It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon and I find my husband in bed with a towel on his forehead and a key stuck in his mouth. I start to laugh, but am shushed by my daughter who solemnly informs me:

“Daddy is not well. I’m taking his temature. I’m the doctor.”

Ordinarily I would take the opportunity – rare as they are — to slip out of the room and go reply to email or read a book. But this time it’s different. My daughter is barely three and she’s playing doctor!

“Isn’t she a little young for this?” I ask my husband, with obvious pride.

He takes the key out of his mouth and replies: “She must have seen it on television.”

Patiently my daughter sticks the key back down his throat. Then she piles books, a doll and puzzle pieces on his belly.

“Voodoo medicine,” my husband lisps through the key.

“Isn’t this kind of great that she wants to play doctor?” I prod.

“Being a doctor isn’t what it used to be,” he says.

Undaunted, I hop in bed beside him and announce that I’m not feeling very well either. Visions of my daughter in scrubs, looking smart like Ellen Pompeo on Grey’s Anatomy, pop into my head.

Flash forward: I’m tan and wrinkled by a sunlit pool playing bridge with my old lady friends.

“Did I mention that my daughter found a cure for cancer?” I ask.

“A million times,” my friend Kim replies. “Now play your card.”

Back on the bed, my daughter feels my forehead. “Hot,” she says.

My husband hands her the key. “Take mommy’s temperature,” he says. She sticks the key in my mouth. “No, it’s not all the way in,” he says. She jams it in further, the metal cracking against my teeth. Painful, but we all need to make sacrifices.

“Great bedside manner,” my husband jokes, as he slips out of bed and runs off to check a cycling race on his computer. I remain still as my daughter piles on the books and the doll and the puzzle pieces.

It’s getting annoying, though, sucking on a key and so I pull it out and ask her to read it. “No,” she says and jams it in again. “Mommy is sick.”

A month later my daughter gets a doctor’s kit for Christmas from her Uncle Simon. (He tells me he had me in mind, more than her. Am I so transparent?)

She barely looks at it and I don’t push it. I don’t want to scare her off.

Then early one Saturday morning shortly after Christmas we’re sitting by our still decorated tree (I can never bear to take it down). My daughter tells me that I don’t look too good and makes me lie on the couch. I quickly comply.

She looks into her kit, slightly confused. She’s seen a medicine bottle before and so pulls it out. After that, she’s lost. She doesn’t know what to do with the tools. I catch her glancing at the Lego set and so tell her I’ll be the doctor to show her how it works.  She gets comfortable on the couch, neatly spreading her princess gown around her.

I try to find my pulse, thinking that ought to interest her. Sadly, I can’t find it and she’s close to jumping up. I open her kit and use the plastic stethoscope and then check her blood pressure, putting the little cuff around her arm and pumping the small balloon. I look into her ears and knock on her knees with the other tools. I’ve no clue what to do with the tweezers and so use them to squeeze her fingers. She’s really getting into it and so I tell her it’s her turn to be the doctor and try to get on the couch. She won’t budge.

“I’m not feeling well,” I say. “If only there were a doctor…”

“I’m not the doctor,” she says. “You’re doctor mommy. I’m the beautiful princess.”

Image by Sweet Caroline Design & Photo

Toys “R” Us is under fire for selling a doll that allegedly curses. One of the “You & Me Interactive Play & Giggle Triplet Dolls”, which sell for $39.00, supposedly says “crazy b&%$#!”. It’s the baby in pink. Whether she’s referring to one of her sisters or her pint-sized mommy is unclear.

The blogosphere is abuzz with people taking sides: irate parents, a lawyer ready to sue, a mom who couldn’t care less. Check out Toys “R” Us customer reviews. They’re funny.

One woman writes: “I bought these babies for my granddaughter’s birthday, but I won’t be giving them to her. The doll in the pink outfit seems to have a gutter mouth. Perhaps it was her upbringing, but I don’t want my granddaughter calling her Mom, Dad or anyone else for that matter a “Crazy [*]“. I don’t think she was talking about a female dog either!”

A Toys R Us spokesperson says it’s nothing more than baby babble and the company will keep the dolls on the shelves.

I’ve watched the videos and can’t be sure exactly what the doll is saying — though it sure sounds a lot like she’s got a potty mouth and that the toy’s designers were having some fun.

My concern isn’t what some doll I could always take back might say, but what might come out of my own mouth. Our three-year-old parrots everything we say. We try to be careful. Occasionally we slip. So far, she hasn’t noticed. But she will.

Uglier than profanities, however, are the things little kids repeat that you weren’t aware you even said. The other day she told me that I’d have to play by myself because she had very important things to do on her computer. If only I could be returned for a better model.

