My son had to stay in the hospital, Bellevue, a few extra days, suffering from a difficult delivery and high bilirubin scores. My wife was laid up for three more days. All the family was around us, and one of the uncles, in a moment of enlightened selflessness, brought us a full meal on the second day, something the both of us, my wife especially, desperately needed. A few days later, after time under the tanning lights, our son's jaundice had receded and we took him home. The experience was heart-warming: it felt as if all hands were on deck, and help would, for the foreseeable future, be close by.

After a hastily organized bris on the traditional eighth day, the family went their own ways. My wife's father went back to Los Angeles. The uncles went back to their homes in the same borough as us, close enough that a phone call could have them at our apartment in minutes. But little did I know that once the baby was home, the concept of help would become more hypothesis than reality, a contentious notion that created a serious family schism.

Being first-time parents, we weren't quite sure what to expect from our relatives. But it was just an assumption that aunts and uncles would pitch in, and that in fact, they would want to pitch in: perhaps bring a meal over every once in a while, or offer to do a little house cleaning, or even babysit a few hours here and there. About this, we were dead wrong.

My mother-in-law stayed for the first three months. Her help was enormous, not only lending a hand and waking up through the night, but also sharing her experiences raising three children with us. But she couldn't stay forever and left for the West Coast after the third month.

My wife and I took the reigns, and things went as well as they could have as we developed our own patterns of parenting. But after about six months, we realized that there was a scarcity of calls from the uncles and aunts: even the grandfather back in Los Angeles seemed over it all. Neither a "how is everything" call was received, nor were even the simplest of text messages sent. We began to feel hurt from what we perceived as a void of caring from my wife's immediate relatives. We would hear about these two couples having brunches together and wonder, why couldn't we be invited? We're totally morning people now! We would be invited for dinner, but because of the challenging schedules of a young baby, attending these was next-to-impossible. Turning down these invitations was perceived from their perspective as a slight, but they couldn't possibly understand the physical and psychological exhaustion we were going through.

This was the beginning of our estrangement from the uncles and aunts, four people who lived ridiculously close to us.

We cycled through a myriad of feelings. We were afraid to call to ask for help, for fear of rejection. We also worried that if we did call, we would come across as too demanding. We also thought — though this was unspoken — that perhaps asking for too much help would be seen as a sign of weakness, as if we were saying, no, we can't raise this child on our own: we need help.

So we created a mantra: we don't need the help, but we would like it. And then the vortex of miscommunication hit, and over the next few months, accusations from both sides of the aisle flew back and forth, which boiled down to two prescient points: from our side, "You never offer to help," and from theirs, "if you don't ask for help, you don't deserve it."

The lack of reaching out — a total surprise to us, as these really are decent people — forced my wife to reconsider her relationship with her up until then close (even friendship) with her brothers. Could this be the end of her tight bond with them? Had they grown disinterested now that she had a baby? Were their once-common interests diverging? As the tensions rose, the rift culminated into an all-out war of words about us being paranoid and lacking in perspective versus them having seemingly forgotten all about us. As if, poof, we had simply disappeared, fallen off the planet. At least that's how it felt.

And then finally, during one sit-down between my wife and one of the uncles, our worst fears and paranoid feelings came true. The words "It's true, we never think about you anymore. Now we just think about the baby," came out of the uncle's mouth. And there it was, the painful truth. We were no longer of any importance. And as much as it hurt, we had known it all along. And we weren't crazy, after all.

We had to ask ourselves, what did we expect from these people? Assumptions that had been made — that living close to uncles and aunts would offer us a respite, that they would help out on weekends, give us a few hours to ourselves to just go to brunch, or see a film, or just to sleep — were not being met.

But these people have their own lives, working long hours during the week, and their weekend hours are precious. I discovered that parents can really become the worst kind of navel-gazers, looking inward with nary a glance outside the windows of our apartment. Sure, the phone calls and babysitting offers had not arrived, but maybe we were just looking at things from the prism of our new life. There are other worlds out there — we just couldn't see them.

After more than a year, family members with cooler heads — namely, my wife's mother — intervened. My wife and I admitted that, yes, we hadn't put in too many calls for help. Our relatives admitted that they could have put more of an effort into first contact.

I'm happy to report that we now receive unsolicited, regular babysitting calls. The relationships are on an even keel; one of the uncles even bought us a spa treatment and offered to take care of our boy while we went off to be steamed, massaged, and therapized.

If I had to do it all over again, I would know to ask for favors from the outset: We don't have much time to cook: do you think you could bring something over? What are you doing Saturday afternoon? How about we buy you lunch and you babysit for the afternoon? Asking for help is not a sin — and now that both couples are (yes) expecting, we'll all need a little more of it.

Kids don't get to be kids for long enough, Ms. Orenstein wrote. Play is an essential part of any child's childhood, an indispensable tool to forming relationships and becoming socially and emotionally stable and there isn't enough of it in today's kindergartens. Drilling kids with flash cards pushes them to grow up before they are ready, robbing them of opportunities to learn necessary skills that will help them compete in our global society. Oops. I was robbing my child of his childhood. He probably wasn't "playing" nearly enough. As I read I imagined the track my bright little boy was on. He'd be the socially awkward, uncoordinated kid who never got invited to parties, acted out in strange ways and drew pitying looks from his classmates. He'd probably smell bad, too.

What had I been thinking? Let the kid grow up when he was ready. Sigh. I hadn't planned for things to be this way. I thought he'd be the rough-and-tumble little boy who roared at everything and bit the furniture as he stalked the house defending his territory. But when he showed interest in the letter "S" at twenty months on a cross-country flight, I snagged the opportunity to keep him quiet and contained. We looked for S's in the in-flight magazines calmly and intently for the rest of the flight. After that, his appetite for letters, numbers and words could not be satiated.

I had assumed I was doing a good thing, feeding his interests, giving him hugs and kisses when he learned new things and generally making learning fun and exciting. I even skimmed through a book, How to Teach Your Baby to Read by Glenn Doman and Janet Doman. The Domans assured me that starting young would make it easier for the child to pick up on new words and learn to read. The older he was, even kindergarten age, the more difficult it would be. As I watched my child, still shy of his second birthday, learn to recognize nine words in one afternoon — with less than ten minutes of effort on my part — I became a believer. The few minutes I spent each day showing him new words and then testing him on them later in the week were going to save us from a world of frustration once he was actually "old enough" to learn to read.

But when I was reminded of the power of play I decided to step back and watch for a while. Did my child even know how to play? I got out the wooden train set he had received for Christmas and spread the tracks on the floor. He spent a few minutes puttering around with them before coming to me and insisting I do it for him. Same story with the playdough. Hmm. At play groups I noticed him standing on the sidelines, unsure of what to do while other kids his age tackled each other, wrestled over balls and pulled things out of the toy fridge. Then he found a book and brought it to me to read to him. Hmm again. And finally, while playing at the park with some friends, he watched, puzzled, as two boys his age battled with sticks the size of staves. His own wand-sized stick, held loosely in his hand, remained unused. Certainly this was the lack of play that would prevent my child from forming lasting relationships, from figuring out how to build bridges, from becoming a contributing member of society. I hung my head in shame.

Still, I don't intend to stop my encouragement of his intellectual pursuits. Not only does it make him happy, it makes me really, really happy. Why? Because playing with him is, um, boring. And frustrating. He doesn't understand the rules of the games. He pushes me around indecisively whenever I let him take charge. He gets distracted. He makes messes that I have to clean up. Standing at the bottom of the slide waiting for him to come down and hovering beside him while he climbs up the tricky ladders at the playground lest he lose his teeth may be fun for him, but a mother can only take so much. We both need our alone time and, of course, we get it. But when we're together, I'd rather spend it doing something that has measurable results, something that I can look back on and say, "I taught him that." Watching him learn letters and words allows me to look back on the day and count it as a success.

And so, at my house, we blur the line between learning and play. We can spend a half-hour sitting on the couch bending chenille stems into Os or spelling out words on flash cards and be utterly delighted. To heck with building towers with oversize legos. Making Ts with them is so much more fun. Who cares about drawing, unless a W magically appears in the random scribbles? Now that is cool stuff. And so what if it's too cold to play outside? We've only read Corduroy four times. There's still plenty of fun to be had.

— Are You There God, It's Me Mommy

Dear Are You There God,

One of us was recently involved in a conversation with parents about this very issue. How do you talk to a kid about god (we'll go lowercase here, out of respect for your beliefs) when you don't know whether you believe in god yourself? Or when you know that you don't, but don't want to force your ideology down your kid's throat? A lot of thoughtful discussion was had, and there were no easy answers. Is it as easy as saying "This is what I believe, this is what other people believe, you can believe what you want . . .?"

It's a bit much to expect a three-year-old to understand this abstract choice. She doesn't even know what or who god is, let alone whether to hitch her horse to his (or her or its) cart. One mom suggested parents should play shrink, dodging any personal inquiries by lobbing questions right back. We like this idea, if only for exploratory purposes: You want to know why this is coming up now. What has she heard? What does she think? But if she's anything like our kids, she'll eventually demand a direct answer on your own beliefs. Avoiding her curiosity won't be much help. As parents, your beliefs matter. At this age, it's fairly likely that she'll follow your lead.

When we read your letter, we were struck (and impressed) by your openminded attitude. Not every atheist (or anything-ist) shares your views, namely, that it's ok for not everyone to share the same views.  And therein lies the answer to your question. It seems like what you're looking to teach your daughter is not what to believe, but how to respect different beliefs.

When ("if" is not a realistic expectation) your daughter asks you about god, we suggest you tell her a simple version of your truth. And follow up with some context, including the fact that other people she loves have other ideas . . . and how that's ok with you. In terms of how exactly to talk about it, there are lots of ways. Sometimes people frame religion like a story that some people believe is true and others don't. You can also tell her feelings about god are a little bit like feelings in general; unique to each individual. So there's room for everybody's own ideas about god; yours, Grandma's, and eventually, her own.

Have a question? Email parentaladvisory@babble.com

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It's the kind of scenario that can make parents of a toddler and an infant toss down their burp cloths in despair and think, as they narrowly avoid tripping over the musical truck, that having two young kids means no one's ever satisfied.

But while you can't keep 'em both happy all of the time, here are a few tricks to keep them, and you, from pitching a fit most of the time. — Shoshana Kordova

It takes three to tango (and eat, and change a diaper)

When the latest arrival needs to be held or fed, your primary interest may be baby's basic needs, but just about any infant-centered activity can become fun for the kid who might be feeling displaced. The baby's gassy? Hold her while dancing and singing silly songs with your older kid (our favorite made-up ditty includes the line "Don't drink beer in my ear, it makes it hard to hear"). The baby's gotta eat? Whether you're nursing or bottle-feeding, extend your limited lap space by grabbing a spot where you can put up your legs, and ask your toddler if she wants to sit on you (even better if you have toys or books nearby). As for the diaper change, lots of toddlers like being, er, helpful, and handing you a diaper is one of the least calamitous forms of help a toddler can offer.

Find the pattern

It's always a good idea to pay attention to what sets off your kid, and that's all the more true when monitoring the way the former center of attention reacts to the cause of her reduction in star status. Maybe there's something about the time of day or the way you relate to your infant that sparks a meltdown in your toddler; pay attention to the contributing factors and you may be able to head off an ear-numbing exercise of the will. I noticed that my oldest would get upset if I tried to feed the baby at a time when big sis was usually hungry. Now I grab some food, get my toddler into the high chair and sit next to her while feeding both of them. Which brings us to the next point . . .

Don't paint yourself into a nursing corner

Some moms like settling in with baby in the same comfy feeding spot every time. But while that can be great at the right moment, be open to feeding the baby wherever your toddler is. The same holds for other necessaries, especially if you've got multiple rooms, or floors, you hang out in. If you have diaper-changing basics or safe baby-dumping spots (even just a blanket or towel spread out on the floor) in a few strategic locations, it'll be easier to stay with both kids. And if you do have to, or want to, go somewhere else with the little one, try asking your toddler if she wants to sit on the couch with mommy too.

View your home as a kid lab

Don't keep doing something just because it's what you started off doing; your kids are changing every day, so if something isn't working right now (even if it used to), modify it. The trickiest time in our house is my toddler's bath-and-bed time, because I need to give her my attention when the baby is likely to be hungry or kvetchy. I tried sticking to our old routine, but got too stressed if I could hear crying in the other room. I tried simultaneous bath-giving and baby-wearing, but found it too cumbersome. I tried giving big sis an earlier bath if the baby was calm, and that worked well until I started hitting resistance. I ultimately settled on putting the baby in her car seat and bringing her into the bathroom with us, but I'm up for figuring out something else if this doesn't pan out either. There's no way of knowing what will work best for you at any given time other than by trial and error, so try, try, try again.

I'll take two

Keep spares of baby stuff in stock, ready to offer to your toddler if she expresses interest. Mine hadn't used a bottle in nearly a year, but as soon as she saw the baby getting one, it became the hottest item of the season. Instead of saying, "No, that's for the baby," we gave her a bottle of her own that looks different from the others. She also adores having her own blanket spread out on the floor, right next to the baby mat; when I first put it down she stalked around the perimeter with this huge proprietary grin, proud to have her own territory to stake out.

Make some one-on-one

No matter how well you manage to incorporate both kids into your daily tasks, at some point you'll probably feel like you're shortchanging at least one of them. So before you rush off on the never-ending quest to cross off everything on your to-do list when one of them falls asleep, take a few minutes to let your toddler swing like a monkey from your neck or to have a staring contest with your baby while speaking in a ridiculously high-pitched voice. It's worth building up a bank of one-on-one time, both for your kids' sense of security and so that the next time one or both of them is too tired, hungry or sick for any of these tricks to work, at least you'll know in your heart that — despite the surround-sound crying you're sure will have the neighbors calling social services — you've been doing your darndest.

Patrimony: A True Story by Philip Roth

I can't think of a more honest or unflinching account of fatherhood. This is the story of Roth taking care of his father, who is dying of brain cancer. There is a scene in the beginning — Roth's sick, aged father wipes his feces all over the bathroom. It's very easy to talk about feeling awe or great affection or worry about the family but I think it's very hard, and also more honest, to talk about the shit and blood and physicality of it. That was one of the things that surprised me about parenting, actually. Babies are not intellectual human beings — in the beginning, they are not even capable of smiling, the most simple expression of human life — and yet they're demanding of a physical relationship. One of the funny — or not so funny — tricks of life: As you get older, relationships come back to that physicality. You might find yourself wearing a diaper again and needing someone to bathe and feed you. Can anyone hold a baby without imagining oneself as an old person or the baby as an old person?

Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier

This book is like the continuation of Patrimony in a sense, because it begins after the end. Weiseltier immerses himself in the Jewish ritual of saying Kaddish after his father dies ? this act of committing himself does not mean he can make sense of death but he engages with it. Religious or not, as a parent, you are somebody who makes rituals. Whether it is a particular succession of books at bedtime or waffles on Thursday mornings ? they're all practices that you repeat and they take on a special meaning. Ritual gives kids and adults a sense of structure where structure is naturally lacking. It's the counting on it that matters.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

I was so moved by this novel, particularly by the way the father and daughter are bound together through shame. The father's shame comes from the fact that he won't admit to an affair he had and the shame of his daughter is for her country, about apartheid in South Africa. Shame can be a good thing though ? it can prompt exploration. It was actually the inspiration for me to write my new book, Eating Animals . There is the shame of a kid asking you a question and not being able to answer it, of almost entirely forgetting your responsibility. Why do we eat animals? Children's questions highlight our inconsistencies and paradoxes, but they also inspire us to consider the answers.

Life? Or Theatre? By Charlotte Salomon

I was in Amsterdam and I just stumbled into the Jewish museum. Salomon's work — the paintings and text that make up this book — was on display there. There was something about the line of suicides in her family — her grandmother, aunt and mother all took their own lives — and the idea of inescapable fate that drew me in. Since I've become a father I've become very aware of things that are handed down on purpose and by accident. And I'm interested in what can be resisted. I have a bad habit, for example, of being anti-confrontational. I know why I have it — we can usually trace these things to historical and familial trauma. Part of being a parent is the opportunity to correct these things. I admire Salomon for resisting her fate so forcefully through her art. Sorrowfully, the Nazis captured her not long after she made these paintings and she was killed at Auschwitz. The conflict is: How can art redeem or correct? Sometimes it can't. And yet we keep doing it.

1.? You are working on a project when you hear your child crying in another room where you know they are being supervised by a responsible adult.? You:

  A. Drop what you are doing to check in and make sure the situation is addressed before it gets worse.
  B. Wait to see if the cries turn into wails before taking a peek.
  C. Let the adult who is supervising handle it.? You will only get involved if there is blood.

2. The office holiday party is scheduled for the same day as your child?s school show.? You:

  A. Go to the party and makes sure someone who loves your child is in the audience, armed with a video camera so that you can watch it later with your child.
  B. Happily go to your child?s show because you hate those office parties anyway.? Now you have a good excuse.
  C. Try to make it to both events, missing substantial portions of each but successfully showing your face for a period of time.

3.? It is 4:30 p.m. and you have an important deadline in the morning.? You have at least four more hours of work to complete the project.? You:

  A. Stop working at 5:00 p.m., spend time with the family and then, once the kids are in bed, work until 1:00 a.m.
  B. Call and ask for an extension until tomorrow afternoon.
  C. Work past 5:00 and through dinner because you can?t relax with the project hanging over your head.

