It recently came to my attention that a lot of my old columns (I’ve been writing it for four + years….there are a LOT of old columns!) are no longer available online, so from time to time, I’m going to re-post some of my favorites. Here’s one I wrote when Owen was a baby:

When I was pregnant with my youngest son, Owen, I signed up for a yoga class, but quickly dropped out. I love yoga, but something about the nausea and lightheadedness I felt pretty much every time I tried to bend my enormous body in half took the joy out of it for me. So I looked forward to the class with moms and new babies under two months old with great anticipation. What could be better than spending an hour and a half in blissful yogic union with six other mothers and their babies?

I don’t know what I was thinking.

Before we were even sitting on the mat, Owen decided he didn’t like this new place, and began to protest—loudly. Other babies followed suit. Some whimpered, some cried, and some outright screamed their little heads off. Other babies decided this was as good a time as any to pass loud gas and fill their pants. Some moms walked their babies around, some changed diapers, and some retreated to the feeding stations set up along the walls. By the time the instructor invited the class to join her in the sound of “Om”, the room had filled instead with the sounds of cries, flatulence, grunts, and gulps—as well as an unmistakable odor. It sounded something like this:

Instructor: And now, I would like you to go inward and find that still, quiet place…

Baby # 1: Pbbbbbbbbbbttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

Instructor: …for it is from this quiet place inside us…

Babies #2 and 3: WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Instructor: …that we begin our practice of Yoga.

Chorus of babies: BURP! GURGLE! WAHHH!

I looked around the room, but couldn’t tell if the other moms were enjoying themselves or not. Everybody seemed to have on her best poker face: if any of my classmates were close to breaking out into hysterical laughter or running screaming from the room, I couldn’t tell. They all looked serene and calm—certainly a lot calmer than I felt. Yes, you’d think that by the time I was on kid #4 I’d have a clue: babies are unpredictable. They cry and poop, and they do it when you want them to do it the least. I get it. But darn it, I wanted to do yoga, not walk the floor and listen to the same crying I get at home, only in stereo.

After I went home, I debated whether or not to return to class the following week. Suddenly it dawned on me that while I might not have had a lot of opportunity to stretch my body during the class, it had been a perfect opportunity to exercise my ability to quiet my mind, which is a big part of what yoga is all about. So I decided to return to the class—after tweaking my expectations a little.

The following week, Owen surprised me by happily lying on the mat through about half the class, while I got to move my cramped muscles in a way I hadn’t in months. Of course, he cried plenty, too. The seven babies in the class kept up their constant symphony of bodily noises and shrieking, but I just reminded myself to breathe, grabbed a stretch or two when I could, and tried to spend the rest of the time enjoying my baby, who I noticed had already changed dramatically from just a week before.

This is motherhood. Babies don’t care that you would really rather be in downward-facing-dog; they just want to be held and fed. They don’t care if you’ve eaten yet today or that you haven’t had a chance to go to the bathroom in hours. Babies are egocentric by design: ultimate self-centeredness is their entire means of survival. It can be frustrating. It can be boring. But it will pass.

I’m taking a lesson from my yoga class. I’m not always going to be able to have exactly the day I’d planned, and many of the details of my day-to-day life are now out of my hands. All I can do is adjust my expectations, do the best I can, and try very hard to access that still, quiet place within me.

For I have discovered that when I am in that place, I can remain calm even when a not-so-fresh-smelling baby is screaming in my ear. And that’s a coping skill worth having.

read my latest column about how looking up old clips on Youtube has promoted cross-generational understanding and appreciation in our home! (Note: it has to do with Weird Al, Skee-Lo and Rick Astley).

I’ve got a few new articles out…

First, my Good Housekeeping article on getting kids to play outside is now on the website.

Second, I wrote about kids with life-threatening allergies (and the hostile responses parents and schools sometimes get when they try to accomodate them) for my column in the Greenville Link:

Third, this month’s issue of Pregnancy magazine features an article of mine about “pregnancy obsession” and how you can protect yourself from information overload. The article also features quotes from Devra Renner of Parentopia.

