The Family That Reads Together

I react to the mail the way the citizens do in the Music Man when the Wells Fargo wagon comes to town. I've even been known to sing when a package arrives.

The House in the Night was a gift for my 4 yo, The Wizard of Why. He liked the story and the pictures and I think it's absolutely wonderful. The whole book is printed in yellow and black.

I remember the first time I heard the name "Potter." I was living in Lesotho, a small country in the middle of South Africa that most of my friends had always thought was a lake. (It's not.) I was reading a comic in some American news magazine about the then-upcoming presidential elections and one character was saying to another. "How about this Potter fellow?" Potter, I remember thinking. I don't think I know him. I took from the tone of the cartoon (and the field of candidates at the time) that the author was simply saying he didn't like the current candidates, but I had no idea he was proposing a boy wizard...as popular as Harry Potter got and as quickly as he got there, he hadn't made it to the middle of my plateaued country at that time.

Fast-forward to today, long after I've read each and every brilliant Potter story, long after I've sat entranced through every minute of all the movies, to my recent Christmas present from my parents I received with no less excitement than my first bike, a shiny red one that waited for me at the bottom of the stairs one glorious Christmas morning. I now own (and have already shipped across the country, lugged up a flight of stairs, and stuffed into an already too-small condo) the complete Harry Potter. I've already opened the first book (and read it and closed it again). The second one will come soon...my husband was a little worried he wouldn't see me until all seven had been thoroughly devoured. It's an obsession I feel good about: it's one my kids can mimic to their hearts content.

I know the future is here and that it doesn't involve hardcover books, at least not in the mainstream. And I know that the people in the beach chairs next to me can fit thousands of books on their slim electronic devices. And I have nothing against that. But on my latest vacation, my oversized suitcase had two giant hardcover books (Ann Patchett's State of Wonder and Chad Harbach's Art of Fielding). Both of them were absolutely gorgeous, exquisite, fantastic novels. I lugged them around in my beach bag and I enjoyed every pound of paper I leafed through. I gained arm muscles holding the epic stories in the air over my lounge chair, changing the angle of my arms to match the sun.

And now I hold my new Potter books. I love the brilliant covers. I love the weight in my hands. I imagine the world will move one. I imagine hardcover books will be a collectible item one day. But that's okay. I'm already collecting them.

What about you? Are you for books or e-readers or both? And what about for your kids? Will you be getting them kindles or i-pads? Or sticking to the trees?

I associate holidays with food. Thanksgiving means my dad's stuffing, my sister's rolls, my grandma's scalloped corn. Christmas means my dad's mom's brown sugar cookies, my mom's coconut macaroons (which are also recycled for use during Passover) and fudge. Hannukah (yes, I celebrate both and thus get to eat twice as much!) means crispy latkes which I like best with rosemary, smothered in applesauce. And small donut holes, made with a nice sour-tasting yoghurt.

One thing I love about being in the kitchen in the holidays is that every dish reminds me of a person, a time, and a reason to celebrate. I remember making fudge with my mom to pass out to the teachers at school. I remember sitting down at big family Thanksgiving tables, which we did again recently with a whole new generation eating (okay, mostly spitting out) pureed chicken along with the rest of us (the rest of us, to be clear, were spitting nothing out). And dishes get added over the years: my brother-in-law comes up with the creamiest mashed potatoes you've ever had the pleasure of putting in your mouth, my aunt makes the classic mince meat pie, which some of us have never even heard of, and I borrow a recipe from the Neely's for some chocolate pecan pie.

I'm excited now to add my own toddler's additions to our table as he cooks alongside me, sometimes in his own play kitchen and sometimes in my more functional, if less cute, one. Whether he's stirring wooden vegetables or a real pot of simmering sauce (yes we are careful not to get too close), it's my favorite place to be with him. My son's favorite thing of all time to make is Gingerbread men. This is partly because they are a fairy tale character and he loves all things fairy tale. It's party because he got a humongous cookie cutter on Christmas last year so he can make really big ones. And it's partly because they are absolutely delicious! I know that time in the kitchen is good for him. It teaches him where food comes from, how to provide for himself, and encourages him to be a little more experimental with his eating. So even if we are making sugary treats, I feel pretty good about it.

What are your favorite holiday dishes? Any food that you like you make with your own kids? Please share! And if you want to give a great gift to a budding chef this holiday season, check out this kids' cookbook that I blogged about over at The Family That Reads Together.

Nutritionists hear this: I am no longer listening! I've read many times that we shouldn't use the old-fashioned dessert bribe to get our kids to eat their dinner. They tell us not to tell a kid how many bites to take. Basically, they want to make sure that sweets don't end up as the prize and savory foods the pain you have to endure to get to the prize. And they don't want us to dictate a number of bites because they don't want food to be an emotional/power issue.

Well, I've followed this advice for three years now. But I'm giving up. Officially. As of this week. Because here's the thing. Dinner is already the thing you have to endure and dessert is, in the words of my son, "special." His taste buds figured that out all by themselves without me holding out dessert as the prize. And second news flash: dinner is also already an emotional/power issue. Just watch my son purposely dump an entire cup of milk on the floor and try to tell me otherwise.