4.? Which of the following work projects is most appealing to you?

  A. A longer term project for which you are solely responsible.
  B. A group effort that requires consensus and the bringing together of work and ideas.
  C. A combination of both individual and team efforts.

5.? How do you like to communicate best with others?

  A. In person
  B. Telephone
  C. Email

6. A large but important project is coming down the pike and has yet to be assigned.? You:

  A. Raise your hand to lead it; you always like a challenge.
  B. Offer to help if needed.
  C. Make yourself invisible.

7. You get an email from a colleague that is written in all capital letters.? You:

  A.Wonder why he is "yelling" at you and spend the rest of the day thinking about what you could have possibly done wrong.
  B. Reply back to him in caps asking, "WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?"
  C. Pick up the phone and call him to straighten it out person to person.

8.? It has been a few days since you have heard from your boss.? You view this as:

  A. A welcome rest; you take it when you can get it.
  B. A sign you are about to get canned; you begin to update your resume.
  C. An uncomfortable pause; you call your boss to check in and see what?s happening.

9. During work hours, the phone rings and you see it is your closest friend from college.? You:

  A. Anxiously pick up the phone and talk for the next thirty minutes.
  B. Pick it up and ask if you can call him or her back when you are done work.
  C. Let the call go to voicemail and make a note to call back later in the evening.

10.? Which is more important to you during the day?

  A. A change of scenery.
  B. A change of pace.
  C. I don?t like change.

11.? Which area do you question yourself the most?

  A. My abilities as a professional.
  B. My abilities as a parent.
  C. Both parent and professional equally.
 

For each of the following statements, select how often each applies to you:? (always, sometimes, never)

12.? I have a hard time focusing on projects until the deadline is upon me.

  A. Always
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

13. I work best under pressure.

  A. Always
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

14.? Praise for a job well done is important to me.

  A. Always ?
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

15. I like to multi-task.

  A. Always ?
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

16. I have a hard time ignoring housework that is piling up.

  A. Always ?
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

17.? When working on a project, I value the input of others.

  A. Always
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

18.? I enjoy working in my profession.

  A. Always ?
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

19.? I enjoy socializing with colleagues from work.

  A. Always ?
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

20.? I feel guilty that I don?t spend enough time with my family.

  A. Always ?
  B. Sometimes
  C. Never

Scoring Guide

Question

A

B

C

Your Score

1

5

3

1

2

1

5

3

3

3

5

1

4

1

5

3

5

1

3

5

6

1

3

5

7

5

3

1

8

3

5

1

9

5

3

1

10

5

3

1

11

1

5

3

12

5

3

1

13

1

3

5

14

5

3

1

15

1

3

5

16

5

3

1

17

5

3

1

18

1

3

5

19

5

3

1

20

5

3

1

Results:

Score between 75-100? — Working from home is a possibility for everyone but you may need to make some significant adjustments to make it work.?The most difficult aspects of working from home for you will likely be to stay focused on the task at hand, especially when no one is watching you.?Carving out private physical space away from the noise of your family and establishing your own practices to stay in touch and on time with work will be tremendously helpful.?Set deadlines and keep them.?Arrange for the kids to be out of earshot while you are working, if at all possible.?And make it a habit to connect with someone from work everyday to discuss what you are doing.?These practices may not come naturally but if you stick to them, you can establish the right environment to thrive.

Score between 46-74 — You seem to have an equal balance of commitment to your family and your profession which bodes extremely well for working from home.?You realize that there is tremendous give and take between the two competing priorities.?Chances are you will be very successful in your home office but that doesn?t mean you won?t ever feel guilty about coming up short on either end of the spectrum.?Guilt is a given, no matter how smooth you are.?Communication with both parties (family and work) is critical to avoid major conflicts.?Don?t beat yourself up for playing hooky from work for an hour or two to run an errand, as long as you make it up somewhere along the way and don?t miss deadlines.?And when your child complains that you are in your office too much, tell yourself that the alternative of NOT being there is much worse.

Score between 20-45? — You have a great deal of professional drive which can be a very positive thing when working from home.?However, your biggest challenge will be that you can never "leave the office" and you might find yourself working too hard to at the expense of your family.?This work ethic is indeed important, particularly at the beginning of a work from home arrangement, so that your colleagues know you are serious about your job.?But once you prove yourself, you can relax a bit.?When the phone is ringing after hours, you don?t always have to pick it up.?And during work hours, try not to be chained to your desk. Give yourself a break, stand up, stretch your legs and go hang out with your kids for ten minutes in the middle of the day. Homework does have benefits which you are permitted to reap and still do a great job.

"Ok, fellas.?Mom has to take this one.?Scoot.?We?ll finish later."

On cue, they both roll their eyes and leave the spare bedroom that functions as my office, shutting the door behind them.?They have learned to always shut the door.?It will be another two hours before I can hear the rest of their day?s events. I feel a wave a guilt wash over me followed by another wave of responsibility as the phone rings for a third time.?I pick it up and get back to work, answering a series of questions from a reporter on deadline.?It?s a balance I have come to embrace over the last decade.?Since 2000, I have worked full time from home.

I manage the communications for a multi million dollar trade association in Washington D.C. from Philadelphia where I average a 50-60 hour work week. More and more I am coming into contact with professional parents like myself who make working from home work for them, their employers, and their families.?Gone are the days when you can?t have a serious career if it doesn?t all go down in an office building. Over the past decade, thanks largely to the Internet, you can hold a high powered job from your extra bedroom or basement while spending more time with the kids.?But it isn?t easy.?

Sure, it sounds heavenly but it?s not the cake walk many assume it is.?When I tell people about this arrangement, they often give me a look which I interpret as politely dismissive.?I imagine them thinking to themselves that "work" must not be the operative term in "work from home" and that my job must be mindless enough to perform while watching my children and soap operas all at the same time.?Judging by the unsolicited email offers I get for "home-based employment opportunities", these lighter jobs must exist, but mine is not one of them.?

Table Stakes

Sharing time between work and family is difficult enough; now imagine sharing time AND space. All the stars must be in alignment to effectively work out of your house but the two most important factors for a successful home office is 1) having the right job and 2) solid buy-in from your employer. Without those elements, you are doomed to fail.?The good news is that there are an increasing number of jobs that can be performed well almost exclusively via the web and telephone.?One good way to test if your job might be suitable is to ask yourself whether your work output can be produced and delivered to your customer (client, boss, or colleague) electronically.?Public relations, marketing, writing, consulting, computer programming, law and even accounting are conducive to work at home arrangements.?However, if your job requires you to manage large groups of people or meet face-to-face with colleagues, clients, or other stakeholders every day, you may be out of luck unless they can come to your house.?Conference calls work very well for occasional pow-wows, but using them in place of daily meetings can become disengaging.?

Speaking of disengaging, the second major criterion for a happy work from home arrangement is concurrence from all company stakeholders.?It goes without saying that your boss has to be on board with the deal but more importantly, so do your peers.?Jealously can be a huge factor, especially when one colleague has to brave rush hour and bad office coffee while the other gets an extra hour at home with the family and can wear sweatpants everyday.?Your arrangement must be justifiable to your team.?No one can complain that you are getting favored treatment if you live several hours away from the office.?If you live close to the office but are working from home, it?s a good idea for everyone with a similar job description to be offered the same arrangement.

Don?t Try This at Home

Once you have found the right job and the right employer to work from home, success is up to you.?Some of the best pieces for advice I have come from my experience of doing it completely wrong in the beginning.?After almost ten years of the daily grind within my own four walls I?ve learned what not to do.

Don?t go solo.? If you think you can get your work done and care for any of your children under the age of nine on a regular basis, you are fooling yourself. Assuming that you can bang out what you need to do when the kiddos are napping or watching Caillou seems like a good strategy until the first time they won?t go to sleep or the cable goes out.?Get real childcare.?Having a responsible babysitter who can take care of your children?s needs while you are working takes the stress out of your day.?This doesn?t mean they can?t pop into your office to say hello.?That benefit is probably the nicest perk of all.?But the earlier that your kids understand that Mom or Dad are working and need to be left alone, the more natural it becomes around the house for everyone.

Don?t be a sloth. ?Living the stereotypical dream of working in your pajamas is a bad idea.?Get up, take a shower, and put on day time clothes every morning. There is certainly no need to dress up, but changing into something suitable to be seen in public changes your energy level.?I wear jeans and hoodies most days at my office — but they are clean and fresh feeling each day and, therefore, so am I.

Don?t share space or devices.? Working at the kitchen table will be an exercise in complete frustration.?Try to find a place in your house that will be known to all as your office.?Ideally this space has a door you can close to shut out the joyous ruckus that occurs on a daily basis but if not, perhaps a screen or divider which creates a barrier between work and home.?This area should be as far away from the kitchen, playroom or other high traffic areas as possible.?You should also have a dedicated phone line and computer if your company will fit the bill or you can afford it.?Everything should be off limits to the kiddos and spouse.

Don?t watch TV.?? Unless watching TV is part of your job, don?t do it during the workday.?You wouldn?t watch television if you were in an office.?Even though no one will ever know, you need to imagine that your boss is there.?Besides, you will be distracted enough with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all day long; don?t handicap yourself any further.

Don?t dive in. ??Every morning, I take my boys to school at 8:30 a.m. and return home to start my workday.?It seems inconsequential but leaving the house and returning to the office gets me psychologically ready to transition from Mom to Vice President.?I heard of one woman who worked from home who literally walked out her door each morning, around the house once, and back inside again for the same effect.?Brilliant! ?It may sound goofy but it works.

Don?t be a recluse.? After working from home for a long period of time, you do start to get a little stir crazy.?I know that I need to get out of the house when I start asking my dog for her opinion on strategic work decisions.?I am lucky that my job requires travel every few weeks when I can be among the living and have real human contact.?If you don?t have these opportunities, be sure to make lunch dates locally every now and then so that you don?t feel like a total shut-in.?Weather permitting, get outside and breathe fresh air once each day.?Walk the dog, get the mail, or go once around the block.?Otherwise, you may never stand up from your chair.

Don?t miss phone calls.? I am a fanatic for answering my phone when it rings, sometimes to my detriment.?Yet, I feel that working from home is a privilege that I will not abuse; and to prove that to all with whom I work, I pick up my phone a great deal after hours.?This commitment served me extremely well, especially in the early days of my arrangement when I proved to everyone that they could count on me even if I wasn?t in the office next to them.?

Don?t be in the closet.? Trying to maintain the illusion that you are in the company?s office when you?re not is untruthful and unnecessary.?When I am talking to a reporter on the phone, I don?t offer that I am working from home but I don?t hide it either.?Sometimes I will warn them that I may be briefly interrupted by my "lunatic nine-year-old" who is home that day with a fake illness.?Most react in a good natured way.?Not only does this relieve the pressure to keep things quiet but it makes you human and most other humans have an appreciation for the universal challenges faced by working parents provided it doesn?t get in the way of doing a good job.

Becoming a Permanent Homebody

Even if you follow these tips, working from home may not jive for you.?It is the ultimate balancing act and crossing the streams of work and play do not always turn out well. Sometimes the challenges outweigh the benefits. (see pros and cons) And situations change as you move through your work and home life cycle. When my boys were toddlers, it was wonderful being nearby all day long. I could have lunch with them and give out multiple hugs and kisses throughout the day, which easily trumped any office professional relationship I could ever imagine.?Now, that they are older and in school all day, I sometimes feel lonely.?Admittedly, working from home may have served its purpose as far as my children are concerned but other benefits endure, especially higher productivity.?It takes a certain personality to manage this delicate balance.?Those who can?t are truly better off in an office; but those who can, will find themselves in the enviable position of being able to bring home the bacon without ever leaving the house.????

Working from home is not a walk in the park but it has certain inalienable perks provided you can deal with the challenges.

The Pros

Energy Saver.? Not only do you save on automobile gas when you don?t drive to work, you also save a ton of personal energy.?You don?t realize how much effort you exert getting to and from the office until your commute involves a few short steps.?You can use this found time with your family, relaxing, or getting ahead of the game when needed.

Home Economics.? Gas, parking and lunch money add up.?I estimated that I saved more than $500 each month when I didn?t have these embedded costs in my workday.?I also save money on work clothes, because I basically don?t wear them unless I am traveling and have to clean myself up.

Extreme Productivity.? It is amazing how much you can accomplish when no one is popping into your office to share the latest gossip or there is no water cooler around which to talk about the movie you saw last weekend. Without interruptions, I can work at an exponentially higher speed without sacrificing quality. Since meeting and exceeding deadlines is critical to working from home, productivity is one of the most important benefits.

Maximum Flexibility.? Once you have proven yourself to be able to handle the arrangement, you are indeed able to get household chores completed during the day.?I fold laundry on conference calls and take my lunches at the kid?s school.?As long as you don?t abuse the flexibility, it is something you can, and should, enjoy.

The Cons

Guilt.? When you work at home it becomes very difficult to leave your problems at the office.?Be prepared to be drawn to work when you should be drawing a bath for your kids.?Inevitably there will be moments when you are being pulled in two different directions.?For those of us parents who feel as if they are never doing either job — parenting or working — very well, the work from home arrangement exacerbates that guilt because they are sharing the same time and space.

Isolation.? Working by yourself out of your home can be extremely lonely.?If you are the only one on a team that is not physically together regularly you need to be at peace with not being part of the daily party.?Even if everyone is working remotely the probability that you will feel like an island is high.?It is an acquired taste to which some folks never adjust.

Glass Ceiling. If you aspire to be the CEO, President, or Grand Pooh-bah of any kind in a large company that you did not start yourself, chances are that you will have to be in the office eventually to reach that final rung.?

Stigma.? There are enough work from home scams and bad experiences that many people write you off before they give you a chance.?You need to prove yourself and earn respect from those around you, more so than you would if you showed up in the office every day.?Working from home does not mean you are any less committed, but it could be wrongly interpreted that way.

It needs to be said from the outset that this is not a pro- or anti-cry it out article. How you approach sleep is as personal and complex as any aspect of parenting. And, rightly so, many moms and dads use their instinct as their guide. The intent of this article is to examine the scientific evidence that sleep training (the kind that involves a distinct period of crying to sleep) causes long-term brain damage — a very serious claim that should not be tossed around lightly.

The work of big name researchers and clinicians comes hand-in-hand with the anti-cry it out stance. For example, UCLA researcher Dr. Allan Schore is often cited as showing that stress hormones like cortisol, released during intense crying, damage nerve cells in the brain, leading to unhealthy attachments and psychological disorders. He demonstrates that a repeated pattern of unmet needs disrupts a child's stress-regulating systems and can alter the way her limbic structures process emotion.

But Schore's research is actually about how trauma, chronic neglect, or abuse affects a small person. No doubt, if ignoring distress were your every day parenting philosophy this would apply, but sleep training against the background of caring, responsive parenting, does not. In fact, this is the case with a lot of sources opposing the cry it out method — the claims of brain, personality, and attachment damage come from research conducted with grossly neglected children (some studies use data from Child Protective Services cases) not healthy children with loving parents who let them cry for an isolated timeframe.

Another well-respected source that makes the rounds on the Internet is a list of studies put together by Dr. Sears that conclude crying it out is dangerous. There are too many to explain each here, but for example, one states that infants who cry excessively have a higher incidence of ADHD, antisocial behavior, and poor school performance. When you look at the original study, though, the crying clearly has nothing to do with sleep training. The study shows that extra fussiness and subsequent crying (regardless of what parents do in response) might be a symptom of an underlying problem that could come up later in life. Sears quoted another study as showing that crying early on makes a child fussy and emotionally unbalanced. Again, the actual study says that babies who already cry a lot might be showing early signs that they are slower to develop emotional control. None of the Sears studies listed shows negative consequences as a result of a structured sleep training program.

A Harvard study often surfaces in this debate to show that CIO is bad for baby. This is not actually an original research paper, but an opinion paper based mostly on anthropological studies of parenting practices. It describes how U.S. parents emphasize independence, while mommies from other cultures co-sleep and respond faster to their little ones. It does not have any data about sleep training.

On the other hand, there isn't a robust body of evidence showing that crying it out is safe. When you think about how complicated emotional health and brain development are, it seems like a difficult conclusion to draw absolutely. Maybe certain children are more vulnerable to stressors and maybe if crying it out comes in tandem with another major change, like starting daycare or weaning, the effects might add up to a tipping point and direct a child's brain development in some way. But is there evidence of this? Not yet. It's worth noting that if it's crying we're worried about, the overall amount of crying involved in a well thought-out sleep-training program can be less than the sobs that many parents have reported when they go with a "no-cry" solution.

So the bottom line? Soothe your baby and respond to her all the time, especially in the early months. Carry her, snuggle her, feed her on demand. Being responsive and loving is a parent's most important job. In fact, it's probably the case that co-sleeping is the most natural and adaptive family arrangement — we've done it for thousands of years and, somewhere deep in their brains, our babies are probably programmed to thrive best this way. But most parents want independent sleepers and a bedtime routine that doesn't end up as a mini-trauma every night. If you decide you can't possibly bounce for another forty-five minutes on the yoga ball to get your baby to sleep, will the times that you let her cry — provided she is fed, healthy, and comfortable and you check on her — alter her brain development? There is no evidence of this so far, so you're free to make that very personal parenting choice for yourself.

Here's the dish those articles never serve up. Read it, and enjoy Halloween a little more this year, knowing that you don't need to be scared of . . .

