The Truth Isn't Always Original

One of the biggest clashes of all time is the one between parents and non-parents. Non-parents hate that parents hound them about the wonders of parenthood and that those same parents "push" non-parents to have kids in order to find fulfillment in their lives. Parents get offended by non-parents who laud their freedom in not having children and they laugh at the non-parents when they complain about being "busy." It is a never-ending war.

More kids at work.

Sometimes, I feel conscious of this when I write about parenthood. I almost feel like it is offensive to non-parents to say when things are good in Dadland. Being a parent is not the life for everyone, and I can see why people choose not to be parents, especially when things are going roughly -- and, believe me, they do, sometimes. In fact, I think that more people should choose not to be parents. There's nothing worse than having kids because one feels one has to. It makes for bad results.

In short, I respect those who choose not to be parents.

Reaching for the Skyrim

When the novel first began to gain popularity, especially in England, there were countless articles written by people of an artistic, philosophical and literary bent. The major complaint? That the young women of England were wasting their time reading novels -- hours on end -- when they could have been doing more productive things. In short, novels were, to the lovers of poetry and philosophy and theology, the soap operas of the age -- a mindless submersion in pure entertainment. They were so full of (here every literary fiction snob across the globe retches) . . .  plot. ("'Plot" even sounds like 'clot,'" once said a black-clad grad student holding a giant wine glass.)

By the way, many novels of that time, as in today's era, stank on ice. But that is neither here nor there. The point is, today, we wish our kids would while away summer afternoons reading, instead of doing other things, like watching TV or (curse it all) playing (holds the words out at arm's-length, like a dead mouse) video games.

If You Buy A Kid an Xbox

(A children's story in the tradition of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.)

If you buy a kid an Xbox (360), the guy at the store will tell you that the old XBox games will work on it.

If you bring the Xbox (360) home, you will find the old games only work if you buy a one-hundred and thirty dollar external hard drive.

If you are a high school teacher who doesn't want to spend one-hundred-thirty more dollars (after the $375 you already spent on the game system), you will decide to hook up the old Xbox along with the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. (This will require a degree in engineering or a lifetime of experience with cords and plugs, the latter of which you fortunately have.)

After you do this, you will find out that your TV room is too small for the "Kinect" that allows game play without remote controls. For a moment you will consider whether you really need the garage that lies beyond the confining wall. You will also wonder whether you could make a small doorway into the garage, so the kids will be able to back up far enough. Your kids will suggest standing on the couch to play. You'll consider this, as well, and then get a hold of yourself.

The Maze of Heroics

Last night, my family and I watched Peter, Susan and Edmund stand by Prince Caspian's side as the massive, evil Telmarine army advanced, great catapults lobbing massive stones to crack the walls of Aslan's How -- the Narnians' last refuge. The young heroes held their ground as the army advanced, slowly, thrumpingly, rhythmically, hidden behind helms wrought into fierce, iron expressions.

In the blue glow of the screen, I watched my children's faces more than the film. The boys' innocent eyes were wide, fixed on the action. They leaned forward to watch the battle unfold and, as Peter lead the charge forward, they bounced a little in their seats. Each time a heroic act was committed, they would let out a "Yes!" or a gleeful laugh.

Bloody Murder in Mario World

So, here we are in the Christmas aftermath -- that small stretch of time during which the kids are allowed to digitize themselves with no limits: play video games until their eyes implode; watch new movies over and over -- that period of sloth and messiness that thrives especially in the homes of teachers and educators like myself who have a break over the next week. One can never quite keep the housecleaning until the tree comes down, what with pine needles and toys everywhere. Yet, we try . . .

My kids got their latest electronic devices (iPod Touches). We're holding out on phones, even though, as my older son's principal informed us: "95% of fourth graders have cell phones" in his school. This number shocks me, but, so it goes.

Sure, they look innocent enough . . .

