Friday, August 17, 2012
Introducing Children to Earth’s Protectors
I can’t remember a time when I did not know about Superman. I was introduced to comic books and comic book superheroes at a very young age, and to this day I still have my entire comic book collection, which numbers in the thousands. (Nomi is very understanding.) Naturally, I wanted Muffin and Squeaker to develop my love of superheroes. I thought I might buy them some superhero comic books, casually leave them scattered around, and let them discover the comics “on their own.” But as babies and early toddlers, Muffin and Squeaker’s first impulse was to rip pages out of books. I didn’t want them extending this impulse to my own comics. Also, superhero storytelling in comic books has changed from when I was a kid. At that time, DC Comics and …
Friday, August 3, 2012
Getting Girls Interested in STEM from an Early Age
With the recent death of Dr. Sally Ride, I have been thinking a lot about what science education was like for me as a kid and what it might be like for Muffin and Squeaker as they grow up. Muffin and Squeaker have been interested in how the world works from as early as they could ask questions. As the girls have gotten older and more mature in their understanding, Michael and I have started giving more sophisticated answers to their questions. And now they have reached a point at which we can ask them what they think the answers might be. This often means that instead of answering the same question for the tenth time in five minutes we ask Muffin, "What do you think the answer is?" As it happens, "What do you think the answer is?" is a …
Friday, July 20, 2012
Scenes from a visit to the BU Child Language Lab.
“Truck.” It seems strange to me today, but according to what my parents told me when I was in my teens, “truck” was my very first word. Apparently, I was quite fond of a toy truck my parents had gotten me, and I played with it quite a lot. So, not surprisingly, “truck” ended up being my first word. After all, it was one of the most prevalent objects in my tiny universe. I saw this sort of thing replicate itself last year when Squeaker and then Muffin spoke their first words. We fed them each a sliced banana every day, and when it came time for them to speak, “banana” was their first word. It doesn’t hurt, I suppose, that “banana” is a rather easy word to pronounce. As all of our friends know, Nomi and I are fascinated with language. Nomi …
Friday, July 6, 2012
Hot Fun in the Summer Time? When it's not Raining!
Since September, Muffin and Squeaker have been in a playgroup for two-year-olds that they have adored. But with the end of the month of June came the end of playgroup for them. And this year, their first week without playgroup coincided with our babysitter's annual week-long camping trip with her family, which left us with two girls eager for fun and excitement but no distinct plan. We started off the week on a high note. This year, for the first time, instead of celebrating the girls' birthday with our adult friends, we invited about fifteen of the girls' friends from the six-and-under set, mostly kids from our synagogue, the playgroup, and those with whom the girls have regular playdates. With the weather being so hot, we decided to …
Friday, June 22, 2012
Why we were exhausted all week
A while back in The Brookline Parent, I noted that a common theme of some of my columns seemed to be that of sleep and not getting enough of it. At first, I felt a little self-conscious about this realization, but when I mentioned to someone that I had written five columns on sleep, her response was, “Only five?” I took that as a good sign; obviously, this is a topic that can be plumbed over and over again for fresh insights. Or revisited simply because, yet again, I’m exhausted. Why am I so tired? Let us cast our minds back to last weekend. On Friday, Muffin was cranky and in the afternoon developed a slight fever. Nomi and the babysitter gave Muffin some children's ibuprofen — against Muffin's strenuous objections — and the fever soon …
Friday, June 8, 2012
The First Cut is the Deepest--at least with hair.
When Muffin and Squeaker were infants, people often commented on one specific feature--their hair. They were born with full heads of hair, and almost everyone who commented assured us that the hair they were born with would fall out. "It won't last," they said. "Infant hair never stays." As the girls got taller, their hair got longer. The infant hair, in fact, never did fall out, and, rather quickly, each girl's hair began to resemble Michael's or mine. Muffin's slightly wavy, lightweight hair resembled Michael's from when he was younger. Squeaker's thick, curly-bordering-on-frizzy hair was almost identical to mine. And as their hair grew, we learned the plusses and minuses of having little girls with long hair. I quickly learned that the …
Friday, May 25, 2012
Are We Having Fun Yet?
When Muffin and Squeaker were born, Nomi and I were delighted that they were twins. Yes, those first few months were rough, especially when it came to getting enough sleep. (Nomi noted the frustration of having one baby fall asleep while the other one keeps you awake for hours.) But having twin girls means that for their entire childhood, Muffin and Squeaker will have a constant playmate in their lives—each other. Both Nomi and I have siblings, and we always intended to have more than one child. We felt that it was important for any child of ours not to be alone. Personally, I always wanted two, as I grew up as a middle child. (Interpret that as you will.) By having two children at once, we felt that the kids could avoid the issues that …
Friday, April 27, 2012
Getting Stubborn Kids to Brush Their Teeth
With the girls approaching their third birthday, we thought we were done with teething, but apparently we were wrong. Two of Squeaker’s back molars have just began erupting, causing her great pain. Nomi and I have been easing her through the teething process with children’s ibuprofen, chocolate pudding, and two small plastic icepack teething toys shaped like a cat and a dog that we got during their original round of teething. Squeaker’s recent teething pain got me thinking about the troubles we’ve had getting the kids to care for their teeth properly. Dental hygiene is something of an interest of mine; I had perfect teeth for all of my childhood, and I even wanted to become a dentist when I was in elementary school. So from the moment …
Friday, March 30, 2012
Fears, Real and Imagined
Like many kids their age, Muffin and Squeaker frequently resist being put to bed when it’s time to go to sleep. They’ve built up a whole library of delaying tactics they use to get one more precious moment outside of their cribs, tactics that usually appeal to our sensibilities. After all, who could object to reading one “last” book to their kids, even if you’re already up to their third “last” book? But a few weeks ago, Squeaker initiated a new tactic to put off going to sleep, one that she used after she had been placed into her crib already. She started to tell us that there were snakes in her crib and that she had to be taken out. Nomi compromised with her by reaching into her crib and removing the imaginary snakes. That seemed to work…
Friday, March 2, 2012
Toddlers and TV: What’s Not to Like
Years ago, a friend of ours invited us over to watch a movie at his Brookline apartment. While we were there, he also invited us to watch his daughter, then two years old, watch an episode of the TV show "Teletubbies." (Yes, there was a lot of watching of watching that night.) I was fascinated by her intensity in watching. I had never seen an episode of "Teletubbies" before, and I found it excessively repetitive and slightly insipid. One segment of the program had the Teletubbies characters watch a short video and then insist on seeing it again. As I didn’t have a lot of experience taking care of two-year-olds, I was unaware of how much toddlers enjoy and appreciate repetition and how it can actually help with them learn. But at the same …
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