You Have to F-cking Eat

30 September 2014

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Author Adam Mansbach is back with a promising sequel to the HIGHlarious children’s book Go the F-ck to Sleep.  For those who have been living under a rock (perfectly understandable when being a parent), Go the F-ck to Sleep is an internationally acclaimed book that debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list and sold over 1.5 million copies around the the world.

 

In collaboration with illustrator Owen Brozman, Mansbach entertains us with another near universal parenting frustration: the tumultuous process of getting your child to eat something. Mansbach’s new book You Have to F-cking Eat, complete with profanitieswill likely resonate with parents who appreciate Mansbach for keeping it real

 

Mansbach’s books may initially appear to fall under the category of the children’s book genre but it’s definitely not intended for the ears of impressionable children. Consider Mansbach’s style reminiscent of the ongoing spirit of “imperfect parenting” that draws millions of parents to communities like Scary Mommy and Blunt Moms. Despite all our best intentions, worries and concerns about our children, sometimes all we can do is have a hearty, bellyfull laugh. And Mansbach offers the perfect comic relief on those “how-am-I-gonna-survive-this-to-the-end-of-the-day, eyes twitching, sleep-deprived exhaustion” kind of days.


You Have to F-cking Eat
 
will be available to purchase on November 12. It would be the perfect Sinterklaas or Christmas gift for a special parent in your life that might just need a good soulful laugh. Or even perhaps parents-to-be who might just need it for some last minute therapy in the future.

 

*Disclaimer: As stated in Amazon, you probably should reconsider reading the book to your children. Then again, perhaps your parenting philosophy is more in line with sociologist Dalton Conley who’s more concerned with a child using profanity within the appropriate context.

 

P.S. If you’d like to waste time on the internet, you should watch this adorable Filipina grandmother discover just how inappropriate reading Go the F-ck to Sleep is.

 

P.P.S. If you haven’t already, come join us on Facebook. I promise I won’t be too annoying.

The Space In Between

24 September 2014

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I didn’t intend to go (relatively) silent in the blogverse back in June.

The initial excuse – moving – holds some substantial weight. I was responsible for 98% of the packing and unpacking. Despite all my best intentions to prepare and plan, life got inconvenient and a bit messy. Setting up a new home with a clingy, curious toddler and a husband overburdened and overcommitted with work was a lot more challenging than I had anticipated.

All those weeks and months in between, I’ve written (mostly in my head) a dozen, or so articles about parenting, motherhood, and life in the Netherlands. Feedly, Pocket and Evernote became my best-friends, littered and cluttered with saved columns and hastily written down notes that only I could decipher. Keeping good on my promise though was regularly updating my Facebook page. I didn’t want to lose touch with those who are kind enough to read my words, who give me support and encouragement with every like, comment and message.

Now that I finally find the time and space to sit behind my computer, I stumble, unable to fill words on a blank screen. I hesitate. Pause. Breathe. Where does one even begin again?

It took me nine long, hard-earned years to find a place in the Netherlands that I could finally see myself settling in.  I’ll always have a soft spot for Utrecht, the place where my husband and son were born. But it wasn’t a place where my heart wanted to establish roots – not with a young family. Maybe in a couple of years but not now, not with my little boy who loves exploring the world.  I didn’t like the mom I was in Utrecht- the “No” kind of mom intent on keeping my curious child alive and safe, who doesn’t understand the incessant dangers of canals, bikes, mopeds, and cars.

We weren’t the Dutch suburbia kind either – the perfectly manicured lawns, identical newly built homes and quiet characteristic of all commuter towns didn’t feel quite right. My allergies against 12 different types of grasses and allergy-induced asthma held me hostage at home, unable to freely roam the suburb built in the heart of endless Dutch grassfields. When weekends came, we were always a bit too enthusiastic to get out and explore, unable to comfortably stay local. We weren’t unhappy in Houten, but if we were truly honest, we were a bit too lonely and bored.

Eventually we found ourselves regularly driving towards the Dutch forests. We loved wandering aimlessly through the wooded paths, the clean air and the space. And so on a whim, we decided to move to Doorn, a small village of 10,000 people nestled within the Utrechtse Heuvelrug National Park. Utrecht, or Amersfoort were only a twenty minute car ride away, but we felt like we were miles and miles away from the chaos of urban city life.

