Alpha Mummy - Times Online - WBLG

Top 5 Victories for pester power

Michael wrote in with the following response to the pester power post: his list of the items that have only flourished because of pester power.

Top 5 Victories for pester power

1: Bratz Dolls
Few mothers, and absolutely no fathers, want their child to grow up taking fashion cues from Bratz dolls. With their teenage hooker pouts and micro mini wardrobes they are a flash forward to a million parent-teenager arguments. Still, they sell in terrific quantities, and challenge the by contrast rather demure Barbie for the top selling girl’s toy slot most Christmases.

2: Swords and guns
No matter how hard woolly liberal parents try to dissuade their young sons from choosing weapon-inspired toys, the violence just seems innate.  Try as you might to encourage the caring, nurturing side to your son he just wants to stab people. With a big plastic sword that could easily have someone’s eye out. Might as well let him get some practice before he moves on to the real thing.

3: Electric hair twirler
Every young girls who sees this perceives it as the pinnacle of personal grooming. Every parent sees it as a guaranteed trip to A&E. You’ll thank every God you’ve ever heard of when the battery finally runs out.

4: Electric powered toy cars
Not the ones that cost £20 and can fit in his toybox. The kind that cost upwards of £400 and demand their own garage. Every small boy wants one of these. Until he hits 3'5" and he can’t get in it anymore. Then it’s a very expensive ornament. That’s four feet long. Bought exclusively by overachieving dads or parents who are just plain scared of their own kids.

5: Super soaker water gun
Impossible to play with indoors, deeply antisocial in any public space, and just plain annoying in your garden. You don’t want to buy it. You’ll end up with two.

Picture taken by callme_crochet on Flickr.com

Pester power: is it always bad?

"Pester power" has become one of those marketing terms that strikes fear in the heart of parents, mostly because it translates into whinging, crying, pouting and floor-rolling whenever you pass a display of something sugar-filled or stamped out in cheap plastic.

My husband tries to combat this by telling the kids they can have a "treat" at the store, then amends this to "a fruit treat - any piece of fruit you want" right before we check out. You can imagine how well that goes over.

Can pester power ever be used for good instead of ill? It seems like the eco-folks have enlisted kids to encourage parents to turn off lights, recycle and so on. Yet are there good ways that other companies can use pester power, or does it require having a product or food that parents like anyway ("Please, mummy, can I have the sprouting broccoli spears!")?

Or should we ban advertisers from appealing directly to kids? After all, any advert that claims a cereal is "fun" or a toy is "cool" is not talking to parents - should it be allowed?

Caitlin talks sense about abortion

If you haven't read Caitlin's comment piece in the Times today about girls and abortion, you should. She cuts through the hysteria about the latest statistics on teenage abortion and refocuses the conversation where it belongs - on teenage pregnancies.

Let’s face it, the rise in teenage abortion is not the scandalous statistic here. It is, ultimately, the teenage pregnancies that are the problem. Why are these pregnancies occurring?

Plus she makes this very important point:

Almost exactly half of the cause of teenage pregnancies - teenage boys - rarely, if ever, get mentioned.

If you missed it, check it Caitlin's blog about Why I believe abortion is part of being a good mother and the lively discussion that ensued.

Another way to spend money at school

An Alpha Mummy reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) writes in about a problem fast approaching parents of school-going children:

When choosing a school for my child I deliberately chose what I thought was a good down-to-earth fee-paying school. What I didn't factor in though was the other parents' obsession with end-of-term collections.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against buying teachers a small token of appreciation at the end of term. Many of my friends whom are teachers are very happy with the presents they receive from their class - particularly the small home-made or quirky gifts which the child has had a hand in making or choosing. 

But our collections are for "a recommended £25 per family" to be paid to the class rep and duly ticked off on a register of names twice a year. Now I can understand that some teachers might baulk at the idea of 20 or 30 bottles of Piat d'Or or gift-sized Galaxy chocolate bars, but do they really expect hundreds of pounds worth of Habitat vouchers each year from children?

