Third Child, Fourth Child

In this and my previous post on my two older daughters, I am concentrating on their different environments. Then I will tackle the far more fascinating question of persistent individual differences. Because I kept journals and wrote graduate school papers when Anne and Michelle were young, I tend to write less about Rose and Carolyn, my third and fourth daughters. Again, they grew up in a different world than their older sisters. By Rose's birth I was a La Leche Leader and a fervent believer in attachment parenting. Both were born at home, both nursed as toddlers, both enjoyed the family bed in infancy. Both were carried far more in the front back and back pack than their older sisters. I had developed my own mothering style; I was no longer captive to the latest book I had read.

Both had wonderful older sisters. When Rose was born, Anne was 5 and Michelle was 3 1/2. I had absolutely no worries about an older sisters' trying to hurt the baby. My only worry was that one of them would try to carry Rose around and drop her, but that never happened. By two months old, Rose loved lying on the bed and watching her sisters jump up and down. Anne and Michelle loved to make nests on the floor for Rose, and they would all play happily for a very long time. Michelle particularly spent countless hours amusing Rose. We have more pictures of Michelle with baby Rose than we do of me with all of my daughters combined.

Rose's first two years was absolutely tied to her sisters' schedules. During her infancy, I had to take her out three times a day regardless of the winter weather. Michelle went to nursery school five long city blocks away, five days a week, 9 to 12. Anne went to grade school in Soho, near the World Trade Center. Her dad took her down on the subway; I had to meet her bus on 23rd St. and 7th Avenue at 3pm every day. Getting infant Rose and tired, napless, 3 -year-old Michelle to that bus stop every afternoon was extremely stressful. I put Rose in the corduroy snugli and wrapped an old peacoat of my husband around both of us. During Rose's second year, their dad took both Anne and Michelle downtown; Michelle attended a Montessori nursery school two blocks away from Anne's school. In addition to meeting Anne's 3pm bus, I took Rose in the backpack on the subway every day to pick Michelle up at nursery school at noon.

It got easier the year Rose was 2 and Michelle had joined Anne in grade school. I only had to do the 3 PM bus pickup. Several days a week Rose went to a toddler playgroup a block away. Rose was traumatized by the move to Maine when she was 2 1/2. Before we bought our house in Bangor, we rented an apartment in Hamden Highlands; we had a frog pond right next to the house. I quickly found a playgroup for Rose, and she was excited about the first meeting. We got out of the car and were quickly led into the barn with a cow, horse, pig, and ducks. Rose was hysterical. Playgroup was supposed to involve elevators, not barn animals.

Our lives had changed dramatically when Carolyn was born in 1982. We lived in a house, not in a high rise; we owned a car for the first time. Both Carolyn and Rose spent lots of time at Anne's and Michelle's school. Skitikuk, a unique school for 45 children 5 to 18, was in a old barnhouse, with abundant fields around; they even had ducks and three horses. I taught a baby development class with Carolyn as the experiment. We always went to the weekly talent shows. I found a playgroup for Rose without horses, and she went to nursery school three days a week when she was 4.

When we moved back to Long Island, Rose was 5 and Carolyn was 17 months. Thankfully, the grade school was a block and a half from our house. Carolyn went to playgroups until she was 3, nursery school 2 mornings a week when she was 4, and 3 mornings when she was 4. She saw her grandparents at least three or four times a week. Carolyn had adoring, doting older sisters until she got to be about 5, and everyone discovered how much fun it was to tease her. She was an incredibly good loser, so she was welcomed to play games with her sisters by the time she was 4. From kindergarten to senior year, any teachers who had all four of them found Carolyn the most delightful, the friendliest, the best adjusted.

Grandmotherly Advice to My Younger Self

For the last few days, I have been rereading a journal I kept in 1976-1977 and sharing my absurd mistakes with you. This is a post advising my younger self on apartment living with young children.

• Do not leave a three-bedroom Manhattan apartment costing $350 a month and move to Bangor, Maine, 450 miles away from grandparents who are now 20 miles away.
• It is not possible to recreate a childhood 60 feet by 270 feet backyard on a 6 by 46 feet terrace on the 20th floor.
• Take them to grandma's house more often, where they can climb trees, play softball, play volleyball, learn croquet, learn to garden.
• Forget about the terrace sandbox. The terrace is not the beach.There is a sandbox playground right outside the house. Sand in the house is unbearable. Visit grandma and take them to Jones Beach.
• Keep the swimming pool but detach the hose once it is filled up. By the time they figure out how to attach it, they might be less interested in watering hapless victims 20 stories below.
• Confine messy art projects involving glue, finger paints, tempera paints, play dough to kitchen or terrace. Buy somewhat fewer art supplies ; I don't need enough adequate for a nursery school.
• Buy fewer toys and concentrate on sharing toys.
• Get outside every single day when the temperature is above freezing and maybe even then. Children love snow, rain, wind, fog.
• Be firmer about naptime and bedtime.
• Use babysitters more. Take advantage of grandparents' offers for weekend breaks.
• Continue part-time editing, if only a few hours a week.
• Only do housework, cooking, laundry, shopping when the kids are awake and involve them from the time they are 1.
• Try harder to confine food to kitchen and terrace. Accept I will not always succeed..
• Do not take toddlers to playgroup five days a week.
• Try harder to contain smaller toys like legos, blocks, little people, doll furniture, puzzles in the playroom.
• Respect my limits. Don't try to be mother of the year. Know when to say enough.
• Most importantly, make more time for us as a couple. Always putting the children first gradually eroded our marriage and laid the seeds of the divorce, which was infinitely more traumatic for the kids than if we had left them more.

First Child, Second Child

This is from a graduate school paper on child development I wrote in 1977, when Anne was 4 and Michelle was 2.
I am still realizing to what extent the mother I am is shaped by the child I am mothering. When I had only one child, I congratulated myself for all of Anne's superior qualities and blamed myself for her troublesome ones. Since I've had 2 children, I've become remarkably more tolerant of other mothers and of myself. I've also grown to understand why my my mom, after mothering 6 kids, has always been quite skeptical of childrearing theories. Since I belong to a community where young parents try to help each other through babysitting cooperatives, cooperative playgroups and nursery schools, and mothers' support groups, I've had the chance to observe many children of similar ages interact with their parents. When I first moved here when Anne was 17 months, I was quick to correlate the children's characteristics with their parents' childrearing practices. Now I am humbly aware of how infinitely complex the whole question is.

The only dramatic change in our lives beween Anne's and Michelle's births was our move to Chelsea from the Upper West Side. We still lived on a high floor in an apartment with a terrace and spectacular views. But although I was still at home full-time and their dad was gone from 8 to 6, their day-to-day routine was completely different. When Anne was born, none of my NYC friends had children; consequently no one I knew was home during the day. To relieve my isolation, I frequently visited my parents and my husband's parents on Long Island. As a result, Vanessa had frequent contact with her grandparents and her teenage aunts and uncles, but very little contact with other babies and toddlers. When Michelle was born, I was immersed in Anne's playgroup, with daily contact with 10 familes and their 2-year-olds. Monday to Friday Michelle was constantly exposed to the stimulation-bedlam of young kids. In fact playing with baby Michelle was playgroup's surefire activity when all else failed. On the other hand, I seldom visited Long Island; our parents and sibs came to visit us. Michelle's comings and goings are always tied to Anne's schedules.

