"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.

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.

He claims that most young people recognize him from Ocean?s Eleven (and Twelve and Thirteen), but even if you don?t know him on sight, you owe Carl Reiner for pretty much everything good about American comedy. Like SNL? Reiner perfected the sketch comedy format as a writer/performer on Your Show of Shows in the ?50s. Fan of 30 Rock? Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show in 1961, which pioneered the behind-the-scenes-of-a-show sitcom. Into Judd Apatow? His intellectual wackiness was heavily influenced by the Reiner-directed 1979 film The Jerk. Not to mention his novels, memoirs, Broadway plays, and notable offspring (like director Rob Reiner). For his latest trick, Carl Reiner has written a children?s book, Tell Me Another Scary Story . . . But Not Too Scary! It?s a Halloween-y sequel to a book he published two years ago, inspired by one of his five grandchildren. He also narrates the accompanying CD, which warns children to stop reading if things are getting too scary. Babble spoke to Reiner about the book and other parent-related highlights of his long, funny career. — Gwynne Watkins

Your "scary laugh" on the Tell Me Another Scary Story CD is really scary!

I?m so happy we?re talking about it! I love that little book. Are you looking at the new one or the first one?

I?m looking at the new one. It?s really creepy. I was sort of flipping ahead to make sure everyone was okay by the end.

I think that?s the trick that I found. I wrote the first book? because somebody asked me if I had a children?s book in me, and I didn?t know that I did until I remembered my grandchild, Nikki, one of Rob?s kids. I used to tell him stories, and one day he asked me, 'Tell me a scary story, Grandpa, but not too scary.' And I think that little key made the first book a real winner, because teachers would tell me they?d read it in their Kindergarten and all the [kids would] say 'No, no turn, turn!' and I loved that little interplay. I think for me the most fun of the book is the interplay with the children as you read it.

How old are your grandchildren now?

The oldest one is grown up. He?s eighteen. Rob also has a sixteen-year-old, and an eleven-year-old. Lukas has a ten-year-old and a six-year-old.

How do you find being a grandparent compared to being a parent?

Oh much, much easier. It?s a snap. They bring them over to play and say hello and get around a little and then they take them home. Responsibility is much less daunting.

You?re actually the same age as my grandparents, who used to play me The 2000-Year-Old Man when I was a kid. Do you play your comedy for your grandkids?

No, I don?t, but I?m sure my children have played it for them. I?m very gratified to hear that people come up to me — young people — and I say, where did you hear it? And they all say, my mother played it, my father played it. I?m amazed by it. We?re very pleased, Mel [Brooks] and I, that they put together all five albums into a box set for Christmas and they?re going to be re-released, and we?re going to Washington and the Library of Congress is going to install it into the Library of Congress.

Back to the book: you haven?t done much in terms of scary stuff in your career.

No, that?s not my genre. My genre is to make people giggle. As a matter of fact, the two new children?s books I have in the hopper right now, which are ready for next year, I really think are the best of the bunch. One is called Tell Me A Silly Story, and the other is Tell Me a Sillier Story.?The two of them, I just love them.

Have you tested those out with kids yet?

Oh yes, I read them to my family members and they giggled. Kids love the words "silly." As soon as I start it, they start to giggle.

Do you find it easier to be silly now that you?re older?

I?ve always been silly! But it doesn?t sit as well on older people. They think you?re becoming senile rather than silly.

So when you were raising your kids and doing all the million amazing things you?ve done in your career, how aware were your kids of what you did for a living?

When I first started, Robby was very small, and when he saw me on television — we didn?t know what television was in those days. It was 1950. He was born in 1947, so he was three when I was on shows. It was just an image. It could?ve been a picture, a photograph. But he looked, he pointed. Kids still do that when they see their parents on television. He grew up with a fairly normal life, mainly they had two parents who had good work ethics and I think that?s what they got from us. They always saw us doing something. My wife was a painter and a singer, and every one of my children is very adept at dealing with the world, they?re really very comfortable people and very non-toxic people. I have great kids.

