Winning fights by not fighting

I was sitting on the couch. Sam was on my lap.

I had my right arm around his chest, firm but not too tight. My left arm was coming up from underneath, controlling his legs so he couldn't whack a heel into my groin (something we dads have to think about, and yes, it has happened, several times).

Sam was in a full-blown, howling, Linda-Blair-spitting-pea-soup rage. He was fighting me with every muscle in his little toddler body, kicking my thighs, pushing at my hands, straining, growling, snarling and spitting out "Mommy! Mommy!" in a demanding shriek.

"Mommy's right there, Sweetie," I kept murmuring in his ear. "She is ready to love you, but we need you to calm down."

When he paused for breath I could feel his little heart rabbiting along, pittery-pittery-pittery. Then, sensing some slack in my grip, he'd throw himself back into battle, like an animal attacking the wire of the cage.

"It's not going to work, Sam," I would murmur. "You're very strong, but I have 200 pounds on you. You're not going to win. But we love you, and if you calm down you can get down."

And even if the midst of the fray, I couldn't help thinking back to the fall of 2004.

My wife and I were, in early November, a few weeks from getting engaged. I was working election night, and was to meet a candidate near my wife’s home. So I stopped in to say hi to her and her boys.

I could see instantly that her then-eight-year-old was in a dark, steamy mood – a common state for him – so I grabbed him and pulled him onto my lap, trying to tease him out of it. “Give me a hug!” I said, wrestling him around.

I might as well have teased a Michael Vick’s pit bull. His scowl deepened and he immediately tried to yank himself loose. I hung on, still thinking that a smile was just beneath the surface.

I was wrong.

He yanked again, growled when I wouldn’t let go and spat out an order: “LET! ME! GO!”

Now, I don’t know about all of you out there, but I’m not really big on taking orders from kids. Maybe it’s some outsized male pride alpha-dog peeing-on-bushes thing, but, well, it’s just not happening. 

“Ask me nicely, and I’ll let you go.”

There was a problem with that, though. My eight-year-old eventual stepson had a rather sizable male pride alpha-dog peeing-on-bushes thing himself. He emerged from the womb that way, so my wife tells me, furious from birth. To ask nicely would be to lose, to yield, and yielding… well, it was just not happening.

So we sat there. He moaned, snarled, argued, fought, then started back at moaning again. I kept telling him, over and over, that I was not trying to offend him by hugging him, was not being mean to him or hurting him, and that he had had no reason to be angry in the first place. I deserved better treatment, I said, and I insisted that he ask nicely.

I was quiet. I was polite. I was not emotional. But I told him that not only was I bigger and stronger than him, I was also more stubborn.

My wife, meanwhile, sat at the table with a troubled look. I could tell she hated what was going on, and was not entirely sure she was in support of what I was doing.  She took my back, though, telling her son that he should, indeed, simply be polite.

After an hour – long enough that I was getting worried that I would have to give in or miss my assignment – he finally complied, mumbled a begrudged “would you please put me down?”

I’d like to say that it was a seminal moment, that from that moment he acknowledged my leadership and didn’t try to fight me anymore. It would be a lie, though. He is stubborn and tempestuous still, and that night was not the last time we engaged in such a battle of wills. But on some level, I think he does know that he’s not in charge, and cannot control his mother and me through the force of his anger. And I think that is a very good thing.

And what of my wife? “I was going to let you do what you thought you had to,” she said – a lukewarm endorsement at best. “I hated seeing him so frustrated, and I don’t him to hate you.”

So as I sat with Sam – frustrated for sure, and in his toddler way probably hating me with great fury – I wondered what her thoughts were. I had a strong sense that I was doing the right thing, but would she approve? Would she agree?

Finally Sam either gave up or simply ran out of energy. I kept my standard for “calming down” relatively low – five deep breaths and down he went.

My wife answered my questions a few minutes later, over coffee at the kitchen table.

“I love what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re being firm, but gentle, not getting upset. You’re showing him that he’s not in charge, and this his anger will not do him any good. It was wonderful.”