A straw poll of friends with children at fee-paying schools shows this isn't the norm. So have I fallen in with a nouveau riche set? or am I just being tight? And what do you think I should do? Shut up and pay up? Make a stand and donate less than the recommended amount? or quietly drop out and buy, or better still make, something more personal from my child?

Is divorce broken?

The news of Brian Philcox, who killed himself and his two children on Father's Day, is striking for its tragedy but for me it begs a larger question: are families cast adrift during divorce?

Our main image of divorce is based, one expects, on high-profile cases involving self-regarding fat cats and exes with an enlarged sense of entitlement.

But for regular couples, who struggle through without a bereavement coach, a team of accountants or a media spin professional, does the current system put too much pressure on everyone, including the children?

Separating couples are left to their own devices to sort themselves out, says Duncan Fisher, chief executive of the Fatherhood Institute, which bills itself as the UK's fatherhood think-tank. While the parents' lives fall apart and everything from the home to the pension to the daily responsibilities is thrown into the pot to be argued over and divided, children are left vulnerable.

"Two children died and there needs to be an investigation as to how this happened. Why was there no safety net?" asks Fisher. He believes that the risks to children during divorce should be assessed and we need to proactively counsel and support families. That would allow families to disentangle themselves rather than tear themselves apart.

Philcox contacted Fathers 4 Justice last week, as do thousands of others coping with separation and custody issues."We had over 1,000 inquiries [from men] from last week alone," says founder Matt O'Connor. Some consider the group a tireless campaigner for father's rights, others believe it's merely a gimmicky group of whack jobs who climb buildings in fancy dress. Whatever its reputation, it's not a support group.

While it operates a volunteer-staffed hotline and refers men to its online forums and support groups like Samaritans and Citizens Advice, it's raison d'etre is as a pressure group.

The UK remains the best place in Europe for women to get divorced. According to Ann Ison, partner at Hughes Fowler Carruthers law firm, in some EU countries, maintenance is shorter (in some places lasting only three years) or absent. Here, the starting point for dividing assets is 50/50 but if you're talking about a £150,000 house with a mortgage, it's hard to slice it up. "One thing the courts accept is that the mother with the younger children has the greater need," while still acknowledging that the father needs a home as well, she says. When you consider that spousal maintenance doesn't have accepted percentages the way child maintenance does (15  per cent for one child, 20 per cent for two…), each divorce means hammering out (and carving up) a deal anew.

It's a fraught system that overwhelms many people. Some plunge into depression. Others cope with drink or drugs. Some take their own lives and even murder their children.

Divorce happens. Surely this highlights we need to make sure it happens more smoothly for everyone involved.

"He phoned up Fathers 4 Justice," says Fisher of Philcox. "Oh, great. Is that all we can offer?"

Placebo medicine for kids

A fruit-flavoured placebo pill, that tricks small children into thinking they are getting medical treatment, is to be launched in the UK, the Guardian reported today.
"Obecalp" - it's "placebo" spelt backwards - will retail at £3 for 50 pills, and says it will "Soothe the pains of childhood" without resorting to drugs.
I have two, directly opposing views on this. The first is that teaching children that the answer is always found in a pill, or a drug, will raise a generation of codeine-gobbling kids, thrilled and comforted by the thought of syringes and medicine-bottles.
The second is WHO WOULD BE SO STUPID to spend £3 on 50 pills, when they could just give them a Tic-Tac? I do it at least six times a week, whenever they get "growing pains/brain ache/a funny feeling in my bottom."
And as for calling it "Obecalp" - you might as well call it "KcirTasti". Imagine what will happen when they find out they've been given fake drugs by the people they trust most, and that the truth was taunting them on the bottle's label. They'll think they're in the plot to "Lost."

Stylish and chemical-free!

Perhaps it's a bit naff, but I think this tiger soother from Bibi has something. Style? Sassy attitude? The real news is what these soothers don't have: Bisphenol-A (BPA).

BPA is used in poly-carbonate bottles, soothers, and plastic food packaging and causes neurological and hormonal damage in animals. The US and Canada are reviewing the use of BPA in baby products.

