I took my three year old to her first dentist appointment today. She’s actually almost four and not a toddler at all. According to my dentist, I should’ve taken her for her visit when she was two. I know this because I have two other kids, neither of whom made it to the dentist at age two. All their teeth are going to fall out, right, so what’s the point?
I’m just kidding, I know the point. Good habits! Also to make sure gums are healthy and stay healthy. The philosophy is preventative care, catching problems early and avoiding problems altogether.
Or you could be cynical and say because of fluoride in the water, kids don’t get cavities like they used to and dentists still need to make a living.
Frankly, the main reason my youngest child hasn’t been to the dentist is scheduling. Every time I tried to make an appointment for all three kids, my head would spin and the receptionist and I would give up.
So the good news is… no cavities. All three kids! Nothing screams “bad mom” like your little kid’s cavities, so I’m cool, right?
Actually, no. Not by most dentists’s standards, certainly not according to my kids’s dentist.
The dentist gave my kids and me a giant, smiley tooth packet which reads:
The way you eat also affects your teeth…Foods that are sticky or gummy really hang on to your teeth. Starchy foods, like crackers, chips, and cereal, and foods with sugars in them like dried fruits, candy, and cookies, also can be a problem. One solution is to brush after every time you eat. Another is not to snack often.
I was asked:
Do my kids drink juice? Yes
Do my kids snack? Yes.
Do my kids eat candy? Yes, whenever and whatever they want though I didn’t put it quite that way. Why pick a fight, right?
We were also given a yellow piece of paper with two columns: good snacks and bad snacks and told to avoid refined sugars and starches.
Basically my kids have the same eating and brushing habits I do, which isn’t rocket science. Even the dentist form I filled out out asks about the mother’s cavities in the past year and the dentist also asked me if I flossed my own teeth.
Like my kids, I eat what I want, when I want. I would summarize it this way: my teeth are important to me, but they are not the most important thing to me. Teeth are the most important thing to your dentist. They should be, she’s a dentist. But if you follow her advice, is that the life you want to lead?
I go to a great dentist, and if he had his way, I would get X-rays once a year (too pricey and why get “tiny amounts” of radiation?) He wants to fit me for a mouth guard to wear at night because I clench my jaw. He says a mouth guard would protect my teeth. I told him I was sure he was right, but that I know myself and there was no way I would wear a mouth to ensure that kind of perfection.
I don’t think of myself as lax when it comes to my teeth. I brush at least twice a day, I floss every night, I get my teeth professionally cleaned every four months. My kids do the same, except they regularly miss check ups which I regularly reschedule. Teeth, while important (and I know gums affect the heart and all that) are not the most important; I take my dentist’s advice with a cube of sugar.
One more thing I’m not a fan of at the dentist’s office: the stickers:
This made me sad about my daughter who loves Batgirl. It’s only a matter of time before she realizes that her superhero is invisible and caves to Ponyworld.
Here is the best thing I’ve read about it, from Twitter:
Do mags ever publish cautionary 1st-person tales about men whose lives are disasters because they refused to settle down?
That Tweet was written by Sarah Eckel. A visit to Eckel’s web site reveals that she is coming out with a book next year: There’s Nothing Wrong With You. Here’s part of the description of her book:
Are you a single person who would prefer not to be? Do you spend a lot of time wondering why? Do you worry that you’re too needy, or too independent? Too picky, or too undiscerning? Too close to your opposite-sex parent, or too distant?
Funny, isn’t it? No matter what you do or who you are, there is always a pathology to neatly explain the problem. Well, I have a radical suggestion: Maybe you’re perfectly fine exactly the way you are.
Apparently, she wrote a piece for the New York Times Modern Love that now I’m dying to read.
Visiting Eckel’s web site reminded me of a post I wrote about Elizabeth Gilbert’s book: Committed on her decision to be childfree. Gilbert’s book is about being with someone but much of her book (and I think the last one in some ways, too) is also about her decision to be child free.
Reel Girl is, in many ways, a blog about parenting, yet my post about Gilbert’s happy, fulfilled childfree life is one of my most popular, most shared posts ever. Why? It makes me think that celebrations of happy childfree women are rare, too few and far between. I wonder if you don’t have kids, if you’re supposed to be unhappy about it? Or something is wrong with you, is that it? And if you’re not with someone, are you supposed to be unhappy about that too? And what about if you’re a man?