So now they have devices that can access the Internet -- You Tube, etc. They're good boys, my sons. They stay, most of the time, with the parameters we set for them. But it occurs to me, especially now, how nearly impossible it will be to protect them from things they shouldn't see so early in their lives.

For instance, a few months ago, they wanted to search You Tube for videos of Mario Brothers. They found some and started watching. I was in the room. I walked up behind them, checking, every few minutes. If I heard a voice that didn't sound like Mario or Luigi, I would get up and check. After a few minutes, they turned it off.

Wiffle Dad

Every day, without fail, my son -- nine years old -- asks me to play Wiffle Ball. (I'm not sure about the universality of this game, so I will mention, for my readers outside the U.S., that Wiffle Ball is baseball, more or less, with a plastic bats and balls that allow play in one's back yard without breaking windows, faces, etc.) So, every day, the lad asks me to play.

He has quite a skill for asking me to play at the most inopportune times. As soon as I get home from work, for instance -- I mean, the instant I come in the door. Or, right at the end of dinner -- simultaneously with my last bite, usually. (Two days ago, I ran around the bases moaning "Ugh. Too . . . much . . . pork . . . in . . . belly," which he thought was hilarious.) He asks me when I wake up on Saturdays. He knocks on the bathroom door and asks me. He asks me while am writing blogs. He throws open the door to my studio while I am practicing or recording or singing and asks. The only way he can ramp up the issue would be to wake up at three in the morning, shake me, and ask. It hasn't come to that. Yet.

Hemispheres

Can a fist fight be good? -- at least for self-understanding? I had one that was, I think.

I remember some scraps from boyhood, mostly while playing football with neighborhood friends. But there was one fight that I remember to this day because, in the middle of it, I became immediately aware of the significance of my thoughts. I was about ten.

It was fall and we were on a tree-lined field; our usual football arena. It was cold, getting close-up on winter. Everyone played the game hard, with that energy that kids radiate during their few hours of freedom under fall clouds and falling dark on a school night. 

The original "Rocky": Marciano

Something happened with an elbow -- he claimed it was mine -- and the other guy came after me, swinging maniacally.

The Old Bicycle Shop

When I was a kid, when things hadn't yet gone mega-hyper-extreme everywhere you turned, we used to take our bikes, for repairs, to a small bike shop five minutes from the house. We'd bought our bikes there and we always had them fixed there.

When I would walk in with my dad, a forest of bikes seemed to go on forever, though there were probably only twenty in the whole place; it was about the size of a big living room. My dad would take care of the business with the mean lady and her mean husband who would both yell at me if I left fingerprints on the chrome, and I would wander around looking at the cool machines. Dad would pay, we'd leave, and I would go home and hop on my newly greased and tightened bike. It always felt like it went twice as fast as before.

A Portrait of the Artists?

Many, many parents think their kids are geniuses. Some of them are right, some of them are dead-wrong and some of them work hard to deceive themselves that Einstein eats Cinnamon Toast Crunch at their breakfast table: "I know he fails everything, but I believe this happens because he is not challenged enough. So he needs to be in all the top classes, even though he has a test average of 6."

The bottom line is, we parents all want our kids to succeed and we tend to project possible glorious futures for them. I have my own opinions about my own kids, but I am not going to write a proud dad piece here. But I do think it is interesting that, for the first time with both of them, I saw real evidence that they might carry on in their dad's creative footsteps. (Let's face it -- I can't completely avoid the proud dad thing, here [puts thumbs behind suspenders; bounces up and down on toes].)

What's Worse?

I've touched on this before, but it is hard not to revisit something that basically amounts to the world force-feeding my children its prevailing attitudes.

I'm constantly amazed at the things people worry about -- the things we think we need to protect our children from. Let's play a game of "What's Worse?"

Here we go:

First Friends, Best Friends

A friend of mine just wrote a blog post that got me thinking. He presents a conventional, age-old idea in parenting: that one should not be his kids' best friend. Many parents agree with this. You guessed it: I don't. The catch is that you need to really understand what it means to be your kids' best friend. See, it is a little different than being your best friend's best friend, but maybe not all that much, in a few ways.