Hopefully I will have something more interesting to share soon! This weather, it’s making me happy but numbing my brain.

my latest column….

When Mother’s Day approaches, it’s easy to think of presents in terms of flowers, candy and bubble bath. But as it turns out, a lot of moms would much rather have the gift of quality health care, a strong dollar and a cleaner planet. In honor of the upcoming election I spoke to a group of moms to find out which issues they’re most concerned about, and these three concerns came up again and again:

Health care

In many parts of the country, health insurance for a typical family of four can cost more than a house payment. And while there are free and reduced-cost health care options for low-income families, spending a grand or more on insurance can easily over-extend even a middle-class budget. And a medical emergency can quickly add up to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a family already just getting by.

Sure, we’ve all heard the old argument that “no one is entitled to anything.” But it just makes good economic sense to have a healthy population. You can’t exactly rule the free world with a bunch of sickly citizens at the helm … and boy oh boy, is that what we’ve got now. In fact, according to a 2005 report in the New England Journal of Medicine, today’s generation of kids is likely to have a SHORTER life expectancy than their parents - the first time that’s happened in more than 200 years.

Of course, you can blame some of that on sedentary lifestyles and junky diets. We need a strong, affordable and accessible health care system to deal with illnesses and emergencies as they come up, but we could also help matters by not treating our bodies - and our kids’ bodies - like trash cans. Just sayin’.

The economy

Get out the violins, ya’ll: according to analysts, we’re headed for - or are possibly already in - a recession. No big surprise there - after a decade or so of Americans racking up debt as though we believed the credit card/mortgage fairies would one day come and haul it away in a poof of glitter, reality was bound to catch up with us.

It’s natural for parents to want the American dream for their kids, but I’m thinking about things a little differently these days. Could it be that our generation of parents has the “American Dream” all wrong, and if so, do we really want our children to have even more of THIS?

It could be that obtaining as much square footage as humanly possible, driving cars that are as expensive as small houses, and owning every knickknack and toy known to man is perhaps not the key to happiness and a “good life” after all.

While I don’t relish the idea of a recession, I think some hard economic times could teach our kids - and us - a valuable lesson that we might otherwise never have to learn. These include how to save for a rainy day, how to be resourceful, how to get by on less, and why, in the end, the size of your house, the value of your car and whether you own the newest gadget don’t matter much at all.

The environment

We might disagree on the best way to get there, but every parent I know is concerned about the state of the planet. Whether it’s dependence on air-clogging fossil fuels, over-consumption, over-full landfills or water quality, no matter what your political leanings there’s an environmental issue that’s probably got you concerned.

We need government that’s ready to tackle these issues at all levels. For example, some cities and villages don’t even have effective recycling programs in place yet. Come on, people, it’s 2008!

On the other hand, we as parents also have to be willing to make some changes in the way we live. Maybe we drive less and walk or bike more; maybe we make a conscious decision to look locally for services and shopping so we use less gas (hint: Shopping locally is also good for your community and local economy). Maybe we do a better job modeling recycling in our own homes. Maybe we just cut down on buying so much crap. Our kids are watching and learning by example.

Of course, we need a strong government to help us make sweeping, nation-wide changes. But they can’t do a good job without our willing participation. As it turns out, the best Mother’s Day gift of all - a clean, healthy and prosperous world for our kids - might be something we parents have to give ourselves.

Here’s my most recent column. (If you’re bored and looking for a laugh, check out some of the kooky comments it got over on Greenville Online!)

As most parents with half a brain understand, children need to be spoken to in order to learn how to speak. And the more words a child hears in his early years, the better he is likely to read and perform in school.

Research has even pinpointed an ideal number of words children should hear before the age of 4: 25 million, or 17,000 per day.

Of course, numbers like this have been largely useless to parents, most of whom don’t exactly have a lot of spare time for tracking how much language they’ve exposed their children to on any given day.

It would take a pretty fast hand and a large sheet of paper to tally up all the words you utter. Especially if your household is like mine, punctuated with a steady stream of Mom-ese: “William, please keep your fingers out of there. Hey, who put peanut butter in my pen cap? Owen, markers are for drawing on paper, not your tongue.”

