The littlest among us, children under 8-years-old, are growing up with new media. How do parents perceive their wee one's media use? A new study seeks to find out. (AP)

Parenting the littlest media users: A study shows what concerns new parents

By Anne Collier, Guest Blogger / 06.19.13

Increasingly, digital media are just part of the rhythm of everyday US family life, a significant new study of parents of young children indicates. The study, “Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology,” conducted by Northwestern University’s Center on Media & Human Development, surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 2,300 parents of children 8 and under about how media – both “traditional” and digital – inform and fit into their everyday lives and parenting. The authors found that “78% report that their children’s media use is not a source of family conflict, and 59% said they aren’t concerned their kids will become addicted to new media,” according to US News & World Report. 

What’s most on parents’ minds (Source: the “Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology” report).

What does concern those parents is the impact of lots of screen time on kids’ health – “the negative impact screen time has on kids’ physical activity levels. More than 60% said video games result in less movement by their children, with similar proportions saying the same about TV, computers and mobile devices,” US News reports. The authors themselves wrote that parents “are more likely to find a positive than negative effect of media and technology on many of their children’s academic skills.”

Family media use very individual

But it’s so individual from family to family, both the report and author, professor and tech parenting expert Lynn Schofield Clark indicate. Dr. Clark, who attended the release event in Washington, had an important take-away: “We don’t all experience media in the same way.” For some families in some neighborhoods, for example, staying inside playing video games might be safer than playing outside.

In her post about the report in PsychologyToday.com, she points to what I think of as an ideal approach to parenting where media’s concerned: “an ethic of respectful connectedness,” Clark calls it. “To the extent that media can help parents and family members to stay connected and to remain respectful of who they are and where they’ve come from, media can be seen as useful and helpful in relation to family goals.”

Less is better? It depends

So far in the digital age, our society tends to believe less media is better, but “not all parents can engage in the kind of concerted cultivation activities hat tend to make media use lighter,” Clark writes. Families “may face economic, health, language, or job- or transportation-related challenges…. ‘Helicopter parenting’ and concerted cultivation are rooted in the idea that young people can achieve and improve their lives through participation in existing societal structures, whether that’s school, sports or the arts. But while families facing greater economic challenges hope that these things will help, they don’t trust that they will [emphases hers]. They look to their families, neighborhoods, friends and communities to help their children develop the resilience they will need to face the challenges of racism, prejudice, and structural inequalities.”

Clark cites the view of Prof. Vikki Katz at Rutgers University, “who has studied Latino immigrant parents and their children” and said at the conference that “it’s important not to pathologize families who have economic struggles. They have the same goals as the rest of us when it comes to wanting the best for their children and in their hopes for the ‘American dream,’ and those of us working in areas of policy, research, and industry need to seek to provide support for them on their own terms.”

Some other interesting findings

• Tablets not babysitters: I’ve often heard it said that, when parents are busy, they just hand kids a smartphone or tablet. Not true. This study shows that they’re “more apt to turn to toys or activities (88%), books (79%) or TV (78%). Of parents with smartphones or iPads, only 37% reported being somewhat or very likely to turn to those devices.”
• Early media independence: Lots of parents use media with young children, the authors report, “but this ‘joint media engagement’ drops off markedly for children who are six or older.”
• Parenting no easier. These parents use digital devices a whole lot, but most (70%) “don’t think they’ve made parenting any easier.”
• Socio-economic differences: Families with incomes of $25,000 or less are more likely than families with incomes of $100,000 or more “to turn to TV for educational purposes” – 54% vs. 31%, respectively. It may have something to do with language, I think, that the researchers found that “lower income parents are also more likely to think TV has a ‘very’ positive effect on children’s reading (23%, compared to 4% among the higher-income group) as well as their math and speaking skills.” The authors add that “similar differences are found in parents’ views about the positives and negatives of computers as well,” which makes me wonder if “computers” means the Internet.
• Media time management. Professor Clark recommends that, instead of asking how much screen time is too much, parents might “think about teaching time management” so they can learn develop their own self-regulatory skills. And Prof. Barbara Fiese at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, encourages “healthy habits in the whole ‘family ecology’” of which media is just one part, Clark reports.

