CurrentMom

Happy Halloween: Can You Stand It?

Startup Sunday

This weekend has been packed with parties, pumpkins and preparations for the big night itself. It calls to mind our very first Halloween as parents to a toddler, when our little one burst into tears at 6 p.m. on Halloween night, too overwhelmed with excitement to even venture out to trick or treat. Hopefully, tonight will go a bit more smoothly.

This annual ritual highlights one of the great life skills that is so challenging to master: preparing for a big event without becoming overwhelmed by the anticipation. I'm prone to lying in bed at night with a to-do list running through my head, or silently rehearsing the speech I plan to give, unable to sleep because of an upcoming event. Our middle daughter clearly inherited this tendency. At night she will call down the stairs with questions like,

"Mommy, did you remember to turn off the oven?"
"Dad, are we going to soccer practice tomorrow?"
"Mom, did you put my homework in my backpack?"

As an entrepreneur, this tension around monumental-seeming events or presentation is heightened even more. After all, everything is resting on my shoulders. There's no corporate headquarters backing me up, or co-workers that I can volley with to prepare and ease the tension. It's all up to me.

Tonight I will trick or treat as an angel, complete with silver wings and a fluffy white halo. I'll enjoy the spooky decorations in my neighborhood and the delight on my children's faces at the piles of candy they'll collect. But a part of me will also be on red alert, watching for signs of an imminent meltdown or indicators that it's time to end on a high note and go home with our stash.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins and Witches and Goblins, Oh My! Halloween in My Hood

Sharing Saturday

What is it about Halloween? Kids love it. Adults love it. Each year, on the morning of November 1^st, after a delicious night of roaming the streets, neon spray paint in their hair and grease paint on their faces, after ingesting more than twice their annual allowance of Reeses, Nerds, Airheads and Milky Ways (the Hershey Special Darks are all handed over to me by fiat,) after a night of fast and furious candy trading, sitting at the dining room table as if they had visors on, looking for all the world like card sharks (I'll trade you two Tootsies for three Smarties and one gummy eyeball), my kids begin planning their costume for next year.

Witches! Hobos! Ghost phantoms! Harry Potter! We’re long past the age of Disney princesses and the Wiggles, although those kept us going for many years. We're now into darker, more magical, more mystical. My younger kids want to completely transform themselves into a new persona for the night, and they take great care in doing so.

When I was their age, more than anything else in the world I wanted a Woolworth's pre-packaged costume that came with a mask. But money was tight and my mother always seemed to find a way to make a hand-made costume (with the help of our babysitter, who could sew.) Although I look back at them now and recognize how beautiful those hand-sewn costumes were, nothing would have satisfied me more than a witch cape and mask from the five and dime.

Love in the Library

Fatherhood Friday

Every since I was a little kid I've been a reading addict and a library lover. I remember being nine years old and taking out 20 books at a time, racing through them, and coming back for more. I'm delighted to see my oldest son developing a similar passion of reading, and even my youngest son enjoys books and story time quite a bit. It got me thinking of some random thoughts on reading and libraries. Read on:

• For better or worse, I truly do think I'm a reading addict. I have always got to be reading something. At any given time I've got a pile of books by my bed, magazines in every room in the house, and 5 different newspapers open online. I sometimes wonder if I'm absorbing it all, or is it simply the act of reading that drives me. I've really been wondering lately if perhaps it is a kind of addiction, and I don't mean that in a positive way.
• I recall reading that the strongest indicator that our children will grow up with a strong Jewish identity (I'm Jewish) is the presence of books in the house. Not Jewish books. Simply the presence of any books. I wonder how that applies to other faiths as well.
• I absolutely love the library. I love taking out 15 books at a time just because they look interesting and maybe reading only a few of them before they are due back. I love rifling through their CD collection and exploring new music that I might never have been exposed to. I love exploring the DVD collection, especially if it has an extensive section of older films. I love that you can take out pretty much anything you want and it doesn't cost a dime.
• Taking my kids to the library is such a joy, though it depends on the library. When my oldest son was a toddler, the library in town had a play area for young children. It was great for inviting kids into the world of books and we'd go there all the time. I'm rediscovering what that is like as I took my 19 month-old to hang out in the library for the first time last week. It was wonderful, though not all the patrons appreciated his squeals of joy playing with the train toys. We left early. We'll be back.
• In every town we've lived in since that first one with my oldest son
  (there have been four of them) we've gotten to know the libraries, their collections and the librarians. Some are great - wide open, large sections for kids - and others are less than satisfactory - crowded, not enough new materials.
• I am really bothered by a poster at the library in my current town. (I took a picture of it; see above). Its got an image of a boy who didn't return his books on time being chased by what looks like 3 police officers. The poster is located right behind the checkout counter. I understand the need to teach kids (and adults) the need to return books on time and respect borrowed material, but the suggested punishment hardly fits the assumed crime. I'm not sure that this poster will really foment a love of reading.

