Life With Three

Dear Mr. Yanoff and Mr. Shulman,

When I was in high school in the 90s, I was only allowed to watch Beverly Hills, 90210 in the company of my parents, who used the show as a vehicle for teaching morals and good decision making.  Their concern for my moral development, and rules about watching the show without their permission, indicate this this obviously is not a show for young kids - or even pre-teens. 

The fact that Bus Radio’s broadcasts and website promote shows such as 90210 and music by groups such as Bratz indicates a clear decision to prioritize advertising revenue above our children’s well-being - the same children who in 20 years, will take today’s lessons and put them into practice as they vote, raise families, and run our country.  Why not give them a better foundation and choose to advertise more appropriate products, music and shows?

We know that our children have a hard time making good decisions.  The fact that a national political figure’s 17 year old is pregnant shows that despite good parenting, our children and teens are still vulnerable to messages about sexuality from media and peers.  And she’s not alone - “each year, almost 750,000 teenage women aged 15–19 become pregnant.” 1  While teenage pregnancy is declining, it certainly has not disappeared.  Shows such as 90210 that promote promiscuity and precocious sexuality don’t help.

PLEASE help us. Help us teach our children to respect their sexuality. Help us teach our children good morals. Help us teach them to make good decisions. Help me limit my children’s exposure to shows and commercials that are not age-appropriate.

I hope you will see my letter, and the thousands of other letters that pour in, as a plea from America’s parents to raise our children with good values.

Sincerely,

Erika L. Myette, MSW
Mother of Michael (5), Jacob (2), and Maggie (9m)

1.  Guttmacher Institute, 2006.  (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf).

The following is an email sent by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood

BusRadio, which hopes to “take targeted student marketing to the next level” by forcing children to listen to its commercialized radio broadcasts on school buses, has sunk to a new low. The company is advertising the highly sexualized new television show 90210 on BusRadio.com, its website for children as young as six. 
Tell Bus Radio: Stop promoting 90210 to six-year-olds.

BusRadio.com - the company’s website for students that  is promoted throughout BusRadio’s broadcasts on elementary, middle, and high buses - is urging children to tune in to tonight’s premiere of 90210, a show that the CW Network calls a “sexier” and “more provocative” update on the popular series from the nineties. [1]  A trailer for the show on the BusRadio website teases several sex scenes, while a banner ad featuring the stars of the show in sexualized poses links to the show’s website.[2] The show is exploiting preteens “currently smitten with Hannah Montana and the Jonas Bros” through merchandise such as backpacks, school supplies, and clothing.[3] Media reports also suggest the show will feature a significant amount of product placement.[4]
BusRadio sells itself to school districts as an age-appropriate alternative to FM radio, but the company’s definition of “age-appropriate” frequently differs from that of parents. Seminole County, Florida recently terminated their relationship with BusRadio when the company refused to stop playing songs from albums with parental warnings for explicit lyrics and content. Advertisers on BusRadio’s elementary school broadcasts include the highly sexualized Bratz brand. Another elementary school advertiser, Answers.com, tells students to do their homework by looking up their answers on the Internet and mocks a student for carrying around books. BusRadio broadcasts encourage young students to visit its BusRadio.com website where inappropriate media, including Mature-rated video games and now 90120, are promoted.
We believe no child should be held captive by BusRadio and we will continue to organize parents and educators around the country to keep advertising off of school buses. But we also think it is important to protect those students who are unfortunate enough to ride buses with BusRadio from this kind of sexualized advertising. 

 
Please visit http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/621/t/6914/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25409 to tell BusRadio to stop advertising 90210 to young children.
 
Thanks,
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
www.commercialfreechildhood.org
 
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU7EjzF1RJk.
[2] http://www.busradio.com/movies.
[3] http://commercialfreechildhood.org/news/2008/08/90210.htm.
[4] http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/08/16/freetime/doc48a0c098adc53549467084.txt.

Sorry it’s taken a few days to get this up, but we’re still figuring out our daily routine - now that Michael gets home at 345 instead of 215 (in Medford), my afternoons are much shorter - meaning that as soon as Michael gets home and we chat about his day, it’s already time to start dinner, then eat, then move toward bedtime.  But Jacob is currently happily occupied with playdough and Maggie’s going to sleep on my back, so I have a few minutes to write and put up pictures. 

