Category: Parenting

  • New Star Wars Trailer

    My kid is crazy into Star Wars right now. I hope it lasts the rest of her life, but I will take the enjoyment that we are both getting out of the movies. And books. And cartoons. And TV shows. And all of the other things that Disney wants to release.

    Just as it happens, last night I was watching a documentary on the making of the original trilogy, so seeing he new trailer this morning just made everything come full circle. And here I am, watching this new trailer that seems to be an attempt to tie all 9 movies together as one giant narrative. Regardless of how the last movie is, and it doesn’t really matter – we will all go and see it – there are now nine movies telling a story that everyone can’t seem to get enough of.

    Why do I keep coming back to Star Wars? Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I ever saw in the theatre at five years old. I can still remember the excitement and fear, and thrill of sitting in a packed theatre with my dad and brothers, sharing that experience of witnessing that movie. What I took away from that movie, and still take away from it, is that you always go to bat for your friends, and you have to face your fears.

    Loyalty and courage.

    And here is the new Star Wars trailer…

  • Habits

    I am trying to break my old habits, and see if I can create some new ones.

    The kid is the person who is indirectly influencing me to do this reexamination. I am concerned that I am not engaging enough with my kid to try and avoid screen time. (For most people screen time refers to phones and computers, but here I want to include the tv as well.) Right now, I say that we are doing about two hours a day. I think that is a pretty good number, but something keeps poking at me in the back of my head, so I think that number is too high.

    When I think back to my childhood, the tv was always on, and I turned out fine.

    Right?

    What I remember is watching tv in the morning when I got up, most likely about a half hour. Went to school and was home by 3pm, and that was when Jeopardy was on. But I would say that I was home for about an hour watching tv and snacking before I went outside to play. Parents were home by about 5:30, and they would watch the news, about an hour. Dinner time, and then we would watch about another 3 hours of tv. So, I think I watched about 4.5 hours of tv a day growing up.

    So why do I feel guilty about our two hours for the kid?

  • Blackout: Learning Experience

    Yesterday, very powerful and disruptive storms hit us on the west coast. The rain wasn’t any worse than a bad thunderstorm in Texas around late May, but whereas a Texas storm is done and over in about thirty minutes, the rain yesterday lasted for over twenty-four hours.

    As the storms were tapering off in the middle of the evening, just as we were about to start making dinner, we lost power, and got plunged into darkness. Luckily, we have a large collection of Yankee candles thanks to our many trips to outlet malls, and we quickly had light in our apartment.

    As we sat and waited for the power to return, the wife and I thought about the last time we were in a power outage. For me, it had to be at least 20 years, back when I was in Texas. My wife was in New York for the blackout of 2003. For our daughter, this was the first time she had experienced no electricity.

    We explained to her what was going on, and that nothing would work in the home. I know she heard us, and understood, but it was cute to watch her go from room to room, trying light switches, and then ask if we had extra electricity in the apartment to use. Like a battery, you know. We even opened the front door, so she could see the complex and the whole neighborhood cloaked in darkness.

    It was interesting to watch her learn. She had been given information, but she still needed to experience it for herself; to touch and see. She questioned why this happened, and how does rain make electricity go away. She wanted to know what we could do to fix it, and when I told her there was nothing to do but wait, she didn’t like that.

    If there is a problem, then we have to solve it.

    Waiting is still a lesson to be learned.

  • The Unexamined Life Sucks…

    Which I think is a more accurate translation from ancient Greek.

    I watched a documentary on Freud last night, and it didn’t help me sleep. What struck me in this program was that it claimed that in moments when Freud was stuck and frustrated by his own theories, he would apply them to his own life to see if they stood up to objective scrutiny. Depending on how you feel about Freud, you may feel that he succeeded or failed.

    It reminded me of Socrates’ quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I know that he said it, or supposedly did, at his trial, choosing death rather than exile. Now, my interpretation is that the ancient world was about examining the external, and the modern world is about examining the internal.

    I remember wanting to write books from a very early age. I remember wanting to have as many books around me as possible. I can even remember memorizing the books my parents read to me, so I could act like I was “reading” them. (My daughter has started to exhibit the same behavior now.) I remember “scribbling” with wavy lines on paper, like I was handwriting a story. When I did learn how to write, this might have been when I was 9 or 10, I asked for and received a child’s typewriter for Christmas. I also remember wanting to tell stories; make them up, read them, perform them, etc.…

    But where did this come from?

    I understand the nature/nurture dynamic, but it can’t be all nature, can it? Being given books by my parents clearly had an impact, but is that it? Did books give me a feeling of power? Were books my “friend” when my older brothers left me alone to do older brother things? Was it playing by myself in those situations where I was forced to use my imagination to create my own stories as I did not have the interaction with another child? Or is it just something that is in me that was inevitable?

    I’m not sure if there is a clear answer here, or even a need for an answer, as in, what does that answer really “give” me? I am who I am, and I don’t regret it.

    But…

    As I mentioned above, my daughter has exhibited one of these behaviors. Is that coming from me, genetically, or from the example I set?

  • Diversity

    Why do I strive for diversity? And for that matter, why do most people my age and younger feel the same way?

    I have been thinking about these questions often, not only for the political environment that we are in now, but also when it come to my child growing up. I want her to be exposed to as many different people as possible. In New York, that was pretty easy, and I might add happily, diversity is California has been wonderful as well.

    I think that this desire for diversity in me comes from attending integrated public schools, from kindergarten to my senior year of high school. That was 13 years of being exposed to kids that were nothing like me, and at the same time, we all behaved like kids. I have a picture from the birthday party where I turned 10, and in that picture are six boys, each of a different ethnic background. And I know that I am not the only person who can say that from where I grew up.

    Sadly, I now realize, the first time that I started hanging out with only white people was when I went to college. University was so completely socially segregated that now it seems odd that no one ever brought it up.

    My point is that I believe that it is vitally important that kids be exposed, and learn with, as many different children as possible. What scares me now is that I see parents, through gentrification, creating segregated schools again.