I have seen forty-something moms in the mall dressed like their daughters and attempting to blend-in with a group of teenagers. I have seen fathers cursing and making lewd comments about women to their teenaged sons. I have seen parents who think it is okay to drink with their high school aged kids. I have also seen parents who are afraid to discipline their children -- who think their kids won't like them if they "lay down the law." These people are all fools. These people act more like buddies than parents and I trust this is the kind of thing my friend is objecting to in his post. I object to them, too.

The Frozen Heart of False Spring

On a Sunday afternoon, I'm upstairs in my music room. The sun has that look it usually only gets in spring -- on Sundays in springtime, for some reason. It's got that trumpet-brightness, as if it's marching ahead of a parade of flowers that isn't so very far away, blaring the message that life is ready to start crawling out from under the frost. It throws a corny, poetic, clarion light that warms my hands on the piano keys even though people pass on the sidewalk in coats.

My sons are downstairs and I can hear them laughing and pleasantly chatting over a game of Mario Brothers. My wife clicks away at the downstairs computer. The house has that after-church peacefulness it tends to get.

Soon, through the window, I see two boys -- friends of my older son -- rolling down the street on their skateboards.

I Know Not "Seems"

Quite often, we'll be listening to my iPod or the radio in the car and one of my young sons will ask me: "Is that you dad?" In my entire life, nothing has been as satisfying as that question. It means my boys see me as a composer and as a singer.

The audience that really counts gets it.

I might have to do something else to pay the mortgage, but my lads know who I really am. They see me in my little studio working; they see me lugging gear off to gigs and they hear me making music often enough that they realize that it's what their dad is really all about.

I don't have a heck of a lot to brag about in terms of artistic recognition, so far, but my sons' perception is proof to me that I've learned to "be" rather than to "seem". In other words, I work at it hard enough that a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old know it's really part of me.

"Christmas At Sea"

Sting set Robert Louis Stevenson's "Christmas at Sea" to music.

I think I know why. It becomes clearer to me each year.

A voyage on the cold sea is universal. So is the sight of the distant, lighted window of home that we always spy in blinks and squints through the wind and the fog, while we work the frozen ropes. It's the price you pay for leaving the place that made you. Home perches there up on the hill where memory has placed it, even if, in reality, it never stood there.

Finding Nowness

Recently, on The Art of Manliness blog, in an article called "Being Fully Present as a Man," I  found that Brett and Kate McKay had written about something that has been floating through my dome since I first heard John Mayer's song "3X5":

Today I finally overcame
trying to fit the world inside a picture frame
Maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm in the mood to
lose my way -- but let me say:
You should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes
it brought me back to life
You'll be with me next time I go outside
no more 3x5's

Crumbs to Build A Fortress

Imagine an ant is walking on the wing of a space shuttle.

Consider the complexity of the machine below him. It contains technologies that neither I nor (I'm guessing) any of my readers understand. In fact, it contains technologies that no one person is capable of explaining in full. Someone understands the guidance system. Someone understands the life support. Someone else gets, say, communications. But the thing is so complex that the grasp of it as a whole is beyond any single human, let alone an ant.

Happy Meal Fisticuffs in San Fran

I agree completely with San Francisco's decision to keep kids from getting toys in Happy Meals that don't meet certain nutritional standards. Fat kids, I think it is universally agreed -- especially those whose obesity is not their own fault but their parents' -- should not be allowed to have fun. And kids who behave in ways that might eventually cause them to become fat should not have fun either.

The logic is sound: if we help kids to eat more healthfully at fast-food restaurants, they will change their eating habits and become more healthy. And legislation like this successfully bypasses those pesky parental responsibilities that get in the way of practical life and it can end marketing that targets kids, completely. Either that, or it "sends a message to corporate America" . . . or something. (People love to send messages these days. I'm thinking of getting a job as a messenger.)