In addition to having different daily routines, they had a rather different mother. After Anne's birth, I still did some free-lance editing. I kept wrestling with the question of if and how and when to combine motherhood with my editing career. By the time Michelle was born, I had wholeheartedly renounced publishing and was fully committed to full-time motherhood when my children were small and had chosen working with young children as my future career. My expectations for myself and my baby had been transformed by what I experienced and by how I had grown during Anne's infancy. I was far freer to respond to my emotions and intuitions about Michelle. I had gained confidence in my own style of mothering and was so longer so swayed by "expert" opinion or my prior expectations of what kind of mother I should be. I was much more relaxed about introducing solids, long-term nursing, the family bed.

Michelle's relationship with me was hardly as symbiotic as my relationship with Anne during infancy. Anne was as much as part of Michelle's life as my husband and I were. Unless Anne was asleep she was almost always in the same room when I nursed or played with Michelle. As soon as Michelle could reliably sit up, we bathed them together. Since Michelle was 8 months old, they've amicably shared the same room. I successfully diminished Anne's jealousy by involving her in every way possible in Michelle's care. I always read to Anne when I was nursing Michelle since she hated playing in her bedroom by herself.

The result? Michelle's social skills seem far more sophisticated than Anne's were at 2. Sometimes she stays at Anne's cooperative nursery school when I am the helping mommy. She knows all the children's names, interacts warmly with them, participates fully in painting, block building, clay, water play, and dress up and manages surprising well at meeting time and story time. She needs to establish eye contact with me fairly often, but she leaves me free to interact with the other children. At home she holds her own with her high-powered sister very well. As I observe her avoiding no-win confrontations with Anne, I try to imitate her skillful mixture of unmistakable self-assertion and judicious compromise. As Michelle chortles, "even Anne loves me."

Favey

This post needs to be read after reading the earlier one on inconsistency. When I forbade Anne to bring her blanket to the playground, I forgot to add, "And you can't bring it to Niger when you are 28 either." This essay was part of Anne's grad school application to Columbia's School of International Affairs, which accepted her. Reading this should bring comfort to all of you who are learning how clueless I was in the early years as Anne's mother. Our children are far easier on us than we are on ourselves.

You are to be photographed with one of your personal belongings. What is the object and why did you select it? Three days after I was born, my father’s mother presented my nervous new parents with a gift: a baby blanket. Loosely woven out of fuzzy white acrylic yarn, interspersed with strands of pale blue, pink, and yellow, and bordered with a satin ribbon, it soon became a permanent fixture in my crib. The earliest black and white photographs taken of me–so early that my newborn legs had not yet uncurled–feature the blanket. There is a photograph, a favorite of my father’s, that shows an infant Anne just learning to hold her head up, sprawled on the blanket with a fledgling copy of Ms. magazine propped over her back.

When I learned to speak, I started calling the blanket “Favey,” a name that baffled my parents until they realized that it was two-year old shorthand for “favorite blanket.” My parents, I now realize, were unusually accepting of security blankets and dependency needs in general. When I was four, there was a famous incident at a dance recital when the teacher refused to let me perform in front of the parents with my blanket. My mother defended me, and I sat out the show. The teacher prophetically warned my mother that I would “make mincemeat” out of her. I prefer to think Anne eroded the old self and help me grow a much more understanding, gentler one. She was not entirely wrong, but I soon learned that there were negotiations in store when I grew older about where it was and was not acceptable to bring Favey: the New York City Ballet was out, but the babysitter’s house was perfectly fine.

I hung on to Favey long after the point that most children give up their security blankets. The blanket suffered its share of wear and tear over the years–the satin border disintegrated, the colored stripes faded, and, most horrifically, my little sister cut a strip out of it to get back at me after a fight–but it stood up remarkably well. It became a standing family joke that I would bring Favey to college. Of course, as I grew older, I developed new and revealing uses for my blanket: I started sleeping with it over my eyes in order to block out the light that I was too lazy to turn off when I had fallen asleep reading in bed; in junior high, I tied it around my wet hair when I went to sleep so that it would be manageable in the morning.

I outgrew these uses for the blanket, but I never seemed to outgrow the blanket itself. When I started college, Favey came with me. I didn’t always sleep with it, but it was always there. It became the only superstition of my life: getting rid of it seemed equivalent to changing your routine when you’re on a batting streak. When I finished college and started traveling around the world as a cost of living surveyor, I brought it with me for good luck, even if I didn’t always remember to unpack it from the suitcase. One of my favorite moments of surveying came when I returned to my hotel room in Hong Kong after a long day only to find that the hotel maid had artfully draped my tattered blanket across the pillow with a mint. When I packed my bags to spend the year in Niger, the blanket came with me. At some point it will need to be retired before it disintegrates completely. I would like to preserve it and hand it down to my own daughter some day.

I have had the opportunity to do amazing things in my life. I have seen some of the truly wondrous places in the world, from the Sahara desert, to Machu Picchu, to the Mekong River Delta. I have jumped out of a plane in Maine and been seventy feet underwater in the Caribbean. I have witnessed one of the poorest countries on earth usher in a new era of hope and democracy. I hope to have a long life in which to add to this list of memories and accomplishments. But ultimately, I believe it is the quality of the love we have shared with others by which our lives should be measured. I can think of no better witnesses to my life than my family–mother, father, three sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins too numerous to count

I love and admire my family for more reasons than I could possibly enumerate on this page. They have always been the most important part of my life: the context in which I first began to define myself as well as my safe haven. That one shredded bundle of acrylic yarn, more gray now than white, is a repository for my memories and a reminder of where I came from. My parents, who respected and trusted a child enough to let her hold on to a security blanket long after others thought she had outgrown it, gave me a valuable gift. I learned from an early age that my own judgment could be trusted, and the confidence that this trust brings has granted me the freedom to strike off in directions that others fear.

Favey at the moment rests at my house. Apparently, now that she is a mother, Anne doesn't need favey. Perhaps she thinks it is a better favey for a daughter. Amusingly, my grandson seems to be getting attached to a burp rag, and everyone is trying very hard to convince Michael to get attached to an adorable light green textured bacon and eggs blanket. My family is taking the question very seriously. Michelle argues that a hotel maid in Hong Kong might be appalled by a 27-year-old burp cloth and Michael will be deprived of his mint.

Inconsistency, September 25, 1976

Reading and posting these entries from 30 years ago is a humbling experience. I feel guilty about how hard I was on Anne, how unreasonable my expectations were. I am going to post Anne's essay on her blanket, written for graduate school in international affairs, so you will know how the story eventually turned out. My other daughters had a far better mother than Anne did; they should be grateful to her for teaching me what battles are worth fighting.

How are my new rules working? Anne dressed herself, but only because she had insisted putting on the clothes she selected for today before she went to bed. She requested oatmeal for breakfast because John had it and then age about 3 spoonfuls. Just as we were leaving, she hit me and I yelled at her. She cried and insisted on taking her bear and blanket to the playground. Then I made the classic mistake and laid down a rule without thinking. I said, "You can't take the blanket outside. It's only for naps. You get it too dirty dragging it everywhere." I closed the apartment door, and she continued to cry. Finally, Anne said, "I need my blanket because it will make me feel better." I was touched and admitted I had made a mistake. She could have her blanket when she wanted to. She could be the blanket boss. The only reason I didn't want her to have the blanket is because I feel embarrassed she is still so attached to it. Far better if I had thought things through before I stated an ultimatum, then revoked it. Such inconsistency teaches her that crying and carrying on works.