The Dick Van Dyke Show was based on your family, and it?s still funny and true all these years later.

One of the biggest thrills I got was when Barack Obama was running for President and he published his autobiography. I was just enjoying the thrill of where he came from and who he became, but at one point he wrote, 'I got a kick out of watching my wife enjoying the reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show.' I said, 'Wow!' And later on, I heard her say in person that he invited her to go some place, and she said, 'I?d rather stay in Chicago and watch re-runs.' The re-runs were running in Chicago during the election because the Midwest had bought up all the rights. And I got such a kick out of it, and I said, of course he?s going to be a good President. He?s got good taste!

Well, it?s still one of the smartest sitcoms ever created! Were there any moments when you were working on the show, and you thought hmm, I don?t think this story has ever been told before on TV?

A few times I felt that. As a matter of fact, one of them almost made me quit the show. In the first year, I came up with a show — not very original — but the little boy asked his mother, 'Where do I come from?' and she actually said, 'Well, you came from my belly.' And he said, 'Oh, I know that. But do I come from New York or New Jersey?' That?s what he wants to know.

Well, they made me take that line out. And I said, 'Why don?t you want me to say that?' And [the network censor] said, well a lot of people tell their kids that a stork brought them or they?re found in a cabbage patch. I said, 'Well that?s not true, is it? Isn?t that lying?' And I said if parents want to tell their kids that and they see this on the air, they can tell their kids, no, that?s not true, you came from a cabbage patch, if they wanna lie. But I said, 'Telling the truth should be a priority on television!' And I said it certainly brings up the subject if people want to discuss it, and it will help people say, 'Oh yeah, that?s right.' You only tell a kid as much as he needs to know at a certain age. You don?t go into the graphics. I mean, I researched it before I did it.

And I was so angry I almost left the show, but I didn?t have enough screw-you money at the time. A year later, I might have said, I?m out of here. Now instead of saying 'from your belly,' he reaches for Dr. Spock to see how to tell him scientifically since the kid wants to know. So I never got to say that line. That line was cut.

So you did The Dick Van Dyke Show, you?ve got all these movies under your belt that people still watch and love —? of all the things you?ve created, what?s the thing that people are talking to you most about now on a day-to-day basis?

Well, mostly, if we?re going to reminisce, I think The Dick van Dyke Show, and The 2000-Year-Old Man, which we talked about. Of course, now that I did all those Oceans, they know me from that. If I hadn?t done that, people wouldn?t know who I was.

Just to end this on a Halloweenie note, what?s the scariest thing that?s happened to you on a TV or film set?

It?s not scary, but there was a show called Your Show of Shows years ago. It was unheard of for good comedians to break each other up and laugh. There were fake break-ups. Some comedians used to fake breaking up and laughing at their own joke and the audience feeling like they were in on something, that you couldn?t control yourself. But we always felt like that was out-of-bounds. We tried very hard to never break each other up. But sometimes: things would happen.

I remember we did Two English Barristers, myself and Sid Caesar, and we were discussing a case while we're playing pool. The joke was that we had the table scored, little pieces of felt were cut so that when he took a shot, the pool cue went under the felt rather than hitting the ball. So when he picked the pool cue up, it would rip the felt on the table. And that was funny. People were roaring with laughter.

Well there?s a warp and a woof to cloth, and when he went under the cloth and pulled the pool cue up, it broke in half. And he?s left with a club in his hand. And he?s walking around with a billy club, looking for the next shot. And my line after that is [upper-class British accent] 'Good shot!' and I?m almost biting my lip because, 'good shot?' He just broke his pool cue in half! And he?s walking around looking for the next shot and I know he?s going to do something crazy. I?m just trying to hold myself together, and he swings it like a polo mallet, and knocks the ball off the table and off the wall. And my next line is 'Good shot!' and I cue it up. And I actually bit my lip and blood was coming in my mouth, I could feel it. But I didn?t laugh. And that was scariest thing to me: to hold laughter back from the audience.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Susan Linn is serious about play, which makes sense ? she?s an award-winning ventriloquist and internationally known puppeteer and one of the late Fred Rogers? collaborators. But Linn also fears for the very survival of play, a concern that stems from her work as Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center, and Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She?s found that unfortunately, we can no longer take it for granted that children know how to play pretend.

