Tag Archives: families

Dan, my unflappable husband – #5

Posted on February 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

He didn’t even flinch. That’s the amazing thing. When I came home that day, I told my husband what had transpired during what should have been an absolutely routine photo shoot. I told him about meeting Keri deGuzman, her husband Brian and their two adorable children, Jesmina and Musse. I told him how Keri and Brian had traveled to Ethiopia to adopt their children, and how they were planning to return to adopt two more. And then I told him they’d invited me to go with them.

He didn’t even flinch. Not then, when I told him I wanted to go to Ethiopia, and not later, when I started dropping hints about how much this was going to cost us. And not this morning, when I woke up to an email from Keri saying, “CALL ME WHEN YOU GET THIS!!!! Here we go………..!!!!!”

All he said, with typical calm, was, “I’m very excited for you.”

I first met Dan when I was 25 — a year older than our son Andrew is now. I had just moved back to Arizona after a four-year stint on the island of Guam, where I had finished my senior year of college and worked as a journalist for the Pacific Daily News. I had just broken up with a Guamanian man who had once asked me to marry him. So when I started my new job at The Arizona Republic, I wasn’t particularly interested in starting a new relationship.

I was still living with my parents after returning from Guam, so I was eager to get my own place. A friend at work was living in an apartment complex near Seventh Street and Bethany Home Road. She liked her apartment well enough, so I decided to move into that same building. Little did I know how momentous that simple decision would prove to be.

The day I moved in, my friend introduced me to Dan Barr, who also worked at the Republic and lived in the same complex. I was happy to make a new friend — especially one who was willing to help me move my boxes up the stairs to my second-floor apartment. We had the same odd days off (Sunday and Monday) so we’d often run into each other at the pool or in the laundry room. Eventually we started going on bike rides, hikes or walks around the neighborhood. Then movies. Then dinner and movies. A year later we were married.

On our way to the wedding reception: April 17, 1982.

How do you recognize the “right” one? I find myself pondering that question as our sons rapidly approach the time in life when they will choose life partners. My marriage did not get off to a particularly dramatic or romantic start. It started quietly, with friendship and shared interests and long conversations. It was comfortable, reassuring, reliable. From the moment we first started “hanging out” together, I knew Dan was a good man — a solid, grounded man who’d grown up in privilege but emerged with humility and great depth of perspective. A man secure enough in himself to allow me to be whatever I wanted to be.

I’m not sure how I knew all of that when I decided to marry Dan; I just did. And though we’ve experienced the ups and downs any honest couple married for almost 28 years would admit to, I have never wavered in my certainty that he was the right choice.

Twenty years ago this month, I was preparing to send my first issue of Raising Arizona Kids magazine to the printer. Though our young family had to absorb the cost of that first printing bill (and many others to follow), my husband never flinched. He believed in me, so he believed in my reasons for starting a magazine. Since that time, he has been a source of steadfast support, my biggest fan in any undertaking — no matter how great the cost to our family finances or my emotional reserves.

During a family trip: July 2009.

This morning, as he quietly shares my excitement in the adventures that lie ahead — adventures that I will experience without him — I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this man who so selflessly encourages me to face my fears and follow my dreams. — Karen

On Jan. 2, I launched a project called “1,000 People to Thank Before I Die.” It is my version of a “bucket list” — an attempt to acknowledge the people who have guided and influenced my life before I lose the opportunity to do so — and was inspired by the book 1,000 Places to See Before I Die.

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No black-and-white answers

Posted on May 6, 2009 | 1 comment

It wasn’t at all what I expected.

Brittney Walker and I attended Monday’s “Safe Sleep Symposium” at Scottsdale Stadium. The educational event, organized by the Arizona Department of Health Services, pulled together professionals from many fields — medicine, social work, emergency response, child protective services and more. Their goal? To figure out what kind of educational outreach would be most effective in reducing the incidence of infant deaths from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and tragic, sleep-related accidents.

Remember the Back to Sleep campaign? That effort has been hugely successful in reducing the number of SIDS deaths from suffocation. Moms and dads were told that it’s safest to put babies to sleep on their backs, rather than their tummies. The overall rate of SIDS deaths has declined dramatically since 1994, when the Back to Sleep message was first promoted. But now another, just as devastating, statistic is rising: child deaths that occur in adult beds.

It goes by many names — co-sleeping, co-bedding, “the family bed.” And it’s practiced in many cultures around the world. Here, it’s practiced by parents who seek  convenience (for breastfeeding moms) or a strong, loving bond with their children.

It’s a very personal choice, and one that clearly comes with risks. An emergency responder who spoke at the conference described finding a child who’d been suffocated by the weight of an adult who rolled over onto him in the middle of the night. Children have suffocated from loose or heavy bedding in an adult bed — or from becoming wedged between the bed and the wall. So I was expecting the professionals at the Safe Sleep Symposium to be adamantly united in a message against co-sleeping.

But they weren’t.

Brittney (an admitted co-sleeper who began the practice out of desperation when she was pushed to her limit by a baby who would scream for five and six hours each night) was part of a panel of woman who’d made the same choice and were there to explain it. I was sitting in the back of the room during the discussion, waiting for my turn to talk during lunch about “Messaging for the Media.” I was astonished, as I listened and watched, to see many of the heads in front of me nodding in agreement as Brittney and the two other women defended their co-sleeping practice.