My Girls Were Just An Excuse

Every woman needs at least one friend whose house is a bigger disaster than theirs. I am proud to say I have always been that woman for my friends. When my husband and I are alone in the house, we thrive in our mess since our priorities are perfectly compatible. The crisis occurs with my daughters before the new boyfriend becomes the husband. Then I am expected to indulge in a mad frenzy of cleaning so he won't realize until the ring is on his finger what genes his children will inherit.

The Recipe

When people compliment me on my four grown daughters, I laugh: "I know the recipe, but no one would ever follow it." Looking back, I appreciate how absurd we were, but on the other hand, the results of our insane experiment in creative childrearing have been gratifying. All three husbands and one live-in boyfriend come from much neater homes, so it will be fascinating to see how my grandchildren are raised.

Setting Limits with a 4 Year Old

Terrace on the 20th Floor

We lived on the 20th floor of an apartment building on West 28th Street, in Manhattan. We had a terrace that was 46 feet by 6 feet with gorgeous view sof the Hudson River. On the terrace was a kiddy pool, a sand table, a large table for arts and crafts and birthday parties. The terrace had a hose and a drain. The terrace below ours was 46 feet by 12 feet so things thrown off the terrace would likely land on our downstairs neighbor's terrace. I was so thankful our building had odd and even elevators so I never had to meet this unfortunate woman in the elevator. If the kids pointed the hose over the north side of the terrace, they could water pedestrians 20 stories below. They were allowed to blow bubbles and chalk the side of our apartment. We were certifiably crazy, but everyone loved to play at our apartment. Anne, who lives in the same apartment complex, plans to get on the waiting list for this particular apartment.

A day like today convinces me that we have not expected enough of Anne. In many ways she is no easier to manage than she was 14 months ago. I have totally failed to set consistent limits. She has been allowed to do what she wants around the house; we have not expected her to follow any rules to kept the house from becoming intolerably chaotic. I have continually lowered my already low housekeeping standards to tolerate toys in every room, discarded clothing everywhere, sand everywhere, liquids spilled over rugs, chairs, and beds, crumbs underfoot, the terrace resembling a slum. All so Anne won't be repressed, so her creativity won't be reined in by artificial standards of order.

I read too many psychoanalysts on the subject of child care and not enough learning theorists or teachers. Undoubtedly, I misinterpreted what I read about setting limits. It probably never occurred to any of these gentlemen that any woman would be as lax and accepting as I am. Their strictures were appropriate for a compulsive housekeeper. No one advocated turning your living room into the beach.

I sit surrounded by the shambles of our living room. I laid down a whole set of terrace rules for Anne at the dinner table in my worst lecture-room fashion. I know such harangues make little impression on her. Just now she told me to "stop ruining her by talking to me." If she can't follow the terrace rules, she comes right inside.

• No one except me empties the pool
• Absolutely nothing gets thrown off the terrace.
• The hose can only be used to fill up the pool, not to water the ground or the terrace below.
  
• She can only pour water over her own head
• No sand in the swimming pool
• No forcing Michelle to swim
• Only a reasonable amount of water in the sand table
• Sand and water stay around the sandbox and pool; they don't go beyond the card table
• No sand in the apartment
  
• Turn off the hose when I say so
• Help sweep up sand. Buy her a broom and dustpan

Did I succeed in enforcing these rules? Once the pool blew away, but that wasn't Anne's fault. Two years later we moved to a three-bedroom apartment without a terrace, and my mom took the pool and the sandbox. However, the living room was now the playroom, complete with a tent, a six foot blackboard, hundreds of blocks, and hooks in the ceiling for a swing, rings, and a trapeze. We used one of the bedrooms as a living room. Two years after that we moved to Bangor, Maine, and finally had a backyard.

Time Outs for Mommy, 1977

I tried very hard to impose time-outs in her room with strong-willed Anne. But she invariably spent the time trying to kick the door down, and we would both get angrier, than than calmer. I decided a better approach would be to impose a time out on myself. I gave myself excellent advice, but I have had to learn this lessons hundreds of times for the past 30 years, at work, with my aging parents, with my husbands. I go beyond my limits again and again.

When I can't stand it, I should go to my room rather than compel Anne to stay in hers. That's probably the most effective way to deal with endless whining about totally unreasonable demands. I do the girls no favor by permissively allowing them to behave in a manner I ultimately find intolerable and then getting angry at them. Far too often I lhave et them do things I don't want them to do, only to get disproportionately angry when inevitable mess occurred.

I have to learn to pace myself, to protect myself, to know when to retreat to the bedroom or the bathroom when I am losing it. It is no use pretending they live with a perfect mommy who could tolerate anything. Some strictness is better than ager. In general, I am very easygoing and relaxed about what they can do around the house, allowing them great freedom to explore and create. If I find myself getting intensely angry or irritated, they are probably out of bounds and should be stopped. I should trust my emotions more. I rarely get angry at them without any reason. If I am angry at Anne because I am really angry at John (my husband), I'm fully aware of it. That almost never happens when I'm alone with them.

Handling Sibling Rivalry, 1977

I wrote this over 30 years ago. I read this to Anne, my oldest daughter recently, and we collapsed in laughter. What strikes me now is how earnest and intellectual I was trying to be, pretending I could objectively stay above the fray. Some of my advice is excellent; too bad I wasn't able to follow it. My journal entry sounds like a grad school essay. I had obviously read too many parenting books and taken too many contradictory parenting classes..

Perhaps it would help me to write down my ideas on intervening between Anne and Michelle. I'm very concerned not to intervene too much, confirming Anne's self-concept as the mean older sister and Michelle's self-concept as the helpless baby. I don't want to spend the next 15 years as arbitrator, judge, and referee. Anne's and Michelle's relationships with each other will last far longer than my relationship with either of them. They have to learn to cope with each other by themselves. I don't want their relationship to be funneled through me. If we have a third child, Anne and Michelle will very likely always be sharing a room.

On the other hand, I don't want Anne to think she can vent all her frustrations on Michelle ,or Michelle to think I'll never protect her from unprovoked hostility. I don't think it's possible to formulate any rules applicable in all situations. But I'll try to state some general principles.

1. When in doubt about what to do, don't interfere.
2. If I am concerned that one of them could really get hurt, always intervene. If Anne really hurt Michelle, she would feel overwhelming guilt and I would feel overwhelming anger--neither of which emotions she is old enough to handle. In practical terms, that means always being within interfering distance when they are both playing on the slide, on the climbing structure, or on the terrace.
3. When other people are around who would tend to think very badly of Anne, intervene.
4. Protect Anne from Michelle. She should have time alone in her room to paint, to build with blocks, when Michelle is not constantly at her back, intent to destroy what Anne just made. When Anne complains that Michelle is bothering her, respond and help her out. It is completely unreasonable to expect Anne to handle Michelle's interference by herself. I find it hard enough to distract single-minded Michelle.
   
5. Encourage Anne to find solutions to the problem herself. "I'm sorry Michelle keeps knocking down your blocks. Do you have any idea how we can stop her from doing it." I hope some of you can laugh at me as much as I can. Poor Anne. No wonder, she told me, a few years later, "Don't give me any of that active listening crap."
6. Try to spend one hour special time with Anne after dinner. Now that she will be away from me three hours a day in nursery school, this is particularly important.
7. Make a firm rule about no hitting with things. Otherwise the thing gets put in the closet until the next day. "Blocks are for building, not for hitting Michelle. You can have it back tomorrow. End of discussion."
8. When I find it necessary to intervene, use actions not words. No screaming, notgetting angry. Separate them physically. Then, and only then, try to help Anne. "I think you are trying to say something to Michelle. Talk it. Yuo can talk; you don't have to hit. I know how you feel, but I can't let you hurt Michelle. It makes her feel like hitting you."
9. When one of them is likely to continue hurting, use physical restraint. Take her to another room to calm down, telling her she can come back when she can play without hurting.
10. Don't get angry. If I can't intervene without getting angry, don't bother. Michelle is not a helpless baby, and she is not always an innocent victim. Don't always assume I saw the curtain-raiser to this particular squabble.