So how’s a busy mom supposed to find the time to add up those words to make sure she’s providing an optimal environment for verbal and social development?

Enter the Lena system. Short for Language ENvironment Analysis, LENA is a device you plant in your child’s chest pocket — the system comes with specially designed overalls — which then monitors conversation between parent and child.

At the end of the day, parents analyze the data using LENA software to find out just how they measure up.

According to the LENA Web site (LENAbaby.com), “Research shows that parents overestimate how much they talk to their children. By using the LENA system, you know exactly how much language experience your child is receiving. LENA provides peace of mind that your child is developing at an optimal level.”

I’m all for talking to my kids (as evidenced by the fact that they all seem unable to shut up). But do we really need a $700 device (sale price is $400 if you act now!) to give us a basic idea of how we’re doing?

Isn’t this just one more example in the long line of “enrichment” products that we suckers — er, parents — are being pressured into purchasing using tactics like fear, guilt and anxiety over providing our children with that elusive “optimal development environment?”

Pamela Paul, mother of two and author of the new book Parenting, Inc., took a hard look at the “parenting industry” and found that not only are the companies creating and marketing these products actively play on parental fears, but we parents have readily bought into the hype.

“In the last 15 years, but particularly in the past five years, parenting has become professionalized and industrialized,” Paul says. “It’s led to the commercialization of child-rearing.”

Fear over economic instability and the desire to give our own children every possible edge has led to a high-pressure, high-stakes parenting culture, Paul says. “We are supposed to optimize and maximize every moment we have with our kids.” Paul stresses that she’s not critical of all products and services. For example, “Hiring a sleep consultant makes a lot more sense than buying a $1,000 designer crib that your baby screams in all night.”

Paying somebody else to teach your child to ride a bike? Not such a great investment, she points out. And overall, the number of products and services we seek out has ballooned out of control.

The result? Stressed-out parents who buy and do too much for their kids in order to give them as much opportunity as possible; and the nurturing of an ever-more materialistic consumer culture as kids get showered with expensive gear and playthings (the average American child, she reports, gets 70 new toys each year) as Mom and Dad seek out spendy services that will make them better, “more optimal” parents.

And though we all like to think we have more common sense than that, Paul points out that parents have bought into the idea that we can purchase our child’s health, happiness and well-being more than we’d like to admit.

She may be right. Even as I scoffed at the LENA system, somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if I should take advantage of its 30-day money-back guarantee.just to see if our household’s “language environment” is as “optimal” as I’d like to believe.

Since I don’t have an extra $400 lying around, though, I think I’ll just throw out a few extra three-syllable words and call it a day.

Perhaps we’re not optimal, but I figure we’re at least above-average. And most days, that’s good enough for me.

A non-parent reader recently asked me why some moms seem to leave the job of parenting to perfect strangers when they’re out in public. Read my response, then tell me what you think–if a kid’s misbehaving and the parent doesn’t seem to notice, what should the other adult in the room do?

“Mom,” my 10-year-old son said to me the other day, “When are you going to tell me about the birds and the Bee Gees?”

After I was done laughing, I felt a twinge of guilt about the fact that my son, who is decidedly a “tween” and moving ever-closer to puberty, is so in the dark about the birds and the bees that he confused the facts of life with a feathered-hair disco trio.

When it comes to sex education, most parents I know fall into one of four basic camps:

read the rest over at the Lansing Noise.

You just never know what will push some people’s buttons. In my rather innocuous (I thought anyway) column about potty-training, a reader called me not just lazy, but a lazy SOW (scroll to the bottom of the column to read the rant against my lazy…sow-i-ness). I have to say, that is the first time I have been compared to livestock. At least, in the context of one of my columns.

Writers, have you ever gotten a really nasty comment from a reader (or maybe editor?) in response to something you’ve published or submitted? If so, how did you respond?

It can be really hard not to lash back, but I’ve found when a complaint is as nonsensical and ranty as this one is, it makes more sense to simply consider the source and move on. And there’s a bright side…Toni has promised to have a T-shirt printed that says “LAZY SOW” on it, just for me.