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Why mommy can't play
Want your kids to be creative?
Leave them alone.
by Terri Mauro
Good news for lazy parents: Turns out playing with your children, directing their activities, encouraging them, and helping them decide what to do is actually a bad thing. That's right, it's better to leave the kids alone with those asbestos-laced crayons and let them do what they will than to suggest a direction or a color or even so basic an endeavor as staying between the lines.
Aiding kids in that way stunts their creativity--or so suggests a new study by the American Psychological Society. Children whose parents were actively involved in their play felt pressured to perform and judged on that performance. Whereas children whose parents could care less what they were up to presumably felt free to be wildly creative and original and true to their unique little selves. One can hope that their muse did not lead them to actually color on the walls, but one would hardly want to tell them not to.
Still, I applaud this new information, since it supports my selfish theory that children should know how to play and just leave me alone and go do it already. At last, now, I know I'm right to sit like a lump in front of the computer screen, reading my usual 487 pieces of e-mail, while my young ones learn spontaneity and initiative and how to amuse their own little selves. Lately, my son's imagination has led him to play Recycling Man; this involves going around the house and filling plastic shopping bags with various items that I will one day miss. He has a toy shopping cart in which he puts these bags and transports them about the house. I could tell him that what he's really playing is Homeless Man, but that would be applying my own rules to his creativity, and fie on that.
My daughter, on the other hand, has always had a tough time coming up with a play plan and has relied on me to tell her how to occupy herself, but no more. If I keep giving her ideas, how will she ever become a creative, free-thinking adult? And if what she freely thinks is that she'd like to watch Nickelodeon until her eyes fall out, well, who am I to hamper that self-determination? Keeps her out of my hair.
Yes, it's a happy day. No more showing the kiddos how to put together Legos into the impossibly complex forms detailed in the instructions, or putting play-doh through the intricate permutations suggested in the kits it comes with. If they can't figure it out themselves, let them figure out something different. And if it involves major clean-up--and tell me, what unsupervised children's activity does not?--well, perhaps its time to let the young people channel their own inner Hazel and learn to clean in a spontaneous and imaginative fashion that does not involve mom. If they don't judge me by my previous performance in this field, I won't judge them on theirs.
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It's a hoax, folks
Forward a copy of this article to everyone you know.
by Terri Mauro
When most people talk about Internet junk mail, they're talking about spam--unsolicited solicitations from businesses, lone entrepreneurs, or porn peddlers that pop up unbidden in your inbox. There are ways to control your spam intake--employing filters, for example, or dumping AOL. But there's not much to be done about that other form of Web refuse, the Internet Hoax, because it's usually sent to you by somebody you know, for your own good. Seems some story or other turns up on one of my e-mail lists on a daily basis, always submitted by a goodhearted member, always about some horrific hot-button issue, always suggesting the recipient e-mail it like crazy. They may not officially be viruses--in fact, more often than not they're about viruses--but they sure replicate like one.
Mostly, I disregard and delete. Sometimes, if the subject is particularly inflammatory and I've got some time on my hands, I'll hop on over to the Urban Legends Reference Page and check it out. This site is a treasurechest of bunk, and you're likely to see things you never thought to question disproved in forthright fashion. HIV-filled hypodermic needles lurking in theater seats, pay-phone coin slots, and gas pumps? False. Virus-soaked sponges being sent through the mail? False. Cockroach eggs in envelope glue? False, though CBS is probably thinking of planting some on envelopes given to letter-writing contestants on "Survivor." Bill Gates giving people $1,000 for forwarding an e-mail? Alas, false. Asbestos in crayons? Well, that one's true, but only in miniscule amounts, and manufacturers are currently changing the formula.
Then there's the one about atheist poster-girl Madalyn Murray O'Hair trying to get "Touched by an Angel" taken off the air. That one turned up in my household today in rare hard-copy form: a handout my mother-in-law brought back from her church meeting. "Stand up and be counted!!!" it read. "CBS will be forced to discontinue 'Touched by an Angel' for using the word 'God' in every program." (Well, hey, I'll bet "NYPD Blue" uses the word God in every program, too, though admittedly not in a religious context.) It goes on to inform us about petition No. 2493, currently before the Federal Communication Commission, that seeks to ban all religious programming on TV. No more Christmas specials! No more televised church services! No more televangelists! Wait, why are we supposed to be upset about this? Oh, yes, because that O'Hair woman, having single-handedly banned prayer from schools, is now trying to ban it from the airwaves and Must Be Stopped! We're asked to fill out a form indicating our desire, as God-fearing people, to keep TV safe for has-been pop stars with yuletide albums.
