Humming along

Lucinda is in her 3rd week of school and Arno is in his 2nd week, and it's a delight to see how they're both calm and happy about their surroundings at Nishimachi and Willowbrook.

Lucinda and several of her close friends have a wonderfully warm teacher, Ms. Greene, who has been nicely encouraging in math and reading from the start. Lucinda marched straight into class on Day 1, and Blaine and I can see her fresh confidence, sense of self, and comfort at school. It seems that 7-year-old girls know themselves pretty well.

Arno was disconcerted that his closest friends from last year all left for kindergarten (he's in a mixed-age 3-5 class). But he's making new friends - particularly those with a similar love of action figures - and already seems very pleased with his teachers. He's not reading yet - and I would love to see that happen this year - but he's become drawn, again, after a slow period, to making his own spaceships out of Legos.

Meanwhile, Lucinda has a new, energetic Japanese tutor (a teacher from Arno's school) and will participate in Nishimachi's afterschool ballet and "active games" (kickball, basketball, wiffleball, soccer) classes. Arno is again taking an afterschool art class. And we're inheriting a friend's okay-but-not-great piano; maybe we'll try piano lessons?

So much for underparenting?

Age of achievement

I'm turning 41 tomorrow. To celebrate, I'm making gingerbread cookies for Lucinda's winter concert, making a pasta dish for Arno's class holiday party, having a playdate with Arno at a friend's house, and taking the kids ice skating. Then we'll go home, have an early Christmas present-opening, eat a birthday dinner, and pack to go Bali.

I should add here that I've also recently pitched some stories to magazine editors; my sumo story for KIE reminded me how much I like writing as well as editing. But it's true, and I'm only sometimes regretful, that my life in Japan has much more to do with domestic work than with professional work.

So it's been kind of fascinating lately to notice that a handful people I know -- sometimes very well, sometimes very tangentially -- who are my age, are in the news. Mostly for good things, but not always. To wit:

Shaun Donovan, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is married to a woman, Liza Gilbert, who is the sister of my good friend from J-school, Anne Gilbert.

Anne Gilbert, meanwhile, is married to Gordon Goldstein, who just published a very well-reviewed (and by Richard Holbrooke, no less) book, Lessons in Disaster, about McGeorge Bundy. (Those Gilberts are pretty spectacular!)

Next, Jason Grumet, who dated a friend of a friend of mine at college, has been advising Obama about energy issues and was mentioned as a possible Sec'y of Energy. He won't get that job, but he may well be the #2 or, almost certainly, very high up in the dept.

When I was watching a 60 Minutes piece about Barney Frank, I noticed that it was produced by Shachar Bar-on, a brilliant guy who is married to another of my J-school friends, Laura Rabhan, who is, herself, an Emmy-winning documentary producer.

And then comes the Madoff scandal. Bernard Madoff, who was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, apparently stole a lot of money from the Fairfield Greenwich Group hedge fund. The fund is run by Walter Noel, whose daughter, Alix, graduated from Brown in my class (I knew her very slightly) and whose husband is also a top exec in the firm. I can't imagine she's having a very good week.

My point, however, is not that it's all about me. Instead, it's about how many well-educated people - especially but not exclusively men - have, by age 40 or so, very defined, successful lives because they've focused intensely on a profession or subject. Which can turn out well or not.

I should add here that writing about this isn't a self-criticism; it's reality. I'm plenty focused - though not on public achievements - and there's no reason I won't find new achievements by age 50 or 60.

Underparenting

Lately there's been heaps of talk about "overparenting." The New Yorker labeled it "The Child Trap": when accomplished well-educated people view their children as their latest project, as extensions of their successes as adult, and coddle them to distraction.

Overparenting is over-catering to your children and signing them up for every imaginable afterschool activity to sharpen their developing brains, turn them into little geniuses, and set them up for Ivy League educations.

I'm worried that I'm underparenting.

Most 1st graders at Nishimachi have unbelievably busy schedules. On top of 30-60 minutes of homework every night in reading, spelling, math, writing and Japanese, most children have afterschool lessons four days a week. It's typical to hear that these 6 or 7 year olds are learning piano or violin; soccer, tennis or ballet; French or Chinese; have tutoring in Japanese at least once a week, and/or go to Kumon to practice speed-math.

The academic and music training (and pressure to do all of it) may be more intense here than in the US, though, having said that, my 6 yr old nephew, who goes to public school in Iowa City, takes Suzuki piano, scores heaps of goals on his soccer team, and adds up 3-digit numbers in his head.

