This blog posting is for no other reason than to vent. This Saturday was going perfectly well, parenting-wise. Wendy split the duties with the kids to get them all to sports practice and two games. Ari got dragged along as the youngest. After 6 hours of car shuttling, snacks, lunches (during which I ate too quickly and indulgently at Fatburger), finding missing mouth guards, yelling advice from the sidelines, and setting the kids up with activities at home, I wanted an hour or so to write. Sure. An hour. Is it asking too much (a question I ask at least several times a week)? It didn’t happen of course. Poor Wendy needed a nap after a sleepless night after a bad week at work. The younger boys violently practiced karate on each other (what did I expect after screening The Karate Kid for them the previous night). Benjamin finally started practicing piano, hitting more than a few errant notes that went straight to my nerves.

I’m trying to figure out my perspective here and I just can’t do it. I love this crazy life, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I’m so frustrated, I scream at the kids, pound the keyboard that can’t seem to help me focus, and dream of life as a college student. Sure, I’ll regain my composure eventually and gather a few of my considerable life rosebuds, but right now, I’m trampling all over them.

My older two kids (10 and 7) still talk about what they did at recess before anything else. Sure, I’d love if they talked a bit more about the lessons they learned inside the classroom, but now there is extra proof showing that recess makes learning more effective. A new study published in the journal Pediatrics shows that children who get at least 15 minutes of recess for a school day behave better in the classroom than those who get less or no play time. According to an article in the New York Times, there are other recent studies linking physical activity to improved in-class performance. The reason this is such important research is that, as schools endeavor to improve academic achievement for their students and concurrently battle with shrinking budgets, one thing that should be a staple is recess and perhaps even more time to play (P.E., anyone?) and rest the brain so the kids can go back inside and learn more effectively. Still, not all schools can afford supervision for play time. At our own public school, the parents banded together to raise money to pay for a P.E. teacher and we really feel it’s been money well spent.

No matter how hard I try, I often wake up to a rainy day and say, “What the heck am I going to do to keep the kids entertained?” Part of the problem is that I’m often lazy and would rather sit in front of an old movie with my wife, and stick my kids in front of the TV for an endless loop of cartoons. While I have no real problem with age-appropriate TV for occasional extended periods, if it means preserving sanity for my wife and me, I have enough of a responsibility pull to think about more active endeavors. I’ve even written suggestions on this topic, such as eschewing the video games and breaking out the board games (which I’m gonna do), but I’m always looking for new ideas. So, would you readers be so kind as to suggest one favorite bad weather day activity?

Gesticulate more with your kids! Research published in the February, 2009, issue of the journal Science indicates that children who use more gestures are likely to develop greater language skills. When it comes to language, even for babies, a lot of parents emphasize making sounds and worry that, if their kids are not verbalizing to communicate, they might be delayed in their language. This new study underscores how valuable non-verbal communication is, both in helping kids get what they need — since babies gesture before they learn to talk — and in assisting their later vocabulary. Although it’s important to not push little ones too hard to learn baby sign language, developing more signs with them can be quite beneficial. The key is empowering babies and toddlers to communicate in various ways so they do not get overly frustrated, though that is part of the language development process as well. Just be aware that, since children learn gestures so readily, they might copy that middle finger reaction to the car that cut you off in traffic today.

In his first two years of life, my middle son liked to put just about anything from the ground in his mouth. He ingested rocks and pebbles from the park, sand from the beach, spare change, you name it. Aside from the fear that he would choke on the grimy objects, my semi-OCD tendencies caused me to imagine Pokemon-like germ characters mounting bacterial attacks on his immune system. We tried everything to keep him from mouthing all that dirt and even learned about a condition called pica (or pika) which causes people to crave dirt to alleviate a vitamin deficiency. He didn’t have pica. What he had was a natural curiosity in the world and a habit of using his mouth as one of his tools.

Now comes a new book called, Why Dirt Is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends, which I discovered via Jane E. Brody’s personal health article in the New York Times. In Dr. Mary Ruebush’s book, she explains that our obsessions with cleanliness and the overuse of anti-bacterial soaps can actually do more harm than good. This is because children need some bacteria to help their immune systems learn what to fight. Brody quotes Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, who says, “What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment…Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.”

Brody’s nicely researched piece continues to cite the conclusions of other professionals in immunology and gastroenterology, who tell us such true but gross facts as how helpful intestinal worms are in making the immune system strong. The article also offers recommendations for keeping the balance between too-clean-to-be-healthy and just right, including moderate hand washing with plain soap and water. Some experts even suggest children not always wash before eating, explaining that kids on farms, who are exposed to animals with lots of germs, are less prone to allergies and autoimmune diseases.

I’m not sure how far I can go to let more dirt near my children’s mouths, but I have to say that I’m a bit more relieved and enlightened about letting my kids roll in the mud and eating snacks while playing with the dog. Dirt is my new friend.

Mike Austin, a great guy with a golden voice and six kids, hosts an Internet radio program about fatherhood. The Wisconsin resident and publisher of the Radio Dad site has had me on a couple of times and the most recent one covered the topic of being a dad in difficult financial times. Take a listen to episode #7 at Mike’s podcast page and let me know what you think.