Category: Magazines

Remembering the facts about car safety can be a daunting task. But keeping your child safe while riding in the car is one of the first and most important jobs that parents have. Here are some of the basics:

Infants and toddlers should ride rear-facing until they’re 2 years old. This seat can be a rear-facing bucket seat or a convertible seat that can later change to be forward-facing. Many parents ask what to do if their child’s legs touch the back of the car before they are two. Crash tests support rear-facing carseats as the safest until 2 years old, with leg injuries being very rare.

After 2 years old, toddlers should ride in a forward-facing carseat with a harness for as long as possible—until they reach the height and weight limits of the seat, or at a minimum until 4 years old.

Once a child meets the height and weight limits for the seat, he should use a booster seat until he is 4′ 9″ (about age 8 to 12 years old), or the seat belt in your vehicle fits appropriately across the shoulder and chest (off of the neck). An adult seatbelt fits properly if the lap belt fits snugly across the upper thighs (not the belly) and the shoulder strap lies across the mid chest and shoulder, not the neck or throat.

The middle of the backseat is usually the safest place to install your carseat. In the event of a side-impact crash, the risk of your child being badly injured is lessened. However, in some cars, it is difficult to make the seats fit tightly, in which case, the side is safer. Most new convertible carseats and new cars have the ability to use the LATCH system for extra security—and this system should be used whenever possible. If you aren’t sure how or where to install the carseat in your vehicle, many firestations have trained personnel to install the seat or check your installation job. (The closest child car seat inspection station is in Staunton. Call (540) 332-3842 for more info.)

Don’t forget that the safest place for all children younger than 13 years old is the backseat.

Finally, check the dates on carseats—they can expire. And if the seat has been in a moderate or severe crash, it should no longer be used as safety cannot be guaranteed. If you have any questions about your carseat, your pediatrician is a great place to start.

Of course, don’t forget to model safety for your older children—buckle up every time you get in the car!—Paige Perriello

Paige is a general pediatrician practicing at Pediatric Associates of Charlottesville. She is married, with two children.

Time for a mom car? If even the thought of a minivan has you imagining the smell of stale French fries, you’ve got options. We talked to some area dealerships about their best-selling choices fit for a family on the go, and here are a few of their top picks.

Crossover
2014 Subaru Forester (above)
At a glance: Motor Trend voted Forester the 2014 Car of the Year.
How it fits your family: Seats five. Plenty of cargo space, and roof racks to take bikes or kayaks along for the ride. Oh, and it’s very pet friendly, with room for a “pretty good-sized dog cage in the back,” according to client manager Richard deButts, and miles per gallon between 24 and 30.
Price: From $24,000 to the low $30ks, depending on how it’s outfitted.

Brown Automotive
984-8400, brownautos.com

SUV
2014 Hyundai Santa Fe
At a glance: Rated the top overall best buy by Consumer Reports magazine.
How it fits your family: A choice of five or seven passenger seating, with seats that fold into the floor for more cargo space and 24mpg. And it’s stylin’. “People are getting these sleek lines in a car that doesn’t scream, ‘I overspent,’” according to Jim Price guest relations rep John Snow.
Price: Starts around $25,000.

Jim Price Automotive
817-1881, jimpriceauto.com

Family wagon
2014 Volvo XC70
At a glance: “We maintain the wagon can get it done.” That’s what sales rep Joe Lombardo said about the long-standing favorite Volvo station wagon.
How it fits your family: Sitting lower and longer means easier loading of golf clubs and an easier time getting in and out of your driveway. It comfortably seats five. All-wheel drive gets you around no matter the weather, and the Volvo gets around 26 mpg.
Price: From the mid-$30,000s up to the high $40,000s.

Volvo of Charlottesville
295-4125, volvoofcharlottesville.com

Sedan
2014 Honda Accord
At a glance: This full-size sedan fits five people comfortably with trunk space that rivals Monticello’s entrance hall.
How it fits your family: Long known for safety, the newest Honda feature is a crash avoidance camera that gives you an audible warning if you’re coming up quick on stopped traffic. Plus it’s fuel efficient, with a low drag design and a gas rating of almost 40 miles per gallon.
Price: $22,000-23,000.