Now, if you ask me, anyone who's trying to get "Touched by an Angel" off the air is doing us a tremendous favor. That show offends my deeply held faith that angels wouldn't be caught immortal in hair like Della Reese's. In fact, all these angel shows, on the air and on the movie screen, are mixed blessings indeed. I caught part of "City of Angels" on a movie channel the other day, and an angelic being was willing to fall to earth just to have sex with Meg Ryan, who was promptly hit by a truck. (Those of you who would like to see Meg Ryan hit by a truck in all her movies...well, that's a different petition.) Surely we Christians would like to believe that God's messengers have better judgment than that. Entertainment that glues on religious themes just to seem deep winds up trivializing religion more than Madalyn Murray O'Hair could ever have hoped to. I imagine her someplace watching this stuff and having a good old laugh.
That someplace would be well hidden, because the woman disappeared in 1995 with her son, granddaughter, and a heck of a lot of her organization's money. She's not been seen since, which will make it difficult for her to argue her alleged case before the FCC. But as the Urban Legend folks explain, petition No. 2493 has already been before the FCC, and rejected by that body--in 1975. It had nothing to do with O'Hair, or with banning the mention of God on TV. It merely asked that religious groups affiliated with universities not be granted licenses to broadcast as educators when in fact they mean to broadcast as religious groups. The FCC said, and I'll paraphrase here, "We wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole." For their defense of religious tolerance, the FCC has been rewarded with about 30 million missives in the last 25 years asking them to just say no to something they were never asked. They wish you'd cut it out, by the way.
Sadly, it seems that people will believe and act on anything. Even more sadly, it seems that nobody is trying to get "Touched by an Angel" off the air after all. Can we appeal to the FCC on the basis of taste? It's time to stand up and be counted!
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Dealing drugs
Pharmaceutical companies hawk their wares on the Web.
by Terri Mauro
I've only just gotten used to seeing prescription-drug ads in magazines, like the one with a little cloud on one page and a little sun on the other page and a little plug for Prozac. It seems odd to see Prozac hawked along with the booze and cigarettes and CDs and cars. It's odder still to see non-over-the-counter meds advertised on TV--people going on about their allergens and allergy medication, people dancing and singing the praises of their heartburn medication, people swearing by the latest weight-loss drug. I must not have gotten the memo about this sort of thing being legal all of a sudden, but clearly the floodgates have been opened. Drug companies are marketing directly to consumers, and though they haven't started giving us free pens and pads and all-expenses-paid conventions the way they do with doctors, that time may well be coming.
In the meantime, we get Web sites. That's right, those same pill peddlers who've been telling you in print and on the tube why you should nag your doctor to prescribe you their product are now setting up cozy little internet offices. Feeling sniffly? Surf over to www.claritin.com, where you can sign up for a daily e-mail pollen alert, get a personalized allergy profile, subscribe to the monthly "Blue Skies Newsletter" full of seasonal allergy tips, even customize Claritin's home page so it suits your own specific allergy needs. And--surprise!--get a $5 rebate on your next prescription.
Similarly on call to meet all your personalized health needs is www.acidcontrol.com, the online site for heartburn helper Prilosec. Here you'll find, among other helpful things, a quiz, a glossary, a list of food triggers, and an offer for a free information kit containing a brochure, a questionnaire, and a personal heartburn diary (but hey, what about a Prilosec pen?) If you just can't wait to start documenting your acid reflux, though, the site offers an online diary in which you can record those painful moments, take note of what may have caused them, and then print out a detailed report for your doctor so that he can treat you properly and, oh, I don't know, maybe give you some Prilosec?
The site for the anti-depressant Paxil, currently advertising heavily on TV as a cure for "social anxiety disorder," is set up as a Mental Health Weather Station, with panic disorder pictured as a violent lightning storm, depression as a driving rainstorm, obsessive-compulsive disorder as a threatening cyclone, and social anxiety disorder as...well, the picture for social anxiety disorder shows a guy banging his head against the wall, maybe because he forgot his umbrella and is afraid to ask anyone for a loaner. In addition to clinical info on each of these afflictions, personal accounts are offered: Supermodel Beverly Johnson talks about her panic disorder! Professional baseball pitcher Pete Harnisch takes about depression! Some guy you've never heard of talks about OCD! But the centerpiece of the site is the Social Phobia Inventory Test, which invites you to select your relative degree of agreement with various statements ("Parties and social events scare me" "I am bothered by blushing in front of people") and then offers an assessment of how likely you are to have social anxiety disorder. I scored 12 out of a possible 68, which even the Paxil people had to admit did not sound like much of a problem. But the mere fact that I had taken the test at all seemed suspicious to them, and they urged that if I even thought I might have a problem, I ought to go see my doctor at once. And, um, is there any particular medication I should ask about?