When baby bottles are heated, BPA leaches into the liquid, as reported in this Guardian story. (A study in 2007 showed in tests that folic acid counteracted the effects of BPA in mice.)

Bibi is one company that makes BPA-free baby items. The website www.bisphenolafree.org recommends several makers of BPA-free baby and children's items, and provides loads of great advice about the plastics among us. 

I try not to fret too much about the baby bottles I used with my daughter or the times I reheated food in cling wrap, with all those chemicals infiltrating it like double agents during WWII. But I want to minimise the amount she's exposed to now.

I seem to recall Caitlin posting about a smart way to microwave-heat food. I can't find it but in the meantime, look here for the Smart Plastics Guide for ways to avoid the worst culprits. The clip below is a segment from ABC news about BPA.

Best movies for kids? Ha. Try these

I love the idea of showing kids Duck Soup and screening something beyond the Tomblyboo, but I'm pretty skeptical about some of the movies on the Times critics' list today of the 10 best films for children. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial - yes. Legally Blonde - er, no. I'd rather show my four-year-old daughter Clueless.

Around our house, some classic films have already joined the kids' heavy rotation list:

The Slipper and the Rose - Richard Chamberlain singing "I'll be slipped, into the beautiful family crypt"? Newcomer (in 1976) Gemma Craven as the sweet and likeable Cinderella? Annette Crosbie as the wisecracking, run-off-her-feet Fairy Godmother? We know all the words.

Singing in the Rain - Highlights include the raincoat song, "where the man dances with the person who's not a person" (Donald O'Connor's number) and Moses supposes his toeses are roses.

The Sound of Music - A sweet former nun is hunted by Nazis. What's not to love?

Kid-friendly excerpts from The Matrix, Pan's Labryinth - Enjoyed only in short bursts, before sandpit duty or eating pizza

Now if only I could lay my hands on a copy of Margie, a Jeanne Crain movie I loved when I was a girl... (you can see a clip here; best line: "Do you like Keats?" "I don't know, what are Keats?")

Got any of your own?

Have an affair. It's good for you!

There is a lot of talk lately about the American book When Good People Have Affairs, which advises people to cope with affairs and strengthen their marriages.

The Guardian lists the book's 17 motivations for having an affair and comes up with some of its own, including "I was bored at work" and "I was just being polite". An article in today's Times chalks it all up to the relative compartmentalisation techniques of men and women.

But it's got me thinking. It seems that every noteworthy individual you read about, from great artists and scientists to politicians and philosophers, had affairs, sometimes multiple affairs. Every year a new study comes out telling us how often married people are playing away and how terrible it is, leading to the breakdown of marriage, the rending of the social fabric and so on.

But what if we came at the problem from another direction. Instead of clinging to the idea of romantic monogamist love (a relatively  new invention anyway), what if we encouraged couples to indulge in safe, discreet hotel visits with non-spouses? Instead of swimming upstream, we go with the flow. It would remove the shame from the cheater and the cheatee - thereby supporting the long-term relationship above all. It would acknowledge the need for variety and excitement (see Esther Perel's book Mating in Captivity).

Of course there are millions of people around the world who don't cheat. But would it be more evolved to include in marriage vows, "...In sickness and in health and in the occasionally outside fling with that cutie in the marketing department"?

Childcare: the hot potato in the political world

The froth whipped up by the Caroline Spelman story would be funny if it's weren't so damning about the country's attitudes toward childcare. So here's the deal: More than a decade ago a working mother pays her nanny extra - during school hours when the children aren't there - to work at her home office opening mail, filing and answering phones? Then she stopped doing it. It's hardly hookers and cocaine, is it? Ironically, she would have been better off spending more of the taxpayers' money hiring a separate person to do these time-consuming but essential tasks.

Yet what strikes me is that - with the exception of David Blunkett's "nannygate" - it's only professional women who are swept up into nanny scandals. Don't male politicians have young children as well? Yes, but of course it's the mothers who organise childcare. Ultimately it's still the woman's responsibility. And in the male-dominated political world, that's the root of our problems with childcare.