Made my day, that did.

So much of what we do as parents is by instinct – it certainly is for me, anyway, even after almost 17 years in the business. And sometimes I don’t know if my instincts are right.

But I think about that moment, and it seems like what was coming through to Sam was a very simple message: That I love him but he’s not in charge, and that nothing he does will change either.

And that, I would submit, is not a bad general statement of what parenting is all about.

Brian David can be reached at bdavid@post-gazette.com or at 412-722-0086.

Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/burghdad/archive/2008/09/05/winning-fights-by-not-fighting.aspx

A teachable moment for my 17-year-old

This has certainly been a week of teachable moments.

My oldest daughter just turned 17 and we've been watching developments regarding another 17-year-old who's been in the news - Bristol Palin.

I asked my daughter last night what she and her friends had been saying about Bristol, who we learned this week is five months pregnant.

"Stupid. Stupid. Stupid," she said. "And her mother doesn't want sex education in the schools - stupid."

Her mother, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, supports teaching only abstinence in the schools and opposes abortion. In her announcements this week about her daughter she put a positive, almost wholesome spin, on the situation. Bristol will keep the baby, due in December, and will marry her beau.

Perhaps my daughter's negative reaction is shaped by what she sees in the city schools. Not every teenage pregnancy is embraced by supportive parents and not every pregnant teenager finishes high school and goes on to lead an independent, productive life.

She said this is the reality most of the time.

A teachable moment indeed.

Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/09/05/a-teachable-moment-for-my-17-year-old.aspx

Kids and chores

Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/08/28/kids-and-chores.aspx

Toothpaste saves the day

      So on Sunday night my husband and I were watching "Mad Men", that magnificent AMC show set in a 1960s' Madison Avenue advertising firm. (If you haven't seen it, start -- It's the best show on television)

     Anyway, as we're watching scenes with a light background we noticed something funny on the TV screen. Lines of red magic marker. Four of them. GASP! This is our new flat-screen TV.

     It's not like we have three toddlers. We have three teens. Who put them there? As of this writing nobody yet has fessed up, but the more immediate issue was, how would we get rid of the marks.

     We wet a paper towel and gently rubbed the screen. Nothing. We tried a little natural cleaner. Nothing. It looked like the ink was deeply imbedded in the screen. Yikes!

    My husband angrily stomped upstairs to bed.

     When in doubt, I Google. The solution, it turns out, is toothpaste. Dab a little regular toothpaste (not gel) on the lines. Wait a few seconds and gently rub with a moist towel. Voila! They vamished. I couldn't believe it.

      I just had to share this tip. And from the length of responses on a Web site I found, we're not the only ones who had children who tried to express their inner-Picasso on their parents' LCD computer screens or flat-screen TVs.

     Do you have your own tips on how to get rid of magic or permanent marker on TVs as well as other surfaces? Please send them along.

     [Parent Exchange now accepts direct commenting. Please link to register, and you can create your own anonymous screen name and even an avatar for your responses. Tell us what's on your mind.]  

When is your child ready for that next step?

Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/08/22/when-is-your-child-ready-for-that-next-step.aspx

A Splash of Freedom

“Ducks!” Sam said, and rushed to the side of the little pool.

Yellow bathtub ducks were circling in a blue plastic pool. The water was a worrisome gray-green color, and the ducks looked a mite moldy themselves. Sam didn’t care; he grabbed one of the floating toys, shouted “duck!” (which could have been either description or warning) and fired it back into the water with a splash.

“How about a prize for the little guy?” the carnival barker said. “Everyone’s a winner.”

Sam grabbed again, shouted again, threw again. The barker leaned in conspiratorially, as though Sam would understand what he was saying. “Basically, it’s how much you want to spend,” he said. “The prizes hanging up” – there were inflated plastic bats and figures and whatnot clipped to the pole in the pool’s center– “are $5 and the ones in the bin” – a wire mesh cage on the ground – “are $2. They pick a duck, and they win.”

