Tag: Parenting

  • Parenting Challenges

    Today, with the observance of Veteran’s Day, the kid’s school is closed. The wife, on the other hand, had to go to work. That leaves me with the kid.

    Back in New York, those were good days to spend together. Since it would be a “treat” that Dad would be home during the week, we’d watch a little extra TV, but then get ready and walk three blocks over to the park. We’d be there for an hour or more, and then head back for lunch. After eating, it would be nap time, and sometimes I would also take a nap on the couch watching Sports Center. When we got up, story and drawing time. Maybe one more TV show, and then news and getting ready for Mom to come home and dinner.

    Ah… but we are in California now. We need a car to go to the nearest park, but the wife has it today to go to work. There are wild fires that are blowing smoke in our direction, and the air quality is so bad that we can’t go outside to play. This past weekend, the last of our things arrived, so there are boxes all over the apartment. We will be making a game of putting things away and arranging the furniture. I set the kid’s easel up in the living room so we can all draw together.

    We are in transition, and this is a big change for all of us, sometimes to does feel overwhelming.  I had a colleague at the last job I had who shared an article with me when we were in the processes of moving offices. The article was about how people hate change/transition and will react negatively to things they normally would agree with. I lost the article, but I have thought about it often over this past month with everything that has happened to us. It might be awhile before we begin to feel normal again.

  • Thoughts All Over the Place

    There was a boy in my neighborhood that all the kids knew about because he played with dolls. We had to be about seven or eight years old at the time. It was seemed like such a sin, and such an egregious act for a boy to not want to play with boy things. I remember even being confused why someone would want to do that. Like, why would you choose to play with those things, when there are so many great boy toys out there. It never dawned on me that this is what he liked doing. That this boy had to be doing it as some sort of act. It couldn’t be who he really was. When that boy came around, no one said anything to him, or brought it up. It stayed a known secret. At least that’s what I remember.

    What I now find odd about this situation is that in kindergarten, I remember everyone wanted to play house and be near the kitchen play set. Well, just about everyone. There were some outlier boys and girls that wanted nothing to do with it. But the majority of us, we all wanted to play in that kitchen. I would have to say that in the early 80’s, boys playing at making dinner wasn’t the most masculine act, but somehow that was deemed acceptable. I am sure it has to do with both boys and girls playing together and acting out what it is like to be an adult.

    My daughter wanted a play kitchen very badly for Christmas. She was almost three when we go it for her, and she took to it immediately. There was some hesitation in me when it came to getting it for her, as I didn’t want to cast gender roles on her. Such as, girls don’t have to play in the kitchen. They can play with other things. Does she want a toy work bench? Not really. She wanted a kitchen.

    It was the same way with play costumes around the apartment. She wanted to have a Darth Vader costume, lightsaber included. (Nerd Dad Me was very excited by this development.) The next she asked for a Princess Leia costume, which I was also very cool with. Then she wanted a Cinderella dress so she could look pretty and dance with the Prince. So, from Darth Vader to Cinderella?

    These are the thoughts that go through my head, but I also know that as she is only three and a half, we are way too early to say that any of this play is determining anything about her personality or what direction she will go in life.

    But everything has to mean something, right?

    I think I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was 8, and then I think I wanted to be a writer. Then I wanted to be a performer, and then a musician, and then I think I just wanted to be left alone (That was high school), and then I think I still never really got it figured out that “THIS” is the thing that I want to do. I keep grasping at things, and trying things out. I hope my daughter doesn’t have this problem, but as she is my kid, she will go through the same thing. Just trying to put pieces together and see what is created.

  • The Parent Fail

    I have begun to notice a type of posting from some of my friends lately that I think proves that we are only repeating the mistakes of our parents. This type of post is mostly coming from my friends who are married, and also have children. It is the post that stats something to the effect of that today’s world is awful for (Insert reason x y and z,) and things were much better (Insert the decade the poster was born, or the decade before the poster was born.) I have written before about nostalgia, but I think this is a litter more sidious and deceptive.

    The reason I say that is because I can clearly remember my parents and their friends telling me how great and better things were in the 50’s and 60’s. (Strange, none of them said anything nice about the 70’s.) And by the time I was in high school in the 90’s, I started to question this logic. Such as, I was well aware that there were a great number of people who didn’t look at the past and see the Good Old Days. Being a woman wasn’t better in the 50’s. Being a person of color wasn’t better a few decades back… The past wasn’t that great, the present isn’t so bad, and the future might be pretty awesome.

    So, when I see friends posting that that the 70’s and 80’s was a better, more honest, connected time for people and families, and children… I kind’a feel like they are continuing the lie of the past. They are falling for the parent trap of telling their kids they missed out, and nothing was as much fun as yesteryear. I think that creates a situation where you instill in your children that they have missed out, and also it doesn’t allow parents to see they world from their kid’s point of view, which is new, exciting and full of possibilities.

    What I remember is that being a kid was fun, but the 80’s sucked.