Poisoned Candy

According to Harper's index, the number of children ever killed by doctored Halloween candy given to them by strangers equals a whopping zero. I for one plan to continue taste-testing my kids' snacks for poisons, but only the good stuff

Choking

Now that you're not worried about your kids' candy being poisoned, you can go ahead and let them eat it without fear of choking. Between 1999 and 2002, over 75% of choking deaths were people over 65. Only about 100 children die from choking each year. While many more are rushed to hospital emergency rooms, fewer than 20% of those kids choke on candy, according to the CDC.

Sugar

Afraid a candy binge will make your kids into little monsters? Experts say the link between hyperactivity and sugar just isn't there. On the other hand, if parents think their kids have had sugar, they will report more hyperactive behavior, even if the child did not actually eat any sugar. The same goes for artificial food coloring and other additives. Look the other way and let the little ones gorge on their loot.

Food allergies

Wait! What about all the potential allergens lurking in those brightly wrapped treats? Only about 6% of children and 1-2% of adults have a food allergy, and most of those are not the fatal variety. While the cause of food allergies remains a mystery, the Mayo Clinic and other experts place increasing weight on the "hygiene" hypothesis: that keeping potential allergens away from kids certainly doesn't help, and may make them more susceptible to food allergies. If you know your child has an allergy, of course you need to be vigilant, but if you've never had a reaction, count yourself lucky and indulge.

Dirt

Speaking of the hygiene hypothesis, it's probably healthy to let your kid eat that piece of candy that fell on the ground. The hygiene hypothesis states that children who are exposed to a wide variety of microorganisms at an early age develop more robust immune systems. Around here, we call the dust that invariably gets into our trail mix Vitamin Fun.

Satanic cults

Worried that some of those demons and witches prowling the street might be real? While Satanic cults make great TV, they've never been shown to exist in real life. If your child does run into a real witch on Halloween, she's likely to be an earth-loving Wiccan who might trick you into taking home some whole wheat brownies instead of the commercial chocolate.

The Internet

What Satanic ritual abuse was to my generation, Internet predators are to my kids' era: the bogeyman in the closet. The Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a Harvard-backed study that included forty-nine state's attorneys general, found that fears about Internet predation vastly outweigh the reality of this fairly rare crime. Unlike Satanic cults, creeps with computers really do exist. But they're a danger to be aware of, not lived in fear of. For most kids, the most dangerous person they'll meet on Facebook is their mom, who might well use the social networking site to find out what they were really up to last Friday night.

Abduction

Not only do you not have to worry about your child being stolen by Satanists or virtual predators, you don't have to worry about your child being stolen by any random stranger. How long would you have to leave your children outside unattended to make it statistically likely that they'd be abducted by a stranger? 750,000 years, says Warwick Cairns, author of How to Live Dangerously. Let the kids trick or treat on their own if you feel like it.

Death

Kids tend to survive. Only about 3% of the deaths in the United States each year are people under twenty-five. While tragedies do occur, it's worth remembering that kids are resilient, and that the scary things on the news make the news because they're rare. As safety guru Bruce Schneier says, "I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying."

There is one real terror on Halloween to watch out for: cars. Kids are four times more likely to be hit by a car on Halloween than on any other night of the year, according to the National SAFE KIDS Campaign in Washington, DC. So tell your kids to look both ways, and then relax - Halloween isn't nearly as scary as you think.

Oscar and the Bat: A Book About Sound by Geoff Waring

Lots of spooky noises come alive at night that can scare kids: hooting owls, whispering wind, clashing thunder. This book explains why sound--even scary sound--is important. Plus, it will show your children how to use their ears to tell how far or near something is, and to find something, like a bird's nest or raindrops, before their eyes can actually see it.

Lesson: The world would be really boring without sound.

There's No Place Like Space! by Tish Rabe

Nighttime is synonymous with being dark and dreary, but it doesn't have to be that way. Why not teach them about just what's out there in our vast universe? Starting with the moon, this book takes kids on a super-speedy trip through our solar system, and addresses questions like, 'If the Earth is always spinning, why aren't we dizzy?' Who knows, after a few reads, you may have some night owls on your hands!

Lesson learned: Darkness isn't scary when you know what's out there.

Dark Night by Dorothee de Monfreid

This story about a boy named Felix who encounters some ferocious-looking animals in the woods will give your kids a boost of bravery before bedtime. At first, the forest animals frighten Felix but he runs into a wise rabbit that says, hey, if something scares you, scare 'em back! Halloween mask in hand, Felix turns the tables on his nemeses.

Lesson learned: Confidence goes along way in combating scary stuff.

The Scariest Monster In The World by Lee Weatherly & Algy Craig Hall

If your kids are scared of monsters under the bed, read them this funny tale about a monster that gets hiccups?and can?t get rid of them! Not only does it show that even the most menacing creatures have a soft side, we find out in the end that the monster?s scare tactics are mostly for show.

Lesson learned: Monsters aren?t that different than you and me.

What Was I Scared Of? by Dr. Seuss

You can?t go wrong with classic Dr. Seuss, and lucky for you, he?s concocted a tale sure to soothe your child?s fears of creatures lurking in the dark. Read this wacky tale about a kid who stumbles upon a pair of (literal) scared-ey pants that rides bikes, rows boats?even runs around with no feet!

Lesson learned: The things you?re most scared of are probably just as scared of you. (Bonus: The book is glow-in-the-dark!)

Creaky Old House by Linda Ashman

Got a creaky house? Read this to your kids. This story about a family with a house full of drafty shutters and dilapidated stairs shows that everything ?spooky? only became that way through years of love. (The fraying rug? That?s where Gran and Grandpa jitterbug!)

Lesson learned: A creaky house is a happy house.

Dear Royal,

Year after year parents worry that their vulnerable young daughters will be damaged by obsessions with Disney's wasp-waisted, pug-nosed role models. The princess industrial complex is unstoppable, and our little girls are drawn to it like flies to sh*t. If you manage to keep the whole thing outside of your daughter's frame of vision, we salute your efforts (and wonder if she's getting enough Vitamin D locked in that basement). If your daughter knows about princesses but doesn't give a hoot, we salute your . . . luck. The major feminist argument against The Princess is that her entire personality consists of being passive and pretty. Some worry more about the stress on beauty, for others it's the lack of agency, or the lack of cultural identity. It's all very interesting from a semiotics standpoint. But as Peggy Orenstein put it a few years ago in the Times, " maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess." In other words, what she means to you is not at all what she means to your daughter. Fighting her obsession could hurt your cause. These tinsel goddesses are characters she identifies with; negativity may be wrongly interpreted or internalized. You might teach her that you don't like what she likes, or what she imagines she is. Or, you might just show her a really easy way to rile you up. The last thing you want to do is to give the princesses the power of getting to you on top of their other powers. You can help your daughter see outside the pink satin box by providing her with a range of pretend play options, and reading her fantasy narratives that go beyond the basic happily ever after (AKA wedding) tale. You can certainly introduce her to the wonders of Wonder Woman and see if she takes the bait. (She does have a crown, after all.) But Halloween is probably not the time to challenge her interests. Halloween is an opportunity for self-expression and identification. We are believers in the self-generated costume (if not in construction, at least in concept). You can force your daughter to wear a Wonder Woman costume, but you can't make her like it. Our advice is to go with the flow and let her be whatever she feels like being for the moment, however much it abrades your feminist sensibilities. Word among parents of older girls is that the princess phase, though often torturous, passes quickly. If you don't add the element of rebellion into the mix, maybe it will run its course sooner. And hey, if you let her go as a princess now, you've got a good excuse not to let her be one again next year.

Have a question? Email parentaladvisory@babble.com

Click to buy Ceridwen and Rebecca's book!

For the first five years my husband and I were together, we shared a common interest in the most obscure horror movies we could find — Dario Argento, Ruggero Deodato, Gaspar Noe, Takashi Miike.?We challenged one another, ordering movies like Cannibal Holocaust from Canada because it was hard to get in the states just to see if we could stomach it.?(We could.)

Together, we would curl up on the couch, some disturbing horror fare before us, pop some popcorn and descend into madness.?We were probably the only people who looked forward to watching the decidedly B-grade Black Christmas (an abysmally bad movie) the day it came out, just one month before our daughter was born.

My friends would lament our bad taste in movies, mock our desire to see House of 1000 Corpses while they went to see Merchant Ivory Productions, but it was our taste.?Our shared sickness was powered by the same insanity that made us both skydive, bungee jump and enjoy fast cars.?We dug the adrenaline.?Unless a movie made me dig my fingers into my husband's arm and involuntarily cover my eyes, then it was not doing its job.?

And then we had children.

I knew things had changed soon after we brought her home when I perused our DVD collection and was more interested in watching Jennifer Aniston bat her eyes and act ditzy than Sheri Moon Zombie dancing sultrily to "Rocky Mountain Way" in The Devil's Rejects.?

It got worse. Breastfeeding allowed plenty of time for watching television and movies, but instead of watching complicated or disturbing shows like X-Files or 24, I started DVR-ing thirty-minute sitcoms like Hope and Faith.?Even worse??I was laughing along with the laugh track, relating to the clich?d situations the main characters found themselves encountering and trying to convince my husband that it was actually "Kind of dirty -- like, sometimes Kelly Ripa says things that could totally be taken two ways.?Isn't that funny, honey?"

My husband refused to watch Hope and Faith, but was roped into TLC's A Baby Story a couple times. "This is the worst show I have ever seen," he groaned beside me as I nursed our infant daughter.

"But look how sweet they all are," I explained through my tears (oh yes, there were tears for TLC in those early months), hoping that he would also be moved by this version of our own baby story, minus all the blood and slime and goop that made it real.?

And so when he asked, "Why do I want to watch this when I just watched the real thing?" I had no answer.

My husband was sure I had lost my mind, or at least my edge.?He started pushing the issue, bringing home bootleg copies of current horror fare, suggesting we watch Hostel again — anything to reawaken my love of torture porn.?But it was not for me, I told him, something that was confirmed one night while our infant daughter slept in the basinett upstairs and we settled in to watch one of Showtime's Masters of Horror — Takashi Miike's Imprint.?It was torture porn at its finest — fingernails, needles and pain.?I had to turn it off.

A few weeks later, I tried a Texas Chainsaw remake, figuring Imprint (which had actually not even aired on HBO due to its disturbing content) might have been a fluke.?But it happened again.?My tolerance for extreme gore had shifted.?Rob was right.?I had gone soft.

Maybe it was the hormones, the daily doses of oxytocin I was receiving via breastfeeding, that made me crave comedies with Sandra Bullock and warm-hearted romps with loveable beagles while my husband still needed the hard stuff.

Suddenly the world was all fuzzy in soft focus and anything bad happening to anyone — not just children — could happen to my child, if not now then someday.?In sixteen years she could easily be the buxom teenager running away from the ax-wielding killer.?She could one day run out of gas on a country road and ask the wrong person for a tow.?She — and I and we — were vulnerable in this world and I did not need my movies telling me just how.

It was more than that, too.?At their heart, most mainstream horror movies are misogynistic, or at least contain a whole lot of T and A.?There is usually a fine line between pornography and the most graphic horror movie, and the desire to watch both comes from the same base instinct. Before I was happy to indulge in those voyeuristic fantasies, to allow myself to get titillated by someone else's peril, but after the baby, I knew what T and A was really all about.?It was hard to watch the sweet young thing, her nubile breasts jiggling (prior to impalement or some equally hideous death) when my own were being used to feed my infant. My body was suddenly more than just a collection of parts that filled out a sweater and added spice to a violent movie.?Now it served a purpose that was so beautiful and sweet it felt perverted to enjoy it in any other way.

But I was still myself, my husband reminded me. I may have lost the stomach for the gore temporarily, but who would I be without loving the darker side of life??Even if my exploration of it was only through watching B-grade horror, it was still a quirk that was all mine.?I had always loved violence in movies and strip clubs and adrenaline.?Perhaps it makes me a female chauvinist pig, but it was my own.?Without it, I worried I was just another Stepford wife, smiling blandly and cooking non-bloody pot roast.?

It was a box set of Six Feet Under that pulled me from the brink of a future filled with cheesy reruns and dulled down comedy.?

A friend gave me all five seasons to watch during my marathon nursing sessions and as it turned out, watching a show whose main theme was that death comes for us all sooner or later was the perfect antidote to my new mom schmaltz-fest.?The Fisher family, with all of their neuroses and imperfections, reminded me that life is complicated and interesting. It is neither anesthetized like a half-hour baby story or sadistic and cruel like Irreversible.?And death is like birth, natural and expected and, sometimes, even beautiful.?

Sixty-three hours of good television saved me from a life of cheese.?While it's true that I may never want to see a woman treated like a piece of meat again, I also don't need all my entertainment served lukewarm.?I had a baby, not a lobotomy.

It is now a couple years later and although I have never renewed my once-vigorous love of all things blood and gore, I am also not rushing out to see the latest romantic comedy or watching bad sitcoms on cable television.?I do turn off the news when something particularly heinous relating to children or abuse comes on, but I went to see Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 opening weekend, just like old times, and barely flinched.?

As the little girl in Poltergeist (the '80s horror flick that awakened my love of the macabre) once said, "I'm back."?Changed, yes. But still me.?Bring on the chainsaws.

You will need:

• A small, serrated knife
• An ice cream scooper or kitchen spoon
• Vaseline
• Felt-tip marker or stencil
• Newspaper

Optional:

• Thumb tacks or push pins
• Stencil
• Fork
• Candle

Five easy steps to carving a pumpkin:

• Cut a circular opening that's bigger than your fist into the bottom of the pumpkin. Carving from the bottom up gives the pumpkin a cleaner look, plus it's safer. You won't burn your hand when you try to light a candle and place the pumpkin over it.

• Use an ice cream scooper or a kitchen spoon to clean and scrape the inside. The pumpkin wall should be no more than one inch thick.

• Draw your design on your pumpkin using a felt tip pen, or download a stencil from the Internet. Attach the stencil to your pumpkin using push pins or thumbtacks. Poke along the cut lines with a fork.

• Carve along your cut lines. If you plan to use a votive, carve a vent hole at the top of the pumpkin. (Never leave a lit jack-o-lantern unattended for any length of time.) If a piece breaks you can use toothpicks to hold it together.

• Seal your cuts by dabbing on some petroleum jelly. That will prevent browning.

Now that you've carved your pumpkin, store it in a cool dark place, not room temperature, where it will rot quickly and attract fruit flies. Happy luring!

In 2007 writers Sharon Brown and Lyn Mikel Lamb published Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes, a book about the messages girls get from marketers and what parents can do about it. From the beginning, they also wanted to write a book about boys.

In their new book, Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons from Superheroes, Slackers and Other Media Stereotypes, writers Brown, Lamb and Mark Tappan analyze all types of data, all the way down to the valentines Johnny and Joey can give to classmates and how they're riddled with menace (one Transformer card features the police car robot shouting: "I've been looking for you"). 

The Valentine's Day cards are just one tiny example of how stereotypes and other media images play out to boys. The message that boys get is that they have to be strong — and not just strong, SUPER strong. They have to play games, but they always have to be the winner.

What does this mean for boys? And what options are left out? What happens when they don't win? If they're not strong? Why exactly is a PG-13 movie (Batman: The Dark Knight) linked to T-shirts in 2T?

It's a story in which those with the most power too often have the wrong kind of power — they are the bullies, the narcissistic athletes, "dogs" or "players" — the ones who call the shots and get the scantily clad, booty-jiggling music video girls. It's a story that teaches boys that they need to avoid humiliation at all costs, seek revenge if wronged, dress to impress and intimidate, be tech-savvy, show wealth and take risks all while pretending that they don't care about any of it.

Think this doesn't apply to your little tot? In one hilarious and frightening example, the authors use movie quotes and invite readers to tell whether they were spoken by Rambo or Raphael, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. (The quotes are equally violent.)

Authors Lyn Mikel Brown and her husband Mark Tappan talked to Babble about what to do and what you can say to your kids to combat the media bombardment.— Jennifer V. Hughes

Your work has turned me into an advocate. I'm always pointing out things from your first book, like how few classic children's books feature girls as the hero.  But I often get the "what's the big deal" response. So what if a kid's t-shirt has Spiderman on it? Who cares if boys are obsessed with sports?

Lyn: The series of messages and a kind of typing about boys that happens pretty early on sets up an ideal that is pretty narrow and pretty hard for boys to fit into. The ideal of always winning and being a superhero closes out a whole range of options, for example, being able to talk about being vulnerable or feelings, the complex things we want to support in our children that make them healthy as they grow up.

Mark, how did you see this kind of thing growing up?

Mark: Things have really changed since I was a boy. One of the things we noticed was how pervasive it is, in toys, movies, books, everywhere. The other side of it is the slacker stereotype, the "I don't care," Bart Simpson character. It's the alternative to the hyper super macho. If you don't measure up to that, you can be a slacker and still be popular.

You talk in your book about how boys are pushed towards certain subjects, superheroes, for example. What's so bad about boys identifying with Spiderman? He's a good guy, he works hard, he's flawed and human?

Lyn: Part of the problem is that the old comic books have been transformed over time. Now they're these over-the-top action movies. There is a lot to like about Spiderman and for the most part he's good. But now there's also bad Spiderman, there's Batman and The Dark Knight. It's gotten a lot darker, a lot more scary and more dramatic. These are PG-13 movies that are really on the border of an R, and yet they're marketed to the littlest boys.

