State of Child: April 2005 Archives

The Parkway is looking for "Baby Brigade Ambassadors"!

The Parkway has had its doors open to babies and parents for a while now. Baby nights are on Mondays at 6.30pm and 7.00pm. It sounds like a really good idea to enable new parents to go to the movies with their babies and not be uncomfortable about their little ones crying or being restless. It does mean however that you have to be patient with babies other than your own!

According to the Parkway's website, attendance has been faltering so they are looking for "bored and motivated" parents to spread the word about the "Baby Brigade".

Maybe my parents could have used a few days like that when I was a baby. My mom loved going to the movies and so we went even when I was little. But once inside the theater, baby me would cry and throw my hands and feet around and she or my dad would have to go sit on the stairs with me or walk me around in the lobby! Unrelated to movie watching but still a glimpse into my growing years--on the autorickshaw ride home I would fall asleep peacefully only to awake at home and resume my activities wide-eyed and into the night!

Nationwide, Landmark Theatres have also introduced similar shows called "Rattle and Reel" in Boulder, Chicago, Detroit, St.Louis, San Francisco and even New York City. In Berkeley, Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas "Rattle and Reel" screening for caregivers and mothers happens every Thursday at 1.00pm.

Startup Journal had a recent article about Parenting services. Amazing to me the business ingenuity of some people and also amazing to me what people will pay for.

Some of the businesses mentioned in the article are:

Fussy Baby Support Services in Chicago, Denver, Brooklyn and Oakland, Calif., helps comfort shrieking babies.

High 5, teachs bike-riding (and other sports) to kids.

Personal shoppers at Macy's help defuse the tension between parents and children when picking back-to-school wardrobes.

SOS --Study and Organizational Skills, helps clean and organize kids' rooms so they can do homework efficiently.

But not being a parent myself I don't want to rush to judgement about which of these make the lives of parents and children better and which ones make uninteresting the experience of parenthood and childhood.

I always thought that it would be really cool that if I had kids that I could raise them in a co-op type situation with some if not all of my friends--the climbing and knitting environmental planner, the triathelete chemist, the hiking camping scientist (these are only some of the qualities of my dear ex-roomates and since I have lived with them previously I know that I could in the future!)and they would teach my kids how to do all of the things I couldn't teach them. In return I could teach them to dance and cook and speak in many Indian languages! It might be a cliche, but it does take a village.

And to end here is one for parents by parents--designer kid furniture. One person in the NYT article says that "Even if parents won't spend money on themselves, they'll spend it on their children" But me thinks a $700 piece of baby furniture is a little much for anybody!

"If you're trying to put underpants on a wriggling three-year-old, try sticking your hands up through the leg holes and out the top of the underpants and then grabbing the child's ankles. With his or her legs now effectively bound it's much easier then to work the undies up over his or her feet, legs, and butt."

via Trade Tricks
via Mrs. Kennedy