In any case, knowing and hearing about these other children is making me insecure that I'm the outlying underparent. I keep telling myself that "She's only 6 years old!", but maybe I'm too laid back about Lucinda's schedule.?

This is what Lucinda does every week: She wanted to take hula lessons on Mondays. She has a Japanese tutor on Thursdays. She sometimes has Brownies on Fridays. She doesn't like sports where there's a winner and a loser, quit soccer after one semester last year, and has so far refused tennis. She plays tag for three recesses a day and likes to come home after school to draw pictures, play with her little brother, have a playdate when I can arrange it, watch TV for an hour while I make supper, and do her homework before bed.

Am I underparenting? I'm not sure. Lucinda is doing well in school but not astonishingly so, and I worry that adding new tasks will make her feel exhausted and pressured. But maybe I'm missing an opportunity to introduce her to experiences - especially music or Kumon's math program - that require a fair amount of time and practice? It's a parenting dilemma for the modern age.

What's Going On

(With a nod to Newsday's former editor, Tony Marro, who always headlined his staff memos this way.)

Let's see, lots going on:

- Tomorrow, Nov 15, is Arno's 4th birthday. I think Lucinda will make pancakes for us all, because that's a 1st grade homework assignment as part of the food/health unit.

- On Sunday, seven four and five yr olds will come to our house for Arno's "superhero" birthday party. He chose the theme, and it's generic enough that I can serve Spiderman pasta and Superhero hotdogs and play a Buzz Lightyear game and no one will care. Every kid will decorate a superhero mask and shield and I'm making capes for them to wear (Hopefully my attempt to make eveything will work out all right.)

- I've worked long hours at my magazine, Kateigaho International Edition, this week and Blaine has collected the kids from school and made dinners. Nice role reversal!

- Next week, the kids have 3 days of school and 3 days of vacation wrapped around parent-teacher conferences and next weekend. I'm working on the Nishimachi book fair on Wednesday and getting mildly involved in Nishimachi's spring auction.

- Arno has been very moody recently, mostly depending on his willingness to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. On Monday and Tuesday, after he'd slept badly, he was a total pain. But Wed-Fri, we got him into bed early and threatened him w/toy-loss if he didn't stay there, so he a much happier and more enjoyable creature.

- Lucinda has been very confident lately. We've hired a Japanese tutor for a weekly lesson, which Lu enjoys. She is very proud that she knows all 46 of the hiragana and she is working on reading simple hiragana books. She's also become more interested and confident in addition and subtraction because her teacher focuses on math first thing in the morning. Her other focus in life is the game of Tag, which I think she plays at each of 3 daily recesses. I will write more about Tag at some point.

That's the overall update. We're doing well at the moment.

TV and teen pregnancy

Scanning the web for Monday's news, this WashPost headline certainly caught my eye!

Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies

Of course one can suspect such things, but statistics leave a much more powerful impression. Here's the lede:

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2008; Page A01

Teenagers who watch a lot of television featuring flirting, necking, discussion of sex and sex scenes are much more likely than their peers to get pregnant or get a partner pregnant, according to the first study to directly link steamy programming to teen pregnancy.

The study, which tracked more than 700 12-to-17-year-olds for three years, found that those who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who saw the least.

"Watching this kind of sexual content on television is a powerful factor in increasing the likelihood of a teen pregnancy," said lead researcher Anita Chandra. "We found a strong association." The study is being published today in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

All I can add is: Wow.

On holiday in Tokyo

Lucinda is on vacation this week, and today we went to see the amazing Picasso exhibit at the gorgeous National Art Center, Tokyo.

The "Picasso: His Life, His Creation" show, plus a second show at the nearby Suntory Museum in Tokyo Midtown, presents more than 200 paintings, drawings and sculpture on loan from my favorite museum, the Musee National Picasso in Paris.

At the National Art Center, the works are laid out by period - blue period, Cubism, and so on - with famous paintings of Dora Maar and one I'd never seen, "Massacre in Korea."

In a parenting inspiration, I brought pads of paper for Lucinda and 3 other first graders who came with us (and another mom), and the museum provided perfectly sharpened, high-quality pencils when they saw us take out pens.

The girls seemed overwhelmed by the museum experience at first, but settled down when they started to copy some of the paintings and to, as I suggested, "move the furniture around" on drawings of other girls' faces.

This exhibit, which will close on Dec 14, is super-fantastic. Adults: 1500 yen; elem school kids: Free! I hope to take Blaine back, sans enfants, for a second look.

