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.

Two days after I wrote my latest column, Owen started taking off his diaper periodically throughout the day and begging to “sit on da potty…pweeeze?”

What’s that saying about “famous last words” again? Oh, yeah…I think it’s “Famous last words come back to haunt mothers more frequently than any other demographic group.”

Have you ever said something about parenthood or one of your kids, and wound up eating your words within days?

my latest column…

After each of my kids was born, I went through a stage of mental fuzziness. Phone numbers that had been locked away in my brain for years suddenly seemed just out of reach, names evaporated from the tip of my tongue, and every day my car keys, which I could swear I had set down on in the dining room, seemed to get sucked into a magical vortex and spewed back out someplace else, like the foot of my bed, or the refrigerator.

And I shudder to remember the times - plural - that I wore mismatched socks or forgot to take off my pajama pants before I left the house.

“Yep, you’ve got mom brain,” women around me would remark when I trailed off in the middle of a sentence.

Now, scientists have finally confirmed what we moms knew all along: “Momnesia” isn’t just something dreamed up by a bunch of addled and sleep-deprived new moms … it’s real.

Moms may go hazy on the details after giving birth, but experts agree that it may serve an important biological function: keeping our children safe. An article in USA Today by Liz Szabo surmised that our brains may just need to refocus themselves in order to ensure an infant’s survival. The parts of your brain that aren’t focused in on keeping your baby alive, are “sort of taken offline,” said neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of “The Female Brain,” in the article.

“Taken offline.” I like that metaphor. It sounds businesslike and organized, something I definitely did not feel when I forgot to file important paperwork, pay the cable bill or check my voicemail for days at a time.

But fear not, new moms: momnesia doesn’t make you stupid. Instead, the article suggests, you’ll become smarter, more efficient and learn faster once your brain adjusts. And certain parts of your brain - the parts that are worried about your baby’s safety, development and well-being - actually go into overdrive. “You’re on the mother beat all the time. It requires certain parts of your brain to work hyper, hyper, hyper well,” Brizendine said. “But it requires other parts of your brain to play second fiddle.”

That would explain why I lost track of what day of the week or sometimes even what month it was, but could tell with amazing accuracy how long it had been since my baby had been fed. I couldn’t keep concentration long enough to finish a chapter in a novel, but could focus on a game of “your feet are soooo stinky” as long as Owen kept smiling. I tuned out most background noise, but could detect a change in his breathing or the tiniest whimper from across the house.

One unexpected side effect of momnesia? It affects your long-term parenting memories. I learned this when my older boys started asking questions like “What was my first word?” and “When did I start walking?” I’m amazed by how much I’ve forgotten about their babyhood - even the adorable stuff I was sure I’d remember forever.

My “baby” is now almost - gulp - two-and-a-half, and during the last year or so I’ve seen signs that my brain is slowly but surely returning to normal. I’m back to reading entire books from beginning to end instead of starting one, getting two chapters in and forgetting about it until I find it under the bed a few months later. OK, so I still mix up my kids’ names, but I might be doing that forever.

Having been in the throes of momnesia for most of the last ten years, I wonder if I’ll be amazed at how well my brain functions once Owen’s 4 or 5 years old. On the other hand, I think I’ll kind of miss that slightly fuzzy, baby-focused mindset. In a culture where we’re all expected to be running around here and there and thinking on our feet all the time, it’s nice to be able to take a mental break and just hone in on a sweet little baby.

So moms, if you’re feeling a little scatterbrained, don’t worry about it: it serves a function, and it’ll pass. But take it from me: do get out that journal or baby book and start writing down those cute things your baby is doing.

Now. Before you forget.

Now that my older two boys are a few months past their eighth and tenth birthdays, I’m facing some new parenting territory: how independent should they be at this age, and how do I walk that delicate line between age-appropriate sheltering and smothering?

