Why I hate Hannah Montana

Why do I hate Hanna Montana? It has nothing to do with the semi-nude pictures of her, trashy as they were.

The other day, I was in the store looking for a night light. My eldest daughter has an intense fear of the dark and what I really wanted was a regular off-white night light that has an on/off switch; not one of those flicker-in-the-near-darkness jobs. Naturally, the kind I wanted was sold out however long ago and no one knew when a new order for them would go in. But they did have the Hannah Montana night light.

They also had the Hannah Montana flashlight. And stool. And three different beach towels. And MP3 player. The Hannah Montana pajamas. The tote bag with accessories and blond wig. The charm bracelet. A Hannah Montana leather watch (in pink, purple, and black). The beauty set. Guitar. Cell phone case. Anti-static pink hairbrush. The sheet set. Umbrella. The Hannah Montana birthday cake edible image. Tatoos. Wii and DS games. Thank you notes. Drapes. Tooth-tunes (those tooth brushes that let you hear music through your teeth while brushing). 166 different books (no lie). Pencils, car decals, purses, nightgowns, panties.

All of them with the girl's face on them.

Strike that. She's not a girl; she's a product. She's Barbie. She's Pepsi. She's Coke. She's a living nightmare.

Who wants their face on a stool? Who wants a stool with someone's face on it? Why do all these products claim to have anything to do with "girl power" when all they are doing is packaging what it is to be a girl and selling the image, thus stereotyping and perpetuating what marketers feel it should be like to be a girl?

The show is about how great it is to be a "regular girl" and a "star." Yet all it does is reinforce the privilege and wonderment of what it is to be rich and famous. Hanna has a desirable life not because she is a regular girl, but because she can choose to be a regular girl or a superstar. Yet the reality is that she and her parents have let her become such an over-exposed product that there is nothing left about her that is human. She is an icon of an image and she is what every girl wants to be.

I think there's a problem when we all start dreaming the same dream. Especially when that dream is unchecked by any sort of ethics or limitations. Hannah shows children that selling out is awesome, that having your face on a bar of soap is cool, that you should put your image on every available product, that shopping provides meaning to your life. Is this what we want our daughters to grow up thinking?

Do we want our daughters to see us all clamoring for $100+ tickets to see a fifteen year old lip sync?

I'm glad that I don't have TV. I can't imagine going to WalMart or Target and having my kids beg for the bananas with her face on the sticker or the phone with her face on it, ad infinitum. We live in a world where ads and product licensing has gone insane.

The Buddha said that life is suffering and that it is such because of misplaced desires. Hannah Montana gives our daughters a lot of misplaced desires--not just toys in her image, but every imaginable product--and this trains them to be forever in the indentured servitude of the corporate machine.

Call me alarmist. But I'm sick of it.

Camping with Children

In two weeks, my family is going to go off on a brave adventure: camping across the western US. This year marks the fifth year of our marriage. On our honeymoon, we camped across the entire country, from California to Vermont and back. Granted, we caved and stayed in the odd motel or so and surfed on friends' couches here and there, but a good deal of it was spent camping.

But things are different five years later. We have two kids and two dogs to take along with us. There's complications with eating, excessive "dark," using the potty, and a general resistance to flexibility to deal with. But saving $90 a night will help to offset the price of gas and cooking our own food will be cheaper than roadside fair as well (that's right--we really want to stretch that stimulus check we'll be getting shortly).

To explore the intricacies of camping with children--which we hadn't done for a year--we went on a short over-night camping trip to a nearby national forest a week ago. Here are some things we've encountered:

Being Outside: The kids love and treasure outside-time. We know this from playing outside and cooking outside, but it is especially evident while camping. When else do you get to spend hour upon hour solidly outside? It just doesn't happen much where we live or at least how we live. But the outside world is endlessly interesting and enriching offering us plenty of activities that don't involve much organization if any.