A Case for Paranoid Parenting

My dad once said, "If everyone in the world were me, a three-year-old girl could wander out of her house onto a city street at three a.m. and she would be picked up and safely delivered home." He's right. It's true. Same thing if everyone were me. Or you, right? So where the hell are these other people coming from? -- the ones who would hurt a little girl? Say it out loud: There are people out there who would actually hurt a little girl. Hard to digest, isn't it? Think that over for a second while looking at this picture:

(source)

Okay, ready?

If it is not us, doing this horrible stuff, who is it? Out of a hundred people, how many of them would harm this little wayward angel? Out of a crowd of thousands? Are there people who are that evil in the picture above? Are they in your building or school or next to you in the cubicle cluster at work?

I'm assuming that nobody reading this would ever hurt our hypothetical lost waif. If I am right about all this, what are we all so worried about? Why wouldn't we let our daughters roam city streets at night?

I'm also assuming a minute portion of the people in the entire world would commit atrocities against a child. That has to be true, right? Well, if it is, maybe we are being held hostage by our imaginations.

But, then, there are the news stories of kids being dragged away; of unspeakable pedophilic rapes; of molestation; of mutilations; of predators of all kinds targeting children; of lonely, deluded people who would steal your baby for their own.

More about my dad: he will not go in the ocean. He saw Jaws and that was that. When my uncle said to him, "Do you know what the odds are of a shark attack? Like, 234 million to one," my dad thought for a minute and responded: "I don't like the odds." Further wisdom from a wise man with dry feet and, to this day, both of them.

Parents and parents of the future: watch your kids and watch everything around them. Don't make you kids stay out of the water, but keep a relentless eye on the horizon for fins. I mean this literally and metaphorically. For heaven's sake, don't let them know you're looking, but keep an eye out, quietly, and with a smile on your face. Don't enjoy yourself at crowded amusement parks: watch. (Yes, I am literally asking parents to sacrifice fun in an amusement park -- at least until they get safely clicked into the rollercoasters.) Be paranoid. Go home exhausted from worry, but with as many kids in the back seat as you showed up with. But don't show the kids your exhaustion. Be paranoid without making them paranoid. Bear the burden while showing no sign of it. You can do it, because your love is (or will be) that big. Soon enough, they will be able to take care of themselves and you can relax. Not now, though. Not while they're little.

And prepare them. Do they know the tricks the sickos of the world might use against them? Do they know how to say "no" to a grown-up? Do know that no one has a right to touch them in certain ways?

I once said to my son, when he was four, "What would you do if someone pulled up in a car and said 'Your mom and dad sent me to get you'?" He said, with a chubby little smile: "Go with them!" What would your kid say?

Prepare them by making them ready, not by making them scared. I know, I know, but you have to figure it out.

Trust no one. I worked for years with a guy who was eventually convicted of possessing and trafficking child pornography. I ate lunch with him, told jokes with him and even invited him to parties over the years. But, even in total ignorance to his depraved hobby, at no time would I ever have trusted him for five minutes in a room with my boys. Furthermore, I wouldn't trust you and you shouldn't trust me and neither one of us should be offended by that.

Truth is, we're not likely to ever see these maniacs, but they are out there -- maybe even next to you right now. Trust no one, stay on high alert with your little ones, but, and this is important, know when to let go. Someday, disengage, confident you made them ready, trusting them to help themselves. Then you can rest and it will be much deserved.

(When you don't disengage, you become a "helicopter parent." For my attempt at understanding these parents, you might want to read a previous post of mine: "Why Your Dad is Like Othello.")

Message in a Baby Bottle

Breaking news! The famous gynecologist, Gerhard Von Schniggle, has just made an amazing discovery: It seems the kicking of babies, in the womb, is actually a kind of communicative code that reveals that fetuses actually have an ability for complex, pre-linguistic communication that is lost at birth. He theorizes that the replacement of amniotic fluid with oxygen alters the brain chemistry immediately upon first breath, consequently causing babies to have to re-acquire the ability to "speak" over a period of years.