Kids? ability and opportunities to make believe are threatened from all fronts, says Linn, and that includes by their parents. And, lest you underestimated its importance, Linn reminds us that the UN?s Convention on the Rights of the Child lists play as a guaranteed right, next to access to nutritious food and clean drinking water.

Babble spoke with Linn about The Case for Make Believe (recently released in paperback), how to best nurture our children?s instinctual yearning for creative play, and what she learned in Mister Rogers? neighborhood. (Check out an excerpt here.) ? Emily Frost

Why is make believe so fundamental to our children?s development, and to their development as good citizens?

It is the foundation of creativity and constructive problem solving. It?s how children learn to wrestle with life, to make it meaningful. It is through creative play that children learn cooperation, social coping skills, and negotiation. But also, it?s how they learn divergent and critical thinking, and how they feel empowered to take action ? those are all especially important in a democratic citizenry.

How are today?s parents stifling play without realizing it?

It?s not that I?m placing the blame solely on parents ? this is a societal issue. And yet, as we need to work to change society, there are also things parents can do within their family.

Kids aren?t playing freely outdoors as much anymore, and one of the reasons that parents give for that is stranger danger. Yet the statistics on stranger kidnappings haven?t changed in the past twenty-five years. But parents perceive that the world as a dangerous place. And certainly there are neighborhoods where it is dangerous for kids to be out alone. But, there are lots of neighborhoods where that?s not the case.

Another way is the push to structure children?s time so that there always have to be organized things for children to do, instead of just letting children create their own amusement.

But one of the biggest problems is the commercialization of children?s lives and this push by the media, and toy and marketing industries, to convince parents and children that children need the things that corporations sell in order to play, in order to be creative, and that whatever children can make up by themselves isn?t good enough.

You?re not a fan of certain very popular computerized toys. Why is that??

A good toy, a toy that nurtures creative play is ninety percent child and only ten percent toy. Play is useful for children, and engaging and exciting for children, when they drive the play, when they?re in charge of what?s going to happen in the play. What?s happening with toys like Tickle Me Elmo is that they interfere with that process.?Elmo is a media character, linked to a media program that children are very familiar with. Children play less creatively with media-linked toys because who the character is, and what the character says and does are already embedded in the toy. If they see the media program a lot, the script gets embedded in the child?s brain and then kids are just imitating with media linked toys, they?re not engaged in creativity.

But the other concern about toys like Tickle Me Elmo is that they?re embedded with computer chips, so the toys sing and dance and talk and do back flips, but all the child is doing is pressing a button to make that happen, and that?s not a creative experience for children, and really, the toys are having more fun than the kids. And parents are convinced that children need this kind of toy because it is modern and technological. But really, those toys are pretty useless in terms of promoting the kind of creative play that is fundamental to children?s well-being.

Would you say there's a class difference in access to non-branded, low-tech toys? And if so, what can we do to address the disparity?

Well, one of the problems is that it is hard to find unbranded toys for young children. It?s possible, but you find them at high-end, specialty toy stores. If you go to Wal-Mart or Toys 'R' Us or Target or the place where working-class people shop, then what you find are endless rows of media branded products and plastic, commercial, chip-embedded toys.

One thing we could do about that is make sure that child care centers, preschools, and schools provide an alternative to commercial culture, so that children have the experience of time spent away from the kinds of products whose advertising they?re constantly bombarded with. But some schools and childcare centers use TV or computers to calm children down. There?s also pressure from parents who feel that kids need to gain technological skills, practically from birth. But that doesn?t really make any sense. Postponing that a few years is not going to hurt a child?s ability to engage with technology.