I pondered. Should I just say “no,” or should I launch into a diatribe on my philosophic objections to the Barney-ized, self-esteem-driven “everyone’s a winner” approach to life, which has yielded a generation which believes the world owes them a car, a cell phone and pocket money?

Then I realized I hard a better excuse. “I don’t have any money,” I said. “My wife has it all.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I have a wife too.”

Sam was still throwing ducks, crying out in triumph at each splash.

“You mind if he plays with the ducks?” I asked.

“No, that’s fine. Maybe it’ll drum up business.”

So for the next 10 minutes I stood watching humanity stream by in its bulgy, sun-burnt glory while Sam threw ducks and celebrated. And it did seem to drum up business, with other children wondering what the curly-haired not-yet-two-year-old was up to.

It was, in a way, an act of surrender.

My wife and I had taken Sam to the fair with visions of him laughing through the kiddie rides, petting bunnies and horsies and goats, bouncing on one of those big inflatable moonwalk things, and generally soaking in the sights and sounds.

It had not quite been so.

He tolerated the carousel. The bouncy moonwalk thing cost extra, and I’m cheap. We did, however, buy him a pony ride for an extra $3. He tried to escape halfway through, clinging to me as I tried to hold him on the saddle.

So we headed toward the animal barns, only to be waylaid by a display of tractors. Sam climbed on a little John Deere and perched in the bright yellow seat. “Tractor!” he said, bouncing, then clambered back off to climb on a bigger John Deere.

I could have stayed there a while, dreaming of a beasty little tractor with a front end loader and a backhoe – toys for boys, I’m telling you – but my wife was committed to the bunnies/horsies/goats vision, so we dragged him off toward the barns.

Now, the barns at the fair are mostly long low sheds, designed for single rows of cows. The cows are tied facing in toward the feeding troughs. So when you go “see the animals,” what you mostly see is row after row of cow derrieres.

Ick.

The horse barn was a bit better. Sam got up close with a couple of noses through the bars of the stalls. Then he apparently startled a big draft horse, which spread its lips and bared its teeth. It’s lips were about the size of Sam’s entire head and its teeth were all yellow and crooked and horror-movie-looking, and that was the end of the horse barn.

He was briefly intrigued by a caboose sitting on a stretch of rail. “Thomas!” he called out. But the caboose lacked Thomas the Tank Engine’s gentle personality, and that didn’t last long either.

Finally, realizing that I could not predict what would catch Sam’s fancy, I just put him down and followed him while my wife was off in search of funnel cake.

He wandered through the crowd, staring up at people and sometimes saying “hi!” It was fun to watch them laugh, then look around for the attending parent. Seeing me, they would laugh again.

Then Sam found a dusty driveway, sat down and started pouring dust on my shoes. That got boring (for me) after a few minutes, and I nudged him along until he found the ducks.

I got different looks from other parents at the duck pool. They would watch Sam splashing in the water (he was soaked when we finally left), then look up at me with an expression of vague disapproval.

Then they would hand Willie (by this time we knew the barker’s name) their $2 or $5 and send the children off to choose prizes. Sometimes they did not even bother with the picking-up-a-duck part.

Then off they’d go, with the children looking back at Sam with expressions that said, “I’d rather be doing what he’s doing.”

And it struck me as I stood there that maybe in my desperation to keep Sam happy I had actually done the right thing. Rather than buying him a prize, I had let him enjoy himself. Rather than forcing my idea of fun on him, I had let him show me what his idea of fun was. And rather than reflexively saying “no!” to the splashing, and I had asked instead what harm it could do (other than exotic diseases from the water, of course).

And you know what? Contrary to what the T-shirts say, in this case freedom really was free.

Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/burghdad/archive/2008/08/20/a-splash-of-freedom.aspx

Laughing with my child

I am told that when I write about my son with special needs, people get all teary-eyed.

Well, now. I do have to correct that.

Yes, there are many challenges in raising special children. But there are also many opportunities to laugh. And there are many times when he leaves me just smiling at the touching things he does.

