Kids....Just plug them in?

I had the most amazing interaction with a six year old patient the other day. He was in with his nine year old brother and his Mom. This was the first time I had seen him but he had quite a thick chart for such a little guy. He had his tonsils and adenoids out a year ago but Mom had been bringing him in because she thought he must still have apnea. She had somehow talked my doctor into getting a sleep study.

I asked her about his breathing at night and she didn't seem to know anything about it. She said that he just seems to show up at the side of her bed in the middle of the night. The sleep study was normal of couse so I look at the little guy and I ask, "Why aren't you sleeping". He immediately starts rubbing his forehead and says, "I play the video games all day long and when I'm asleep they run through my brain and I can't turn them off, I can't sleep" I look at the Mom and we just stare at eachother dumbfounded. I didn't need to ask how much he was playing or how much TV he was watching. She simply asked, "Do you think we should scale back?". I talked to her a little bit about how overstimulating TV and video games can be and it seemed to be the first time she had heard any of this info.

It was really interesting to me to have a real live case scenerio in the theoretical information that I already know. I don't even know if I have actually read the studies that show that TV and video games contribute to ADD or sleep disturbances. It just seems intuitive. It was a real eye opener to have this "from the mouths of babes" experience.

Flash forward to last night when I went out to dinner with the kids, my husband and my parents. Eating out with my two boys is always a little stressful for me. I never really worry about what I order because I am pretty sure that I won't be able to enjoy it. We had to wait twenty minutes for a table and we were already there a little late for their dinner time. There were kids all over and it was a pretty noisy restaurant. I don't really worry about disturbing others in this kind of situation so I don't really get stressed. The kids did really well. Tristan is just loud but it is a "fun loud". I'm pretty sure we had some dirty looks from a couple of people during some of Tristan's squeels of delight but I didn't really care.

As we were paying the bill I noticed that Adam became very quiet and interested in what was going on at our neighbor's table. Then I noticed there were some kids at the table watching a little mini DVD player while the adults talked happily. There were definately two separate experiences at that table, the adult and the child. I thought it a little odd but my Mom was really offended. Then I noticed that the table behind us had the same thing going on! It seems to be an epidemic. My Mom was completely appalled at this point. I was just down right concerned.

Now, I am always careful about not being judgemental about these kinds of things. I never understood the DVD in the car thing until I had to travel with children. I still try to limit movie watching in the car but when you are on the crazy car rides like we take in the summer it is suicide not to have a little back up!

This DVD at the restaurant thing has me feeling both concerned and a little abandoned. Concerned because it seems to be another version of "children should be seen and not heard". Then there is my concern over the kids' mental health and the possible overdose of stimulation: Loud restaurant, all new people, new foods, frenetic cartoon on the TV. But I am feeling abandoned because as parents we unfortunately sometimes sacrifice what we want (dinner at a nice restaurant) in order to take the kids to a "family friendly" restaurant where we know that most people won't care if the kids get a little out of hand. You like to be in a place where there are friendly nods and smiles, a feeling of "been there, done that, don't worry, just breathe..." But if mini DVDs at the restaurant is going to become the new norm then what then?? Where is my refuge??

Again I don't want to judge. Who knows what those families were going through. Maybe they recently had a loved one die and needed a night out but didn't have a babysitter. Who knows? I'm not upset at them but I am a little worried at the ease of which we just plug our kids in these days. You can find endless distraction just about anywhere. Not to worry, we can always just medicate them when the distractions get to be too much. Our generations version of, "turn on, tune in and drop out". Oooh yeah, you are hearing the judge in my voice now right? I'm sure it will come back to bite me in the butt.

The Classic Tragic Figure

Michael Jackson died today and as I was looking through the comments on FB are qualified by something like, "he got weird at the end but Thriller was my favorite album back in the day." I am struck by the fact that it is that very attitude that we have towards him that caused his real death years, maybe decades ago. We loved him for what he did, how he performed and in the end what kind of scandals he was involved in. At the end it was a train wreck. Nobody ever cared about that man even when he was a boy. They all loved him for what he did, not who he was. He surrounded himself with people who used him up and filled him full of the things that he wanted to hear. The tragic death was long long ago and that makes me very sad. Moms and Dads remind your kids that they are special and not because what they do makes us proud. They are not ours, they only come through us.

Modern Day Dads

"At some point in the last few decades, the American male sat down at the negotiating table with the American female and – let’s be frank – got fleeced. The agreement he signed foisted all sorts of new paternal responsibilities on him and gave him nothing in return. Not the greater love of his wife, who now was encouraged to view him as an unreliable employee. Not the special love from his child, who, no matter how many times he fed and changed and wiped and walked her, would always prefer her mother in a pinch. Not even the admiration of the body politic, who pushed him into signing the deal…Having shocked the world by doing the decent thing and ceding power without bloodshed for the sake of principle; he is viewed mainly with disdain." -Michael Lewis Author of "Home Game"

I heard an interview with this author yesterday on Bob Edwards and I was left wondering if there are many Dad's, including my own husband who feel this way. When I first heard this quote it sounded really harsh but after I listened to it again I began to feel empathetic towards the author. I know that my husband often feels frustrated and never really feels like he lives up to my standards. The 21st century Dad is left with a really tough job.

From a mother's point of view sometimes I feel that I had children and then there was my heart...outside of my body in the form of living, breathing, crazy bouncy boys. Sometimes I feel like every moment of the day is just inches away from certain disaster. Sometimes I look at my husband with my boys and I have mixed emotions of complete admiration and overwhelming fear that he is treating "my heart" like a bouncy ball. I know the pressure that I put on him to be a modern day father, provider and husband is a huge responsibility.



This week I had a Dad in my office with his 5 year old boy. They had been through a lot of antibiotics and were looking for another solution. The story I was getting seemed to be told second hand. I was imagining his wife sitting him down and telling him all of the things that he needed to remember. I knew I was missing some details. Poor guy. We came up with a plan that we thought was reasonable based on the information I had and when he checked out I had the nagging suspicion that he would be back after being berated with all of the questions that he forgot to ask. He was back about an hour later. He seemed so defeated and I felt his frustration. I was left feeling, should he really be expected to do this job well?? Fathering is perhaps not a detail oriented profession.

These mothering and fathering insticts must be inate. I think about primative societies and even animals and it seems to be the father's job to provide and protect and to spring into action when needed. But it is the mother's job to do the "detail work", to notice if a fever is too high, someone is too tired, too hungry. A mother's nervous system is probablby instinctively more aware of the nuances of human behavior. I believe that mothers are more like the alarm system and fathers are like a SWAT team. I don't believe that our nervous systems can be wired to do both jobs really well all of the time.

This may seem like horribly old-fashioned, antiquated ideas to some but I guess what I am trying to say is that I salute Daddys everywhere. You have a tough job and not enough recognition. Happy Fathers' Day!!