In other news, a sweet blog reader e-mailed and brought up the issue of sleep training babies. When I wrote back, I mentioned that helping [...]]]> This week two momentous but unsurprising things happened at our house. My six-year-old lost a baby tooth. And my eleven-and-a-half-month-old drifted peacefully off to sleep without a tear and without nursing.

In other news, a sweet blog reader e-mailed and brought up the issue of sleep training babies. When I wrote back, I mentioned that helping your baby fall asleep without nursing is just like pulling teeth, baby teeth. It was just a brief and undeveloped analogy in my e-mail, but as I thought about it, I’ve seen a lot more parallels.

When people hear about the kind of mothering I do, the baby-wearing, cue-feeding, (safe!) co-sleeping, non-cry-it-out, happy-flower, earth-mama, I’d-be-so-crunchy-if-it-weren’t-for-the-Coke-slushies kind of mothering, after they get done inappropriately checking up on Mr. P’s and my assumed lack of marital intimacy (really funny now that we have more children than most of the people who ask us about this, so if results are any measure of health in this area, maybe we should be checking up on them), the biggest concern people usually have is, when is it going to end? Are you going to be nursing your nine-year-old to sleep every night? How do you ever get those children out of your bed? The answer is surprisingly simple.

I realize that there are as many ways to mother a baby as there are mothers out there, so if you’ve found something radically different that works well for your family, high fives. Figuring out what you and your baby both need is no small task. I didn’t write this post to beat you over the head. In fact, if you want to read something less controversial, here’s a post where I make everyone mad talking about birth control. Or, if you just wanted to laugh at me, you could read about the time I tried to take a shower in a campground with my kindergartner, my toddler, and my three-week-old baby. BUT if what works for you and your baby right now is sort of similar to the high-touch, extra-cuddly kind of thing I’m doing, and you’re worried about whether your child will be able to fall asleep in her own bed in her dorm room someday, then this post is for you.

So, getting back to teeth. I think it’s fair to assume that most of us want a full set of healthy adult teeth for our children. But the problem is, babies don’t come with two gleaming rows of full-size pearly whites. No. Babies get baby teeth. And those baby teeth have to come out to make room for the big grown-up teeth we want.

Now, imagine a world where people made a spiritual issue out of getting rid of those baby teeth to make room for grown-up teeth. Imagine people wrote books advising parents which teeth to pull at which age and imagine those books were full of dire pronouncements about how children who did not learn to sit patiently while their parents pull their teeth will think they are the center of the universe, never learn to submit to parental authority, and push other children off the swings at the playground. And direst of all, they say that children whose teeth aren’t pulled at the “right” time, “God’s” time, will never get adult teeth. Imagine that the first question everyone asked you when they heard you had a baby was about which teeth you had pulled, and imagine that the parents who cheerfully answered, “All of them!” were admired and seen as “good,” while the ones who hadn’t pulled any were “weak,” “unspiritual” push-overs who were being “controlled” by their babies.

This sounds kind of ridiculous because, as everyone knows, children loose their baby teeth on their own. Sometimes, there’s a little help from Mom and Dad, but if the roots have already dissolved, all it takes is a quick pop at the end, maybe just moment of pain, and the tooth is free. But pulling it early is so much harder and causes so much more misery. The tooth may come out, but if the roots weren’t dissolved, if the child wasn’t ready, it doesn’t happen without significant trauma.

Sleep training is exactly the same. Adults were made to fall asleep alone and stay asleep all night, and barring extreme circumstances, by the time our children reach adulthood, all of them will do just that. But babies don’t. Babies want to nurse and be cuddled, rock and snuggle, and feel safe and secure knowing mama is right there. How do we get from baby sleep to grown-up sleep? It happens pretty much on its own. Parents may recognize that the transition is happening and help provide the last little pop, but if it’s really traumatic, then the baby isn’t ready. For example, my oldest daughter at age one was a shaking, hysterical mess the first time I tried to night wean her. Shortly before she turned two, all it took was snuggling up with her for a conversation. From now on, there would be lots of hugs, but no more nursing. She was content. That part of her life was over.

Another similarity is that both losing baby teeth and learning to sleep alone for long periods of time are purely physical development issues with no spiritual import at all. Zero. Neither one really has anything to do with submission to parental authority despite what all the books say. There is not a single verse in the Bible that even hints at recommending sleep training (or tooth pulling ) as the key to child training. Sleeping alone, falling asleep without nursing or being rocked, and sleeping a long/prescribed amount of time are NEVER mentioned in Scripture. When we make these things into spiritual issues, we put other parents under horrible bondage that often leads to guilt, fear, and second-guessing their ability to know what’s best for their children.

And just as there are lots of ways to help your child transition from baby teeth to adult teeth, there are lots of ways to help your baby transition from baby sleep to more mature sleep. So far, four of my children have finished the process, and it was different for every single one of them. Sharing experiences can be great. (“I tied a string to a doorknob.” “I just grabbed that puppy and yanked.”) But prescribed, formulaic methods like “tug three times, wait five minutes, and tug twice more” are helpful ONLY as long as they are helpful. They are never the holy grail of perfect parenting, and they almost never work for everybody. As soon as something doesn’t feel right or isn’t working, we should be free to toss those systems out and never look back.

Where this analogy totally breaks down, of course, is that having a child with baby teeth is pretty painless for parents, while having a child who doesn’t sleep well means that you don’t sleep well, which is basically torture. And this is where the spiritualizing comes in. Clever marketers are all too ready to justify their sleep-training methods to tired, desperate parents. And if a baby is ready for longer solo sleep, and the method just provides the last little pop at the end, there’s not much real harm done. But when babies aren’t ready, when the methods are causing undue suffering, when the parents should be free to walk away, all those justifications become shackles of fear and judgment as parents are led to believe that if they don’t successfully control a natural process that it will never happen and that there will be long-term problems in their precious baby’s life.

Parents whose babies aren’t ready need to be free to call those arguments what they are: justification and marketing. Sleep training is not an essential part of parenting. Children will move from infant sleep to adult sleep when they’re ready, and if we try to push them too soon, we’ll find that it’s hard for everyone, as hard as pulling teeth.

It’s time to wrap up my epic journey through everyone’s favorite USDA report, Expenditures on Children by Families (the one where the government estimates that the average American family spends $226,920 to raise a [...]]]> This is Part 5 in a series. You can read the earlier posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

It’s time to wrap up my epic journey through everyone’s favorite USDA report, Expenditures on Children by Families (the one where the government estimates that the average American family spends $226,920 to raise a child from birth to age eighteen, which then gets reported on by scads of journalists as meaning that “it costs” $226,920 to raise a child, thus frightening would-be parents straight into the “Family Planning” aisles in their local pharmacies in despair). That means that it’s time to cram all the last four piddly little categories together into one glorious crescendo and also that it’s time to talk about my yellow hippo jogging suit. This is a sensitive topic for me. I’m hoping this post will bring healing.

But first, the numbers, set out in a new, easy-to-read format, so those of you who care can get a quick picture of what the numbers come out to, and those who are just waiting to hear about my yellow hippo jogging suit can scroll past with precision.

Transportation:
14% of the total cost
$31,768.80 total for this category
$1764.93 per year
$147.08 per month

Health Care:
8% of the total cost
$18,153.60 total for this category
$1008.53 per year
$84.00 per month

Clothing:
6% of the total cost
$13,615.20 total for this category
$756.40 per year
$63.03 per month
$378.20 for shopping twice a year

Miscellaneous:
8% of the total cost
$18,153.60 total for this category
$1008.53 per year
$84.00 per month

And now, some sad news. I’m not going to talk about Health Care. There are probably some ways to save on it, like eating well and remembering to floss, but that sort of thing is not a guarantee that no one will get sick and require spending in quite the same way that, oh say, buying an 87 cent loaf of bread at the Aunt Millie’s outlet guarantees that you won’t have to spend $2.50 for that same loaf of bread at the supermarket. And also Health Care is not really an area where we tend to overspend just because we can. Most parents don’t say, “Happy Birthday, honey, I upgraded our HMO to a PPO just because I knew it would make you so happy!” or “Well, darling, are you sure you don’t want to spend the afternoon in the ER just for kicks? There’s a handy tree over there you could fall out of.” So, we’re going to leave it as it is and let the USDA and the journalists have their way on this one. If any of you are horrified, you are free to correct my egregious oversight in the comments.

This leaves us with three remaining categories: Transportation, Clothing, and Miscellaneous. Let’s break them down.

Transportation
This one is so awesome because it doesn’t really address the issue that most people think of immediately: buying the minivan. If we have a child, they reason, we will need a bigger car. What is that going to cost? What about insurance? What about putting gas into a less efficient vehicle? As usual, the government was off in a totally different direction. The USDA’s Transportation category is solely the cost of driving the car you already have to your child’s activities. Now, that’s actually not really SO unreasonable since, unless you have a sports car, you probably do have room to put one, two, and possibly even three children in the back seat. And since the USDA is talking about the average American family, which only has two children, there’s no need for them to even think about the necessity of the minivan.

What is kind of unreasonable is the idea that a child would be involved in so many activities that it would cost $147.08 a month for chauffeur service. I drive a (fabulously sporty!) twelve-passenger van, and $147.08 is very nearly HALF our monthly gas cost. I’m figuring that the two-child households in the survey are driving cars much smaller and more fuel efficient than mine, and I shudder to imagine how much they must be on the road to account for this much cost. Now, granted, my oldest is only eight, and kids tend to get into more activities as they get older. But, on the other hand, if you were to have a child, he or she would also not be older for several years, and unless you’re planning to do Kindermusik, creative movement, T-ball, and Suzuki violin lessons all at the same time, you could potentially reduce the total transportation cost by quite a bit just by factoring in a delay before the start of full-on Mom’s Taxi status. And, on a third hand (I’ll need an audience volunteer for this one), while it is VITALLY important for parents to help their children explore who God made them to be, to develop talents, gifts, and interests, once again, it all comes back to the question of what things we consider so important that we would rather not be alive if we couldn’t have them. At what point does life lose its meaning? Youth orchestra without soccer? Orchestra and soccer, but not community theater? I’m asking these questions so that they sound sort of mockingly rhetorical, but really these ARE the questions. And they fall to each individual couple of prospective parents to answer for themselves. It’s just important that we know what the questions actually are. This $147.08 a month is not what you will need to be sure you can get a sick baby to a doctor’s office or take your family along with you to church on Sunday. It’s the cost of driving to an “average” (hefty quotation marks) number of activities and play dates, beneficial, but not really “necessary” in the truest sense of the word, and definitely things that can be subjected to a cost/benefit analysis.

Miscellaneous
This is everything from toothbrushes to iPads. You ought to be able to buy your child a toothbrush or at least have the intelligence to locate a dentist who hands them out. (Roll that toothbrush into your health care category. Way to beat the system.). Your child will probably be able to make it to productive adulthood without an iPad. If your kids doubt you on this one, my advice is the same it’s been all along: Get them some friends without iPads. And also, check Little House in the Big Woods out of the library and be sure to read the part where Laura gets nothing but a pair of mittens, a stick of candy, and a homemade rag doll for Christmas. And is totally thrilled. You could also leave the World Vision, Compassion International, or Samaritan’s Purse gift catalog lying around. Instant perspective.

Clothing (and the yellow hippo jogging suit)
Smart readers will notice, I changed the order of the categories. That’s because I was saving my catharsis for last. And because nothing symbolizes for me the emotional issues behind this whole series better than the story of my yellow hippo jogging suit.

It was fall, back-to-school shopping time, and my grad student father and stay-at-home/writer mother pulled together every penny they could for my new school clothes. (As I recall, it was about as much as they spent on themselves combined.) It was enough for about four brand-new, off-the-rack outfits. (My mom didn’t want me to have to wear thrift store clothes to public school.) Back-to-school shopping was a terrifying experience. Even with my parents’ extravagant sacrifice, I still didn’t have enough funds for the “best” brands that so many of the other girls wore, like Guess and Esprit. It was always a huge gamble trying to pick clothes I wouldn’t get laughed at for wearing. That year, I got it wrong.