My 11-year-old son leaves me laughing several times a day, as his observations and struggles with language sweetly bump together.

"Is it constipated?" he asked me the other day when I was putting a hot pack on my sore arm. "It's not good for your body to be constipated."

"That's right," I said. "But my arm is not constipated."

"Does it have an eye infection?"

When my husband left the bathroom fully dressed except for his shirt, he was greeted by our son in the hallway.

"Why are you half-naked?" he said to my husband, somewhat angrily, showing he felt some modicum of decency was being violated.

"I miss you so much I will blow up with gas," he wrote to me in a note while I was at work one day.

In another: "Mom + mom = kiss."

With a little heart next to it.

He loves hearts; in fact, expressing his love of all things is one of his hallmarks. His teachers tell me they have rarely met a sweeter boy, a compliment I cherish even more as he moves into his teens and kids get sometimes not-so-sweet.

I returned home from work one day to find the refrigerator door covered with dozens of tiny hearts he had drawn on computer paper and cut out. Each heart said something like "I love you moon." "I love Pennsylvania."

"I love New York."

Recently, I had to confiscate his beloved GameCube because he refused to adhere to bed time rules. I told him once he regularly stayed in bed all night, he could have it back.

One Monday morning he greeted me early and said, "Can I have my GameCube?"

"No, you didn't stay in bed," I said.

"FINE!"

He stomped back upstairs.

He came down 5 minutes later.

"It's Tuesday morning. I slept all night.

"Can I have my GameCube?"

We have some idea of the things that make him burst into laughter. Frequently they are sight gags. He adores "SpongeBob," and the more visual the story, the more he laughs.

He laughs hardest at a silly Looney Tune in which Daffy Duck does a take on Carmen Miranda, dancing and gyrating around the cartoon room with a fruit basket on his head. Daffy's funny, but nothing's funnier than my son giggling so hard he turns red and nearly falls off his chair.

Unless he is singing. He's head-over-heels with female singers, such as Carrie Underwood, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis. His iPod is loaded with their hits.

One day recently I went to check on him in his room. I could hear him singing in there, one flat note after another. I think it was Lewis' "Bleeding Love." He seemed to have his iPod and ear buds on; I could hear tinny music.

His door was locked.

I knocked. The singing stopped. He unlocked the door and peeked out through a crack.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"I don't know."

"Ok."

He shut and locked the door. The singing resumed.

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Imperfect parenting

The other week I had a dream, one I've had for years and years. It's not a nightmare exactly, but the dream is always the same: I'm about to graduate from college, but somehow, through stupidity or laziness, I have neglected to amass enough course credits to graduate.

A rush of voices crowd into my dreaming brain, urgently asking: What am I going to tell my parents, who spent so much money on my tuition? What am I going to do without a college degree? How am I going to get a job? Why can't I talk the college dean into letting me take summer school? What will become of my life? Will I ever amount to anything?

The voices become louder and louder until I wake up, shaking, and suddenly, in a warm rush of gratitude, I remember: I am 54 years old. I am married. I am gainfully employed, with a job that I like very much. I live in a nice house, with a nice garden I made myself.

And most of all, I have three teenagers.

This last fact is the most important part you need to know about me in this blog. I have 16½ -year-old twins (one boy, one girl) and a 14½-year old daughter. They are less exhausting than when they were 2 years old and a newborn, but they make me worry more. They do, however, provide me with priceless material every day for this blog - as do all the wonderful publicists out there who keep sending me free books on raising teenagers and calling me with story pitches.

Yesterday wasn't a very teen-age-ish day on the free book front. I did receive one in the mail titled, "The White Trash Mom's Handbook: Embrace Your Inner Trailerpark, Forget Perfection, Resist Assimilation into the PTA, Stay Sane, and Keep Your Sense of Humor," by Michelle Lamar and Molly Wedland (St. Martin's Griffin, 240 pages, $13.95)

Besides the annoying title - just one more way to poke fun at people who live in mobile homes - its parenting philosophy is right out of the "Slacker Mom" school, and a clear reaction to my baby boomer generation's obsessive parenting style. Nothing wrong with that, of course. In fact, I recall writing about a similar book just two weeks ago, Anna Johnson's "The Yummy Mummy's Manifesto," which basically told new moms to relax and chill... while hanging on to one's sense of style, chic, and playfulness.