As much as you fault the media and our obsession with screen time, you?re not anti-TV at all. In fact, you worked closely with the late Fred Rogers and television was very important to your childhood.

I?m not one of these "pull the plug and move to the woods" people. In fact, television had a very positive and profound impact on my creative life as a child. And, I really struggled with that when I wrote The Case for Make Believe. I kept saying to myself, "Why am I so critical about today?s media culture when in fact, I benefited from television and movies, from screen media? What?s the difference?" And the difference is access. I saw Peter Pan at the movies once when I was six. I didn?t see it again until I was nineteen. I was so delighted by it, but if I wanted to enter that world, the only way I could do it was to play about it. But today, children can see movies or television programs over and over and over again ? and so they don?t have to play creatively in order to enter that world. They can just press a button and there it is. They don?t get a chance to exercise their creative muscle.

What?s your favorite memory of Fred Rogers and his neighborhood?

I did a bit for his show where I did a whole spontaneous interaction with my puppets and when I finished he said, "That was wonderful Susan. And do you know why? Because you let you come out." He was who he was. It wasn?t an act.

Another one ? a memory that means so much to me, was actually the last time I ever saw him. He was speaking at Wheelock College and I went to hear him and went back to say "hi." It was at a time when my daughter was quite ill and he took my hand and said "Susan, how are you? How?s your daughter?" and I stood in the middle of that room, filled with people who wanted to talk with him, and told him about my daughter. And he stood there listening intently as though there was nobody else in the room. Then a few days later I got a little book in the mail from him, his book, You are Special and he had written "I just thought you might need this." That means a lot to me and the opportunity to be mentored by him is something I will just carry with me forever.

When children are playing in a way that involves enacting violent scenes, often our first instinct is to immediately stop them or redirect them. But you?d disagree with that course of action ? why is that?

Yes. I think that playing about violence and playing about scary things is a way for children to cope with their fears, their anger, and things that they may experience in their lives. And children have always played about violence; they?ve played wars or they?ve played about scary monsters or cops and robbers, for instance. That kind of play can be exciting and fun and it is a way for children to gain mastery over what can be a very scary world, even in the most protected child?s life.

But there?s a difference between play that is merely a capitulation of what kids see on the screen and play that is really working something through. Preschool teachers report that the play of children immersed in Spider Man, for instance, and all things Spider Man, is merely repetitive violence. And if kids are immersed in the film and immersed in the toys, we need to let them play about it, because that?s how they work things out.

The challenge is: is there a way to move the play beyond the script so that it can have some more meaning and creativity for the children? Can you use clay to build a cave for Spider Man? Can you make Spider Man lunch? Can you build Spider Man?s house with blocks? Anything adults can do to shift the play a little bit is helpful. I have spent time finding myself arguing (I?m using the word argument lightly here) with kids because I want to deviate from a television program or set script and the kids don?t want to. The scripts are very, very powerful. And with boys it is violence and with girls it is this kind of sexualized, gender stereotyped play. And I have seen that a lot.

What can parents do, and what can we do as a society, to protect play?

This is the first generation of parents that really have to consciously and actively carve out commercial free time, space and silence for their children to play creatively. If they just let things go along, it?s not going to happen, because for the first time in history, when children have leisure time, we can?t assume that they?re engaged in creative play; they?re either engaged with screens or they?re engaged in this rote sort of scripted play. Parents really have to make active decisions to nurture creative play and they can do that in a variety of ways.

One way is to limit screen time. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under the age of two, and only an hour or two a day for older children. So, that?s one thing that parents really do have to do.

Another thing is to be thoughtful about the kinds of toys and equipment that you give your children. Think about purchasing toys that can do more than one thing, toys that lay there until a child invests them with life, toys that are tools for creating things, from simple musical instruments to art supplies; those are the toys that will really nurture creative play and give your children hours of pleasure.