Image by taberandrew

Flying with baby isn’t what it used to be, says a New York Times story. Pity the poor Lin family with their 18-month-old twins. The children aren’t allowed to stretch in the aisle. A flight attendant couldn’t even spare a cup of milk when the family ran out.

Airlines have cut costs dramatically and so it’s not just that harried attendants are uncooperative, but that they literally don’t have the extra milk. The little they have goes to full-fare paying customers in the better seats.

Anyone who has flown recently with children knows the stories. Because we live overseas, our trips are often across the Atlantic and so particularly long and painful. There are the baggage inspectors who chat up each other instead of unfolding a stroller. (I know it’s not their job, but it’s callous to watch a mom struggle on her own). The flight attendant who wouldn’t help me find a seat by my toddler after the booking agent failed to do so, as well as the desk crew. And then there’s the flight attendant who refused to warm up a bowl of vegetable mash. She told me the airline provided a meal. My daughter was one.

Yet for all of these encounters with rude flight staff, I have many more examples of airline employees and other passengers going out of their way to make travelling with a young child so much easier.

The Delta pilot who carried my bag to my seat, so that I could carry my daughter. On a Lufthansa flight, an attendant insisted on taking my daughter on rounds, even though at two my daughter clearly wasn’t helping. Then there was the Southwest Airlines desk attendant who quietly mentioned the one extra seat on the flight and suggested I put my child (who hadn’t paid) in it.

More often though, it’s fellow passengers who have helped out the most. On one transatlantic flight, a middle-aged couple took turns walking my daughter up and down the aisles. At one point, they took her to their seats and played with her while I napped. They had a grown daughter, they said, but no grandkids. They missed the days when their daughter was young. I required no explanation whatsoever. My only regret was that I failed to get their names and address to send a note. If you’re reading this, kind couple who looked after my kid, “Thank you!”

Another long-haul trip last summer was supposed to stop in Atlanta first. With winds big enough to upend a plane, we were rerouted to Birmingham where the winds were pretty much the same. Three attempts to land failed as the captain pulled up the plane in the final seconds. We were jerked all over the place and I have no doubt everyone aboard that plane was praying. Everyone except my daughter. She was too busy throwing up.

I saw the look on her face seconds before it happened. I had time to grab an air sickness bag. The problem: there wasn’t one. Apparently cost cuts on passenger amenities spare nothing. There wasn’t a single bag in our row. My daughter vomited everywhere, on herself, her chair, the floor, my handbag.

I remained calm enough and started to clean up the mess. But it was the guy next to me who deserves a merit badge for life for good citizenship in the air. He rallied our fellow passengers to send over their air sickness bags. Fortunately the airline had stocked some. Then he got me towels, despite my protests that he remain seated as the plane was still badly shaking. He helped clean up the mess. And most important, he kept me calm and even made me laugh.

All I remember is that he was a building developer from South Florida who in the economic downturn had gone back to building engineering work. I think his name was Steve. Thank you Steve, if that is your name, and thanks also to the Delta pilot (yes, the same pilot who carried my bag), for getting us all on the ground alive.

Image by Aonghus Flynn

My daughter and I are at the park for a play date and picnic. We’re meeting a friend and her daughter, along with two other little girls and their parents. Pretty soon the girls are holding hands and racing around the park – all except my daughter. She tries to catch their hands, but only to have them jerked away.

She wraps an arm around my leg and looks up into my eyes. “They don’t want to play with me,” she says. I try to explain that they go to pre-school together and it will take a little time for them to get to know her. But the heartbreak in her eyes makes me want to throttle those girls.

Seems like only yesterday our babies barely interacted — orbiting each other instead. Now hardly out of diapers they’re already snubbing each other.

Then the lovelies are rolling down a hill. My daughter adores this game and so I encourage her to join them. She runs over shrieking and prepares to roll, but is told in no uncertain terms that she’s not welcome. I know in the world of bullying this is petty larceny, but my daughter isn’t yet three and she’s totally distraught.

I’m furious. The girl’s mom (my friend) is busy talking to the other parents and so I say to her kid (a cheeky child I quite like): “you wouldn’t like it very much if someone said that to you, so knock it off.”

Wrong response. Now it’s me and my daughter the girls are avoiding.

I have no choice but to rat on them. My daughter is stubborn. She’ll keep pursuing them no matter how many times she’s rebuffed and my heart can’t take it.

My friend fixes the problem after a mommy daughter talk, but it’s not long before it starts again. At this point my friend turns to psychological warfare. She scoops up my daughter and starts playing with her. It’s just the thing. Her daughter is jealous and soon all of the girls are playing happily together. Only I hold a grudge.