Actress Zooey Deschanel, who– get this– actually called herself a feminist publicly– responded to a question about whether or not she would have kids:
That is so personal, and it’s my pet peeve when people press you on it. And it’s always women who get asked! Is anybody saying that to George Clooney?
What is so clear to me is that when women are not valued for being single or for being childfree, all women are not valued. If women’s worth is determined by their relationships, they have no worth at all. So, I guess that’s another reason why I wanted to defend Elizabeth Wurztel. Even though, in many ways, she perpetuates a stereotype of an unhappy single woman with that piece, in many ways she doesn’t.
Here’s a re-post of what I wrote about Elizabeth Gilbert:
Best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert says childless women are just fine
The husband, the kids, the picket fence, you know this scene. Women’s biological clocks are desperately ticking. We’re on a quest to secure a man so we can reproduce, because becoming mothers will make us truly happy and fulfilled.
While childless men manage to find a respectable place in society, often with a few publicly recognized achievements under their belts, admired, or even envied, as the self-sufficient bachelors they are; childless women remain suspect, if not total freaks. They’re often pitied; people wonder at what point in their lives they veered off onto their unnatural, unfeminine paths, becoming lonely “spinsters” or crazy cat ladies.
Best-selling, childless author of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert introduces a radically different theory in her new book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage. She writes that childless women have historically served a crucial role in society, not yet publicly recognized. These women should not be scorned but celebrated for their contributions to bettering the human race.
Gilbert writes:
“If you look across human populations of all varieties, in every culture and on every continent (even among the most enthusiastic breeders in history, like the nineteenth-century Irish, or the contemporary Amish), you will find that there is a constant 10 percent of women within any population who never have children at all. The percentage never gets any lower than that, in any population whatsoever. In fact, the percentage of women who never reproduce in most societies is usually much higher than 10 percent- and that’s not just today, in the developed Western world, where childless rates among women tend to hover around 50 percent.”
Gilbert speculates that female childlessness is an evolutionary adaption:
“Maybe it’s not only legitimate for certain women to never reproduce, it’s necessary. It’s as though, as as a species, we need an abundance of responsible, compassionate, childless women to support the wider community in various ways. Childbearing and child rearing consume so much energy that the women who do become mothers quickly become swallowed up by that daunting task- if not outright killed by it.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
Gilbert points out that childless women have always taken on the tasks of nurturing children who are not their biological responsibilty as no other group in history has ever done, in such vocations as running schools, hospitals, and becoming midwives.
That’s all fine and good, but won’t these childless women be desperately unhappy in their old age?
Gilbert says no. Recent studies of happiness levels in America’s nursing homes show the indicators of contentment in later life are poverty and health. “Save your money, floss your teeth…you’ll be a perfectly happy old bird someday.”
Gilbert concedes that without descendants, childless women are often forgotten more quickly, but that the role they played when alive was vital. Gilbert calls these vibrant women the “Auntie Brigade.” Here are some examples she lists of their influences:
Jane Austen was a childless aunt.
Raised by childless aunts:
Leo Tolstoy
Truman Capote
the Bronte sisters
Edward Gibbon (famous historian raised by his Aunt Kitty)
John Lennon (Auntie Mimi– convinced him he would be an important artist)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Aunt Annabel offered to pay for his college education)
Frank Lloyd Wright (first building commissioned by Aunts Jane and Nell who also ran a boarding school in Wisconsin)
Coco Chanel (Aunt Gabrielle taught her how to sew)
Virginia Woolf (muse was Aunt Coraline)
Marcel Proust (memory set off by Aunt Leonie’s madeleine)
Gilbert writes that when J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, was “asked what his creation looked like, replied his image, essence, and spirit of felicity can be found all over the world and hazily refelected ‘in the faces of many women who have no children.’ That is the Auntie brigade.”
Marcel Proust
I’ve always wondered why people get in such a tizzy about gay people, justifying their bigotry because: “It’s just not natural.” How do we know what’s natural? Is everyone supposed to pop out babies like the Duggar family and their 20 kids? Is that “natural”? And is every “natural” thing good anyway? Death is natural. Cancer can be natural.
Women without children are perfectly capable of being happy; what they’re often missing isn’t kids, but a society and a culture that values and respects them.
