I’ve found a new kindred spirit in the parenting world.

And he’s a dad.

Dan Zevin’s Dan Gets a Minivan hit bookstores this week, and its publishers would like me to tell you it’s the perfect Fathers Day gift. It is. But read it yourself first, because really, this book is for YOU, lover of funny and thought-provoking writing.

Here are a few things Dan Zevin and I have in common:

• we both love our minivans. No really. If you really think you’re too cool to drive a car with satellite TV, six zones of air conditioning, and trunk space big enough for an armchair, then Dan Zevin and I laugh at you.
• we have both put in our time at the Criminal Court Building in New York City, “located in a neighborhood of Manhattan that has never known the light of the sun.”
• we both stink at tennis.
• we have both enjoyed raising our kids in New York City. And have both the-opposite-of-enjoyed that. Zevin’s since moved his family to the suburbs, and is very happy about that. Food for thought.

What’s that you say? Is there another book that I am not the specific target audience for and yet laughed my tuchis off while reading?

Why, yes!

My No, No, No Day by Rebecca Patterson tells the tale of young Bella’s very bad day. Ballet is too itchy! Toothpaste is too minty! It’s like Alexander’s horrible day of yore, only funnier, mostly due to Patterson’s priceless illustrations of what being four and very angry looks like. All three of my kids adored this book, and when my daughter brought it to preschool, the two teachers stopped what they were doing immediately to laugh at a story they know all too well. This book is one you’ll love as much as your child.

And now the giveaway! I have a free copy of Dan Gets a Minivan for one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is comment below with the name of the last book you read that you really loved. Winner will be chosen on Tuesday, May 29, 2012. Happy reading!

I received complimentary copies of Dan Gets a Minivan and My No, No, No Day from the publishers for review purposes. All opinions expressed are my own. 

Some things just can’t wait. These are the urgent questions my daughter has flung wide the shower door to ask me in the past week:

1) Can you live to be a million?

2) Is Fresca good for kids?

3) Is my doll’s name “Mih-kenna”? Or “Muh-kenna”?

4) What is the most far, California or the whole world?

5) Mommy, what are pussies?

My replies:

1) no;

2) no;

3) Mih-kenna, but you can say Muh-kenna if you want to;

4) well, Maggie, it depends on– never mind. California. Now CLOSE THE DOOR;

5) WHAT?

Now, maybe my mind went to the gutter a little too quickly. But keep in mind that when my four-year-old daughter asked me that last question, I was naked. Also keep in mind that a preschooler can interrupt her mother in the shower pretty much every day and she will still stare at her mother’s pubic hair like she has never seen it before.

So in the context of the moment, let’s just say I was a little perturbed.

MOMMY: Maggie, what are– what?

MAGGIE: Pussies. What are they?

MOMMY: (drawing a blank, vamping desperately) What do you mean?

MAGGIE: (sighing heavily) Like pussy cats. What are they? Dogs?

Now I was really lost.

MOMMY: What do you mean? They’re cats.

MAGGIE: They’re pussies. So… are they dogs?

MOMMY: …You just said they were pussy cats.

MAGGIE: But they’re not cats if they’re pussy cats.

I have never had a conversation in which I was more at sea. Or wet, since the water was still running.

MOMMY: Close the door, Maggie. I’ll tell you when I get out.

I did not. By the time I rinsed out the conditioner Maggie had (much to my relief) gone back to playing with McKenna, which is what she does pretty much whenever I’m not in the shower. But I’m already dreading the question that awaits me tomorrow morning. I have a feeling we didn’t really settle the pussy cat issue.

What’s the most urgent question you’ve ever been asked while in the shower?

First chardonnay and sushi were declared off limits to mothers-to-be; now they’re coming for your smartphones.

A new study published this spring in Scientific Reports suggests that in utero cellular telephone radiation may result in neurobehavioral disorders in children so exposed. Yale scientists put cell phones making uninterrupted, muted calls atop cages of pregnant mice, and found that when born, the baby mice exposed to the cell phone activity showed dyfunction in their brain circuitry similar to humans with ADHD.