We still have to pay childminders out of taxed income and until recently couldn't use childcare vouchers for nannies. As the Guardian says today: "Gordon Brown was promising a national childcare strategy that would deliver affordable, accessible, high quality care to all. Ten years on, that's one more promise he has failed to keep."

The piece goes on to say,

Whatever the outcome of Spelgate, among her critics there might also exist just a touch of ambivalence. It's a bit rum that in a profession awash with allowances, including the cost of staying away from home, office expenses and a London supplement, there's no allowance for the one job that should matter as much if not more: someone to care for the children.

The general outcry about the affair is not just a little hypocritical, considering how many people pay for their childcare in cash or under the table, or regularly jiggle the numbers - giving the nanny £100 "grocery money" every week to buy some milk and bread. We have to realise that our attitudes about childcare directly relate to our attitudes about working women.

The Times Libby Purves writes, "However much the nation pretends it wants their skills, working mothers are still the bottom of the heap."

Maybe that's why I can't get worked up into a lather about Spelman. Giles Chichester paid hundreds of thousands to a company in which he was a director and now we're talking about paying someone - not a family member, not one's self indirectly but a nanny - to do a little bit on the side. I wonder if Spelman would have fared better if she'd hired the woman as a personal assistant and paid her for babysitting on the side.

Is there a "best bit" of childhood?

I'll level with you - I reckon I'm in the middle of it now. The kids are 4 and 7. To me, 4 and 7 breaks down like this: they can go to the toilet on their own, and amuse themselves with Doctor Who figurines whilst I get the tea on - yet they still like to snuggle, and hunt for treasure, and they believe that I can call Father Christmas and dob them in if they don't eat their cabbage. I'm neither fretting about Cot Death Syndrome and constipation, nor teenage pregnancy and heroin. These are, surely, the golden years.
I didn't enjoy the baby years, or the toddler years. I can remember many, many nights of three-hour-long bedtimes, and sitting, stock still in the dark, stroking a restless child, and thinking, "I'm really not enjoying this. How did my mother have eight? She's demented."
Essentially, they couldn't really talk, or enjoy classic musicals, or walk for more than 50 yards without "resting" - all deeply vexatious character traits that I could only forgive by pretending to eat their fat thighs, and sniffing the area behind their ears that seems to have a particular magical, soothing quality.
Equally, though, I'm not looking forward to the teenage years. I've seen the same look on the faces of parents with teenagers that I pull when newly pregnant couples go, "We're expecting our first child! We reckon people over-state how difficult it is!" I have some vague plan to "take them to Bangladesh" when they get to 14ish - show them poverty and community and very cheap ethnic accessories, and hope that it gives them some perspective, and stops them from saying "Yeah - WOTEVAH" and wearing slaggy skirts. But I suspect it won't work.
So for now, I'm just enjoying the Glory Years.

Have children? Yeah, but what am I going to get out of it?

I remember very clearly what I thought I was going to get out of motherhood. I was banking on two things: one, that it was somehow going to "complete me" as a woman, and two, that it was also - and I never really examined the practical mechanics of this - going to give me enough time to write a novel. I think I'd read an interview with JK Rowling, and envisioned the child sleeping in a crib under the desk whilst I bashed out some fabulous cross between the two best books ever (Riders by Jilly Cooper, and The Railway Children.)

Well, hahahahahaha, obviously. Hahahaha. Having a child doesn't "complete you as a woman". As the minx-goddess Sarah Silverman said, "Today I learned that everyone has hole in their heart, but that you can’t fill it with a kid - because they’ll stomp on it and stretch it and make it impossible to fill in the future."

And as for the novel - well, I'm sure you can guess. As I discovered in the first few weeks of motherhood, having a newborn is a very special era in your life, when you have so little time that you often have to split having a poo between two separate days - summoned from the toilet by hysterical, red-faced screaming from what appears to be a semi-malignant otter in a pink towelling suit, who genuinely quite hates you.