Certainly there has always been more sibling rivalry between Anne and Michelle, 26 months apart, than with my two younger daughters. Anne was 5 and Michelle was 3 1/2 when Rose was born. Rose was 3 1/2 when Carolyn was born. It continues to this day. The weekend Michelle moved up to Boston, where Anne had lived for 6 years, they argued for an hour over whether Michelle could take chicken off a pizza slice that Anne had paid for if she wasn't eating the whole slice. My youngest Carolyn, who had been9 when Anne and Michelle had separated, was aghast. Anne and Michelle were married two weeks apart; there was some competition over which family members would come to which wedding.

December 2, 1982--4 Children

My kids are 9, 7, 4, 7 months. We had impulsively moved to Bangor, Maine from Manhattan in March 1981; I almost immediately got pregnant. We are snowbound November through April. My husband insisted on heating our 4-bedroom house entirely with our wood stove and six cords of wood. We had a three-sided metal gate attached to the living room wall with carabiners to keep the girls away from the stove. I had never before had to cope with stairs and kids. My ability to write in full sentences has collapsed. I am trying to decide whether we should try to move back to New York. I am very active in the Nuclear Freeze movement. Being a political activist and the mother of 4 isn't working. I remember the good times so vividly and totally forget the hard times. No wonder why younger mothers reject the saccharine advice of older mothers.

I let the kids stay home today because Michelle was hoarse and Anne was hard to rouse. Their being home busy with their projects makes it harder to keep Carolyn (the baby) safe. Carolyn has a scratch near her eye, and I don't even know how she got it--perhaps the kitten? Made apple crisp, made bread. No oven timer, so I kept losing track, worried about the stove door being so loose--will it fall off? Reading Lifton-Falk book about nuclear war, will give me nightmares. Kids bickering; baby eating pieces of paper. All my careful preparation for naught, no time to sit down and relax. Carolyn hardly napped. Papers all over living room floor. Snapped and yelled.

Do I want to go back? Something always make me stop at the brink. Fear of admitting we made a mistake? Or are these growing pains? Half-conscious of my tendency to romanticize my life in New York. I didn't share my political interests. We probably know more people in Bangor who share my interests than we did in New York. I glanced back over my journals. A bracing perspective. Mothering has always been hard. So much for my fantasies about how much better a mother I was in New York. I am so hard on myself. Go to the library and look up book on depression.

April 27, 1976--3 years old and 1 year old

Anne is now 3; Michelle is almost 1. I was trying desperately to find sometime to write during the day. This effort lasted about a week before I gave up. Rereading this now, I wonder if I got the date wrong, could I possibly have trusted them alone in the same crib when Michelle wasn't even 1? The date is correct. In my defense, we lived in a 2-bedroom apartment and my bedroom wall adjoined theirs.

This morning I heard the sounds of Michelle amusing herself in the crib. I was surprised; to her the crib seems like a prison. When I went in, I was astonished to see Anne in with her, both of them playing happily with the busy box. Naptime only works well when both of them go in together. If Michelle won't take a nap, Anne can amuse her. Besides I'm clear on one thing. I don't care what they do during naptime as long as it doesn't involve me. I could tolerate anything short of physical mayhem. I find this statement shocking; I certainly could have used a babysitter. This hour makes the difference between thriving in motherhood and feeling caged by it.

How hard it is to ignore what's going on in their bedroom--to restrain myself from going in to see what's happening. Yet has Anne done anything to Michelle when not right under my nose? She only seems jealous when I am paying direct attention to Michelle; otherwise she enjoys her company. If I stay out of the room, I don't have to set any limits about Anne's being in Michelle's crib. If it keeps both of them amused, I don't care.

An interruption that I handled badly. Michelle was crying so I took Anne out of her crib and left the room. Michelle continued to cry so I took her in my bedroom to nurse. Anne followed me in and Michelle didn't seem terribly interested in nursing. I bought them both back to their room, nursed Michelle in the rocking chair very briefly. Then, I put Michelle in the crib, shut their door, and came in here and shut my door. They both started crying. In the time it took me to write this paragraph, they've stopped crying. Rationally I accept that I can't make life perfect for my children, that sometimes I have to meet my needs in order to be able to meet their needs. But I feel guilty if I let them cry, if only for three minutes.

September 9, 1975--Anne is 2 1/2

I find it salutary to read my journals when Anne and Michelle were toddlers. Looking back 30 years, I might come across as a much better, saner mother than I really was. I owe it to younger mothers to be honest about my inadequacies. When I rejoice that my daughter is mothering my grandson the way I mothered her two younger sisters, I am really celebrating that she doesn't seem to be making the mistakes I made with her.

When I wrote this, Anne was 2 years and 5 months; Michelle was 3 months. I have not changed a word, much as I am tempted to.
Anne is going through a difficult time. She seems to cry more in a day than she cried in a month at Michelle's age. The price of autonomy is discontent. The world is not your oyster. There are many things you can't have when you want them. It's impossible to tell how much is her age and how much is jealousy over Michelle. No use agonizing over the question, either. This is a resolution often made, seldom kept. If we weren't tired by the additional work Michelle involves, perhaps we would have more patience with Anne. I can only try. I have to guard against the tendency to prefer Michelle's sunny responsiveness to Anne's unpredictable moods. Michelle makes me feel like a good mother; with Anne I am not so sure. Perhaps I resent her a little because of that.

Tonight I was thinking that both she and I would probably benefit if I had more time away from her. Part-time jobs for mothers of young children are probably the ideal solution. It's impossible to be freshly responsive to a 2 1/2 year old all day long, particularly if she's your own.

I should keep these journals. If all mothers kept journals when their children were young, there would be less need for psychiatrists. I would love to see a journal my mom might has kept when I was Anne's age. There would be real continuity from generation to generation. Otherwise you forget about almost everything. Michelle makes me realize how little I remember of Anne at that age.

Once I got pregnant with my third, I stopped keeping the journals, and I have always regretted it. Rose, my third daughter, was both the most like me and the most challenging. I would love to be able to capture how I had to change to be the kind of mother she needed.

What Women Aren't Told About Childbirth

Home Births, 1978 and 1982

Learning to grandmother and to mentor my daughters' friends and my nieces has involved learning to hold my tongue about childbirth. I don't want to impose my experiences on theirs. I am not sure about the wisdom of my discretion as more and more young women, including my daughter, give birth by C-section. I practiced natural childbirth for all four daughters; I had the younger two girls at home. I was very fortunate to have medically uncomplicated births. I spent enormous amounts of time and energy researching my options and finding providers who shared my beliefs. Anne was delivered by an obstetrician; Michelle and Rose by nurse-midwives; Carolyn by a family practitioner. I also taught childbirth education and always discussed birth options as a La Leche Leader. I am puzzled why the most highly educated and professionally successful generation of women in history are not more skeptical about conventional obstetrical wisdom. We would never have to worry about world overpopulation if 30% of women required surgical births.