It wasn’t necessarily all the responsibilities with the move that prevented me from writing. Granted, it was impossible for me to ignore the boxes and the ensuing frustrations of living disheveled and disorganized. Someone had to settle us in and that someone was me, myself and I. As many writers can enthusiastically attest to, unless there is an environment that fosters creativity, any attempt at writing would be in vain. I needed to set up my entire home (not just my designated writing room) to clear my mind.

But one can hide behind the “just moved-in” excuse for only so long. No, there was something else going on with me. I started flirting around with the idea of my own impermanence, about what if my Catholic upbringing misled me to believe that my consciousness would be perfectly intact?  What if Stephen Hawking was right, that “there is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” If life were a movie, you can press play to REM’s Losing My Religion, the mandolin chords giving way to universally familiar words, “That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion.”

Sorry for sounding melodramatic. I am a writer after all and the artistic license of being emotional applies to me just as much as a musician, painter, dancer, photographer, designer and what ever other creative outlet there is. I feel things. Deeply.

Ironically, it was finally being able to find a place to call home and in a good place that served as a catalyst for my mild existential crisis. Life is good – so good that it hurts. I started asking the hard questions – Why am I writing? What am I writing about? To Whom am I writing to? Why Should I Continue to Write? Is what I am writing about even interesting to people?

 

I’m starting over. It’s official. I’ll continue writing about life in the Netherlands and all my cultural observations of the Dutch. I’m also now intent on curating my blog as an on going love letter to my son and my husband. Along the way, I’m going to foster a community of expats, Nederlanders, moms, dads and anyone else who’d love to receive random updates of my life in the Netherlands, of stories that move the spirit and anything else in between celebrating life.

 

I hope you continue to follow me on my journey. Here’s to Finding Dutchland, whereever you may be.

Don’t Be Friends with the American Mom

4 February 2014

The moment I stumbled upon the article ” Why You Should Absolutely Date A Girl Who Travels” , I was immediately inspired to write a spin-off. Hilariously enough, the article was a direct response to a blog post cleverly titled “Don’t Date A Girl Who Travels”  currently going viral on the internet. Not surprisingly, there’s also one called “Don’t Date A Girl Who Wants To Change The World, Join Her” that made me say a resounding Amen after reading it. Here’s my contribution to the spin-offs, a lighthearted and obviously satirical take (with moments of vulnerability) on being an American mom in the Netherlands.

 

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She’s the mother with the frazzled look, chasing around her toddler son on his loopfiets (walking bicycle) and making sure he doesn’t fall into one of the canals. Her dark brown skin pales in the soft Dutch sunlight, black hair tied haphazardly in a bun. She gets plenty of sunshine from her toddler who had the staring role of aging her ten years from the moment he was born. Although she’s a stranger from a different shore, she’ll  entertain you with her stories if you let her.

 

Don’t be friends with the American mom. She’s socially clumsy. She didn’t grow up in your country and doesn’t know all the cultural nuances. Fresh off the boat, she assumed friendships were simply made by breaking bread. And she really wasn’t impressed upon her initial exposure to corpsballen and hockey-club people. She now, however, can enjoy pleasant conversations over a cup of coffee, or a glass (or two) of wine even among alleen maar nette mensen (only decent people) given the right circumstances.

 

Don’t be friends with the American mom for her enthusiasm, openness and natural high-on life personality might be a bit too much for the stereotypical reserved and distant Dutch demeanor.  She’s passing it forward to her toddler son who greets every passerby with a wave and a hello. Don’t be shy to say hello back. She’s part of the loud, passionate kind of people who wear their hearts on their sleeves and will smother you with kindness if you let them. And if you ask her where she’s from and she responds “I’m from San Francisco” with an obvious hint of homesickness, please have the courtesy not to question where she’s really from. Ask yourself first if you would give someone with a paler complexion the same inquisition.

 

Chances are, she’s quite content staying home with her toddler, trying to make the best of a rather enjoyable, but exhausting period of her life.  For now, she’s thousands of miles away from a built-in-support network of supportive relatives. Her only nagging heartache is that her son isn’t growing up with an Oma or Opa. She mischievously wonders if she can “Rent-an-Oma” to supplement his lack of doting grandparents.  Don’t hold your breath expecting her to cry a river. Rather, you’d probably hear her roar from a distance or up close and personal, giving all the love she can to her little man and surrounding him with people who do care. Beyond her own little family of three, she’s also welcomed friends into the heart of her home and they’ve become extended family anyway.