So I'm changing things up. Today, for example, you don't get the homemade pumpkin doughnuts if you don't eat the polenta. And at least 10 bites of the lentll-squash soup. And the entire potato-spinach ball.

I've been doing this for a week and so far, I like the results. He ate the spinach ball, and he didn't choke to death. He ate some of the soup, even if he did complain the whole time that it wasn't "plain tomato soup" like he prefers. He ate a great deal of the polenta. And I think this is a good thing. Because something else the nutritionists tell us is that the more you eat something, the more you like it. Which makes sense, right? Otherwise, why do toddlers in other countries loves spices my kid would never touch?

The one advice I do like and will try to continue to follow is that I don't make a second dinner for my son; if he doesn't want the fried rice or the chicken soup or the quinoa, he doesn't eat. He hasn't starved to death and I haven't been acting the part of short-order cook, so those are the positives. There's a lot he does eat and a lot he doesn't and these seem to change week to week and month to month. One thing I am glad I do is keep putting those foods on the table--you never know when (last week) he's going to gobble down a whole plate of asparagus after letting it sit silently for all these years.

So, for the record, that's what we are doing. No second dinners. No dessert if you don't eat dinner. Five more bites of mashed potato. And for this week, he's eating more of his dinner now, which I consider a good thing. But readers, I want to know what you think, too. Am I making a big mistake?

And we all got to eat fresh hot doughnuts tonight after dinner, which I also consider a good thing. In fact, now that the kids are in bed and I don't have to worry about being a good role model, I might have another one. Or two.

And let me know your ideas...what works in your table to get the veggies eaten and the taste buds trained?

I remember my Grandma's kitchen. I remember the batter dripping off the spoon. I remember when I was first allowed to lick it off and thinking I was the luckiest person in the whole world. I don't remember what it was--brownies? chocolate cake? cookies? Does it even matter? It was delicious!

Today, I cook with my son. He has been counting down the days until Halloween since about July. He might be the only kid in the country who was cheering for the end of summer. "When does fall start?" he would ask me every morning in August. His three-year-old mind doesn't quite have a grasp on the difference between days, weeks, months, and seasons, but he does know this: fall comes after summer and Halloween is in the fall. And he gets to dress up on Halloween. So he kept asking the question.

Personally, I loved the question. Fall is my favorite season; it always has been and always will be. I get to put on warm boots, wear sweats, drink hot chocolate, and light a fire. I have so many memories of the fall and am so excited to be passing them along to another generation.

And now, as we get ready for my son's Halloween party, he asks with a smile if he can try the gooey chocolate batter even before we bake the cookies. I can tell he expects me to say no. When I say yes, his eyes light up with the happiness of having won the lottery. When I hand him the beater to lick, he almost can't believe his luck. And for the next ten minutes, he enjoys the sugary gooeyness while I line the cookie sheet with drops of our homemade batter.

I look outside at the wind rustling the almost-orange leave of the trees. I look back at my son's chocolate-covered face. In a moment, I can see the leaves at my Grandmother's house and the bowl of chocolate in her kitchen. The breeze picks up outside and I can almost see the leaves again, at another time, and is that my son, my 3-year-old, with his own son or maybe a granddaughter? But then he asks for more and the moment is gone.

But I know just as sure as the next generation of trees will drop their leaves that the next generation of kids will drop some batter on the floor as they lick the spoons. And if I can pass along nothing else, I think that will be perfect.

If I have a parenting philosophy, it would be the following: never do anything for your kids they can do for themselves. Like all good rules, this one is made to be broken at appropriate times. But it is definitely the rule I try to live by.

Of course, it has some considerable downsides. A few things come to mind: the time my son came upstairs the first time we let him downstairs by himself and said "PARENTS, there is HOT SAUCE all over the house." (I'm not sure where he got it, but he calls us "Parents" usually when he's done something wrong or really needs some attention. This was an example of both, I suppose.)  Going downstairs to investigate, we found that, indeed, he had poured hot sauce all over the kitchen floor. Another example: letting him pour the ingredients for the cookie dough all by himself. That was messy. I can count a lot of other things: broken cups, marker on the table, the expression on my in-laws face when they see that, at 2, he was allowed to use his own butter knife to spread his favorite ingredient (jam) on his second favorite ingredient (Loveless Cafe biscuits). Certainly this philsophy has made for a messy few years.

Letting kids do things for themselves also takes 10 times as long. Waiting for him to put on his shoes, for example, usually means I could have read an entire book in the time it takes us to leave the house. I also wait for him to open his car door, climb in, and put his five-point harness on. It seems to take forever, and sometimes, I have to bite my lip, reminding myself not to tell him to hurry up, that if he could go faster, it would mean he was growing up, and really, I don't want THAT part to hurry up.