Of course, no study is without its limits. According to the Yale Alumni Magazine,

Lead researcher Hugh S. Taylor stresses that the study was conducted on mice, so how it applies to humans is unknown. For one thing, mice “don’t have ADHD.”

Good point, Dr. Taylor. How exactly does one measure hyperactivity in a small rodent that, even if completely typical, enjoys spending all its waking hours running on a round treadmill to nowhere?

And let’s be honest: if you’re a pregnant woman talking on your cell phone between 15 and 24 hours a day– the amounts of time used in the study– you and your child will probably have plenty of other pressing issues caused by your extreme sleep deprivation.

Still, there has been a documented increase in diagnoses of ADHD in the last decade. That may be due to a growing awareness of the disorder. It might be due to an increase in misdiagnoses, depending on who you believe. It might be a little bit of both. But something’s causing something.

And this study suggests it might be the mom’s cell phone use at fault. I am usually way resistant to these sorts of guilt trips, but whether or not this study turns out to have any weight, there are some easy fixes here for all of us:

- keep your cell phone off your nightstand.

- if you’re pregnant, keep your phone “as far away from your abdomen as possible.”

- which might mean buying yourself one of these.

- or else just hanging up.

Do you take any precautions with your cell phone use, for your kids or for yourself? Do you think about it at all? Would this study change anything for you? 

The entirely-fabricated-by-the-press Mommy Wars are newly aflame with this week’s Time Magazine cover: a picture of a 4-year-old standing on a chair so that he might stand comfortably and eye the camera while suckling his sexy mother.

(as if you haven't already seen it one hundred million times)

“Are You Mom Enough?”the cover blares, and I’m not sure what they mean by that. Am I Mom Enough to get my hair and makeup professionally done before I breastfeed standing up? Nope, and I think I can live with that.

This picture has nothing to do with what it’s actually like to breastfeed a child of any age; nor does it accurately represent what it’s like to see a mother actually breastfeeding in public (all the skin you’ll see then is a bit of wrinkly stomach flab under a T-shirt pulled up from the BOTTOM).

“It’s a Hot Mom/Young Son meme used as an illustration for a scare story,” said my friend Christen Clifford, herself a fierce advocate for breastfeeding as long as you darn well feel like it. I think she nailed it on the head, and that means we should all just ignore it– but instead we’ll be talking about it all this Mothers Day weekend, valuing shock value over honest discussion of women’s lives.

Clearly, Time did this to sell a few magazines, and sadly, they probably will. But I’m not buying a copy, and neither should anyone who really cares about mothers’ issues.

If Time wants our eyeballs and our dollars, here’s a few cover questions I think could really move some copies:

–WHY CAN’T WE GET OVER OUR BREASTFEEDING HANGUPS, WHICH ARE TRUTHFULLY FAR CREEPIER THAN BREASTFEEDING?

–WHY DO MOST PEOPLE THINK STAY-AT-HOME MOTHERS DON’T “REALLY” WORK?

–WHY DO WE INSIST ON MAKING UP A FIGHT BETWEEN WORKING MOTHERS AND STAY-AT-HOME MOTHERS THAT DOESN’T EXIST?

–WHY ARE WE OKAY WITH WOMEN MAKING 77 CENTS TO A MAN’S DOLLAR IN 2012?

Those I’d buy. You don’t have to trick me into being interested with a ridiculous photo, either. On those questions, most of us mothers are already pretty engaged.

Anything you’d add to that list? Will you buy this week’s Time?

Maybe we should have stayed screen-free.

Yesterday, a day I had been dreading: my seven-year-old came home from school and asked me what “sex” was.

Turns out he had received the following “friend request” on his favorite website, the seemingly-harmless-enough Moshi Monsters:

hi lover boy meet me at the park and we come have really good sex

Cut to me, staring at the screen, marveling at the potty mouth on tia3456789 (pictured at left).

“This person said this when they wanted to be my friend,” he said, “and I didn’t know what they meant.”

“Did you accept their friend request?” I asked, smile frozen on my face.

“Yes,” he said, as if there were no other possible answer to that question.