The benefits of being dirty: It's nice to be able to tell the kids to go ahead and be as dirty as they need to be. Especially in our 3 year old, there seems to be a resistance to--not getting dirty--but staying dirty. While camping, it's unavoidable that you will be dirty, so telling them so is somewhat of a liberation. Our eldest kept reminding us throughout the two days, "Look, I'm dirty, but it's okay." It never before has crossed my mind how much we must subtle encourage cleanliness in our day-to-day.

Hidden Dangers: Where we live, in southeastern Texas, there is a lot to be wary of. Poison ivy and oak are all around, as well as roughly 65 billion types of poisonous snake. There are insects like asps and scorpions that are better left alone. The lakes in the area house plenty of gators that would find our 2 year old a delightful snack. So there does end up being a bit much of the "stay close" and "get out of the bushes" from time to time. It didn't seem to bother them much.

Sleeping in a tent: This is fun for the kids, though a bit scary, too. We had the idea that they would sleep on one side and the parents could cuddle up in a separate area. No chance. We were a woven tapestry of humanity the night long. This is fine once expectations are abandoned. There is also plenty of need to reassure kids during sounds outside. Once in a while, I also need reassurance.

Play equipment: You don't need a lot of equipment for kids to play with. Lots of camping rituals provide structured fun; roasting marshmallows seems to be much more fun than eating them. we did bring sand pales and shovels and they chose to do a lot of digging. But exploration of leaves, bugs, and toads was more than enough for them most of the time.

Be prepared: This story is really told best by my wife. Okay, I'm the dumb one here. In the year we've had our trusty mini-van, I've never had to change its tire. Sure enough, waking up to a brisk morning, I saw that we had a flat over night. Getting that spare tire out from under was impossible--until I found out the right way to do it two hours later. There was no cell phone reception and no Google to help me out of the situation. Then, once that problem was solved, we discovered that a late-night diaper change led to a light being left on and eventually to a dead battery. When we finally tracked someone down to give us a jump (and we forgot our own cables), our German Shepard, Blitzen, threatened by the man's proximity to our daughter, decided to pounce the guy. Yeah, it was a great morning.

It's not like grown-up camping. The night doesn't get late enough before it's bed time, the little legs can limit long hikes, and you never have to remind your wife to move away from the fire nearly as much as you do your toddlers. But camping with kids can be fun and enriching. There is no limit to the opportunities for curious kids. They can't wait to go on our adventure, and neither can we. I'll be honest and update if we end up in a Super 8 due to rain or cold, but we're going to try and go all the way.

The Hostile Educational Climate of Testing

I'm a teacher. At this point, I'm just about a year away from having earned a doctorate in Education. I can't stand the thought of my kids going to school when standardized testing is ruling the terms of the classroom.

No Child Left Behind is un-researched, underfunded, and simply senseless. I can't imagine why--despite the glittering generality of the title of the bill--people voted for it. There is no reason to believe that all children learn at the same pace. There is no reason to believe that some students just aren't ready to go on to the next grade. There is no reason to believe that every student in every corner of America should be learning the same things at the same times and demonstrate the same skills. It's nothing short of madness.

The federal government pays for about 10% of public schools. Despite that small amount of funding, No Child Left Behind intrudes upon each and every classroom and, essentially, dictates a common curriculum for all students to learn. I see three major problems with it.

Problem #1: Educational Diversity

In nature, species survive through genetic diversity. If the climate changes, a new predator is introduced, or a certain disease comes through, the variety of genetic make-up will help some of those creatures survive. Those advantageous genetic qualities will the be passed on, improved upon, and posterity will benefit. You can't expect every creature to survive every epidemic, but you can, reasonably, expect that the species will push on. This is why inbreeding is frowned upon in polite societies of animals; too much of one specific gene pool will result in decreased genetic diversity.

In Universities, they don't hire their own graduates most of the time. If UT hires only UT alumni, they will, in effect, be in-breeding. They will have a lack of educational diversity which will lead to narrow thinking. This narrow thinking will result in a lack of diversity for problem solving--all people will approach problems in the same way, drawing from the same education, and at some point, a problem will come along that will be unsolvable to them.