But you know what? I reckon I have got a lot out of my becoming a mother. Probably more than my kids have, who are downstairs at the moment watching Tracy Beaker on CBBC, eating dry cream crackers they've scavenged out of the kitchen, whilst I write this in bed. Indeed, I reckon I've got so much out of it, I could make a list:

1) Learning that everything is "a phase". Not just biting, or a fear of Daleks, but socio-political movements, anger about the Euro, bird-flu, Alanis Morrissette. They all come, and they all go. There's not point in getting terribly worked up about them. All you need to do is hold calm in the centre.

2) Often, you don't need to do anything at all. Raising kids is, in many ways, like being sent to interview a fabulous, blingy r'n'b star. They don't really want you to interact with them very much, or ask them any questions. You've just been sent there to witness how fabulous they are, and occasionally go "Wow, you came from the projects. That must have been tough. You're amazing." Substitute "You came from the projects" with "You had to do a spelling test", and that's pretty much all kids want from you, 80% of the time.

3) Really getting a handle on the fact I'm going to die. I was never really that ambitious before I had children, because I thought I had approximately six million years left to sit around smoking marijuana, watching daytime TV and keeping a scrapbook of Richard Madeley's best sayings. But now I've made a child who's nearly four feet tall, I am very aware of the passing of time. I am going to die relatively soon. I need to get on with things. I've got my hustle on. Simillarly, I've...

4) Developed a work ethic. You never really know how much you can cram into a day until you've got kids. You also never know how many things you can do simultaneously until you've got kids. I can now easily make the tea, over-see reading aloud, keep on eye on a playdate, book a holiday, worm a cat, hold a conversation with my husband about someone we hate, and write a feature, all at the same time. All mums can. We never even mention it. And working until 2am just isn't a big issue any more. Let's face it - it's much, much easier than looking after a toddler. Working until 2am is a blessed relief, compared to attending a birthday party at ClownTown on the North Circular Road. Everything become very relative.

5) Lost my fear. I could never watch violent or scary movies before I had kids. My imagination was feral, and I once had a panic attack after my sister merely described to me the plot to The Blair Witch Project. After a three-day posterior labour, however, I came out of that hospital nails. I watched Gladiator when Dora was six days old, and didn't bat an eyelid as decapitated heads went flying through the sky. "Yes," I thought. "That was a bit like the Second Stage."

6) Made me more socially adept. I never really liked talking to strangers before. Indeed, if my husband invited his friends round, then went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, I'd run off to the toilet until he came back. I was very awkward and self-conscious. Seven years of nurseries, play-dates, school-trips, school-gates gossip and sundry playground-hanging have changed all that. Firstly, it became embarrassing that my two year old was more socially adept than I was - going up to people and saying "SLIDE!" in a very cheerful manner, then playing with them for two hours. And secondly, you realise conversation between two human beings doesn't have to be the slick, Emmy-Award winning, West Wing-style patter you believe it should be in your childless world of pubs, parties and work. Humans are actually quite simple, happy people. You can just talk about the kids' shoes, the vicious local tom-cat, and the new chutney they sell in Budgens, instead. And feel a lovely, village-y, lo-fi glow about human interaction.

7) Introduced me to the best social circle I've ever had. Before we had kids, everyone we knew was an alcoholic. And to be fair, everyone we know now is an alcoholic, too. But these new alcoholics have kids, and have to be in bed by 1am tops, which has almost certainly saved us all from terrible cirrhosis. And I love the almost soap-like feel of seeing them twice a day, at pick-up and drop-off, and the constant flow of gossip and updates and running gags and plans to all hire a barge together, which never quite come off.

Looking at that list now, I realise that, actually, I was a little more than a spineless creature, lying on my back at the bottom of a pond before I got pregnant. I probably should have started earlier, really. I wasted fully ten years being some hapless, incompetent, wastrel-spenk. I'd probably be CEO of UniLever, and have won the Nobel Prize for being sexy and deep, like, if I'd got up the duff at 14.