The Northwestern researchers divvied the various kinds of media environments that parents have created for their families into three buckets based on quantity of screen time: the 39% of households that are “media-centric” (11+ hours of screen time/day, with children spending 4-5 hours a day on-screen); the 45% that are “media-moderate” (spending just under 5 hours on-screen/day, with children spending just under 3 hours); and the16% that are “media-light” (generally with higher levels of income and education and spending even lower amounts of time with screen media, with children spending under 1.5 hours/day on-screen).

What does all this say about parenting these days? To Lynn Clark, it suggests that “parents will have to prepare children for a world that requires intentional effort as we seek to maintain the bonds that matter most to us.” I’m with her on that and, if I can riff on it a little bit: Successful participation in social media (not to mention school, work and all social spaces in our kids’ futures) is conscious participation. It’s both social literacy and media literacy – a “respectful connectedness,” as Lynn put it, online and offline. It doesn’t only defeat bullying and other anti-social behavior, it develops the kind of protection that’s preventive and permanent – with our children all the time and all their lives – critical thinking and resilience. And we know from the research that it increases academic as well as social success.

It's National Pollinator week, a time to celebrate the majestic pollinators of the world, like this bumblebee taking off from a rapeseed field in Germany, May 8. (AP)

National Pollinator week: How to get your family involved

By Susan Sachs Lipman, Guest Blogger / 06.18.13

June 17-23 is National Pollinator Week. It’s a week to celebrate and educate about pollinating animals, such as bees, birds, butterflies, bats, beetles and others, which are extremely vital to our ecosystem. Pollinators support much of our wildlife, lands and watersheds. Nearly 80% 0f the 1,400 crop plants grown around the world that produce all of our food and plant-based industrial products require pollination by animals.

There are so many simple ways to welcome pollinators into our home gardens and other outdoor spaces. In addition to helping the earth’s ecosystem and food supply, you’ll also experience the fascination and wonder that comes from observing the animals you attract. Here are a few ways to get more involved:

Find or add an event through Pollinator Partnership, a wonderful resource about pollinators year-round.

Garden for wildlife with tons of tips and guides from the National Wildlife Federation, which offers a Certified Backyard Habitat Program.

Check out NWF gardeners’ favorite plants for attracting pollinators.

Find more information about gardening for wildlife from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Join the Great Sunflower Project and many other citizen science projects that allow you to help researchers right from your own backyard or a local park.

Spring at the Bird Cafe and bird feeder activity.

Make a quick and easy bird feeder to attract and observe birds.

Enjoy beautiful nature during Pollinator Week and throughout the year!

College students reenter the familial home with as much grace as a spaceship returning to Earth. (Reuters)

Ground control to undergrad: Prepping your college student for home reentry

By Judy Bolton-Fasman, Guest blogger / 06.18.13

If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s, it seemed like there was a spaceship launch every week. A rocket was followed by a plume of smoke, and off the brave astronauts would go into the unknown, possibly bumping into God.

Launching a spacecraft is one thing. Bringing it safely back to earth is another kind of business. Launch and reentry have been on my mind quite a bit this past month when Anna returned from her first year of college.

As Ken and I launched our girl into higher education last August, the venture made nervous astronauts out of the three of us. It was a bit of a bumpy start, but that did not last too long and soon enough, Anna was orbiting her new world 300 miles away. She had a successful launch and last month, we all had to reverse course for her to reenter our atmosphere.

Depending on your perspective, this return was either a setback or a simple change of venue. I’d say it was a little of both. Just as spacecraft reentry can be a very tricky business, so is getting your college freshman acclimated to home life again. Note that when an object enters the earth’s atmosphere it experiences a few forces, including gravity and drag. Gravity has a natural pull on an object and will cause the object to fall dangerously fast. Think of this as your college freshman reluctantly comes back to home life, reacting to the natural yet disturbing force of your parental gravity.

Moving back home can prove to be a challenge for college students. The earth’s atmosphere contains particles of air that a falling object hits and rubs against as it descends to the earth, causing friction. The object experiences drag or air resistance, which slows it down to a safer entry speed.

You and your returning freshman will have your own version of friction. True enough, your child will experience drag and air resistance, but in the end will not be happy to adjust her life to a safer entry speed. Again, take a lesson from physics in understanding that friction in relationships is, at best, a mixed blessing. In addition to causing drag, it also causes intense heat.

In researching the particulars of space-shuttle descents, I came upon some physical realities that make reentry safer, and in the case of a college student returning home for the summer, a bit smoother. Any astronaut will tell you that reentering earth is about attitude control. In the case of space flight, this is not a psychological term, but instead refers to the angle at which the spacecraft flies. I submit that similarly adjusting one’s view of welcoming your college student back home also has to do with attitude control. You and your child are in your own private descent back to family life, and how you adjust the angle of your relationship is the key to success.

Don’t make a rookie mistake and think that loving phone calls and happy Skype sessions while your child is at school will translate into a seamless transition back home. In reality, we parents are the ground crew to our children’s ongoing launches. You and I both know that she’s still under heavy parental support, but it doesn’t feel that way to a daughter who has been in charge of her own schedule for the past nine months. Your child believes she is a high-flying adult living on her own.

We can cull further lessons on our kids’ return to home life by understanding the descent of a space shuttle. In order to leave its orbit, a spacecraft must begin the process of slowing down from its extreme speed. The parties, the 2 a.m. pizza call, the constant flow of company, all of that comes to a screeching halt back at the ancestral home. Just as a spacecraft flips around and flies backward for a period of time to slow down, your college student will need to thrust her life out of orbit to return back to your home base.

The descent through the atmosphere can be a bumpy ride. Once a spacecraft is safely out of orbit, it turns nose-first again and enters the atmosphere in a position akin to a belly flop. The nose is pulled up to what is called an angle of attack, which stabilizes the descent. The lesson to learn here is that friction is inevitable and even necessary to guarantee a safe landing.

Landing a space shuttle today is a lot different from landing one of the Apollo missions, of my childhood. In those days, the astronauts returned to earth in their command module and made a dramatic splash in the ocean. Today’s shuttle lands more like an airplane and glides into a landing strip, deploying a parachute to slow it down.

In the end, does the reentry of your college student look like the big splashdown of one of the Apollo missions or is it the smooth computer-assisted glide of a shuttle landing? We’re still working it out at our house, and the return back from dorm living vacillates between the two, feeling as mysterious as the heavens.

Father's Day is an opportunity for nostalgia, wishing that the early years of children were back again but also being glad in some ways that they're over. (Tim Brinton)

Father's Day: Children always need you, no matter their age

By Peter Zheutlin, Correspondent / 06.16.13

While waiting for my older son to arrive at Boston’s Logan Airport late the other night, I saw a young father wheeling an overburdened luggage cart, his wife a few feet behind him, a sleeping toddler in his pajamas in her arms. I remember flights like that: for many years when our kids were young we flew from Boston to Oregon for a beach vacation with their cousins and grandparents. Those were l-o-n-g flights and we carried many a sleeping or cranky child in our arms through airport terminals in those days.

In some ways I’m glad those days are over – they look exhausting; they were exhausting – but I can’t help feeling a twinge of envy for those weary parents, too. I’ll be 60 in a few months: my older son just graduated from college and the younger one from high school. They’re turning pages, but so am I, and I regret that I’m much closer to the end of the book than I was during those interminable flights to Oregon, diaper bag under the seat and squirmy toddler on my lap.

Early on in their lives I sensed time would pass quickly. As any parent knows, the days and nights can pass very slowly, but the years fly by. That’s why I was determined to find work that would give me the ability to be home as they were growing up. I was terrified that if I didn’t I’d look back one day and realize I missed it, that I was stuck in traffic during their Little League games, or on the road at a business meeting when their teeth fell out.

It wasn’t obvious to me when they were young, but fatherhood is a lifetime commitment. Their problems change, their needs evolve (mostly they become more expensive), and their expectations of their parents become harder to discern, but in many ways children never stop depending on you no matter how old they are. Even when I’m feeble and, heaven forbid, dependent on them in some way, they will, I suspect, still have expectations, even if it’s just that I should live to see another day.

Father’s Day, like Mother’s Day, seems awfully contrived, a boon to florists, retailers, and greeting card manufacturers that has more than a whiff of obligation about it. But what parent wouldn’t be at least slightly pained if their children let it pass unnoticed?

Few parents I know took the job, if one can call it that, so they could collect their children’s appreciation or because they wanted to be the object of a national holiday. (Some fathers, like the father of our country, get a whole day to themselves; the rest of us have to be content sharing the glory with several million other people.) But I’m probably not alone in thinking that my kids take a lot for granted. We all did when we were growing up; our parents’ hard work and sacrifice is something we could only appreciate when we became parents ourselves.

So, I will open the cards and the gifts and be truly grateful for them. I’ll miss my own dad and be grateful for all he gave me, too. But mostly I will be grateful for the privilege of being the father to two fine sons, even if they sometimes call me “Pete.”

David McCullough Jr., pictured here giving his 'You're Not Special' commencement speech to students in 2012, ..... (Screenshot via YouTube)

'You're not special' graduation speech: David McCullough spins it into a book

By Lisa Suhay, Guest Blogger / 06.14.13

Last year, in a bust-your-chops commencement address to Wellesley (Mass.) High School graduates, English teacher (and, yes, namesake of his historian dad) David McCullough told students something mot modern parents would consider sacrilegious:  “You are not special.

This year, he is on sabbatical and is preparing more words for the American audience via a new book spun out of last year’s speech. He's at work on a “philosophical” memoir of his 20-year teaching career. Rather than making this an anecdote-heavy tome, Mr. McCullough says his focus is on the theories behind the practices of learning and teaching. The working title for his book, “The Chief Element,” has its genesis in a line from his 2012 commencement speech: “You’ve learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness.”

 The YouTube video of McCullough’s speech has had 1.9 million views, a number of them from literary agents and publishers, he told me during a recent phone interview in which he projects the sense that, while he’s a nice guy, you wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of his judgment on grammar, punctuation, or parenting.

“The book is really about my experiences as a teacher over the past 20 years and not the speech,” McCullough says. “I address the kinds of things I’ve experienced, such as how students approach the educational system to see what they need to study in order to look good to a university, instead of from the standpoint of the exhilaration of learning for learning’s sake.”

He adds: “Instead of looking at learning as a glorious gift, they see it as just a step to something else that they must complete, and move on.”

Looking back at his now-famous speech, the English teacher is still in awe of the response: “I really had no indication immediately afterward that this was going to take off this way. It wasn’t until the following week when I opened my e-mail and saw the outpouring that I realized the impact.”

While McCullough told me that he “really didn’t see any negative reaction at the time and anything that came in was dwarfed by the support,” the speech did seem to spark both furor and kudos in commentary.

Love it or hate it, the speech was a watershed moment for many parents who paused to at least discuss the culture of praise some say has been created around kids, making them egocentric and lazy.

McCullough has the following advice on the art of commencement speechmaking: “It’s a different assignment, the commencement speech. Believe in the importance of what you tell them. Be sincere. Be genuine. Think about whom it is you’re speaking to and don’t go on too long.”

He adds: “Of course there are some conventions you have to stick with, but mainly the old fart stands up there and tells them what they need to know.”

What was his “convention” in the “You’re not special" speech that was so unconventional? “I went with the convention of giving advice,” McCullough says.

On that score the speaker did not skimp on tough love. Much of the speech bears repeating.

McCullough told the graduating class of 2012, in part:

“Contrary to what your U9 [under 9] soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh-grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you … you're nothing special. 

“Yes, you've been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you, and encouraged you again.  You've been nudged, cajoled, wheedled, and implored. You've been feted and fawned over and called ‘sweetie pie.’ Yes, you have…. But do not get the idea you're anything special.  Because you're not.”

McCullough says that after the speech a grandmother came to him and asked for a copy of it because she loved it so much. He received more than 10,000 e-mails praising his approach, he says. Among the messages were offers from agents and publishers that led almost immediately to a deal with HarperCollins’ Ecco imprint to write a philosophical memoir of his 20-plus years as a teacher.