I remember what it’s like to be bullied. It’s not the pain and embarrassment I want my daughter to avoid – well, I do, of course. But these things we get past and can make us stronger. It’s her thinking that kids who treat her poorly are justified. Low self-esteem is something most people never shake off.

And there are so many other consequences. A recent study found that students at schools with more reported bullying fared worse on standardized tests.

“Study after study reveals lasting marks on people’s confidence, willingness to take risks, ability to trust or form quality relationships, and ability to contribute and thrive in life,” writes Kelly Valen in the Huffington Post.

CNN Anderson Cooper’s special report on bullying and suicide is devastating. The young kids interviewed said they weren’t at all surprised a bullied child would take his or her own life.

How frightening is that?

And so it all begins at a picnic on a playground. Three little girls shunning a fourth. I know it could just as easily have been my daughter doing the shunning. Happily for us all, parents intervened and our day ended with three moms and a dad stretched out in the sun as four squealing girls took turns rolling down a hill.

If only all bullying incidents ended this way.

Image by PinkStock photos.

More bad news for parents of young children looking for the occasional break. It turns out that even brief exposure to SpongeBob SquarePants, a frenetic and wildly popular Nickelodeon cartoon about a sea sponge and his friends, impairs pre-schoolers’ brain power.

The LA Times wrote that Angeline Lillard and Jennifer Peterson of the University of Virginia’s department of psychology tested 60 four-year-olds to see if nine minutes of SpongeBob affected skills associated with performing well in school, such as paying attention, remembering things, solving problems and delaying gratification.

The children were randomly assigned to three groups; one to watch the cartoon, another to watch a slower-paced PBS show for kids, and a third to draw with markers and crayons. Afterwards, the kids were tested for negative immediate effects.

The kids watching the Nickelodeon show scored significantly lower than the other kids, according to the researchers.

“Connecting fast-paced television viewing to deficits in executive function … has profound impacts for children’s cognitive and social development that need to be considered and reacted to,” wrote University of Washington pediatrics professor Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, an expert on children and media, in an editorial with the study, according to the Time story.

Oops.

Nickelodeon responded that the show was aimed at children 6-11.

Until reading about this study, I’d never actually watched the show. Nor had my daughter – not to say she hasn’t watched plenty of other programs that are probably bad for her. I immediately watched some episodes online.

Here’s my conclusion: there are lots of reasons not to expose your kid to this show — diminished brain power aside. Do you really want your sponge-like pre-schooler parroting these irritating characters? Just watching the show long enough to form an opinion about it gave me a headache.

And then there’s the lack of humor. My husband lets our not-even-three-year-old watch the Simpsons. I’m not wild about this, and have switched it off when it gets violent. But at least Bart and his family and friends are funny.

This mom says “yes” to occasional TV, but “no” to TV that’s annoying. That seems as good a guide as any university study.

Image by Daimen Richards.

Here’s a surprise. Airlines, some movie theaters, restaurants and even shops don’t want noisy kids around. Earlier this summer, Malaysia Airlines banned kids from some of its first-class cabins. Then a restaurant in Pennsylvania made the news with a ban on kids under 6. The other day I noticed our corner store near Wimbledon has a sign on the door that forbids more than two kids entering the shop at a time.  I was pretty shocked – our neighbourhood is made up mostly of families with young children – but I get it.

The last few decades have seen the rise of the FWOBs (families with-out boundaries). Their houses look like Chuck E. Cheese’s. At shops, their toddlers pull items off shelves without returning them, and at restaurants their precious little ones mull over menus as harried waitresses pretend to find it all so charming. They’re the ones in the business class lounges with the loud kids, who they occasionally shush with an “inside voice please,” as if it’s okay to scream outside.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a mom too, of a two-year-old. It’s not like I believe that children should be “seen, but not heard.” I just don’t want to hear them all the time. If we can’t control our kids, then companies may be justified in doing it for us.

The best advice I ever got on child rearing came from my friend Cathy. She said “raise your kids not to be annoying to others.” She didn’t mean shut them up or curb their spirit. She meant don’t let them kick the chair in front of them on a plane or let strangers babysit them on a train or pretend not to notice as they deposit the contents of a restaurant table on the floor. It’s important in life to learn to be likeable. (My friend’s daughter married a billionaire, so I follow whatever advice she offers.)

My husband and I came to parenting late. We were DINKs (dual income no kids) until our 40s and I guess our tolerance for annoying child behaviour is low. We want our daughter to feel well-loved, but not feel like she’s the center of the universe.

