Brett Berk

Some of you may not know this about The Gay Uncle, but in addition to being an established and well-respected expert on young kids and child development, he also knows a little something about…cars. In fact, he knows enough to write a weekly online column about cars for Vanity Fair. It’s called Stick Shift (see that name up there in his headings?) and given its increasing prominence, folks often approach him to solicit advice about what kind of car they should get. He’s recently been peppered quite a few times with a particular question: “What kind of car is good for a mom with two kids?” Being Gunc, he usually turns the inquiry on its head. “What kind of vehicle are you thinking of?” And very often, the answer he gets from the ladies is that they’re looking for “…an SUV?” Imagine that. In this economy. With oil running out, and bound to head up again in price, they want to waste their money (not to mention our earth’s precious resources) pushing around some overweight, hulking piece of metal, when in reality, there are other, just as practical options. Being stylish at heart, Gunc would never utter the M-Word (he’ll spell it: M-i-n-i-v-a-n). So what does the he recommend instead? Wagons! Not little red Radio Flyer types (though that would be cute.) Station wagons. A Subaru Forester or Legacy will do. But if you want to be even the least bit creative (and enjoy life a bit more), Gunc recommends you head elsewhere. Audi and BMW both make beautiful wagons in a variety of sizes (A4 and A6, and 3 and 5 Series, respectively) and a one or two year-old, Certified Pre-Owned one is surprisingly affordable. Cadillac is just about to release its first one maybe ever (CTS) and it’s hot as hell. Volvo is famous for its full-sized wagons like the V70, but the smaller V50 is absolutely adorable. VW makes a great pair of wagons in Jetta and Passat varieties. The Toyota Venza is butt ugly, but it’s essentially a Camry wagon. The Dodge Journey is pretty much a wagon, albeit a pretty crappy one. The Saab SportCombi is a fantastic wagon. Even Honda is about to get back into the wagon game with a new Accord Estate. And while it looks ever so slightly M-Word-ish, the Mazda 5 tall wagon is an excellent option as well.

Of course, whenever the G.U. pitches theses wagon at folks, they inevitably counter: “But we have a LOT of stuff to carry around.” To which Gunc says: “If you have more stuff than can fit in a wagon, you have TOO MUCH STUFF. Prepare to dump.” (If you need help figuring out what not to carry around, and why, take a look at Gunc’s piece on Lifeboating.) Regardless of whether or not you get a new vehicle, carting around a bunch of extra junque in your trunque all the time increases wear on your car, clutters up your life, and lowers your gas mileage. In these times of CHANGE, start thinking how you can get yourself some.

A friend recently wrote to the Gay Uncle asking how to deal with an issue her Kindergartener is having. Apparently his “best friend”¯ has turned-coat and become a “best enemy”¯. Worse, the ex- is now trying to incite mutiny with the boy”s new closest cohort.

Gunc has never been a fan of the “best friend”¯ moniker for young kids” social setups, as he thinks it tends make inevitable just this kind of unraveling. Kids this age have a limited understanding of peer relationships, so encouraging them to pick a favorite is like trying to toilet train them before they know where their butt is. The best way to expand this knowledge is to give your child access to many friends and acquaintances through casual contact and informal and formal playdates, as well as modeling positive social interaction yourself.

It”s also important not to vilify the former friend. This kind of BFF BS is probably not the result of inherent cruelty, it”s more likely””like most things with young kids””the product of formulating responses based on a very limited repertoire. At the school the G.U. ran, he had a rule, You Can”t Say You Can”t Play, that required kids to allow access to anyone who wanted to join them, and ensured that a teacher would help them work through incidences of teasing or exclusion. The goal was not (only) to create a utopia, but to provide kids with real, functional social skills and tools as well as myriad opportunities to practice using them.

The same goals can be applied to this situation. The Gay Uncle’s friend can tell her son to use words to communicate his dissatisfaction. She can teach him to let trash-talk roll off his back. She can encourage him to form many new bonds. But perhaps most importantly, she can be reminded that the kinds of problems from which we can’t totally insulate or protect kids (e.g. teasing, ear infections, junk food) are best responded to not by fretting, retrenching, or attempting control, but by providing them with actionable skills for responding appropriately.