This is what we're doing to the nation at large. If every student is forced to learn the same materials for the same purposes, the homogeony will make the country much less creative problem solvers. We will be faced with plenty of problems that will be unsolvable.

Problem #2: Common Denominators

Many students who are behind in class are there because they are way ahead of the class. They get bored, frustrated, and end up living in their own heads rather than paying attention. Then they can't demonstrate the skills that were taught simply because the subject matter wasn't engaging to them.

This is why we push for smaller class sizes. It's not just that each student gets more attention, but that each class can move faster, or, at a pace more common to all the students. By saying that we won't go on without every last student, even the bright students might be chastised for holding the classroom back.

Problem #3: Negligence

The worst advertisement I've ever seen was for Kindermusik. It showed a girl playing a drum and said, "The same rhythm she uses for music, she'll use for dribbling down the court." So that's the value of music education? What it can do for your basketball skills?

This has been the attitude towards educating the arts for as long as I can remember. I took a lot of music when I was younger and was always disgusted when someone would mention that music was good for your math skills. I always thought that math was good for your music skills.

Arts aren't just good for learning the important stuff: they are the important stuff. By focusing testing and benchmarks on English and Math, schools neglect not only music and art, but science and history as well. These things are important. These are the way that we move a culture forward. They are what being human is about, even if they don't use it to benefit society. Or basketball.

No Child Left Behind, by focusing on the "practical skills" is, in a sense, saying that education is for making money in the future. It's not. Education is supposed to be for thinking for yourself, understanding of your place in the world, and should, ideally, enhance your creative skills. Let's see them demonstrate creativity by filling in a bubble with a number two pencil.

I live for the day when we realize that some students may not be ready to move on--even emotionally. And when we see that some students should move very much farther on. If we could take the funding for NCLB, and many other ridiculous educational programs and put it to making smaller class sizes and increasing the range of subjects that students can learn, we will make out country a stronger place.

Or, we can just give programs fancy sounding names that limit our students and look fancy to our constituents so we can stick around the beltway a little longer and increase our salaries. That's a good idea, too.

Related:
Education vs. Schooling (On Steve-Olson.com)

Should Bookstores be Socially Responsible?

We have a habit of hanging out at bookstores. We’ve had this habit since way before we had kids. In several of the towns where I’ve lived, the local libraries weren’t much to write home about. Besides being terribly under stocked and in the “wrong” area of town, they also had lousy hours and didn’t feel conducive to hanging around being semi-social. So, we got in the habit of frequenting large chain bookstores.

This isn’t anything original to us. Many people are turning bookstores into their own little living rooms. They go, have coffee, a muffin, read the day’s paper, talk on the phone, whatever. In college I often chose to study at Borders instead of the college library because it was closer to my house and it felt like I was out doing something. These places are semi-public spaces that are turning more and more into semi-private places.

This habit of ours leaked very comfortably into our lives as parents. Many Barnes & Nobles have train tables to play with, little stages to play on, and several cozy reading nooks for kids to get into. And of course, when we lived in Austin, we spent an inordinate amount of hours at the world’s greatest bookstore, BookPeople, which was so full of fun activities and a wide selection of books that there was rarely a question of what to do when it was just too damn hot outside.

But with the exception of the above mentioned independent bookseller, being at these places has always come with a challenge for us as parents. My daughters—when they tire of playing with the train or dancing on the stage—want me to read books to them. That much is great. But the problem is distinguishing between books and toys.

The basic rule I’ve come down to is this: books have an author listed, toys do not. So much of what is seemingly a book, isn’t a book at all. There are a million Princess books that have no listed author, as there are with Backyardigans, Elmo, Dora, My Little Pony, Hanna Montana, and every other imaginable character. (Now, I have a soft spot for Disney, thanks to well over a hundred trips to Disneyland, but that doesn’t change my stance about their “books”).