I believe the most overlooked and underpublicized piece of the speech held the real value and purpose of the address: "You see, if everyone is special, then no one is.  If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.

“We have come to see them as the point – and we're happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that's the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole."

Today, he says,  “scores of students” have thanked him for the speech in person and via e-mail.  “Too many to count really, and at some point it all became a blur,” he recalls.

“My intention was to shake students out of the parent-driven 'success for the sake of more success' mind-set,” he says. “I wanted to see them find the exhilaration of learning instead of just building an impressive student résumé.”   

He hopes, too, that his book will help parents discover the truth of Sophocles' words when helping their children make their way through the educational system.

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Debra Bruno and her adult daughter, Joanna, eating a meal on a family excursion from their base in China to Hanoi, Vietnam. Bruno's children are leaving China and returning to the United States for graduate school. (Courtesy of Debra Bruno)

Empty nest: Diverse paths find an American family all in China, then gone

By Debra Bruno, Guest Blogger / 06.14.13

I had just returned to a Beijing that was hot, muggy, and so polluted my eyes stung, after a lovely sojourn visiting family and friends in the United States.

My phone rang. It was my daughter, wanting to vent about something. We chatted for a while.

An hour later, my phone rang again. It was my son, welcoming me back to China and wanting to catch up.

There’s certainly nothing odd about a mother chatting with her grown children after a trip. But what’s odd about this is that both of my 20-something children also live in China, a situation that is a happy combination of serendipity and choice. I know many expat families here in Beijing – but all of them are families with school-age children, mainly settled in the city’s suburbs to be near the international schools. The couples our age – let’s just say we’re middle-aged – have grown children who live in other places.

My husband Bob and I get a kick out of seeing the reactions on people’s faces when they ask us if we get to see our children much.

“Yes,” we answer. “They live in China.”

Daniel, our eldest, claims we followed him here, since he was the family pioneer, choosing a job teaching English in China almost five years ago after he graduated from college and bounced around in short-term jobs for a while. It’s been a choice he’s enjoyed, mainly, I suspect, because of the rock-star status he is awarded as a young male from “Meiguo” (Chinese, for USA) teaching in university classrooms full of Chinese college students, mostly female. He now lives in Guangzhou (Beijing is to Guangzhou as New York is to Miami, in terms of distance) but calls and visits frequently.

Joanna, the youngest, followed us. She had also graduated from college and landed a great job, but the prospect of a lifetime of the 9-to-5 grind, daily commutes, and squeezing in adventures in two weeks of paid vacation every year left her thinking that she should explore the world first. So she quit that fantastic job, backpacked around Asia for a month or so with a friend, and landed in our apartment in Beijing for what was supposed to be a short visit. But a month became two months, and I suddenly found her going on job interviews. Before we knew it, she was also teaching English, coming with us on hikes along the Great Wall, and meeting other young expats from the corners of the world. She lived with us for a year until she decided that she needed more privacy, and rented a rare-for-Beijing four-bedroom apartment with three other friends.

Our family adventures remind me of the year we lived in Belgium when the two were teenagers. Then, uprooting Daniel, 16, and Joanna, 13, was tantamount to child abuse in their eyes, and they responded initially with a fairly heavy-duty regime of sulking and door-slamming. But before long they discovered the joys of Europe: buying chocolate crepes a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower, skiing in the Alps, eating twelve grapes in the shadow of the Alhambra in Granada as the new year arrived, biking through Holland, riding double-decker buses in London, and gorging on moules-frites in Brussels. Not all was bucolic, of course, since travel with teenagers has its own challenges. I remember one giant fight over the best way to exit the ancient grounds of Pompeii, losing track of them in St. Marie de la Mer and wondering if they had been abducted by gypsies, and feeling frustrated when they seemed to prefer playing their hand-held video games instead of looking at a panel of stunning Rembrandts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. And there was that memorable meltdown in Avignon when the water park didn’t work out and they accused us of tricking them into going to the Palais des Papes instead.

Mostly, though, that year brought us closer as a family at a period when some families tend to drift apart.

