Last month, my third child graduated from kindergarten. This means that, among other things, I am now a three-time veteran of the Kindergarten Halloween Parade. Three times, I have hurried to the elementary school to watch from the sidewalk as a tiny boy I love marched beside his classmates — one boy as Batman, one boy as Mario, and most recently, one boy as Spyro the Dragon — and posed for pictures for a throng of parents before settling in for a crafts and a snack.

Last week, I found out that the senior adviser to President Obama, Valerie Jarrett, is a Halloween Parade Veteran too. At the Huffington Post’s Third Metric conference in New York City — a day devoted to talking about redefining success beyond the traditional measures of money and power — Jarrett told our wonderful hosts Arianna Huffington and Mika Brzezinski about a time when she had to bolt out of a meeting with her boss at the time, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley,  in order to try to make it to her then-second grader daughter’s Halloween parade. She explained that though she missed plenty of school events over the years, the Halloween parade was an event that was particularly important to her daughter. She knew, she said, that her daughter would scan the crowd, looking for her face. If she wasn’t there when her daughter looked for her, it would be crushing for them both. (I won’t leave you hanging: she made it.)

The moment Valerie Jarrett relayed that story was the moment I truly felt like I belonged at the Third Metric conference. I had arrived that morning trying desperately to fake it ’til I made it: I had flown to New York and left my four kids in the care of a relay team made up of my babysitter, my mom, and my husband. I had ditched my every day uniform of yoga pants and flip-flops for a grown-up ensemble and heels, blown out my hair, and applied actual make-up.  And I had fervently hoped that no one would notice that I am a mostly stay at home parent who writes during my baby’s nap time, yet I was somehow lucky enough to stand in a room of true luminaries — CEOs, a U.S. Senator, magazine editors, film producers, television journalists, doctors, and yes, Valerie Jarrett. I was, in a word, intimidated. I wasn’t sure what I could add to this conversation about success when my usual definition of amazing success might mean surviving a trip to Costco with all my kids in the midst of a summer thunderstorm or getting all of my children to bed on time without someone crying (usually me).

But a Halloween parade is something I know and understand. What Jarrett’s story first made me realize, confirmed throughout the conference day by other mothers (and fathers!) like Joanna Coles, Candice Bergen, and Ali Wentworth and her husband, George Stephanopoulos, is that parenting is a great equalizer. Whether we are suburban moms hoping for a good nap out of our toddlers or renowned actresses or CTOs or television personalities or political bigshots, we’re parents. When our children scan a crowd expecting to see our faces, we want to be there. Period.

Bergen told a story about asking for a Golden Globe category to be moved later in the program so she wouldn’t have to miss her daughter’s performance as a warthog in a school play. Wentworth admitted to turning down a television show that would be shot in L.A. — far from her family’s home in New York — because she knew her husband George Stephanopoulos was right when he told her she would “cry every day” of the thirteen-week shoot. She knew she would miss her children, ages 10 and 8, too much, even if she was only gone part of the week. Several conference panelists talked about trying to avoid work on the weekends and in the evenings and to ignore their phones and messages. They talked about setting boundaries for their families, carving time for self care and meditation, and about trying to remember that a life well-lived, as Jarrett said, was more important than having the life others expect you to live.

It was a big day and a bigger topic. I came home with my head swimming, full to the brim with ideas and voices and opinions. I still haven’t fully digested everything that I heard and thought at the Third Metric, and I am fully immersed again in my familiar setting of diapers and Goodnight Moon and Minecraft and so, so many Legos. What is a third metric for success? The question has rolled around in my brain and kept me awake at night. What element rounds out a successful life — for mothers and fathers, for women and men who are not parents, for stay at home parents and for those with careers big or small? For me?

I have decided that it is connection — in whatever form an individual finds it — that fills in the gaps between money and power in my definition of success. My personal feeling of success is measured by a connection and the quality of that connection to my children, to my husband, to my friends and community, to myself, and to and through my writing. Money and power would be awesome (goodness knows), but a strong connection is my priority. That is what I saw in the panelists at Third Metric, too: whether the connection was to themselves through meditation and mindfulness, to their families, or to their communities, it was that reaching out beyond the confines of their work hours and responsibilities that made people feel like they had achieved true success in their days. Senator Claire McCaskill, for example, relayed that her morning had been made by spending breakfast in her hotel room bed with her college-age daughter, watching Sex and the City episodes. The smile on her face when she told us the story made it clear that her moment of connection with her daughter had been vital to her day.

I’m not a U.S. Senator. I’ve spent the past ten years having babies and trying to figure out how to keep them and myself alive by bedtime. I’ve also volunteered in my children’s schools, in my community, and for my alma mater. I’ve done work I feel is important, even if it was unpaid. I’ve missed plenty of school events, just as Valerie Jarrett did, even though I have not been working in city or federal government or for pay at all. But I haven’t missed the times that count. When my children’s faces have scanned the crowd, my face has been there beaming back at them. Our eyes connected. That is what matters.

Even women and men who aren’t married or who aren’t parents have the equivalent of Halloween parades in their lives, whether they are family weddings or funerals, anniversaries, vacations, or even just a long-awaited dinner with a friend. For everyone, there are times when we can miss things for work and then there are times when we know that if we miss that moment — if we can’t show up, connect, and be present — we will lose something. Something important.

The challenge, then, is to live our lives honoring that other part of success, and to remember that it is our personal connections to others as well as ourselves that tether us to this crazy world. We must, as Jarrett advised, look for jobs and bosses that understand the importance of our personal Halloween parades — and then we must firmly commit to nurturing our personal lives and not apologizing for doing so. That’s true for the stay at home parent too, who must sometimes leave the kids at home and go on date nights or nights (or even weekends) out with friends in order to maintain a self outside of the primary caregiver role. The truth is that we are all more productive and happier at work — whether that work is in the White House or our own houses — when we connect to ourselves and our relationships outside of work. And the bottom line is, if you miss your daughter’s one-time performance as a warthog, it doesn’t really matter if you win a Golden Globe or not. Take it from Candice Bergen.