Even worse are the books that are actually just toys in a book shaped box. They have buttons, make noises, play songs, or are actually filled with little knick-knacks of every imaginable persuasion. They are a real and true blight on the bookstore. And, they are specifically designed to attract children.

Obviously, I can’t explain to my kids that I don’t want to read books without authors to them. But I do try and explain why I don’t want to read princess book after princess book, or why it’s no fun to hear an electronic beep play “muffin man” a billion times in a row for no particular reason. Usually, while they are involved in the initial distraction of the train, the toys, or whatever, I make a round and pick out several books that I would like to read. Some old favorites, like Suess and Sendak, and some new or seasonally exciting ones. Then, I try and persuade them to look at these books with me, as the stories are so much better than the plight of Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony as she tries to throw a party for Minty.

These toy-books are positioned to be the most reachable. They attract children with familiar characters (many of them at least familiar from the grocery store, Target, and kid’s shirts that they play with). And, of course, I’m sure they sell great. Many parents are like, “Cool, you want a book, we’ll buy it.” Or hapless grandparents who aren’t sure what to buy pick them up based on accessibility. They even have line after line of these books that are supposed to teach the child to read—because the parents would have no idea how to do that without the Elmo puppet’s help that’s attached to many of these.

If you want your children to grow up to be readers, you have to look past the marketing. You have to encourage them to read books that are worth reading. In the long run, they will notice the effects of a good book versus a bad book.

On a recent trip to Borders, their seasonal wall was overcome with a new display of Disney Fairies books—all of which burst onto the market the same day as the Borders-Disney sweepstakes. The other four tables around it—together representing the five most accessible areas of books for kids—had signs attached to them as follows: “At the Movies;” “Hannah Montana;” “Make it a Nickelodeon Night;” and “Your Favorite Characters” (all of which, apparently, can be found on TV).

Should bookstores recognize their position as the new public book space? Should something be done to increase library funding for better hours, more pleasing kids areas, and better lighting? Should they lead buyer for Barnes & Noble—the single most powerful person in publishing—recognize the importance of good literature for every age? Or should we just buckle to our typical post-capitalist apathy of, “Hey, they’re a business, they want to make money, Jackass!”

Businesses run from our money. The libraries run from our money. We should expect more of them, and we should, therefore, expect more of ourselves.

Imagination and Curiosity

My daughter has the most depressing imaginary friend in the whole world. Her name is Blently (the imaginary friend, not my daughter) and she lives by herself. She has no parents, no friends, no way to get across town to visit my daughter. When I ask what Blently eats, I am told that she likes pizza and macaroni. When I ask how she gets her food, I am told that “a man” gives it to her, but that he doesn’t stay to eat with her.

I don’t know what to make of Blently. She pops up in conversation every now and then. Usually it’s an announcement in the car, something like, “Blently is very sad today. She still does not have anything fun to do.” When I offer to pick the poor girl up, I am told that “She is very busy and cannot play.” I ask if there’s any way that Blently can come and play at a time when Mommy and Daddy don’t watch—hoping to bring some relief to the monotony of the poor girl’s life. But, no, she has no way to get to our house and she will be too busy at any given time.

Yet, there are some qualities of Blently’s that I’m afraid my daughter likes. For one, Blently is 4, a year older than my daughter. She could use the potty several months before my daughter could. She can also sing very beautifully, but, one supposes, to a null audience. She can write, she can read, and she doesn’t cry when she’s lonely. Their choices of food seem pretty much the same.

Could it be that Blently is my daughter’s Tyler Durden?

I hope not. I hate to think that somehow my daughter’s unfulfilled fantasies of living by herself in a kingdom of loneliness. Psychologists have come a long way in how they view imaginary friends. Even Dr. Spock said some pretty depressing things about imaginary friends in his early career and much of these have been mainly debunked by now.

I don’t think that imagination is a bad thing. I don’t think that having an imaginary friend is, for the most part, anything but fun. I don’t want to stifle any aspect of my daughter’s creativity with this whole Blently thing, though I do wish she’d let the poor girl branch out from her dungeon.