And now we’ve had another chance, one that few families get. This time it’s Asia to explore, both as a family of four and with each of the kids alone: biking alongside rice paddies in Vietnam, feeding crackers to petite deer in Japan, snorkeling in the Philippines, running a race through Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We’ve celebrated birthday dinners both in our apartment and at Beijing’s best spots. We’ve stared at more Buddhas than I ever expected to see in two lifetimes.

Now, though, this brief idyll is about to end. Both kids are heading back to the US this summer to begin new chapters in their lives in the form of grad school. Gone will be the funny texts from Joanna: a Starbucks that had run out of coffee, commentary on Downton Abbey. Gone will be our weekly manicures. Like the chats many parents can have with their adolescents when they’re in the car, sitting in a nail parlor was an opportunity for us to chat about just about anything because the manicurists didn’t speak English. And I’ll have to figure out the time difference between Beijing and Denver when I want my son to explain the nuances of the latest episode of “Game of Thrones.”

I know that lots of parents face the struggle with both the empty nest and with boomerang children. In our case, it’s not that the nest is empty but that we’ve moved the nest. And I can hardly call them boomerang children if we’re all in this Asian adventure together.

In any event, it was fun while it lasted. And if someone had told me five years ago that we’d all be living in China in the year 2013, I wouldn’t have believed it. We won’t pass this way again, but this unexpected episode makes me hopeful that life has a few more surprises in store.

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A son asked to go to temple after seeing challah bread with his dinner. (Melanie Stetson Freeman)

A son asks to go to temple and his mom's religious enthusiasm grows, too

By Linda K. Wertheimer, Guest Blogger / 06.13.13

My husband was working late, so my son and I had a thrown-together dinner of leftover pasta, yogurt and carrots. I added one touch, store-bought Challah, to give our table a semblance of Shabbat.

The sight of the braided bread was enough to spark my 4-year-old son’s interest.

“Is the temple open?” Simon said.

“Yes, they’re having a service tonight,” I said, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was 6 p.m. The service on the schedule was at 6:15 p.m.

“Is it a grown-up service?” Simon asked.

“It’s for everybody, but not a Tot Shabbat,” I said.

“Can we go? I want to go to temple,” he said.

Part of me wanted to immediately shake my head no. I was tired. I had just gotten a magazine assignment with a tight deadline. In a few days, I was about to start teaching again part-time at local university. I was not really in a Shabbat service kind of mood. I had barely had the time to buy a challah. A year ago, I sometimes made my own challah.

Braided challah ready for baking

Not to mention, I was in shorts and a T-shirt with scraggly wet hair because we went swimming in the afternoon. But my son was actually asking to go to a Shabbat service. And he still wanted to go when he learned it wasn’t the children’s service which featured puppets. He was already at a place that I had spent decades trying to reach – a comfort zone with Judaism, ritual and synagogues. He was always eager to go to a service when we asked, but there was something particularly special about his asking. I don’t think he had ever asked before.

“Yes,” I said, “we can go.”

I rushed upstairs, stuck my hair in a ponytail, and put on Capri pants. We got to temple at 6:20 p.m. and slid into a row toward the back. A few seconds later, the cantor’s daughter, a big smile on her face at seeing Simon, ran over and sat next to us. By showing up, Simon doubled the number of small children in our sanctuary that night. He and the cantor’s daughter soon moved from our row to across the aisle to sit next to the rabbi’s teen-aged daughter.

At the start of the summer, when we went to an early service, Simon often could not last the entire time. He would get bored in the middle and want to go play in the hall for a while. This time, he stayed. He played musical chairs a few times, but most of the time, he paid attention and absorbed the service in his own way. He sang a little at times and bounced in his seat with the music.

No way, at age 4 ½, could he understand everything he was hearing. We do not talk much at home about liturgy. The music and the sense of community draw my husband and me to services.

We have taken Simon to these early services off and on since he was an infant, and each time, as is tradition for any children at the service, he has gone up to the bimah to help open the ark that displays the temple’s Torahs. As a baby, he could not do much but be held in my or my husband’s arms. Now, he usually walks up on his own. At this service, he walked up with the rabbi’s daughter and then staked a place by one of the ark doors so he could open it himself.