I blocked the sender, stuck my finger in the dam by telling my son “sex is when moms and dads kiss,” then contacted Moshi Monsters help directly. I heard back from them within the hour that “appropriate action had been taken.” Still, their reassurance fell a little short:

Due to privacy laws, we cannot give any information regarding action taken.

We ask all parents to please not contact the player who has been reported or removed, as this can escalate the situation unnecessarily.

I took their advice and have not left this little sh*t/Moshi an enlightening message on her own”Friend Tree,” which had been my intention. But upon further consideration, I’m wondering if Moshi Monsters is mostly thinking of themselves when they warn against unnecessarily escalated situations. Why shouldn’t I reach out to this jerk, even if he or she is a minor, and say, you are ruining childhoods and I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING?

And then just his morning, the New York Times printed Amy O’Leary’s sobering article So How Do We Talk About This? , addressing what to do when your young children see internet pornography.

Not what to do if they see pornography.

WHEN they see pornography.

The overall takeaway of this article, and of Moshi Monsters’ prefabricated response to me, is a depressing realization for this parent: my children can’t be safe on the internet. Not even on websites designed for children. (Perhaps especially not on websites designed for children?) Here’s how Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of the national sex-education organization Answer, boils it down:

“Your child is going to look at porn at some point. It’s inevitable.”

Apparently I need to give up on my dream of childhood innocence with a sigh, and take as a given the day when I have to steer my nine-year-old son towards appropriate images of nude women to surf.

Wait, did you read that right? Yes, you did.

Dana, a divorced mother of three… assumed her sons would seek out pornography and thought it was normal for her 9-year-old to want to look at pictures of naked women. But when he was 13, he asked why women liked to be choked.

What? WHAT? I sure don’t want my 9-year-old son graduating to only violent porn by 7th grade, that’s for sure, but ain’t no WAY I’m going to shrug my shoulders if I find my third grader googling “boobs” later this afternoon. I refuse to accept that as “inevitable” for someone so young, someone so happy being so young. If we all accept that as normal than our children’s childhoods will suffer for it.

The NYT’s Motherlode blog has an extremely helpful post up today, also by Amy O’Leary, explaining how to filter your home network and (perhaps most importantly) talk to your kids once the horse has left the stable. It’s the unavoidability of that moment that I’m struggling with today, hoping that I may yet be able to tighten the reins, start looking over their shoulders a little more often, and protect them from those who would take joy in ruining their innocence.

What do you think? Is it inevitable that our children will see pornography online?

Should the focus be on how to protect their innocence, or what to do once it’s ruined?

What steps have you taken to monitor what your child sees online? Has it been successful?

Most importantly, do you think I should fire off a nasty note to Moshi Member tia3456789?

Readers, we survived. Screen Free Week is behind us. This past Sunday morning, I asked my children for their reflections on the past seven days.

Seamus, age 7:

“This was the worst week of my life.”

Maggie, age 4:

“We are never, NEVER, N E V E R  going to do this again.”

And then Connor looked up from his cornflakes.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It was a little bit good, when you think about it, because we did other stuff.”

It did not escape my notice that his siblings didn’t punch him when he said that. But it wasn’t until Monday morning, when screens were once again allowed, that I understood the full import of what we had just done.

It was 7:40 a.m.,  and for a change, everyone was already ready for our 8 a.m. departure, backpacks by the door, bedhead combed. (Our mornings and evenings had become very strangely peaceful over the past week.) As the kids had each morning the previous week, they sat down to play with long-forgotten Beyblades and dolls from the bottom of the toy chest.

“You guys,” I said gently. “You can have your screens back.”

They stared at me.

“Seamus, you can check on your Moshi Monster,” I prodded.

“Huh. Oh yeah,” he said, almost entirely without enthusiasm, and actually had a few more Beyblades faceoffs before casually strolling to my laptop.

The previous Monday morning, there had been such sobbing and garment-rending about how this Moshi Monster could not possibly survive a WEEK without being fed and walked around Monstro City, what was going to HAPPEN to him, he’d probably DIE and he would NEVER BE ALIVE AGAIN.