Imagination is another side of curiosity, to me. By playing through this Blently scenario, my daughter is exploring the world. She is discovering what it would be like to live by herself—even if she were a year older—and in what ways she is dependent on family for her everyday things. She is also exploring the realms of happiness that she has playing with friends and with her little sister.

And curiosity is only a good thing. Whenever someone is praised for being “smart,” all they are seeing is the level of curiosity that the person exhibits. The answers to whatever questions one may pose are out there—it’s the questions that elude most people. If someone asks you why the sky is blue and you know the answer (Rayleigh scattering), it’s only because you bothered to ask the question yourself one day.

It is an important role of a parent to cultivate a child’s curiosity. Easy answers or brush-offs are not conducive to this; don’t train your child to feel stupid for asking a question. Instead, follow them through and show them how each answer can lead to other questions.

In the meantime, I have to try and encourage my daughter to come up with someone less heartbreaking to hear about every day.

Changes

The other day I was driving from Houston to Austin and I got a call from an old friend of mine. I've known her for as long as we've both been alive and she became a mom shortly after I became a dad. We were talking about potty training--the ups and downs of the whole thing--and, specifically, we were talking about cleaning out the tiny potty after, well, number two.

I broke into my own conversation, which was in a very descriptive stage, to point out that all the years we've known each other, the subject of cleaning crap out of a plastic receptacle had never really come up before; things had changed a lot in the past couple years. It was a mildly interesting interjection.

I remember when I was really young hearing my grandma say that nothing in this world is constant but change. While I feel that change is constant, the rate of change is fluctuating. If I think about the changes that occurred in my life from ages 15-17, it can't begin to compare to the changes in my life from ages 25-27.

It's like plate tectonics. Pressure and tension build up over time and then WHAM, an earthquake slaps the surface. And now, watching my daughters grow up is like having massive aftershocks every single day. They are expressions of flux, every day growing and learning. They learn more in a single day than I can take in during a semester of graduate school.

Without a doubt the biggest moment of change in my life was when my first daughter was born. It was a palpable feeling; probably something like dying would be. Seriously. Or maybe like being born, myself. I felt like I fell apart and was something else entirely. As much as I've tried to write about that moment over and over in my life, I've never found the right words. I've never come close, and I really don't expect to any more.

The earthquake of that moment is still being felt. In a single instant, priorities shifted forever, concerns toppled, things were put into focus and others taken out of focus, the world that I lived in seems silly and trifling now, and the world now seems multilayered--stratified with superficial concerns on the bottom, ideas of consumerism waddling in the muck going up to petty concerns about money, and the lightest layers floating on top; the joy and mystery of life, the feeling of a baby falling asleep on your chest.

I think it's a shame that some people are able to overcome the power of that change. Some people are able to go back to their old concerns and priorities. Maybe they've just been rooted in them for so long. Maybe they feel that there is time in their lives for everything.

The world is at once infinite and temporary to me, these days. I think it's important to take a moment now and then, see where we've been, and take note of where we are. Where are my priorities today? Have I put them in the right place, or have I fallen into really old habits again? How can I help guide the change that will happen today, push it in a positive direction for my kids? Yes, it's just one day. The world they make today, they will change tomorrow, so every single step counts.

Potty Party Part II: The Outcome

Last week, I reported the details of my family's desperate plan to potty train our kids, the potty party. As a quick recap, the plan was to throw a day-long party to celebrate the absence of diapers in our home. The idea was that by forcing them to come up with non-diapered means of expulsion through a positive theme, we would circumnavigate all the hurt feelings and frustration that we've been experiencing over the whole idea.

The whole day was a wash. I mean, we had fun, but there was no notion of household productivity. The decorations were hung, the cake was made, and just to throw a harpoon in the whale of the notion of diet, we had homemade chocolate chip buscuits for breakfast and brought in pizza for dinner. The day was shamefully full of movie watching, and the yard rested quietly outside, escaping even the slightest effort of mantanence that I might have considered appropriate on a regular Saturday. But the pottys were set up and waiting, and that's what mattered.

