Put a Noose on Mother Goose!

Seriously, am I the only person who has a problem with those crazy "Mother Goose" nursery rhymes? They are so wildly outdated it's ridiculous. And yet, they still seem to dominate the toddler lit market! What is up with that?

The world that these rhymes speak of is so foreign to most North American children that they can no longer comprehend or relate to it, especially in their early years.

For one thing, there is the pervasive imagery of farm animals and village life. While there are still farm-raised children in North America, most are now city kids. In the city, "chicken" is something you get in a plastic package at the supermarket. We never hear roosters, only alarm clocks. We don't have hens and geese running freely through our streets, and the only sheep, cows, and pigs that we play with are stuffed ones. That's why rhymes like these must leave children completely clueless:

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.

There's also the language of servitude that is foreign to us today:

Cock-a-doodle-doo,
My dame has lost her shoe;
My master's lost his fiddle stick,
And knows not what to do.
 
And then there are words that have changed meaning or gone out of use over time, making some rhymes nearly embarrassing...

I had two pigeons, bright and gay;
They flew from me the other day. 

...or just plain incomprehensible:

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
eating of curds and whey...

There are also the countless references to life under a monarchy and aristocracy - check out "Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross" and Sing a Song of Sixpence for rhymes loaded with passé social ranks. Even Humpty Dumpty, one of the best known Mother Goose rhymes, is half-outdated by its monarchical reference:

All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Finally, there are repeated mentions of old British customs (Cat's run away with the pudding string!"), currency ("Buttons, a farthing a pair!"), and British locations that mean nothing to North American children ("Doctor Foster went to Glo'ster"; "There dwelt an old woman at Exter," etc.).

Yes I still read Mother Goose to my children, solely for the purpose of exposing them to the ebb and flow of English word sounds. But I despair every time I do it, and long for something better.

It is time for a modern poet to take on the challenge: we need a new Mother Goose for North America. Where is Mother Moose?

We need a book of pithy, witty rhymes about the kind of life that our North American children know and recognize, a book of rhymes that speaks to them and teaches them lessons beyond the flow of language.

Will YOU dare to meet this challenge?

Our children need it, and we parents need it too!

photo credit: Dan A. Nachtnebel via photopin cc

Live Chat with Katrina Alcorn

Image: Book Jacket, Courtesy Seal Press

I participated today in a live chat with Katrina Alcorn, author of the just-published book Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink. It was a thoroughly enjoyable discussion with women presenting various angles and sharing their own experiences with the working-mom juggle.

Katrina has a lot of interesting things to say about the work-family balance. Her story is the main starting point: she tried to do exactly what Sheryl Sandberg has been nudging women to do: "lean in" to their careers, pushing full-throttle ahead in the working world even as our small children are holding onto our legs with pincer grips.

Unfortunately in Katrina's case, the result was different from Sheryl Sandberg's unlikely victory; at 37 years old, at a time when everything in her life was seemingly under control and success beamed from every direction, Katrina had a nervous breakdown, quit her job, went on medication, and had to re-evaluate her life and take it in a different direction. Katrina is still very successful today, and one of her main roles has perhaps become to be a herald of truth about the working mother's plight in trying to meet the cultural ideal of "having it all". Having drunk Sandberg's kool-aid and shipwrecked as a result, she has sobered up to the somewhat harshly un-feminist reality that women usually need to slow down when they are also mothers.

Read the whole online discussion here.

Also check out Katrina's blog at the Huffington Post, where she discusses a lot of these issues. I love the way Katrina expresses the truth of the matter! My favourite posts: "My Advice to Women Who Give Advice to Women", "Career Advice You Will Never Hear from a Counselor", and "The Lesson of Marissa Mayer".

The Scary "Other" Cost of Daycare

Recently I found out that an acquaintance from law school experienced the loss of her 20-month of son this February.

That is of course a devastating loss at any time, and I empathize with her grief. I don't know how any mother can find the strength to cope with such a loss, and perhaps the main thing that keeps one together is the need to look after other children.

Today, I was told how this little boy died: he choked to death on food at daycare. There appears to have been a news story written up about this event, and the Police Chief called this death a "senseless tragedy."

Cold shivers just thinking about it. I can vividly imagine various scenarios that could have led to this. Yes, children really do die in daycare, and while it could have happened anywhere, since children choke on their food at home too, I really do believe that there is more likelihood of it happening in this kind of institutional setting. Daycare caregivers are constantly being distracted by several other children and can't properly monitor any one child.

Earlier this month I read about another similar case here in Canada, where a two year old girl died in a daycare in Toronto. In that case, the coroner apparently advised the parents that the little girl's death was “100% preventable.”

I mourn for these children, whose little lives were so needlessly cut short. Mothers beware: daycare can cost lives.

photo credit: Vincent_AF via photopin cc
 

What if Our Son Becomes a Zookeeper?

Earlier this week we visited Papanack Zoo. We got there on a hot afternoon and many of the animals were sleeping. Just when we thought we would not see much during our visit, we discovered that one of the zookeepers went around and, following a published schedule, fed the different animals so that visitors would be able to view them.

What a gift this man was to us. We followed him around from the monkeys to the lions, the boars and the Siberian tigers. He told us about each of the animals as he was feeding them, and we learned all kinds of interesting tidbits that we would have never known had we just walked around on our own.

Zookeeper at Papanack Zoo, feeding and caring for wild animals: now that is a very different career path! Life is so incredibly diverse, and people are so widely varied in their talents and interests. There is something out there for everyone.

If one of our children decides that he or she would like to be a zookeeper one day, why not? It often seems that parental hopes get concentrated on the hallowed trinity of doctor, lawyer, or finance, with only a handful of other paths acceptable as alternatives. It is understandable that parents want for their children what such careers represent: money, status and prestige in society. But do we really need to chase those things in order to be happy?

In the book Compass, James Stenson discusses how parents are first and foremost raising children of character. The path these children take in their working lives is far less important than the type of person they are. We want them, above all, to be in Stenson's words "competent, responsible, considerate, and generous men and women who are committed to live by principles of integrity". If we raise a zookeeper with these qualities, we will be proud indeed.

Welcome Post: Breaking the Ice

Thank you for visiting my blog, I hope that your experience here will be enjoyable.

This blog is my respite from the busy days I lead, an electronic coffee break that invites relaxed conversation.

In between these coffee breaks, you will find me running after three active monkeys aged 4, 3, and nearly 2, trying to maintain a house and make the meals, and spending time with a wise husband who usually turns out to be right in the end.

In my working life I wore the hats of a lawyer and of the assistant director of a nonprofit. Now I am trying on the hat of aspiring writer.

It will be a slow start to be sure, as my days do not leave much space for writing at the moment, and opportunities for writing often compete with the need for sleep. Slow and steady...

As I begin this blog, I am also hoping to continue working on a novel that I would like to complete one day. It's something I've always wanted to do, and so I will forge ahead despite the fact that novels are being phased out in “book” stores. I have no idea what I am getting myself into. What is happening to the book industry?

Earlier this week I visited the large Chapters book store in our neighbourhood, and I was struck by how much it has changed in the last couple of years. At least a third or more of the store is now devoted to feel-good products like herbal soaps and nature-themed mugs, alongside an upscale version of dollar store-type kitch such as scented pens and erasers and funky to-do lists. One sizable corner is now even allotted entirely to pillows! Pillows must be more profitable on the shelves of a book store than books themselves, hence Chapters is blending into Pier 1 Imports meets Dollarama. In the children’s book section, there are now less books than toys.

Printed books are clearly hitting upon hard times. As will surely soon be the case for those gorgeous blank journals that have displaced novels on the shelves of Chapters. I really would have loved to have some reason for spending that $29.95 on a patent-leather unlined journal with faux antique metal clasps. But really, how often would I marr the pages of such a work of art? I hardly write with a real pen anymore, and a fancy journal would be doomed in my house to sit unused until some child would find and deface it with washable crayons.

Instead of unlined journals, here is this blog. And so the journey begins...

photo credit: djking via photopin cc