The preschool teacher sent a nice note home: My delicious (OK, that’s my word) 2-year-old grandson L. had noticed that his classmate’s nose was running so he got a tissue and started to wipe the kid’s nose before the teacher swooped in with a lesson on hygiene.

L. should have given the lesson on empathy.

You read so much about bullying these days, but the two words I’ve never seen in those articles are “empathy” and “kindness.” And those are really the words that people need to understand, internalize, and teach to prevent and combat bullying. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: bullying, featured, kindness

I was attending a small community gathering last week when a mom, who was holding a baby on her lap and watching a 3-year-old shake her sillies out, asked me if those two small people at my feet were my kids.

“Um, yep. All mine,” I said.

“Are they twins?” Her eyes grew big.

“Yes. And that’s my 6-year-old,” I said pointing at the kid who was pacing nearby.

“Wow,” she said. “All boys?” Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: kindness, strangers, Twins

If you're not nice to my baby, I'll take my business elsewhere.

“If someone is nice to your child, you can forgive a lot,” my mother said. Seven months into motherhood, I consider that the ultimate truism.

If Lila and I meet you, this mother’s Jewish eyes may be smiling, but they’ll also be watching you like a hawk. Have you acknowledged Lila, and if so, are you treating her nicely? Those who bend over backward for Lila win my admiration, while those who ill-treat her may earn glares.

During our apartment search in July, the people who showed us around doted on Lila. That was a smart sales move on their part. However, at the fanciest building we visited, our guide ignored Lila. It could be that he was not bewitched by Lila’s big eyes and enchanting smile, or perhaps he doesn’t consider cooing part of his job. Still, this mother noticed, and that became the first of several demerits for his building. We passed on that address.

By contrast, we ended our whirlwind weekend in one of Washington’s tony shopping districts. While we sipped smoothies at the mall, a woman spotted Lila in her stroller and screamed as if she had just seen Justin Bieber. Lila, who already understood enough to know that “cute,” “beautiful,” and “gorgeous” were good words, listened nonchalantly to the woman’s effusive attention. This Mama Bear took note, though. I had never met that woman before, and I still don’t know her, but I already like her.

When we went furniture shopping in September, my opinions about furniture were similarly colored by reactions to my girl. Lila patiently endured visits to 11 specialty and department stores. At one shop, the saleswoman complained I was restricting too many design options because of Lila. Yes, it’s true that Lila won’t always be a baby, but we also have many years of small stature and paint handprints ahead of us. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Baby & Toddler, Parenting
• Tags: kindness, shopping, strangers

Photo by Alexandra Huddleston for The New York Times

Facebook is the equivalent of talking by the water-cooler for those who work at home (or agoraphobes): type in your password to see what people are talking about.  And so that’s how I know that a lot of you apparently like talking about terrible things.

“You’ve GOT to read this” was the basic gist of the eight or nine wall postings and forwards I received of Emily Rapp’s well-written piece in the New York Times. In the piece, Rapp told the story of being a “dragon mother” – that is, a mother of a fatally ill son with Tay-Sachs whose time on this earth is limited to a handful of years at best. As parents, we all know that no amount of time would be enough, and in knowing that, Rapp’s family’s fate is even more horrifically cruel.

After seeing the fifth Facebook post, I read Rapp’s piece and felt sick. It made my stomach turn with pity and fear, two emotions that I admit find singularly unpleasant. I don’t like feeling pity because I can’t shake the feeling that it implies that I somehow, even implicitly, deem myself “better” than they are, or more fortunate.  There is an element of condescension, I find, in pity, but even more so in our ability to exit from the situation we pity with such ease compared to those who are suffering. It’s like watching a TV show about famine and then turning it off, saying, “That’s awful” and going out to meet your friends for dinner. And to finish reading this piece and hug my healthy baby tighter, as though to say, “I appreciate you more after having seen someone else’s suffering.” That felt  cruel, somehow, to me.

I am not better than this woman – if anything, I am worse in so many ways — but I am indescribably more fortunate. I savor my children’s faces each morning I am with them, but do so doubly because it is not “normal” for me. Thanks to my divorce, our “normal” is different from other families. I don’t get to spend every birthday or every vacation with my boys.

And yet, despite or perhaps because of my sorrow at the seesaw of custody and my boys leaving and coming, leaving and coming, I savor them more perhaps than I would have otherwise. I was blessed with an unexpected daughter from an unexpected second marriage, and because of knowing the vast emptiness I had faced without her, I savor her more than perhaps I would have otherwise. I am proprietary about all of their time. I don’t want to waste any of it. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: featured, Jewish genetic diseases, kindness, pity, Tay-Sachs