This book, the - um - "White Trash" one, says moms need to relax and chill, too, but don't worry about looking good while you're doing it. It's really less a parenting guide than a document on the ongoing class war in this nation's elementary schools between the "Muffia" - perfect moms - and women like author Michelle Lamar, who says in an excerpt published on Amazon.com's site:

"Look at all the moms in the parking lot every day. Perfect hair. Perfectly dressed. And then look at us. Well, you look pretty good...most of the time. OK, now look at me. I take my kids to school in my pajamas every day. I'm lucky if they get there on time.... It's about being imperfect as a mom and being OK with that. Embracing it! And to hell with all the perfect moms! As if!"

OK! Point taken.

There are some funny bits in it ("Do Chores Like a Teen: Load the dishwasher with only the glasses and dishes that are in the sink. Load up the dishwasher and start to run the dishwasher with only five dishes in it. Act surprised and shocked with parent stops you from completing your chore.").

But there's another book that also came in yesterday that looks a little more my speed, as the confounded mother of a 16-year-old boy: "Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men/ Understanding the Critical Years Between 16 and 26" by Michael Kimmel.

You mean I'm facing 10 more years of this?

Stay tuned.

The parent pariah

"Drop me right at the stairs. When you run, go on the back trails. Don't run up on the track or around the Oval. And then sit in the car and wait for me. Don't come up looking for me - stay in the car."

Thus were the instructions from my 14-year-old who asked that I drive her to the Schenley Oval for an evening cross-country practice ....but insisted that no one see me with her.

Yikes!

So as she bolted up the stairs to the track, my son and I headed to the park's shaded back trails for a two-mile run. Of course, my son insisted on walking several feet in front of me so that if any of his friends saw him, he wouldn't be seen with ......his mom. How mortifying.

Double Yikes!

The poor mom: adored by her younger kids as the "mostest specialest person in the world", then reviled by her teens.

Of course I remember doing the same things a zillion years ago when I was a child. If I was standing with my Sunday School class at church and my parents passed by, I'd look the other way. And I'd make my mom drop me not one, but three blocks from school.

I figured this was an American phenom until a friend of mine who was hosting an exchange student from Japan was ordered to drop her off a block from Winchester Thurston School each morning.

But sometimes kids will surprise you

A couple of years ago I helped my oldest, now 16, carry into school her snow skis because the kids were heading off to Seven Springs that afternoon. After I put down the skis in the corner of the multipurpose room, she gave me a big hug good-bye. Right there in front of everyone -- with kids and teachers all around.

Just as she put her arms around me, another parent walked in.

Triple Yikes!

How mortifying to be seen with my child!

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The R word

Oh, the uproars, the uproars! Here they come again.

The latest is over the movie, "Tropic Thunder," which liberally uses the word "retard."

It’s a spoof, but I can’t image many who advocate for the disabled are getting many laughs out of the use of "retard."

Just before this one, national radio show host Michael Savage created a outcry by saying that autism is the "illness du jour" embodied by "a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out."

How stupid is this man? Stupid enough to be called a "retard"? Gee, let’s hope only he would be mean enough to use that word.

I’ve been in the newspaper business for 28 years; I’ve been the mother of a child with special needs for 11. Pulling both of those roles together over the subject of semantics has not always been easy.

My professional training is to cut to the chase, make sure meanings are on the mark and tight headlines fit. Toss in years of working on news side, rather than, say, features (where I mostly work now), hobnobbing with grizzled veterans and I’m often enough on the block for an attitude correction. No more so than when I had my son and my smug little way of thinking that my kids would be perfect got upended.

I hate to think of years when I may not have been so sensitive. But I am also smart enough to learn, and use, lessons. Early in my career, I covered a school merger done for integration purposes. That opened my mind up to a whole other way of looking at things, not all having to do with race.