A friend of the Gay Uncle’s recently revealed that, while she’s been down the line with her two daughters about things like sleep training, remaining in their own beds, toileting, discipline, and most other markers of good parenting (in Gunc’s opinion) she’s been a wimp about food. “I make different meals for every member of the family, every night.” When Gunc asked her why she did this, she sighed. “Food just seems so important.” The G.U. agrees. Which is exactly why he believes that parents need to take control of their child’s consumption habits before the get cemented into something screwed-up and problematic. Kids don’t know anything about nutrition or food balance. It is YOUR job to educate them, not placate them. We have enough issues with food in this country without adding more!

There are many ways to accomplish this goal, but for this particular case–when kids are treating mom like a combination of waitress/customer service agent/short order cook–he suggests the following protocol:
1) Announce that “ordering” dinner each night is going to end, and that the family (or at least the kids) will begin eating whatever mom selects each night. Set a time for this to occur a few days or a week after the announcement. Mark it on the calendar with the kids. Count down each night.
2) Get buy-in from the kids. Ask them to come up with a list of things they like to eat for dinner. Write these things down on pieces of paper, with simple pictures if you like.
3) Inform kids that each dinner needs to include a balanced selection of elements. Color can often be a useful category [e.g. Something off-white (some sort of nuggets/sticks/fingers), something green (vegetable), something yellow or red (fruit, sauce). Or you can go deeper and do it by food group categories like Protein, Grain, Fruits, Vegetables. Insist the kids come up with a few items in each of these categories. Add some into the sort yourself if they don’t. The kids can even create sample menus using these elements.
4) Use these kid-created meals as a guideline for the first week of the new protocol. If you want to offer selection to the kids, do so within the context of this kind of balance, e.g. “We need to have a vegetable tonight. Do you want broccoli or peas?” DO NOT GIVE THEM ADDITIONAL CONTROL
5) Insist that dinner is the time for eating this meal. Do not offer other options later if your child claims they’re hungry later, unless they’re pre-ordained healthy snacks (carrot sticks). This does not mean you need to retreat into old-school tactics like “You’re going to sit here until that plate is clean.” This is nonsense.
6) Lay off the nagging. Unless your child is showing signs of malnutrition–dizziness, diarrhea, extreme weight loss–they’re not starving, and they’re definitely not going to starve themselves to death.

The Gay Uncle has been saying for years that our culture is engaged in a war on parents. He’s not talking about the war for parental leave, the war for affordable day care and universal health care, or the war for allowing photos of breastfeeding on Facebook, all of which he believes are perfectly valid crusades. He’s talking about the war against intelligence, self-actualization, and self-respect that comes from many adults’ unwillingness to assume the mantle of being the grown up–the boss, the one in charge, the person on whom their child can depend for guidance, limits, and structure–when they have kids. The front lines in this war take all sorts of forms, from parents asking their four year-old whether or not they should move to a new city, to an abdication of responsibility for how much television their toddler views, to cooking different meals for every child in order to avoid “blowback”. But Gunc believes that much of it is based in one brutal field of combat: a strange willingness for parents to allow themselves to be infantilized by a consumer culture that tells them that they’re idiots and have no idea how to do their job. That they need Boppy Cushions to nurse, digital thermometers to tell them how warm the bath water should be, and eleven expert/peer opinions to determine whether or not they should allow their child to sample strawberries. The G.U. believes that parents have brought this upon themselves, with their own refusal to give up indulging in childish whims, like playing video games or consuming cupcakes. But he believes he has found its apotheosis in an ad he found on SkyMall this afternoon (itself, the most accurate bellwether of contemporary culture): one for grown-up footy pajamas. How the fuck, he would like to know, is one supposed to be in realistic command of the life of another growing person if one is still this deeply mired in their own infancy? And what, he would like to know, is next? Adult cribs? Adult breast milk? With the new intelligence sweeping through government, he hopes for major change.