Not to go all “back in my day” on you, readers, but by the time I was 8 years old there was scarcely a spot within a mile radius of my house that I hadn’t covered, on bike, foot or both. It wasn’t unusual for kids to have that kind of freedom then … all my friends joined me as I romped around the neighborhood, to the corner store, in and out of backyards.

To allow your children that much freedom and that little direct supervision these days is practically seen as neglect. In fact, depending on how you interpret the laws, in some states it might be illegal to let your kids - even big kids of 11 or 12 - play alone at the neighborhood park or walk themselves to school. And even though I always meant to give my kids more opportunities for independence than the average kid might get, it was hard to fight back against a tide of fear-based messages that parents are inundated with today:

“You can’t turn your back even for a second!”

“The world is a dangerous place, and parents can’t be too careful!”

So I didn’t let my boys ride their bikes all the way around the block, or go to the playground alone, or navigate their own trip to the store for a candy bar. It wasn’t that I thought they were at much risk for befalling a terrible fate, but because their friends’ parents were saying “no” and it felt strange to go against the socially-acceptable grain.

I spoke to Mike Lanza, founder of Playborhood.com, a Web site dedicated to creating neighborhoods where children can - and want to - play freely. He says that while fear for their children’s safety is one of the biggest reasons that parents are wary of letting their kids roam the neighborhood, the fear may be misplaced: as he points out, the risk of a child being killed as a pedestrian or abducted or killed by a stranger combined only adds up to one-third the risk of kids being killed as passengers in a car.

And then there are the soaring rates of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes that have coincided with kids’ increasing move away from outdoor and active play.

Could it be that driving our kids everywhere and letting them stay indoors is less safe then letting them run around outside or walk places themselves?

Numerous researchers and the American Academy of Pediatrics deem unstructured free play “essential.” And that kind of play, says Lanza, happens most naturally outdoors, in multi-age groups of children … with minimal direct organization or supervision from grown-ups.

According to Lanza, the public needs a shift in perception. “In generations past, it was a no-brainer to let your kids run around outside all day, but now, the no-brainer is keeping them in the house,” he said. “We need to get the message out there that letting children play outside is good and responsible parenting.”

The bottom line is, I want my kids to know the kids in the neighborhood, to ride their bikes to the park and play in the dirt and pick up sticks and lay under trees … without my having to organize every last second of it for them. I think it’s an important part of childhood, and it’s not something I’m willing to let my kids go without. After all, lfe is full of risks, and there’s no way to eliminate them even if we keep our kids under lock and key. But do we want our children to live their lives looking fearfully over their shoulder - or live that way ourselves? There must be some comfortable middle ground between constant hovering and neglect.

I know the urge to cushion those precious offspring in protective bubble wrap, but as it turns out, that may not be the best way to raise happy, healthy kids.

It seems scary and unfamiliar, but maybe the best thing we can do for them is loosen the reins a bit.

this post will be cross-posted at Chicago Moms Blog.

Here’s my latest column, in which I address the Jolie=baby-collecting maniac and kids=drudgery issues:

recently read an article on ABCNEWS.com claiming that Angelina Jolie, who by all visual evidence will soon be celebrating the birth of her fifth child (second biological), is a “compulsive mother,” driven to parenthood as a way to self-medicate and escape her “inner emptiness.”

“Mother Earth” types like Jolie and Mia Farrow (who has 14 children, some of whom are adopted), the story claimed, are often just hiding deep depression and feelings of emptiness behind domesticity and child-rearing. The implication? Having kids isn’t “real life,” it’s just a way to escape from it for a while.

After puzzling over that logic for a while, I was treated to yet another anti-breeding viewpoint: an article in Reason Magazine, by “voluntarily child-free” writer Ronald Bailey, suggests that the reason people no longer tend to have lots of kids (or in many cases, any kids at all) is that child-rearing is a grisly chore, and people don’t like children.

The article quotes psychologist and “happiness researcher” Daniel Gilbert, whose research shows that people “derive more satisfaction from eating, exercising, shopping, napping or watching television than taking care of their kids,” and that taking care of children is seen to be only marginally more pleasant than doing housework.

Not only are most parents miserable, asserts the article, but we lie about it, too: “Gilbert suggests that people claim their kids are their chief source of happiness largely because it’s what they are expected to say.”

I have no doubt that there are parents who reflexively rank parenthood as their No. 1 joy in life because they think they’re supposed to. On the other hand, there’s a big difference between finding happiness in parenting and finding happiness in every minute of every day spent caring for kids. Parenthood can be intense and exhausting, hilarious and tedious, all in the same day; and 1-year-olds don’t always make the best conversationalists. But the satisfaction of parenthood isn’t something you can take apart, rating each little task to come up with an average “happiness score.” Like all relationships, raising kids is too complex for that.

So why do we question the motives surrounding the decision to have children (or not) with so much more skepticism than we do other decisions? If a celebrity had a large circle of friends, no armchair psychologist would bother to question whether she was trying to “fill a void” with companionship. It would instead be accepted that creating relationships with other human beings is a normal, natural and human desire. On the other hand, I’m getting the feeling that these people wouldn’t believe me if I told them I genuinely enjoy my children … most of the time.

Sure, some days I might rate taking a nap or watching a favorite TV show higher on the satisfaction-o-meter than changing a diaper or even pushing a swing (for the 18 zillionth time). But at some point, a life of nothing but “satisfying activities” could get pretty boring. I believe that most people, whether they have or want kids or not, are looking for something more substantial.

The point of having children isn’t just to make yourself happy, though our “me” culture certainly tries to tell us so. Fulfillment comes from adding value to the world we live in and learning about giving, self-sacrifice and putting another person’s needs above our own. There are lots of ways to give back to the world, and I don’t mind at all if somebody chooses not to have kids. But please don’t find me naïve if I assert that having children has added much more to my life than it’s taken away.

Finding fulfillment as a mom - even a mom of many - doesn’t mean I’m compulsive, avoiding life, trying to re-define myself, seeking attention, mentally ill or one-dimensional. It simply means I love my kids, even on the days I don’t like all the work that comes along with them, and I find that having them in my life is rewarding.

A lot more rewarding than a lifetime full of nothing but naps and television, anyway.

My latest column…

Since having kids, we’ve tossed around the idea of getting a puppy or kitten a few times, but have always decided against it once we consider all the factors: fur everywhere, litter-training or house-training, obedience training. (Hey, at least babies use diapers, toddlers don’t shed all over the sofa, and kids rarely jump up on strangers or chase squirrels into the middle of the street.) I still like animals, but just didn’t feel up to the task of combining kids and pets.

But as it turns out, I can have both, wrapped up into a cute little blonde package. My 4-year-old son William has decided that he is a cat.

At first, it was cute. “Not William - I’m KITTY,” he would protest when I called him to dinner. The fact that he pronounces his “K” like a “T” added to our amusement.

When he began asking for his dinners in a bowl on the floor, I obliged his whim, happy to encourage his imagination. I scratched his head when he bumped it against my hand (for a kid who’s never had a pet, he sure has a cat’s mannerisms down). I carried on conversations with him in which his end sounded something like “Meow meow me want meow chocolate meow meow chip meow cookie!”

And somewhere along the way - I think it was the day when he jumped up in my lap and licked my arm - Will’s “cat phase” went from cute to slightly disturbing.

It’s impossible to carry on a conversation with a kid who inserts a “meow” or two between every other word. He insisted on crawling on all fours, even though there’s snow on the ground, and meows piteously and holds out his paws - er, hands - to be carried down stairs.

When people began giving us funny looks when he purred at me in public, I began wondering if there was some well-known fact about children who act like animals that everybody was clued in to except me.