Mark: We're not against superheroes, but if it's the only thing that boys have, then it's a problem. Boys should have a range of toys to play with and people to identify with. Superheroes are a place for parents to have a conversation with their sons. In our culture, it's just sort of accepted — what's the big deal, boys will be boys. It's different for girls; we have a sense that girls need to be protected. But it's almost as if boys don't matter as much. They'll goof off in school, they'll cause trouble, they'll raise hell, they'll fight and it's normal. We think the media plays a role in that; it's not just boys being boys in a natural sense.

I do think that there are some inherent things about boys: they usually are more high-energy, they usually do gravitate toward a ball instead of a baby doll. How do you accommodate a boy's natural tendencies and still adhere to some of your ideals?

Lyn: What we're talking about is the way that energy is translated into a very narrow stereotype. Why is action translated into violence? Action can be channeled in other ways.

So how do you try to address some of these issues of violence? Do you ban Bakugan? Say yes to Spiderman but no to X-Men? How do you decide?

Mark: There are choices parents have to make about what's appropriate. We'd like parents to pay more attention to the ratings of movies, for one, so they don't let their kids see PG-13 movies just because they got a Batman toy in their Happy Meal. We want parents to talk to their sons so the violence is a topic for conversation, not something that has to be banned. Ask them: "What does this mean? Why do you like it?"

Lyn: The important thing is to listen. We don't always know why they are attracted to something, say violent video games. One of Mark's students helped us see that boys often like these games because of the complex storylines. As parents, if we listen to them, we can help channel that in other ways, help them find other ways to get that complex storyline.

When it comes to violence — what is the difference between what kids see today and what we watched? I remember adults thinking that Wile E. Coyote trying to blow up the Road Runner was too violent.

Lyn: We have so many examples of how things are different from the way they used to be. We were totally struck by Nerf and how big the guns are now. There are also Legos now where it's not about creatively making what you want to make, it's about making the Transformer. We looked at racetracks; it used to be that the idea was to keep the car on the track, now the idea is to crash. We saw the word "hyper" in a lot of toys and other marketing; even the name has to be over the top.

In your previous book, Packaging Girlhood, one thing that stunned me was the part about how children's games show — by a huge margin — the boy winning or playing an active role with the girl as a passive observer rooting for the boys. Tell me one of the things that you were really surprised to discover in your research for Packaging Boyhood.

Lyn: With this book, after a while, we just felt like it was all too much. We started thinking of it as this frantic, desperate need to impose this on boys. I was thinking of all the little boys in their little bodies confronted with this all the time and the experience that they have to somehow live up to all of this in the guise of fun and action. It has to feed a kind of anxiety

Mark: Certainly for marketers, that's the technique: you increase someone's anxiety about not being pretty or smart or strong enough and then you sell them a product that will make them feel better. You tie that into the cultural anxiety about masculinity. One of the examples of that is, strangely enough, energy drinks. You start to listen to all those names — Full Throttle, No Fear, Monster, Tiger, Rock Star — it's that again and again, this desperate sense of you're big enough, you're strong enough, you're man enough, you're hyper enough to prove something.

I thought it was really interesting how you point out that there are a lot of great shows for young boys (and girls) — WonderPets, Thomas — where the focus is not all on competition and violence and destruction, with good messages about teamwork and cooperation and affection. But then it seems to go straight to X-Men. At least girls get My Little Pony in between. Why is there so little middle ground for boys?

Lyn: I think that's right. Not only that, but they go right into the tween shows, too. It's interesting how much the show "Drake and Josh," mirrors the show "Two and a Half Men": one is the player, and one is the straight man. The other shocking thing about [shows directed to boys] is the idea of drinking, how much we saw boys' characters getting "drunk." SpongeBob gets "drunk" on ice cream; on "The Suite Life" they get "drunk" on soda. In Toy Story, they get "drunk" on tea, in Open Season, they get "drunk" on candy bars. It becomes a right of passage for boys, and it goes to the littlest boys, that out of control, action thing.

You address the issue of race more in this book than the last one. What have you found about how race is addressed in movies, TV, and other media?

Lyn: I think we were aware of the fact that we didn't address race much in Packaging Girlhood, but at the same time I think it's more of an issue for boys because a lot of the hyper masculine images are of men of color, in sports or music. One of the big concerns was in reading, it was hard to find books, except history books, where boys of color were the protagonists or the leaders. It's pretty rare when you see that.

Mark: It happens in movies too. The character of color is typically the sidekick, like Donkey in Shrek .

Lyn: Of course, the lead character in Open Season is played by a person of color . . .

But of course he's too drunk to do much good.

Lyn: Exactly, he's getting drunk and saying things like "Bros before does" (referring to the adult version, Bros before Hos). That's the kind of coded stuff designed to bring in adults, but it really does sell out boys in terrible ways.

So what's your advice to parents, especially those with young sons, like four or five?

Lyn: That is the time when parents can introduce simple concepts of how they're being sold something, what a stereotype is. You can guide them away from things and channel their energy into more constructive things. The hope is that if we can do that with little kids, as they get old enough, they'll do the talking. We want to have a voice in their head with all that other media stuff.

In this exclusive excerpt from the book, they analyze the limited — and highly gender-divided — range of choices in Halloween costumes and advise that you talk to your sons about being able to be themselves, even while wearing the standard ultra-violent and superhuman outfits.

Click here for Lamb and Brown?s chapter on Halloween costumes for girls from their previous title Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketer?s Schemes.

Special Forces Jungle Fighter Child

Surf the web, flip through the many catalogs, or walk through department stores beginning in early September to look for a Halloween costume and Boyhood (that?s with a capital B) will assault you at every turn. Take him to any big box store like Walmart or Target and your little boy can pour over a dizzying array of costumes. When boiled down, his choices include scary characters, fighters, and heroes — either in super form, like Spiderman or Batman, or the real life version, like police officers, military personnel, or sports stars. For the youngest boys there?s the occasional Pooh Bear or SpongeBob, even a cute puppy or lion, but they are buried in an avalanche of ninjas, special Delta force soldiers, and Transformers.

Halloween for boys is mostly about embodying a sense of power and full-throttle action. Boys dress up as men and the version of manhood presented to them is one in which superheroes and warriors are ready to save the world. Their costumes come with every weapon he needs to control, dominate, and save, and just to prove he?s physically up for the challenge, they come complete with fake muscles. "Bulging padded ?muscles? are stitched into torso, arms and legs," announces a catalog description. "Transform your little hulk into the most powerful human-like creature."

Most powerful. Every costume says extreme action! Being a soldier is tame, almost boring, compared to being a Special Force Fighter Child, complete with ragged, ripped camo pants and "3-D foamed muscle top jumpsuit" that fakes 6-pack abs — "A great costume if you want to be Rambo." Of course few boys today know who Rambo is, aside from those who have seen Stallone?s recent R-rated sequel with the tagline: "Heroes never die; they just reload." Even if he?s not allowed to see the movie, the little boy posing in the costume, his camo headband off-kilter, his hands on his hips, his best five-year-old "don?t mess with me" expression, conveys the idea pretty well.

It?s no surprise that Halloween invites boys to dress up as the superheroes they watch in movies or sports stars they admire on TV, but it?s striking how many costumes are just variations of tough guys carrying all manner of weapons. Fighting crime like Superman and imagining you can dunk a basketball like Michael Jordan or win the Indianapolis 500 like NASCAR?s Jimmie Johnson is great fantasy, but just as pink and princess have overrun all manner of girls? costumes, boys? costumes have to come with some kind of ninja attitude and fighter paraphernalia.

And more is always, always better. More stuff, bigger muscles, tougher-sounding descriptions. Who wants to be just any ninja when you can be Shadow Ninja Bounty Hunter? This extra-tough guy costume includes a jumpsuit with muscle torso, attached belt, sword, shin guards, apron, hood, and badge. The red and black mask covers all but his eyes: "You'd better hope this ninja isn't on your trail if you're a fugitive on the run because he always gets his man."

Perusing the Halloween costume catalogs sent to homes across the country, we?re also struck by the images of little boys posing for these costumes. They must be told by the photographer to give him or her their hardest, scariest, meanest looks; to show the world how big and strong and frightening they can be, how fearless and intimidating. Like WWE stars, they model threatening poses, some showcasing their fake muscles, others in aggressive battle stance, their guns, swords, knives, light sabers, and blasters at the ready or their fake boxing gloves raised as if to strike the next blow. Many are made up to look like they?ve just been in a fight, but they?re still standing, hair messy, an eye blackened with make-up to show toughness, torn shirts and fake muscles pumped and ready for more.

Looking closer, however, we can see a hint of a smile play around the lips, even a smirk on some. The littlest boys can?t help themselves. Many smile openly at the camera, loving the fun of this playful moment when someone takes their picture and tells them how cool and tough the look. The older boys are better at the menacing looks, more practiced and polished at faking invulnerability for the camera, but even then it?s clear that this is a performance, an opportunity to imagine the glory and satisfaction of knowing all who come his way will quake in fear or run for their lives. Who wouldn?t let their son enjoy a bit of this kind of fantasy?

All boys go through this door; all girls go through that one — Halloween is about the stark commercialization of gender. It?s something we thought we?d left behind years ago. There is no neutral space, no crossing gender lines. Just look straight ahead and march, people! Even animals and insects are coded tough guy and pretty-sexy girl. No colorful butterflies and gossamer wings of dragonflies for boys. No black spiders and bats for girls. Dinosaurs and dogs are for boys. Cats, sexed up in black fishnets and full makeup, are for girls. Everything and everyone is elaborately and distinctly gendered. Halloween — at least as commercial costumes go — is not about real imagination and fantasy at all, but about the celebration of gender stereotypes. Crossing over to the other side, as some do, is possible — girls can be ninjas, boys can be dragonflies — but the distinctly male and female poses, the carefully worded descriptions in the catalogs and on websites, the clearly labeled "boy" and "girl" categories alert us all to the consequences of not dressing in a gender-appropriate way — they?ll be out of synch with their friends, breaching cultural protocol, and set up for teasing and rejection.

Of course there?s something especially pernicious about paying good money to box in our children?s worlds and limit their choices at such an early age. Fantasy for children is about trying on new roles or imagining the unusual or impossible, and Halloween is a chance to be whatever wild and crazy identity captivates him in the moment. After seeing costume after costume, he may desperately want to be Super Scary Special Forces Ninja Bounty Hunter Fighter World Saving Man. After all, marketers know the promise of all that action and power can be irresistible, especially to boys who don?t get the chance to feel that way very often (which is to say, most boys). But, given a real choice — a choice that builds action, fun, and adventure around other options — he may not. If we don?t offer the alternative, how will we know?

Since these costumes will be part of his play long after Halloween is over, help him invent stories that include those parts of him you want to nurture, stories that include a range of feelings, his own and others?. Power can be about physical strength and dominance, but it can also be the power to change someone?s point of view, persuade evil to be good, to challenge others to do good things. Remind him that every superman has his kryptonite and it?s okay to feel afraid. A superhero needs to listen, pay attention, and show compassion. These skills distinguish a true leader from a despot, and it?s never too early to help him know the difference.

PACKAGING BOYHOOD by Sharon Lamb, Ed.D., Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed. D., and Mark Tappan, Ed.D., copyright ? 2009 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin?s Press, LLC.

Halloween Costumes

Boys are dressing up as military personnel, policemen, and explorers. Girls dress up as hot little teenagers. This is no more apparent than on Halloween. Walk through Wal-Mart or look through any Halloween flyer or catalog, and you'll see pirates, firefighters, and superhero clothes offered to boys; princesses, cheerleaders, and sexy divas are offered to girls.

When we were kids, Halloween was a chance to dress up like someone you weren't. It was a time to be a little transgressive, to cross the usual boundaries set in place by social mores and convention. At Halloween's gloaming, the powerless became superheroes, the young became wrinkled and bent, the poor donned dazzling jewels, and people of the day became monsters of the night — vampires, witches, and all manner of ghastly ghouls. Sometimes girls became mustached men, and boys became big-breasted women, just for the absurdity and the fun of it! We raided our parents' closets and makeup supplies, tore up sheets for bandages, painted lipstick blood down our cheeks, or dug out Dad's big rubber boots to invent someone outlandish. The streets resembled something out of Night of the Living Dead, save for a few oddly bright Tweety Birds and Cinderellas.

Halloween is still a chance to be who you aren't, but anyone with kids can tell you that costumes have become something of an art form. No wonder all the kids want them; Mom's closet looks drab by comparison. They are elaborately accessorized affairs made of every fabric and material known to humankind. Costumes come with things like hats, boas, glasses, wands, microphones, wigs, swords, slippers, purses, pom-poms, wings, medallions, scarves, crowns, handcuffs, whistles, badges, and broomsticks. They have muscles sewn in, plush animal-like fur, foam chest armor, layers of chiffon, and fake leather or metal. Some are full-fledged fantasies that parents who can afford it pay $20 to $40 to see come alive on their child. (Sixty dollars will buy you a bride's costume, complete with "giant diamond ring." Alas, there is no groom's costume in sight.)

But there's one obvious way that Halloween costumes lack imagination. Go ahead and pick out the boy and girl costumes from the following list of catalog descriptions:

"Pow! Bang! Batman to the rescue."

"Evening star enchants everyone."

"The Gladiators enter the arena, and the crowd goes wild!"

"Made in Heaven."

"Shadow Panther Cyber Ninja, protector of the galaxy!"

"Chic pink pussy cat is spotted at all the best soirees."

You get the idea. Halloween has become less about being who you aren't for a night and more about fantasizing that you are the ultra-girl or uberboy the material world says you should want to be. Boys are tough, active superheroes, ninjas, and warriors, ready to save the empire, the world, and the universe, complete with fake muscles to prove their manhood. "Ask the incredible hulk over to your house — but don't get him angry," warns one catalog. "Bulging padded 'muscles' are stitched into torso, arms, and legs. . . . Transform your little hulk into the most powerful human-like creature." Little girls don't "take on evil" or have "bold adventures" or even "incredible fun." They don't save, capture, leap, strike fear, or stop enemies — they don't do anything. Even Wonder Woman, a rare exception, only "encourages fortitude and self-confidence." That she does so in a spaghetti-strapped leotard with beige stretch nylons and what resembles a bikini bottom suggests the only thing she's ready to battle are Halloween-night goose bumps.

According to these costumes sold in department and drugstores, in catalogs and online, girls get their power almost solely from their looks. They just are — "puuurfectly coordinated," "darling," full of "lightness and beauty." If they act at all, it's to "sizzle," "slither," "rock the stadium," or "stalk the stage in zebra stripes." They are lotus blossoms and beautiful princesses. (And have little to do and no sense of direction. "Which way to the castle?" asks one girl featured in a costume catalog.) They are dancing queens, pink cheerleaders, divas, fairies, and Barbies, Barbies, Barbies. Girls are beautiful to behold in their short skirts, full skirts, grass skirts, and even pirate skirts (something no self-respecting pirate — and there were real women pirates — would wear) and off-the-shoulder gowns and lace-up bodices, made of shimmering satin and pink sequins. Even the more traditional Halloween-type costumes speak to the ultrafeminine and increasingly sexy — pretty witches and gothic princess, sexy genies and hot devils who aren't scary but plan to "paint the town red in a stretch velvet leotard with fluffy marabou trim." As one of our surveyed girls told us, "I wore a devil outfit because it was simple and looked sexy."

Is it as limited and narrow as it seems at first glance? Web sites sort their costumes explicitly along gender lines, with categories like "Princesses and Barbie" and "Star Wars and Sci-Fi," or even more pointedly "Girl Costumes" and "Boy Costumes." When we checked a promisingly neutral "When I Grow Up" category on one site, we found the same gender divide. There parents can find fifty-five costumes for boys and only twenty-two for girls. Of these, fifteen are cheerleaders, divas, and rock stars. Included in this "when I grow up" section was our number one thumbs-down nomination. Don't all parents wish their daughter will grow up to be a "French maid?"

There is something especially pernicious about all this. Fantasy for children is about trying on new roles, about imagining the unusual or impossible, about wearing whatever wild and crazy identity suits their fancy or captivates them at the moment. Why would we want — and, indeed, pay good money ? to limit kids in such stereotypical ways? (We're including the littlest kids here. Don't forget to dress your infant in a baby Hulk, Spiderman, or Superman costume.) And why especially on Halloween? After all, isn't Halloween the night when the veil between the worlds is thin, when the real and imagined come close to merging? It's the one magical night when we can expect imagination to wander far and wide, to let carnival and spectacle overtake convention. Do your daughter a big favor and encourage her to see herself as something other than the pretty princess, the sexy diva, the veiled genie, or the glittery fairy. Help her imagine that she has power over more than how she looks, how well she serves her master, or what prince she attracts. This Halloween, go ahead and raid the closet with her. Imagine that anything is possible. If her heart is set on glitter, at least help her imagine a feisty fairy who takes on the magical realm's evil dragon, a butterfly that saves the insect world, or a princess who can use a map to find her own way to the ball.

PACKAGING GIRLHOOD by Sharon Lamb, Ed.D., and Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed. D., copyright ? 2007 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin?s Press, LLC.