The Gay Uncle is back in LA, which means he got to spend some time with his best friends (and parental whipping posts) Kate and Dylan last night, and to see his adorable “nephew” and “niece” Max, 6 and Athena, 3. Once the kids got over the disappointment that “Uncle Towel” (a.k.a. Tal) was not going to be joining them, it also meant that he got to hear their latest stories of family insanity. Max is one of the most empathetic kids he’s ever met. He’s like a feeling, caring machine, always genuinely concerned about other people. This translates in two ways: 1) he’ll talk to anyone, and 2) he’s very aware of human suffering. He’ll go out of his way to give money to a scangy teenage panhandler yelling curses at him or a homeless guy drinking mouthwash next to a dumpster, and hel’ll wander up to an obviously insane and overly made-up matron in a sailor’s cap (why always a sailor’s cap?) waiting on line in front of him at Rite Aid and ask, with all sincerity, “Are you a captain?” and when the lady hazily nods her head and delivers a junkie’s pirate’s growl, he’ll counter with, “Where’s your boat?”
This infernal kindness recently challenged his mother when, on exiting a supermarket, they encountered a sketchily official-looking volunteer ringing standing in front of a overturned plastic water-cooler bottle. “Change. Donate your change. Donate your change.” Max turned to Kate. “What’s he doing?” Kate cocked her head and tried to figure out how to answer the question–honest, or padded; a common choice when dealing with kids. She went instead with vague. “He’s collecting change.” Max stared at the man for a second, causing Kate to examine him more closely. She wasn’t exactly sure he was working for any sort of organization. But Max had figured out his take on things. “That’s what I want to do when I grow up,” he said. “And I’ll give it all to homeless people.” Kate was distressed, and let her feelings slip out. “Oh, Maxy. I think you can do so much more with your life,” she said, immediately regretting her own sentiment. But the boy will not be swayed. He’s on a path. And for his next birthday, his Gay Uncle is going buy him a bell, a bucket, and perhaps a Santa suit.

The Gay Uncle was in one of his favorite places yesterday: an airport bathroom! He’s been on the road quite a bit recently, and since his bladder is about the size of an almond, he spends an inordinate amount of time in terminal pissoirs. There’s always something…funny going on in these locales. But this was the first time he was approached by a woman on his way in. “Excuse me,” she said, “but is there a man with a little girl in there?” Gunc found this a strange request, not only because it called for his being psychic, or that it conjured all sorts of nasty images, but also because he worried that by answering he might become embroiled in some sort of kidnapping/custody/traversing state lines battle between this lady and her estranged husband (he was in Dallas!). Still, being an professional Advocate for Children sometimes involves taking risks. “I’ll check,” he said. The woman smiled and then called at his back, “Craig and Melinda. Their names are Craig and Melinda.”

They weren’t difficult to find. Unlike in most other airport bathrooms, there was only one man standing with his head in poked into the stall, barking instructions to whoever was on the other side of the half-closed door (“You have to wipe! You have to wipe!”). And only one person with a tiny squawky voice answering from the other side (“I am NOT going to wipe! I’m not!”) Motivated by a profound sense of duty (ugh), the G.U. approached the man from behind. “Excuse me,” he said, suddenly at a loss for how to proceed. “Are you Craig and Melinda?” The man took a step back and revealed his face: early 30’s and decent looking, but reddened, sweating, and screwed up into a rage-filled scowl. “Yes,” he spat. The Parenting Bubble does all sorts of crazy shit to people–blinding them to the futility, counter-productiveness, and entrenched nature of their child-rearing tactics–but this was one of the worst forms of perspective-losing Gunc had seen in a long time: a man trying to make his daughter wipe her bottom–verbally, argumentatively, and forcefully–in a PUBLIC RESTROOM. It’s her butt, the G.U. wanted to tell the man, Close the door and let her take care of it. (Whose control issue is this?) But this did not seem the time or place to offer advice to a stranger. So The Gay Uncle turned on his polished heel and exited. “They’re in there,” he told the anxious mother, who was pacing by the door. “But they don’t seem to be doing very well.” He reached into his purse to grab his business card–the one with the SAY UNCLE slogan, an image of the book’s cover, and a link to this site on it–but mommy had already picked up here cell phone and turned away. “Craig?” she shouted into it. “What’s going on in there?” Gunc suddenly realized he hadn’t completed his business, but decided it was best if he found a different bathroom.

The Gay Uncle read something very interesting this weekend, an article about scientist parents who use their own children as research subjects! It seems that, in light of the tightening restrictions on the use of young humans as guinea pigs, the dwindling pool of foundlings, and the discomfort that many folks feel at allowing someone to experiment on their kid, Dr. Mom or Dr. Dad are signing their own children up as participants. One father strapped a camera to his newborn’s head so he could record every single thing the baby looked at. Another put all three of his kids through repeated MRIs. And, in what the G.U. thinks might be an invasion of privacy, another wired his house with dozens of video cameras and microphones, recording every move and sound his son–and anyone else who dropped by–made for his first three years. (Guests were eventually asked to sign releases, and the university oversight board strongly recommended against taping any bathroom action: drat!)

Now, the Gay Uncle has conducted quite a bit of scientific research with young kids himself, mostly concerning the educational effects of watching TV–some of it for the U.S. Department of Education–so he knows first-hand the value of studies with live subjects. His research entailed little more than having participants view episodes of Curious George, Word World, or Caillou and then answering a few questions. He feels proud of this work, and wouldn’t hesitate to ask his friends or family members to participate if needed (okay, maybe not on the Caillou project, which may transgress the Geneva Conventions). But repeatedly running your child through a body scanner, or forcing them to constantly wear an electrode-studded cap so you can study their brain waves? Come on. If you saw someone doing this at the supermarket, you’d call Child Welfare.

Gunc’s objections are myriad. He believes it impossible to avoid bias when studying one’s own child. He has concerns about the lack of oversight inherent in circumventing third-party approval. And he’s uncomfortable with the slight echoes of Dr. Mengele. But more than all this, the G.U. believes this is just another example of our contemporary struggle with what he calls Texas Hold-‘Em style “All In Parenting”: an inability for parents to separate themselves and their own needs from those of their child. Kids are born individuals and should be treated as such, not as extensions of one’s own whims, vanities, style statements, or professional advancement. Likewise, parents need and deserve some form of life (professional, peer-based) separate from their role as a mother or a father. Raising your child in a petri dish achieves neither of these objectives. It is simply an extreme example of the Parenting Bubble in which he feels so many families are currently locked.

The Gay Uncle cannot believe it: his little niece “Cakes” is turning one today. She is truly one of the most sophisticated and advanced babies in the world, as evidenced by this incredible picture of her engaging her super-powers in order to levitate, as well as render herself invisible to the naked eye. It’s fortunate that the G.U. is a master photographer–as shown in his recently published work in Vanity Fair–allowing him to snap this rare shot on a recent visit to The Keys just before she lifted off and disappeared. He’s pleased that she is still using her powers for good–helping along the cease-fire in Gaza, calling beachable whales back to sea, setting that jet down safely in the Hudson–but hopes that she comes back down to earth in time to enjoy her party, rebuild the engine on her daddy’s ’64 Nova, and complete her new translation of Ć€ la recherche du temps perdu which she and Gunc began together during a visit last month.

Happy Birthday, Cakes!!!

Gay Uncle loves you!!!

The Gay Uncle is in Chicago working on an article for the fabulous parenting magazine COOKIE, about helping a parent choose a preschool. One of the struggles his subject is going through in her selection process concerns her part-time work schedule. Her daughter is currently in an in-home care provider environment–where a nice young lady named Dawn watches over a group of three or four other kids. But given that she works only three days a week, the girl is often confused as to whether or not a particular day is one that she attends day care or not. “Is today a Dawnie day?” the girl will ask each morning. “Yes,” her mom will say. “I have to go to work.” Recently the girl has been pulling on her mother’s heart strings. “Let’s stay at home today,” she’ll say on waking up. Or, having learned about tele-commuting, she’ll suggest over breakfast that mommy “work from home.” She’s even gotten sharp about one of the core benefits work provides. “Let me see your wallet,” she said one recent morning. Mom passed over her purse, and the girl looked thumbed through. “It looks like you already have money in here,” she said. “I don’t think you need to go to work today.”

The Gay Uncle is headed to Chicago to work on an article for COOKIE magazine in which he follows a mom around as she searches out a preschool for her daughter. It’s supposed to be sort of a she said/he said (or she saw/he saw) piece, comparing what parents look for and see in an early childhood center versus what a trained educator like the G.U. spots. But it’s also going to be sort of instructional, letting parents know what kinds of questions they should be asking, and what kinds of things they should peel their eyes for, when considering a school. So here’s Gunc’s question to you: What do you want to know about picking a preschool? Let him know in the comments section below so he can be sure to look for that as he makes his rounds in the Windy City.