It was soft and cozy, a delicate, buttery yellow, covered all over with playful hippos. I still think back bitterly that I should have known it would be dorky. But it was snugly, and I thought it would be OK. I loved it even. Until I got to school, and everyone told me my jogging suit looked like pajamas. All day long. Even people who were supposedly my friends. “I’m sorry, Andrea, but that really does look like pajamas.” I got tired of saying, “It’s a jogging suit,” and wishing I could just sneak right out the school door and flee. I only had the gumption to wear it one other time after that day.

And that was that. My jogging suit stayed in my drawer. I was down to three new school outfits. And there was no more money for anything else that school year.

So I get it. I get all of it. I understand why parents are afraid to have children when they aren’t sure they can give them everything the other kids will have. I understand what it’s like to have less and suffer for it, to get teased for not having the “right” whatever-it-is. And, honestly, getting it wrong that year, not being able to fit in, feeling like everyone in the whole school was punishing me for not measuring up is still one of my most vivid, sad memories. I’ll never forget the gray sky out the gym door window that I wanted to fly right into to get away from the humiliation.

I have nothing but compassion for the parents who are spending $756 a year per child on clothes. But I also want to stand up and say that this is not destiny. I’ve been on the other side. My parents took me out of the monolith of judgment. I did get to fly away. Starting in sixth grade, they homeschooled me. And one of my happiest memories was the freedom to pick out clothes I liked (at Goodwill, often), just because I liked them without the slightest fear of getting teased.

Now I spend on clothing five children about a quarter of what “average” parents spend on clothing one. We shop at the thrift store and occasionally online. My homeschooled kids don’t even know what the cool brands are. Oh well. There will be plenty of time for that later. Their homeschooled, thrift-clad friends don’t know either.

And the yellow hippo jogging suit is behind me. Today there is sunshine, and tulips in my front yard, and love for the parents who sacrificed, both for dorky school clothes and to take me out and homeschool me.

If you’re looking at that $226,920 and sadly relinquishing your dream of having children for fear that you won’t be able to afford to make them happy, I want to whisper it one last time: I’ve been without and lived with less, and I’m still really glad to be alive.

Some of you may have been getting bored hearing about my new favorite number, $226,920, what “it costs” to raise a child from birth to age eighteen. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read [...]]]> This is Part 4 in a series. You can read the earlier posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Some of you may have been getting bored hearing about my new favorite number, $226,920, what “it costs” to raise a child from birth to age eighteen. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this.) But I promise that this will be a more practical post since I’m going to talk about FOOD. (I love food, especially cookies.) According to the the USDA’s spiffy report, Expenditures on Children by Families, spending on food accounts for 16% of my favorite number, or $36,320.20, which comes to $2,017.07 per year, or $168.09 per month, or roughly $38.80 per week to feed one child. In other words, the average American family supposedly adds $38.80 per week to its food budget for every child in the household.

By now you know the drill: you could spend this much, you could spend a lot more than this much, but you don’t have to spend this much. And I’m not just talking about replacing several meals a week with ramen noodles, either. (Like I tell my kids when they ask for them every single time we go to the store, I consider ramen noodles to be a nonfood item, and I don’t think serious parents should be planning a steady diet of nonfood for their children if they can help it.)

So how do you go about spending less than the neighbors on food? Well, to start with, let’s remember that babies don’t cost anywhere near $38.80 a week to feed even if you are a totally typical American family. Neither do toddlers. In fact, I expect that for the first half of your child’s sojourn in your house, you will find it’s pretty easy to stay under $38.80 a week. It’s those moody teenagers who grow at a rate of 3.5 inches a nanosecond that you really have to feed. So right there, you can probably hack a quarter or so off that scary eighteen-year food cost total.