What I would like to tell my son’s fifth grade teacher at his graduation:

For weeks now, my friends have asked me, “Are you sad? Are you sad the year is over?” and I have said, emphatically, “No! I’m ready. I can’t wait for summer.” My head has been filled with thoughts of mornings gloriously spent in pajamas and of stuffing the lunchboxes far back in the kitchen cabinets where I cannot see them for months.

(I really hate packing lunches.)

Then, this week happened. My fifth grader had party on top of party, all celebrating the ends of somethings: his Robotics Team party. His Safety Patrol party. His parent/student kickball game, the privilege reserved for fifth graders alone. I watched you out there with the kids, running as fast as you could muster around the kickball bases while hordes of children ran after the ball in an effort to have the chance to hurl it at your head and tag you out. I saw you laugh, beside them and with them, when you missed the base.

Last Friday was the day of the fifth grade party — cosmic bowling, countless Taylor Swift songs sung loudly by so many fifth grade girls in matching neon T shirts, and, yes, a photo booth. It was the same photo booth that was at my niece’s Sweet Sixteen party in October. I smiled when I saw you join the group of fifth grade teachers jumping behind the booth’s curtain for pictures all your own.

In the fall, it was my kindergartner who asked me to get in that photo booth with him, and I hesitated. This time, I didn’t. This time, I was the one who asked my tall, lanky 10-year-old to take a break from eating his pizza and bowling with his classmates to jump into the photo booth with me. There was no baby sleeping on my chest; instead, there was a toddler sitting on my hip. This year, more than any, has shown me how fast the time actually does go and how much my children change, sometimes overnight. I don’t hesitate anymore, whether I’m jumping into a picture or giving or receiving spontaneous hugs.

This year also drove home to me, in unfortunate ways, exactly how important you are in my children’s lives and mine, beyond the tests or the lesson plans. I learned that when a shooter invades a school, teachers will lie, challenge, and sometimes die trying to protect their students. I learned that when a tornado takes a school down as if it was built with popsicle sticks, teachers will use their own bodies to cover those of their small charges. After the recent disaster in Oklahoma at the Plaza Towers school, my friends all shook their heads in horror at the agony of the parents who could not reach their children when they knew a tornado was coming. But it dawned on me that the parents outside the school weren’t necessarily the only ones separated from their children. I realized that if it was our school in that position, you would also be worrying about your own son at college nearby, whom you could not reach. You too would be separated from your loved ones, even as you led and protected mine.

Thank you.

(Those words are inadequate, but they are the only words I have.)

Thank you for spending this year with my child, maybe the last year when I can really, truly call him a child, and for continuing to nurture his love of school. Thank you for the Friday afternoon dance parties, the reading breaks, and the current events assignments that had him reading news articles with new interest. Thank you for encouraging him to enter essay contests and to go beyond the boxed curriculum. Thank you for having great expectations, but also giving him grace when he needed it. Thank you for the day when you emailed me a picture of him on a field trip with you when you knew I was far away and missing him with the simple note: “We’re having a great day.”

Tomorrow morning, the little boy that I once dropped off in a preschool classroom only to sit in the parking lot and lean my head on the steering wheel, tears streaming down my face, will graduate from elementary school. He’s not grown up yet, but he’s on his way. I have the distinct, gnawing feeling that things are about to get real up in here, that this is the autumn of his childhood, and my days are growing shorter with him. I’m infinitely grateful for this past year — a good year, a year of happy days and many books and increased independence — a year we shared with you. I don’t think he has any idea what he’s getting into with middle school. I’m not sure I do either. Frankly, I think that’s okay. He’ll be fine (and I will too). Overwhelmed at first, perhaps, but fine. I am not worried. I’m actually a little excited.

So thank you, for all of it. Thank you for your sense of humor, for your eternal patience, and for the work you put into my child. Most of all, thank you for loving him when you didn’t have to and for letting him be who he is. I understand he might not always have that gift, which makes it all the more precious. He was lucky to share your classroom. We both were.

What I actually said to my son’s fifth grade teacher at his graduation:

Thank you, Ms. W. Have a great summer.

“We’re just covering our bases,” we said when we decided to make the appointment. “Just a formality, just in case. Probably nothing.” But we knew it wouldn’t be just a formality or just in case.

When my second child was about three months shy of 3 years old, I took him to a private speech therapist. I had waited, per my pediatrician’s suggestion, to see if he would grow into his speech. He seemed to understand everything just fine, and he talked an awful lot. But I was his primary caregiver, and I couldn’t understand 90 percent of what he said.

I asked his preschool teachers how his speech compared to his classmates’ in his two year old program. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just comparing him unfairly to his verbally precocious older brother, who seemed like he spoke like an adult (if a very irrational adult) from the time he came out of the womb. At first, they said no, they noticed nothing different. I relaxed. About a week later, the lead teacher pulled me aside. “You know,” she said, “after you mentioned it, we started noticing that he actually just doesn’t talk in class… really, at all.”

That was how I found myself sitting in a small room, in a small chair, watching my son play on the floor with well-loved toys while I filled out The Forms. So many forms. It was a booklet. The questions were endless, and the questions were relentless. They asked me about his birth. They asked me about his infancy. They asked me about his toddlerhood.  What were the circumstances and details of his birth? His birthweight? What was his first word, and when? When did he roll over? crawl? Walk? Had he experienced any trauma? When? How? How many of these fifty words would he recognize? How many does he say? How often does he say them? What foods does he eat? When did he start eating them?

I stared at the pages. I felt as if I was on trial. I knew the purpose of these eight zillion questions was just to gather as much information as possible, to help diagnose my son’s issue and more importantly, to help my son. All I wanted in the whole world at that moment was to help my son. But answering those questions, I felt as if every second of his life was under a microscope… and with it, me.