I urge you to read this excellent article--What Women Aren't Told About Childbirth. It is based on the survey, Listening to Mothers II (LM 2), released in 2006, which reports on U.S. women's childbearing experiences. Conducted for Childbirth Connection by Harris Interactive in partnership with Lamaze International and Boston University School of Public Health, the survey is representative of U.S. mothers 18 to 45 who gave birth to a single infant in a hospital, with 1,573 actual participants.

"The predominant picture that emerges from our data," the report states, "is of large segments of this population experiencing clearly inappropriate care." The majority of women ended up attached to IVs, catheters and fetal monitors. They had their membranes artificially ruptured and were given epidurals. Most of these women had little understanding of the side effects of these interventions, including cesarean and medical inductions. The report also shows that though women understood that they had the right to refuse medical interventions, few did, and many received interventions, such as episiotomies, without their consent. Among the more striking points are these:

• The United States is also one of the only wealthy countries where the maternal death rate is climbing. In 2004, the most recent year for which information was available, the maternal death rate in the United States jumped to 13 deaths per 100,000, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. This marks a significant increase from just four years earlier when it was 11 deaths per 100,000 births. Among developed countries, the World Health Organization reports, 29 have better infant mortality rates than the United States, including Slovenia and Cuba, and 41 have better maternal mortality rates.
• Childbirth educators often talk about the "cascade" of medical interventions: the likelihood that once you receive one intervention, like Pitocin, you are more likely to receive another intervention, like an epidural. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never approved Pitocin for the use of augmenting labor and it has been suggested now that mismanagement of Pitocin is the leading cause of liability suits and damage awards.
• The World Health Organization recommends that the rate of cesarean births for any country not exceed 10 percent to 15 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the U.S. rate at over twice that: 30.2 percent, and the LM 2 survey suggests this number is on the rise.
• Obstetricians are surgeons with an expertise in female reproductive pathology. They often provide routine gynecological care, but when it comes to childbirth, their training has primarily prepared them to actively manage a high-risk birth or to intervene medically and surgically when something goes wrong during a birth. Though they may have attended hundreds or even thousands of births, few obstetricians have much experience with unmedicated births. Even fewer have attended out-of-hospital births.
• Continuous electronic fetal heart monitoring is another seemingly innocuous medical intervention that is linked to adverse outcomes. Even though it requires women to be strapped to a machine and therefore limits their mobility -- movement in labor is listed as one of the recommended comfort measures by Lamaze International -- it may seem that constant feedback on a baby's heart rate would reduce unnecessary interventions and surgical procedures. Yet, some studies have shown CEFM to be an ineffective indicator of fetal distress and one of the causes of the increase in cesareans.
• Women without insurance are less likely to end up with cesareans, as are women with Medicaid, according to the HCUP study. Women with private insurance, the study says, have the highest cesarean rate.
• Most health insurance does not cover midwife-assisted home births or births in a birthing center, thereby forcing women into hospitals when they might prefer other options. Indeed, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), last year went so far as to issue a wholesale condemnation of out-of-hospital birth. They cited a lack of evidence to support the safety of birth outside hospitals, despite its undisputed record of safety in many other countries.

Joys of Exploration

Since Michael had pushed himself so far to capture the sneakers, I let him explore them until he wanted to chew on them. When I put him on the floor on a blanket or a furry, he immediately pushes himself back because he knows wooden floors let him move faster.

Learning to Move

Michael is striving valiantly to master crawling. Now that he can sit, he seems less interested in doing it and will go from sitting to his hands and knees. He can push himself backward on the hardwood floors if he is wearing long pants. He gets on his hands and knees and rocks. He can swivel 360 degrees. His latest approach is to balance on his hands and feet. I am conscious of his surveying the apartment, making note of things he will attack once he can crawl. Computers, remote controls, electric cords, and cell phones top the list.

Floors are the safest place for babies Michael's age.

Considering Home Schooling

I have been rereading my past writings when my daughters were young to look for material I want to share on my blog. I wrote this in 1982, when we were struggling with the issue of home schooling. I would have had to submit a petition to the Bangor Board of Education. My second daughter Michelle was miserable in the traditional Maine public schools; I was having great difficulty getting her to first grade. A week after I wrote this, we found a wonderful private school whose tuition--$900 a year--we could afford. Skitikuk was unique; it had 45 children ranging in age from 5 to 18 and 4 gifted teachers. Situated across the road from the University of Maine at Orono, it made imaginative use of the university's resources. We found what my daughters needed at Skitikuk, so we didn't school them at home. Twenty-four years later, they still enjoy reminiscing about Skitikuk even though they only spent two years there; we have kept copies of the students' weekly newsletter.

When we moved in Long Island in 1983, we were not happy with traditional public schools, but the schools were reasonably responsive with an excellent gifted program, so we didn't consider home schooling. Our circumstances were different; I was heavily involved helping my mom cope with my dad's Alzheimer's Disease. I was planning to go back to school. I still wish I had tried it, at least for a year or two. One dilemma was that my two middle children would have thrived in home school, but my oldest daughter and I would have squabbled most of the time. Anne needed a much wider world than I could have provided at home.

"For almost 9 years I have spent most of my days with at least one child under the age of three. Therefore I have thought very seriously about learning for babies and toddlers, who are the very model of what one would wish learners to be--boldly adventurous, endlessly curious, resourceful, energetic, and confident. No one has to worry about motivating them. Every mother soon learns that if her baby is dull, apathetic, listless, she is certainly sick.

Surely these 9 years laid the roots for our eventual decision to take our children out of public school and try home schooling. They needed a school that encouraged them to explore and make sense of the world around them in ways that most interested them. Tests, grades, sorting children into narrow age categories, textbooks, workbooks are barriers to learning. Thank God no one teaches babies to talk the way older children are taught to read, yet learning to talk is a vastly more complex achievement. Even the third time around, it seems a breathtaking miracle.

When the girls became mobile, we childproofed our home as much as possible so the kids would be free to explore. We never used playpens or closed off any area of our apartment to our children. Safety, not adult expediency, was the only justification for locked doors. If the baby wanted to empty out the kitchens cabinets five times a day or systematically take every book off the lower shelves of our bookcases, we could put up with more mess and work. Our confidence in our children has been richly rewarded.

How much energy has been dissipated in doubts, agonizing, second-guessing, endless discussion about their schools. What has been so maddening about Michelle's problems this year is that we really can't do anything about them. The contrast between Michelle at home all day and Michelle after a full day of school has been truly spectacular.

Mothering versus Grandmothering

You raised four daughters and now you have a grandson. How would you compare the experience of being The Mother with that of being The Grandmother?

Struggling with an injured knee, I haven't felt up to blogging for the last week. But I want to get back to answering Janet's questions. I have been a mother 34 years and a grandma five months, so I can't yet do justice to this question.I I was 27 when Anne was born; I was 61 when Michael was born. As a grandma, I know what I am doing with babies and I have absolutely no conflicts about it. I know how quickly babyhood passes so I can cherish every minute of his infancy without being eager for him to sit up, crawl, walk before he is ready.

When I am with him in my daughter's apartment, I can focus entirely on him. I don't have errands to run, bills to pay, laundry to do. Anne has made it clear I am not her maid, and I am very good at taking her at her word. This is exactly where I want to be; this is exactly what I want to be doing. I had expected to go back to work part-time a few months after Anne was born; deciding to stay home full-time was a complicated, conflicted decision.

Of course, loving the baby is the simple part of grandmothering. Learning for the first time to mother Anne, the new mother is far more complex. We are both strong, opinionated women who have frequently disagreed over the last 34 years. It seems miraculous how well we are doing now. To my great joy, Anne is mothering Michael essentially the way I mothered my two younger daughters, when I was confident enough to honor my heart and my instincts and not let experts persuade me to impose unrealistic expectations on the baby. I couldn't be prouder of her.