But there are a few highlights, and yesterday was one of my favorites. I was in the kitchen making dinner.  My boys were in the family room, the baby on his mat, the 3-year-old playing nearby. My 3yo came into the kitchen and said, with urgency, "Mom! I need a spit-up rag!" I gave him a rag, and he went back in to the family room and starting wiping the carpet. "BABY," he said in a fairly exasperated voice, "this is why I need you to NOT spit up on the carpet!" He finished cleaning it up and gave me back the rag.

And so I am about to raise another one, just as messy, starting with the spit up and moving on in a few years to the hot sauce. But at least I know that I'm not only teaching them to make messes (which, hey, is an important part of the creative process anyway right?), I'm also teaching them to clean up.

My true love writes a blog, bakes biscuits, and lives at the Nashville Public Library.  Oh, and he's a dog.  A puppet dog.

I've always loved the phrase "it takes a village to raise a child". I like the powerful community implications, the way that it mandates a certain kind of connection between people--even complete strangers. The connection implied is one I often fear the world is losing: even as the globe shrinks, even as online users compile Facebook friends by the hundreds and Twitter followers by the thousands, it still feels that we are losing meaningful touch with one another.  It feels like we are losing our "village".

When I became a teacher, this phrase took on practical importance in my life, as I watched struggling students and saw a common thread in those who found the path to success. That thread was a village. When students parents, teachers, and administrators worked together, success was always faster and easier than when the parties played on different teams, or worse, never came together at all.

When I became a parent for the first time, the phrase once again played in my mind as I watched my own family, my in-laws, teachers, coaches, and friends all take a role in the growing-up of my child. In the best of circumstances, I would stop thinking of him as "my" child and think of him as the child of all of those players, a child of the whole village, preferably a child of the world.

The village appeared again when my second son was born. I was the one with the belly. I was the one at whom total strangers smiled and for whom total strangers moved so I could sit down. But I was not the only one in the story.

When the time came, there was the willing babysitter who came over in the middle of the night. And then, waiting for me at Vanderbilt hospital, there was a whole village of strangers. After my husband half-carried me through the halls to the delivery room, I was immediately swarmed by nurses, my midwife, my husband, and my doula. For them, it was all about me--telling me when to breathe, feeding me ice cubes, cheering me on. But for me, it was all about them--I was hanging on to their every word as if for dear life. And, in the end, I guess it was for dear life--the dear, precious life, of the small bundle that was born that day. Even though I don't live in a small village, even though I delivered a baby within the white walls of a large institution, I found the support of a village of people, people whose names I will never know, but whose spirits I will never forget.

I can only hope that I will continue to find such villages as I raise my sons and that they will find them for themselves and their own families. I truly believe it is how humans are meant to live.

When is it okay to read the part about the wolf eating the pigs?

Two fairy tale books are a recent source of joy in my home: Mary Engelbreit's Fairy Tales: Twelve Timeless Treasures and the matching volume Mary Engelbreit' s Nursery Tales: A Treasury of Children's Classics. I looked for a long time before finding a good fairy tale book. I wanted one with stories short enough for an almost 3-year-old. But so many of the books I looked at had shortened the stories so much that they made little sense. There were so many like this it made me wonder who was doing the editing and if they actually read the books before they printed them.

The only other options I found at first were Disney versions, and well, I think he'll get enough of that in the movies he's bound to see. I mean, do I want him to grow up like my husband thinking that the Little Mermaid is a Disney story and asking me with a blank stare "Hans Christian Who" ?

But I love Mary Engelbreit's version. The stories are each about ten pages long, give or take, with gorgeous illustrations and not too much text per page. They have plot, character development, and stay well within my toddler's attention span. Perfect for reading two or three before bedtime. The only (minor) gripe I have is that sometimes more than one action happens per page and only one is illustrated which makes it hard for a really young reader to visualize.

There's another plus to these books: they take out the unnecessary violence without ruining the true nature of the story. But that brings me to an important question--how much violence, death, and misery is appropriate to share with a small child? After all, fairy tales can be a good, fairly safe way to introduce such concepts. Do we really need to pretend that the wolf didn't eat the pigs and the last pig didn't catch the wolf in his boiling cauldron? And if so, for how long should we pretend that?

Another of my favorite picture books is Jon Scieszka's True Story of the Three Little Pigs. I've used it in elementary classrooms in the past to show different perspectives and point of views. But when reading it to my toddler recently, I found myself editing the words as I read out loud. He might have eaten the pigs in this version, but my toddler is not yet aware of that. I was embarrassed that I felt the need to do this, but that's just how the story came out of my mouth as I read it.

Wanting to know just how much I was leaving out, I did some research on earlier fairy tales.  Most of the versions are fairly similar to what we read today.  But one thing caught my eye?  You know the stereotypical evil step mother?  Well apparently it used to be the evil mother but sometime (a long, long time ago--maybe the 1800s?) that got changed to step mother to avoid frightening the kids.  So I guess every generation has its limits.  The question is--what are the limits for our generation and how do we know they are appropriate?

What do you think? How much do you expose your children to and at what age? I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts.