Tag Archives: parenting

Top academic priority: study the playground

My son’s new school is about a mile away from our house. His new school is the one in which he will attend Kindergarten. He calls it his new school to differentiate it from his preschool, which was his old school.

He likes to visit his new school. There is a big playground alongside and I guess he wants to familiarize himself with all the equipment, to give himself a jump on his classmates in September. It’s important to know which is the best slide in those pivotal moments when the other children are making a confused rush toward the playground. Otherwise, you could have to wait your turn or something.

Climbing the ladder

A school is only as good as its playground.

Yesterday, I was home with the boys. As a special treat, I loaded them both into their wagon and started pulling them over the long trail toward the new school. It wasn’t very hot outside, if you weren’t pulling two kids in a wagon. The unencumbered pedestrians we saw looked rather comfortable. But comfortable is a relative term for a beast of burden.

Halfway there, I realized that I hadn’t brought the little guy’s diaper bag. We had already climbed one of the two big hills along the way and I was damned if I were going to backtrack for a diaper. Diapers are subject to arcane rules of chance, mandating that if you go out of your way to have one with you, you will certainly not need it.

I discussed it with Toddler Boy and we agreed to roll the dice and keep going. Mr. Kindergartener concurred, though his vote was merely ceremonial.

At the school playground, the boys exited the wagon. I had earned a moment of relaxation, but what a parent earns and what he collects are different quantities. A four-year-old can run surprisingly fast when aimed at a slide-sprouting sculpture of yellow metal.

Where's the best slide?

Practicing racing the other children to the best slide.

A one-year-old can be stopped in his tracks by an interesting array of wood chips, a used straw, an unfortunate bug, or really any number of common things seen under the new light of the playground.

Examining mulch

A piece of mulch unlike any other.

It is no time for relaxing when one must herd the cheetah and the sloth into the same swath of savannah.

Our play time was limited. Building clouds made a storm appear imminent, and a toddler always makes a storm imminent when he lacks fresh diapers.

As I built up a nice froth pulling the boys home, my son said, “Daddy, I’m not sure I want to go to Kindergarten.”

This was unusual. He’s been excited about it so far. “Why not?” I asked.

“I don’t know if I want to follow all their rules.”

This is a boy after my own heart. Many times I have contemplated calling my supervisor: “I won’t be in today because I don’t think I want to follow your rules. You’ll see me when I’ve developed a better attitude.”

I couldn’t argue against his point, so we went home.

Elementary school

The dismal house of rules just beyond the playground.

My wife got home soon after. “Guess what we did?” my son asked her. “We walked to my new school.”

We did?

I let it go. Mom was home now, so I could grab a few minutes to myself to relax. I did what I normally do with these precious moments. I went outside and mowed the lawn.

 

Mr. Washington’s sauna

When I asked my son if he wanted to visit Mr. Washington’s house, he asked what any righteous four-year-old would. “Can we go to Mr. Lincoln’s house instead?”

Though his priorities were above reproach, I was left with the sad duty of explaining to him that Mr. Lincoln’s house is in Illinois and we were going to Virginia. Once he understood how harsh geography had robbed him of his first choice, he agreed that Mr. Washington’s house would be a fine substitute.

I like Mount Vernon. It is interesting and beautiful. It is also on a hill in Virginia – an important consideration if you are visiting in the heart of summer with small children.

Mount Vernon front gate

A beautiful home, if you can make it there before you melt.

I guess the area around Mount Vernon is called Northern Virginia to trick people into thinking it might not be hellishly hot there in July. I won’t be fooled again. In fact, I am rethinking my January beach volleyball plans in South Dakota.

Mr. Washington built his house on a hill overlooking the Potomac. It was a good idea for someone with a horse to carry him back up the hill every time he wanted to go dip his toes into the water.

Potomac wharf

It looks like a carousel but there are no horses. Just like there are no horses to carry you back up the hill. Psych!

Many interesting parts of the estate are downhill from the main house. My wife and I didn’t have any horses to carry us back up the hill in the stifling heat. Fortunately, our boys did. They had a couple of plodding nags, affectionately called Mommy and Daddy.

My wife had the foresight to bring the double stroller. I’d wanted the single. While the little guy could only be expected to toddle odd bits of the greater Washington area, I argued that the big boy could do his own walking. It was no smooth sailing, pushing that cart loaded with 65 pounds of childhood up dirt paths, but without it, my four-year-old and I would still be on the banks of the Potomac, arguing about how he was going to be transported up the hill.

Mount Vernon carriage

This belonged to Mr. Washington, but I could swear I pushed my boys up that hill in it a few times.

By the time we toured the main house, everyone was tired and sweaty. I have observed that tired, sweaty kids are not always on the their best behavior. If Mr. Washington’s spirit happens to flit around the halls of his home, he has now observed it too.

Mr. Washington’s house is full of interesting knick-knacks. He, and anyone truly devoted to preserving his legacy, would certainly want a curious child to try to touch them all. Undoubtedly, he would encourage such a child to stray from his group and open any door that might have been closed against the public by mistake.

Mount Vernon overseer cabin

Washington’s overseer had sense enough to barricade the doorway of his cabin so the young’uns couldn’t get into his things.

Mr. Washington was a good marketer. This was the man who slyly wore a military uniform to the meeting where they were going to pick out an army commander-in-chief. This strategic thinking persists at Mount Vernon, where the gift shop straddles the park exit and beguiles weary tourists with its air conditioning.