As is custom, our two rabbis and our cantor sang the Aleinu, the closing prayer of the service. It is a prayer about Jews’ dedication to and faith in God. I doubt my son understands what the prayer is about. I’m still sorting out the meaning of many Jewish prayers.

What does he get out of attending services? Is it spirituality? Is it comfort? I’m not entirely sure, and he’s not old enough to articulate it. It does not really matter. If I were to guess, I would say he wants to go to services because they’re familiar and comfortable. He feels safe there. He feels love there. He rushes up to our senior rabbi and gets hoisted high up in the air for a hug.

Our son is developing an appetite for temple, and as his enthusiasm grows, so does mine. We have given him lots of exposure to Judaism, but we have tried not to push religion on him. We have just let it sort of be.

Linda Wertheimer blogs at Jewish Muse.

Shopping for toys means seeing certain colors and patterns, like hearts for girls and trucks for boys, repeated over and over for one mother. Here, fourth-grader Carissa Watson checks out back-to-school backpacks. (Ben Chrisman/The Daily News/AP)

Boys get trucks and girls get flowers? One mom says enough with the separation

By Rebecca Hains, Guest blogger / 06.12.13

Preschoolers can be quick to notice gendered illustrations on products. If a package has a picture of a boy on it, that item must be for boys; if it has a picture of a girl on it, it must be for girls. Likewise, if a package has pink, flowers, and/or hearts, it must be a girl’s product; if it has cars, trucks, or construction vehicles, it must be for boys.

I saw this in action this weekend, when we took our four-and-a-half year old son, T., shopping for a new bicycle helmet.

His favorite colors are blue, red, green, and purple, so to avoid buying a helmet covered in licensed characters (we do not need one more Lightning McQueen anything!), I offered him a few choices: A black helmet with blue and green stripes; a solid red helmet; and a solid dark purple helmet.

For a moment, I thought he was going to choose the purple helmet. But then, he announced: “No, mama, that one’s for girls.”

It looked pretty gender-neutral to me, so I was puzzled. “What makes you think it’s for girls?” I asked.

“From the picture, mama. See? That’s a girl.”

I took a closer look, and sure enough, the helmet – though labeled a “youth” helmet – showcased a photo of a smiling girl with a long ponytail and a pink shirt.

Other helmets either had photos of boys or girls on them or did not feature a photo at all. I realized that any helmet that was remotely girlish – with even the smallest touch of pink or purple – had a girl on the packaging; those that seemed boyish or gender-neutral (e.g., black and white) only depicted boys.

After much deliberation, my son chose the blue and green helmet. It did not have a photo of a child on it, but its colors clearly coded it as appropriate for boys – and it had flashing lights on the back! No way could any other helmet compete with that.

Before he made his choice, I explained something to him. “Just so you know, the purple helmet is for boys AND girls,” I said. “Purple is not just for boys or just for girls. Colors are for everyone!”

“Hm. Okay, mama.”

Phew. So far, he seems pretty open to this concept. I saw this in action a few months ago, when my son was shopping for Hot Wheels cars to go with his T-Rex Takedown set.

He decided that he wanted a blue car, a green car... and a pink car. I was thrilled! But then I was disappointed: there was not a single pink Hot Wheels car in the store.

“I’m sorry we can’t find a pink car,” I said. “I’ll try to find you one at another store.”

“Okay,” T. replied, “because I really want one. It really really needs a pink car!”

I went home and posted about it on facebook, and within minutes, friends and family were helping me with my search. My mom came through; she found a pink car in her local store. My son was thrilled.

Only later did I think to ask: Why did he need a pink car, anyway?

His answer: “Because it shows it on the box!”

Oh!

I took a closer look, and sure enough, he’d noticed something that I had entirely missed: in the upper right-hand corner, a pink Hot Wheels car was careening down the tracks.

I hadn’t picked up on this small detail at all, but for my son, it was significant enough to make him request a color other than one of his favorites. Amazing!

I’m sure that detail isn’t lost on other children, either. In fact, the inclusion of a pink car on the package might help make girls feel that this toy – though stereotypically boyish – is for them, too. And I think that’s really great.