I felt especially keenly how little I remembered. Was I supposed to know all of this by heart, off hand? I had two babies 21 months apart. The preceding four years had been a crazy blur of sleepless nights, pregnancy, and diapers. I had no idea when he rolled over or when he crawled. I had no idea when he started talking or how many of those words he knew. The letters blurred together and swam on the page. I would reveal myself, right there on those very official forms, to be a completely unobservant, negligent mother who really hadn’t paid attention to my second baby’s babyhood. No wonder he couldn’t talk.

It’s my fault, I heard in my head as I wrote down the circumstances of his birth. He stopped moving in the womb at 37 weeks. I sat in triage a whole day, waiting for him to move. Finally, we had to induce him, unable to determine why he was so still. He was born a healthy 8 pounds, 9 ounces, his umbilical cord wrapped twice around his neck, but not blue. He nursed well, he grew well. He slept early and often, the complete opposite of my first newborn.

I paused at the question about trauma. When he was nine weeks old, my mother was carrying him when she lost her footing by stepping in a divot in the pavement on a road. She fell to the ground, dropping him on his back and the back of his head. It was almost kind of a a release to have one of my worst new-mother nightmares come to fruition: someone actually dropped my baby. After a horrific ride in an ambulance with my 9 week old strapped to a board, X-rays and examinations declared him fine. My heart was not. Two years and change later, I had to write the scene out again on those forms, and the doubts began creeping back. Was he not fine? Did something stop working when he hit the ground that day?

By the time I finished the pages and pages of questions, my shoulders had long since slumped in defeat. I was demoralized. I was convinced I had somehow failed my baby in utero. I was convinced he had brain damage from falling on his back at nine weeks old. I was certain a better mother could answer the questions about his milestones confidently and easily. This is where failures bring their children, I thought. Failures fill out The Forms.

I know it’s not true, of course. I wasn’t a failure. I was weary, a little battered, a little worse for the wear after a few years of sleep deprivation and hormonal roller coasters. I was deep in the trenches of motherhood, not yet able to see a horizon line beyond Baby Einstein and nap schedules and time outs. But as any mother who has ever sought an evaluation of any kid for her child can tell you, The Forms just seemed to cement every slippery doubt, every nagging worry, every small neurosis that had ever kept me awake at night even though my exhausted bones screamed for mercy. They’re insidious, the forms. They’re brutal. They’re unforgiving. They’re poker-faced. They’re merciless. They convince you that your child is not okay.

And sometimes he isn’t. Sometimes, the doubts are right. Sometimes, it’s not until you sit in a small chair in a small room with a toddler playing at your feet — your world still for the first moment that day — and stare at the pages of questions you don’t want to answer, that you acknowledge that you already know that he’s not okay.

For us, two and a half years of speech therapy yielded a child who can speak articulately, if not completely perfectly. He can speak well enough to tell me when he hates me and when I have failed, but also whisper that he loves me before he closes his eyes at night. We still do not know why he had articulation difficulties and mouth weakness. Now, when my friends tell me they are going in with their children for evaluations — any kind of evaluation — I nod my head silently. I know the first hurdle will be The Forms. They’re awful. But they are the first step toward something else: Hope.

This post originally appeared on Brain, Mother, the blog for Brain, Child magazine. 

Only a few members of my large village.

I don’t need a greeting card holiday to celebrate the mothers in my life. Except I kind of do, just because normal, everyday life sort of swallows me whole a lot of the time, and I barely have time to wash my hair and give each of the little people in my life love before the day is through. So I’m going to take a moment to thank Hallmark for trying to capitalize on emotions and say that sometimes, I do need the designated holiday. Unfortunately for Hallmark, I am never organized enough to buy an actual greeting card. Sorry, Hallmark.

I could write a lot of words about motherhood and what it means to me, and I might. But today I want to write about mothers — not my own mother or my grandmother — but the mothers who are in my life and help me be a mother. They help me be a better mother. They help me be a better person. They are my village.

This one is for the mothers who pick my children up from school for me because I’m sick, because the baby is napping, or because I am stuck in traffic. They take my boys to practices or games and bring them home sometimes. I want to be everywhere, but sometimes I can’t be. They take care of the most important things in the world to me and deliver them home safely.

This is for the mothers who volunteer to chaperone field trips and school parties, who work on PTA with me. We are all busy and all our time is valuable, but they help make a difference in my children’s schools, and that is so important to me. My children spend more time at school than they do at home during waking hours, and I want that environment to be as positive as possible.

To that end, this is for the mothers who put their own children in childcare so they can teach at my children’s schools. They aren’t being paid generously and they are subject to a whole lot of headaches, and yet they still make the choice to teach. I know the job does not end when they turn the lights off in the classroom each day, and I am grateful that they share their talent and their dedication with my little gang. I could never give my children everything that each of these women give them.

This is also for the mothers who were my teachers, both in school and in college, who became a part of my life, who mentored me and modeled for me the possibilities of all the paths I could choose and who told me I could choose them. Their support and encouragement changed my life and who I am, both as a person and as a mother myself.

This is for the mother that puts her own children in childcare so that she can be my doctor and take care of me. She’s the one who called me from her car with her 1 year old in the backseat, on her way to a Gymboree class, to talk about an issue with my last pregnancy. She’s the one I called at 2 AM with my third pregnancy, certain I had given myself listeria by eating deli sandwiches at my child’s birthday party. She’s the best doctor I have ever had, and I’m so glad that even though she has two small children of her own, she juggles everything her life to continue to be a doctor and to bring my babies into the world.

This is for the mother who is also my primary babysitter. She has three children of her own and a day job, but when I ran out of gas at the baseball field on a week night — pregnant and stuck with three hungry, exhausted children while my husband was out of town — she dropped everything and came to help. She feeds my children, plays games with them, and snuggles them to sleep so that I can have breaks or attend meetings or parties without them sometimes. The only way I can go on my third grader’s field trip tomorrow is because she is willing to watch my baby on her day off from work. I pay her, but I could never pay her enough for the peace of mind of knowing I have a pro here in my place.

This is for the women, some of whom are are not yet mothers themselves, who love my children because they love me. They send my children some of the only mail they ever receive and remember them when they don’t even have to — the best gift of all to a child. We don’t always acknowledge it, but they truly are family to my children, and I am so glad.