But after a week apart from the computer game he loved so dearly, my son’s relationship to it had changed. It became one of but many things he could do with his free time. And not the most interesting one, either.

“It’s weird,” Maggie told me yesterday, as we played Girl Scout Meeting with her dolls. “Because you think you need to watch the screens and you do a little but maybe not a lot.”

And then last night Connor said, “I kind of miss Screen-Free Week.” He then suggested that we observe it once a month.

“No, it should be a pattern,” Maggie said. “Yes screen week, no screen week. Yes screen week, no screen week.”

I do feel obligated to point out that Seamus vociferously and heartily disagreed with these sentiments. But I am absolutely floored at what my kids got out of this experience. And me too- I don’t need to spend as much time with the Real Housewives of New Jersey as I think I do. I’ll be hanging out with Milania and Don Draper this week for sure, but two weeks from now, I’ll be spending my evenings with the screenplay I finally got started once I turned off the boob tube and focused on the stories I have to tell.

I won’t be throwing our TVs and iPad off the top of Dave Letterman’s studio anytime soon, but I do see them differently now. I undertook Screen-Free Week thinking it would at least provide some horrible hilarity on which to reflect- what I actually got was a whole lot more.

We did it. Listen To Your Mother NYC happened, it really did, and it was even more than I had hoped.

You might think that before the show that we were panicked. But we weren’t. I was more certain that this show would be a success than any show I have ever worked on. Sure, emotions were high backstage, but we gathered for one last pep talk knowing that we were about to share incredible stories with an audience that was so ready to hear them. There was nothing but joy.

I haven’t felt that way since my wedding day: here is a room full of love, ready to celebrate, ready to soar.

My only regret was that we didn’t have 200 more seats to sell. But the YouTube channel will have all the performances up by this summer, and until then, you can watch the hundred stories that are already part of the canon. (Warning: clear your schedule first! It’s hard to stop watching once you start.)

Every single woman and man on that stage left her or his comfort zone in a different way. And there wasn’t one of us who didn’t feel utterly transformed by the experience. It was so great I’m considering piling into the car on Friday to go see Philly’s LTYM show. I want to be in a room like that again.

By seven p.m last night, I had closed down the cast party with the last few of us not yet ready to leave cloud nine. When I got home, my three children ran to the door to greet me, to ask how it was, to hold me tight, to present me with this token of their gratitude for having me as their mother:

in case you can't read upside down and backwards, this says "I really love you"

and I said to my husband “You didn’t have to make them do that,” and he said, “I didn’t, they really wanted to.”

And then within five minutes I was hip-deep in gym bags and permission slips and soccer cleats, the typical Sunday night madness, like the show had never happened. And I was so sorry to wake up this morning with the show in my rear view mirror. But it changed me. It changed all of us who were privileged to have our stories heard. My deepest thanks to everyone who helped make it happen.

If you live in Spokane, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Madison, or northwest Indiana, you can still see this year’s shows. Don’t miss them.

Time to announce the winner of the Fresh Direct gift card: Melanie! I’ll be contacting you by email.

It’s my fault.

It’s my fault for having bought so darn much of it.

And it’s my fault that I apparently have much, much less willpower than my three children.

As I sit here typing I can hear, from the next room, a vast assortment of gummy delights and semi-melted chocolate whispering my name. Today, I tell myself, today I will not give in to temptation. But I am Mother, and I am home, and I am weak.

So vex me no more, Reester Bunny! Hie thee away, Life Savers Pastel Jellybeans! Haunt me no more with your strawberry-kiwi deliciousness, for you are meant for CHILDREN, children who have long, long ago forgotten that you await them in the cabinet above the microwave.

When I was a youngster I clearly remember working methodically through my two-pound (solid) chocolate crucifixes and lambs until they were gone, and wayyy before the city pool opened for the summer. I don’t know where my children got their temperance. Certainly not from me. I sent three bags of Halloween candy, groaning under their weight, with my husband to his office the week after Thanksgiving– but only after I’d gained a permanently hard belly from a month’s steady diet of Sixlets-in-a-tube.