 

Don’t be friends with the American mom because you might have to speak English. While she genuinely wants to meet you more than half way and converse in Dutch, she has her eyes sights set on raising her son bilingual.  Her husband and her are strictly following the one parent, one language methodology.  That means that she will only speak in English to her son and not let him know (at least for now) that she can also communicate in Dutch. She can’t wait to listen to her son sing classic nursery rhymes in her mother tongue. And after seven years in the country, she’s earned her street cred knowing intimately too well that the Netherlands really is a multicultural society that extends beyond the controversial, polarizing labeling of alloctoon (originating from another country). So please support their decision in raising their son a child of the world.

 

Don’t be friends with the American mom since she’s embraced the refreshing art of Dutch directness. She’ll also be the first to refute the infamous reputation of the Dutch being rude. Here’s a major light bulb moment- there’s rude people everywhere in the world. However, there’s also a clear difference between being rude and being direct. She knows that some people simply haven’t mastered the gentle art of being polite, especially if they’re  speaking in a different language that they often don’t use. Though, she’s also learned not to let anyone hide behind the convenience of culture for poor, inexcusable behavior. She’s a whole lot wiser now, gauging the temperature of the situation and carefully assessing what is and what isn’t lost in translation.

 

She’s found genuine happiness in the Low Countries and she definitely doesn’t need any sympathy for being the lone foreigner in her Dutch village. She actually wished she moved there sooner because the Dutch suburbanites have bestowed her nothing but kindness, patience and acceptance (despite being mistaken for an au pair twice!). She’ll always be a city girl at heart, but she absolutely loves having a huge garden for her toddler to play in and the sanctity of not having to share any walls with any disgruntled neighbors. Many in major cities seem not too keen on the pitter patter and bangs and collisions of tiny little feet.

 

So don’t be friends with the American mom unless you’re willing to open up your own Dutch reality.  And if you prefer your world to simply be only Dutch, than keeping your distance is actually much appreciated. She wouldn’t want to change for your convenience. But if you happen to take your chance on the American mom you see at the local playground, she’ll change your world in more ways than you’ll ever know. Her radiant personality and American optimism will eventually melt your heart and maybe, just maybe you’ll welcome her like a long-lost sister.

Going Dutch at Birth

31 January 2014

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While America has been transfixed with mining other cultural parenting philosophies (Asian Tiger moms, sophisticated French moms), Dutch parenting continues to fly under the radar. Ironically, Americans are seemingly obsessed with attaining happiness, wishing with all their heart that their tiny offspring’s future is a happy one. Shouldn’t there be a natural inclination to look towards Dutch parenting? After all, the Dutch are raising the happiest kids in the world.

But where does one begin? Intuitively, if I wanted to explore Dutch parenting, I need to start from the beginning – pregnancy and birth. Though to understand the whole story, I must also introduce the Dutch social-welfare state and proceed with caution.

Americans have a notoriously difficult time filtering out the American rhetoric of European-style socialism. There’s a general consensus, especially among conservatives, that the word “socialism” is a dirty word, belonging to the same category as profanity, dictatorship, communism, and flag burning. Hence, to utter the word “Dutch social-welfare state” would immediately be criticized as quintessentially anti-American and met with skepticism.

At the heart of the misunderstanding, as Russel Shorto ingeniously points out, is that Americans perceive the Dutch social-welfare as a “direct threat to their values.  What many would be surprised to find out is that the system was rooted in religion, established by devout religious people who had a genuine commitment to looking after the poor, the sick and the disenfranchised. Russel Shorto reminds us that “This system developed not after Karl Marx but after Martin Luther and Francis of Assisi.”

Having a baby in the Netherlands gave me a crash course in socialized medicine – and privileged insight as to why there’s so much happiness in the Netherlands. When I found out I was pregnant with my son, I had just finished my master’s in Health Economics and hence unemployed. My husband was (and still is) an entrepreneur. Rather than be concerned about the potential costs and ramifications of our situation, we simply called our health insurance provider and made the necessary appointments with medical specialists.