Michael attends the Discovery School here in Tegucigalpa, about 10 minutes from our house.  it’s a private school with small classes and fewer thatn 300 students in PreK-12th, and students who come from about 20-25 different countries with as many languages.  He gets picked up by his small bus (~10 students) by 730, starts at 8, goes until 3, and is home by 350.  It’s a long day but so far, so good.  Each week he has music 3x, P.E. 2x, library, art, Spanish 4x, lots of group activities, stories, snacks and playtime. He’s a big guy now who buys lunch in the cafeteria. His teacher Ms Gigi is Honduran and has been teaching at Discovery for 11 years.  She’s a mom of 4 boys, which seems to have well-prepared her for this year’s class of 8 boys and only 3 girls!

Here are some pics of the first few days of kinder (and Daddy’s 1st day, too):

 Michael and his buddy Mariano:

His classroom:

 Michael at the end of his first day of school:

 Michael’s bus driving away:

Last night I finished up some emails and some Skyp-ing and went to “finish” cleaning the kitchen… only it turned out that you can’t finish something that hasn’t even been started! I decided that for once, instead of griping about it, I would try to do it joyfully.  After all, I’m the one who wanted to stay home and be in charge of the house.  So I made myself a rum and coke (what every good ex-pat drinks when overseas) and started in on the mountain of dishes.  As I washed I started thinking about all the ways I am blessed, and here’s what I came up with:

1. I washed with hot water.  Many houses here (read: most) don’t have hot water from the faucet. 

2. I washed with running water in my sink inside the house, not water drawn from a well or communal faucet, or from a river. I wasn’t battling mosquitos outside, but was inside my own kitchen.

3. I had lights in the kitchen and ice from a freezer, both of which require electricity. Not all my neighbors have this luxury.

4. I was coming from email and online conversations held in my own living room.  Last time I lived in Honduras, it was a 30 minute trip, including a walk across/through 3 rivers and a ride in the back of a pickup or an old crappy school bus, into town to find an internet cafe whose internet/phones were working 1/3 as well as mine do today.

5. Upstairs, my three children and husband were sleeping peacefully (or watching the Olympics) and were happy and healthy. I am both happy and healthy, too.

We truly are blessed.  I hope you are inspired to count your blessings today, too.

My friend’s sister was the physical therapist for the family whose email appears below… As a mother and as a human I feel compelled to share it with you all with hope that it will both raise flags about such an offensive way of treating a large group of people on such a large scale, as well as raise discussion on how we as individuals refer to persons with disabilities. I’ll try to get links to related articles or activities up here, too.

Dear Family and Friends,

J. and I are taking the time to let you know about a movie that is being released soon. “Tropic Thunder” with stars such as Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., and Tom Cruise will be coming to a theater near us soon (LA screening is Monday August 11th and release to theatres is August 13th).

This movie has really hit home because it makes fun of people with intellectual disabilities unashamedly. To us it’s a personal attack on our son. “A particular sore point has been the film’s repeated use of the term “retard” in referring to a character, Simple Jack, who is played by Mr. Stiller in a subplot about an actor who chases an Oscar by portraying a mindless dolt.” Nice huh? We have actually been trying to get a letter written to all of you for about 5 days now, but we are so hurt and angry that we have had to use quotes to describe this movie. DreamWorks choose to promote this movie with a slogan that read, “Once upon a time….There was a the retard.” This has since been removed from websites. We are so sad that they are among a group that has decided to make a movie about those with mental retardation to get laughs. We can’t believe that our son is still being used as the punching bag for actors and writers to get a laugh.

Below are some quotes and reviews:

“In perhaps the single most offensive scene in the film, Matthew McConaughey, who plays a Hollywood agent, speaks to the film’s main character who wants to adopt a child. “Well, at least you still have a choice. I’m stuck with mine,” states McConaughey while pointing to a photograph of his teenage son who appears to have an intellectual disability.”