What if the purple helmet had a photo of both a boy and a girl on the packaging? Maybe my son would have selected it. Maybe the manufacturer would be able to sell that model to twice as many kids!

But unfortunately, that’s not how marketing usually works nowadays. It’s all about segmentation, about separating the boys from the girls, in hopes of selling twice as many products. The logic seems to be that if a product is just for girls, it won’t be handed down to their baby brothers, and vice-versa, so segregation and segmentation is seen as good for business.

That’s a shame, since it’s important for boys and girls to learn to play together. In too many cases, marketers are shortchanging our kids. The T-Rex Takedown packaging is the exception, not the norm.

In sum, packaging is important. The way manufacturers label things matters. It plays a role in the socialization of our kids. It’s worth paying attention to it so that you can talk about it with your children when you need to. I’m guessing that your kids, like mine, have already noticed.

Rebecca Hains blogs at rebeccahains.wordpress.com.

An adult cicada ovipositing into an apple twig is shown in this undated handout photo by Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. (Reuters/CAES)

Not all Seaboard communities are battling cicada infestations, but what if yours is?

By Noelle Swan, Guest Blogger / 06.07.13

For months now, East Coast residents between North Carolina and Connecticut have kept a watchful eye on the cicada forecast. Bug lovers eagerly awaited one of nature’s biggest—and arguably weirdest—coming out parties, while more squeamish residents dreaded the impending infestation.

It seems that many areas, such as Baltimore, Washington D.C. and parts of New Jersey have been spared, while others are positively overrun with the flying critters. It turns out that the cicadas have spent the last 17 years burrowing in rather sporadic clusters. If you have not seen any cicadas yet, chances are you won’t see them this time around, though it’s possible they may hit your area in 2021 when Brood X make their debut; this year’s crew is known as Brood II.

If your area is teeming with cicadas and the idea of a swarm of insects sends shivers down your spine, a little background knowledge can go a long way to take control of those emotions. Framing the event as a fascinating phenomenon for kids could help calm their fears and prevent lasting insect phobias.

So, what are cicadas anyway?

Cicadas are herbivorous, flying insects that grow to be about 0.75 to 2.25 inches long. There are over 1,500 species of cicadas around the world and more than 150 different species in North America. The particular species making headlines this spring is the periodical cicada, or Magicicada.

While many species of cicadas are present throughout the year, periodical cicadas spend the majority of their lives underground. This particular species surfaces only once every 17 years, for four to six weeks in a mad dash to mate. .

What’s all that racket?

Cicadas are best known for a high-pitched buzzing sound that males make trying to attract a mate. The din created by a swarm of cicada suitors can be highly distracting and downright annoying; however it can also be a useful prompt for families to explore the properties of sound.

Male cicadas have plate-like membranes on their abdomens that vibrate like the skins of drums. Young kids can experiment with vibration and sound by placing the palm of their hands on their throats while humming, plucking a rubber band, or rubbing a comb back and forth over different surfaces. Older children can explore how different vibrations produce different sounds.

Cicadas don’t initiate their telltale symphony right away. First they emerge from small holes in the ground, about 0.5 inches in diameter. Then they climb onto tree trunks and shed their exoskeleton before they are ready to mate. If the timing is right, you might witness a newly emerged cicada wriggle free from its old skin during its final stage of metamorphosis. If you miss it, don’t worry, you’ll likely find many discarded carapaces, for kids to collect and examine.

Adult cicadas take shelter in the treetops for about five days while they wait for their new skins to harden into protective exoskeletons. Then they begin their noisy mating rituals; and they are hard to miss. Having lived most of their lives underground, they are somewhat bumbling fliers and tend crash into people, windows, and other objects. If you get caught in a swarm of cicadas flitting about to find mates, it helps to remember—and remind kids—that they are harmless. If you can move indoors until they pass.

When no amount of humor can quell the annoyance factor, remember that cicadas play a vital role in the ecosystem. While living underground, they tunnel through the earth in search of plant roots to munch and help to aerate the soil. Their decomposing bodies and discarded exoskeletons help to replenish the natural nutrient cycle of the soil.

And if you just can’t take it anymore, remember that they’ll soon be gone for another 17 years.

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