Many parents continue to worry about other safety aspects of the current H1N1 vaccine, in part because of the fast-tracked safety trials the vaccine underwent. A vocal minority of doctors against the vaccine have increased those fears. Dr. Mercola, publisher of a popular natural-health website, is the author of the article, "Do Not Let Your Child Get Flu Vaccine: 9 Reasons Why," which is now circulating as an email. Yet much of the information contained in that piece is misleading. For instance, Dr. Mercola claims that the vaccines used in trials differ from the final version. But the FDA says this is emphatically untrue. They state, "The vaccines used in studies to determine dose and regimen are the same vaccines that were licensed." He also argues that American children are over-vaccinated, suggests that the vaccine contains squalene (though it's not used in the U.S. at all, and has a good safety record in Europe), and cites climbing autism rates as a reason not to vaccinate (though recent studies all disprove any connection).

Dr. Kent Holtorf, in an interview with Fox News back in September, disseminated similar mis-information when he called the vaccine "too big of a risk." In his segment, he said the vaccine was "rushed to market" and also mistakenly said that it contains "high levels of adjuncts, including squalene" and that vaccines are "highly implicated in autism."

Opponents like Dr. Larry Palevsky, a New York-based pediatrician and President and Co-Founder of the Pediatric Holistic Foundation, insist that the vaccine's safety cannot be proven. He's advising his patients to pass. "Having the authorities tell us it's completely safe is in contradiction to how safety studies need to be done, and how data needs to be collected in order for us to conclude they are safe enough to administer," says Dr. Palevsky.

Is the vaccine really safe?

The CDC disagrees with Dr. Palevsky. Abbigail Tumpey, a spokesperson for the Immunization Safety Office, indicates that vaccines are actually one of the most regulated kinds of medicine for safety. What's more, the vaccine is made using the same tested and approved methods as the seasonal flu vaccine. Dr. Grace Lee, Assistant Professor of Population Medicine & Pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, is currently involved in the active surveillance of H1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccine safety. She explains, "Each year, the seasonal flu vaccines change to accommodate [different] strains of flu — meaning that the flu strains that circulate each season differ from the previous year. H1N1 is just like the seasonal flu vaccine, it's just that the H1N1 vaccine will protect against the circulating H1N1 strain in the community." While Dr. Lee acknowledges that, although rare, adverse reactions can occur with any vaccine, she says the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Concerns that dominate all vaccine programs have also made their way into the swine flu conversation. Anti-vaccine groups have postulated that flu vaccines aren't very effective — another reason parents might skip the swine flu vaccine. While the CDC admits no vaccine is 100% effective, they also state that they've "seen a very good immunoresponse in adults and older children that was evident within eight to ten days after the vaccination was given." The seasonal flu vaccine is considered two-thirds effective in young children, and the swine flu vaccine may yield better results since the vaccine is matched to the virus strain. (Note: children under ten will need two doses for the vaccine to be adequately effective).

What about thimerosal?

Some parents are also concerned about the inclusion of thimerosal in the H1N1 vaccine. Despite repeated studies that disprove any link between autism and the mercury preservative thimerosal, small groups of doctors, celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy, and organizations like the The National Vaccine Information Center may help perpetuate this idea. Though the CDC says that, yes, thimerosal is used (as with the seasonal flu vaccine) and is not related to autism, parents can still request single-dose thimerosal-free vaccines from their pediatricians.

Nevertheless, the unknown will still stop some parents from vaccinating their children. Many parents maintain the position that because the H1N1 flu appears to be mostly mild in the general population, it's not worth taking any chance with the vaccine.

Yet there is some legitimate cause for concern. Since September 28, 2008, there have been 147 reported influenza-associated pediatric deaths during the 2008-2009 season and seventy-six were attributed to the swine flu virus. And, as twenty-nine deaths have occurred since August 30, 2009, the swine flu might be becoming more deadly as the 2009-2010 flu season gets underway. Though not necessarily more virulent than the seasonal flu, it is more widespread and more contagious, and the more people it reaches, the more people it could kill.

Who is most at risk?

Pregnant women and children with underlying health conditions also seem to have a disproportionately increased risk of complications and death from the swine flu. Approximately two thirds of the children who have died had underlying health conditions. For these children, it's especially important to get the vaccine.

What?s the verdict?

Fear of vaccines cannot be completely eliminated, but the majority of research and evidence points to their safety. What's more, the CDC has devised a careful monitoring system to track and respond to any kind of adverse reactions that might develop. Aside from a vocal minority, the majority of the medical profession seems to wholeheartedly support swine flu vaccination. When all is said and done, it's hard to find any real evidence that suggests that the risk of side effects from the vaccine outweigh the tremendous benefit to children, pregnant women and adults alike.

What to Do if Your Child Gets the Flu

As the flu season gets underway, many parents anxiously await the arrival of the H1N1 vaccine. Until the vaccine is widely available, parents should continue practicing common sense precautions. Frequent hand-washing is the best defense. A healthy diet, proper exercise, and plenty of rest can also help boost a child's immune system. Parents should also ensure their child has received the pneumococcal vaccine since many swine flu deaths have resulted from pneumonia infections. Healthy adults and children with the swine flu don't necessarily need to seek medical attention if they contract the flu and their symptoms remain mild, but children with underlying health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, cancer, neurological disorders, kidney and liver disorders and those with weakened immune systems should be watched carefully. If you suspect the flu in these cases, call your doctor. Studies have shown that for children with underlying health conditions, antiviral treatment should be started as soon as possible after the illness begins. The CDC also recommends that pregnant women receive antiviral treatment if they exhibit flu symptoms. If your child experiences any of the following, seek medical attention immediately:

For additional information about treatment and prevention of the swine flu please visit the CDC website.

H1N1 by the Numbers

? "He's so cute," she says, touching my son's curls. "Still not walking?" His chubby fingers clutch mine as he inches towards the swings, wobbly as a newborn foal.

"Oh, you know.?He's getting there," I say, as if everyone walks around with a twenty-five-pound toddler death-gripping their thumbs. As if on cue, Owen drops to his hands and knees and speeds off, slap-slap-slapping across the filthy playground flooring.?

"He's a big boy," Playground Mommy says. "How old?"

"Thirteen months." ?

"Thirteen months?!" she says, eyes wide. "He's huge!"

That's true . . . except for the "thirteen months" part.?My son is actually seventeen months old, but you'll never hear it from me, at least not at the playground.? ?

Yes, I know it's nuts. As a reasonably intelligent, Birkenstock wearing, "Every child develops differently" type of gal, I always assumed I'd be Captain Awesome when it came to raising my own kid.?I pictured myself surrounded by a crew of happy, tow-headed tots, each secure in the knowledge that they were special Just The Way They Are. But all that flew out the window when faced with a gaggle of playground parents whose ten-month-olds were running laps around my older son.?

I'd round down his age down to the nearest month, shaving off a few precious developmental weeks.?"Oh," the parents would sigh, relief flooding their faces. "That makes more sense."At first I didn't think too much of it.?The babe had always been a little slow with the physical stuff, but I figured it was genetic.?His dad and I veer toward the "readerly" side of the athletic spectrum, so it made sense that he'd rather thumb through Goodnight Moon than run a 5K.?But then it started.?The looks. The tsks. The well-meaning advice from people whose charges were walking — running! — at twelve or nine or even seven months.

Within weeks I'd heard it all: Buy him sturdier shoes.?Buy him comfortable shoes.?Make him walk everywhere. (He's only crawling because you're not putting your foot down.) Don't let him watch television.?Tempt him with treats. One ancient grandmother-type recommended that I tie a scarf under his armpits and march him around the playground like a puppet.?

I've found myself considering it.

Still, my gut tells me he's fine. I've done the reading; I know that boys tend to be slower with language and that taller children take longer to walk. At seventeen months — and thirty-six-inches tall — he's as big as most three-year-olds, so it makes sense that his toddler brain would have trouble coordinating his preschool-sized parts.?But just to be safe we went ahead and had him evaluated to make sure we weren't missing any red flags. The physical therapist, a small woman with a reassuring smile, said that Owen was a little behind the curve, but physically and cognitively he was fine.?Better than fine, even.?Smart!?Social! Wonderful in all the ways that warm a neurotic parent's heart!?The best thing I could do for Owen, she said, would be to put down the parenting magazines and let him develop on his own schedule.?After all, nobody goes to college not knowing how to walk.?I know?she's right, yet all it takes is one raised eyebrow on the playground to send me spiraling.???

It started small, as most lies do. I'd round down his age down to the nearest month, shaving off a few precious developmental weeks.?"Oh," the parents would sigh, relief flooding their faces. "That makes more sense."?Gone were the furrowed brows and awkward talk of early intervention. Suddenly we could gab about normal things like nap schedules and vegetable aversion.?I was happy.?They were happy.?And my son didn't understand what I was saying so, hey, happy. ?

Of course I still have qualms.?It doesn't take an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras to know that it's a slippery slope between fudging a few facts and turning into a full-fledged Freakmother.?But some days saving face feels like the only way to keep my sanity. I know I'll have to stop when he's able to understand me, and that's fine.Until then, telling a white lie every now and then to avoid an hour-long lecture on footwear seems small in the scheme of things.?The less time I have to take to defend his (okay, our) honor, the more time we have for important things like playing chase.?Even if it's on all fours.?

Dear Sugar free mama,

For parents, the avalanche of candy at Halloween can be scarier than the ghoulish costumes. On the one hand, there are your standards: healthy, natural foods. On the other, there's tradition: an all you can eat sugar-soaked artificially Technicolored candy gorgefest.

Unless you live in an exceptionally health-conscious neighborhood where kale chips are the Halloween treat of choice, if you want to avoid sugar altogether, you have to avoid Halloween altogether. Which would be a bummer.

Though the chasm between kale and candy corn is admittedly vast, there are ways to compromise, giving you some control over your kids' sugar intake while still giving them some degree of enjoyment. You just need to decide what enjoyment-to-control ratio you're comfortable with.

The way we see it, there's life, and there are special occasions. Some candy on Halloween is not going to undermine years of healthy eating. Forbidding your son from indulging while his cousins pig out, on the other hand, could provoke the beginnings of a flat-out sugar OBSESSION. We've too often heard about the sugar-denied kid doing all kinds of things — early childhood shoplifters you know who you are — to get his or her hands on the stuff once freed from mom and dad's immediate purview.

Like you, many parents subscribe to the hard line no-candy lifestyle early on. And we totally support this. Giving a toddler a box of Mike and Ike's? What!? Why? But an older kid is starting to pick up the corn syrup scent. Now your job is not only to take control but to teach control. Moderation can be a harder, longer lesson, but it's a valuable skill that your child can eventually apply to all kinds of temptations.  

The moderation approach to Halloween can include any of the following:

  • Don't let your little kid trick or treat forever. There's no reason a three-year-old should be dragging a 3 lb bag of candy home.

  • Make the event more about the costume and play than about the booty. For every mention of candy, there should be at least ten mentions of costumes, pumpkins, hanging out with friends . . .

  • Feed him a good meal before you head out.

  • Consider rationing the candy. Two pieces of candy a day till it's done? If the bag isn't so big, we're talking a week or two. Let him pick his poison at a high-energy expending time of day. Not before bed. And not as a reward for eating "good food." Candy as reward is not going to help your cause.

  • Consider letting him feel sick. Some parents go for the one night extravaganza method. On the good side, this gets the horror over with, on the bad side, it is almost sure to result in a stomachache/teachable moment.

  • Try not to make a huge deal about the candy. Tell your son it's not good for your body to eat candy and/or junk food. But a little bit on special occasions is OK. This is the boring truth.

There are lots of variations and combinations of you could try. But all will require you to accept the basic premise: you're letting your kid do something you don't love. Believe us, this will not be the last time . . . but that doesn't make it any less difficult. May we suggest some chocolate to soothe your wounds? Or maybe some kale chips.

Have a question? Email parentaladvisory@babble.com

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About a year ago, my husband and I were faced with a dilemma. We had a dog. We had a kid. We had a lot of material possessions no luxury cars or Steinway pianos — just stuff, the kind that is sometimes hard to remember where or why we acquired, the kind that takes up space. In addition to these things, we also had an apartment, not a particularly small apartment but an apartment nonetheless: two and a quarter bedrooms, a wonderful location in a neighborhood we adored, a mensche of landlord, access to basement laundry, an all-in-all good set-up. Still, it wasn?t our own place. There was no garage, no mudroom, no private back yard or separate family room or guest room or any of those cushy amenities that have become synonymous with middle-class suburban living. And so with a one-year-old and vague thoughts about a second child at some unspecified future time, we took what seemed to us and to our parents and to many of our friends the only logical step: we moved. We bought a townhouse in a less exciting but perfectly acceptable neighborhood where our family would have plenty of space and room to grow.

I should pause here to say that what follows is not one of the countless real-estate horror stories that have become so commonplace. We didn?t fall pray to sub-prime loan sharks or end up in foreclosure. We didn?t end up mortgaging off anyone?s birthright or buying a McMansion built on quicksand. We guiltily accepted the help our parents so graciously offered. We kept to a budget (most of the time), and the next thing we knew we were shopping for our first lawnmower. Of course, even for people as lucky as we?ve been, home-ownership is not without its drawbacks: I?m thinking of all those hours spent not with family and friends, not working, but trying to find a good plumber or worrying about a flooded basement or trying to erect an effective but not-too-ugly fence to keep the god-damned bunnies from eating the begonias. In other words, as happy as our family is in our new home, there are times when I wonder — was it really necessary? Did we really need more room and a house of our own to raise a family, or were we just buying into a cultural ideal, an illusion of necessity? I began to wonder just how prevalent the idea is in other industrialized countries that family = house?

I brought these questions to Cynthia Gabriel, an anthropology doctoral student at East Michigan University who spent a significant amount of time studying childbearing and family living arrangements in Russia?s urban centers. She explained how, "Western-leaning businesspeople are increasingly able to live apart from parents and grandparents, but multi-generational households are still the norm. In these apartments, the young mother or couple is usually given the one bedroom in which to sleep with the baby and the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great-grandparents sleep in the living room. Almost every living room in the Russian homes I observed doubled as a bedroom. So out of space necessity, co-sleeping is incredibly common. I rarely, rarely, rarely saw cribs in Russian apartments."

I have to admit that at first I was shocked by this description. I certainly understood that Russia?s standard of living was not as high as that of most western countries, and that poverty was still pervasive. But the image of an entire extended families sharing an apartment seemed such an extreme example of want — the idea of not having space for something as simple as a crib an example not simply of a less affluent society but of real deprivation. How do they do it, I wondered. How do they make it work, raising a family in such close quarters when so many American families feel the need for a multi-acred lot and a ping-pong table in the basement just to stretch their legs?

For Gabriel, it wasn?t such a mystery. First, she explained, apartment buildings in Russian cities are usually designed with a playground at the center for all the kids. And second, "Russian children do not have nearly the quantity of toys that American children have. They have a box or two of special toys and that?s it. But there are lots of clubs for children: ice-skating, chess, gymnastics, etc."

When I asked her if the Russian children she observed seemed to go stir-crazy without the private backyard American kids and parents prize so highly, she observed that, on the contrary, some Russian kids, even those in cities, seemed far more connected to nature than American kids she?d known with huge yards. That they tend to play outdoors in public spaces far more than urban Americans. "In the summer," she explained, "many children spend big chunks of their vacation at a "dacha" — a rustic country home where they might live with their grandparents while their parents continue to work in the city. Often the mother and/or father visit for the weekend. The kids explore the forests, gather mushrooms and berries, play in the rivers, and help in the family garden. Not many toys needed."

How charming, I thought. And how impossibly exotic. The scene Gabriel described sounded so much like something out of a fairy tale, I kept expecting elves to appear and begin whittling their lutes. And yet something about her account of Russian childhood sounded vaguely familiar, too. Eventually, it occurred to me how similar it sounded to my mother-in-law?s childhood in Chicago or my own father?s childhood in up-state New York. Though my father?s family did have their own house in Gloversville, NY, it was a small, three-bedroom, one-bathroom place for a family of five, and this was considered quite spacious for the time. My mother-in-law grew up in a city with a middle-class family that lived in comfortable, but very small, one-bedroom apartments, the living room doubling as sleeping quarters.

"Do you think it was a harder childhood then, getting by with so much less space?"

My mother-in-law isn?t sure. "There certainly wasn?t the same expectation that middle-class families have now that you have to move to the suburbs."

My father, who?s lived in Richmond, Virginia for thirty years now, a part of the country where apartment living for families is an anomaly, puts it this way: "I meet people all the time who want to live on a big piece of land where they won?t be able to see their nearest neighbor. It?s not something I particularly understand. Space is nice, but it?s not everything."

Yet, last year, Lucy began showing signs of anxiety: she began wetting her bed at night and sucking her finger. She had trouble staying asleep at night and cried when her parents dropped her off at preschool. When her parents asked a psychologist for help, he offered a surprising diagnosis: Lucy is one of a growing number of American children stressed out by the recession.

"Kids are very intuitive, they see what's going on," says J. David Carr, a psychologist at a wealthy public school in New York's West Village. "When the economy is bad, a lot of things go wrong, and one of them is that children become more emotional."

Of course, it's not that kids are worried about the future of Wall Street; they're just soaking up the tension around them. They see grim-faced anchors on television and overhear conversations about foreclosures. Their parents, worried about jobs and money, have less patience for them and many are fighting more with each other. And if one parent loses a job and the nanny is laid off, kids find themselves stuck at home with a new routine and a reluctant caretaker.