So I’m giving it one more dinnertime for the kids to remember they have uneaten bounty for dessert, and then into the wastebasket you shall go.

Yea, I have not forgotten you; and I will never forget you, Hollow Double Crisp Too-Tall Bunny. But you are too tall, otherwise there would be a lot less of you left a month after you came into my life.

Does anyone else suffer my shame? Please say yes.

One more shoutout for my FreshDirect giveaway, which ends Sunday, and for Listen To Your Mother, happening in ten cities nationwide between now and May 12th. We’re 48 hours out from Listen To Your Mother NYC and I can’t sleep! Because it’s gonna be awesome, that’s why. See you on the other side! 

Are you celebrating Screen-Free Week in your household this week? Presented by Commercial Free Childhood, Screen-Free Week is ”a time to play, read, daydream, create, explore, and spend time with family and friends.”

So far at our house, Screen-Free Week has been a time to wail, gnash teeth, and fill all the free time usually taken up by screens with plaintive questioning of just how much longer we will all have to suffer this way. If our dinner-table conversation had a word cloud, it would just be the word

SCREEN

with an almost indeciperable pin-dot next to it saying”more ketchup.”

Of course, if you can read this, you are not screen-free at the moment, and apparently neither am I. (My husband and I have given ourselves a workday exemption.) But I’m trying to stay off the social media during my “work” time, which I should be doing anyway. And in the morning before school, and from 3 pm on, we are all screen-free. No TV, no iPad games, no iPhone games, and no Moshi Monsters.

Two days in, it’s already been a remarkable experience. “What’s the weather going to be?” my husband asked me yesterday morning, and I reached for my phone, then the remote control, then honestly had to stop and think before realizing I could look 1) at the top right corner of the newspaper or 2) out the window.

Thirty seconds later, Connor asked me what the tallest building in the world was, and after (again) reaching for my phone, I was chagrined to realize that without a screen, I had no way (in my house at least) of figuring that out.

Here are a few things we have done so far with what seriously feels like hours of found time:

• cleaned out our coat closet
• labeled our new electric piano with letters on the keys and learned half of the Level 1 piano book
• created some Fresh-Direct-box airplanes
• early-morning silent reading on the couch

Add it to the Making-Us-All-Look-Bad Files:  California mother Athena Hohnenberg sued Nutella because their marketing led her to believe their Duncan Hines frosting in an European jar was healthy.

Or maybe it’s the Making-Us-All-Look-Like-Idiots-For-Not-Doing-It-First Files, since a California judge has just ordered Ferrero Inc to pay her three million dollars.

I totally, absolutely do not get this. Sure, I have deluded myself that stirring Nutella into my children’s morning oatmeal was more refined than dumping a melted Snickers bar in there. But I did so fully aware that I was kidding myself. When the nutritional information is right there on the side of the jar, I’m not sure how you can argue that it’s Nutella’s fault if you’re in denial.

The judge agreed with Hohnenberg’s assertion that Nutella’s advertising was deliberately misleading. While Ferrero doesn’t actually come out on TV and SAY “This stuff is arteriosclerosis on a spoon,” I don’t think they ever did a better job of convincing me they were “part of this healthy breakfast” than, say, Frankenberry.

This reminds me of a similar lawsuit two and a half years ago when Baby Einstein was shockingly proven to not make babies geniuses. Apparently someone’s kid got to pre-K without diagramming sentences in German, sued Disney, and that was the end of what had been my children’s favorite age-appropriate viewing.

At that time Vicky Rideout of the Kaiser Family Foundation justified the Baby Einstein burning-at-the-stake this way:

My impression is that parents really believe these videos are good for their children, or at the very least, not really bad for them.

You know what? That is EXACTLY my impression. The Baby Einstein DVD’s were, at the very least, “not really bad” for my children. Not compared to a lot of other stuff on television. And I feel the same way about Nutella: relax. It’s not poison in a jar. If you didn’t bother reading the label on what you were feeding your children, that’s your shortcoming. Don’t ruin the chocolatey goodness for the rest of us.

Do you think we need to be protected from Nutella or Baby Einstein? Did you believe their claims or find them misleading?