To all the moms out there, thank you for working hard to continue the human race. And to the “Auntie Brigade,” thank you for working hard to continue the human race.
Read my post on New York Magazine’s biased coverage of childless women here.
Elizabeth Wurtzel is writing about what it’s like to be 44. I just turned 44 yesterday, so I suppose it’s self-indulgent of me, but its kind of fascinating for me to read about it.
I like this sentence:
I am proud that I have never so much as kissed a man for any reason besides absolute desire, and I am more pleased that I only write what I feel like and it has been lucrative since I got out of college in 1989.
How many women say that? Wurtzel is stating: “I am hot and I am smart and I make money.” That is something that has always fascinated about Wurtzel: as a Harvard grad and “attractive” best-selling writer in her twenties, the combination of brilliance and beauty defied the “smart” or “pretty” polarities women are so often forced into. It’s also still not cool or okay for women to talk about earning money at all, not to mention publicly. She does.
While Googling herself to find a piece she’d written, Wurtzel came across a Harvard doc about prominent Harvard alumni:
under the rubric of “Literature,” there was my name. That would not have been so strange except that I was the only woman and, with John Ashbery, the only person on the list still alive. It occurred to me that it had been so long since I last published a book—not since 2001—that maybe they thought I was dead. But there it was, me with T. S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, William S. Burroughs, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Norman Mailer, John Updike, George Plimpton, David Halberstam, and Henry David Thoreau. It was a shockingly distinguished group to find myself lingering with. I had certainly moved up in the world by doing nothing. And maybe all it meant was that somebody in a communications office at the university had suicidal tendencies that she got through by reading my books. But I was moved nonetheless.
When I grow up, I thought, I am going to be a damn great writer.
The only woman. Wow. It sucks that she is the only woman but I am happy a woman is included. I’m glad that she told the world she was included. Who else is going to do it?
Then, there’s this:
I am committed to feminism and don’t understand why anyone would agree to be party to a relationship that is not absolutely equal. I believe women who are supported by men are prostitutes, that is that, and I am heartbroken to live through a time where Wall Street money means these women are not treated with due disdain.
Women in the world are, much of the time, economically dependent on men. Some of those women are admired for that and some of those women are derided. Wurtzel is pointing out that hypocrisy when most people ignore it.
My husband and I watched Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture” over the holidays. I loved the movie and love that a twentysomething woman wrote and directed her own film. I felt appreciation and gratitude for Lena Dunham, that she has the talent, guts, drive, and luck to get her perspective out into the world.
I have been kind of amazed by the level of vitriol hurled at Dunham from young people, old people, men, women, internet bloggers, print media and on and on for her show “Girls.”
On Reel Girl’s FB page, I posted the latest deluge, the horrific comments from Gawker mocking Dunham’s memoir. How dare she write a self-absorbed memoir! WTF? How long have women writers been mocked for being “confessional.” Is Phillip Roth “confessional?”
Did Jerry Seinfeld get shit for being spoiled? As I recall, he was admired for it because it was funny. His show was a comedy. What about “Friends?” What about most shows on TV?
Lena Dunham, like all writers, is influenced by her own life and experiences. She is a middle class white girl. But for some reason, people expect “Girls” to be some kind of ethically pure representation of, what, I don’t even know.
I get the frustration with the lack of diversity in the media. My whole blog is partly inspired by the nonsense that one narrative and one perspective dominates. But the solution to that myopic view is not to burden the one young woman who finally gets her own show on national TV, who gets to write and direct it, with representing everyone else’s narrative.
And then, on top of that, to get mocked for her body type? I LOVE that Lena Dunham doesn’t look like everyone else on TV, especially when it comes to how young women are almost always portrayed, regardless of ethnicity. Young women on TV are skinny, unless they are the fat girl, or the fat friend, never the protagonist, as Dunham is, never the girl with a boyfriend, or many boyfriends. Too many, obviously, Dunham’s character is a slut with no self respect…
In the New York Post, Linda Stasi writes:
“It’s not every day in the TV world of anorexic actresses with fake boobs that a woman with giant thighs, a sloppy backside and small breasts is compelled to show it all.”