This is for the moms who sit with me at lunches or dinners or, sometimes, bars — who laugh with me, who cry with me, and who nod their heads when I talk. They listen to the stories about my children, to my gripes and my worries, and they don’t judge me. More importantly, they don’t judge my children. They are my soft places to fall. When I call, they answer. I really don’t know what I would do without my friends. It takes another mother to fully understand the distinct and intricate combination of love, exhaustion, exasperation, fear, and pride that goes into everyday mothering of these crazy, complicated little creatures in our care. It takes another mother to listen to our words but also to go farther and feel our hearts. It takes another mother to say, “You are doing a good job,” and for us to hear it on our bad days. Because we know they know. I have those mothers in my life, and I am so thankful.

This Mother’s Day, I hope to celebrate my mom a little. I hope to be celebrated myself. But I am feeling overwhelming gratitude today for the mothers who surround me and take care of me and my children, and I hope I do the same for them. I need these mothers, each of them — I need the ones who have careers big and small, the ones who do not work for pay, the ones who live around the corner and the ones who live across the country. Every mother is vital to my village, whether we have made the same choices or not, whether we parent the same way or not. Our paths might not look the same, and they might not even all lead to the same place. But we’re all walking, and they are choosing to walk beside me — and sometimes, to carry me. Thank you, ladies. This one is for you.

In honor of Mother’s Day this Sunday, there are two projects in which I would love to see you participate. The first is a photo campaign at HuffPost Parents inspired by “The Mom Stays in the Picture.” We’re asking moms to let their children take pictures of them and to let the kids write the captions. You can submit your photos here or by emailing parents@huffingtonpost.com. The second project is through my friends at weeSpring. They actually helped inspire this post with their project “Not Just for Moms.” Read here to see how you can celebrate a caregiver who helps you be a better mother, because I think we all have a village, big or small!

My copy of the book, dog-eared after my children dropped it in a full bathtub, lying next to a used medicine dropper I had to use at 2 AM to give Tylenol to a child with a raging fever. We keep it real here.

I’m not a very good liar, especially when it comes to motherhood and parenting. Early on in this parenthood gig, I couldn’t understand why anyone would lie about mothering. Don’t we want everyone to know exactly how freaking hard this is? I wondered. If I hadn’t slept in months, if I was wearing the same shirt I slept in, if I could do circus acts with my spraying nursing boobs, if my hair was still falling out in huge clumps months after I had the baby… you were going to know about it if you stood still long enough for me to tell you. (I am so fun to have at parties! The invites roll in daily.)

Okay, so ten years later, I am a little more judicious about sharing information. Most days. I have a confession to make, though. Last week, the (very pregnant) elementary school guidance counselor told me off-handedly that she was nervous about childbirth. That was a big mistake. Before I could stop my mouth, I was telling her that’s not what she should be nervous about. “It’s everything that comes after that,” I said helpfully (ominously). She gave me just a wee, tiny bit of a questioning look, and I was off to the races: “You’ll feel like you were hit by a bus. That’s normal. I’ll make you a list of things you will need if you have a vaginal birth — Tucks hemorrhoid pads you can put in the mesh underwear and Dermoplast spray for faster wound healing.”

The look of horror on her face clued me in to the realization that I HAD JUST SAID THE WORDS “VAGINAL” and “WOUND” TO MY KIDS’ GUIDANCE COUNSELOR. I took a few steps back, hurriedly muttered some niceties, and ran out of the building, baby on my hip, 5 year old in front of me, like Old Mother Hubbard who needed to get back to her shoe with her million children and her tips about hemorrhoid pads and vaginal wounds. I swear I used to be a normal person.

Okay, so I am a little TOO honest sometimes, but I think it’s still important to be real about motherhood — maybe not so much to first-time pregnant women charged with overseeing your children’s mental health, but to other new moms at least. Jill Smokler, aka Scary Mommy, does too. Her recently-released second book, Motherhood Comes Naturally (and other vicious lies) is dedicated to exploring the myths and lies we were told about motherhood before we had children and how her experiences turned out differently. Among the myths Jill details: “Parenting strengthens a marriage,” “You’ll get more sleep when they are older,” and “It gets easier.”

I’m with her. Jill uses her typical hilarious and down-to-earth style to explain why these statements just aren’t true a lot of the time. Babies are hard on marriages, in part because there is always a child in our bed or on our floor (and my older children wake up more than the baby does!). And I have always been very careful about answering the question, “Does it get easier?” The truth to me is that it does not get easier, but some things get easier and some get harder at any given moment. Things that are hard about newborns — the spitting up, the short sleep and eating intervals — get easier, but toddlers are certainly not easy. As they grow into full-fledged kids, the “work” of parenting is less physical but harder emotionally. As the saying goes, big kids have bigger problems.

Like Jill, I often reminisce now about the days when I had two under two, even though those days were HARD AS HELL, because they were simpler. I was working hard, stressed out, and lonely, but my problems were all confined to my home and were remedied by meals, naps, and diaper changes, for the most part. Now I have to email teachers, vet therapists, and face middle school. It’s a whole different ballgame, and the logistics are way more complicated. Whereas I once likened my first year with a colicky newborn to a war, I now consider newborns the easy ones.

Jill intersperses her chapters with wry lists of parenting truths and factoids such as “Decoding Mom Speak,” “Perks to Being Awake When the Rest of the World Sleeps,” and my personal favorite, “The Seven Stages of Getting Dressed for a Rare Night Out.” (“1. SHOCK & DENIAL. This is not my body.”) She also ends the book and dots the chapters with confessions from real moms from her site, Scary Mommy. Everything is really funny in that groaning, all-too-familiar way. To be honest, I’m not usually a fan of parenting books in general, and I don’t always love books for moms because they are full of cliches. But I really enjoyed reading Jill’s book because she writes so conversationally, we might be sharing war stories at Starbucks after the third grade field trip. Her experiences mirror mine. She gets me. And she doesn’t write in cliches.

