for The Next Family, we better get cracking.

His passion for helping single parents assures me that he doesn’t need any coaching for the questions that I’m about to ask. I am always shocked at how positive he is after such a tumultuous year – being slammed in the media for breaking up with an opportunist on TV in order to be with the right woman. His drive to help single parents in whatever way he can, leaves all insecurities and negativity in a place that never shows.

He helps me set up the camera and let’s me know that he can restate the question if need be. Good thing one of us has some experience with this kind of thing. I throw the questions at him and he answers them from the heart revealing that he is just a normal guy on a mission to give back.

After the interview, my babysitter left and I threw my son at Jason to hold while I made sure the video loaded correctly on my computer. He took Bay on a tour of my house and I hoped he would miss the heap of laundry spilling into my hallway. He’s out the door on his way to another meeting about raising money and gives me a quick hug. A man on a mission – a mission to bring awareness to the challenges and needs that single parents have in our country.

Check out Jason’s Place

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One Parent

By: Allison Norris

“How do you do it?  Whenever my husband goes out of town, I think about you and can’t imagine how hard it must be for you!”

And so I answer, “I don’t know any different.”

He wakes in the middle of the night, I get up.

He needs a diaper change, I change it.

He’s hungry, I feed him.

I have to shower, he sits alone and I hope he isn’t crying.

I lay him in his crib after his bath and hope that he falls asleep soon, as it will be my long stretch of free time until I can no longer keep my eyes from closing.  I do the dishes, laundry, play on facebook so that I don’t feel entirely out of the loop, turn on my tunes, and pluck my eyebrows – if I remember.

I hear how the other moms can pass off the baby when Daddy walks in the door every night.  Their needs can be temporarily met while their other half is playing catch up with his offspring.

My son’s father helps whenever he is here and I get a taste of what it would be like; an extra set of hands to load the car or carry in groceries.  Hopefully, some day, I’ll have those hands at the end of every day.

Until then, I’m in control, or at least I think I am.  I control my wee one’s schedule, his mood, his outfits, and his hygiene.  I get spurts of rest in a huge bed all to myself (until my son, who is all of 5 months old, hogs the entire thing), my new biceps are bulging, nobody argues with me about how I want things done, and there is nobody to cook dinner for…  My frozen dinners are my secret pleasure -  maybe this is perfect?

When we lay in bed together, every morning, he smiles at me and I remember that I am not alone.  He is my teammate and my partner.

His hands are the softest to hold.  We need each other and I’ll never be “single” again.

 

 

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Two Parent

By: Sandra Peria

 

 

My husband is a type A personality; actually he’s more like an A+. From the moment he learned we were going to have a baby, he bought every book, printed out all pertinent articles online and started analyzing everything from sleep schedules to pumping, to recalls on Carter’s p.j.’s. He followed the baby’s development chapter-by-chapter, week-by-week. “Do you want to know what the baby’s doing now? It can hear, it hears noises.” “Hello baby,” I mutter. I am excited as well, of course, but tend to be a more go-with-the-flow-hope-for-the-best type of person. I am a B-.

After the birth, he kept me on a strict feeding schedule, getting up with me some nights to make sure I remember to actually feed our child. For this I will be forever indebted. He also put the baby to sleep at precisely the same time in exactly the same way every night. He’s the sleep master; three books, a lullaby (“You are my Sunshine”), and off to sleep our son went. When I am especially busy in my day, I know how lucky I am to have my man take care of things like paying the bills and organizing the children’s books tall to short, (told you he was type A) and even taking a swing at dinner, sure to have a protein, a veggie, and a carbohydrate on each plate. He follows the recipe very closely.

There is a strange thing that happens when your husband is Mr. Overachiever; it makes you feel inadequate and you start to doubt every decision you try to make. Is it time for his bottle? Should I take him out or is it too close to nap time? My husband, the dear man, would call me from work telling me it was time to put the baby down. “I was going to,” I explained, “but he needed to be changed and then he seemed hungry again so I thought…” “That’s not what we set up, honey. That’s not what we committed to doing, you can’t make up your own rules.” He is a well-meaning, lovely man, but I can’t help feeling like a complete idiot in regards to raising our child.

Sometimes I do wish I was single and it was just my son and me, battling the world together, making mistakes, doing it wrong. Staying up until midnight eating cold pizza, running around with no diapers, drinking too much juice and bouncing off the walls, putting crayons up our noses, walking in the dirt with no shoes, and then, to finish, the cardinal no-no in our house: sleeping in our bed. I wish I had the right to do it all my own way. I mean my parents screwed up; don’t I have a legacy to uphold?
I realize organization and routine are ultimately for the best, but if I were a single mom, I would love to just jump in the pool with my boy to see if he can swim.

All said, I wouldn’t change my husband or my son for the world and I love them both dearly.