Tag Archives: parenting

Gentlemen is just a fancy word for girls

My son seems to be testing the hypothesis that he can more easily get what he wants if he expresses his desires in terms that might be used by a 50-year-old diplomat. Unfortunately, four-year-olds don’t always understand the meanings of the words necessary to overwhelm their parents with polite graciousness.

We were playing at the train table in the back room. I had the baby as well. This meant that we could choose to have all of our creations destroyed almost immediately by the continuous tornado of infancy, or we could subject ourselves to constant crying as I held the baby back from his sworn duty to deconstruct any system giving off the odor of intentional design.

I was in favor of letting the whirlwind run amok. Big Brother voted for incessant wailing. Neither choice was a good one, but the final decision was mine. The boy, weighing the balance of power within the room, turned to diplomacy. “I’ve got a great idea,” he said. “Let’s leave the baby with those gentlemen.” He pointed, in his open-handed way, through the kitchen toward the living room.

Hearing my son refer to any people as gentlemen left me befuddled and amused. There were indeed two people in the living room, and for a second I imagined that they were the foreign ministers of Germany and France. In fact, they were my wife and her sister. I was about to tell him, “That’s no gentleman; that’s my wife,” but I realized it wouldn’t be funny to him, or to anyone else.

Instead, I asked, “Do you know what gentlemen means?”

“Yeah, it means girls.”

Women's League

Maybe these gentlemen can watch the baby. That is, if they are all done pushing Germany and France toward war.

“Listen,” I commanded, as I began to speak slowly. “Gentlemen, gentle . . . men, men. It means boys.”

A true diplomat must have the ability to adapt to a changing situation. He must have the skill to address a new reality without any embarrassment or regret over what no longer obtains.

Before I could even get around to asking him if he understood, my son’s arm was raised again, his open palm indicating the path to the living room. “I’ve got a great idea. Let’s leave the baby with those gentle ladies,” he said.

I’m signing him up to take the Foreign Service Exam. I just hope it doesn’t have a vocabulary section.

 

Scorn is fundamental

Our four-year-old is learning how to read. He is also learning how to not read. Take him to the toy department of a store and he can read surprisingly well. The words on the boxes all spring to life with vast meaning. Sit him down with a book at home and letters no longer make pronounceable sounds; words are cryptic hieroglyphs on the page.

At first blush his selective comprehension might seem like laziness. And it probably is, to some degree. But it also represents an understanding of the economic value of knowledge. When there is something he wants, he suddenly has knowledge to offer. When knowing offers nothing but tedium, he naturally knows nothing.

His strategy of using reading as currency is obvious. The other day, he quickly read the word Batman on the cable guide because he likes that show. He has become quite a fan of the old 1960s TV version (and for anyone who thinks Adam West is not a great actor, you try to say some of the lines he had to say with a straight face).

Another time, the boy also easily read the sentence, “Do you want chips and cheese?” when his mother wrote a note for him. He really wanted chips and cheese, which momentarily made him a super-reader. With a full belly, he became illiterate once more.

He has yet to embrace the concept of delayed gratification: make your parents happy and proud now, and you are more likely to receive some as-yet-unnamed reward in the future. Consequently, we are left with the task of trying to make reading, for its own sake, seem less toilsome.

We have a collection of magnetic letters stuck to our refrigerator. He uses these to spell out words. His baby brother likes to play with the letters too, but his favorite game is to push them underneath the fridge.

One day, the big boy was using the magnetic letters to spell out his full name. He was lacking a letter, so we spent our time trying to retrieve some of them from underneath the appliance. We finally found the letter he needed, but there were still more letters underneath that we couldn’t reach. He wanted all the letters back.

He had seen me push the fridge away from the wall once before so he grabbed hold and tried to push that monster out of the way. Of course, it didn’t budge. “Help me move this,” he insisted of me.

I had nearly destroyed its wall plug the last time I’d moved it. “No. I’m not moving the fridge again,” I told him.

He put his hands on his hips and gave me a look of disgust. “I thought you were trying to be helpful,” he growled.

The jury is still out on reading, and delayed gratification is yet to come, but it appears as though I’ve done a bang-up job of teaching him scorn.

Reading is fun!

I really need to pull another N out from under this fridge before the boy hits middle school and this message takes a wrong turn.

I can tell you are a Superstar from your healthy snacks

This is a big week in our son’s life. He is Superstar of the Week at his preschool. This is a major honor that can only be achieved through hard work, diligence, and having your name drawn out of a hat. All of the children have a turn, but this does not diminish the honor. When it’s your week, you are the only one who is Superstar of the Week.

The boy’s parents are not Superstars when it comes to thoroughly reading the information sheets he brings home from school. Instead, we rely upon him to keep us informed. This is ironic, as he seems to believe that his parents do more than skim the paperwork for the gist of it. He doesn’t like to waste our time supplying redundant details.

This resulted in a Sunday night trip to the store for materials, when we finally figured out that Superstars usually make a poster of family pictures to display during their week. The evening was a frantic blur of scissors and glue. Daddy ran security to keep the baby away from the project, on the construction of which, he so badly wanted to help.

I was the at-home parent on Monday of Superstar Week. When my son got up in the morning he asked if he needed a bath. Since his mother hadn’t left orders to give him a bath, I told him he didn’t need to take one.

“Yes, I do,”  he replied. I froze in place. Before I could demand of this alien imposter what he had done with my real son, he explained. “I can’t be dirty if I’m gonna be the Superstar.” So, Superstars take baths voluntarily? This is the most important thing to know about the Superstar of the Week. I went back and checked; it wasn’t mentioned in the handout.

The Superstar is privileged to bring to school a healthy snack to share on Friday. We will have to ask for some advice on this matter. When I was a kid, healthy and snack never appeared in the same sentence. If anybody had ever dreamt of such a combination, it would only have been to remind the provider to steer clear of the lead chips this time.

During my childhood, we ate wholesome snacks. These were foods that gave us the energy and the blood pressure to stand up for the American Way. Ho-Hos and whole milk defeated communism. Could carrot strips and V-8 juice have accomplished that?

Sugar and salt, the cornerstones of my youthful nutrition pyramid, seem to be out of favor today. Maybe my wife knows of a magical food item that fits into that narrow intersection of healthy and delicious to preschool children. If not, we’ll do what we usually do: bring it up in casual conversation with some up-to-date preschool parents and steal their ideas without letting them know how clueless we are.

Being Superstar of the Week brings glory, but also grave responsibility. You have to be clean, and you have to nudge your parents into the modern age. It’s not all fun and games, you know.

walking to school

Heading off to the first day of school in the fall. Who would have guessed that the experience would turn him into a Superstar?

 

 

Can a baby get some credit?

Every time the baby goes to the doctor, they ask about milestones. These are things he should be doing at certain ages. It went from making eye contact to sitting up to rolling over to crawling. Recently, we have met and passed the pulling himself up to stand milestone.

Tracking these standard milestones is fine, but it’s disappointing that the doctor doesn’t seem to care about the entertaining stuff our baby is doing. Our baby has passed a lot of other milestones too.

The High five milestone

Our baby is quite advanced in his high five skills. Maybe a lot of 10-month-olds can give a high five when prompted, but our child initiates the high five. He holds up an open hand and gives you that look that says, “Daddy Dog, can a baby get some skin?”

He is satisfied with all the high fives he gets in response. But if you make a “chit” noise with your mouth, to exaggerate the sound of two palms striking each other, he will reward you with a lovely smile and probably make you one of his regular high five buddies.

For a while, he even experimented with the fist bump, to which the proper sound effect was a tongue click. In the end, he found this activity overly pretentious and less sincere than the high five.

The Don’t go to any trouble; I can serve myself milestone

This is a milestone that all breastfed babies probably achieve. It’s odd that the doctor never asks about it because it is a good measure of ingenuity and coordination. Our baby met this milestone some time ago, but it seems like he keeps getting more nimble and insistent.

Babies learn to know where their bread is buttered. Though they may be eating other foods, there is still nothing like a fresh brewed pot of milk. Our baby has perfected the art of grabbing hold of one of nature’s milk jugs with both hands, while turning himself sideways across his mother and diving directly at the spigot. The turning maneuver he can accomplish without using his arms. This lets him keep his eyes, and his hands, on the prize.

The I understand that something nasty just went down inside my diaper milestone

This is another universal milestone that doctors should ask about, but don’t. It shows the development of awareness and an appreciation for social awkwardness. Younger babies can do all sorts of mischief inside their diapers without batting an eye. That bubbling cauldron of goo is no concern of theirs.

You know your baby is developing some self-awareness when a bottom-side blowout makes him freeze in place and stare at you with wide eyes, even before his big brother yells out, “Daddy, the baby just ripped a hole in his diaper!” The baby knows he’s absolutely tearing it up. What he doesn’t yet know is whether he should be proud or ashamed of it. Hence, the wide, questioning eyes.

Don’t worry, baby. In a year or two, your brother will have taught you that the sound your butt just made is the most hilarious noise in the world. There is nothing to do but laugh, and try to blame it on him.

wide eyed baby

“Oh my! Did somebody order a diaper shredder?”