In Lucy's case, conditions at home hadn't changed that much. Unlike some of her peers, Lucy didn't have to move due to foreclosure and her father was still employed. But his company was financially squeezed and he worried about his job. When he spent more time at work, Lucy's mother found herself worn out by childcare duties. The stress weighed on everyone, and Lucy's parents fought more with each other and became more irritable with their children.

"Parents are very fearful that their security is gone. They don't always think about the kid being in the next room and talk openly," says David Swanson, Psy.D., a children's therapist and author of Help, My Kid Is Driving Me Crazy. "The kids hear their parents and freak out."

There haven't been many studies done yet to measure the impact of the current recession on children's mental health, but one national poll released in July by the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan shows clear results: 40% of parents with kids aged 5-17 said their children were stressed by the recession. The likelihood of stress was highest among poor families, but even among those making more than $100,000, a hefty 25% reported that their children were stressed. Carr says referrals to him by teachers have jumped 10%-15% in the past year — and these are only the very egregious cases teachers weren't able to deal with alone.

Without a doubt, the main way children soak up financial stress is through their parents. Deterioration in parental behaviour spans a wide range, from more irritability over spilled juice to outright beatings. Hospitals around the country say the number of children brought in with signs of physical abuse has soared over the past year, sometimes by as much as 30%.

Older children also absorb a lot of stress away from home. Hearing about lay-offs on the news might make them wonder if their parents are going to be fired. If a school mate loses his home or has to move to another school, children worry if the same is about to happen to them.

"A lot of times kids come to me with stuff they've heard on the news and in school, which was not thought through for an anxious child," says Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., who runs the Children's Center for OCD and Anxiety outside of Philadelphia. "They're terrified. They don't have the perspective to take news in context."

Of course, anxiety becomes a much more serious problem if the child is directly affected by the recession.

Luke, a seven-year-old boy from Chicago's wealthy North Shore area, had to change schools earlier this year when his parents lost their home in a foreclosure. The change in living standard wasn't dramatic. "They went from living in a very impressive house to a nice house," says his therapist. Still, Luke had trouble making friends at the new school, began having nightmares and crying more than usual. When his parents took him to see a therapist, it became clear that he felt scared and unsafe. "He didn't know how permanent his new life was going to be."

It's tempting to dismiss the suffering of children who are pretty wealthy compared to those whose parents were barely surviving on minimum wage and then get laid off. But when wealthy children, even middle class children, have been shielded their whole lives from trauma and sacrifice, as much of this generation has, the recession can cause serious angst.

"Parental fighting is parental fighting," says Swanson. "It's very upsetting to kids."

During the school years, children are also more affected by changes in the family's spending habits, especially if that means no more music classes on Saturdays or no movies at the mall. Tweens and teenagers, meanwhile, are often devastated by drops in income because their social standing is so closely tied up with the price of their jeans and the gadgets they own.

Not surprisingly, wealthy children often respond to their family's money problems with anger. Some even steal money from their parents in a desperate attempt to regain some of their financial standing.

"Kids are feeling more slighted, they say it's not fair." says Joanna Ball, Ph.D., a children's psychologist who sees well-off kids at a private practice in a wealthy New York suburb and poor inner city kids at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. "Poorer kids are more used to having to sacrifice. The recession is a different type of an adjustment for wealthier children."

The way children express their anxiety varies wildly depending on age and temperament, but nightmares and refusal to go to school — out of fear that something bad might happen at home while they are gone — are often part of the mix. In children under five, regression — thumb-sucking, toilet accidents, separation anxiety — is common, and children are likely to become clingy.

Older kids are likelier to suffer from depression, which manifests itself in different ways. Introverted children who are depressed sleep a lot and withdraw from others, in an attempt to hide or even suppress their feelings. Extroverted children are more likely to act out, by fighting with peers, defying their caretakers or simply behaving erratically — destroying favorite toys, for example. Stress symptoms in extroverted children are often brushed off as attempts to win attention, or worse, misdiagonesd as ADHD, says Carr.

"Children know that adults generally help them feel better, so they might seek out those interactions with adults, even if they're negative interactions," says Carr.

The good news in all of this is at the recession isn't going to last forever, and that these years offer parents a good chance to teach their children important values: that self-worth doesn't come from material possessions and that it's important to empathize with those with less money. The bad news is that the stress children experience now might haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Bruce Rabin, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on stress, says repeated bouts of stress before the age of seven can permanently damage cells in the brain's hippocampi, causing children to become more prone to depression and anxiety as adults. In addition, frequent stress during childhood makes them more susceptible to it later in life.

That's why it's so important for parents and caregivers to offer comfort and stability amid the turmoil. That doesn't mean hiding the truth from kids, but it does mean dispensing information thoughtfully and finding a way to release stress before walking through the door at the end of a rough day.

"Imagine being on a plane and experiencing violent turbulence — not knowing if this is normal or not, you look to the flight attendant," says Swanson. "This is what it is like for our children during times of financial stress. They may not understand the cause for the financial turbulence. But they need to feel secure that the plane isn't going down."

I have been immersed so long in exploring the relationship of play to children?s experience that it?s sometimes hard for me to believe everyone is not as passionate about it as I am. But I am rescued from this myopia whenever I leave the office. When I bring play into a conversation I find that most people?s eyes glaze over. I imagine they?re thinking, "But play is so frivolous! Why should I even care about it?"

Why indeed? I attended a celebration recently that was populated mostly by adults and just a few small children. I was doing what grown-ups do at such occasions ? laughing and talking with friends and family ? when I felt something brush by my leg and looked down to see two small girls weaving in and out of the crowd. "Sister, sister," one cried to the other, "the witch is coming! Run! Run!" Intent on their fantasy, oblivious to the adults around them, their exuberance and palpable joy was a wonder to behold. That it evokes such delight is reason enough to place play high on my list of passions. But there?s so much more. The capacity to play is a survival skill.

Most child development experts agree, for instance, that play is the foundation of intellectual exploration. It?s how children learn how to learn. Abilities essential for academic success and productivity in the workforce, such as problem solving, reasoning, and literacy, all develop through various kinds of play, as do social skills such as cooperation and sharing.

I appreciate and value these aspects of play, but my true passion lies elsewhere: in exploring how play is linked to creativity and to mental health. My particular passion is make believe, or pretend play, which I think of as creating fantasy characters, imagining different realities, and transporting ourselves to pretend worlds other than the one we live in. Children?s make believe is rooted in their unique experience of people and events. When given the opportunity to play, it comes naturally to them and serves as an essential experience of self-reflection and expression. It is a gift, both to children and to the adults who care for them, and can be a window into their hearts and minds.

When allowed to flourish, each child?s pretend play is unique ? like fingerprints. A four-year-old of mixed religious heritage speaks through a dog puppet to say, "My heart is Jewish, but the rest of my body is Christmas." A six-year-old facing surgery turns the same dog into a doctor. A five-year-old just back from a dentist appointment tells it to "open wide." Another child transforms it into a mom kissing her child good-bye at day care. In another child?s hands, with a different family experience, the dog as mother watches implacably as her child drowns. Some children pass up the dog completely, choosing to speak through a hippo, a dragon, or a cow. A few shun my puppets altogether during our sessions, preferring to draw, build, or make music.

Pretend play combines two wondrous and uniquely human characteristics ? the capacity for fantasy and the capacity for, and need to, make meaning of our experience. By fantasy I mean imagination, daydreams, and the stories we may or may not share with others that design the future, reshape the past, make new things possible, and illustrate powerful feelings. By making meaning, I mean the drive to reflect on and wrestle with information and events so that they make sense to us, enrich us, and help us gain a sense of mastery over our life experience.

Pretend play thrives in the intersection between the inner world of fantasy and inner experience and the external world that exists in time and space. Unlike daydreams, or most of our interactions with other people, it exists neither wholly in the inner nor wholly in the outer world ? but it can shape both. Children?s make believe play allows them to bring to light dreams and fantasies that, once they are no longer held inside, can be examined and reflected upon, and even altered by someone else?s input.

I feel an increasing sense of urgency ? the kind of urgency that environmentalists feel about saving the rain forest ? about preserving time and space for children to play. Next to love and friendship, the traits that play nurtures ? creativity and the capacity for making meaning ? constitute much of what I value about being human, yet they have been devalued to the point of endangerment by the prevailing societal norms characterized by a commercially driven culture and bombardment of electronic sounds and images.

I?ve noticed in the past few years ? an observation reinforced by my colleagues who study young children and preschool teachers I talk to ? that I can no longer assume that children know how to play creatively. The children I see at the day-care center often begin our sessions by picking up animals or little people figures and reenacting the exact same cartoon violence so popular on television, bringing nothing of their unique experience to their play. With sometimes just a little effort, I can help children pretend if I talk for various characters, or ask open-ended questions, or introduce themes that I know are important to them. "Does it talk?" a three-year-old girl asks about a baby doll she has just been given. "Yes!" I answer and the pretend that the baby is crying. "Ma-ma," the baby wails in my voice. The little girl opens her arms. She envelops the doll in a big hug, comforts it, and launches into an elaborate scenario in which the baby doll?s parents get dressed and go to a party, leaving the doll with a babysitter. With great glee, she spends several minutes reenacting this scene with minor variations.

Yet children shouldn?t have to be taught to play. When they are given the time and opportunity in the context of even a moderately nurturing environment, play comes naturally to them. Babies are born equipped to learn about the world through interactions with caring adults, with their own bodies, and with the objects, textures, sounds, tastes, and smells they encounter.

Given the importance of play to children?s lifelong cognitive, social, and emotional health, one would think that we would do everything possible to preserve space for it in our children?s lives. Yet the exact opposite is happening. Studies on how children spend their time suggest that the time children spend on creative, pretend play is diminishing. A recent survey on children?s time use suggests from 1997 to 2002, over the course of just five years, the amount of time that six-to eight-year-old children spent on creative play diminished by about a third.

In spite of the researched links between play and learning, government policies such as No Child Left Behind promote rote learning at the expense of quality playtime even in kindergarten. Time allotted to recess ? another in-school opportunity for play ? has been severely diminished, or cut out altogether, all across the country. Nor are kids left with much time to play outside of school.

These days, parents who can afford to are enrolling even their youngest children in structured enrichment classes or organized sports. Even parents who stay home with their children and want them to have unstructured playtime complain that all the other kids in the neighborhood are busy with after-school sports and activities. Working parents without access to adequate, organized child care may rely on television to keep children occupied at home. And, in many neighborhoods, parents feel that their children aren?t safe playing outside.

Babies arrive in the world primed to play. From the earliest days we join in that play when we mirror their gestures and sounds, allow them opportunities to sustain interest in their discoveries, and when we give them opportunities to rediscover what?s familiar. Initially play manifests in movement, touch, and vocalization ? in the sensory pleasure babies derive from exploring the world ? in actions and activities that they repeat over and over for their inherent pleasure. I was changing my nine-month-old granddaughter?s diaper when suddenly Isabella made a rather unusual grunting noise ? like "hmpf!" ? and looked at me expectantly. The funny thing was that she sounded exactly like her older sister being silly. Matching her tone as exactly as I possibly could, I grunted back. She smiled a little and grunted again. So we spent a few happy moments together making silly noises at each other just because we could.

At first, babies play by attempting to repeat sensual pleasures, master physical challenges, and investigate the principles of the physical world. That funny, frustrating period when babies repeatedly and deliberately drop toys, spoons, and everything they can get their hands on is really an exploration of gravity. Those endless games of peek-a-boo are actually manifestations of early grappling with a lifetime of departures and arrivals, of comings and goings, and about testing a newly formed understanding that people and objects exist even when they are out of sight.

I was lucky enough to be visiting a friend at the moment his seven-month-old daughter made an astounding discovery ? her knees. Squealing with glee, she extended her arms to her father, expressing in no uncertain terms her desire to stand up. As each tiny fist gripped tightly to one of his fingers she pushed up from her toes, and straightened to a standing position. After a few wobbly, upright moments she began to squat, bending her legs slowly. Then, like an inebriated ballerina rising from a plie, she teetered up once more. Beaming with pride, she repeated the sequence again and again and again.

Eventually she noticed a favorite toy kitten on the floor. Holding on with only one hand, wobbling even more ferociously, she began to reach for the kitten only to find that 1) it was too far away to grab and 2) it was at ground level. With great deliberation, she extended her free hand toward the car. Tottering precariously, completely focused on her mission, she began the glorious process of bending ? and was saved from an undignified tumble by her father?s protective arm. She allowed herself a brief rest on the floor and, with joyful determination, began the process anew.

Babies don?t have to be taught to play ? they are natural sensualists and explorers ? rather we prevent them from playing. I remember wandering around an ancient Buddhist temple in southern Korea on a glorious fall day, the grounds filled with families. I noticed a baby of about seven months ? old enough to sit by himself but too young to be mobile ? sitting in the middle of a rather dusty patch of bare earth. Clearly, he had been placed there by his doting family ? mother, father, grandmother, grandfather ? so that they could take a picture of him. While I don?t understand Korean, it was pretty obvious from the gestures and interactions of the four adults that they very much wanted him to look up into the camera and smile. The baby, however, had a different idea. He was bent over, running his hands through the dirt. Intent, completely engrossed, he traced patterns with his fingers. Ever so slowly, he picked up some of the dirt and gradually let it sift through his fingers. His grandmother pulled at him, cajoled him, and pleaded with him to look up at his daddy, who had his camera ready for a big smile ? but to no avail. Despite the best efforts of four determined adults, he would not abandon his sensual, scientific, and playful exploration of dirt.

Children develop at different rates, but at some time toward the end of their second year an extraordinary change takes place in their play. They acquire the amazing capacity to make something out of nothing. It?s not just that they can hold the visual memory of important people and objects in their heads, but they have the power to conjure up images at will and alter those images in any way they please. The early experience of pretending lays the foundation for creating ? and delighting in ? whole worlds that no one else can see.

Excerpted from The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World by Susan Linn (New Press, 2009). Buy the book here.

And as soon as I became a mother, I desperately wanted to make sure my son would grow up with Christmas carols and Easter egg hunts. I started going to church, well, religiously. People who knew me, including relatives, were shocked. But I wanted to create a religious foundation for my family. I wanted my son to be baptized and to have some sense of belonging to something larger than himself and our family. We joined a wonderful Presbyterian church in Manhattan.

And yet, it hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be to avoid feeling conflicted sometimes, particularly when it concerns secular considerations, including social, political and racial issues.

I'm a black mom who happens to be half-white, so when the Trinity Church scandal was erupting, I found myself thinking a lot about the political basis of African-American church history. Trinity Church, like so many evangelical megachurches throughout the country, had a superstar pastor, packed services, fantastic gospel singing and ministries that provided essential and admirable support services to the poor, sick, hungry, homeless and downtrodden.

African-American churches have been political gathering spots stretching back to the days of the slave trade. Many pastors and ministers urge their congregations to strive to understand the causes and dynamics of power, money, politics, imperialism and racism. And all of that was great, it just wasn't for me. I didn't grow up attending that kind of church, and I didn't enjoy contentious religious-political debates every week (at church or at the obligatory post-church brunch), plus the worship style was totally different from what I like. I crave sedate, peaceful worship.

One recent Sunday, I struck up a conversation with an amiable African woman on the subway. She was from the same country as my mother and so, predictably, invited me to her church. "I belong to a church already," I explained. She looked even more concerned when I told her the name and location, a wealthy white area. "Do you really like it there?" she asked as if I were a wounded bird. "Do they accept you?"

On the flip side, whenever some white, non-religious acquaintances learn I attend church, I can feel them pause. Are they wondering if I am secretly in league with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ready with razor-sharp race-based observations about the divide between the haves and have-nots and their chances at entry into the kingdom of God? But I don't talk to angels every night about how Doomsday is near. I'm just a regular person.

Even a few seemingly open-minded members of my own church have expressed wonder that we're there. One well-meaning woman approached me one day when I was brand new to the church.

"I think it's lovely that your little one comes here to church," she told me. Then her expression turned solemn as she looked over at my son, who has a Muslim name and a Middle-Eastern appearance. "Get in as much as you can," she implored me, "before he goes back to his father's religion."

Which brings me to my son's father. He doesn't have any hands-on religious parenting responsibilities right now, as he's not living in the country. My husband's pretty liberal, but I expect he will want to talk about religion with our son soon. We both agree that it would be great to have the family participate in some special breaking-the-fast Eid dinners during the month of Ramadan. After all, who doesn't enjoy sharing a special tasty meal and good company? But my son's father told me he also wants our child to fast during the holiest month in Islam. Even drinking water is forbidden for children of fasting age, and depending on who you ask, obligatory fasting starts as young as age seven.

"Are you going to fast every day?" I ask my son's father. He dodges the question, saying something about how mothers from "all religions" like to fast with their children. Hmmm, I don't recall getting that memo. Clearly our family has more than a few things we need to iron out.

In the years to come, I'm hoping my son and I will have some good conversations about religion and culture and society and politics. I expect there may be some frustrating conversations as well. For now, we're hardly at the point of discussing the Sunni-Shia divide in the Muslim world or analyzing the Black Liberation Theology Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, though, my son asked me, "Who is that man?" and he pointed at an image of the disciples surrounding Jesus. It was all beautifully etched onto the stained glass windows of our church.

"Who do you think he is?" I asked my son. And he just smiled back at me, a beautiful smile, as if he suddenly knew the answer.

