Tag: #Parenting

  • To Dare is to Do

    I have written about my current inability to finish reading a book. I start one, start the habit, then something happens, and I get out of the habit. This has everything to do with discipline, and my complete lack of it. Maybe I made the mistake in believing that the Pandemic would give me to opportunity to reset my life, and to create new, better habit, or at least correct things. But unemployment, remote school, and the feeling for the first two months of the pestilence that we were going to die… It made some easy things very difficult to accomplish.

    But the Pandemic is coming to an end and we will start living close to normal lives again. In that spirit, I am giving reading and finishing a book one more shot.

    I pulled down Donald Barthelme’s 60 Stories and started again. “Audere est Facere,” seems to be the idea here. I might fail again. And thus, try again, and sadly, fail again. I know what the right thing to do is, and I just need to keep trying. Everyone gets knocked down, not everyone gets back up.

    Now after having been very dramatic about reading, the other thing is that I do want my daughter to have the habit, the good habit, of reading, and I have to set the example. I have to show her that reading is important, that it’s enjoyable, that it’s the right thing to do. Really, there is my motivation. Just try again.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • This Morning with the Kid

    Some days are easier than others, you know. Today started off as a tough one for the kid. She was getting out of bed, when I went to take the dog for a walk. I could tell that she was still tired and a little grumpy. When I got back from the walk, there was a sulk on her. She was listening to her mother by getting dressed, and brushing her teeth, but the kid wasn’t into it. As my wife was putting the kid’s hair in a ponytail, the child was in a full frown. The kid went over to her desk, where her computer was to start her remote day in school, and just pout landed in her little chair.

    I went over to her, and picked her up, and just gave her a big hug. “Tough morning?” I asked.

    Her face was buried into my shoulder, but I could feel her head nodding a yes to my question.

    “Well,” I started, “today is going to get better.”

    She lifted her head to face me. “How do you know?” she asked.

    “I don’t. I just believe it will get better.”

    “Like a prediction?”

    “Sort of. But more like, I’m sure it’s going to happen.”

    “…okay.”

    I put her down, and she took her seat for the remote class. “Can we go to the park?” she asked.

    “Sure.” I confirmed.

    “Good,” the kid answered.

  • Sharing Photos with the Kid

    There has been a project that I have been meaning to get started on, which is getting photographs framed, and up on the walls. I have been squirreling away picture frames for some time, because when we go to IKEA, I pick up one or two. (Yes, I have a very unhealthy obsession with IKEA.) With it being Spring Break this week for the kid, I thought this might be fun for us to do together. We went out to our storage space, and grabbed the boxes for pictures and frames, and settled in on this project last night.

    When I started pulling out the pictures from the box, all still in that folder envelope that your pictures would come in after they were developed, the kid wanted to know why they were like that. (She has only lived in a digital world, and will never know that you used to have to wait for your pictures, and even then, you weren’t sure that they would turn out.) The pictures that I had were from Fall of 1995 to Summer of 2006, as after 2006, I used a digital camera, and never when back to film.

    And as I shared these pictures of my early and late 20’s life with my daughter, she had a perplexed look on her face. I remember feeling confused when my parents would show me pictures of their life at Southern Illinois University, or back in their high school days in Kankakee. Little six-year-old me was confused because it was hard for me to fathom my parents had a life before me and my brothers. My parents were fun, but serious, responsible people who ate their vegetables, paid their bills, and went to bed on time. Who were these people with beers in their hands, smoking, captured mid-laugh in photographs? Who were these people?

    The kid looked at the photos of me, with long hair, circle glasses, beer in hand, smoking, and wondered what I wondered when I was her age; who is this guy? Who are these people with Dad? What are they doing? Why is that guy hugging a tree?