Newsweek gave “Tropic Thunder” a glowing review, 4 1/2 out of 5 stars. They’re calling it the “funniest movie of the summer.” They had wonderful things to say about Ben Stiller, who directed, co-wrote, co-produced and stars in the movie. The part that includes the r-word is spelled out pretty specifically: “The comic momentum doesn’t flag, the gunfire and explosions balanced by inspired riffs. One of the best is Downey/Lazarus’s memorable discourse to Stiller/Speedman on how to win an Oscar playing handicapped characters — you can’t do the ‘full r*****,’ as Speedman did in ‘Simple Jack,’ but only the ‘half-r*****,’ as Dustin Hoffman did in ‘Rain Man.’ ”

Newsweek had the audacity to write this…Newsweek. Notice that they knew enough not to write the word “retard” in their review.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (this was an interview…using the n-word is unacceptable, but making fun of individuals with intellectual disabilities is ok?): The challenge with that character was to find the right line. You want to make fun of this pompous actor, but if you play it wrong, it verges on being minstrel-like. Your costar Brandon T. Jackson told me there was a scene in the script where Osiris uses the N-word and that he said it went over the line.
ROBERT DOWNEY JR.: Brandon might have saved the movie that day.
BEN STILLER: For sure. We were rehearsing in Hawaii and we got to that scene and I said to him, “What do you think of this?” Brandon said, “This feels wrong.” It was definitely a constant process of feeling it out.
CafePress… had their t-shirt pulled, “Never go full retard”….but…..this link I think is just awful, it shows all the other quality clothing they sell Its amazing that this company would “save face” to the public and say “we have removed the offensive material” This is a dispicable company and they have proven it today. http://t-shirts.cafepress.com/retard

Dreamworks CEO’s and Disability activists, met this past Friday for a private screening. The activists that attended this screening deemed this movie far worse then they originally anticipated. “A coalition of more than a dozen disability groups is expected to announce plans for a national boycott of the DreamWorks film “Tropic Thunder” in response to language and scenes that advocates regarded as open ridicule of people with cognitive disabilities. At issue are repeated uses of the word “retard” and the subplot involving “Simple Jack,” played by Ben Stiller.
“Not only might it happen, it will happen,” said Timothy P. Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, of the expected push for a boycott. Shriver said he planned to join in the picketing personally on Monday at the film’s Westwood premiere”

Our desire for our son like any parents would be to give him a better life then the one we have had. When Z. was born we made a promise to him that we would do this, and today we were shown that it is going to be harder then we thought. If you or anyone you know is thinking about seeing this film we beg you to not support this movie. Please do us the favor and pass this on to anyone you know, and ask them to do the same.

Thank you,
J. and K.

I always said that I needed to have boys first. Growing up with just a sister, we were very much stereotypical girls - we played house and school, and while we spent plenty of time ouside, riding bikes and playing kickball and ghost in the graveyard with our neighbors, we weren’t much for getting dirty.  We didn’t play in the mud, or look for worms or bugs. We didn’t necessarily think that being gross = being funny. 

Before even Michael was born, I said that I needed to have one or two boys first, before having girls, to “break me in” - to initiate me into the world of things that boys find both funny and fun.  And as the boys grow older, and Jacob’s language skills improve and he and Michael become more and more able to carry on conversations and invent games, I am indeed being broken in, in a process that both breaks and renews me.

My mom has joked in the past that being married to my father - “enduring” life with him (she’s kidding, of course) - is what will earn her a front-row seat in heaven (with a recliner, not just an ordinary seat). She and I were talking last fall, when I was still pregnant with Maggie, about my belief that our children are truly gifts from God, and that while I don’t always feel like I’m the best mom out there, I *do* feel that this is the life God has called me to, as mother of three. I believe that through the experience of mothering Michael, Jacob and Maggie, I am constantly being taught humility and patience. 

Since I was in 4th grade and first received the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession), my default sin has always been my lack of patience - and while it may be kind of weeny to say the same thing every time, it’s always been true.  I’m not a patient person.  I’m easily frustrated, quick to snap, and not the first to apologize.  Having two boys who love nothing more than to run all day, say ‘eyeballs’ and laugh hysterically every 5 minutes, make lots of noise and go from hugging to hitting and back to hugging in less than 2 minutes…well, that tests daily my patience and my ability to love .

The day that I was talking to my mom, as she was half-jokingly questioning my sanity upon entering life as a mother of three, I told her that my understanding was that God was using my experience of mothering not only to teach me, but to break me of my needs - my need to control, my need to have and do everything my way, my need to put myself first - and then to build me up again as a better, more loving person. I truly believe that learning to roll with the things my boys do, and not just to roll with it, but to see the joy they see, to truly appreciate them for who they are, brings me closer to God. My children, both boys and girl, bring me to God. They will ultimately bring me to heaven - and maybe, just maybe, help me get that front-row recliner seat.

