SEE FREELANCE DAD SPEAK IN BROOKLYN TUES. MAY 6

ADULT EDUCATION PRESENTS: BABIES & AMERICAN INDUSTRY

Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - 8 pm (doors at 7:30)
Union Hall in Park Slope
702 Union St. @ 5th Ave
$5 cover

Adult Education is a monthly lecture series organized by the Brooklyn-based nonprofit, Stay Free! Each month is devoted to a given theme, and 4-5 speakers will address some aspect of that theme using visual aids.

| Pamela Paul, "Baby Gear Your Mother Didn't Have"
| Daniel Radosh,"Marketing to Christian Kids or The Secret Identity of Bibleman"
| Charles Star, "A Short List of the Worst Children's Toys Ever"
| Gary Drevitch, "How Princesses and Pokemon Conquered America"
| Susan Gregory Thomas, "Barbie Goes Vertical: How the Marketing Industry Brands Infants and Toddlers"

DANIEL RADOSH is author of the new book Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and a contributing editor at The Week magazine. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Playboy, Esquire, and GQ. In the early 1990s, Radosh was a staff writer and editor at Spy magazine.

PAMELA PAUL is the author of Parenting, Inc: How We Are Sold on $800
Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture, and Diaper Wipe Warmers -- and What It Means for Our Children. She writes for Time magazine and the New York Times Book Review, and is the author of two previous books, Pornified and The Starter Marriage. She and her family live in Harlem.

GARY DREVITCH produces the parenting Web site freelancedad.com, contributes to magazines like Parents and Jewish Living, and writes non-fiction books for children. He is also the senior editor of
grandparents.com. A father of three, he has become part of the Pokemon problem, and now seeks its solution.

SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS is an investigative journalist and broadcaster. Formerly a senior editor at U.S. News & World Report and co-host of public television's Digital Duo, she has also written for Time, the Washington Post, Glamour, and elsewhere. She has two children, seven and four years old.

CHARLES STAR is a sometimes lawyer, sometimes comic, and host of Adult Ed. But he is mostly known for his excellent cat.

April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

EMPLOYMENT NOTES FROM ALL OVER

From Mediabistro's Daily FishbowlNY:

Grandparents.com Signs Three Young 'Uns
Everyone's favorite site for the elderly set announced the hiring of three staffers today. New senior editor Gary Drevitch will coordinate and oversee the Expert Advice section, which includes our favorite category, "Ask a Therapist."  . . . . It's great to be grand. It's also great to have a job.

IN OTHER FREELANCE DAD UPDATES

• Earlier, we reported that we'd written a major feature in the second issue of Jewish Living magazine, on the 10 Best Jewish Summer Camps. Well, our long national nightmare is over: the piece has finally been posted on the magazine's Web site.

• Before he walked away from the home office, Freelance Dad granted an interview to Nielsen Business Media for this piece on "Freelance or Full-time: Choosing the Right Path":

  “I like talking to my 18-month-old, but he doesn’t really keep up with the news,” joked Gary Drevitch, a telecommuting father of three who has contracted with such clients as Disney, McGraw-Hill and Harper-Collins. “As a freelancer, it’s nice to have a variety of different clients, if not just to have a variety of people to talk to.”

• Many of you read our reports from the second row of the New York International Children's Film Festival, specifically the screenings of short films for kids. Children, parents, and festival judges separately voted on their favorites from the slates and to our great disillusionment, all three groups bypassed the artistry of shorts like "Rain Down From Above" and "Animal Book" (click here and scroll down to select and watch both films) for the cozy familiarity of Mo Willems' "Knuffle Bunny," which was chosen as the best short in the entire festival by the experts and parents, and was also the favorite film of children under 7. Look, Daddy, it's the same book we have at home! I want you to vote for THAT one!

Meanwhile, kids under 10 spit their audience prize between "Crank Balls" (not so surprisingly, since it appeared on the program cover) and the completely enchanting "Zhiharka" (see it here), for our money the best Looney Tune ever produced by Russia. Still, we'd have given the prize to "The Tide."

HOW YOU GONNA KEEP 'EM GLUED TO GRAND THEFT AUTO AFTER THEY'VE PLAYED THE SAT?

Stanley Kaplan thinks SAT prep is the killer ap for the DS. Think again, Stan.

WE'VE TOLD FELLOW THAT WE THINK HE'S READY TO GO BY HIMSELF TO PLAYDATES AT HIS FRIEND'S HOUSE ONE BLOCK AWAY. BUT WE HAVEN'T ACTUALLY LET HIM DO IT YET

And that, if you're wondering, is why NYC columnist and mom Lenore Skenazy has gotten so much attention, and rightfully so, for her column-fodder stunt of leaving her nine-year-old at Bloomingdale's with $20 and a Metrocard and letting him figure out how to get home by himself. We don't think Skenazy is irresponsible or a bad mother; Hell, Freelance Mom let us walk to kindergarten by ourselves and we grew up in a tough-enough medium-size city. But as much as we support what Skenazy did, for some reason we can't pull the trigger on giving Fellow that kind of independence yet ourselves. She's either brave or foolhardy, but either way she's tougher than us. (See her defend herself to an expert crank on the "TODAY" show here.)

MAURY POVICH HAS ALREADY SUED FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT   

Rite Aid is making available in at least 30 states the first-ever home paternity test — for when you absolutely, positively need to know who's your baby daddy.

