Monthly Archives: July 2011

My parents taught me to not answer the telephone and tell people they weren’t home. My parents taught me to look adults in the eye and offer them a firm handshake. We were basically okay.  All of us.

Right now my daughter is at the mall with her friends. She has $20 and I told her to not buy soda. She’s with a friend, she has a cell phone with her, but no one will answer it.

I can’t GPS my kid (I have an inbox full from devices that will do that) and I won’t keep them home. I’m certainly not going to stroll through every crappy tweenage store in every Westfield mall in Greater Los Angeles.

I also don’t want to hang out while my son plays street hockey for two and half hours. Only nine year old boys can play street hockey for that long, it should be understood that they are to be dropped off for activities that take that long and occur on a blacktop (I don’t need any age spots).

We don’t live in a quiet neighborhood so we had to teach our kids to cross a street. By eight, my son was walking a mile which included crossing a six lane boulevard. For her tenth birthday all Jane wanted was to be left alone in the house. How could I not let my children hit these very important developmental milestones? How could I deprive them of the opportunity to mature?

Last week a boy was abducted by a stranger and died. This is hideous, it’s tragic, and it’s made a lot of really great moms feel afraid for their own children.

I’d like you to indulge me a moment and just look at your children. What makes you think that a stranger would look at them walking down the street and think I have to steal that child? Mine would be pretty uncooperative. Make sure yours would be too.

The reality is that our cities are safer now than they’ve ever been. The greatest risks to our children lie within our own four walls. Child abductions are almost exclusively the territory of non custodial parents and people we’ve invited into our families.

What has increased in the past forty years is reporting. We report crimes that we used to hide. Children now are empowered to tell their parents, teachers and physicians about the people who have touched them. Young women no longer call it “date rape” as the girls of my generation did, they call it rape. My mother’s generation didn’t have a name for it. It’s what you deserved.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Thirty years ago there was no CNN so if you heard about an abduction it was on the national evening news or within your community. Parents in Los Angeles didn’t hear about a runaway teen in Nashville unless there was something extraordinary about the case. The twenty four hour news cycle can’t possibly run a headline like “2.2 Billion Children had an Uneventful Day”.

The next time someone tells you that the world is more dangerous today please ask them how it’s more dangerous. They don’t really know that to be true. It’s horrific that Leiby Kletzky was murdered, but what would be most horrific would be if we all stopped really living.

To say that I’m livid would be a gross understatement. I am sitting under a circling traffic helicopter, but there is no traffic.

At 1.30 this morning I was finally able to fall asleep, I’d gotten used to the sounds.

When a celebrity melts down Los Angeles can’t sleep. I’m fed up with media helicopters which have NO regulations from the FAA or your local police. There is no curfew and there are no restrictions as to how low they can fly.

They are dinosaurs, if you want up to date traffic try google maps, or any of the hundreds of traffic cameras installed on the freeway. Let’s please join together and get these beasts out of the air. 

Special thanks to the LA Times for their early morning coverage.

Over the course of the last month I’ve spoken to everyone I know about the Special Olympics. I’ve found facts about it that I hadn’t before known, I’ve been moved by stories of success and sat at my desk cheering GO TEAM KNOX.

Through my work with Procter and Gamble and their Thank You Mom campaign I’ve had opportunities to talk to large audiences online and in conference rooms what giving back can mean. I was able (just yesterday) to tell a group of bloggers that P&G asked the athlete’s moms what they wanted and that they wanted P&G to donate money to the Special Olympics.

I learned to ask questions kindly and gently. I’m still not sure that I’m as comfortable as I’d like to be, but I think that’s okay. I think it’s important to be a little extra sensitive, because we all know I can pop off at the mouth and it never leads to anything good.

We see the world through Mom Colored Glasses, and here at 41 I look at the athletes and I see a family. I can’t help it, I imagine myself cheering Jane or Alexander over hurdles and through long swims. I imagine the Moms of the Special Olympics cheer just the same. I see the world a little differently.

I’m glad the folks at P&G do too. They’ve hit their interactive goal and $250,000 has been donated to the Special Olympics to honor the Moms. I want to thank all of you who have joined the Thank You Mom facebook page, and if you haven’t yet, I’d encourage you to do so.

So the next time you hear “Thank You Mom” maybe you’ll be like me, and think ooh that’s for all us moms.

I’m parking my little hybrid in Culver City, and it’s a busy Thursday night. The parking structure is full in part because of cars like this.

I found the last spot in the structure, it was a compact parking spot next to a giant Lexus truck. Now,let me be clear, I don’t have it in for SUV drivers, I just think that if you’re going to buy a truck that size that you need to know that not every parking spot will fit you. There will be times when you need to walk an extra block or so because parking isn’t available for your oversized truck.

So I took the squashy parking spot and wedged myself out from between our two Lexus’.

When I returned to my car a couple was putting their toddler into the back of their massive SUV and then she walked to the space between our cars and started inspecting to be sure that I hadn’t dinged her precious car door. She turned to look at me and dripping with insincerity said, “How ever did you manage to get out of your car.”

“I squeezed.” I said matching her fake smile, “I think it was easy because I’m thinner than you.”

You know… yesterday…

Well, my friend had picked the kids up from camp and delivered them to my house. When I walked out to the driveway to greet everyone she told me, “the counselor said he was really surprised that you didn’t come pick him up. He seems pretty sick.”

I hugged Alexander and asked him if everything was okay. Because, ya know, I’m still thinking there’s a social issue.

And then there was this.

Which of course reminded me of this.

My friend Ian always says that I’m a breath of fresh air. He’s the only one who says that to me and I’ve always assumed it’s a good thing because I like him. Our families are crazy about each other. So a breath of fresh air is a good thing, right?

Today I got a phone call from camp. Alexander was there complaining of an upset stomach and I know something is wrong at camp. I know it’s not his stomach. I can’t tell you how I know this, I just do. It’s a mom thing.

So I explained this to the camp director and I could almost hear her nodding. She volunteered to talk to his counselor and see if anything out of the ordinary was going on. Just as she was about to hang up the phone I said, “One more thing.”

“Sure.”

“You know I picked him up from camp yesterday and he had an icepack on his knee. I love my son. I love him a lot and I don’t want to ignore any physical injuries.”

“Of course not.” She replied hesitantly.

“I just think that there’s a pretty good chance that his knee wasn’t actually hurt too much and I don’t want to sound offensive, but I don’t want to turn my kid into a pussy.”

Which is when she told me I was a breath of fresh air. I’m hoping that means she didn’t hang up the phone and call CPS.