Michael reminds me very much of his mother as a baby, which brings back hundreds of wonderful memories. Being back in the same apartment complex where we lived when my girls were young is also evocative.

I notice I am reviewing my choices on combining work and mothering, so I can be supportive of my daughters' different choices. If I had had a job I loved, which I had undergone rigorous training to prepare for, if my mom had been available to babysit, I suspect that, like Anne, I would have tried to work part-time.

Which Hat Fit Me Best?

Friday is a day off from helping care for my grandson, so I have time to tackle more of Janet's excellent questions.

You state in your blog that, professionally, you have worn several different "hats." Which hat fit you best and why?

I have been pondering this question for a month and still haven't worked out a satisfactory answer. The hats that fitted me best are mother and grandmother, which my young feminist self never would have anticipated or believed. I felt my intellect and my emotions were in harmony.

Second, would be the 12 years I was a La Leche League Leader. When I was pregnant with Anne, I had actually considered not breastfeeding because I was still a fanatic about equal father/mother parenting. I found breastfeeding incredibly fulfilling; I admit to feeling pangs of jealousy watching young mothers nurse now. Helping other mothers learn to enjoy nursing, was deeply rewarding.

None of the professional hats have been an entirely satisfactory fit. My mood swings played a significant role in these disappointments. When I dropped out of grad school, I wanted to be a journalist, but found I lacked the confidence and assertiveness to pursue it. Book publishing was a substitute. Looking back, my job was better than I appreciated at the time; after only 18 months, I was promoted to a very responsible position. I was an editing supervisor, which meant dealing with dozens of copy editors, proofreaders, indexers. I had relatively little author contact and no major influence on the shaping of the books or what books we published.

I decided to go to law school, pursuing the fantasy of being a

I am postponing talking about the professional hats of editor, librarian, and social worker.

Sitting Up

Along the Austic Spectrum?

This post is not facetious; I am struggling to understand. I am beginning to wonder if I might fall somewhere along the autistic spectrum as it is now conceived. I have a few close friends, but am very involved with my big family. Most of my abundant email is from my family. I am only truly myself with people I love. I am much more comfortable interacting with people on blogs than in real life. I would always chose reading a good book or watching TV and movies with my husband over attending a party.

I only had lots of friends when I lived in Manhattan; then I always bumped into them walking on the street and did not have to take the initiative. I am perfectly happy spending days alone, reading, writing, internet researching, visiting the library, gardening until my husband comes home. I don't know my neighbors except for a casual hello when we get out of our respective cars. Libraries are my version of paradise. I so appreciate that no one asks you if you need help.

My teachers only noticed me when I wrote my first composition; until then I was the quiet girl you might not realize was there. I recall one day that my kindergarten teacher called the roll and I said here, but she didn't hear me and marked me absent. I was much too shy to correct her, and had great difficulty the next day accounting for my absence because I had no note from my mom. Often my mother spoke for me when I was asked a question; I was too hesitant and took a long time to respond. My dad, who was like me, called her on that.

In the Catholic schools of my youth, with 60 students in a class, smart students who never talked in class, only answered questions but never asked them, wrote fine compositions and did well in tests, were praised. No one ever worried about them. I recall on rainy days we had to eat lunch in our classroom. We were permitted to talk, but I had taken to heart the rule about talking in class, and never said a word. How very weird I was!

My dad had a similar personality. His true nature only fully emerged in the three and one half years of love letters he wrote to my mom during the war. Reading the letters has been a revelation; I realize I never truly knew my dad. My mom was a vivacious extrovert; she never would have fallen in love with the shy, quiet man except that he wrote the best love letters I have ever read. Until my husband Peter came to America to marry me in 2001, we wrote and instant messaged to each other infinitely more than we were able to spend time together. So ours was a letter-writing romance as much as my parents had been.


All my 62 years I always recognized I was shy and introverted. I understood and felt far more comfortable with characters in books than with the people in my class or at my job. The seduction of mania is that my shyness and self-consciousness suddenly disappears. During my first manic episode, my brother Joe said: "My God, MJ, what happened. You sound just like mom." My father unhelpfully said, "Talk, talk, talk. What ever happened to Mary Jo, who was such a nice quiet girl." In real life I am a Mary, who pondered things in her heart. In my writing and when I am manic, my Joan persona emerges.

An essential part of taming my illness has been embracing and cherishing who I am. Manic Mary Joan is not my ideal self, is not the real me. Being a librarian was good for me because I had to talk to strangers, which I could do because they needed my help. A librarian is a anonymous handmaiden; people don't know her name. On the street, people would realize look familiar, but not be able to place me even if I had helped them numerous times. As a social worker, I worked well with clients one-on-one, but was terrified of conducting groups. As a La Leche league, I loved counseling mothers on the phone, but dreaded monthly meetings.

And yet I am secure that I have made a difference and am very happy I never was afflicted with another diagnosis. I am eager to read a new book: Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness by Christopher Lane.

Social Anxiety Disorder?

This post is not facetious; I am struggling to understand. I am beginning to wonder if I might fall somewhere along the autistic spectrum as it is now conceived or merely suffer from "social anxiety disorder." I have a few close friends, but am very involved with my big family. I tend to make friends with people who leave all the reaching out to me, and often I can't bring myself to do it. Most of my abundant email is from my family. I am only truly myself with people I love. I am much more comfortable interacting with people on blogs than in real life. I would always chose reading a good book or watching TV and movies with my husband over attending a party.

I only had lots of friends when I lived in Manhattan; then I always bumped into them walking on the street and did not have to take the initiative. I am perfectly happy spending days alone, reading, writing, internet researching, visiting the library, gardening until my husband comes home. I don't know my neighbors except for a casual hello when we get out of our respective cars. Libraries are my version of paradise. I so appreciate that no one asks you if you need help.

My teachers only noticed me when I wrote my first composition; until then I was the quiet girl you might not realize was there. I recall one day that my kindergarten teacher called the roll and I said here, but she didn't hear me and marked me absent. I was much too shy to correct her, and had great difficulty the next day accounting for my absence because I had no note from my mom. Often my mother spoke for me when I was asked a question; I was too hesitant and took a long time to respond. My dad, who was like me, called her on that.

In the Catholic schools of my youth, with 60 students in a class, smart students who never talked in class, only answered questions but never asked them, wrote fine compositions and did well in tests, were praised. No one ever worried about them. I recall on rainy days we had to eat lunch in our classroom. We were permitted to talk, but I had taken to heart the rule about talking in class, and never said a word. How very weird I was!

My dad had a similar personality. His true nature only fully emerged in the three and one half years of love letters he wrote to my mom during the war. Reading the letters has been a revelation; I realize I never truly knew my dad. My mom was a vivacious extrovert; she never would have fallen in love with the shy, quiet man except that he wrote the best love letters I have ever read. Until my husband Peter came to America to marry me in 2001, we wrote and instant messaged to each other infinitely more than we were able to spend time together. So ours was a letter-writing romance as much as my parents had been. Neither of us would have been able to say what we were able to write.

Why Do I Feel This Way?

Some parents have asked me why I feel so passionately about preschool psychiatric diagnoses when my own daughters didn't have such serious problems. I will let you in on a secret. Bright, creative children can have a terrible time adjusting to traditional American grade schools. Bright bored children don't finish worksheets, don't pay attention, daydream, forget assignments, leave books and homework home, ignore the teacher, read ahead of the class and miss their place if called upon, miss many days of school. My local school insisted on testing a kindergarten boy for development disability; his IQ was genius level. 