Brown Honda
973-1351, brownautoshonda.com

Compact
2014 Hyundai Elantra
At a glance: This is a compact car with mid-sized cargo capacity and space for a family of five, and a nearly unbeatable price tag.
How it fits your family: Great gas mileage (average of 32 city or highway driving) for about $17,000. “It gives people a nice vehicle at a price they can afford, without sacrificing comfort,” said Snow.
Price: $17,000.

Since my first role at the tender age of 8, when I played the pivotal character of Fourth Building Block in a production of The Velveteen Rabbit, I’ve been hooked on theater. It was my preoccupation all through my formative years: classes in winter, camps in summer, shows all year round. And although I majored in English, I joined student theater and a cappella groups in college because academic life would have been too bland without the spice of performing.

Most importantly, I made many of my best friends backstage. No matter how odd or awkward I felt, among theater types I was always on the spectrum. Ain’t no friends like the ones you make singing three-part harmony, doing each other’s eyeliner, running lines while lounging on the old couch in the green room, and getting loopy on one too many snitched Dr. Peppers (and, in college, one too many cups of cast party punch).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t recognize the supportive team that made this happy childhood in the theater possible, headed up by my dear mother. She sewed costumes, gave rides, ran lines, brought dinner, kept my schedule, applauded me enthusiastically, and, when necessary, dried my tears. She was remarkably stoic in the face of parenting the hyper-dramatic emotional whirlwind that was (is) her oldest child. And lucky for me, I have her good example to follow, because I’m currently playing Stage Mom to my own budding thespian.

I have only myself to blame. I aroused my daughter’s interest in theater by forcibly enrolling her in my Kids on Stage drama class at Live Arts so I wouldn’t have to pay a sitter. Seeing how much she actually enjoyed it, I signed her up for the musical theater summer day camp there too. And that went well, so I let her audition for A Christmas Carol when I was assistant directing it at Four County Players this past fall. Lo and behold, a confident audition yielded her a pair of interesting roles, The Ghost of Christmas Past and Miranda Cratchit. Standing backstage each night awaiting her first entrance, whispering a few last-minute words of encouragement, and then paging the curtain while she glided onstage are memories I will treasure.

However, with her successful audition for the musical Grey Gardens, we’re in new territory. I’m involved in the project solely as her parent and superfan. She’s the youngest person in the cast, and everyone but the director was a virtual stranger to her before she started rehearsals. Leaving her all alone at the first read-through, sitting with a pale, brave face at a big table of grown-ups, was like the first day of kindergarten all over again. When she walked in the front door afterwards, flushed and smiling, I pounced.

Me: “HOW DID IT GO?”

Daughter: “There were Oreos! I ate SIX!”

Me: “Wow! O.K.! But HOW WAS THE READ-THROUGH?”

Daughter: “Great! (Pause.) I do NOT understand that play.”

Ah well, I played Pooh Bah in The Mikado around the same age—10-year-old white girl as male Asian baritone—and to this day I don’t understand the perambulations of that plot. She’ll be fiiine.

When Grey Gardens’ director called to say she wanted to cast my daughter, she followed up with, “I hope that’s O.K.” In my excitement, I couldn’t really figure out what she meant. I hung up and told my daughter the news and watched her dance around the house, whooping and shouting. Yeah! I’d say it was O.K. with us!

But now that rehearsals are underway, I realize she meant, “I hope that’s O.K., because it’s going to be a lot of work for both of you.” And Mom, consider this my official thank you, because schedule-keeping and lines-running and rides-giving is a lot of work, not to mention the emotional support actors need, especially young ones. But it really moves me to watch my daughter get so much pleasure and life experience from a discipline that has been so important to me. I can’t wait to see her take the stage opening night, executing all the lines and songs and dance moves she’s been so diligently practicing. What goes around comes around, and Stage Mom is a role I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to play.—Miller Murray Susen 

Grey Gardens opens at Live Arts March 7. Visit livearts.org to learn more and buy tickets.

“We may have bought the wrong kind of seaweed,” is not a typical statement you’d read in a blog from a 15-year-old, but Seamus Bartels takes his seafood seriously. The Charlottesville High School freshman blogs about his adventures preparing international recipes. His attempt at creating a seaweed with garlic and vinegar dish was his only bad experience so far.