Dear Too Posh,

There's no such thing as a stupid question, even when it involves the delightful prospect of defecating on a baby. In fact, this is a very common and totally understandable concern. Many women worry about what might come out in addition to a baby.

When you bear down in labor, you use the same muscles you use when you have a bowel movement. The urge to push a baby is pretty much the same as the urge to use the toilet. It's all the same area, same triggers, same muscles. So, yeah, it's true poop happens. It's common. It's normal. And you will likely never have a clue if it does.

Caregivers are discreet and quick to wipe away any evidence. They have seen it all a hundred times. No one will scream "GROSS." No one will worry. And if your partner or labor support person is watching the baby emerge, it's unlikely he or she will even notice.

As far as the baby's involvement: Any poop action will probably happen earlier in the pushing stage and be well out of the way before the baby's head emerges. Women often have diarrhea at the onset of labor: the hormone progesterone loosens intestines along with everything else. There is always the enema. A staple of labor preparation in the olden days, women are no longer required to flush their bowels before delivering babies. You can still request an enema if you want one, but realize that this comes with its own set of discomforts and humiliations. Plus, labor and your intestines are long. Even if you empty your bowels early in labor, by the time you push you may be hitting another digestion cycle.

Also worth mentioning while talking about babies and nethers: there's a lot of good bacteria in the birth canal (AKA the vagina) that does all kinds of wonders for the baby's immune system. Seriously, one reason there's added risk in a c-section is that babies miss out on that smear of bacteria. So while this may all seem rather impolite, it's a pretty good system.

Almost all babies born vaginally do come out facing the rear (posterior position). But when the head crowns and emerges, the baby's face turns out rather than back towards the anus. It's kind of like the head at the prow of a boat and pretty rad, at that.

Bottom line is: try not to worry about the poop factor. If you're trying to push but also not trying to push, you'll give yourself more unnecessary work. Birth is a pretty solidly intense event: women in labor tend to shift their priorities completely. It's hard to imagine now, but the chances are excellent that when that moment comes, poop anxiety will be pretty low on your list.

Have a question? Email parentaladvisory@babble.com

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Wow — later, she and I laughed about this. That kid is going to spend years on some therapist's couch. The weird illogic her particular Jedi mind-trick of pop psychology made it almost impossible to unpack (The equation of me with the bookshelf? The meaning of "care" to a five-year-old?). There was something so depressing about the passivity of the plea, something so desperate about the invoking of her own fragile ego as a reason the kid should behave.

It gave me one of those smug, moments of self-congratulation (I may be a model of inconsistency when it comes to bedtime and mid-night wake-ups, but at least I don't threaten my children with my own hurt feelings) that always come back to bite you.

Sure enough, I began to notice my five-year-old whining about "feeling like" she just needed something sweet (never mind whether it was time for desert or five-thirty in the morning), or "feeling like" she would never, ever fall asleep. I recognized that, she was, not infrequently, having tantrums involving the accusation that I just didn't understand "her feelings" (that, for instance, she didn't like time outs, or that it made her furious to be told we were not going to watch a movie tonight).

This is not to say that I was suddenly flooded with recovered memories of emotionally blackmailing my children, but I did start to think about how often I bring up "feelings" (my own, my kids', their friends, the dog next door's . . . ). I did start to think about how often I, like so many women of my age, begin way too many sentences with the unnecessary declaration (or caveat, depending on how you see it) of "I feel like...".

"I feel like my kids are driving me crazy" or "I feel like we need raised garden beds if we're going to plant veggies." At least half the time the phrase is totally unnecessary. Why not just my kids are driving me crazy? Or I need raised beds in the garden — when there's really nothing subjective about it.

It's just a pattern of speech of course, like adding "like" to so many sentences. But it is also a reflection of a sort of generational uber-attention to feelings. The awareness of what we feel is prominent enough to shape the idiomatic pattern of our speech.

Like so many thirty-somethings I know, I grew up on the doctrines of Sesame Street (remember Gordon's heart-felt exhortation to "Let Your Feelings Show?") and Free To Be You and Me (which made sure we knew "It's All Right to Cry" practically before we knew how to walk). Our parents, those children of The Greatest Generation — whose own feelings were steadily and consistently shut down by their stoic war veteran fathers and questing-for-perfection 1950s moms — went all out to make sure their kids had the vocabulary, the awareness and the comfort to express their feelings and be emotionally sensitive beings. Maybe it is only logical that, consciously or not, we perpetuate the trend.

But watching my own children articulate and attend to their own feelings with enough gusto to turn blue in the face ("Mama!!! Come!! I feel like a monster is behind me," my three-year-old screams from midway up the stairs), I have to wonder if all this emphasis on feelings is such a good thing. Feeling like there is a monster doesn't mean there is a monster. Feeling like you need to have ice cream doesn't mean you need to have ice cream.

"Feelings aren't facts" a friend of mine always quotes a sage uncle as saying. In my own life as an adult this has been extremely helpful to remember. Feelings pass. Feelings aren't rational. Feeling something doesn't make it so. And while it might be too much to ask children to understand this concept, modeling it by overlooking irrelevant feelings and talking a little less about how everyone feels might work to that end.

We ask our children so much about their inner state — does that make you feel happy? Did that make you feel sad? There is the whole Dr. Barry Brazelton school of "reflecting back," as in, "I can see you're feeling angry about giving that hammer back to me but it just isn't safe to play with." And the Dr. Sears focus on finding new ways to express feelings.

So it's hardly surprising that our kids are held in thrall by their own volatile feelings. Their feelings are extreme (what toddler doesn't feel devastated when told he can't have the bag of gummy bears calling out to him in the grocery checkout aisle? What five-year-old doesn't feel mad when her little sister knocks down her intricately arranged Calico Critters palace?) They don't have the life experience to put their frustrations and hopes and fears in context.

"I feel blamed," a friend of mine's seven-year-old step-daughter cried in indignation when confronted by the fact that she had taken a younger girl's ball. But the "feeling" wasn't what was important here — the general boundary-observing principle of civil order was.

Conveying the idea that "feeling" is not the most important element in every situation might be anathema to a Romantic poet, or to Morris Albert, song writer of "Feelings" (Whoa, whoa, whoa feelings . . . ), but as someone prone to worry, fear, and sadness, I think it might be reassuring. A little less focus on my feelings might actually have helped me get a handle on my own as a kid. It is all right to cry, but the fact that you're crying about having to share your dump truck doesn't mean it really is a tragedy. It is alright to feel bad that you were blamed for something you did wrong, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't be. You'll get over it, and isn't that actually the most steadying thing?

Andy Richter, 42, may be best known as Conan O?Brien?s sidekick on "The Tonight Show." But to at least two people – Richter?s eight-year-old son, William, and his four-year-old daughter, Mercy – he?s more than the main attraction. He?s the center of the universe. Richter, who also voices the characters of Ben on the Nickelodeon show "The Mighty B!" and Mort on Nick?s "The Penguins of Madagascar," recently talked to Babble about the universal appeal of fart jokes and the secret to a long, healthy marriage (hint: it involves fish. And shrinks). — Tammy La Gorce

So the big news for you this year is that you?re back working alongside Conan after a nine-year absence, during which you tried your luck on a couple of other TV series. Are you happy to be back side-kicking?

I?m thrilled, actually. I work with someone I actually like and respect and am friends with, as opposed to being out in the world in a situation where I might not enjoy the company of who I?m working with as much, and where people get to tell me whether I?m funny or not.

Tell us about your kids.

I have a son who?s going to be nine in November, and my daughter just turned four. Both kids are really sharp and really funny. My son is big – everyone always thinks he?s eleven. And not that he?s terribly behaved, but they expect him to act much older than he is because of his size.

Right – there are downsides to being big, even for boys.

Yeah. We went to play putt-putt golf the other day, and there were these tiny Asian kids, much smaller than him, hitting the ball much better. He didn?t understand why, and I told him, "Those kids are probably twelve years old!" 

Do your kids get your sense of humor? Do they think you?re funny?

All you have to do to make them laugh is throw pee and poop into the conversation or make fart noises. They love that. When my son started to get to the age of liking jokes, every one we would make involved pee or poop or farting. We thought, "Oh my God, we?ve raised a frat-house monster." Then we took a trip to preschool: that?s what makes all of them laugh. It?s universally funny.

What about your work on "The Mighty B!" and "The Penguins of Madagascar?" Do the kids think you?re incredibly cool because you?re on those shows? Are you brag-worthy?

No, not really. My son is starting to become aware a little bit that I have a fun job, that it?s kind of neat to do what I do. He brought a friend to the premiere of Madagascar 2, and that was cool. But his eyes are opened to the fact that I?m the guy who keeps him from eating ice cream in the morning.

What?s interesting is that I think my daughter thinks of the cartoons as a real environment, one we kind of coexist in: she knows they?re made up, but she also thinks of them as real. And it?s that way with all kids, probably. They often have family parties at Nick, and my son met Tom Kenny, who does the voice of SpongeBob. But he still thinks SpongeBob is a real creature out in the ocean somewhere.

So they think of you sort of as a fun cartoon character rather than a celebrity?

As far as them thinking I?m cool, they really don?t, because they think of me as their parent. Which is how it should be. Whenever I hear anybody say, "My dad is my hero," I always think, "I don?t know what you?re talking about." Parents are like the drapes in your bedroom – you barely even notice them or what they do.

What?s your favorite show for kids?

I have to say "Mighty B!" is pretty great, and "Penguins" is pretty great. Both are the kind of things I can watch and have watched without a child in the room. Lately my son?s been really getting into "Dr. Who" on the BBC. There?s also another BBC show I started recording called "Primevil" which, the basis of the story is time holes are opening up all over the place and dinosaurs are coming out, and there are secret agent police squads and dinosaur cops. We?re really into that.

With my daughter, I?m very proud and very happy that she loves "Looney Tunes" and "Tom & Jerry" – the old cartoons. She prefers them. It?s not anything we really forced on her. I know parents who are like these aesthetic cops – they insist their child should watch an episode of "My Pretty Pony" or whatever. I certainly don?t turn on "Barney" and say, "Come and watch this insipid garbage."

Do the kids ever catch you on "The Tonight Show?"

My son watches "The Tonight Show" on occasion. I show him bits that are on if there?s something splashy or interesting, like when we blow up a car. He came the day there were human cannonballs from Ringling Brothers. I think it?s one of the things he?ll look back on and feel lucky about, to have grown up where there are days when he went to work with Dad and got to see a couple of human cannonballs.

You recently played "Celebrity Jeopardy!"against Dana Delaney and Wolf Blitzer. A couple of reports called it "a beatdown," with you winning $68,000 for the St. Jude?s Children Hospital and leaving Delaney and Blitzer scrambling at the buzzer. Your interpretation?

Well, I wouldn?t say "beatdown." I have to be a gracious winner. But I did do very well. I don?t know – "Jeopardy!" is tricky. I played once years ago and it was sort of a lopsided victory, because the people I played against were complaining about the buzzer. This time, Dana Delaney didn?t, but Wolf said he was having trouble with the buzzer. I don?t really get that – they tell you how it works, and then you do it. You wait until a light goes on, then you click the buzzer. I don?t know how you lock yourself out.

You?ve been married fifteen years to Sarah Thyre, who also does a voice on "The Mighty B!" That?s a long time. You told The L.A. Times a while back that "seeing a shrink" helps with your relationships. Does therapy still help you avoid marital spats?

Therapy sure helps with that if you?re gonna use it the right way. In marriage and in anything, you?ve always got to be working for peace. You?ve got to ask yourself whenever you open a kettle of fish, are you there to wallow in the stink, or are you there to figure it out? Everything that comes out of your mouth, when you?re having an argument or when you?re trying to sort out some emotional issue, the reason that it?s coming out of your mouth has to be because you want things to get better. If you just start punching at each other, you?re just wasting time.

How about your kids? Do they punch at each other? Or do they get along well?

My kids fight endlessly. Constantly. I have to give my son a tremendous amount of credit, because if I were him at his age I would have been pummeling my sister if she did the things to me my daughter does to my son.

Oh, no. Like what?

Like she?ll go a bin of toys looking for a weapon to hit him with, something she can use to do damage. She?s also just a complete noodge – she can have the snottiest little sister way of arguing with him.

Does she get in trouble for it?

Half the time she?s really doing comedy skits. She?s hilarious. She?s making him crazy, but she?s also making him laugh. And she?s discovered early on that you?re going to catch a lot less hell from adults if you make them laugh while they?re mad at you. That?s a pretty good skill at age four. And frankly it?s terrifying. We have a pretty funny household.

I thought I was done raising young children. I'd been a single dad since Chet, my littlest one was just eight months old and his big sister Ava was three and a half. I'd blogged about it, written a book about it, congratulated myself on what a faithful parental servant I'd been to them, and now that they are of school age I get a thrill commanding them to unload the dishwasher, take out the trash or make their beds. I had started imagining the day when I could just toss them a twenty and say, "Be home before midnight."

And then I fell desperately in love with a woman and her eighteen-month-old heartbreaker.

Like Al Pacino in Godfather III, I suddenly said to myself: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." I'm telling you, before falling in love with Amanda and Maia, I could see the finish line. A time in the near future when I could go to the movies without factoring in an extra sixty bucks for a sitter. When my single friends from my former hipster days blew into town unannounced and invited me on some fabulous adventure that night, and I could instantly say yes.

As part of our divorce mediation my ex-wife and I had agreed to a "six-month rule." We'd have to date someone six months, be positive that they would be a significant part of any future plans, before introducing them to our kids. Amanda and I started dating around the Super Bowl, introduced the kids to each other around Father's Day and were all living together in my New York City apartment by Labor Day.

For me, diapers were the biggest reminder that it was d?j? vu all over again. The first time Amanda asked me to change Maia she said, "Are you sure you still remember?"

Remember? Ava stayed in diapers late. With the dissolution of my marriage I wasn't about to push her. The result was that in the first six-months after my then wife moved out I was changing both kids, often at the same time. By the end I felt like one of those master pizza pie throwers or circus plate spinners, or maybe a Benihana chef. When I changed diapers I should have charged admission to watch me. That was just four years ago. Of course I still remembered. And then my memory was put to the test.

"Um, is the big picture of Dora supposed to be on the back or the front?"

I'd forgotten everything. Maia just looked up at me, as if saying, "Is my mommy really in love with this idiot?" Then that oddly sweet smell re-invaded my brain and suddenly my past life came bubbling back to me. I held her fat little legs together and high in the air with one hand as if she were a freshly plucked turkey and I remembered that for a girl I had to wipe front to back. A fingertip full of Desitin, Velcro the wings shut, a quick tap on the butt and she was off again, wobbly race-walking back to play with the big kids.

"Ava's daddy," she murmured as she careened away.

"Chet's daddy," Chet corrected her, as he does dozens of times a day, to no avail.

Before Maia, Ava had been bugging me for yet another American Girl doll, but now Ava had a real one. Soon she was not only helping me change Maia but changing her herself. At the playground she helps her up the ladder to the slide and does her best to hoist her into the baby swings. Half the week Maia and her mom are off in Boston, where Amanda is getting her Ph.D., but as soon as Maia enters our apartment she runs and throws her arms around Ava's neck.

I was initially more afraid of how Chet, the former baby of the family, would react. He, however, is perhaps the most gaga over our new little one. When he's not pretending to be a monster, causing her to run, squealing into my arms to protect her, he's kissing her cheeks. When one of his friends called Maia a little devil (Chet's nickname for her) he wrestled him to the ground.

Of course this is not to say that any of it is easy. We single parents grow especially territorial and sometimes a bit rigid. After the trauma of the breakup it's only natural that the new, smaller family binds together with a bit of a scar. At first it was hard for us to truly open up to these two new ones and they to us. Since both Amanda and I were thriving single parents it's been a real transition for us to again accept parental consensus.

It didn't help, for example, that we'd each read different parenting manuals. The family bed, for example, has been a big adjustment for me. Unlike my kids, who were out of the co-sleeper after six months, almost three-year-old Maia still begins her evening in the toddler bed next to ours, and by the morning she's invariably glued to her mother's neck. Add in Amanda's insistence that the dog also sleeps in the bed, and my nights are spent clinging to the corner. If little Maia didn't smell so good after a bath, hug so tight, and say things like, "Turn the dark light on" when she wants the light off, if she didn't do a million things every day to make me love her more and commit even more deeply to watching and helping her grow up and if her beautiful mother didn't make me happier than I've ever been in my adult life, then I might be mad about how little sleep I'm getting.

I came from a family of four, had created my own family of four for a little over half a year and then for six years commanded an invincible little family of three. A family of five, for me, is unchartered territory. Now that that we adults are outnumbered, Amanda and I have moved from a man-to-man defense to a zone. We have to pull out the leaf on the dining room table when we eat, the dishwasher and the laundry should just stay on in continuous loops, and the TV shuttles between the Wonderpets, Star Wars Clone Wars and Hannah Montana. When single friends come over they gape at our familial chaos. If we lived under a big top I'd call us Cirque de la Famille and sell tickets.

Gradually, however, I'm getting the hang of it, I think. There are extended moments when I actually think we've got it under control. Of course it is exactly in those moments of calm that Amanda reminds me that we've agreed to adopt a little girl in the next two years. Her name will be Sadie.

I can't wait to meet her.