The best part about the book? Lie #6, “Parents Wouldn’t Dream of Hurting Their Children.” While Jill is funny and her humor colors everything in the book, I admire that in this chapter most of all, she isn’t afraid to be real and brutally honest. She writes about how once her daughter turned three, she began the renowned tantrums and meltdowns that made Jill crazy. She talks about the rage that boils up sometimes, that makes her feel like she could burst. But she didn’t take it out on her daughter, because she calmed herself down like the rational adult she actually is. I know what she’s talking about — especially when dealing with hormones, especially if there is a new baby sibling in the house, especially if my husband has been out of town or working late and I am dealing with the third tantrum of the day over why the favorite TV show isn’t on or whether or not the child can have another pack of gummy fruit snacks (in addition to the two he had already) or why he can’t go swimming just because it is lightning outside. I don’t hurt my children, but I have felt the rage that makes me know why others with less self control do. That’s what sets Jill apart: her book is not just funny, it’s real. And it’s cathartic in that honesty.

You have to know that Jill cusses. I like that about her. You also have to know that not all of her experiences might be exactly yours. I did, in fact, think adding a third child was not exactly a “breeze,” but for us, it was not the sinking scene in Titanic that she relates it to — probably because she had her last two children close together, whereas my third child was 3.5-years younger than my second. This is a worthwhile book, and a good one to give both new and veteran moms. New moms will breathe deep, relief-filled sighs as they realize they are, in fact, normal. Veteran moms will laugh wryly to themselves and groan as they nod in recognition of why, in fact, Sharpies are never a good idea in a house with small children. The only moms I would not give this book to are those who are still pregnant with their first. We can’t let them in on all the secrets yet. Let them get over the vaginal wounds and the hemorrhoids (or the C-section scars and engorged boobs), and then they can find out the rest.

Jill Smokler’s Motherhood Comes Naturally (and other vicious lies) is available at Amazon here. I was not compensated for reviewing her book, but Jill did send me a copy to read. I occasionally guest post at her blog, Scary Mommy, and I have found her to be an extraordinarily supportive, generous writer and blogger, especially to a newbie like me. She deserves all the accolades she gets!

Dear Baby Girl,

You are my very last baby, and a few weeks ago, you turned one year old. Since you are still just crawling and standing, not yet brave enough to raise your foot and project forward into toddlerhood (thank goodness), I still get to call you a baby. FYI, I also get to call you “my baby,” if not “a baby,” forever. It’s written in my contract. But in actuality, you won’t be a baby much longer. Not for long, and not forever.

Baby Girl, you love your bath like nobody’s business. You’re such a menace, scaling the sides of the slippery tub in search of Objects You Are Not Supposed to Have and face planting in the bubbles, popping your sweet, round head up with a “WTH?!” look on your wet face. You love playing with your sparkly purple plastic tea cup set in the tub with your 5 year old brother, whose long legs take up too much of the tub, but his enthusiasm for playing with you more than makes up for them.

With my first or even my second babies, I would have been too nervous to let them crawl around so much in the tub. I would have been afraid of them tripping over each other’s legs. I would have dunked them in the bath, given them a good scrub, and whisked them out for bedtime. But with you, I’m more likely to revel a little in your chunky thighs, watch you play a little bit, and enjoy the fact that I have a baby in the tub. I spy the now-defunct baby bathtub sitting lonely in my closet, and I can’t believe we’ve already outgrown it. I won’t have a baby in the tub much longer — not for long, and not forever.

You only have two bottom teeth. Your brothers all had many by now. It makes me worry when I feed you table food — how much can those two tiny teeth do? You eat anything and everything with gusto, though. Truth be told, I’m in no hurry for your little mouth to fill up with teeth, to start the long and winding road of dentist visits and worries about cavities and the possibility that you might knock one of those teeth out or chip them on the patio. I love your gummy little smile. I won’t have an almost toothless baby much longer, and certainly not forever.

Your crawl is the funniest thing ever. You don’t like to rub your knees on the floor, so you crawl with two hands and two flat feet, your bum pushed way up in the air in a sort of hybrid walk-crawl. Your daddy and your brothers are absolutely dying for you to walk instead. They try to coax you by lifting you up to your feet and begging you to come fetch intriguing somethings at your eye level. But you very daintily plop to the ground and tear off on your hands and feet like a monkey. I’m treasuring what I fear are your last days of crawling and my last days of sanity — I dread worrying about where you might fall and what you might fall on — because once you walk, you’ll likely never crawl again. You won’t crawl much longer. You won’t crawl forever.

You have yet to say your first word, but you babble an awful lot. You will squeal indignantly if your brothers anger you or take your pacifier away. You will laugh and cackle when they please you. When you want them or me or Daddy, you will call for us in an indistinguishable yelp, but one that definitely sounds like you are calling someone. Your brothers had at least one word by now, yes. But you will get there. I’m sure that soon enough, you’ll be talking my head off like they do, and with that, you’ll have the ability to both make my heart burst and also to make my heart break with your words. I’m good with the babbling for right now, Baby Girl. I love communicating with you by touch, by eyes, by hugs and nuzzles. You won’t be wordless much longer. Not forever.

I spent your oldest brother’s first year in agony. I failed, you see, at baby sleep. Utterly, miserably failed. F-minus. By the time he and I finally made it work, I was broken and he was frustrated beyond belief. The majority of my anguish was not my lack of sleep, but my feelings of failure and inadequacy: I was certain I had failed him, certain he would never sleep properly, certain it was my fault. Other mothers told me so. “He’ll never sleep in his own bed if you let him sleep in yours!” they crowed. “You missed your window, and now he’s ruined!” they moaned.