When my writer, pictured above, was in first grade, her teacher refused to assign her to the advanced reading group until she was more "cooperative and compliant." Rose never became compliant. In kindergarten she refused to do assignments because "writers use their own words." In high school she refused to do art projects because "artists paint what they need to, not what the teacher assigns." Now I would be told to have her tested because her "emotional maturity" lagged behind her intelligence. My two high school valedictorians were not given any awards from grade school. They only truly liked school when they got to Yale.

Your bright preschooler might face as many challenges as your friend's autistic or ADHD son. More schools have special ed services than have gifted services. Again and again, I questioned whether home schooling might be easier than my daily struggle with their school. Younger parents might not anticipate the extent to which they need to be advocates for their kids in American's test-obsessed schools. Getting high test scores is more important than being a gifted musician or artist. Kids who don't adjust to the norm are stimatized. The most creative, divergent thinkers our society desperately needs can be slapped with a psychiatric label and have their giftedness drugged out of them.

Discipline: Baby Boomers and Their Daughters

Reading other mothers’ blogs, I am feeling all of my 62 years and every strand of my silver hair. Although I might feel more comfortable with these eloquent younger women, I belong to their mothers’ generation and might symbolize for them their mothers’ mistakes. I was born the day after the atom bomb was tested in 1945; I am six months too old to be a baby boomer. Most of my contemporaries didn’t stay home with their kids, didn’t have 4 children, and pitied me for my domestic imprisonment.

On Frog and Toad Are Still Friends, Beck published two brilliant posts about discipline. I was surprised by how much stricter some of the moms who commented seem to be. My oldest daughter, 34, , speculated that her generation believed more in discipline than their parents did, because so many of their parents worked long hours and used permissiveness to assuage their guilt about their unavailability to their kids. Do you think she has a point? Or does the economic necessity of entrusting children to group or nanny care at younger ages demand better behavior than parents who stay at home would expect or tolerate?

My four daughters were not model children. I was better at stimulation and creativity than boundaries and discipline. They were excellent students when they showed up in school. In retrospect, I permitted an overly permissive ad hoc home schooling option for the easily bored who could cough convincingly. They did not speak to their grandparents, teachers, any other adults the way they were allowed to speak to their parents. I often heard about my charming, delightful daughters.

Reading some of the comments, I got nervous that today’s moms would not have let their kids play with my kids. My kids were allowed to express their feelings endlessly. They rarely picked up their toys and their rooms were unspeakable. Chronically late, they often needed to be driven to school that was close enough to walk to. Household chores were not their strong points. No doubt I was rebelling against the strict, guilt-inducing discipline of my Catholic childhood. I transferred my first daughter to another public school because her teacher said "for shame" to her on the second day of kindergarten.

I was not permissive about violence. I always stopped my oldest daughter from hitting her younger sister. She was only 2; I didn't punish her. But I made a big deal of encouraging her to express her anger in words. "Use words not hitting to tell Michelle how you feel." Anne dictated stories and drew pictures to express how she felt about her sister. The books were simple affairs. I folded construction paper, used a hole puncher on the fold, and tied the sheets together with string. I kept them, and everyone still loves to read them. I always took away the toy used as a weapon. By the time Anne was 4 and Michelle was 2, they usually could play happily with blocks without mayhem.

Punishment would not have taught Anne a lifelong way of handling her anger; it would have just made her more rebellious. I hurt my back when she was 3 and could not play with her as usual. "Draw me a picture of the dummy mommy with the bad back," she instructed. She then took a pencil and stabbed that picture countless times. I was appalled, but it helped her. Anne had almost perfect recall of her dreams from the time she was 2. Their violence was a revelation. "Daddy went under the train last night because I didn't like his noise. Then I went to live with Ellen." "But Ellen sometimes yells at her children," I pointed out. "Then she will have to go under the train too," Anne said matter of factly. Now Ann works for a world peace organization.

My two younger daughters were relatively peaceful creatures who were born using words not weapons. Carolyn, the baby, was babbling once her head was born. Their older sisters adored them. I attributed such harmony to the sibling bonding that occurred when Rose and Carolyn were born at home. Three and one half years apart rather than 2 years apart make a tremendous difference. Rose, my third daughter, would remind me that toddler Carolyn sometimes bit her without provocation, and Rose, a wonderful big sister, never responded in kind.

Disciplining them for verbal aggression would have been a full-time job. Their father and I were not perfect role models. When I was 7 years old and made my first confession, my sins were: disobedience, talking back to my parents, and hitting my brothers. In succeeding years, despite frequent repentance, I managed to stop hitting my brothers, but made little progress on the other two sins. We tolerated our daughters talking back to us if they were not abusive. "I hate you mommy" was acceptable if they could articulate their anger more specifically. I admit “respect” was not a word they heard frequently.

My younger daughter’s daughter's college application essay gives an evaluation of my discipline style I don’t deserve: "We were never spanked or severely punished when we did something Mom disapproved of. Instead, she simply told us how she felt about it. I'm sure some parents would say that my sisters and I weren't disciplined enough. However, I've noticed that when friends of mine are grounded, they often complain about their unfair parents, but I take it very seriously when Mom tells me she's disappointed in me. “ She charitably left out all the times I let them behave in a way I found intolerable and then I yelled at them. Obviously it would have been better to respect my limits and save them from my harsh words.

We were strict about academics, safety, and seatbelts. Dropping out of honors classes or not taking advancement placement courses because they required too much work was never acceptable. Possibly we pressured them too much to succeed academically, but we expected them to honor their considerable intellectual gifts. We threw out our television set when our oldest was four and didn’t get another for five years. We were extremely strict about TV; we had a lock on it. They could not watch TV on school nights. We rejoiced that we had the only teenagers who felt they were being bad by watching TV. There were no problems with boys, booze, or drugs. We were relatively poor, so we didn't buy them lots of clothes, toys. We encouraged their interest in world affairs, occasionally took them to peace demonstrations.

I made countless mistakes, but they all are well-educated, compassionate, dedicated women, able to own and use all their particular gifts. They have met and married wonderful men. They assure me they are going to be much stricter with their kids and make them clean up their room, vacuum, mop, clean bathrooms and go to school every single day they are not running a 103 fever. We all try not to repeat our parents' mistakes, possibly then making our grandparents' mistakes. We might only learn the truth about our parenting by watching our children parent our grandchildren. My oldest daughter is a far better mother than I was with her, but my first grandson is only 5 months old

"Experts," Testing, and Misdiagnosis

Warning: by nature I am a skeptic and a heretic who hasn't forgotten her radical pacifist youth. Joan of Arc is my patron saint. I birthed two children at home, nursed them for years, sent them to a hippy school of 50 kids from 5 to 18. But I am not an ignorant nutcase grandma, ignorant of the "magnificent" advancements in child psychiatry. Before children, I edited psychiatry books for 7 years; our authors were world-famous psychiatrists who knew how to heal people without drugs. I have a master's degree in library science and a master's degree in social work, specializing in mental illness and families.

As the oldest of 6, the mother of 4, the oldest cousin of 45, a children's librarian, a playgroup coordinator, a breastfeeding counselor, a nursery school membership coordinator, a school volunteer, a family therapist, I have known many hundreds of young children. I have reassured countless mothers that their different child just seems a creative divergent thinker, not a psychiatric case or a potential psychopath; I have often been thanked for my sane, helpful advice.