And get your children outside. Nature is a great antidote to commercialism and children play more creatively in green spaces.

And what some families are doing is having screen-free nights where there are no cell phones, computers, television, or mp3 players and families do things together. The first one might be hard but what families are reporting is that it is really fun. It?s nice for families to be able to interact together. Family meals are important for all sorts of reasons but family meals are where you sit around and talk, where family history gets passed on.

So all of these things that a couple generations ago, or even a generation ago, we used to just take all of this for granted, but we can?t anymore. It?s bizarre, but we?ve reached a point where nurturing creative play is actually counter-cultural. Creative play is actually a threat to corporate profits. Children who play creatively don?t need as many of the things corporations sell to us, they?re not as dependent on them.

Susan Linn also works with The Campaign for A Commercial Free Childhood, where you can find more resources on nurturing creative play.

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.

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.

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?

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.

My daughter's first pediatrician had co-authored a well-known book with a famous, beloved pediatrician. What's more, he took my insurance and was accepting new patients. Doctors have been picked for far worse reasons. In retrospect, I wish I had chosen the most reliable path to a happy doctor-patient relationship and asked for recommendations from people I knew, but as I was the first in my group to have a baby and lived far from family, I had nobody to ask.

The first hint at a bad fit was that he never remembered my daughter's nickname (he always called her by her longer formal name, which nobody uses), but this was a small irritation. Worse was his warning, at every visit, about her size — totally average at birth, she had become plump and round on a diet of breastmilk, only breastmilk, for her first six months. Her father and I come from slim people, and I knew that exclusively breastfed babies are often chubby but rarely obese — still, the doctor's constant cautions made me doubt myself, and his tone brooked no questions. Fat cells laid down now, he said, would never, ever go away. Twenty pounds at six months? She was sure to face weight problems as she grew, he promised. I would love to introduce him to her now, a slender athletic teenager with a still-healthy appetite and, thankfully, no insecurities about her body's shape. (Overly aggressive admonitions against infant obesity, it turns out, are a common theme among mothers who ditch their first pediatricians.)

In the end, quitting was shockingly easy. A year of sing-alongs and park visits had introduced me to a crew of moms and kids, so I asked around and got names of the doctors other mothers cherished. I think the new doctor's receptionist even handled the file request from the old office. If I had had to face my daughter's first pediatrician to deliver the news in person, I might have said, "it's not you, it's me." But that would have been the same lie it always is.

It's been years now, but I remember fantasizing for weeks about sending the first doctor a Dear John letter, letting him know why he lost our business. I never did. As much as I had hated him, for years afterward I felt vaguely guilty — for quitting, for waiting so long to quit, for having chosen him in the first place. The whole mess seemed a rookie mistake, and something I was certain other, wiser mothers would never do. After all, my brothers and I had gone to the same doctor until we were grown. Surely, I thought, it's a rare and shameful thing, to quit your pediatrician.

I was wrong. The next time you're with a group of parents, ask around — you're certain to find other quitters. Perhaps you're one yourself. We are everywhere, it seems. And though there are surely a few parents who see themselves as medical consumers, just shopping for the best product, and more who have to change doctors due to relocation or changes in insurance plans, many are just like me: parents who've suffered a pediabreakup. As with all breakups, the details vary, but most seem to boil down to breakdown in three big areas: communication, respect, and trust.

Amy, a mother of two in St. Louis, chose a pediatrician recommended by her midwife, a woman who routinely appeared on her city's top doctor lists, a local star who donates her free time to overseas medical service. Other mothers on the playground would express their envy at Amy's having snagged such a prestigious doctor. But prestige doesn't translate into bedside manner, and in the office the woman was difficult — when Amy could get an appointment in her jam-packed schedule. "I found her brusque and told myself she was 'no-nonsense,'" Amy said. "She was sometimes rude and I told myself she was 'direct'."