 

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All of my medical expenses were covered under my universal health insurance basic plan – from weekly visits to my obstetrician (women tend to opt for midwives in the Netherlands unless its considered a high-risk pregnancy), regular ultrasounds, blood tests, nutritionist (diagnosed with gestational diabetes), delivery and postnatal care.

When it was time to go to the hospital for the birth, we simply walked in and taken care of. Mind you, it was not a clear, cut routine medical delivery. My water had prematurely broken, sending me into labor exactly at 36 weeks. It was a comedy in the making with a vague prognoses of delivering sometime that evening, the next day, or any time within an interval of two weeks. About ten hours later I went on to deliver a healthy baby boy, complete with an epidural, an episiotomy and a vacuum assisted delivery. There was also a pediatrician in the room on stand-by with an incubator just in case. We would stay for the next two days in our private hospital room complete with an extra bed for my husband to sleep in. I have a sneaking suspicion the financial costs in America given my family’s demographics (unemployed wife, entrepreneurial husband) would have been prohibitively expensive.

Delirious after having such an ethereal birth experience (amazing bedside manners of the doctors and nurses), I was ready to go home to be met by my private maternity nurse. She would pamper me for the next ten days and teach my husband and me how to take care of our newborn son. And perhaps best of all, she gave me the mothering that I was ached so deeply for.  Is it a wonder for me to think that Dutch moms have it made?

I definitely won’t argue that there’s plenty of room for improvement with the Dutch health care system. I’m convinced that many Dutch would also agree with me. However, there’s an immeasurable contribution to the overall well being of a society when every mother and every child born in the country receives this kind of care and personalized attention.

Discussing parenting in the Netherlands wouldn’t be complete without first addressing how the Netherlands provides universal quality care literally from the very beginning – at the start of life. It provides valuable insight as to why Dutch parents are able to raise really happy kids. Ironically and arguably of pertinence, the closest foreign analogue to America’s Obamacare is the Dutch system.

 

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American parents, please stop looking over at France for some guidance and inspiration. You’re looking at the wrong country over the side of the pond. It’s time to take a look at the Netherlands, the place with the happiest kids in the world.

Essential side-note: I’m still an American mom learning to navigate the world of parenthood, one day at a time. My innate curiosity lends me to question, observe and analyze how parenting is done in the foreign country I happen to live in. I’ve also not forgotten the essential all-American child rearing values of individual motivation(“can-do-it” attitude), empathy, creativity and perseverance.

 

P.S. If you’d like to waste more time, come join me over Facebook or make friends with me on Twitter (I’m feeling quite lonely over there!)

Going Dutch – Putting Dutch Parenting on the Map

28 January 2014

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A snapshot of a picture perfect childhood in the Netherlands (my husband’s family)

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the article The New “It” Nationality for Parenting Perfectly written by American writer Madeline Holler. I was tickled to learn her interpretation of my viral article (and hence my blog) as promoting the wonders of Dutch parenting in order to raise happy kids.

On a more serious note, could she be interpreting my writing and observations of Dutch parenting to be another variation of Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bébé : One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting or Amy Chua’s Battle Hymm of the Tiger Mother?  To be perfectly honest, I had no intention of joining the latest bandwagon of buzz-worthy parenting trends and philosophies. I wanted to be part of the international conversation about parenting and share my own experiences of raising a child in a foreign country. Parenting, after all, is a universally shared experience.

Perhaps most importantly, Holler’s article inspired me to reflect on how this blog is evolving and its future direction. My delayed light-bulb moment has finally come – Why not write more illuminating stories about Dutch parenting and culture for the rest of the world to learn about? Since parenting and culture are intimately intertwined, there’s plenty of material for me to entertain myself (and my readers) with.

While no one genuinely believes that the Netherlands is a perfect utopia and there is lots of room for improvement, the Dutch have succeeded in raising happy kids. That’s an accomplishment that the Dutch should be proud of.  Let’s also not forget to mention that Dutch women don’t get depressed  the fourth happiest place in the world happens to be the Dutch city of Utrecht. Suffice to say, I’m just surrounded by lots and lots of happiness.

I hope you guys join me in my endeavor to put Dutch parenting on the map. Here’s to Finding Dutchland, where ever you may be!

p.s. I’d love some company on my Facebook page if you’d like to get to know me more.