They were wrong. Now, I don’t fear ruining you. I know better. You sleep in your own crib most of the time, and soon you will sleep there all the time. I will miss your little head under my chin. I will miss your feet kicking my thighs. I will miss you, because you will be in your crib for more than half of each 24 hour day between bedtime and naps. For now, I don’t worry about my spotty sleep. I don’t fret that I have failed you. I don’t wish it away. I’m afraid that too soon, you won’t want to snuggle. Too soon, you’ll thank me for the bedtime story and you’ll turn over in your bed, probably grumbling about your bedtime and cursing my name. Too soon, you’ll be asking about sleepovers and not long after that, curfews. It won’t be much longer. I’ve done this a few times now. I know exactly how fast it goes. I know.

So humor me, Baby Girl. Be my baby today. Let me hold your head against my chest and rock you in our chair. Let me share a cookie with you and watch your eyes light up with the new taste.  Let me dress you in some impossibly impractical bubble that you won’t deign to consider in a few years’ time. Be my baby — not for long, and not forever, but for today — and I promise that for this moment, I will be present and enjoy every single second of it.

(I’ll cry a little bit too — but not for long, and not forever.)

It’s hard enough to be pregnant. Stop the fat shaming.

Pregnancy — the four times I enjoyed it — brought a lot of anxiety into my life. I was 27 when I conceived my firstborn. I had lived most of my life fearing report cards and test scores and admission letters and phone calls that told me whether or not I received The Job, just like anyone else. I had spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about my weight and which pair of jeans I could fit into at the moment and how others valued me on both a physical and intellectual level, as many women do. But pregnancy brought on an entire new category of judgment, perceived and real: how I wore maternity clothes, how much weight I gained, how I carried, how I coped. Then there were the details: how many orange or yellow vegetables I ate a day, whether I took my prenatal vitamin, if I practiced my kegels, if I ate sushi, if I drank caffeine or artificial sweeteners.

Thank goodness that all my insecurities were just perhaps a little neurotic, but normal. Thank goodness my name was not Jessica Simpson or, gosh forbid, Kim Kardashian.

I have been mortified at the way these young women have been torn apart in the media — and by “civilans” — for their pregnancy appearances and their pregnancy weight gains. The current fascination with and entertainment value of fat shaming Kim Kardashian, especially, is galling to me. I’m someone who has felt the discouraging despair of watching my breasts and stomach swell in that super-uncomfortable, not-fat-just-pregnant phase of pregnancy, before it’s completely obvious that you are either sheltering a basketball or a baby under your clothes but after the point you can wear your regular wardrobe. I have thrown bras down in frustration because they just didn’t do the job anymore. I have struggled with the desire to wear anything BUT a maternity dress and the hatred of the blasted belly panel that I can’t live without, because those newfangled maternity styles without belly panels just slid right off me. Nothing less attractive than a pregnancy plumber’s crack, my friends.

I understand that America does not feel warm and fuzzy about Kim Kardashian or her family at the moment, given their track record for exploitive reality television and obnoxiously extravagant weddings for marriages that lasted for mere weeks. I’m not trying to defend Kim or her family on a personal level, though I would point out that they would not be famous without the explicit cooperation of the American viewing public. But for as many adjectives as you may throw at Kim Kardashian, she’s a real person. She’s a woman who lost her father to cancer when she was young and who has been divorced twice, and I don’t care who you are or how much Dolce is in your closet, neither of those are easy experiences. She’s a hard worker who shows up on time and takes her work, whatever you think of it, seriously. But more importantly, she is in fact a human being, and no one deserves the ridicule she has been receiving.

You may critique Kim’s fashion choices, of course. I don’t agree with them. I do think that she could do herself a favor by embracing the maternity look and forgetting the effort to continue to wear clothes not designed for a pregnant woman. With her money and resources, I would not be wearing the same ensembles. But making fun of Kim’s weight gain or her body is beyond cruel; it’s simple bullying.

Kim Kardashian is a small person. She’s not tall. She’s very petite. As with most things in Hollywood, this is a case of objects possibly appearing larger than they really are. A twenty-pound weight gain on Kim Kardashian is going to change her entire body. The plain truth is that almost nobody — really, nobody — is Heidi Klum, including the women of Hollywood. Most of us, Heidi excluded, are going to look like Oompa Loompas when we are pregnant. Most of us, no matter what we wear, are going to look uncomfortable or awkward at some point (or, in my case, all points) during our pregnancies. It’s inevitable and, in my opinion, part of pregnancy to realize that you are no longer in control. That’s not a bad lesson to learn, I feel.

When the media and the public shame Kim Kardashian, they shame all women. Teenage girls, not yet mothers, are listening and watching when Kim’s weight and figure are broadcast on television and in magazines as something outrageous. They are internalizing the message this is shameful, this is bad. While maintaining a healthy weight in pregnancy is a goal, it’s also secondary to the mental, emotional, and otherwise physical health of the mother and the unborn child. The messages we want to send to our daughters are that pregnant women, like all women, come in all shapes and sizes. Pregnancy is beautiful on many levels. What is important about pregnancy is health, not how good you look in a dress.

It’s not Kim Kardashian who needs to feel shame right now. It’s the American media and the public criticizing her, snickering at her, and trying to make her feel uncomfortable who should be ashamed. Stop the bullying. It’s really not pretty.

[I asked my friend and college classmate, Jessica, to write a guest post for me about talking to our children about what the word "gay" means. I asked her because I have, in the past year, needed to explain it to all three of my boys, and because I know that at least one of my children has heard it used in a derogatory manner at school. Jessica is an expert in such matters, and as you can see, the whole concept doesn't faze her a bit. Now, I am an ally in LGBTQ causes, but I realize that not everyone feels the same way I do -- even in my own family. But I agree with Jessica that no matter how one feels about these issues, it is one of our parental responsibilities to explain what "gay" means to our children, because it is part of their world whether they are gay themselves or not. I agree with her that children understand what love is and what it means, and I think it's an excellent starting point. Maybe you do too. In any case, this post is not a debate about gay marriage, nor is it a debate about the morality of homosexuality. It is, in fact, about parenting. -- Allison]

Jessica’s daughters drew this picture to illustrate her most important point: it’s about love.

“Mommy, what does ‘gay’ mean?”

“Um… uh… it means happy!  Happy and gay!  Now what should we have for breakfast?”