"At first I liked it that she asked intrusive questions, because they were aimed at my husband: did he help with the baby? Did he do the dishes?" said Amy. "But when she quizzed me about my child-rearing, her manner left me feeling guilty and ashamed. I lied about co-sleeping; I could just tell from the way she asked that she frowned upon it."

Sometimes the communication problems between doctor and parent go beyond ego-bruising. "Our first pediatrician was short with us," said Valerie, a Boston mother of two, "just her manner, I think now." The doctor made negative comments about breastfeeding and accused her newborn daughter of "testing" her by crying at the breast, but the worst, Valerie said, was when she prescribed Zantac for a fussy infant, even though she told the parents that the baby "didn't need it." There's nothing a nervous first-time parent likes less than confusing medical advice: who wants to give their baby a medicine she doesn't need? Valerie found a new pediatrician soon afterward.

Madeline, a California mother of three, ditched her kids' first doc for a couple of good reasons: the aforementioned fat baby warnings (which veered into uncomfortable territory when her older daughter, naturally slim, was relentlessly praised for her body shape in front of both kids) and another common complaint: sneak attacks with the immunization needle.

"My older one hates shots, screams and screams, even now," said Madeline. "She turns pale, you can feel her heart beating, it's awful." Despite multiple pleading that the doctor keep both mother and daughter posted on the need for any shots at the girl's six-year-old checkup, this pediatrician and her nurse bum-rushed the pair and gave the shot without warning. "Of course, she's crying and screaming and it all happened so fast I was stunned! That's NOT how we do things at home," said Madeline, who says the family is happy with their new doctor.

Worst, perhaps, are those doctors whose own prejudices get in the way of providing good care. Thato, originally from Botswana but now living in New England, said her sons' first pediatrician wasn't her choice. "He was the only one accepting patients," she said — a common reason we end up with the doctors we do — "and he was young, geekish and awkward. I don't think he had ever been around people of color. He was just weird and always uncomfortable around us and he never made my son feel comfortable." The doctor's lack of cultural intelligence went even further, according to Thato. "He once said that some kids have more mental capabilities than others and some have more physical capabilities . . . and he explained that my older son just happens to be more physical than mental." To assign any child one particular trait — he's just athletic, she's just verbal — is bad enough, but to blithely judge a young black boy as 'more physical than mental' can do as much damage as a botched prescription.

Pediatricians have a delicate role to play, of course, and there are surely as many difficult parents as there are awful doctors. Among medical specialties, pediatrics confronts doctors with uniquely complicated demands — there are the tiny, often nonverbal, irrational patients to be examined and treated, and with each one comes these large, terribly verbal, also irrational parents. Parents of small children call too often, worry too much, and are quick to blame the doctor for anything that goes wrong. And because of the way the profession has developed over the past century, pediatricians find themselves called on for not only physiological expertise, but also information and advice on developmental and behavioral issues — some of which are so controversial they divide families. Navigating these waters has got to be hard.

So how do you know when it's time to quit? A doctor-patient-parent relationship only works when all three feel comfortable. A lack of trust, unfixable failures of communication, and any hint of medical error should be enough to send a parent off in search of a new doctor. Yet many stay years longer when their initial instincts tell them to flee. "I kept going to her for years because I was afraid of her," said Amy, the St. Louis mom, "and telling her that I was leaving seemed harder than staying."

Breaking up is hard to do. But once it's over, these mothers report, they wonder why it took so long to make the move. Happily cared for by doctors they trust and like, they feel they've crossed an important parenting milestone. Are these families' second pediatricians objectively better than the first? In most cases they are, but the parents have changed, too, have grown into themselves as veterans, no longer the scared rookies they were in those early days and weeks.

Amy, the St. Louis mom, provides a clue about the different relationship one has with the second pediatrician. Her kids' new doctor doesn't ask many probing questions, she said, "but then, the kids are five and ten. Evidence suggests that I'm able to keep them alive and well."