I hope that Lena Dunham gets more power, influence, and money (yes, through product placement to make her show economically viable, she should be doing that) and uses her position to help to get other people’s stories out into the world. But shitting all over the occasional person who manages to defy Hollywood’s cookie cutter stereotype to tell her own story in mainstream media only helps to keep all “alternative” stories repressed. I suppose that’s the point.
Today is my birthday! Right now my husband is dropping our three kids off at my sisters, then we get to see a movie and go out for dinner. I am so excited and feel incredibly lucky for my family. I am trying to decide between “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Silver Linings Playbook.” I’m thinking I’ll go with ZDT because I know I will see SLP eventually, but I think if I don’t see ZDT in a theater, I may not see it at all.
Since I’ve been blogging, I usually write every year about how great my 40s are. This continues to be the best decade of my life so far. I am really enjoying the ages that my kids are right now: 3, 6, and 9. I feel so lucky I’ve already been pregnant and given birth and now I get to enjoy these remarkable creatures. No more babies to keep me up at night, no more poo diapers to change, but I’m still, pretty much, their favorite person to hang out with. Two of them can read which is so fun. Last night, the two older ones and I all got in my bed with our separate books, cuddled up and listened to the rain on the roof. It was heaven.
Career-wise, in your 40s, you realize you don’t have time to waste. It’s now or never. At least, that’s how I feel. A couple years ago, I left a non-profit I was with since I was 28. I stopped doing what I felt I should do and followed my heart. Now I am writing an MG book which is my passion, along with blogging which helps me stay connected while I write. It’s scary, taking the leap and pursuing a dream, but it also feels so great and right to focus my time, energy, and resources on what makes me happy, fulfilled, and what really matters to me. My energy feels endless.
January 6 is the Twelfth Night, the epiphany. I hope you all have a magical, insightful year. I think 2013 is going to be amazing.
Wow. Isn’t that shocking? And shocking that it’s not shocking, if you know what I mean.
In total, Raj listed 14 characters from kids’ cereal boxes, every one a male.
Before you scoff at this blatant sexism as Raj’s friends did, remember: these characters are designed to appeal to your kids. Huge companies poured millions of dollars into creating these guys, to make them into household names. So why are female characters completely missing from this line up?
Can you imagine shopping at Safeway with your kids and seeing shelves lined with cereal box after cereal box, all featuring images of an all female a cast of heroes and villains? Do you think you’d notice? Do you think your kids would?
Why is it so normal for parents and children to see an imaginary world where girls go missing?
Today, I got this comment on Reel Girl from Dr. Vanessa Paugh:
This is a little off topic, but it is about girls and food. I think you practically got a shout out on The Big Bang Theory last night. Raj, one of the male characters, complained about the lack of female cereal box characters. He said that he had done the research, listed about a dozen famous male characters and concluded that there are no female cereal box characters at all. He was dismissed by the other male characters in the scene, but at least it’s out there.
Go Raj! I am so happy this guy called out the lack of females in imaginary world on national TV. I think it’s fascinating he made this observation to an all male group who dissed him. I would love to see this episode.
Reel Girl has had several posts on the lack of female characters on cereal boxes. Food packaging is one more space where female characters get sidelined, stereotyped, or go missing all together. And once again, this is an imaginary world. So why is it sexist? Why do females, half of the kid population, go missing?
One of many endless examples of sexism from my cupboard: Cocoa Pebbles. On the front of the box, there’s Fred, waving at us. At the top of the box, you can see buddies, Fred and Barney, driving cars and having fun.
More fun for Fred and Barney can be found on the back on the box. There they are playing a racing game with their cars. A game you can access on your smart phone as well. How cool is that?
Where’s Wilma? Is she car racing? Is she in a game at all? No, silly. Women can’t drive! They’re not fast, they don’t compete, they don’t care about winning. Women are above all that boy stuff. Women care about “health.”
There’s Wilma, on the side of the box (could the term “marginalized” be any more clear?) hoping kids are getting enough Vitamin D.
Want to see another place where a female shows up on a cereal box?
She’s an actual person. She’s dieting. Her weight loss gave her “a sense of pride” that she’s never felt before.
I will be buying Wheaties this year. Sam Gordon became the first female football player ever to be shown on a box.
Think about this: the celebration of Sam Gordon is a huge accomplishment, but why is it so hard to show gender equality in the imaginary world, a fantasy world that is supposed to inspire our children to imagine, create, and dream?
