Category: Parenting

  • Summer Grocery Shopping

    The school year is coming to a close here in NYC. As of this moment we only have 6 days left of remote school, and we all can’t wait for it to be over. Come September, the kid will be back in class, like a normal elementary schooler, and there will be so much joy and excitement for that occasion, it already feels like it’s going to be Christmas Morning on that first day of school.

    In the meantime, it’s still the Dad/Daughter Experience for the Summer.

    Yesterday, as we got out of class early, I had to go shopping at Trader Joe’s. I didn’t see any reason why the kid couldn’t come with me, as the store is allowing people to shop together again. If nothing else, it would kill an hour of the day, which was better than her watching TV.

    Getting there did mean a subway ride, which is slowly beginning to feel normal to me again. For the kid, mass transit is still an adventure, and now it’s more exciting as she can read, and loves checking out all the ads on the train. Stepping down into one station, and then appearing out of another, is like magic as you get transported to a whole new world; Like the Upper West Side. Once in the store, she was a good kid, and is now big enough to push the cart for me, unassisted, so she was really helping out, and not fake praise helping out.

    As we walked to the subway station to go back to Harlem, the kid was excited about the ice cream we had bought, and I wondered how much of this she would remember later in life. I have foggy relocations of going grocery shopping with my mother during summer vacation when I was my kids age, and at the time it was just a thing we did, but now it has taken on more of a melancholy reminiscence. A very important mundane experience that I value more today.

  • Unexpected Benefits of the Chore Chart

    I’m not the best at this parenting thing, but I try. One of the things we are trying out on the kid is a chore chart, and earning money. That is supposed to teach responsibility, right? This all started because she wanted to get an LOL Doll. I wasn’t excited about her using her money for that, but that wasn’t the point. She has been diligent, worked hard, and bought the doll. She also has bought ice cream, and ice-y’s in the neighborhood. All was going as expected.

    Then, a few weeks ago, she came to me and wanted to get books about geology. Well, what she asked for were books on rocks and volcanos. We did an Amazon search, and found three books that were geared towards kids. One was $4, another was $8, and the final one was $13.

    It took her little over a week, but she earned the $4, and we got the first book. It was about 20 pages, very much geared to 6-year old’s, and was heavy on pictures of volcanos, and lite on facts other than the most basic. She read it from cover to cover quickly, but what she really wanted was a book that was about different kinds of rocks. That would be the $13 book.

    The kid set her mind to it, and worked the chore chart. She earned $8, and I did ask her if she wanted to get the book of that value. She said no, and kept working toward the $13 book. Not a single complaint came from her, and in under a month, she had the money. We ordered it from Amazon, and it was the longest Two-Day Prime delivery of her life.

    The book arrived on Tuesday, and to say that I have been hearing about rock facts nonstop would be a grave understatement. The book is attached to her, going where she goes, and the kids at the playground are getting some valuable geology lessons from my daughter. The best part, which made my heart swell with joy and bottomless love, is that she is sleeping with her book; snuggling it as best as one can do. Nope, she’s not snuggling a stuffy, or blanket, or an LOL Doll, but a 200+ page rock and mineral field guide. I didn’t see this one coming when we started this chore chart, but I think my kid really loves books.

  • If You Ban Books, Remember to Bring Props

    Today, I read an opinion essay in The New York Times by Carmen Maria Machado about books being banned, especially her memoir In The Dream House, in Leander, TX. (Go Texas!) To quote from Machado’s essay;

    “This year, a parent in Leander, Texas — livid that “In the Dream House” appeared on high school classes’ recommended reading lists— brought a pink strap-on dildo to a school board meeting. Voice trembling with disgust, she read excerpts from my book — including one where I referred to a dildo, inspiring the prop — before arguing that letting a student read my book could be considered child abuse.”

    Sadly, the parents in Leander are trying to ban books, which, and no one there seems to have learned this, never works. For one, you can’t kill an idea, and two, the parents are just making these books even more desirable to their kids, because the books have become clandestine.

    Please, read Machado’s essay, as she makes a very persuasive argument for the need of teenagers to have access to books that share a wide range of different viewpoints from a spectrum of authors. But, she also points out that education on healthy relationships is never taught in schools, and her book, and many others, can be a teaching tools for what a compassionate and caring partnership between adults can and should be. I found the essay well written, and made me think more about what my daughter should have access to.

    One last funny note…

    Please click the link, “brought a pink strap-on dildo ,” because I had a question. As the parents were offended by the book, “In the Dream House,” somehow they thought, especially Lori Hines as she is the woman in the picture, that bringing a dildo was a great “prop” idea for the meeting. You know, really ramming home their point, but it does raise questions for me like; Did Lori go out and buy a pink strap-on dildo, did she own one, or did she borrow it? Also, what is she planning on doing with it now that the meeting is over? Did she think about how in the high school, she will be known as the “pink strap-on dildo mom?” If you didn’t want kids exposed to pink strap-on dildos, you have, in fact, exposed your kids to a pink strap-on dildo? (Also, saying pink strap-on dildo over and over again is kind’a fun.) This might be a moment where the stunt upstaged the message.

  • The Perils of the Upcoming New Normal

    I referred yesterday to the fact that the NYC DOE released the 2021/2022 school schedule, which begins on September 13th, and also includes no snow days, but states all classes will be in person. One way or another, kids will be back in school in September.

    This is a huge step for us, as with the kid back in school, that will give me an opportunity to find a job. A job means the ability to make some progress from the situation we are in, because as it stands now, our condition hasn’t changed since May 2020. That was when I was laid off, and we went into the financial lockdown we are still existing in. Freedom from that is a dream come true.

    And yet, school starting up again will mean an end to my daily existence with the kid. It has been madding, and trying, and difficult, and I am sure that there has been some psychological damage on everyone’s part… But…

    The last time I spent this much uninterrupted time with my daughter was the first month that she was born. I had a month of paternity leave, and the three of us hunkered down together learning how to be a family. And then, I went back to work. With the exception of a day here and there, or maybe a week vacation, I have been working, or she has been in some sort of daycare or school.

    Come that early fall day of September 13th, when I walk her to school for that first day, it will conclude one year and six months of father-daughter bonding. I didn’t know how I would survive it, but now, I am a little sad to see it go.

  • Post Covid-19 World; Death to Snow Days

    I have to admit that Covid-19 has changed the way America works, and thinks. Remote working has changed employment and where people can live to be employed. The pandemic has ushered in a different attitude towards universal healthcare. I also think that we all now know what, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or one,” truly means in practice. And as long as we are on a Spock kick, I will also quote him by saying, “Change is the essential process of all existence.”

    In that vein, we got the new NYC school calendar for 2021-2022. As I was skimming over it, looking at the dates of holidays and in-service, I saw this little addition:

    “On ‘Snow Days’ or days when school buildings are closed due to an emergency, all students and families should plan on participating in remote learning.”

    Yup, it’s official; SNOW DAYS are DEAD! Long Live Snow Days!

    I kidded about the death of snows days this past winter, as no matter how much it snowed, there were still remote classes. But now, the death of snow days is official policy. Never again will kids watch the news in the morning to see if enough snow fell to cancel school. No more will children know the joy of missing school to play in the snow! Gone now is the last hope of a child to avoid a test, praying that God will drop a foot of snow in one night.

    We have entered a new world.