“It was slimy to start with and I already had a bad feeling, but when I added the vinegar it was really rubbery,” Seamus said. “Other than that, South Korea has been one of my favorites.”

The Charlottesville teen has always liked to cook, and recent travels to Italy and Portugal only fueled his love for international cuisine. He finds recipes at the library and decides what sounds like a good challenge. But he’s very methodical, cooking his way around the world, continent by continent. Currently focused on Asia, Seamus is looking forward to tackling Indonesia (“but it’s hard to find the right ingredients”) and he has his sights set on Japan before moving on to European cuisine.

“Doing this lets me explore different techniques,” he said. “It’s so cool that one continent has so many styles of cooking!”

He’s keeping an online journal of his journey at internationalfoodsproject.blogspot.com. His blog is meant to share his experiences, obviously, but it also has a bigger mission: to help him get into college.

“How can I show a school that I have experience cooking when I don’t have a career behind it? This blog shows what I’ve done,” he said.

Seamus said his mom likes having help in the kitchen (“especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas”), and his brother and sisters are behind him.

“They try it sometimes. Occasionally I get the ‘I don’t want fish, I hate fish,’ kind of comment,” he said. “Other than that, they’re pretty supportive.”

We love the nursery of local photographer Andrea Hubbell’s son, Clyde. With an eye for design, she’s kept the room awash in soothing neutrals with vibrant accents and plenty of mid-century modern inspiration throughout. “The foundation of the room is white, gray, and wood,” Hubbell said. “That allows the bright colors that pop every now and then to not be overwhelming.”

Straight to the source

Chair: Monte Joya Rocker from Petit Bebe (244-9500)
Crib: Oeuf from Petit Bebe
Vintage dresser: From Circa (295-5760)
Mirror, wall shelves, cube shelves: IKEA
Art: Amy Sullivan prints from shopamysullivan.etsy.com
Frames: Metal frames from Great Graphics (979-4747)
Ceiling light: George Nelson from Modernica (“Clyde loves this light. We joke that we should have just hung it over his crib instead of getting him a mobile,” Hubbell said.)
Mobile: “Symphony in 3 Movements” by Flensted from amazon.com (“We love that it’s not super bulky in our small space.”)

What story do your kids tell themselves about why they do the things they do? It’s a question that’s critical for children’s wellbeing, according to UVA psychology professor Tim Wilson.

Wilson, a social psychologist, says people can improve their lives by controlling and editing their internal narrative. For example, if a new college student tanks his first exam, he can come to believe he isn’t college material, or he can decide he has the ability to succeed and simply needs to work harder.

Children too are constantly interpreting life’s events and inventing stories about why and how they happened. This is a central tenant of social psychology, according to Wilson, and not that controversial. Where things get a little more radical is in Wilson’s belief that parents can alter their kids’ storytelling in helpful ways.

“The technical term is ‘minimally sufficient rewards and punishments,’” Wilson said. “You want to use just enough to get them to do it, but not enough to make them realize that’s why they are doing it. You don’t always get it right.”

If you do get it right, your kids will come away from the exercise with a story about intrinsic motivation. “I ate those peas because I like peas,” for example, instead of “I only ate those peas so I could get dessert after dinner.” The hard part is finding the right motivators, Wilson admits.

He offers the example of the Pizza Hut Book It! Program, in which kids are treated to a personal pan pizza for completing a certain amount of reading. It’s been around for nearly 30 years, and there’s some evidence it’s been successful, but does it really bring about a love of reading? Or are the kids just doing it for the pizza?

“I’ve seen some students give back their [Book It!] reward,” said Mia Shand, a fifth grade teacher at Agnor Hurt Elementary School. “Getting kids motivated to learn is about making a connection. If you respect them for their individuality, they can see that.”

Shand has found computer games with immediate rewards like “badges” to be more effective motivators for many of her students. She figures she’s developed a handful of Civil War buffs through the game Minecraft.

But are the kids really buffs? Once the game runs its course and the students have learned everything they can from Minecraft, will they seek more info on the Confederacy and Union?

“If they are given feedback based on how well they are doing, the research suggests it can be beneficial,” Wilson said. “But it is a tricky business. There is a danger that they may just enjoy learning about the topic in those contexts.”