Visitors!

We have our first non-family visitors, our friends Blaise, Adrienne, Anselm and Eliot from Seattle. I'm frankly envious of their freedom here: the freedom to travel and experience Japan as a vacation and not as a place to live and work and go to school.

But there is a side benefit. They are nudging us out of our routine. Blaine went with them today to take the kids to Mt. Takao, a short mountain that's about an hour's train ride from central Tokyo. (I was working at my magazine.) There's a cable car that takes you up to the top and some steps that Arno whined about but then conquered. They played hide and seek and had ice cream and met me at Shinjuku station with chocolate smears on their shirts. They were happy.

Another benefit of Adrienne's visit, for me, is that we're having some interesting chats about parenting. It's vastly helpful to see other parents in action, if only to show options for what we do.

I'm realizing that summer is a challenge for Lucinda, especially, because she misses the structure of regular school days, and it's a challenge for me because I like my school-hour freedom to do what I want, to read, to swim, to look around Tokyo. End result: she makes lots of demands, I end up saying "no" a lot, and we get annoyed with her more often. With parenting, you always have to find a new solution to a new problem.

Equal parenting?

The NYT magazine has a big piece about "Equal Parenting" that is pretty interesting for any parent to consider, and perhaps more so for a trailing spouse.

The story focuses on a family in which father and mother split responsibilities and time spent taking care of home and children. Each parent works professionally for about 30 hrs per week and they endeavor to share childcare, grocery shopping, cooking, and housecleaning. In the web video accompanying the story (an effective summary of the long piece, if you don't have time to read the whole thing), the dad explains that to equalize laundry-washing, he does the dark loads and she does the light loads.

Blaine and I certainly reflect how different our responsibilities are in Tokyo vs. Seattle. Here, he often wakes up to deal with editors around 7 a.m. before the Post is put to bed the previous night in D.C., and sometimes (or, recently, often) writes on deadline at night to get a news story on the Web. My days, meanwhile, are governed by the kids' schedules: school dropoffs, pickups, swim lessons, playdates, birthday parties. Some days it seems, and feels, very unequal from a feminist point of view because I spend so much more time with the kids. But the truth is that, on the whole, I have more time to myself (more than Blaine does, that is) when the kids are at school to see friends, have coffee, or exercise, while he picks up the slack when I have editing or writing deadlines.

What will be really interesting, then, is how we shift our family responsibilities if (or, more likely, when) I'm also working full time at some point in the future.

What do you think of equal parenting? Possible? Desirable? No way?

Arno's new friend

Here's some family news: Arno has an imaginary friend named "Silly."

Silly made his first appearance during our holiday vacation in Guam, introduced as "my friend Silly." Arno told us that Silly "lives in Korea" (because, we guessed, Blaine often goes to Korea) but that Silly was on vacation in Guam, too. Silly and his family were staying in the hotel next to ours.

Blaine and I were curious to see how far Arno could imagine Silly, so we asked a bunch of questions and got a bunch of answers. Silly has a mom, dad, older sister Sally and little brother Jack. Later, we learned that Silly lives in Tokyo - in our neighborhood, no less - and that Silly will move to Seattle when we do.

Arno doesn't talk about Silly every day. Instead, Silly is the repository for Arno's dearest wish, which is a moving target. We've been told that Silly "doesn't go to school," that Silly "has a dog" and that "Silly's mom lets him do whatever he wants."

Arno's latest fixation is guns (replacing his fixation with swords) and tonight at supper he told us that Silly "lives at gun school." We wondered: What happens at gun school? "They shoot guns, play with guns, and they eat gun crackers that are shaped like guns." Sometimes Arno talks on a toy cell phone with Silly, and tonight Silly told Arno that Silly is "making a yellow sword for me; it turns into anything I want it to turn into, like a sword or a gun."

Trailing spouse: endless kid stuff

Yeah, the kids are neat, but don't you ever get tired of dealing with them? I do.

Conveniently today, a friend sent me these amusing videos on same subject:

The Mom Song, by Anita Renfroe



And the concordant Dad Song

Surrogate mothers

I came across an interesting Newsweek story about surrogate mothers that I thought others might want to read.

Lots of info I hadn't heard before: many American surrogate mothers are military wives; surrogate mothers are implanted w/embryos that do not involve their own eggs, so they have no legal right to the baby; and American surrogates are bearing children for foreigners from countries like Germany, which doesn't allow surrogacy.

