Choosing to flood my child with joy

You are standing on a train platform. It’s late, and foggy. No one is around. It’s just you and your child at your side.

You hear footsteps at the other end of the platform. They approach steadily.

You crane your neck, squint your eyes as the adrenalin starts pumping. You scan your surroundings as the flight or fight reflexes kick in.

Your child is also anxious and scanning for clues. But it’s not the approaching stranger that’s making them nervous. It’s you.

As adults we take our cues from our surroundings. Our young children however get their information from our faces.

Dr. Stephen Briers uses the example above to open the chapter on mirror neurons in his book, "How Your Child Thinks."

"When presented with an ambiguous or unfamiliar situation, the first place most infants look for further information is in the faces of their caregivers," writes Briers.

While children don’t have life experience to help them assess their surroundings, they master reading faces very early on.

Mirror neurons take reading your face to yet another, deeper level.

These special neurons are what allow us to learn from others by simply watching. Some experts believe that not only do we learn how to jump by watching someone else jump, we also experience the thrill of jumping from watching someone jump.

This is something that I need to keep in mind when I’m tired and grumpy. Inevitably, my 2 year old is following close behind watching everything I do.

Lose my keys in a huff, in a hurry, and he is there. Throw something because I feel like I am going to snap, he is there.

"When we frown at our children, they feel the chill of displeasure; when we smile and laugh, we flood them with the sunlight of their own capacity for joy," writes Briers.

How do we know mirror neurons really do have these effects on our kids? All I have to do is consider the way my son's laughter makes me feel.

When he plays chase, he runs around shrieking and smiling until he drops. By the time he hits the floor, I'm also exhausted. I feel like I could collapse in a fit of happiness. I certainly lighten up from watching him.

Why not return the favor? He doesn't know the world of bills, contracts, narrow windows of opportunity and disappointment. Toddlers don't fill with fear at the sound of a stranger's footsteps on a train platform.

To them, the world is not a harsh place. What they know about emotions, they get from watching Mommy and Daddy's faces.

How life has changed at the Shore

NNS Photo

As my wife Sarah and I walked down the pier I realized there are three phases to life at the Shore: couples, parents with little kids and teenagers trying to get away from their parents.

When Sarah and I came to the Jenks pier (as Jerseyans call it) as a couple, we’d drive down in my Jeep with the top off, park near a restaurant and sit on the beach ordering drinks like the Funky Monkey until the night’s entertainment started, which was usually a cover band that made good use of horns and a reggae beat. All we needed were our hats and shades.

This year was our first summer with Owen, our 15-month old son. We drove to the Shore in the four door SUV that replaced the Wrangler before Owen was born.

Instead of drinks on the beach, we packed juice and snacks. We also had to pack diapers, wipes, toys, extra clothing, and a tent to be built in the sand so that my half Nordic baby wouldn’t burn.

The main attraction of a band was replaced by the aquarium where Owen ran from tank to tank pointing to sea lions and sharks yelling, “Wawa! Wawa!”

When night fell, instead of bars, we all turned our attention to the pier’s choo-choo train and carousel where we took pictures of Owen smiling in amazement.

As it got later, teens and young couples flooded the boardwalk making navigation with a stroller difficult. Listening to myself grump about the hoodlums who had clearly been drinking it hit me—something had changed!

I was no longer the teenager heading into the T-shirt shops. I wasn’t even one of the young couples anymore. Trips to the Shore from now on would be centered around family fun, like showing Owen the ocean and watching him try new things like frozen yogurt and funnel cake.

I don’t mind the change. In fact, I am anxiously plowing ahead full-speed, looking forward to future summers when I’ll get to see him running along the water’s edge, flying kites. Maybe we’ll play miniature golf…Only one thought makes me pause: I’ll know I am in the next phase when he starts ditching me for his friends.

He’ll hurry through dinner as the sun goes down; put on cooler clothes and head to the pier where he and his buddies will laugh at the adults who grump along pushing strollers through the crowd.

I know they say that there’s nothing new under the sun. But still it shocks me to see how things change.

Originally published 08/27/2008 in Suburban Trends and other North Jersey Media Group newspapers

Ladies and gentlemen, the 'Old Mac Donald' Blues!

I have many harmonicas. There’s a pile of harps that I play and a pile of keepsakes – harmonicas signed by famous blues harp players, like John Sebastian and Charlie Musselwhite.

Whenever my 2 year-old son, Owen, runs into my office, the shelf full of harmonicas is the first place he heads. Maybe they were initially appealing because they were a collection.

Once he found out that the multi-colored plastic cases opened--and each one contained a shiny metal object--the appeal increased. By the time he discovered that the shiny objects made music, there was no stopping him.

Whenever I left my office door open, the little guy with a huge smile would make a mad dash for the harmonica shelf.

"Daddy, open this one," he'd say handing me a red case. "Open this one," he'd say pushing a blue one into my lap.