Prozac, no less concerned about our well-being, offers an array of "Recovery Tools" to make sure your treatment is working the way it should (and if you're not taking Prozac, undoubtedly it ain't.) At www.prozac.com, you can follow your progress with the Zung Depression Tracking Tool, plot your recovery on the Kupfer Curve, sign up for daily e-mails that remind you to take your medication, or forward the page to a friend so that they can be depressed, too. Of course there's a diagnostic quiz, this one called the Zung Depression Self-Assessment Test. Now, this isn't to be used if you're really, really, really depressed--the opening disclaimer clearly states that if you are feeling suicidal at this very moment, you really ought to skip the quiz and go straight to the ER. Those who are still somewhat short of the ledge can go ahead and agree or disagree with statements like "I enjoy looking at, talking to, and being with attractive men/women" or "I feel that others would be better off if I were dead." I can't tell you what my score was on this one, because although I answered every question, the computer kept telling me I didn't. A plot to send depressed people screaming for Prozac? You be the judge.
Wondering what fun your own medication of choice has to offer? In most cases, you can just plug it right into an url and see what comes up. www.provera.com, the site for the contraceptive Depo Provera, offers a detailed description of what to expect from a pelvic exam and instructions on how to do Kegel exercises. www.tamiflu.com helps you assess whether or not you've got influenza; please try not to vomit on the keyboard as you review the symptoms. I tried www.ritalin.com, but was bounced to a search engine that warned me many of my results were adults-only. Even worse, when I entered the name of my decongestant, Duratuss, I wound up at a porn site which professed to specialize in bikini-clad babes. Maybe that stuff would clear somebody's sinuses, but not mine. And speaking of porn sites, one of the offerings on www.viagra.com is "Success Stories." Do any of them involve bikini'd babes, I wonder? At any rate, I'm not going near that self-test.
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Logic problem
Test scores mean nothing, unless they mean something good.
by Terri Mauro
I hate standardized tests. I think they're a poor way to measure schools' effectiveness and harmful to the educational process. I think they try to quantify something that is not truly measurable in such rigid terms. I think they put pressure on teachers to teach to the test instead of teaching what students need to succeed. I think they take creativity out of the classroom and put conformity in.
Unless my child scores well, in which case they're a wonderful measuring device for proving that she's learning, she's really learning.
I especially hate standardized tests for special-needs kids, who must necessarily learn in different ways. I think they're skewed against kids for whom English is not the first language. I think they're skewed against kids who spent formative years in another culture, or in a deprived or neglectful setting. I think they make teachers fearful of inclusion, lest the teacher's effectiveness be measured by the progress of kids for whom learning is hard. I think they're a poor indicator of a child's actual ability to cope in real-life situations.
Unless my child scores well, in which case they're a true and accurate portrait of her abilities, and should be accepted by everybody as proof that she can be successful.
This year, my child scored well. Her numbers were above average in language, math, science, social studies, and total score, and I take those as proof that I was right in wresting her from self-contained special-ed and putting her in a regular-ed class with an instructional aide. Ha, that's right, I was right, right, right! Look how much she's learned in this new setting! Her scores were triple or more what they were on the same level test last year. Take that, you naysaying Child Study Team members!
Of course, her score for reading stank, actually lower than the very-low level it was at last year, but that's clearly a statistical glitch. Probably a misprint or something on the test form. Reading comprehension questions are often confusingly worded, and frequently fall into areas of knowledge that my girl doesn't possess because she spent her first 4.5 years in a Russian orphanage. Don't confuse me with low scores. Low scores are inaccurate. High scores are true and meaningful. It's parent's logic. Don't confuse me with the facts.
Facts are things that parents of special-needs kids moving through the special-ed system are bombarded with all the time. Facts and test scores, evaluations and estimations, all those formulas and numbers that attempt to sum up our children's potential. We sit in rooms full of professionals and hear that our seven-year-old is functioning as a five-year-old in this and a four-year-old in that and a three-year-old in the other. We hear that our ten-year-old is in many ways like a seven-year-old, and not the sharpest seven-year-old, either. It's horrifying to hear your child's abilities summed up in months and years, such low months and years. And so you've got to grab for the good news when it comes along, however dubious it may be.