Whatever the reward for a desired behavior, Wilson said it’s best for parents to go over-the-top at first. Once the behavior is in line, you can scale back. Which means more peas, and less dessert.

Joel Codiamat has always had an interest in fashion (“It’s the reason I got into photography,” he said), but his take on family portraiture is giving him another opportunity to do what he loves: styling.

Codiamat started doing fashion photography when he first moved to Charlottesville four years ago, but this past year, he began fielding requests for something a bit different.

“More people I know were asking if I could style their family and photograph them with a fashion edge. Not the standard family portraiture,” he said.

Here’s how it works. Once you contact Codiamat, he’ll set up a meeting to get a sense of how grand you want to make the shoot and, based on that, he creates a storyboard with several concepts. Then he starts styling. Most of the clothes are borrowed from local stores, which requires a fair amount of measuring and fitting before a final selection. But it’s all part of the process.

“I want the family to have the ‘experience,’” Codiamat said. “The experience of being treated like stars for an entire month—a fashion stylist at their disposal, make-up artists, hair stylist. I want them to feel very special.”

It usually takes three to four weeks altogether, so he’s currently only taking on one of these types of clients a month. Pricing depends on the scope of the project, but it’s generally broken down into two costs: the styling and the photography.

Certainly, Codiamat’s happiest when he gets to push the family out of its comfort zone.

“I want the photos to look aspirational and out of the ordinary,” he said. “I want them to look at those photos years later and say, ‘Wow, we look really fabulous.’”

Like most parents, I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about how the various things I do might impact my daughter’s emotional and intellectual development because, thanks to social science research, I know that everything I think is good is actually bad. I’m told, for example, I can’t tell my very smart daughter she’s smart because this will make her afraid to try difficult things; if she doesn’t do something right, she’ll supposedly think that means she’s actually not smart.

Similarly, I have to ration admiring comments about her appearance because if I tell my beautiful daughter that she is in fact beautiful this will make her think her self-worth comes from her physical appearance which will lead her to become a stripper or something. So I find myself constantly over-thinking what I say and wind up awkwardly shifting my word choice in mid-air so when my daughter does something particularly smart I wind up saying things like “you’re so smar—er, um…here?” No word yet on what social science says the effect on children is of having mush-mouthed and obviously dissembling parents.

While fretting about how anything I say or do could be damaging my 20-month-old daughter’s psyche, I stumbled upon several recent studies that show that the damage can go the other way, too: In effect, children (and especially daughters) screw up their parents (and especially their fathers) in ways I never would have imagined. The Pew Research Center, for example, recently published a study showing that having a daughter can turn even very politically liberal people into conservative parents who vote Republican.

Thoroughly dismayed, I initially dismissed the study’s findings. But I’ve reluctantly come to concede there is at least some small measure of truth to this—e.g., even well before my daughter’s second birthday, my long-standing support of comprehensive and serious gun control measures has started to loosen because I now realize the original intent of the Second Amendment was to allow me to have a shotgun on hand to greet any and all of my daughter’s suitors in the years to come. Other than that, though, I remain skeptical that I’m being politically reshaped in any significant way.

A couple of studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, point to even more dramatic changes that may be in store for me. A 2011 study showed that while men with higher testosterone levels are more successful at attracting a mate and having children, testosterone levels drop dramatically once a man becomes a father. But here’s the kicker: testosterone levels fall further still for fathers who take an active role in raising their children. Fathers who reported three or more hours of daily childcare duties had further reductions in their testosterone levels compared to fathers who were not involved in the raising of their children. A similar study published in 2013 goes a little further: a man’s “testicular volume” varies inversely with child nurturing behavior. The more time fathers spend with their children, the lower their testosterone level and the smaller their testicles. This is supposedly a salutary evolutionary adaptation. While high testosterone is important to attracting a mate and having children, it makes for bad husbands and fathers if sustained. Lower testosterone makes men better husbands and more nurturing fathers. In other words, the invisible hand of nature has fathers by the balls, but it’s supposedly for our own good. Or is it?