I tore these cool women away from my kids long enough to get them photographed. My husband took the pictures.
So here we have soccer players (they come with a ball they can kick), Catwoman with her whip and motorcycle, Batgirl, Wonder Woman with her plane, Hawkgirl, and Princess Leia.
Next we have Coraline (who you’ve seen in an earlier post) Katniss and Merida (who were not Christmas presents but wanted to join the party) and Rue from the Hunger Games.
Catwoman, Serafina Pekkala, Lyra Silvertongue, Black Widow, Wonder Woman (already missing her laso) and another Batgirl
All figures except for Merida and Katniss were found on A Mighty Girl or Toward the Stars. That little Wonder Woman on A Mighty Girl’s promo was the one who started me on my shopping spree.
My nine year old daughter found Bella’s Mystery Deck in her Christmas stocking.
Today, we broke it out and played all morning. The deck consists of 52 cards, each with a story that describes a mystery to solve. The game revolves around Bella, a 13 year old Mexican-American girl who lives in Tucson with her family and black lab, Noche. If you follow Reel Girl, you know I love games that center on a female protagonist who is smart and brave. Bella is all that.
Besides Bella, the stories are full of colorful characters in Bella’s community. My six year old and three year old, while too young to solve the mysteries, were entertained just by listening to the nine year old read these entertaining narratives out loud. To check your answer, or find it if you’re stumped, the package comes with a mirror to decipher the backwards writing at the bottom of each card. All of my kids loved that.
We had at least an hour of utopia playtime for everyone in the family with this game, no tears, no board upsets.
I used to blog regularly about kids and food, but, now, hardly at all and that’s a good thing. Knock on wood, but food is pretty much a conflict free issue at my house.
I realized my food blogs had stopped when I wandered downstairs during movie time and saw this:
My kids got that candy for Christmas. Before you call CPS on me, I want you to know that when my older daughter saw me standing in the doorway, she asked for chicken soup. My three year old shouted, “Me too!” That bowl of candy doesn’t have a dent in it.
(Lucy is watching “Ratatouille” and hopefully smirking about the lack of female chefs. Rose is watching “My Little Pony” which commenters keep telling me I should watch but I can’t bring myself to do it.)
All of my blogs on Reel Girl about kids and food basically centered on this: I let my kids eat whatever they want, whenever they want. I have raised them based on the principles from the excellent book Preventing Childhood Eating Problems. I read this book because the same authors wrote a book that helped me to get over a tenacious eating disorder. I hope to train my kids (as I eventually trained myself) to listen to and trust their own bodies instead of any authority figure, “expert,” or fad about what to eat.
Every Christmas, Santa leaves a candy trail for the kids their bedroom to their presents, and they all say finding the candy is their favorite part of Christmas. Note that it’s not eating the candy that they love, but opening the door, seeing the sparkly silver kisses, and following them to their presents.
As I keep writing in these blogs about kids and food, I have no idea what will happen when my kids grow into teenagers, but I am hopeful. Right now, my kids are not only adventurous eaters who try new foods all the time, but also, they are what any parent would call “healthy” eaters.
Once they were old enough to feed themselves, we have regular meal times and I make healthy food always available but hardly ever controlled their eating as far telling them what, when or how much to eat. I write “hardly ever” because my middle daughter is allergic to eggs. I was terrified of the allergy when she was a baby, after she had a skin rash when she ate a hard boiled egg. For probably a year after that, I made a big deal about telling everyone she was allergic to eggs and making sure she never had anything with eggs in it. Then I saw her getting tentative about trying food, always looking up at me nervously before taking a bite of something. Clearly, she was picking up on my anxiety.
So I shifted tactics. I subtly told adults she was allergic when it was necessary to tell them. I didn’t make her allergy a conversation topic that she could overhear. I rarely had eggs in my house, again without making a big deal about it. She calmed down and also, luckily, her allergy lessened as she grew older. Now if she eats something with egg, sometimes her tongue will itch. But that she is still the pickiest eater of the three, though none are picky, further indicates to me that the more relaxed parents are about food, the more relaxed their children will be.
Now here’s the problem: How many women do you know who are relaxed about their food intake?
Before you ask, so far, no cavities.
Here are some (not all) links to previous blogs on Reel Girl about kids and food that go into more detail about books, practices, experience, philosophies, etc.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Marcel Proust