It worked--mostly.

We now stand at a new and exciting ratio of potty users in the famiy; our older daughter has not worn a diaper since Friday, and it is now Wednesday. To top that off, she hasn't had even a single accident.

All we had to do was weather the first excruciating half of Potty Party Day (as it will hence be refered). She screamed. She begged. She ran in circles. She wanted a bath (presumably to be used as a covert urinal) and argued that her dirty fingernails demanded bathtime attentions. All the while, her little sister sat happily on her potty--holding everything in for all it was worth.

We almost caved at least once every hour.

And finally, at noon, she could hold back no longer. She sat on her little potty, positioned comfortably in the living room, squeezing my hand in terror. Then, finally, she looked at me and said, "Daddy, don't be happy." I assured her I wouldn't be.

"Daddy," she said, "Don't be proud." Again, pride was far from my demenor.

"Daddy," she begged, "Don't clap and say 'yay.'" And I told her I wouldn't.

"I pee-peed."

The chear that I let out instantly broke all of those forced promises, but she cheered, too. She wanted to call her grandparents. She wanted the world to know. And she pull on her panties with what can only be described as glee.

Ever since then, she has, perhaps, over-pottied. She takes such pride that if she's not fully occupied, she will choose to practice her art.

For whatever reason, our younger daughter just wasn't ready. She begrudgingly returned to diapers. Despite sitting on the potty, she just won't go in it. Her big sister is trying to teach her, with limited success. We'll try again, soon, to get her to go cold turkey like her sister, but, heck, she is a year younger.

So, if you're stuck with an older kid in diapers, the Potty Party just might be for you.

Potty Party may lead to Pity Party

My daughters are ages 2 and 3. They are bright young girls with vocabulary skills that really blow my mind from time to time. And while every parent takes pride in the developmental milestones of their children, there's one that I'm just plain vexed by. That damn potty training.

To be honest, I feared it for long before I ever had kids. I have an abnormal memory, as far as I can tell, remembering many mundane events that happened before my second birthday. I remember the frusteration of not being able to communicate and I remember the dread and despair of potty training. Why in the world would my Mom insist that I try using a potty when the diaper thing was working out just fine? Well, probably because she was six months pregnant and didn't want to have two kids in diapers.

Man, do I understand that now. Our older daughter has been ready to use the potty for at least a year. She can tell you when she is planning on going pee (especially a pleasure in public) and she sequesters herself when she has to do any more than pee. Then, she gives you a report about her estimated size of the delivery.

It's heartbreaking.

And we don't know why she hates the potty so. We're sick of hearing people's advice on the subject because there just isn't any correlation between her and a potty-using child; there's no common ground on which to compare them. She just won't sit on the damn thing. Not for reward or punishment (though, I suppose, we stopped short of any kind of punishment, and maybe a taser would work wonders).

Our second daughter is on her way down the same path. She did like to sit on the potty, though there was never any positive outcome, as she would then stand up to pee. But watching and imitating her sister is the subject that she has most mastered and she can tell that this potty thing must be some kind of trick, trap, or otherwise undesirable type of monster. S she now refuses to sit.

I think this is about control. I think this is about power.

We're very read-up on the subject. We haven't taken this lightly, and all the advice we have heard and read about has been tried. But still, we can't get over the idea that they have mastered their digetive tracks well enough to do it and that we don't want to cause them any lasting emotional trauma.

With all of this in mind, we are going to try one more time.

The Potty Party. It's our last hope. After this doesn't work, I'm going to wait until they go to college and let the dean of student activities deal with the situation.

Tomorrow morning, they will wake up to a near-Christmas caliber event. Wrapped, new potties, one for each. Soli's favorite color is pink, and Luna's oscillates between blue and green. We will rid them of their diapers under the majesty of streemers and balloons. Their brand new baby dolls (today's payday, in case you didn't catch this expensive trend) will have to be potty trained. The girls will delight in this, of course, as they understand the wonderment of potting even though they haven't indulged.

Then, they will have to put things into action for themselves. There will be fancy, cute, panties at their call standing by for wearing. And there will be cake baking, should they make the big score.

It's silly. And, honestly, I don't want such a party every time I go potty (though a little more fanfare would be nice). And I just don't know if it will work. But I'm sick of diapers. I'm sick of feeling like I can't do it. In many ways, this mirrors the frustration that I had when I potty trained, only now I'm having it from the other side.

So wish us luck, because we'll be want for it. And I'll let you know after the weekend if I recommend your own potty party, or if it was a bust.

In the meantime, please enjoy an on-topic video:

The Sex Talk

A recent trip to visit our folks resulted in my three-year-old wondering where babies come from. Something had to spawn it sooner or later, and it is probably fortuitous considering all the talk there's been around here lately about a third baby. All the same, it was somewhat unexpected and really, there was no real strategy in place. Here's how it went:

Solstice (that's daughter number one) was looking at pictures of me when I was her age. This is something that grandparents love to thrill grandkids with. This information, about me being her age at one time in the universe, got her to thinking. Finally, while in the car, she quizzed her mother on the situation. "Mommy," she said, "do you remember when Daddy was a little boy?"

She answered truthfully that she didn't, but that she met me much later. This led to a series of questions getting at the heart of the whole issue. Finally, my wife told her that we had met, fallen in love, and gotten married. "Was I there?" she asked.

My wife did her best to explain that, no, she wasn't there, that it was before she was born, before she was a baby. But that we decided to have a baby. "You went to the store?" Well, no, we didn't go to the store. She explained to Solstice that Daddy put her in Mommy's stomach so that she could grow in there.

And now, Solstice had fully grasped the situation. "Oh," she said conclusively, "He used his magic wand."

Hmm. Not exactly. But the resultant laughing was enough to end the conversation without any of the more explicit details.

So what do we do about the whole "sex talk" thing? I've read a few things lately by people in the field who say that around age 8 is the right time. But by the time my 3 year old is 8, will it be too late? And if she's this curious right now, how do we put things off further? We can't really have her telling people in public that her new sibling was put into her mommy's tummy by daddy's magic wand! That would be considerable more disturbing for those listening to this astonishing fact than the gory truth of the thing.

As for me, I cannot remember not knowing. It's not due to any lack of memory as I remember my 2nd birthday. But I'm sure at that age I didn't have a lot of wonder about the subject. I imagine that it has more to due with the fact that my mom was a childbirth teacher and somewhat of a hippie. I don't remember a single time that "the talk" was delivered to me, but many instances of simple explanation that I mainly shied away from.

Conversely, there are many friends of mine who say that their parents never told them. They had to find out friends and their varying sources of reliability. I think this is mainly a selfish point of view in parenting, where the parent hopes to avoid a conversation that will feel awkward.

I wonder how our generation will handle this one. There are lots of books that explain this with illustrations and the like, but I don't know if I really want to read the book with the cartoon penis in it every night before bed. While, yes, at this point in my parenting life I hope that my girls never have any interests in boys, I know this can't ultimately be the case. And unlike people, like our dear president, who think that sex education should be about how to avoid sex, I think it should be about education. And with the curious minds I already have in tow, I don't believe in holding back truths from a mind seeking to learn something.

I am curious to know how the more experienced parents handled this and how the others plan on handling it. I don't think that by any means this is the defining issue of our children's lives, and I think that most of the drama is parent-induced. Nevertheless, all discourse is helpful.

The Power of Language in Childhood Creativity

Certainly the most amazing thing we will ever accomplish is over and done with by age five. Scale Mt. Everest, swim the Pacific, be the first person to walk on Mars, and it doesn't matter--your very biggest accomplishment is resting softly behind you with no laurels, no medals, and hardly a thought put into it after the milestone of preschool is reached. Of course, what we're talking about is the aquisition of language.