10 green toys for party bags

We're coming up to another round of kiddie parties, and I think it's high time we parents broke the back of the party rules:

1. The party bag must be a lurid colour of the flimsiest plastic

2. The party bag must contain plastic bits that fall between the car seats on the ride home

3. The party bag must contain radioactive candy that keeps your children up all night.

I tried to do something different at my daughter's birthday in the toy department by including a little bundle of Wikki Stix, wax-covered yarn that you can bend into shapes. I'm not so sure how successful it was, since everyone kept asking me, "What is this?"

But in my research I have run across some eco- or Fair Trade-conscious sites for affordable party bag swag. Got any tips of your own?

Littlecherry.co.uk - Wooden toys and recyled party-bag fillers, such as the pencil case that used to be a car tyre (£3.00), traditional wooden noisemakers (£1.50), and fairy or pirate mini blackboards (£1.99)

Ethicalpartybags.com - Prefilled bags for boys and girls, plus individual toys that are either fair trade, recycled or both. Loads of coin purses and party bags made from recycled juice boxes (pictured), from fairly traded rayon or from old exam papers (from £3.00), spotted ring boxes (£2.50) and fairtrade chocolates (£0.25)

Happygreenearth.com - Offbeat bag goodies include a knitting mushroom (£1.75), animal flutes (£1.05), a natural felt flower ponytail holder (£1.00) and the classic magic coin trick (£1.25).

What did your childhood taste like?

What did your childhood taste like?  Mine tasted like Ding Dongs, the American snack cake filled with cream; a terrible tomato and okra stew my mother made from frozen almost every week; Kraft macaroni and cheese, with its powdered sachet of “cheese” sauce; mashed potatoes and tinned green beans, mixed up together.

In her new book Encyclopaedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy Krouse Rosenthal catalogues the tastes of her childhood (see below) as well as bucketfuls of other bits of his life – from “lows” (grandmother dying, speeding tickets) to “coffee, stopping for” to “jobs I could never do”.

I’ll be honest, I was prepared to hate this book, because at first glance it seemed to encapsulate everything terrible about writers who are so into their own thing that they think everyone else will be too, a bit like friends who invite you out for a drink and only talk about themselves, never asking you a single question.

But in fact I loved it. It acknowledges all those thoughts we all have, all day long. It’s a memoir but really it celebrates individuality and the quotidien. I read a list of what has formed Amy and think about what has formed me.

Plus she’s got a theme song on her website, in a They Might be Giants vein.

Extracted from Encyclopaedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal published by Atlantic Books, £10.99

Fathers are drawing a blank

To listen to the latest directive from the government, requiring that fathers sign their babies' birth certificates, you'd think there was an army of disenfranchised dads battering down the door at the local birth registrars.

Currently in about 7 per cent, or 50,000, births, mothers choose to leave the father space blank on the birth certificate and no questions are asked. Now, as part of the Welfare Reform Bill in autumn, the man within married couples will automatically be entered. If a mother attempts to register a birth without the father's name, she'll be asked and then, if she provides the father's details, the agency will pursue him to be named.

Babies need fathers. But the formality that happens down at the registry office is miles away from a dad who pitches in to help raise a child or takes an active role in its life. A few fathers might hear of a baby's birth when they might not have otherwise. But in practice the law is unworkable - just imagine the overworked civil servant in your borough playing detective to get a dad on the record.

In theory, it's paternalistic. It reminds me of politicians lecturing about the horror of teen pregnancy, while ignoring that for every young pregnant girl there was a boy not wearing a condom.

This move paints a picture of mothers wilfully cutting out fathers, perhaps on a whim, and scapegoats them for absent fathers. It ignores the fact that some of these mothers may be protecting themselves and their children from fathers who won't contribute to a child's well-being - because of drug use, abuse or other factors. You can't legislate happy families.

All those poor dads missing out on signing the certificate and all those mothers swanning around refusing to acknowledge them. Next thing you know women will want to get an abortion without the approval of a second doctor and society will descend into anarchy.