(This message was brought to you by the Association for Nervous Parents, and sponsored by the Foundation of What Not to Do.)

Parents, listen up.  This is not rocket science.  But it might hurt, just a little.

As an advocate for the safety of LGBTQ youth in schools and a mother of three girls aged seven and under, I am often asked HOW a parent can explain “gay” to children, and more importantly WHY would they?  People sometimes give me the side-eye, as if I am up to no good, when I explain that my own kids have known about gay couples since they were toddlers. Well, stay with me here—but the truth is, the answers to both of these questions are remarkably easy.

Q: HOW do you explain “gay” to kids? 

A: Simply!

Q: WHY do you explain “gay” to kids?

A: Because you have to!

Little kids don’t know about sex.  NOR SHOULD THEY.  What they DO know about is families.  And the idea of marriage.  Because they have likely observed at least one of these concepts in their own homes or in the social landscape at large.

So when my best male friend R was coming to meet my girls for the first time and he was bringing along his partner of 10 years, M, I made this NOT-AT-ALL-SCARY declaration: “Girls, this is R, and this is M.  They are married just like Mommy and Daddy, and they love each other just like Mommy and Daddy.”

Did my girls’ heads pop off?  No.  Did their eyes bug out?  No.  Did they immediately erupt into detailed questions about R and M’s personal life and morality-laden inquiries about non-reproductive sexual conduct?  HELL NO.

Did they ask if R and M brought them presents?  Um, yes.

And that’s about it.  I think you could do this!

Put aside, for a moment, the fact that R and M are not legally married (because they can’t legally marry in their home state).  Kids don’t ask to see marriage licenses.  Kids understand the world within their established framework, and kids understand marriage.  Marriage is a heuristic—a mental shortcut—for a greater concept. Kids can understand that you MARRY WHO YOU LOVE.  We say this all the time in my house.  Trust me: it works.

But what if my child is older?, you ask.  What if he already knows about the birds and the bees?  How do I explain birds with birds, or bees with bees??  Help!

Again, and here I’m quoting a cranky old guy I know: “Keep it simple, stupid!”  You can say, “Obviously, two boys or two girls can’t do exactly the same things in their bedrooms as a boy and a girl do.  But you know what?  A lot of what they do is exactly the same.”  And if your kid wants to know more and is old enough to know more, then he probably also knows about this poorly-kept secret: THE INTERNET. You’re welcome!  Direct him to an information-oriented site such as http://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth-resources.htm to get him started, and then promise you won’t go snooping through his browser history from there.

Please don’t let your religious beliefs keep you from explaining this concept to your children.  This is not about religion. Gay is everywhere, like it or not.  It’s on your TV, it’s in the President’s inaugural address, and soon it’s going to be in your schools, because gay kids end up dead when it isn’t.  You can choose not to have a gay relationship, you can disapprove of gay marriage, you can believe that gay people don’t get into heaven.  What you CANNOT do, however, is tell children that gay people don’t exist, because willful ignorance leads to hateful ignorance.  Only one Matthew Shepard needs to die, alone and tied to a fence post, to teach us that painful fact.

There is one last reason why you need to explain gay to your kids: YOUR kid might grow up to be gay.  Go ahead: gasp, wring your hands, put your therapist’s number on speed dial.  Won’t change a damn thing.  Now, odds are, your child WON’T be gay: the statistical likelihood hovers at around 10 percent.  But will your child have a gay friend, a gay teacher, a gay teammate, or a gay coworker one day?  You betcha.  The closet door is wide open.  LGBTQ people are taking their rightful place as American citizens in one big old gay parade.

So the choice is yours: Do you embrace this new reality and give your kids a straightforward, age-appropriate explanation of two people who share the same loving feelings for each other as do you and YOUR spouse or significant other?  Or do you do the dance, change the subject, and hope like heck that all the gay people turn straight before your kid raises the dreaded subject again?

Look around you.  The world is full of difficult conversations we must have with our children.  This is not one of them.  It’s easy.  It’s love.  And it’s time.

 Jessica Mayer Herthel is the mother of 3 girls and currently works as a consultant with the Broward County, Florida, school district. In that role, Jessica has developed LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum, approved LGBTQ-friendly books for school libraries, and drafted a handbook of best practices for principals and administrators regarding LGBTQ youth concerns.

“It’s okay, Mom, it’s only a test,” my 9 year old says almost convincingly as he brushes off my attempts to give him a pep talk. His eyes won’t meet mine, and I know his bravado is thin.

For the past week, both my older boys have had the chance to indulge in that new American childhood pastime, state-mandated standardized testing. My fifth grader is finishing up six days of tests in reading, math, and science. He is took his math exams on a computer for the first time. My third grader was treated to a relatively short four days of reading and math testing. Failing his tests would mean mandatory retention: repeating third grade, regardless of his class grades.

My particular kids are not in danger of failing these exams. However, their school years have centered around them. I would not say that their entire curriculum nor all their coursework has been “teaching to the test,” because I don’t think that is true. We’re lucky enough to have dedicated teachers that do teach more than just to the test. But I do think that the tests hang in the air in their classrooms, never quite out of sight or mind for the teacher or the students.

In third grade, I was still learning to write effective paragraphs and to perfect my cartwheel at the exact same elementary school where my children attend now. In my gifted resource class, I was dissecting a starfish and presenting a report on the Bermuda Triangle, complete with transparencies (Remember transparencies?). My teacher read us Where the Red Fern Grows aloud from a stool in the front of the classroom. I came home each day, ate snacks, watched Scooby-Doo, and played outside until dinnertime.

I took standardized tests, but they were “fun” because they were on just one day out of many, and they didn’t mean anything to me. My children and their friends, by comparison, understand well the stakes involved in their tests. They know failing means retention in third grade. They know that the scores determine which math classes they are allowed to take and whether or not they will have to take intensive remedial classes in reading or math in upcoming years. They talk about the tests in their free time at the cafeteria tables and on the playground. When they make “All About Me” pages or write poems for class, they include lines about how they hope to pass the state tests. Have you ever heard the acronym “FCAT” in a third grader’s haiku? It’s pretty sad.