Big ones, little ones, plastic and metal, he'd grab as many as he could and plop himself down in the middle of the room with the harps scattered around him.

I bought him his own. But the plastic rubber orange harmonica with large holes made for someone his age had an unfortunate characteristic—it was hard to play. Even I had trouble getting sound to come out of it. Instead of letting him get discouraged by the toy, I let him play mine.

I got used to him honking the harmonicas behind me while I clicked away on the computer. He’d blow into the holes and listen. Flip it over and try again.

Eventually, he learned that he could make music in a number of ways: blowing into the holes, sucking air through the holes; he learned that moving up and down the harmonica would change the pitch. I was proud of my blues harp buddy.

Last week, I was sitting and playing harmonica with him and I noticed yet another milestone. He started to sing and play at the same time.

He breathed into the harp and then I heard a quiet voice. I couldn’t make out the words until he repeated them after his next riff: “With a moo moo here…”

He added another riff…

“And a moo moo there!”

He was singing his own blues adaptation of “Old Mac Donald!”

What a moment! I was so proud of him playing harmonica and trying to sing for one of the first times in his life.

The most common comment that I get from readers goes something like this: “Thank you for last week’s column. It reminded me of the love that I have for my child and made me appreciate them again, now that they are teenagers.”

I have to admit that as a newbie father of a boy who is only 2, the level of frustration parents can hit by the time their kids are teenagers is foreign to me. But I do remember being a teenager. I hope Owen is easier on me than I was on my parents.

When that time does come, when I feel like hitting the roof, I hope that I remember this moment--Owen and I jamming the "Old Mac Donald" blues.

I am betting that it will probably be a touchstone that I return to. I can’t imagine the road ahead of us. Was it moments like these that got moms and dads throughout time through the rough spots?

What makes apple pie so American?

Growing up, I celebrated many holidays in a log cabin. My Uncle Bob built it by hand. It was the perfect setting for Thanksgiving dinners, Memorial Day barbecues, etc. And the perfect dessert was the homemade apple pie that Aunt Joan placed upon her red and white checkered tablecloth.

What could be more American than that?

And yet, apple pie isn't American.

According to the "Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America," the pies enjoyed in America were first popular in England. They were a staple for the colonists because piecrusts used less flour than bread and did not require a complicated brick oven for baking.

The pies allowed settlers to stretch meager provisions. However, idyllic images of pies on windowsills wouldn't be quite accurate. These were pies for harder times. Heavy crusts made of rough flour mixed with suet tasted more utilitarian than heavenly.

Against the popular notion of the pies being a symbol of America, Alice Ross from journalofantiques.com points out that they were popular in the motherland first.

"The crust (wheat flour and lard) was intrinsically English, as were the apples, butter, and even bread crumb thickeners. And the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg came from the far-flung British Empire to enrich the affluent British pantry. Indeed, the pie form itself was an English specialty, and unrivaled in other European cuisine," Ross writes on her Web site.

As the new land's orchards matured, fruit pies' popularity increased. Primitive pies sometimes had cream and egg custard mixtures and used reconstituted dried apples. But eventually the pies that filled tins and redware plates evolved into the shape of the pies found on my Aunt Joan's table: rounded crusts, rolled and crimped.

That is, before Uncle Bob and Aunt Joan sold the cabin and moved to Florida. And so goes the flow of people. Just like this great country, the apple pie, at its core, is really a story of migration.

According to Ross, most apple varieties originated in the Middle East. The fruit was then introduced to Europe by the conquering Roman legions. The apple's first appearance in New Jersey is estimated to be around 1632, according to the "Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink," and John Chapman, AKA Johnny Appleseed, took it from there.

Where does happiness come from?

http://bit.ly/HbThB According to Eric Weiner's "The Geography of Bliss," 70 % of our happiness comes from our relations with others.

Ode to Daddybloggers -- That's Why I'm Here!

From "Ode to Daddybloggers"

I'm really not one to buy into these pseudo-holidays that try make people feel that a bouquet of flowers and a trip to the spa are an adequate way to thank mothers for everything that they do or make us think that dads need yet another day to relax, watch sports, and enjoy what being a "dad" means in this culture.

It's no secret that I'd love to die and come back as a dad.

Whether it's the happy screeches and clingy love that he gets when he walks in the door, or the praise he gets for being the lone dad with all three kids at the pool, there's something about being a dad that's obviously missing from my experience as a mom.

At least beyond the twig and berries.

I don't deny that it can be tough out there for a dad, particularly those, like many, that are forced to choose between work and family. At least women have started a commentary about the challenges of working and maintaining a family presence; I just don't see it happening as much with dads.

The breadth of dad lit has just started expanding, but the level of analysis on the experience of fatherhood seems to just be scratching the surface....

For the rest of Kristen Chase's blog entry visit: motherhooduncensored.net