But to say "the aquisition of language" and act like we have a true understanding of what we speak of is to make the greatest understatement in human history. To aquire, master, or even understand any form of language is to gain a cognitive universe, full of ups, downs, emotions, colors, textures, and thought. All of these notions that we have about what reality is are based on the way that we use language. Our very perceptions of reality would shift dramatically without this basic skill.

Much has been written about this that I'd love to quote, but a blog entry can only be so long and, after all, I have a point to make somewhere after this meandering, so let me show you what I'm talking about.

Words as a substitute for understanding

When my oldest daughter was just beginning to speak, she expressed her curiosity about the world through her use of language. We, in turn, showed her the world that surrounds her by also using the language. As she aquired words, she not only had ways of saying things, but she aquired understandings about the world around her. And, even if she ultimatley didn't understand the concept she was trying to grasp, using a word as a replacement for the understanding being sought was enough for her.

Here's a good example: She started to wonder where I went all day. She would wake up, and I wouldn't be there most days of the week. For her, the universe is small, the population mainly centered in and around our house, and she, of course, couldn't fathom what it was I was doing not within the framework of her universe. She said this by shaking her head, putting out her arms, and saying, "Daddy? Where Daddy?" Easily enough, her question was posed.

The answer was, "At work."

And every day, she would nod and say, "At work."

This progressed. After a week or two of this question/anser jag, she started coming into the room and announcing, "Daddy at work."

Let me ask you this: what did a 14 month old know about "work?" Nothing, really. It was a place that Daddy goes instead of staying at home. She couldn't possibly know that this was normal for daddies everywhere, or what a myriad of different meanings "work" can have, both by definition and by context. But she was more than willing to take that word and use it as understanding, as meaning. And only now that she's three does she have much of an understanding at all.

Our kids do this with everything we teach them. Every little tiny thing. They take it as understanding and meaning. So how we present the world to them doesn't just offer description of a reality, but it gives them the only reality they know. This is heavy stuff. This is their world.

Okay, so what do we do with this information?

First of all, beats me. I mean, this is a big realization, that our responsibilities are not just to teach our children to speak, but to actually design the world that they live in. My wife could have easily told my daughter that I was off "killing" instead of being at "work." And it would be easy to show the ways that my part in the system of education can lead to things like poverty and war and deaths. And this is the world that she would be living in now.

But I think this presents us with great opportunity. I don't think that children should be molded. I think it's unavoidable that we should show them our beliefs and our ideals, but I don't think they should be forced. And I think this realization about language is a chance to steer things away from the brainwashing of the world.

Instead, I think we should see the aquisition of language as a great chance to nurture their creativity. Try and expand their vocabulary, especially if you speak English. English has more words than any other language ever has and is the only language that requires a thesaurus. It is a shame that we use so little of these words.

One of the greatest writers of English was Joseph Conrad. In his very slim book, The Heart of Darkness, he shows how versatile and beautiful the English language can be. It can be, in fact, much more like mood music when describing a scene or an action, and the understanding of his meaning comes across in painted pictures rather than concrete descriptors.

This is, of course, notable because Joseph Conrad held English as his third language. His outside perspective of the language enabled him to see the true spectrum. He was free of the usuage of language that his parents and peers employed.

In many ways, it would be ideal if our children were free from the bonds of language that we impose on them. And in other ways, they will be; afterall, children get their accents not from their parents, but from their peers.

Conclusions?

No. But I think it's important as a caring father to have an expanded awareness of how we raise our kids. Creativity is an attribute that should be cultivated in our children, regardless of how it helps them do on standardized tests. We should embrace their interpretations of the world and let them indulge in their own thoughts and ideas as much as we can. Encourage them to play with language. Engourage them to think outside of the box. Ask them their interpretation of the world before offering them the easy answer. You may be surprised and, hopefully, you'll be open to the idea that you are no more right than they are; you just agree with the majority.