S Robertson's Man Parenting Column

Curious George

2010-11-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

We read a lot of kids books around here and the other night we hit the first Curious George book written in 1941.

It is very strange... It starts out with this monkey (Curious George) all happy living in the wild in Africa and then along comes "The Man with the Yellow Hat" packing a gun, a camera and some binoculars who lures George into a trap with his hat. Then they take George back to the ship to be taken back to America to spend the rest of his life in his wonderful new home... a ZOO!

Of course Curious George gets into trouble on the way... He goes overboard trying to fly like a seagull... And as he is pulled from the water he appears to vomit seawater with fish. My kids thought that was funny... Fish in the vomit water... Ha Ha! Children really notice everything in the fine details. One of the sailors pulling him out of the water was smoking a pipe much like The Man with the Yellow Hat was two pages before... And then, low and behold, 2 pages after that Curious George is at The Man with the Yellow Hat's house and he eats a good meal and smokes a good pipe (he is in a chair smoking a pipe) and then feels tired... Nothing out of the ordinary there, it was a good pipe.

The next day he ends up in jail for a false fire alarm, but he breaks out of jail with time to steal some balloons which take him for a high ride, but everything is OK as he lands safely and the man with the yellow hat pays for the balloons (we don't want to set a bad example for the kids now do we).

And then Curious George ends up in the ZOO looking happy as a pig in shit because of course that is a GREAT place for a monkey to live.

My daughters questioned if a ZOO is that great for a wild animal to live and look forward to being old enough to smoke their first pipe.

lice

2010-10-03T23:22:00.000-07:00

It happens and then you have to sit everybody down shampoo their head and go through it with a fine special medal comb to remove the adults and the nits. And then of course you have to do it again (and again) in case an egg hatches and starts again the cycle of life. Did i mention the aggressive laundry cycle at 200 degrees Celsius... you have to love modern technology.

It's a pain in the ass but it's not that bad, i think parents tend to complain too much about things... look at as a chance to spend some time with your kid as you comb through their hair rather than them watching TV and you pecking away like a fool on the computer thinking you are doing something.... i find lolly pops work well. "Hey you want to suck this lolly pop... well then sit in this tub while old daddy doo does a little shampooing and combing" i say. I have also found that if you show a 3 year old a louse that you pulled out of their hair they will want to be lice free and agree to sit and suck a lolly pop while you do the business.

Unfortunately one of the twins took a shit in the bathtub as i was looking for the comb that was on the table but somehow ended up wrapped in a blanket, stuffed in a purse and placed under the lazy boy chair, lucky for me i am hip to that jive.

It is amazing that the man who was dry heaving cleaning out a litter box years ago was there picking a fresh log out of the tub in one hand and de-licing a head with the other... that is parenthood in a nutshell... when everything is falling down you just become strong and deal with it... slowly but surly.

The weird thing about the whole ordeal is how lackadaisical some people are towards the issue. Fact: we found adult lice and larvae in the hair of our family members which means we have had it for a while... eggs have been laid and hatched, so of course as a noble member of the community you need to put the word out... we have 2 kids in a daycare and one kid in a school and the kids were in camp not too long ago. Where did it come from? Could be many options and possible multiple exposures. i pointed it out to many parents that have shared head space with my kids, and most were happy to have that declared, others rather disturbingly, feel they have no fear because they haven't got a note form the school or daycare alerting them to the issue. I have a problem with that level of truculence in this fight... we need to get it out of the loop. I realize there is a stigma about having lice, and in that way it could be hard to admit, but things like this thrive on the negligent eye.

Family man with band

2008-11-12T14:35:00.000-08:00

So we had a band rehearsal in the "family room" the other night. My wife was bathing the twins and young Kaiya was downstairs listening to the music. She was having fun bouncing away on an exercise ball and enjoying things. We were in the middle of discussing an arrangement for a particular song when all of the sudden there was a big smash and the rabbit ears came down, the exercise ball came down and a hand drum teetered on a shelf and then came crashing down. There was a pause and i said "Kaiya, where did you get this destructive streak?". I then gave her the drum and went back to the band... who were enjoying the irony of me, who has spent a life smashing things, questioning my prodigy taking up the habit.

Kaiya left after that... I didn't really notice as we were kind of working, and it was her bedtime, but the next night over dinner I told the story to my wife at the table in front of the family. CT asked Kaiya if she liked the music and she said she did but she didn't like when i said that to her. I apologized, and tried to explain why it was in fact a funny joke, but i guess the lesson is to remember to explain jokes like that at the time... or to not rehearse around kids.