So did the first time someone explained "person first" language to me. Saying "a person with disabilties" rather than a "disabled person" shows you think of the subject as a person first, disabled secondly.

That lesson was underscored for me as I pushed to have my son mainstreamed, making sure others don’t bully him because he doesn’t always assimilate, making sure they don’t know that what he is isn’t an act at all.

I have over the years tried to make sure that when I write, when I edit, when I talk and when I observe, I am as sensitive as possible.

My career also means I respect freedom of expression. So dear old Mr. Savage has every right to be stupid as a mossback fence post. The makers of "Tropic Thunder" have every right to spoof and use a word that will make some of us shudder.

And the Arc, advocates for the mentally retarded, has every right to issue a statement against "Tropic Thunder," which its Greater Pittsburgh office did yesterday:

"In our culture, words such as ‘retard"...carry a lot of baggage from the days when people with disabilities were institutionalized...These hurtful words also create negative stereotypes that lead to discrimination and often times abuse.

"Today, children with all types of disabilities are included in all types of schools. People are included in all types of jobs. They work, they vote, they pay taxes."

I want to see "Tropic Thunder." Some of it sounds pretty funny (there’s a character called Alpa Chino, and the sendups of the movies sound delicious).

I also want to see if the use of "retard" bothers me. I’ve got to think it will.

But I have the right, too, to walk out.

And I have to right to applaud Arc, and to say, never use the word ‘retard’ around me or my son.

Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/specialkids/archive/2008/08/14/the-r-word.aspx

Thunder over the 'R' word

Oh, the uproars, the uproars! Here they come again.

The latest is over the movie, "Tropic Thunder," which liberally uses the word "retard."

It's a spoof, but I can't image many who advocate for the disabled are getting many laughs out of the use of "retard."

Just before this one, national radio show host Michael Savage created a outcry by saying that autism is the "illness du jour" embodied by "a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out."

How stupid is this man? Stupid enough to be called a "retard"? Gee, let's hope only he would be mean enough to use that word.

I've been in the newspaper business for 28 years; I've been the mother of a child with special needs for 11. Pulling both of those roles together over the subject of semantics has not always been easy.

My professional training is to cut to the chase, make sure meanings are on the mark and tight headlines fit. Toss in years of working on news side, rather than, say, features (where I mostly work now), hobnobbing with grizzled veterans and I'm often enough on the block for an attitude correction. No more so than when I had my son and my smug little way of thinking that my kids would be perfect got upended.

I hate to think of years when I may not have been so sensitive. But I am also smart enough to learn, and use, lessons. Early in my career, I covered a school merger done for integration purposes. That opened my mind up to a whole other way of looking at things, not all having to do with race.

So did the first time someone explained "person first" language to me. Saying "a person with disabilties" rather than a "disabled person" shows you think of the subject as a person first, disabled secondly.

That lesson was underscored for me as I pushed to have my son mainstreamed, making sure others don't bully him because he doesn't always assimilate, making sure they don't know that what he is isn't an act at all.

I have over the years tried to make sure that when I write, when I edit, when I talk and when I observe, I am as sensitive as possible.

My career also means I respect freedom of expression. So dear old Mr. Savage has every right to be stupid as a mossback fence post. The makers of "Tropic Thunder" have every right to spoof and use a word that will make some of us shudder.

And the Arc, advocates for the mentally retarded, has every right to issue a statement against "Tropic Thunder," which its Greater Pittsburgh office did yesterday:

"In our culture, words such as ‘retard"...carry a lot of baggage from the days when people with disabilities were institutionalized...These hurtful words also create negative stereotypes that lead to discrimination and often times abuse.

"Today, children with all types of disabilities are included in all types of schools. People are included in all types of jobs. They work, they vote, they pay taxes."

I want to see "Tropic Thunder." Some of it sounds pretty funny (there's a character called Alpa Chino, and the sendups of the movies sound delicious).

I also want to see if the use of "retard" bothers me. I've got to think it will.

But I have the right, too, to walk out.

And I have to right to applaud Arc, and to say, never use the word ‘retard' around me or my son.

[Parent Exchange now accepts direct commenting. Please link to register, and you can create your own anonymous screen name and even an avatar for your responses. Tell us what's on your mind.]  

Learning to know what you want

It happens almost every day.

Sam sits in his high chair, ignoring the food on his tray. He looks up at the cupboard, stretches out his arms and utters his first and best sentence:

"I want!"

 "What do you want, Sam?"

 "Pleeeeaasssse?"

"But I don't know what you want!"

"Pleeeaaassse?"

 At that point we begin grabbing boxes and bags and pieces of fruit. "You want an apple?"

 "I want! PppllllleeeEEEAAASE?" he says, and starts pumping his arms in demand.

"You want a piece of cheese?"

"PLEASE!" And he starts to cry.

Most times, we never do figure out what it was he wanted. We end up giving him a handful of peanuts or pretzels or blueberries, and he'll look at them with an expression of surprise. It's clear that the peanuts or pretzels or blueberries were not in his mind, but he likes them. And he eats them.

Personally, I don't know that there really is anything specific he wants when he does that. I think maybe it's more a statement of being, his ultimate expression of self. It reminds me of Rene Descartes, the French philosopher who demonstrated his own existence in unforgettable words: "I think, therefore I am."

Sam's version would be "I want, therefore nothing. I just want."

He wants his toys, wants books, wants berries and soap bubbles and Teletubbies, wants to throw balls in the yard and pebbles in the creek, wants his diaper changed, wants us to leave his diaper off mid-change, wants to climb up stairs, wants to climb down stairs, wants to be picked up, wants to be put down, wants to cuddle, wants to be free, wants to make us laugh, wants us to make him laugh, and when he doesn't know what he wants I think he has a logical fallback: He starts wanting to know what he wants.

It all sounds terribly selfish, and sometimes, as his father, it feels that way too. He wears me out with his wanting sometimes. And if he were an adult or even an older kid, it would be selfish - don't we all know a few people who simply pursue what they want, with thoughts only of how to get it? And aren't they horrible?

But he's not an adult or an older kid - he's 20 months old, and is only now putting together the building blocks of language and concept that are necessary to transcend the state of pure wanting. And that makes it OK. A starting point, to be sure, but OK.

The fact is, sweet and cute and innocent as infants are, they only know how to want: They want to be fed, want to be clean and dry and warm, want to be held and rocked.

Do they think? Surely their brains are in hyperdrive, processing like mad - but they have no language, no symbolism, no tools to form connections, nothing to define the jumbled mass of sensation that floods them constantly. They utterly lack the mental capacity to separate their actions from their desires.

I look at Sam now, and absolutely marvel at what he's learned, how far he's come from that state. He will stand in front of us, looking all serious, then just let his legs go and collapse on the floor. "Funny!" he says from the floor as we laugh.

How did he form the concept of "funny"? Surely that qualifies as thinking, the way we adults define it.

He knows to say "please" for what he wants. He's even able - with great effort - to stop fussing and use it. He's learning that sometimes we simply say no to what he wants, and that he's not going to change our minds. He can accept it, though it generally takes a while.

That all takes thought. Descartes would recognize it.

And armed with such simple thoughts, I think he's already taking the first tiny steps on the lifelong journey we're all making - a journey which is, essentially, away from wanting.

Sam's little mantra - "I want!" - has really gotten me thinking. How much of the trouble in our lives, the struggle, comes from wanting? We want big houses, European cars, flat stomachs, full heads of hair, perky breasts. We want Caribbean vacations, sons who are quarterbacks, daughters who are Homecoming queens. We spend a whole lot of time working to get those things.

And we want more mental things too. We want self-fulfillment, want to experience joy, want to be moved, want to be liked, loved, respected. We want some poorly defined state called "happiness."