We did not buy any souvenirs, but I cannot tell a lie: a one-year-old I know might have rearranged the display of some of the trinkets in the store.

The river looks so beautiful, cool, and inviting. Ignore it and go to the gift shop. That's the trap with the air conditioning.

The river looks so beautiful, cool, and inviting. Ignore it and go to the gift shop. That’s the trap with the air conditioning.

Memories in cardboard

When I started Kindergarten, we were introduced to the alphabet through a program that assigned the letters human traits. Hence, Mister M had a munching mouth. I think Mister T may have had tall teeth and Miss I might have suffered from some sort of uncontrollable itch. I don’t remember the characteristics of the other anthropomorphic letters, but I will always remember Mister M.

I didn’t like him then. I love him now.

Mr. M's munching mouth

He seemed like more of a serious individual when I was five.

I recall Mister M so well because he was the first letter-person we met. I’m pretty sure he was, although it seems like it would have made more sense to start with Miss A. Oh well, 1972 was confusing time for a lot of folks, and I’m sure there was a method to the madness in the way we were taught our MBCs.

Mister M’s image was presented to us on colorful placard. We practiced our M sounds for a little while, whereupon Mister M’s card was hung up on the wall, where we could all see and admire his glorious munching mouth and be inspired by it to bite each other in the legs.

When I got home from school after Mister M’s arrival, my mother asked me about him. “What does Mister M have?” she quizzed.

It must have been a long, stressful day of Kindergarten for me, because my response showed much more surliness than imagination. This was out of character for me, as my reputation indicated that my imaginativeness should nearly equal the level of my rotten disposition.

“Mister M don’t have nothing,” I said. “He’s just a piece of cardboard.”

I don’t remember this discussion. My mother told me about it when I was older. It is one of the few snapshots of my childhood, taken from the point of view of one of my parents, that I keep with me. There is no telling how many like snapshots are lost forever.

toy tractor

A boy and his tractor in the black and white days before Mr. M.

My parents have been gone for many years, and with them have gone most of the glimpses of my childhood wisecrackery. I never got the chance to talk to my father man to man, and I had far too few years of adult conversations with my mother.

That is why is write this blog.

It’s not the only reason, and it’s not even the main reason I had for starting. But it has become the primary reason over time. My boys won’t remember the majority of events chronicled here. They won’t see any of these happenings through their dad’s eyes.

When I’m gone, I want them to know how much I was amazed or tickled or made thoughtful by their childhood antics.

Yes, I could record these events without blogging them, but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t get around to it. Blogging makes it a responsibility of sorts. It gives me deadlines for turning my memories into words before they slip between the fingers of my mind.

Like typical digital parents, we take tons of pictures of our kids. But pictures can lack context. There are some emotions that only a story can show. Sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures.

Whatever happens tomorrow, I can be happy that my boys have this link to their yesterdays. I can’t give them everything I want them to have, but at least I know I’ve provided them with some treasures of their own making. If nothing else, they will always have a handful of their own Mister Ms.

 

How Daddy’s reading comprehension skills died a slow death

Parents of multiple children can’t help but compare and contrast their offspring. I like to notice the ways my two boys are alike, because noting their differences often leads to the temptation to wish one could be more like the other, and if I’m going to pressure them to follow another child’s model, I want more well-behaved examples to point at.

There is a world of difference between the habits of a one-year-old and those of a four-year-old. Despite the age difference, there is one activity in which my boys take common delight.

Pulling out the bookmark

Colorful tabs were just made for pullin’.

Apparently, children of all ages find endless joy in pulling the bookmark out of the book their father is reading and replacing it between randomly selected pages in the book.

I am, or rather, I was, an avid reader. I used to tear through history books like there was nobody tugging on my arm or crying in my ear. I used to devour the classics like a man who need not condemn anybody to bed at an unjustly early hour, and then hear fifteen different appeals of the sentence as the night wears on.

One summer, I devoted a couple of months to reading Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy. If I tried to tackle those thousands of pages today, it would take me longer to read The Civil War than it took Lincoln’s reluctant generals to fight it. I would be a sorry historian to declare that The Civil War lasted eight years. But there were lots of extended breaks.

Civil War set

For childless readers only . . . unless you want to end up as just another casualty.

The irony is that before I had children, I didn’t rely so heavily upon bookmarks as I do now. Back then, I read so often that I could easily remember my place without a flag directing me where to resume. Now, I might go weeks between reading sessions. I need bookmarks not only to remind me what page I was on, but also which book I was reading.

There must be something about a little nub of paper or Mylar, or even a strand of lint, sticking out of a book that hypnotizes a child with the desire to pull it out. It does not matter how plain the bookmark appears, it still portrays itself as a magical tab that must be pulled. I might as well install buttons on my books and expect little boys not to push them.

In the end, a bookmark is a boring plaything. The boys rediscover this as soon as it is free of the book. Little brother might toss his disappointment to the four winds or hide it somewhere within the book, as the mood strikes him. Big brother has been yelled at enough that he covers his tracks by replacing the marker between pages, any pages.

Thus, I find myself wondering why some books are so repetitive, while others seem to leave huge gaps in the narrative. I’ve read a few books over the past several years in which the sequence of events was downright bizarre. Some men my age have mid-life crises. Not me. I’m just going through my post-modern phase.