When i was a kid there was always so much worry that i would destroy things. In a weird way we are trying to move towards fewer possessions so if something gets destroyed it could actually be a blessing. As long as you don't destroy your relationships with a combination of paranoia and ill communication everything should be alright.

the pinata

2008-10-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

When i was a kid i never saw a pinata... never knew what it was. I am pretty sure it's the "Dora" factor working here. Dora is the Spanish sensation "educational" cartoon character that all the kids love and embrace the product lines. When Dora, or any character has a birthday party on the show there is always a pinata. Now since we are the consumer society our kids now all have pinatas at their birthday parties.

What we don't have is the culture to know how to do it. It is always a great comedy of errors to watch the pinata portion of the birthday party. When something is really part of your culture there is an intuitive sense of how to do things... there would be an older uncle who's great pride in life is hanging the pinata there would be areas where children waiting for their turn to bash a pinata with a hard stick would stand that would be far away from the child currently swinging madly at the pinata.

In our culture we see it as an opportunity to treat our children to more low quality candy and small plastic toys and the green light to swing a large bat madly with the hope that if you swing hard enough you just might get first shot at the candy.

In my experience the pinata is never hung properly in the first place so there is this meeting of men to try to solve the problem as women and children look on... i have seen 2 men standing on chairs holding a rope high above their heads and the pinata drooping at the midpoint between them and it gets worse from there... the last one i witnessed, the hosts lost a nice Wisteria plant.

There is also no protocol for the bashing... usually the most hyper and oldest boy gets a hold of the stick and attempts to seize his manhood by swinging madly with all other kids in close range.. this bring the adults in all screaming at once to their kids to stay back but it never works because a few minutes later all are again drawn in by the lure of sugar. This scenario repeats until somebody gets hit in the head with a stick, and then everybody moves way back and then slowly begin to sneak back forward again to ensure the comedy continues. Often times the pinata will fall from it's perch before it breaks open and then sooner or later somebody says enough is enough and rips the dam thing open sending the candy to the ground creating another mad scramble. Now the kids have had cake, soda, treats and more candy, and they have fulfilled their cartoon reality.

Ironic that in a world of fear and "safety first" we let our kids high on sugar swing big sticks to prove that "WE" as parents are A OK. This whole birthday culture has got to be stopped... i feel like the Grinch, but didn't the WHOS still sing on Christmas day.

modest expectations

2008-10-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

It was one of the better pieces of advice my sister gave me... she was talking about raising twins specifically, but the concept is one of the key rules to parenting.

If you think that you are going to get 10 things done in the day and something goes wrong than you leave yourself open to disappointment and unwanted forms of stress.

I was reminded of that this morning when i went upstairs to put the wash in the dryer so that it would be all done by the time the twins were ready to take their nap (nice and quiet)... then i was going to go and vote an go to the park for a nice play.

I guess we will never truly know what happened, and it would be easy to blame our 4 year old girl, but perhaps a massive amount of soap somehow made it into the washing machine through a series of errors on my behalf. If i actually want to take that further i do remember just grabbing all the clothes and stuffing them in... perhaps it might be a good strategy to put things in one at a time. In any event, as i whipped up the stairs ready to do a quick task i was greeted with a wall of suds and all immediate plans were off. Did i mention 16 month old children love bubbles?

It's all good... we got cleaned up put the clothes in the bathtub, looked for evidence, found nothing and we made it to the park and to vote and even found time to inflate tires on the stroller.

Kids are napping now, and although the laundry will have to wait for the 4pm window there is stuff to do in the kitchen now.

It won't be the last surprise of the day.

Crying

2008-10-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

When your babies cries it's OK. You don't need to lose you mind and get all upset and go over and shower the child with "love". I'm not saying don't pay any attention to it and ignore your children completely but once they learn that crying will get them attention you start a cycle that will waste time and cause grief.

The baby that doesn't get picked up every time he or she cries in the night will learn that everything is OK and learn to settle themselves thus in the long run do less crying.

Of course every kid is different, but all kids learn from their parent's reactions to the issues of the moment.

Have you ever seen a kid fall in the playground and be OK until he or she see's a distressed parent running toward them? It is then that they start to cry.

I think as a parent you want to do the best for your child, and sometimes the line becomes confused on these issues. How could you neglect you own flesh and blood? Well perhaps you are not neglecting but rather teaching that some things are no big deal.

These days i am in the parks with my twin girls (16 months)... it can be a bit dangerous so one of the policies i have tried to stick too is not to help the girls get to places that they can't get to on their own. The belief was that if they fall they should fall from not very high. Unfortunately the twins have displayed quite a climbing skill amazing myself and other parents. Was this because i never helped them? Possibly, but I am afraid we will never truly know the answer to that one, because remember all kids are different.

Anyway so i was at the park and Emily had gone up high and was eyeing the large slide, and Hailie was making her way up from the base. On the second step Hailie lost her focus and began to fall... she did hang on to the railing which helped break the fall and landed on her bum in the pea gravel. Some of the other parents gasped in horror and one of them even roared over and picked up Hailie and handed her up to me. Hailie never cried but she seemed happy to get a free ride up.