Another friend, Channing, always seems to get it right and so I often copy her parenting. We used to eat at their house a lot when their kids were young. We’d spend about 30 minutes reading and playing with the kids and then they were sent to bed. Perfect. I love my friends’ kids, but I didn’t come to dinner to play with them all night.

Last night, we had our own dinner party. A new French-Senegalese friend said the problem in the west is that we no longer allow strangers to tell our kids to behave. Even if they’re throwing sand in other kids’ eyes or tossing trash on the sidewalk, adults are supposed to ignore it. In France, she said, we view children as part of society and so we all have an interest in seeing they behave. If a kid is acting up in public, she said, you can be sure someone’s grandmother will say something.

And so there we were – including me and all my good parenting intentions – around the table after eight. Our daughter should have been in bed, but she was excited by the guests and wouldn’t go to sleep without a fuss. We let her linger rather than put her to bed as we should have. At one point, she was eating two breadsticks covered in hummus and making a mess. When she reached for a third, the French husband, said, “you can’t have it, it’s mine.”  Our daughter backed off. I wasn’t annoyed in the least. I only wished I’d gotten her to behave myself.

Soon after, I put her to bed. I’m crazy about my daughter, but the evening wasn’t about her. It’s important she understands that not everything is.

Image by dariuszka.

Months ago I wrote a diatribe against Dora the Explorer, accusing the show’s producers of peddling baby crack. I still think it turns toddlers into zombies looking for their next fix, but I’ve since discovered the show’s other benefits. It turns out that the promise of a single episode of Dora is compelling enough to get a recalcitrant toddler to use the potty.

For weeks we’ve been trying to potty train our daughter. It’s been a disaster. She’s peed on me, on my husband, all over the house. Everywhere save into the bright pink potty we carefully chose.

She’s grown really clingy too and insists on sitting on my lap to eat breakfast, color, play with Legos, etc.

It’s all very sweet to be sure, but I’m a bit of a neat freak and so not that into being peed on.

The books and advice sites say you can’t get angry. You’re supposed to smile and say encouraging things like “great job” and “you’re getting to be such a big girl!”  and “let’s call Grandma to tell her what good work you’re doing!” as you scoop poo off the kitchen floor. Something tells me grandma didn’t potty train this way.

We’ve tried every treat you can imagine. Stickers, ice cream, other TV shows.  On day ten in round three of training, I taped five episodes of Dora. Setting aside my strong aversion to this loud and manipulative show — and overriding our house ban against it — I offered it up as reward for a successful pee or poop in the potty.

It worked!

Think of it: the allure of Dora is so profound that it can get a child in her terrible twos  – one who the day before refused to sit on the potty for ten seconds in return for ice cream – to properly use her potty. That’s a little worrying.

And wonderful. It’s day two under the new incentive scheme and – although I hate to jinx it – our daughter is three for three. And so, I guess all I can say is: thank you creepy wonderful Dora.

Images by Sarah Ackerman and mollypop.

We’re eating ice cream and I’m desperately trying to get a photo of my two-year-old with her grandfather. He smiles and kneels beside her in a way that’s painful for an 85-year-old. My daughter sticks out her lower lip and frowns before turning away.

I’m furious. I’ve been trying for days to get a single decent shot of the two of them.

I’ve already given her ice cream and so I’m out of carrots. A stick is useless when shooting for smiles. My father, good-natured as ever, laughs it off and my daughter finishes her strawberry ice cream in a funk.

It’s hard to blame her. She’s suffering from photo fatigue. We’re on the annual grandparent tour and she’s been photographed relentlessly, by me and my parents, all in a sad but understandable attempt to make up for time not spent together.

My husband and I have lived abroad for more than a decade. I always argued to my family that while we didn’t see each other often, we spent longer periods together because instead of the standard two-week vacation given to US employees, we got five.

Then we had a baby. My parents would prefer frequent weekend visits to two or even three weeks of intense quality time. Little children change so quickly. They want to bond with her and that’s impossible to do on a two-week annual trip.

And so we race through activities that are more photo-shoot than pleasurable outing. No moment goes undocumented. My daughter feeds a duck at the zoo. Snap. She blows bubbles with her grandmother. Snap, snap. She takes a bite of ice cream. Snap, snap, snap. No wonder she’s cranky.

I’m the worst offender. We waited to have a child. Now our parents are older. Keenly aware that the clock is ticking,  I snap wildly at everything trying in vain to capture these fleeting moments. It’s all so sad. The worst part is that the incessant photos take the life out of our time together.