As far as I know, there are no studies showing just how far the inverse relationship between being an attentive father and masculinity goes. Does the decline in testosterone levels and testicle size stop at some critical minimum point or does it just keep going with every playdate, story-time, and tumbling class? I think it’s safe to say no one actually knows where this is going and what the long-term effects will be because the really involved father thing is, at least as a general sociological phenomena, something entirely new under the sun. Other studies suggest that men who have fully embraced the role of nurturer are regarded as unattractive and even embarrassing by their female partners, although it’s not clear if the basis for this is primarily physiological or sociological (i.e. even women who have eschewed traditional gender roles for themselves are not comfortable with men who have done the same).

I’m not a stay at home dad, but I do spend a huge amount of time with my daughter, which apparently puts me in the at-risk male population. How would I know if I’m spending too much time with my daughter and getting close to some tipping point? Will I start talking about my feelings and watching Bravo or will I merely start using more emoticons? Can I have it all by taking a more masculine approach to nurturing and doing things like father-daughter bow hunting or ultimate fighting? Should I use a timer when I interact with my daughter and limit my nurturing behavior to less than three hours since that seems to be the cutoff? Or should I just stop wearing the matching outfits my wife buys for me and my daughter? What if both the political and gender transformation studies turn out to be true? Will I one day look in the mirror and see Mamie Eisenhower—or will I become even more conservative and even more feminine and become Marcus Bachmann?

While I wait for science to tell me what to do, I’ve started talking to other at-risk fathers to come up with strategies to slow down or moderate this transformation. Right now, we meet for tea once a month and talk about how we feel about what’s going on with our bodies. The goal of these gatherings is to embrace our lives and where we are within them and push back at the stigma on the mature, nurturing man within our society. Above all, we strive to provide a safe and supportive environment for men who have lost testicular volume. We’re easy to find—to show that we’re not embarrassed about who we are and where we are in our lives we wear red hats in public. And we’re looking for new members. Bravo should do a show about us!

I vividly recall a major blowup my parents had when I was about 6 years old. I was in our basement family room, watching Saturday morning cartoons. They were upstairs shouting and throwing dishes. I’d witnessed harsh words and muffled arguments between them before, but this sounded like bedlam.

Once the noise finally subsided, I tiptoed upstairs, full of curiosity and concern, to find broken pieces of china littering the kitchen floor. I stood there horrified until my parents emerged from the bathroom teary-eyed, with their arms draped affectionately around each other.

“What happened?” I asked them.

“Nothing,” said Mom with an obvious sniffle. “I accidentally broke some dishes. Go watch your cartoons, sweetheart.”

Apparently they’d reconciled, but I was still devastated and confused.

We may have the best intentions in shielding our children from marital conflict, and of course it would be better if parents never fought, but child development experts say it’s futile to try hiding everyday disagreements from the kids. In most cases, children are acutely aware of the tension even if they don’t understand the specifics of the arguments. But that’s not necessarily the problem. What’s worse, say the experts, is that by trying to hide the situation from them, we deny our children the ability to witness that we resolved the conflict and how.

If parents begin to bicker at the dinner table, for example, but quickly decide to “discuss it later,” the children never see the resolution and may continue to harbor anxieties about it. Moreover, even if parents think they’re being discrete, it’s likely they’re modeling all kinds of ways to belittle, insult, or accuse, but very few ways to apologize, concede, or make up.

I was confronted with my own failures in this regard one morning with my own 6-year-old. My husband and I had had a disagreement the night before and had assumed the children—who sleep like logs once they finally succumb—had missed the whole business. I went ahead, however, and asked my daughter if she’d overheard us arguing. She nodded and said, “I don’t like it when you and Daddy fight,” as if what she’d heard the previous night was not the anomaly for her that we had believed.

While I wish she’d never observe an unkind word or look from anyone anywhere or experience her own home as anything other than the love nest of safety I yearn for it to be, that likely is impossible with two working parents, two young children competing for attention from those parents, mortgages, college funds, car repairs, school volunteer obligations, a New Year’s resolution to make more green smoothies, and all the other complexities of this modern life. There is bound to be some discord over who forgot to do, pay, or order something and who feels more overworked and underappreciated in any given week. I’m quite sure the dog is feeling the most slighted of all, but fortunately he’s too old to bark much about it these days.

On the whole, I hope that my children experience their home as a place of emotional security and that when conflicts do arise, they see positive examples of compromise and reconciliation and that Mom and Dad do kiss and make up. They could probably do without the kissing part, but I’m an overachiever so they will have to deal with it.