By the time the panel ended, I was completely dumbfounded. You expect the pros to be very black and white about rules. Especially when it comes to safety. But they weren’t. They acknowledged that there are many positives to co-sleeping, and sometimes many economic reasons why it’s the only choice. (Some families, obviously, can’t afford cribs and separate bedrooms for their children.)

So it’s a tricky message they have to craft: that co-sleeping can be dangerous but there are ways to make it less so. Like never bringing a child to your bed when you’ve been drinking alcohol or taking sleep-inducing drugs. Like making sure you have a firm mattress (no cushy pillow top!) and there are no fluffy pillows or heavy blankets anywhere near the baby. Like positioning the baby near your waist, not your face.

One nurse I spoke to before I left told me that she thinks of it the same way she does many other safety hazards. Take ATVs. “I’ve seen so many accident victims,” she said. “But what are you going to do? Tell people they shouldn’t have ATVs? Or that their children shouldn’t be allowed on them? At least they’re out there pursuing a family activity that they enjoy doing together.”

If we wanted to keep our children 100 percent safe, we wouldn’t let them ride their bikes or roller blade or skateboard or cross the street, for that matter. Instead, we teach them the safest methods for navigating their lives. We make them wear helmets and we teach them safety rules. We take precautions on their behalf and we follow the safety rules ourselves. And we hope for the best.

Download the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development brochure “Infant Sleep Position and SIDS.”

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Speaking up–finally

Posted on December 29, 2008 | 2 comments

I used to work for the Arizona Republic. In fact, my husband and I fell in love while co-writing middle-of-the-night reports about homicides, fires and robberies. (He was in the field; I was at the night rewrite desk.)

We left the Republic to pursue graduate school (a law degree for Dan, an MBA for me). Seven years and two children later, I started Raising Arizona Kids Magazine.

I held my tongue as I watched what evolved at the Republic over the next few years. Raising Arizona Kids pioneered one project after another–comprehensive calendars of events, annual summer camp directories, birthday party resource guides and more–only to see our ideas duplicated in the larger and more efficiently distributed daily newspaper. I held my breath and suffered countless sleepless nights when the Republic (through its magazine division) started a monthly magazine for parents in the East Valley. (Our Kids lasted less than a year before it was yanked for failure to thrive.) And then came the final blow. The Republic claimed moms for its own, providing “new” resources online that we’ve offered decades–but with the advantage of huge teams of web-savvy professionals who could add all the bells and whistles (if none of the depth). Versus me and one part-time IT guy.

But now I’ve really had it. The Republic, in the Gannett model of market-research-driven, increasingly superficial and fluff-oriented journalism, has gone too far. In this month’s az magazine (which is devoted to “buzz, people, style and culture”), self-annointed parenting expert Karina Bland advocates a parenting strategy designed to put children “Ahead of the curve” by enrolling them in what she describes as “10 of the Valley’s best enrichment programs to help your child beat the competition.”

I felt physically ill as I read her describe how today’s parents will “do just about anything to help [children] get a leg up on the competition–even it if means instruction in Mandarin well before they’ve mastered English or college classes before they’re old enough to drive.”

It’s not that the 10 places she lists are bad places (although I know from receiving the same press releases she gets that the Bambini Language Immersion Preschool she recommends just opened on Nov. 17th, so how it can be the “best” with no track record floors me.) It’s her premise that the only way to be a good parent is to push your child to be better than everyone else.

The irony is striking as I proofread copy for our February issue. We have an article by Scottsdale early childhood education expert Melanie Romero, who through both education and experience is far more qualified than Karina Bland to tell parents how to best approach their parenting. In “Parenting on Overdrive,” Melanie rejects the strategy of trying to raise super kids (a concept, frankly, that was on its way out 23 years ago when I had my first child). To quote from Melanie’s article: “Parents who over-schedule their children or push them to achieve risk creating young people and adults with chronic stress, burnout, low self-esteem and lack of creativity.” She condemns “hyper-parenting,” a phrase first coined by Alvin Rosenfeld, M.D. and Nicole Wise in their book The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap.

When I attended journalism school I was taught that professionalism dictates objectivity, despite your own innate preferences and choices. My staff has been trained to work this way. We believe that parenting is a serious and carefully cultivated skill enhanced by exposure to different professional opinions. We consciously choose to avoid recommending any one approach or hyping something as “best” because we know that all parents are different, all children are different, all families are different… and what works for one does not necessarily work for another. We strive to be a place for the exchange of ideas, rooted in a professional perspective provided by local experts we interview or whose articles we publish. We expect that our readers will ponder the options and strategies we describe and choose wisely from their own insights about their respective situations.

In this blog-eat-blog world, we increasingly accept as “news” and “fact” the opinions of people whose intelligence and personal experience often encompass no more than the ability to type and hype. It saddens me that the Republic has such a large and powerful platform on which to promote what their marketing department has determined will sell magazines.

I refuse to relegate my parenting — or my company — to that model.

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