Headline: The Curious Lives of Surrogates

What's happening

I've been writing a lot about where we've been going and what I've been seeing, but not much about life here generally. So here's a general update:

Blaine is writing a lot about North Korea, which is making his editors happy. (I'll post his latest story after I finish this post.) But he's also working so hard, and traveling a lot, that he's come down with a few severe colds. He needs a vacation! (More about that later.)

Lucinda is growing more confident in her reading every day, and she's reading faster and more smoothly. She brings home 1 or 2 short books as homework every night. Also, she was excited on Friday when her Japanese teacher assigned her first Japanese homework: writing her name in Katakana and Kanji (two of the three character-based languages that make up Japanese).

On Thursday, Lucinda will host Blaine and me for an hourlong "student-led conference" in her classroom to show us what she's learning. Nishimachi doesn't let parents volunteer in the classroom - though they gladly "let" us volunteer in the library or to raise money - which means we have to rely on Lucinda to give us scarce details from day to day.

Lucinda's other focus these days is her two best friends, Claire and Naomi. This triangular friendship sometimes causes heartburn - I assume for all three girls, but definitely for Lucinda - because shifting alliances sometimes leave one girl or another feeling left out. We talk about this situation almost every day, and I think Lucinda (with my help) has worked out a strategy that seems to help: on days when she knows the other two will have a playdate - which usually means they're wrapped up together - she has started to plan ahead to spend time with other friends. It seems to give her a sense of control on days when she's worried.

Arno is Arno: cheerful, lots of talking, enjoying school, jumping and twisting in the air. He's also really got a mommy-adoration thing going on, which is very sweet but also makes me worry that I'm not spending enough time with him. Alas, the endless parenting dilemma of time with kids vs. time alone. His class will have "family day" on Thursday, after Lucinda's parent conference, and we'll have lunch with him in the park.

Me: I'm working on pitches to a few magazines and volunteering at the kids' schools. Last week, the director of Willowbrook (Arno's school), another mom and I delivered a Volvo-load of donated groceries to a food bank, Second Harvest, here. Today I spent 1.5 hrs in Nishimachi's new library organizing books and painting props for an upcoming Book Day. Oh - and blogging when I can get it together.

Next week is spring vacation for both kids. We're flying to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido on Sunday to ski with Blaine's translator, Ako, and her family. Hokkaido is supposed to have amazing snow: something like 900 inches/year. Lucinda and Arno will probably take lessons - should be really neat. Then we'll be back in Tokyo by mid-week to witness the height of the cherry blossoms here.

Adventures in parenting

I rarely think or say that an entire day sucked, but today really did.

First, there was the lingering problem of Lucinda's gymnastics class. This program, called "I Can Gymnastics," effectively owns gymnastics for expats in central Tokyo. The owner, who is well-known, conducts classes at the three major international schools in our neighborhood, including Nishimachi, and at the Tokyo American Club. His program is the only game in town unless you're willing to travel (without a car, in our case, which would probably take an hour) to another neighborhood for a one-hour class. Also, I think his classes are somewhat repetitive.

But Lucinda likes gymnastics; in Seattle, she went to weekly classes at a program called The Little Gym, and I could see that, for example, learning to walk on the balance beam did build her confidence to try other new things. I'm not planning an Olympic career - after all, she'll probably be about 6 feet tall - but I think gymnastics at this level can be fun.

But the owner of I Can Gymnastics and I do not get along, which is pretty unusual for me. He likes to philosophize with parents about how he, personally, convinces children to try new things in his classes. I'm not saying he's not effective, but in my experience, the activities are more important than any one teacher - and I've said as much.

What happened today is that I tried to get Arno to join Lucinda's class. Arno is old enough, he likes jumping and swinging and somersaulting - and Lucinda really wanted him to go along. He has resisted before, but this time, he took off his shoes and took a few steps toward the other kids... and then ran back and clung to my leg.

The owner, seeing this happen with Arno for the second time in the past few months, promptly lectured me that, in his program, the children must decide to participate - implying that I was a pushy parent. I objected and said that (1) if I waited for my children to want to put on their shoes in the morning, we might never leave the house, and (2) my children often resist new things, but almost always enjoy them if they give it a try - sometimes with a nudge from me.