He has released a transcript of "kick-speak," as he calls it. The results are fascinating. Here is a message from the baby of Mr. and Mrs. Ted Cadwallader of Mont Alto, Pennsylvania, as transcribed by Dr. Von Schniggle, October 4th, 2010 :

Mom and dad -- it's me, your son. I know you are thinking of naming me Leo, but I would really prefer Gary -- but that is not the point. I need to fill you in on some stuff before it is too late. Some if/thens, really, that I know to be true about our relationship to come over the years. I know these things now, though I'm not sure why -- I'm getting messages wired in from somewhere. Sorry about the bladder-kicks, mom, but this needs to get through to you before I lose it.

First, you need to be patient with me. I know you know that, but what you don't know is that I will drive you to episodes of confusion and anger the likes of which you have never known. I will behave in completely irrational ways that will drive you to the limits of your endurance by keeping you awake to all hours of the night. You can't blame me, and you have to stay at the top of your game no matter how tired you are. I need you. Try to remember that.

Second, I really am sorry about the smells I will produce. I have no good excuse.

Third, you need to stick to your guns while you are raising me, no matter how hard I cry and whine. This is a test. I will test you. If you take my cookie away because you have warned me several times that this would be the consequence if I punched the dog in the nose again, I will cry to see if you love me enough to stand up to it. I will do this into my teenage years, except crying will turn into yelling. I will never really believe you love me if you let me get away with things for complaining.

Fourthly, stock up on Cheerios. They will be an excellent tool for behavior management, but you will find them around the house until you reach retirement age. I want to be up front with all of this.

Fifth, when I start talking to you, listen to me. No . . . stop nodding. Seriously: listen to me. Don't go all vacuous and wide-eyed and talk like a bad kindergarten teacher. Don't patronize me. Talk to me and listen to me. If you don't take me seriously, I won't take you seriously when I am a teenager. Fair's fair. Don't blame me for our communication problems if I have had to spend ten years being talked to like the village idiot.

Sixth, you will miss the diapers, so don't wish the time away. Dad -- I kid you not, my friend -- you will enjoy changing me if you give it a shot. You will find there is no feeling like watching your little guy walk away clean and comfortable, new diaper crackling around the room under a "onesy". So don't be a wuss. (Oh, and never refer to time spent with me as "babysitting". That will piss mom off.)

Seventh -- play with me. Don't worry about not knowing how. I'll show you how. If you play with me, I will be made as happy as I possibly can be made. I will be convinced you care about me and I will learn from you. And remember, when I get interested in things like video games and I talk about them in non-stop rolls that break Guinness records for time-span, remember to still listen. Each of my progressive interests will be the most important thing in my life at the time. Don't give me the feeling that those interests are stupid or that they are less important than the laundry.

Eighth, I'm clay in your hands. Take responsibility for the way I turn out. You can't be perfect, but you need to try to be. You need to make me ready for the challenges I will face. If I "fall in with the wrong crowd" it will be mostly your fault for not preparing me to make better decisions. If I do drugs some day, your fault, too. I hate to lay that on you, but that's the deal. Think ahead and address these things with me. Prepare me. I can't do this stuff without you. But if you screw up, remember that everyone does. As long as you follow the above rules, we will always be close and we can get through any mistakes we make.

Ninth, remember that I don't want stuff nearly as much as I want time with you. Please don't take a job, no matter how much it pays, if it takes you away from me. An hour a day is simply not enough with you. I don't care about having to take out loans for college. I want hugs. Eventually, I'll want to have catches on the front lawn. I want story time. Starting on my birthday, I want naps on your warm chest. I can't feel your heartbeat if you are on business in Chicago, even through the wonders of video conferencing.

Maybe most importantly: stop in my room to watch me sleeping each night before bed. I know you will be really tired, but stop in for a minute and watch me sleep. You'll know why when you do it.

Oh, and while these things are coming to me -- I will be able to shoot vomit across a twenty foot room, despite my exceedingly diminutive stature. You should know that.

Alright, I'm pooped. Peace out.

Amazing! All of this from some kicks and punches. When interviewed, Mr. Cadwallader said only: "I am not changing diapers."

Alas.

Mrs. Cadwallader could not be reached for comment, as she had to pee really badly.

Why Your Dad is Like Othello

I'm not a big fan of justifying behaviors by explaining them but I do believe in understanding behaviors in order to help soften their negative blow to our world. 

People have been pointing a certain group out for a few years now: "helicopter parents".  There are jokes about them and horror stories of these clingy parents accompanying their adult children to job interviews.  Every teacher and, these days, every professor, has to deal with them.  They do all the work for their kids, from picking classes to disputing grades -- they even do their homework.  (Oh, yes you do, sir.  I didn't just fall off of the rhubarb truck. )  If they could, they would walk everywhere in front of their kids wielding bubble wrap, deflecting everything from falling acorns to smart bombs.  It's all a result of the intensity of parental love -- a love that some people simply can't handle with reason.

Love can heal cancer, some say, but it can also ruin lives.  Ask Othello.  Oh, wait, you can't because he let his overwhelming obsession with the purity, faithfulness and the well-being of his wife, Desdemona, drive him into insane fits of jealousy, brought on by Iago whose paranoia-inspiring whispers completely cracked the Moor's confidence and ability to think rationally.  So what did he do?  He smothered his wife.  Smuh-thered.  Art thou with me?

So, take out the "romantic" and leave the intense, all-consuming  love and we have parents in the role of Othello and our society and media in the role of Iago.  (Please don't forget the part about taking out "romantic" -- I don't want this to turn Freudian and gross.) The kids?  Smuh-thered. 

Like with Othello, it's crazy, but I do get it.  Iago is constantly telling parents how children are abducted from their front yards; how most child-molesters are members of our own families; how kids get sick and die for no reason; how teachers are no good and lazy and sometimes seduce their innocent students; how all kids rebel and do stupid stuff to impress their friends and sometimes die as a result; and, most horrifically, how our kids will someday no longer be our cuddly little pals who tell the truth and who run to us when the thunder claps . . . 

I mean, we spend about eight years being capable of saving our kids from nearly all harm, then the little ingrates have the gall to start wandering off on their own to friends' houses -- next thing you know they are sneaking kisses with the neighbor's daughter (or son -- let's be fair).  Then what do these rotor-equipped parents do?  They try to control what they can in a desperate attempt to keep protecting the thing they hold dearest -- the precious child that the world wants to kill, maim, make sick and, ultimately, seduce into leaving them. 

The seduction begins with video games and moves to  parties, random independence and, finally, fat, shiny jobs.  That hurts.  So if the parents can't have their children, no one can.  They get jealous.  They control, guide and cover.  Smuh-thered.

Obviously, we need to be stronger than this for our kids.  But let's not go in the other direction, either: "We never wore seat belts and we were okay!"  Who is this "we"?  Not the kid who smashed through the windshield and died in 1949 when his dad bumped the car in front of him at twenty five miles per hour, surely.  Let's just agree not to say stupid crap like that.

So what message can we give to these parents?  Maybe it's that kids are like kites.  You put them together with love, carefully carry them to where the wind is -- taking care not to rip the thin paper or break the balsam bracings -- then you run them into the wind and let them rise up on their own, gently guiding them.  But when they are up so high they are out of sight, you need to sit down in the sand -- still holding the string so they don't fly away and crash somewhere, alone -- and wait there in case they fall and need you to put them back together again.  But take heart: you don't ever have to let go completely.  Not completely.  You just can't fly everywhere with them.