It must be said that Cookie had become a publication out of step with its times. The idylls of Cookie?s pages, featuring toddlers in patent leather and cribs lined with flokati, altered not a whit with the collapse of Wall Street and our entire economy with it. Though Cookie's media kit indicated that their readers' median household incom was $80,616, it would have taken five or ten times that amount to live the life depicted in its pages. And even if readers might once have aspired to that kind of lifestyle, when our gilded age came to an abrupt close, Cookie seemed suddenly – and glaringly – irrelevant. Changing with the times may or may not have spared its life, but Cookie had a vision of modern motherhood, and until the end, it stuck with it.

From its first issue, Cookie magazine made it clear that it would hold its mother-readers to a higher standard than the other parenting titles out there. "All the Best For Your Family," each issue proclaimed, and indeed Cookie called itself "The Stylish Parenting Magazine for the New Mom." By "New Mom," they did not mean a first-time mother of a newborn. They meant an entirely new sort of mother, one interested in parenting fashionably, who was also an up-and-coming celebrity, or at the very least looked like one.

This New Mom, as represented in Cookie?s drool-inducing photo spreads, did not need to dwell exclusively on the undeniable preciousness of her offspring. Sure, her toddler was right next to her, pouting with disarranged mane, standing knock-kneed in her $3,400 leather miniskirt with sheer organza overlay. But in the Cookie world, that child was willing to just hang out while the New Mom gave her attention to the glamorous adult life she was leading with someone just off-camera.

The Cookie home had artfully scattered through the living area no more than three or four toys, all Danish, fashioned of blonde wood. There was no television in the Cookie household. Who had time for such passivity? After school, these children were too busy tending to their rooftop herb garden, nibbling arugula as they picked, before their New Mom cooked dinner with them, hand-cutting egg noodles and whipping up some salmon with minty pea sauce (the two-year old?s favorite).

The families in Cookie spent their weekends browsing art galleries. They vacationed not at Club Med, but in a beachfront hut in the Galapagos Islands, or in a Shaker village in rural Kentucky. They had elegant parties for the entire neighborhood on the spur of the moment. The New Mom was at the center of all of this, in her "everyday chic" $980 trench coat, always with a certain carelessness, a laid-back, insouciant ease. In Cookie, motherhood was never hard, just fun and glamorous. Cookie suggested that it was possible to have a body, a home, and a life after children that was even better than what you had before.

At first this idea seemed refreshing, even noble, to my mother friends and me. We all subscribed immediately, hailing this new paradigm: not all cuddles and Care Bears, but not put-Little-Mermaid-on-auto-repeat-while-Mommy-takes-a-nap, either. Our children could be at the center of our lives without our having to renounce the lives we once lived. As the years went by, most mothers I talked to still enjoyed Cookie, drawing sustenance from its monthly fantasies that their former, smoother lives could be reattained. However, when my issue of Cookie came each month, and I sat down to read it on my sofa covered with Sharpie scribbles, it mostly just made me feel bad that that life was not already mine, that I was never that fluently glamorous in the first place, and that I couldn?t see ever getting there.

Not that Cookie was solely responsible for this message. The standard for New Motherhood is alive and well and promulgated all around us: as a mother, you must look fabulous — as good, in fact, as if you have not in fact had children — and most of all, it must be easy for you to do so. When my mother?s friends were all wearing their one-piece bathing suits shirred through the mid-section at Lake Hideaway circa 1983, I don?t think they felt bad that they didn?t look like movie stars. No mother of three (or more) was expected to rock a two-piece, and so I don?t think my mother spent too much time feeling bad about her abdomen spilling over her waistband. The "muffin top" didn?t have a name back then. I, on the other hand, am aware every day of how Tori Spelling has Hip-Hop Abs and I don?t, even if I don?t have time to do anything about it except feel bad.

The Cookie mother never got a muffin top in the first place, since she "carried small" and started working with a personal trainer as soon as she got home from the hospital. But Cookie did its best to reassure mothers that any imperfections they did have could be easily corrected. "Maximum Beauty, Minimum Effort!" one cover blurb teased, and I eagerly flipped to that story first. If it was easy to look like a New Mom, then surely I could at least approximate it. The story inside the magazine told of one mother?s new and streamlined beauty routine since her triplets had come along: these days, she was getting her hair blown out just once a week, and instead of time-consuming manicures, she was opting for the quick pick-me-up of a polish change.

Are you kidding me? I thought. I never did those things in the first place! But this mother did, because she valued herself that much, and made it her priority (well, that, her new cookbook, and the nonprofit foundation she was launching). Besides, it wasn?t hard for her to look good; for weekend brunch, she could just gather her hair into a loose chignon, slick on some lip gloss, and be out the door! Cookie never really acknowledged that while the mothers it profiled had speedy beauty regimens, they were not typical mothers. Another issue outlined the "three minute beauty tricks" of Helena Christensen, mother of Mingus, while failing to admit that they may not work as well for anyone who is not, you know, a supermodel. When I was in the maelstrom of two under two, I didn?t even have time to brush my teeth on a daily basis. But that was before Cookie came along, and so back then, I could view my bedraggled aspect as a personal badge of pride. If I was going to be freaking exhausted, I figured, I might as well look it. My physical appearance was a manifestation of the rather extreme effort it was taking, at that time, to be Me.

The ladies? magazines our mothers read were all about making the Effort visible. My mother never subscribed to any of them, but she would often toss one in the grocery cart while waiting in the checkout line. Those magazines made quick work of Fashion (two pages on the eighteen ways you might not yet have considered to wear that print neckerchief you bought on a whim. How it brightens up that old T-shirt dress!) and Fitness (repeating, monthly, the dubious axiom that, really, walking was the very best exercise). Having gotten those tired topics out of the way, the bulk of these magazines? pages, as well as their covers, were devoted to elaborate cakes a mother could make for any and all occasions, like a Tom Turkey cake for Thanksgiving with jellybean eyes and a wattle fashioned of Red Hot Dollars.

I do not recall too many of these themed desserts on the dinner tables of my childhood, other than one very memorable Easter Bunny cake with Twizzler whiskers. Now, at least, I hold my mother in the higher regard for it. The thing about those cakes, though, is that even though they would be summarily eaten almost as soon as you had finished, the point of them would be to say, look how hard Mom worked! You might get a few oohs and aahs, at least out of the little kids, especially if you stuck a sparkler in it. At least someone might notice you made an effort.

Cookie recommended themed entertaining for the New Mom as well, but the birthday boy?s cake was in soft focus compared to the no-fuss hand-squeezed passionfruit caipirinhas served to the adult guests. How easy it was for the New Mom to entertain! Forget the Easter Bunny cake: she could whip up an al fresco Brazilian churrasco for sixteen in no time flat, and everyone, including the four-year-old guests of the birthday boy, devoured the pork skewers and coconut rice balls she threw together just that afternoon while the New Mom sat back and ENJOYED HERSELF — and while I, reading it, wanted to scream.

I think that some women were able to feast their eyes on the utopias of Cookie while understanding that they were utterly unsustainable. Each photo takes dozens of people many hours of effort to create. The fantasy is the point. But not me. Every time I read Cookie I would feel less relaxed, and then I felt even worse about myself because if I ever wanted to be a New Mom, nonchalance had to come first. All I really wanted was someone to say either, hey, let?s all slack off, or, God, isn?t it hard to have your act together? Cookie refused to let me off the hook, either way.

And now Cookie has crumbled, a victim of both the failing economy and its utter disconnect from it. But despite everything that happened between us, I will miss Cookie. Like the naughty snack after which it was named, Cookie was as delicious as it was unhealthy. You can know cookies are bad for you, but still you love them. Every time a new issue arrived, I would sit down after the kids were asleep and gorge. I would always feel a little sick afterwards, but God, was it good.

oys are better in math, girls are more empathetic — there's something almost alluring about the idea that our brains are wired differently. But in her new book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain, author and neuroscientist Lise Eliot synthesizes decades of research on the topic and concludes that both sexes — boys in particular — are suffering under our assumptions about their nature.?

Our X and Y chromosomes really do seem to point us in different directions. From the beginning, girls are more resilient and faster to develop than boys. They get a head start in language and fine motor skills. By four months, girls make more eye contact (not surprisingly, women are found later to be more skilled at reading emotion). Boys are more fussy as babies and vulnerable throughout childhood. Their motor skills are on par with girls', though, and they tend to do more jumping, running, and general stunt work than their female counterparts.

But according to Eliot, the biological differences between us are actually very small. Average skill levels vary slightly, but it's nothing close to how much the sexes differ in height, for example. When it comes to abilities and personality traits, there is way more variation within each sex than there is between the sexes. And the overlap is huge, meaning lots of boys are more verbal than girls and lots of girls are more active than boys.

So how do we go from slight biological variations to a clear gender divide? It starts when our babies come home from the hospital to their sports-themed or doll-inhabited rooms. Despite their best intentions, moms and dads treat their little ones differently, with boys tending to get tossed in the air and rough-housed more and girls tending to be described by their parents as softer and more delicate. One study in Eliot's book asked moms to judge how steep an incline their eleven-month-old could crawl down and showed that moms doubted the skill and courage of the girls and made the ramp steeper for the boys, even though both sexes were equally capable.?Studies also show that parents (dads in particular) are less supportive when, for example, their boy cuddles a baby doll, than when he wields a lightsaber.

Our biases are hurting the boys in particular, says Eliot. They are more likely to be held back from kindergarten, or labeled with ADHD and learning disorders. We expect them to be slower and less focused, instead of challenging them and adapting our teaching methods. She gives a lot of suggestions to help boost boys' communication and fine motor skills (two areas that have a big impact on school performance). For example, teach boys to type early; read non-fiction; and encourage cutting, stamping, and painting. Boys need more chatting and soothing and less "toughening up" ? they require just as much help, if not more, understanding their feelings.

Girls have been on the rise for a while now, but math and science are still dominated by boys, partly because we assume that they have a natural advantage.?In reality, boys only excel in visuospacial skill (the ability to mentally rotate an object), and girls actually tend to get better grades in both math and science. But the ladies fall off once they hit adolescence, which Eliot argues is because they get the message that hard-core math is not their turf and they lose confidence. Women are well represented in medicine (which has a human, helping side), but we still don't have very many female aerospace engineers or computer scientists. Give Legos and Lincoln Logs to girls, says Eliot. They need balls and paper airplanes, jigsaw puzzles and tool sets. Get them onto the computer for some fast-paced targeting games to practice spatial reckoning and healthy competition.??

There is no gene for garbage truck obsessions or tiaras and tutus, but if we only follow our children's lead and never challenge them to step out of their comfort zones, guess what will happen? Our brains are remarkably "plastic," meaning that they grow and strengthen based on our experiences.?So imagine that your boy needs a lot of emotional support and that your girl might grow up to be a wacky math professor.? "Whatever you do is what your brain will be 'wired' for," says Eliot. "So anytime we see an obvious difference between men and women, or boys and girls, ask yourself: how did they spend their time over the past thirty years to make their brains so good ? or bad ? at certain skills?"

]]>Heather Turgeon http://www.babble.com/hate-calling-from-road/Fall is here, which means a lot of us are hitting the trail to teach, speak, meet, and conduct all manner of business that keeps money and professional mobility flowing in our households. My slate is full this year and while I'm excited to be on the road — all those Bliss Spa beauty products and random talks with cab drivers in Midwestern towns — I dread not only saying goodbye to my four-year old, but saying hello. From my Blackberry at the airport, the phone in my hotel room, Skype on the screen of my MacBook, no matter the medium, I'd rather eat my arm than talk to my kid while I'm out of town.

Seriously.

You know how it is fellow sojourners: you long for your children the moment you see the airport sign on the highway. Suddenly nostalgic for the twang of the 5:45 alarm and epic daily corralling through teeth-brushing, face-washing, yogurt- and apple-eating, lunch-bagging and surreptitious eyelash-curling, you have inexplicably romantic thoughts about waiting for the bus or catching the subway with five million other people. You forget holding your breath when the man next to you sneezes five times in a row, and how often you wonder if you can get swine flu more than once. Or if you live outside of the city, you forget the pang of guilt you feel (the ozone, the future of the planet!) every time you turn on the air conditioner for the seemingly endless drive to school on nauseatingly curvy roads.

But these moments of waxing rhapsodic are fleeting, are they not? Mere hours later, comfortably ensconced in a room with a Heavenly Bed and a willing room-service delivery person, things change. There are movies on demand, movies you want to watch! The Wifi is perfect and you can work when you want to, at three a.m. say, without worrying about passing out the next day after morning drop-off. Did I mention you can pick up a phone, tell someone what you want to eat and then they . . . bring it to your door? A door you can answer in a long shirt and tights?

Yes, my friends. Things are good. Until the hideous red LED clock on the dark wood veneer nightstand creeps closer to what you have calculated to be bedtime at home. First you have an hour. Then twenty minutes. Five. Three. One. You pick up the phone with a heavy hand. Your mate answers, you brace yourself, and then you?re off to the races.

"Hello!"

You say this first word cheerfully, with great excitement, because you know the first rule of calling home is sounding as if you have been waiting to talk to your spouse and children since the moment you kissed them goodbye at the airport when the truth is you haven?t thought of them for hours.

"How am I?"

You say this with a little more than a soupcon of aggravation because rule number two dictates you sound as if being away is positively awful, the worse thing EVER. Sounding like you?re having fun could cause jealousy and possibly even long-lasting feelings of betrayal. And so, even though you have largely recovered from the atrocities of air travel, you share only the truly dreadful details.

"Uch, the trip was terrible. Bad food. My seat was in the back of the plane, and the flight attendant treated me like I had leprosy. They tried to give me a room ten miles from the elevator. When I told the person at the desk, he moved me to a non-smoking room that smelled like an ashtray. You know how it is."

Instead of pity, you are treated to a recounting of all of the extra work done in your absence. Adhering to rule three, you sympathize and share, from the bottom of your heart, how much you wish you were home to help. Which is more or less true, but the movie you?re watching on-demand has clicked back on after its three-minute pause, and you have to rush to silence it lest your partner think you?re luxuriating while he or she scrapes the burnt oatmeal out of the pot you left on the stove this morning.

Because you now feel guilty about the movie and yet understandably inspired by your twelve hours of solitude, you throw an offer out, forgetting the last time you did this it landed poorly.

"I?m so sorry, honey. I know it?s hard when I?m away. I?ll be back soon. When I get home, let?s pitch a tent in the backyard and have sex all night under the stars."

Which, as it did the last time you tried it, wins a sarcastic retort. Something like, "Well at the moment, all I can think about is how I?m going to empty the diaper genie before the natural gases cause a explosion and feed Claire something other than packets of almond butter and honey."

You roll your eyes but say nothing (rule number four). And then to get things back on track, you utter the words you?ve been dreading for the last few hours.

"Can I talk to the baby?"

And then it begins, the brutal exchange of barely intelligible grunts, awkward silences, and incoherent trains of thought masquerading as sentences. Ten minutes that sound more or less like this:

You: "Hi honey! How are you? Mommy misses you so much!"

Honey: "What Mommy?"

You: "I miss you!"

Honey: "What Mommy?"

You: "I miss you!"

Honey: "Daddy didn?t use the right toothpaste when he brushed my teeth this morning."

You: "Uh-huh. Well did you tell him it was the wrong toothpaste and show him where the other toothpaste is?"

Honey: Silence.

You: "Honey? Did you tell Daddy to use the other one?"

Honey: "No. I?m hungry Mama. Are you still on the airplane? Is there food on the airplane?"

You: "No I?m not on the airplane anymore. I?m in the hotel."

Honey: Silence.

You: "Honey? Are you there? I?m at the hotel."

Honey: "You?re at the hotel? Where?s that? Is that on the airplane? I lost my red bouncy ball today and Daddy couldn?t find it. Are you still on the airplane?"

You: "No honey, I?m not on the airplane. Remember when we went to Los Angeles and we went to the hotel and the man brought you the chocolate milkshake? Remember the hotel? I?m in a hotel."

Honey: "You?re in the hotel where we got the milkshake? Is that in the plane? Can I have a milkshake now or will the chocolate mess up my poopy?"

You feel as if you?d rather slit your wrists than continue this mother-child communication charade, but you must go on as everyone knows maintaining connection is the only way to keep your child from being irrevocably scarred in your absence (rule number five). You fight the urge to scream.

You, calmly: "Okay honey, give the phone back to Daddy."

Honey: "But mommy? When are you coming home from the airplane? Are you coming home tomorrow?"

You: "No, honey. I?m coming home in four days."

Honey: "Is that the day after tomorrow?"

You feel like pulling your fingernails out, but know you must not express one iota of frustration (rule number six).

You: "No, honey, but soon. Now let me speak to Daddy, okay? Mommy misses you. Sleep well. Love you."

Honey: Silence.

You: "Honey? Give the phone back to Daddy."

Honey: "But I don?t want to give the phone back to Daddy."

You: "Give the phone back to Daddy."

Honey: "Mommy, when are you coming home?"

At which point if you?re lucky, your frustrated but still adoring spouse takes the phone and saves you from throwing it to the floor and stomping all over it.

Spouse (again, if you?re lucky): "We miss you babe. I?ll find the toothpaste. I love you. We?ll be here when you call tomorrow."

Tears of gratitude well up in your eyes at this exquisite show of compassion.

"I love you too. Get some rest, okay? Don?t let them wear you out. Kiss."

You hang up and lay flat on your bed, staring at the ceiling. You reach for the remote with your right hand and thank God you?ve got twenty-four more hours before you have to do it again.