But long term, most babies today will, in a decade or so, become children who eat A LOT. How do you make reasonable plans to afford to feed them real food? A lot of people have written gobs and gobs of great information on this subject. I’ll link to some at the end, and I hope that others will add their favorite resources in the comments, too. But here’s a common sense start.

Avoid eating out, even on dollar menu items. If everyone in a family of four each gets two items from a dollar menu, it will cost eight dollars. And they will be getting nonfood. They could take that same eight dollars and buy a pound of organic, grass-fed beef (about $5.00 at my local health food store), a box of store-brand whole wheat spaghetti, and a jar of sale-price pasta sauce, and eat wholesome, nutritious real food instead, with very little effort. (It doesn’t get much easier than spaghetti with canned sauce.) And as soon as you depart the dollar menu and venture out into Big Mac “value meals,” the tradeoff becomes even more ridiculous. And this is way before you even get to the Olive Garden or Outback level of family dining. If you want to save money, make it yourself.

Cook from scratch as often as possible. Nearly everything that’s premixed and boxed up costs more and contains more nonfood, chemical ingredients than the same thing made by you. Buy staples and make your own of everything you can. (That spaghetti sauce in my last example would have probably only cost a few cents if you’d made it yourself from tomatoes you grew in your garden and canned in your reused garage sale Ball jars.) You’ll eat better, spend less, and create some powerful memories of the way the house smelled with Mom’s homemade soup simmering on the stove and fresh rolls rising on the counter. (Just throw last night’s chicken carcass in a pot full of water with some nice, inexpensive onions, garlic, carrots, and celery, and some salt and pepper and let it simmer all afternoon. You’re splitting the cost of the chicken over two nights, and getting delicious, wholesome food for your family.)

Meal plan. Meal plan. Meal plan. For a while, we tried the pantry plan where we just bought a ton of whatever was on sale that we knew we used. We spent WAY more money that way. This is, of course, exactly what those store executives are hoping will happen when they put things on sale in the first place, which means that stocking up is to their advantage. And if it’s to the store’s advantage, it’s questionable whether it’s really to mine. Now, each week I write down what we will be eating every day. I like to do this with the weekly store ads up on my computer, so I am still shopping sales by planning my meals around them, only I’m just buying what we need for the week, rather than buying six extra whatever-it-was for later. I make a careful list, and then I try really hard not to buy anything I didn’t plan for. Next week, there will be new sales. It’s not like any given week is my only chance to get a good price on generic Rice Chex or Parmesan cheese. If we don’t eat something one week, it goes on the list for the next week. Since I have a plan, I know that I don’t need to get some kind of “reasonable assortment” of food that I can concoct into meals. It saves a lot and cuts down on things going bad before I can use them because I don’t buy what I don’t have a plan for cooking.

Eat your leftovers. Eat them for lunches the next day, or if you have a lot, you can eat them again for dinner. A wild assortment of a bit ‘o this and a bit ‘o that can just all be put on the table at once for what my mom calls “Leftover Smorgasbord.” (Everything’s more legit when you give it a name.) You can also freeze your leftovers for instant, from scratch, homemade convenience food. All the convenience. None of the overpricing. I find that we almost always drop at least one dinner a week from my meal plan because of leftovers.

With careful planning, research, and a good supply of inexpensive homemade cookies (with me, it usually comes back to cookies), you can feed your family for a lot less than the average in the USDA’s estimation, and probably (depending on how clever you are) not have your children thinking they are impoverished and unloved. Sure Mary Sue has name brand Doritos at her house, but we have fresh snickerdoodles still warm from the oven.

Resources:

Mary Ostyn has a great book, called Family Feasts for $75 a Week (she’s figuring on a family of four), which, granted, is in 2009 dollars, but even with the recent food price explosion, if you figure that went up to $100 a week for a family of four, you’re still way below the $155.20 per week, the USDA is estimating for the same family.

Online, you can check out Stephanie at Keeper of the Home’s $250 (Canadian!!!) per month meal plan that includes all whole foods including a little grass-fed beef and raw milk, or Cheryl at Moms in Need of Mercy’s Healthy $10 a day menus.