[Speaking of exasperating - not 90 seconds after publishing this post, Jacob came up to me coughing and with red crayon all over his face. "What happened?", I asked. "I not eat the crayon. I just pretending." Clearly, he's not pretending very well.]

As you may have read in MIchael-John’s “2 for 12″ post, we arrived in Teguc last night.  The kids were up at 6am this morning (8am Florida time) and after some stalling and showers for the adults, we hit the farmacia for some diapers, baby soap and shampoo, and the Dunkin’ Donuts for sprinkle donuts for the boys (it’s seriously like being back in Boston - there’s one of nearly every corner).  We enjoyed tasty breakfast in our hotel, and had the pleasure of meeting the CRS office manager who would later accompany us on our first day of house hunting. 

She first took us to the CRS office, and while I’ll let Michael-John talk more about that, let me just say that it’s a great office with a nice view of the city and some wonderful people working there - he should have a great year.  The real estate agent met us there and we started what was to be a long day of house hunting.

We saw 7 or 8 places (can’t really remember) - a few houses, a few apartments in a highrise, and a few condo/rowhouse style homes.  They were all very nice - it’s going to be a very different experience in this part of Honduras than at the Finca.  I’m still pretty overwhelmed by the size of the city - it’s huge! The fact that our hotel is located in the center of the city and has a spectacular view of the surrounding areas as they rise up in the hills only compounds the feeling that the city is huge - you can see every building from our window.  Living in the city is going to be a huge change for me - Medford, MA was much more suburban, the South Side of Chicago felt smaller, and the Finca was obviously the complete other end of the spectrum.

Anyway, my mental picture of Honduras is still based on our years at the Finca and the surrounding small villages, and the houses we saw today are very different from what I knew in the past.  The differences are great, and it will be interesting to integrate these two experiences of Honduras.  I’m looking forward to the challenge, and hoping that the modern conveniences and relative ease of whatever house we choose don’t overshadow our purpose for being here - to live our calling to serve others.

Out of the 7 or 8 houses, only one is to our liking - a 3 story (built into the side of a steep hill) home with a garage and laundry room on the bottom, kitchen, sala/living room and porch on the main floor, and 3 bedrooms (all with a/c) and another small sala on the 3rd floor.  We’ll see some more houses tomorrow, but so far this our our frontrunner. It would only be a 25-30 minute walk for Michael-John to his office, and a short taxi for me and the kids to shops.  Here’s a picture of it from the street - whichever one we take will receive a full profile as soon as it’s chosen!

(PS - the HGTV reference is because when we told Michael we’d be househunting, he asked if we’d be on TV on “House Hunters.” Oh yeah, and it’s after midnight in South Bend, IN, where we got married, so happy 8th anniversary to us! And happy 7th to Sarah and Colin, whose just passed 15 minutes ago!)

Thanks guys, for all your hard work to raise money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society! There are more riders with Grampa Myette’s Loose Sprockets than just these 5, but I don’t have pictures of the other riders handy.  (Want to donate? Want more info? Click here.)

   Michael-John Myette          Jim Fuehrmeyer           Betsy Bowman

    Erin Hempstead               Claire Hoipkemier (third from left, apparently meditating)

2004 Grampa Myette’s Loose Sprockets

I’ve had many conversations lately with many different people on these topics.  We’ve offered many questions, but not so many answers.  There’s the ever popular “organic vs. cheap” debate in grocery shopping. We all know pesticides on veggies and fruits , hormones in meat and milk, and chemicals on packaged/ prepared foods are bad for you, but we also know that organic foods are more expensive. Is it worth it to pay more?

There’s the pull between buying delicious imported fruits that come in our off-season but are bought from overseas, and the new trend toward being a “locovore” in which you strive to buy as much food as possible from local sources.  This is tricky to do, and can require driving to many stores and markets - which then requires lots of gasoline and pollution.

Then there’s the “food of the day” movement in which every day we read another article on which food offers which miracle cure for cancer, depression, obesity, PMS, etc.  We’re told what to eat and what to avoid, and some days I think the only way to make it is to only eat lettuce (for the roughage factor) and pomegranates (for the antioxidants). Other days I’m pretty sure that everything I eat is bad for me in some way or another, and really, I’m just choosing from various ways of poisoning my body.