When my son was evaluated last year upon leaving the school's pre-K program, he miraculously scored as close to his actual age level in cognitive skills. Close to his actual age level! He'd never been close to his actual age level in anything before. Height, weight, head size, motor skills, language skills--all significantly lagging, years and years behind. But damn, he thinks like a seven-year-old! High fives all around! Now, if he'd scored low, I'd have had a million excuses--doesn't test well, tester couldn't engage him, yada yada yada. But my boy scored high! He showed what he can do! That's the sort of thing to which we parents cling.
That, and positive standardized test scores. There's a million excuses for why my daughter did well and a million reasons why her doing well means nothing--after all, she's a ten-year-old scoring above average for an eight-year-old; among kids her own age, she'd be a cellar dweller for sure. She's also on her second time through second grade, so she darn well should be showing some improvement. Do her higher scores mean that a) we've finally found the right level for her, and as she follows along in her two-years-behind course she will continue to perform well; b) regular-ed teachers do a better job of prepping kids for stupid standardized tests than do special-ed teachers; c) my daughter needs two years in every grade to actually learn something; or d) coloring the bubbles in the shape of a smiley face turned out to yield the right answers this time around?
I'm choosing answer A. And if you say I'm wrong, well, tests like this are for the birds.
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Give me a break
Does a popular beverage put young bones at risk?
by Terri Mauro
Mamas, watch what your daughters drink. If they're sippin' the wrong beverages, they could be apt to cause themselves bodily harm. In fact, there's one devilish concoction popular with our young people today that quintuples the likelihood of breaking a bone. To drink it indicates such a lack of regard for one's personal health and safety that parents would do right to be concerned.
It's likely, though, that Mom and Dad are drinking the stuff themselves. And it's not alcohol that puts young bones in such danger. No high-octane cocktail or drug-spiked brew. This viper in our midst is found in refrigerators across the land, in vending machines and mini-marts and fast-food palaces and picnic coolers.
That's right, the culprit is cola.
According to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, girls who drink the demon cola are practically begging for a bone fracture. Researchers surveyed active freshman and sophomore girls at a Boston high school and found that, while only five of 57 girls who just said no to Coke and Pepsi suffered fractures, a whopping 38 out of 107 cola-chuggers experienced that injury. Simply sipping soda of any sort made a break three times more likely, but the nectar of the cola nut raised that to five. And yet this hazardous substance is sold in high school cafeterias throughout the land! Alert the media! Let loose the politicians!
What is it about cola that makes bones so brittle? The problem may not be what's in the can, but what's not: calcium. The theory runs that girls who are drinking soda aren't drinking milk, and milk, as we all know, builds strong bodies 12 ways. No, wait, that's Wonder Bread. Milk makes strong bones, anyway, but you're not likely to find a high school girl who'll be caught dead drinking it. Cow juice is kid stuff, and if they weren't drinking cola they'd probably be drinking coffee, or sports drinks, or designer water, or beer.
There's also speculation that the phosphorus found in cola actually weakens bones, but let's not let that get out, because while no amount of ads of milk-mustached celebrities is likely to make moo juice cool, imbibing harmful chemicals most certainly is cool, and kids will start quaffing more cola just for the kick of turning their bones to Jello. Besides, the lack of calcium caused by deficient milk-drinking seems to be the strongest factor in weakening bones. "Osteoporosis is a pediatric disease," says Dr. Neville H. Golden, director of the Eating Disorders Center in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park, N.Y. Which means that those healthy young active girls will soon be racing us old, stooped women for those bottles of calcium supplements. Unless we stack a few cans of soda nearby as a decoy.
Not surprisingly, the cola industry is taking a defensive stance on all of this. A spokesman for the National Soft Drink Association was quoted as saying, and I'll paraphrase here, "Aw, go squeeze a cow." But I think they're missing the boat. Why not just fortify all those yummy carbonated colas with calcium? It's a whole new market niche. It shouldn't be hard--calcium is turning up in all sorts of products these days where it has no business being. Why not pop? Just think of the ad campaign possibilities--beautiful young celebrities lounging about with their cans of soda, talking about how calcium-spiked cola is responsible for their rock-solid bone structure.
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copyright © 2000 by Terri Mauro