But are those things we can achieve? Can we stretch our arms toward the cupboard, say "I want!" and get love, respect, happiness? Or are we, like Sam, really just wanting to know what we want?

Pondering this brought me to one of the most famous "wants" of all: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

I always took that, line, the beginning of the 23^rd Psalm, as meaning that the Lord would provide for me, give me what I needed if I would follow him, let him take care of me.

Perhaps, though, what it really means is that if I let the Lord be my shepherd, he will help me to "not want," that rather than satisfying my wants he will help me stop wanting, help me stop ceaselessly seeking things that are not and to instead enjoy what is.

And perhaps, if I can grasp that, I can help Sam with his own journey. I really want to do that.

Parenting advice that will make you smile, not feel guilty

 I get a lot of free parenting books sent to me at the Post-Gazette, some useful (" The Baby Food Bible," "Raising a Bilingual Child," "Why Bad Grades Happen To Good Kids"), some not so much ("Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness).

Today, though, I struck real free-book-gold: Sandra Tsing Loh's new book, "Mother on Fire," (Crown Publishing Group $23.00) finally arrived.

Ms. Tsing Loh, a 40-something parent, performance artist, author, NPR commentator and regular columnist for the Atlantic Monthly, is one of the funniest, smartest writers on what it means to be a mom today. Especially what it means to be a 40-something mother driving a "Cheez-It-encrusted minivan" with flabby upper arms in a city (Los Angeles) where the public schools are mostly terrible, where the Prius-driving parents preach the value of public education but send their kids to an expensive private school, and where, during a year long odyssey to get her own daughter into one, she becomes a passionate activist and advocate for Guavatorina, a local school where most of the kids speak Spanish and qualify for free lunches.

It's quite a journey, one interrupted by musings on the things that really matter to moms: the proliferation of costly skin-care products that don't work; her father's disdain for her life as an artist; and $10 Target pants ("Are they running pants, exercise pants, pajama pants?") that are the ubiquitous Mother of Small Children uniform.

For those of you who want to know more about Sandra Tsing-Loh, check out the Q&A I did with her, here:

I remember this interview so vividly: she made me laugh so hard -- and gasp in recognition with every anecdote -- that I could hardly type.

Parents: send us your tips to get ready for school

The start of the new school year is fast approaching and with it, a whole lot of juggling of schedules and activities. We're looking for your best organization and scheduling tips that will help busy parents stay ahead of the game.

Send an e-mail with your tips and suggestions to Gretchen McKay at gmckay@post-gazette.com. Please include your name, home town, number and age of children, and home phone to gmckay@post-gazette.com.

TXT 2 b Hlthy

Today's shocker on cell phone safety should prove a huge adjustment for most people who use cell phones. This is particularly true for teens, who use phones not just to be practical, but to be cool.

Among the new warnings by UPMC's cancer guru Dr. Ronald Herberman to limit exposure to electromagnetic radiation emitted from cell phones:

-- "Do not allow children (up to age 18) to use a cell phone except for emergencies." (yeah, right)

-- "Avoid carrying your cell phone on your body at all times." (double yoi)

These warnings made a young woman who is staying at our house this week LOL!

Anyway, a walk down any street or any local mall gives you a great vantage point in seeing how teens are using cell phones. First of all, most of them keep them in their back pocket ("Avoid carrying your cell phone on your body at all times") There also are numerous clothing lines that have created special pockets just for cell phones!

Teens also are well adept at multitasking with phone in hand. At a local mall last night, there was the one-handed shopper -- phone held to ear by one hand, looking through clothes racks with the other. The one-handed payer -- phone held to ear by one hand, paying for clothes with the other. One-handed drinker -- phone held to ear by one hand, drinking from cup with the other. And of course, the one-handed driver.

In some respects these warnings will be more of a burden on older teens and adults rather than the younger set, who have almost exclusively shifted to text messaging.

Fortunately for them the cancer specialists recommend texting over talking. Just make sure you hold the phone about 3 feet from your body.

I guess it's now up to us parents to master texting so we can communicate with our children in a "healthy" way.