And speaking of poisoning my body, there’s this new question of BPA and plastics - do we throw out all of our old BPA-full plastic cups, Nalgenes and bottles and buy new stuff? Do we buy plastics at all? Do we ignore the fear, wondering if it’s just a trend and not really as dangerous as some people think? I have one friend who is part of a moms’ group that likes to jump on the bandwagon a lot, and their latest thing is the BPA-free cups and bottles. It’s easy to get caught up in what’s new and put forth as bad or good for us, but harder to make wise decisions based on good information, not just on what everyone else is doing. (As for us, we did decide to go BPA free as much as we can - I’m trying to limit as many toxins as I can in our bodies, and I have a feeling we’re only going to find further information on how harmful BPA is for us. But that’s just us.)  Then again, even going BPA free isn’t enough, since they’re now saying the cans we get our soup, veggies and other food products leech some chemical or another into our food.  Sheesh.  It’s hard to keep up with everything, let alone keep it out of our bodies.  The vaccine debate is another example of the great toxin debate - both their effect on neurological development, and their part in public health. I won’t even go into that one.

Then there’s the trend toward using reusable bags instead of either plastic or paper.  My mom got me on this one and I love it.  I love not having a million small bags floating around the house after I grocery shop, and I love the ease of using easy to carry bags.  However, a friend of ours who lives in Honduras says they won’t let you bring bags into the grocery store for reuse - even your old plastic ones - because of fear of shoplifting.  So much for my snazzy Target bags. 

A few things I/we have done for almost 6 years now, partly to limit the amount of artificial products and chemicals going into and onto our children’s bodies, are breastfeed all 3 kids and cloth diaper all 3, though lately we’ve slowed down on the CD due to both the overwhelming amount of laundry we’ve had and the moving we’ve done/ still have to do. However, I have a number of friends who are considering doing CD with yet-to-be-born children, and many others who ask advice on switching to cloth. I’ve written the “how we do it in our household” email many times now and my goal this week, now that we have our camera back from getting fixed, is to take pictures of Jacob and Maggie in various covers and styles of diapers, so I can just have all our thoughts and “how-to” on CD in one convenient post.  We’ll see if I get there.  For now, Mothering has a few great articles.

Ahhhh. So many things to think about, so little time.  Making good decisions for my family is becoming more and more complicated every day.

We were 6 women in all at Saturday’s gathering- 5 married with children, 1 single, all 6 Catholic. Our conversation largely centered around marriage and family, and the various challenges we faced in raising our children.  One of the topics that came up was the challenge of following God’s will in accepting children into our families.  Without knowing most of these women too well, I am reasonably comfortable saying that our approach to thinking about this topic (if not our practice) is fairly similar. 

Women of all faiths around the world struggle with the call to trust God and God’s wisdom in giving us children - a call that seems simple in theoretical terms but is much harder when we consider the challenges of daily life.  Unemployment, medical, developmental, learning, behavioral or emotional problems in a parent or older child, the desire (and financial ability) to have one parent home with the kids instead of working, the ability to afford a good home, school, food and clothing, even the amount of patience and skill a couple has with their current children — all these are aspects of daily life that enter into any couple’s decision of how open to be to accepting new children into the family.  It’s an incredibly tough conversation to have when one is only thinking about the realities of daily life - and adding the “Catholic” aspect just adds a whole other level. 

As a small group (and as part of a much larger group around the world, both Catholic and non-Catholic) we asked many questions: Do we really trust God’s ability to see the bigger picture and “only” give us the number of children we can lovingly parent?  What if we don’t “want” any more children?  What if one spouse wants more children than the other? What if we don’t think we’re ready?  What if we’re ready but the child doesn’t come?  What if we can barely handle the children and responsibilities we have now?  What if God doesn’t (seem to) agree with our assessment of the current situation in our family??

They’re incredibly hard questions. Some of us asked these questions, some of us asked others.  Some are hoping the next baby comes soon.  Some aren’t.  Some aren’t sure.  Some practice natural family planning, some had studied  Theology of the Body, and some are questioning the appropriateness of NFP for their family. The common thread among all 6 of us was the strong desire for our faith to play a central, leading role in these conversations and decisions.  It was incredibly refreshing to be able to share honestly on such an important area of our lives.