This week buy a copy of: For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of Expect Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English. I am baffled that this generation of young parents, the most high educated parents in history, are sometimes willing to trust their young children to so-called experts, testing, possible medication. When I was worried about my preschool kids, I called my mother or mother-in-law who had raised 11 kids between them. I asked my grandmother with 7 kids and 31 grandkids whether I should be worried. I went to the library and read all I could about creative children. I researched my worries.I had honest discussions with other mothers and teachers who knew them. Twice I switched nursery schools. I did not take them to a psychiatrist or psychologist. I already knew that my pediatrician's childrearing advice was misguided; I learned not to ask them questions when I was probably going to disagree with his answers.

If a young child is diagnosed autistic, or bipolar, or ADHD as a preschoolers, that diagnosis will affect his entire life. Even his loving parents, aunts, uncles, siblings will regard him differently. When I was in social work school in 1993, it was psychiatric dogma that bipolar disorder could not be diagnosed until late adolescence. Now kids are being diagnosed as preschoolers and treated with antipsychotics, which are only approved for chronic schizophrenics. Psychiatrists seem reluctant to prescribe traditional mood stabilizers because, after all, they are generic now. They can't be much good, can they? Some antipsychotics cause tremendous weight gain and are implicated in childhood diabetes. Before medicating their child, perhaps parents should take the meds themselves and experience their effects. Most college students know ritalin will improve their performance on the SATs or final exams.

I am skeptical about the usefulness of testing young children. We endlessly agonized over subjecting our kids to an IQ test to get them into the only public school in Manhattan for gifted children. Anne, my oldest, was a bit too creative for her own good. When asked to complete figure drawings, she ignored the missing eyes or ears to adorn the figure with gorgeous hats featuring birds on top and with princess gowns. Some kids won't talk to their parents' friends upon command. Why would they open up to a stranger?

Little kids are not fooled by being told the nice lady is going to play games with them. They sense they are falling short, that they might not be good enough, that their parents are worried. That must affect their behavior during the test, at preschool, at home.

We had created a very hostile world for children. Far too many experts seem interested in labeling and drugging children so they fit into that world, rather than reforming society so children's amazing creativity and individuality can flourish. I am not denying that some troubled children could benefit from professional evaluation and help. Certainly parents can research and implement some of the stimulation suggested for certain learning difficulties. But how can an expert spend a few hours dealing with a possibly uncooperative child and convince you that they "know" what is wrong with them? When I was growing up, the diagnosis "brat" was used freely, but you were expected to outgrow brattyness. "Oppositional defiant disorder" can sometimes sound like the same thing.

I have gone to psychiatric lectures on childhood mental illness where home, parental work hours, school, neighborhood are never mentioned. The assumption is the child has a lifelong biological brain disorder. even though no physical test can validate that diagnosis. I suspect 100 years from now current psychiatric treatment of children will be seen as a disgraceful episode in medical history, one more flagrant example of experts giving mothers destructive advice "for their own good."

Blogs and Privacy

I have spent the last few hours supplying pseudonyms for my daughters, husbands, and brothers to protect their privacy, at least a little. I wasn't very original because I doubted my ability to remember anything less obvious than their middle names. At first I kidded myself that not using their last names and using my maiden name was enough. But I somehow forgot that I have used Koch for all but 24 of my 62 years. All my daughter's high school, college, and grad school friends knew me as Mary Jo Koch. I confess it didn't occur to me that my brothers might read Matriarch.

This concern about disloyalty and privacy violations partially contributes to my never publishing my writings. They tend to be intensely personal. I have seriously wondered if I could turn them into fiction by liberal use of the find and replace commands. But I am no novelist. I do use a pseudonym on the blog where I discuss the gory details of my manic depression. It feels absurd to do so on this blog whether I want to exchange experiences with other parents.

I am aware that my mom's death makes it easier to write about my growing up years. The girls know I have this blog, but I haven't told them that I am reviving it and actually getting some readers. When I realized the extent of my reluctance to tell them, I realized I had to change names. I am not particularly comfortable talking about my daughters as grownups except to celebrate their wonderfulness.

Best Toys

As my grandson, now five months, begins to play with toys, I have been thinking about toys and children. As the pictures show, blocks are my favorite. We had a huge collection; I have saved them for my grandchildren. Blocks were great for sibling sharing; they were everyone's toys. My recommendations:

books
blocks
indoor slide or climbing toy
outdoor climbing structure
water
bubbles
musical instruments
sand
pets
cooking, baking
gardening even if only on windowsill
endless art supplies
classic music, ballet music
lots of pieces of one and only one building toy; we have legos
dressup clothes, scarves, etc.-
dolls, stuffed animals, little people for use with lego and blocks
as much time as possible outdoors--gardens, backyards, parks, playgrounds, zoos, beaches, trees puddles, flowers, weeds, grass, birds, bugs, worms, etc.
New York City

I don't recommend toys with batteries or computer chips for babies and toddlers. They need to learn the real world before the virtual world. Ideally, kids before two shouldn't watch TV or dvds or play with computers. After two, children should only watch when interacting with parents and caregivers. Try to resist the temptation to plop your baby in front of the TV. She would be better off banging pots in the kitchen. She would be better off helping you clean the bathroom or do the laundry. We didn't have a TV set from 1977 to 1983 and I never regretted it.

Birth Order

In the first picture, I am two and one half; Joe is one. In the second I am four, Andrew is six months. In the third picture, I am seven; Bob is newborn. In the fourth picture, I am 12; Gerard is 1. Next I am 13; Brian is one month. The last picture was taken when I was 14.

Studying the pictures, I understand family dynamics much better. It has always seemed that sibling relationships matter more to me, that I try harder to keep the family connected. Being both the oldest and the only girl seems central. I was my adult height when my two younger brothers were born; they were only 5 and 7 when I left home for college. I must have seemed a quasi-maternal figure to them. We did not grow up in the same family. My mother returned to school full-time when Brian was 5; when he was 7, she started teaching high school. Joe, Andrew, and I had had a stay-at-home mother until we went to college. Brian doesn't remember my mom staying at home full-time. My father retired before Brian finished college.

We have very different perceptions of our parents. Joe, Andrew, and I remember our dad as a brilliant intellectua and mathematician; Gerard and Brian remember an old man who disappeared into Alzheimer's Disease. The three oldest remember our childhood perceptions of my mom as "just a housewife" who never went to college. My younger brothers remember her the way her obituary describes her: "teacher, activist, trailblazer."

With the death of my mom, Joe is my only source of family history. Unfortunately Joe was too busy climbing on top of the roof to remember very much. I realize I could write family fiction and convince everyone it is family history.

John and I struggled against our inclination to favor Anne in sibling squabbles, because she, like us, was the oldest of several siblings. John and I were both the oldest children of oldest children of oldest children--not the best recipe for marital harmony. Certainly Anne shows the same sense of responsibility for her younger siblings that I felt. John, Anne, and I thought younger siblings owe considerable gratitude to the oldest, who has fought all the battles necessary to whip parents into shape.

In my constant discussions with friends about baby spacing, I noticed that adult relationships with your siblings greatly influence you. If you love your sibs, you might think a brother or sister is the best gift you will give your kids. If you don't talk to each other, you will feel guilty about the trauma you are inflicting on the oldest. As people only have two children, there will only be a younger and an older. Middle children seem to have special gifts society will sorely lack. When I told 6 year old Michelle, I was pregnant with Carolyn, she rejoiced, "Now I won't be the only middle child."