I'm a huge Jimmy Buffett fan. He's known for taking us to the tropics and other forms of escapism. But one of my favorite songs is called "Love in the Library". Its as much about falling in love with the library as it is about falling in love with another patron who seems to share similar passions. Check out the lyrics - http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jimmy+buffett/love+in+the+library_20071955.html

(photo credit: TNH Guy)

 

Free WiFi and Web Security Vulnerabilities

Image via Wikipedia

Technology Thursday

I love taking my laptop to the coffeeshop and getting a bit of work done there. A new venue is often a nice change of pace. And while I'm lucky to be able to work from home quite a bit - even that luxury gets a bit stale. And just the other day I tweeted that I'm totally bored with the decor in my office downtown (and may make revamping that into a project - perhaps it'll mean I even go to the office a bit more often!) But my wishes for a change of scene may not be worth the security risk from using public WiFi.

There has long been a vulnerability in the way some websites handle keeping you 'logged in.' This is typically done through the use of "cookies" - small bits of data stored on your computer to provide websites you interact with information about you. Generally speaking, if someone can get access to your cookies, they may be able to get access to the sites using the information in those cookies. The vulnerability has been that many sites don't bother to encrypt cookie data. There may be encryption of your password when you log in, but after that, nada.

So, if you're surfing around on a public WiFi network, your cookies are flying around 'in the clear' (as the security gurus, say). So, you think, whatever. Who's going to be looking for my cookies? But some, myself included, think this is pretty poor practice, particularly on the part of very large websites (such as that social network I loathe). And some have taken an additional step to try to prod better behavior on the part of these websites. There's now a Firefox plug-in you can download and install in your browser, and any time you're sitting on a public WIfi you can look around, using this plug-in, and grab other people's cookies (and log in as them to popular websites). Now, that'll probably get someone's attention!

It's called FireSheep. Here's how the developer describes this plug-in:

Halloween Fright 2: Scary Parenting Fears

Work Wednesday

Just around this time one year ago, I blogged about my Halloween fright at the amount of time, money, and energy Halloween now consumes. Not just in America at large (where, even in our troubled economy, the average person will spend $66 on Halloween stuff – similar to 2008 – and total holiday spending will reach nearly $6 billion) but in my own small corner of the world.  Last year, I decorated the house, outfitted the kids in costumes, frequented numerous pumpkin festivals, and participated in no less than three Halloween parades/parties. And took the kids trick-or-treating, too.  They, of course, loved it all.

This year, Halloween is shaping up to be even scarier. I've discarded my  "do as little as possible" approach to the holiday and plunged into the frightening frenzy. I've not only purchased ready-made Halloween decorations at my four-year-old son's urging but actually "crafted" some of our own decorations. (See the spooky spider tree in the picture.)  I allowed my small -for-her age seven-year-old daughter to purchase a tween-sized lady bug costume that might look mildly trashy if it weren't too big for her. And, in perhaps the biggest pumpkin-headed move of all, I volunteered to coordinate said seven-year-old's class party.  I've now spent more than a few hours poring over magazines and web sites for Halloween-themed (but healthy and nut-free) snacks, coming up with first grade-friendly creepy craft projects, and recruiting and directing a posse of parent volunteers. 

Of course, fearsome as all this Halloween folly is (and, yes, you're right, there is a part of me that enjoys it), there are much spookier things going on this Halloween season.  (And I'm not thinking about Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's witchcraft horror show although, I have to admit that I find the electoral mood ominous.) I'm not sure why, but, as a parent, I've been finding the world more than a little scary lately.

There's bullying (and cyberbullying), which has received a lot of attention this month after a slew of truly heinous incidents involving teens including the suicides of Tyler Clementi and Phoebe Prince. Just yesterday, a group in Los Angeles released a large scale national study of high school students indicating that half of high school students have bullied someone in the past year, and nearly half have been the victim of bullying. And now it turns out that bullying (and other mean girl stuff) is showing up in younger and younger groups of kids.  Although I try to put these reports in perspective and recognize that bullying may not be any more extreme or prevalent than it was fifty years ago, the idea that my child could be a victim, a bully, or even a passive bystander fills me with fear.

And then, there's childhood obesity, which also received a lot of press during last month's first-ever National Childhood Obesity Awareness month focused on this American epidemic.  Over 23 million children and teenagers in the United States ages 2 to 19 are obese or overweight, putting nearly one third of them at early risk for Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease and even stroke.  The numbers are particularly scary for low-income and minority kids.  While I'm not particularly concerned that my own (underweight) kids will become obese (at least not unless they overdose on Halloween candy), I'm alarmed by the prevalence of this problem.

And, of course, there are even more terrible things. Physical and sexual child abuse. Drug and alcohol addiction. Natural disasters. Terrorist attacks. Wars. The list is endless. I'm not an alarmist, and I loathe fear-mongering, but sometimes I do feel afraid. How do I deal with my own fears and help my children, particularly as they grow older, cope with really scary things in the world?  How can I enable them to be confident and resilient in the face of truly frightening things?

I'm not sure I know all the answers, but I do know that it's important to keep my fears in perspective. And to help my children feel safe personally by providing them with love, communicating with them about real concerns and threats in a honest and age-appropriate way, and empowering them to be self-confident.

On Halloween, though, I plan to frighten my kids with those plastic spiders and bloody eyeballs.  After all, there just may be something to laughing in the face of fear!