The owner then said, with some disdain for my cruelty, that Arno "has only been on this earth for three years". And insulted that I would question his expertise, he asked, "How long have you been" a parent? Six years, I said. I tried to explain myself - and then he told me that I was a bad listener. He wondered aloud why I didn't seem to like him. When all I want is a simple program where my children can have fun - and if I can drop them off for an hour on a kid-intensive weekend, so much the better. (A few weeks ago, when Blaine took Lucinda to class and planned to read at Starbucks for an hour, the owner cornered Blaine to lecture him about his philosophy, too.)

The whole interaction was so absurd, and I fumed about this for much of the day.

Then later, after I'd taken the kids to the Tokyo American Club and we'd trekked back on the bus and stopped at a coffee shop, I couldn't find my house key. It was cold outside and very windy, which made me panic a little. I called TAC, but they couldn't find the key. I decided I would take the kids home to look for the key before I called the management company for help.

So where was the key? Sticking out of the lock in my front door, where I'd left it after rushing to go to the damn gym class. On the plus side, that's one benefit to Tokyo: Leave your key in the front door for six hours, and no one breaks into your house.

Quiet weekend

It snowed all day today, leaving a layer of slush on the road, and we've mostly nested at home all weekend: reading books, checking political news on the web, hosting playdates. Blaine took Lucinda to her gymnastics class this morning, but Arno and I didn't leave the house. We made chocolate chip cookies this afternoon.

On weekend days, Blaine and I really need down time when we can read a bit or answer email or read a book without feeling constantly on call, and this gets harder when the kids stop napping. So in the past few weeks, I've been training Lucinda and Arno to play together without squabbling every 15 minutes or demanding our intervention - and I think it's working.

Today they played for an hour of "quiet time" upstairs in Lucinda's room and for another 45 minutes in the morning and afternoon without any crying or screaming, which seemed miraculous. For "quiet time," I tell Lucinda how to read the clock to know when she can come out, and I extend the time if she comes downstairs early. She always complains about having to stay in her room, but eventually gives in to her enjoyment of books on CD (Little House in the Big Woods or, this week, Anne of Green Gables) that we rent from the Tokyo American Club. Arno is basically happy if Lucinda is willing to play with him.

We're already thinking ahead to our big summer vacation in the US: 2-3 weeks in Colorado with a possible side trip to Iowa, and maybe a week in Seattle on the way back to Tokyo.

Raising resilient children

There was a seminar this week at Lucinda's school about "a parent's role in teaching a child to be resilient" - that is, to help children manage and learn from difficulties.

This was valuable because Lucinda can be very negative before new experiences, even though she typically enjoys new foods, new sports, new friends, new challenges. She also sometimes broadcasts a wave of negative stuff as we walk home from school including, "I hate you," and this sometimes bums me out and makes me angry. So I was curious to hear some ideas on the subject.

Here are the highlights. What do you think about these? Are they realistic or crap? And what you do with your children to manage negativity and build resilience?

1. Resilience can be taught. Just as some children are natural athletes, some are naturally resilient - and some children need training.

2. For girls, a baseline skill for resilience is to build strong caring relationships. For boys, a baseline skill is to learn how to problem-solve.

This was curious because it mirrors the analysis of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"; that is, women talk about problems while men seek solutions to problems.

So if I accept this concept for Lucinda and Arno, am I needlessly reinforcing gender stereotypes or am I accepting innate qualities of boys and girls and taking the most efficient route? (I know my friend Adrienne, with her interest in gender diffs, will have some ideas about this.)

3. Convey to children that "bad times don't last" and "things always get better." This is a foundation for optimistic thinking: view problems as temporary and "talk sense to yourself" when you are in the throes of pessimism.

4. Find personal examples from your child's life, from members of the family, or from literary heroes to convey how a person overcomes adversity. I've worked the "remember how you worried about walking on the balance beam?" example to death, and now plan to make constructive use of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

5. Remind your child what they are good at.

6. Just as we recognize difficult patterns with bosses, colleagues, spouses or friends, look for patterns in your child's response to difficulty or anxiety. Then talk proactively about the pattern and how to manage it, instead of reacting to the negative experience of the moment.

7. Listen when your child is talking about problems, but at some point, say to him/her, "Have you had enough time to talk about this? When you are ready, we should talk about solutions."

8. It's okay to let kids struggle, like a butterfly that has to break out of its own chrysalis. (Corny, but an effective visual metaphor.)

9. At least one parent in the family should be an optimist. Typically, it's the parent who does most of the family management - which, in the expat community, typically means Mum. More responsibility?

The lecturer said that some kids carry notes like "I am smart" or "I am good at math" in their pocket before a stressful event. And she showed us these Strength Cards for Kids that say things like "I am creative."