I’m an academics-oriented parent. My husband and I take school seriously. However, my only goals for my children’s elementary school experience have been that they learn the foundational skills they need for their educations and that, most importantly, they learn to love school. I would hope that every child could love elementary school, and I can’t imagine instilling motivation and drive for higher education in my kids if they didn’t love their time in the primary grades. School should still be very lovable when you are 8 years old.

Unfortunately, the environment our children are in now, with these standardized tests and their expectations and high-stakes results, does not nurture a love for school. I have observed 8 year olds dealing with test anxiety. I have watched their parents panic even more, all the while trying to act nonchalant in front of their kids. I have seen teachers try valiantly to walk the line between not freaking their students out and yet not freaking out themselves because their pay, or even their jobs, could be tied to their students’ results.

This is madness. And to what end?

My kids are in the gifted resource programs too. They don’t dissect starfish or learn about the Bermuda Triangle. They do have the chance to explore some outside-the-test-box subjects, but the state now dictates that they mostly receive just extra academic work — more math, more reading. At least in that setting they are given a chance to play with math manipulatives and games — the kind every student should have. They have more science than their peers, too. Because science isn’t tested until fifth grade, science curriculum in elementary school until fifth grade is very minimal. Good thing science isn’t an important subject or anything.

Recess is twice a week, depending on the teacher. Twice a week. For elementary school students. Some teachers (not mine, thank goodness) still use recess as a punishment, taking it away from the very kids who need the chance to touch a playground the most.

I can work around school budget cuts and the minimizing of everything but the curriculum the kids must cover before the annual tests. I give my kids time to play outside after school, to swim in the pool and climb on their playset every day. We supplement the lack of recess and the weak P.E. curriculum with athletic extracurricular activities like tennis or flag football. We give them math and logic games here at home, we make sure they have access to any book they ever want to read, and we let them perform basic science experiments in the kitchen. I can give my children these things because my husband makes enough money to pay for them and because I stay at home and play taxi to my children in the afternoons — neither of which is a luxury other parents, even in our middle class neighborhood, can sometimes afford.

But I cannot opt out of standardized tests. I can’t shield my kids from these ridiculous exercises. If the tests were truly just tests, I wouldn’t need to shield them. If they weren’t the talk of the school water coolers, if they didn’t color their entire third, fourth, and fifth grade school years, if they didn’t mean that everything stops during those testing weeks except testing, then they could be considered “only tests.” But they are not. They are instead often the basis for these children’s self worth, the measure of their entire school year’s success.

I have a 10 year old worried there will be a computer glitch that will harm his score, who can opine on how much easier it is to do math problems on paper without transferring the answers to computer screens (something I did not do until I took the GRE in my 20s). But he is a lucky one — he has enough natural writing talent that he was able to deftly handle last year’s FCAT writing prompt that asked him to write about a time when he rode a camel — something he has never done — while also using the desired varied syntax, interesting vocabulary, main ideas with concrete elaboration, and an appropriate introduction and conclusion as well as correct spelling and punctuation. How many Florida public school children have ridden a camel? Is it fair to evaluate all of Florida’s fourth graders in any given year based on their ability — at 9 and 10 years old — to creatively write about an experience they probably haven’t had in a high-pressure testing situation? If this was a classroom assignment, a learning experience, I would applaud it. But the children and their parents don’t even have the chance to see the graded writing samples.

How much time is wasted testing these children that could be spent teaching these children? How much money, time, and resources are spent on this ritual? My school principal was forced to use all his allocated school improvement money on building a new second computer lab this year — solely for the purpose of administering the standardized tests on computers. Our school doesn’t have a science lab at all. We have a cadre of teachers who work hard and actually care, and we ask them to spend a large chunk of their school year focusing not on innovative teaching methods, but on making sure their students can pass this one test.

Again, for my children, this is only a test. They’re not going to fail. I don’t worry about them failing. I worry about what effect it will have on them that school is already a business, that they are receiving the message at 8, 9, and 10 years old that the only thing that matters about their days there is what they ultimately score on these exams. Why should they care about their daily coursework? What about their days will inspire them to explore more and want more from their educations in their high school and college years? Why can’t we get this right? If everyone — administrators, teachers, parents, and students — are miserable about standardized testing, why don’t we end it? Why are we continuing to subject everyone to this inane process?

What’s wrong with kids these days? Everyone asks. I wonder. These aren’t only tests. These are tests that are changing how our children view school — and themselves.

I’m off to find an electrical outlet!

1. When placed in an adult bed, small children can only sleep horizontally, preferably with feet in one adult rib cage and head wedged in another, different adult ribcage. WHY? Are there magnets in their heads? Must they always point due North?

2. If placed in a room the size of a football field, a crawling baby or newly walking toddler will travel straight to the only electrical outlet in the room. Every time. Without fail. Again, is there a magnet involved?

3. Why is it only when served spaghetti with marinara sauce for dinner that toddlers contract stomach viruses around six to eight hours later, when I am dead asleep and the most ill-equipped to deal with challenging bedroom carpet stain removal?

4. Even at the age of nine months, a baby knows when she is not supposed to have the tiny object in her mouth, and she will smile sweetly (and with tight lips) at you when you suspect there is something in her mouth. Then she will go all steel cage death match on you if you try to remove it. Does she want to choke and die ingloriously on a Lego from her brother’s Hogwarts set?

5. When eating baby food or even finger food, babies will eat the most exotic of foodstuffs: beets, avocado, squash, spinach, capers, balsamic vinegar, kamut, kale, you name it. I am not even sure what kamut is, but my baby eats it out of a pouch marked “ORGANIC,” so it must be good for her. Yet the exact same baby after the age of 3 won’t come near anything that isn’t fried or a simple carbohydrate. My 5 year old recently declared he no longer likes bananas or peanut butter, two of his only reliable consumables. Do they just want to mess with my head?

What mystery of small children are you encountering or did you encounter?