The last morning I’m alone with my daughter on the beach for a precious hour before we pack. For once, I leave the camera behind. My daughter floats on a wave for the first time. She runs screaming after sandpipers and slides down the dunes. We hold hands and run into the water. None of it is photographed. It’s stored only in my memory. Later I feel sad realizing her grandparents missed it.

Images by imcountinufoz and GerryT.

My daughter doesn’t know who Kate Middleton is, but at two she already wants to be a princess. She loves pink and dress-up and to order us around. Her favourite movie is Cinderella (what were we thinking buying the DVD?). At a gift shop the other day she raced straight to a shelf of tiaras and tried them all on before I could stop her.

I have nothing against princesses. It’s how they become princesses that bothers me. At least in the fairy tales it seems that being pretty and nice is enough. I want my daughter to be pretty and nice, of course, but I also want her to be curious and funny and athletic and artistic and brave. I don’t want her hanging out hoping for a better life.

In London, Kate Middleton and her sister are known as “The Wisteria Sisters”, for their ability to climb socially. The press rarely tells us much else about Kate other than that she’s a nice middle class girl who looks fabulous in clothes, plays tennis and sails, and has plenty of patience. She met Prince William a decade ago at University and was later uncharitably dubbed “Waity Katie”.

What we rarely hear about are her interests – supposedly she likes photography and painting – or how she spends her days. It’s seldom mentioned if she’s ever held a job, though of course she has one now.

The whole princess myth needs an update. Even beauty queens these days are med students and aspiring scientists and judges.

Then Kate Middleton entered Westminster Abbey radiant and waving and  gorgeous and left a Princess, or technically the Duchess of Cambridge, but really Princess Catherine has a nice ring to it. You couldn’t help but get caught up in the magic.

My daughter and I watched the ceremony cuddled up on the couch — me a bit more keen than she. She’s more excited about the street parties starting outside our London door in a couple of hours.

When you think about it, Cinderella’s not so bad either. In fact, she’s quite appealing in the stylish ‘50s Disney version with her slim waist and natural charm and it is kind of cool the way she talks to animals.

Who am I kidding anyway? I wore a tiara on my wedding day. I felt just like a princess.

Photos by Gene Hunt and americanistadechiapas.

This morning I attended my last mommy/baby class, the kind where you sit with your kid on your lap and sing songs and clap. My daughter has outgrown them.  Cynical about these classes at first, you’d think I’d be happy. Instead I nearly cried.

Some readers may remember me whining about these very same classes a year ago. I thought if I were paying someone to teach my kid something, they could get on with it while I sipped a cappuccino with my new mom friends. The wiser among you may have realized how foolish I was being. Now it’s me who’s not ready to move on.

Doting parents will tell you the favourite age of their child is whatever age the child is. It keeps getting better and better they say. But that age when a child still flings himself with total abandon into your arms and sits happily on your lap to sing or clap soft hands seems awfully sweet.

I remember the first class. I hadn’t signed up. I was heading to the park with my daughter when I saw a group of moms walking into a pavilion. The weather was lousy (typical for London) and so I followed them, figuring they knew something I didn’t. Turns out it was a sing and sign class, where babies and toddlers are taught to sign their desire for milk or for a fresh diaper. The teacher, Joanna, said I could stay.

I’d tested out other mommy and baby classes, but always felt put off by the chirpy types who tend to teach them. Joanna wasn’t like that. She has a droll sense of humor, while still being sweet with the kids.  She’s not controlling either. If a kid wants to sit in a corner and bang on the wall, she’ll let him.

Signing is only part of the lesson. The kids also learn how to follow simple commands  – march, clap, play instruments – and to play nicely with others. Parents learn to sign too, though some signs have come in less handy in our American household such as  signing that you’d like some “beans on toast”. We moms also get a safe space to play silly games with our kids – not to mention a break from our daily routine. You’re never really sure how much sign language your kid is absorbing, but it’s kind of beside the point.

And then there’s the “running hug”, that every kid in our class seemed to do. They’re orbitting the other toddlers as if they’ve forgotten all about you. Then they catch your eye and run as fast as they can and fling themselves into your arms. I’ll sit through a lot of bad happy clappy for that.

So there I was this morning singing and signing the “Time to Go Home” song for the very last time and feeling embarrassingly close to tears. I kept it together by thinking first of work and then of how mortifying it would be to blubber in front of these British mums.

As it turns out, I wasn’t alone. A group of us shared lunch after the final lesson. Only one of the children would be going back for another class. One family was moving away. The rest of the children were too big and classes going forward wouldn’t involve us moms. Everyone confessed to being on the verge of tears as the class wound down.

So much of parenting, everyone says, is learning to let go. I just didn’t realize that process would start so soon.

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography and Mykl Roventine.