April 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

PLUS, HE'S CUTER THAN VALERIE PERRINE

Best child-training news of the month: We've got Little Guy, all of 19 months, handing us our towel as we exit the shower in the morning. It's great start to your day–makes you feel like Gene Hackman in "Superman."

YOU'RE TELLING US WE CAN'T EVEN YELL AT FELLOW WHEN WE CATCH HIM EATING A BOWL OF RICE WITH HIS HANDS? THAT'S A TOUGH SELL

Alan E. Kazdin of Yale's  Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic tells readers of Slate this week the secret to getting kids to stop their bad behaviors and do what you want them to. After reminding readers how poorly most adults respond to being yelled at, or talked to death, he recommends a third way:

You begin by deciding what you want the child to do, the positive opposite of whatever behavior you want to stop. The best way to get rid of unwanted behavior is to train a desirable one to replace it. So turn "I want him to stop having tantrums" into "I want him to stay calm and not to raise his voice when I say no to him."

Then you tell the child exactly what you would like him to do. Don't confuse improving his behavior with improving his moral understanding; just make clear what behavior you're looking for and when it's appropriate, and don't muddy the waters by getting into why he should do it. "When you get mad at your sister, I want you to use words or come tell me about it or just get away from her. No matter what, I want you to keep your hands to yourself."

Whenever you see the child do what you would like, or even do something that's a step in the right direction, you not only pay attention to that behavior, but you praise it in specific, effusive terms. "You were angry at me, but you just used words. You didn't hit or kick, and that's great!" Add a smile or a touch—a hug, a kiss, a pat on the shoulder. Verbal praise grows more effective when augmented via another sense.

It's just crazy enough to work . . .

METHODOLOGY NOTE OF THE MONTH

The Wall Street Journal's Science Journal reports on a study showing that our attraction to baby faces may be hard-wired in us:

"It suggests we are probably all hard-wired to respond and care for babies, to help us perpetuate the species," said Oxford child psychiatrist Alan Stein, who helped conduct the experiment. "The response to an infant face is too fast to be under conscious control."

We were not at all surprised by that conclusion, and you're probably not, either. But we were amazed by this note on the methodology of a related face-recognition study from Japan:

Yoichi Sugita at Japan's Neuroscience Research Institute raised infant monkeys for two years without ever showing them a face. Lab workers wore hoods. When faces were finally revealed to them, the monkeys could readily tell them apart, Dr. Sugita reported in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

April 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

AND IN A 19,992-WAY TIE FOR NINTH PLACE: POOPY (BROWN)

To mark the 50th anniversary of its iconic 64-crayon box, Crayola revealed eight newly-named colors, influenced by the online suggestions of nearly 20,000 kids. And here are the winners, each of which can be found inside a limited-edition 50th birthday box:

Super Happy (yellow), Fun in the Sun (orange), Giving Tree (green), Bear Hug (brown), Awesome (dusty pink), Happy Ever After (blue), Famous (hot pink) and Best Friends (purple)

SHE'S TRULY BLESSED TO HAVE BEEN BORN IN A REGION WHERE CRANIOFACIAL DUPLICATION GETS YOU WORSHIPPED. INSTEAD OF, SAY, PITTSBURGH

In case you missed it: A little girl with two faces was recently born in a northern Indian village where she is apparently living in good health, breathing normally — she drinks milk from both mouths and closes all four eyes at the same time, her doctor says — and being worshipped as the reincarnation of Durga, the Hindu goddess of valor.

THERE'S GOT TO BE A SPECIAL PULITZER COMING TO BETTY SOME YEAR, DOESN'T THERE?

We grew up reading "The Mini Page" in our local newspaper every week, appreciating its combination of current events, patriotic trivia, and earnest but primitive illustrations. Unbeknownst to us, the page continues to be published in 500 papers across the country, but now without its founding editor, as per this press release from her syndicator:

Betty Debnam has decided to step aside from her duties as editor and publisher of The Mini Page, a children's newspaper syndicated in about 500 papers across this country, to dedicate more time to painting, writing children’s books, and researching trends and developments in education . . . Debnam also will work to develop the Debnam-Hunt Literacy Resource Center at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. Her official title now becomes founding editor and editor-at-large.

As editor for 37 years (l969 to 2007), Debnam has been the guiding force of The Mini Page, which for many of the early years she wrote and illustrated . . . . Debnam will continue as editor-at-large for The Mini Page, covering stories she considers of interest to readers . . . . "The Mini Page is a legacy to Betty Debnam,” says John McMeel, president of Andrews McMeel Universal, the parent company of Universal Press. “Her vision, insight and sensibilities are still embraced by teachers and parents who want to instill an appreciation and a love of newspapers for generations to come.

April 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

ARE YOU TURNED ON BY TURNOFF WEEK?

The Center for Screen-Time Awareness will soon be encouraging families like yours to turn off their TVs during its annual Turnoff Week, from April 21-27. (Just take our word for it; their Web site's a complete mess.) We love the TV, but actually think the week is a great idea, and even wrote a column about it for our friends at the Walt Disney Internet Group, now available online.

Our column tells the amazing true story of two miserable young children and how their personalities underwent a remarkable transformation over the course of five days without the pernicious influence of television:

The results were startling. When they woke up on Monday, we put on a CD and peacefully listened to music over breakfast. By Wednesday, they were working on puzzles together before school.

And as if that weren't enough, then came...the compliments! Thursday morning, Tiny said to Fellow: "You look very handsome today," then Fellow told her, "YOU really look like you're ready to get your picture taken today!"

(Spoiler alert: They reverted to form as soon as the week ended . . .)

April 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS