Stop Taking So Many Pictures of Your Kids

By Nina Badzin

I remember how the cost of taking pictures used to add up quickly, and how tedious it was to keep track of your film. On my teen tour in Israel in 1993, for example, I was always judicious as my finger hovered over the shutter. I would never have considered snapping a picture of every person on my trip standing in front of the same stack of rocks on Masada. Who had the time, energy, money, and interest in developing all of those pictures? Did I want to load a new roll of film in the middle of a hike? The advent of the digital camera feels like a curse. Taking pictures is such a regular part of our lives that my 6-year-old asks to see shots immediately and requests I take new ones if she doesn’t like something about the picture. And since I have four kids, it should come as no surprise that I am drowning in digital photos. I expected to have the classic situation of endless pictures of my oldest child and next to nothing for my youngest. Instead, I have an obscene amount of pictures of everyone, and I don’t know how to manage them all.

Recently, when I attempted to put the pictures into folders on my computer, I got half-way through the project before I realized the main problem was not how to organize the pictures (though that is a beast of a task). The real issue here is training myself not to take so many pictures in the first place. It’s a chicken-egg problem. My files wouldn’t be so out of control if I took smarter pictures from the get-go like I did on Masada in 1993.

Based on the many pictures I deleted as I was putting our photos into digital folders, I would like to share some picture-taking wisdom with my fellow Jewish parents.

PICTURES YOU DON’T NEED

1. You don’t need 20 pictures of yourself from every angle during each month of your pregnancy.

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10 Tips for Flying with Kids

By Melissa Langsam Braunstein

Over the past year, I’ve flown a lot–way more than I would have anticipated with a new baby. Lila and I have flown up and down the East Coast and all the way to Europe. It hasn’t always been easy–especially when it’s been just us girls–but I’ve gained some useful travel tips along the way:

1. Book your baby’s ticket. Even lap infants need their own tickets. Call customer service after booking your own, because there’s typically no obvious way to do this online. If your child is under 2, she flies for free domestically, but there are taxes and fees if you fly overseas. Lila chilling on my lap added about 10% to the price for our round-trip to Geneva.

2. Dress simply. Airport security is an ordeal for everyone post-9/11, but even more so when you’re traveling with a toddler in tow. Keep things simple. Wear shoes you can easily kick off in the security line, like loafers or flip-flops.

3. Seek necessary help. When flying alone with a baby, you carry endless gear. There’s no way you can schlep everything from your home to your destination without some help. If no one’s offering, ask. If need be, embrace your inner chutzpah and direct unencumbered adults: “Could you put this car seat on the metal detector conveyor belt?” (It’s not really a question.)

4. Shun the red-eye. The worst thing you can do for your toddler is fly overnight (as we did to Geneva). Meghan Casano, sleep team leader at Boston-based Isis Parenting, recommends that you fly during the day, so if any sleep is missed, it’s nap time. By the time you reach your destination, your child will be tired and more inclined to sleep, rather than completely overtired, having missed a whole night’s rest.

5. Pack some toys, find others everywhere. Lila loves spoons, so I like to pack plastic spoons and other small teething toys in my carry-on bag. However, with airlines’ copious baggage restrictions and fees, it’s often easier to pack less and find more on-board. We’ve discovered that sugar and pretzel packets make great rattles. Ditto for (closed) roll-on deodorant, if you stowed personal items on board. Plastic cups from beverage service are also fun for your toddler to roll, crunch, and chew.

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How an Ex-Catholic and Jewish Atheist Talk to Their Kids About God

By Julia Fierro 

This post is part of Kveller's month-long series featuring different ways that parents of various religions have talked to their kids about God.
When people ask what religion we are–me, my husband Justin, and our two small children–I answer, “nothing.”

Then I realize how empty this sounds. I revise, explaining our parents’ religion. As if, to tell the whole truth, one has to start from the beginning.

My Catholic parents believe even dogs go to heaven, I say.

Justin’s parents, I add, are atheists who belong to a temple of socially conscious activists, presided over by a gay rabbi.

Justin and I do not believe in God, but he can still call himself Jewish. It is ingrained in his history, his perspective, his sense of humor, and even his curly hair, which he calls a Jewfro. I will only ever call myself an ex-Catholic, because once I stopped believing in God, in Jesus, in his mother Mary, in miracles and the afterlife, calling myself a Catholic felt like trespassing.

Despite our attachments to the religious identities of our parents, Justin freely admits that he is an atheist. But I often feel I have to elaborate after I confess my loss of faith. “I used to believe. If I could, I would.”

I need people to understand that it’s not my choice, and that I know life would be easier, and less lonely, if I did still believe. My people, for generations back on both sides, are believers. I am the first to not baptize his or her children. My nightly prayers as a child, my visits to the confessional box, the papery taste of the crumbling communion wafer on my tongue–all feel as if they happened to another person, not me.

Death is mentioned regularly in our house–but only in regards to the death of LEGO figurines and Power Rangers. Our 6-year-old son says, “The bad guy got dead!” or “Batman made the Joker dead!” but it has the weight of losing a life in a video game. Getting dead = Game Over. You can start over. Reboot. Try again. The few times that death, with a capital D, has come up have been (coincidentally?) at my parents’ house. Like when my son spotted the black-and-white photos of my deceased Italian ancestors crowding the mantel, flanked by holy candles, a chipped statuette of St. Francis standing guard.

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Jewish Naming Practices

Advice and traditions on how to choose a baby name

A child's name is significant in forming her identity; going through life as either Mackenzie or Maayan will probably affect her in many ways. Luckily, Jewish tradition offers some guidelines for how to choose a meaningful name. All of these fall under the banner of custom or tradition--not law--so feel free to view the suggestions below as just that: suggestions. Pick what works for you.

One Name or Two?

Perhaps you--like many parents of Jewish kids in America--are looking to give your child both an English name and a Jewish name. You might want those names to be somehow connected (either by their meaning or their sound), or you might not be too concerned with making them "match."

Either way, it's helpful to think about when exactly you plan to use the Jewish name (most likely a Hebrew name, though you might choose one that is Yiddish or Ladino). If your child's Jewish name will mostly be used in synagogue contexts, you might not be too concerned with how pronounceable it will be for kids on the playground. But if you plan to use your child's Jewish name more regularly--or make it his only name--you might want to consider whether certain sounds will make his life complicated.

Naming After Relatives

You might have heard that Jews do not name their babies for living people. While this is true in most communities of Ashkenazic Jews (Jews of Central and Eastern European origin), the opposite is the case among Sephardic Jews (Jews of Iberian or Middle-Eastern origin), who often choose to name children after living relatives.

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How I Got My Toddler to Poo in the Potty

By Tamara Reese

We’ve all heard horror stories about potty learning. From ill-timed accidents to elaborate bribes, teaching (“training”) children how to use the potty turns even the most sensible people into frantic angry shut-ins. I bought into the hype reading “three day potty boot camp” books and prepared to sit in the bathroom with my naked kid eating salty foods, drinking water, and letting his Curious George doll pretend to pee on the toilet.

I was tired of changing diapers. Infant diapers are an inevitable part of my day, but huge man-sized turds from my 25lb toddler were driving me insane. His lanky body was awkward and unstable on public changing tables and the smell could clear a room in seconds. My blood boiled as I watched him walk behind the couch, drop a deuce in his diaper and then demand I change it immediately–or rather hiding it from me until his butthole blazed with a fiery red rash that required a teary mid-day shower.

I wanted him to put that shit in the toilet. Literally.

But learning to use the potty is more than being physically able to sit on a toilet; it is a psychological transition that if handled poorly can result in issues spanning from constipation and UTIs to genital anxiety. More so, my son learning to use the potty was not about me, what I was tired of doing, or how and when I wanted him to take control of his body.

It was about him. His body and his desire and willingness to feel and respond to it.

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How a Mormon Mother Teaches Her Child to Pray

By Joyce Anderson

This post, part of our month-long series about God, is by Joyce Anderson, one of the winners of our writing contest.

I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some people call us “The Mormon.” Despite what you’ve heard, what you think about Mitt Romney, or what Broadway musicals say about us, we’re pretty normal people who just want to teach our children how to be godly in an increasingly godless world.

After my first son was born, and after the shock of motherhood started to wear off, I realized that I needed to start thinking about how I was going to teach my son about God, Heaven, Jesus Christ, and all of the other things we believe. I felt overwhelmed at the task in front of me, and I really didn’t know what to do, other than pray.

I prayed for a long time and asked the Lord for help, for direction, and for a huge clue about what I was supposed to be doing. In a very quiet moment the answer came to me like a small, heavenly whisper. “Teach him to pray. Teach him how to talk to me.” But that was only part of the answer. HOW, was my next question? How do I teach a toddler to pray? I prayed for more guidance. Again, in another quiet moment, that same heavenly whisper came and suggested I use the prayer chart from my days as a missionary. Back then we had a flip chart with scripture verses, pictures, and sayings that we would use when we would teach people about our church. One of the pages in the chart had an outline for how to say a prayer. That was it. I would use that lesson to teach my son how to pray.

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Introducing the Kveller God Series

God on Kveller is a huge topic. Like, really huge. Many of us have a hard time figuring out just what we believe about God on our own terms. Throw a 4-year-old in there who demands answers? Yep, even harder.

Or is it? We’re devoting the next month to exploring how parents have talked to their kids about God. We’ll get stories from parents of different religions, from devout believers to atheists and everywhere in between. You’ll see posts from New Yorker editor Ben Greenman, children’s book author Laurel Snyder, a practicing Mormon, the formerly-Catholic half of an interfaith marriage, and many more parents who are currently struggling with what to tell (or not tell) their kids about God.

We’ll be rolling out one post a day on the blog, so check back here to read them all.

Among the articles you'll find are:

• I Tried to Raise a Jew & He Turned Out a Communist
• My Daughter Wants to Know Why I Pray 
• My Sons, The (Maybe) Nonbelievers