For example, it’s common knowledge that mass murderers were likely to have been bed-wetters, fire starters and cruel to animals as children. Maybe, I thought, there’s also an established link between children who act like animals and those who grow up to compulsively chew old shoes or urinate in public.

A little digging online reassured me a bit: acting like an animal is developmentally normal for a 4-year-old child.

In fact, pretend play in general is considered to be an important stepping stone in a preschooler’s development - experts say that it helps children learn to communicate and express emotions and can increase their imagination and creative skills.

But pretend play is one thing; a break with reality is another. Can it really be considered normal when a child prefers to curl up on the floor to sleep?

I was hoping to raise a human boy, not a hairless 40-pound kitty that pees on the toilet seat and leaves peanut butter smears on my shirt when he rubs his “whiskers” on me. And cats don’t even do anything useful. Couldn’t he have chosen to be a service animal, perhaps a pack mule or a mail-carrying pigeon?

I know it could be worse. For instance, William could have decided to act like a poop-flinging monkey or a rabid woodchuck.

And I feel extremely fortunate that he has not been around actual cats enough to observe them cleaning their nether regions, because if he’d decided to give that a try too, I might have been in for a very unpleasant parent-teacher conference.

Of course, one day, when Will’s getting my car into fender benders or blowing curfews, I’m sure I’ll look back with nostalgia at simpler days when the most annoying thing he did was lap milk directly from a bowl after finishing his cereal, rather than using a spoon. And for the moment, I’ve found myself growing quite fond of my furless little feline and wouldn’t mind if he sticks around for a while.

As long as he finds his own way to the litter box, that is.

I wrote about my vow to unplug my kids–Monday through Friday, anyway–in my latest column:

When my kids were little, I was adamant that I would never allow video games in the house.

“Those things rot your brain!” I’d protest to my husband, whose brain, I figured, must be at least three-quarters rotted by then.

I wasn’t entirely scientific in my protest. My only evidence was a gut feeling that there was something really WRONG about the look that came over a kid’s (and, OK, my husband’s) face when they were deeply involved in an on-screen battle or quest.

read the rest, then do tell us about how video games work in your house. Do your kids play? Do you or your spouse? Do you set limits or give them free reign? And most important: do you play Rock Band?

You just never know what will get some people good and fired up. My snow day column, of all things, has gotten me a few critical comments now, and one of them definitely has a point. A reader took me to task for making a generalization about how snow days can often throw off a working mom’s schedule, but, as he pointed out, in his office there are two men who are first in line for “snow day” duty.

So, I generalized, and for that I apologize. Of course, I should have said working parent.

At first I was feeling really guilty, thnking I was a hypocrite for poking fun at my disgruntled e-mailer the other day when it turned out I’d done the same thing (made a sexist assumption). But here’s the difference, as I see it: “Ben” was making an assumption about my specific home life based on, well, based on nothing, since if he’d read a few more of my columns he would know I was a working mom. I was generalizing about a group of people based on my experiences–still not okay, necessarily, but in any generalization there is some–sometimes much–truth. And the truth is, in the vast majority of families I know, the mother is the one who takes on the most responsibility for snow days and sick days–regardless of whether she’s working or not.

Even in our household, where we have a pretty even partnership, it’s generally assumed that I’m the one who will make it work if one of the kids has to stay home. Now, part of that is because I work mostly from home, which you can technically do with kids in the house. Technically–but it doesn’t always work out that way, especially if a child is sick and needy. But if I have a big deadline on the day that school’s cancelled or snot is flowing, I would have to ask my husband to take the day off, and though he’d probably do it, there would be some grumbling and gnashing of teeth first.

What about you? In your family, who is the automatic stay-home-on-sick-and-snow-days parent? Do you take turns? Work it out depending on who’s got more going on that day? Or does one parent or the other stay home most of the time? If that’s the case, did you set it up that way by design…or default? If you’re an at-home parent, then what about the dual-working couples you know?