4 years old…

My daughter, not me. And I’m still alive. A few more gray hairs (when I let my hair get long enough to see them) but overall, I’d have to say that every year has been more awesome than the last.

                Here are things I’m looking forward to in 2016: reading for herself, writing more than just her name, going to the bathroom by herself (more often), Rogue 1, the Chevy Bolt (no, I’m not getting one), her final year of preschool, puzzles, Legos, ballet, video games, playing piano and the list goes on.

                Here she is at an art studio celebrating her birthday. Please note the shirt.

If she WANTS to become president, I would fully support that.  But I would also be fine if she wanted to become a professional pan flute player… mostly fine. It is exciting to think what will interest her in the coming years and what she’ll be doing 20 years from now.

                For the time being, it’s a pleasure watching her navigate the ins and outs of licking an egg beater. (See what I did there?  Ins and outs… cause… you know.  An egg beater has spaces and holes and stuff.  Funny, right?)

Worst. App. Ever.

There’s this app for your phone called “Parents Calling Santa” which, when activated, will have Santa call your child with one of 3 stock responses. The parent chooses depending on how their child is ‘behaving’ at a given time.

This is a horrible idea on so many levels and I can’t begin to express my disbelief and disappointment that A) this even exists and B) it’s among the top 5 paid lifestyle apps in 13 different countries. (according to their website)

This is a bad app because it scares children into behaving more ‘appropriately’ or else they won’t get Christmas gifts. Instead of helping them to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, kids are basically getting bribed to do the right thing with loot. What’s more, strong-arming your kid into behaving during the days leading up to Christmas is pretty much the same thing as giving them a pass for bad behavior the rest of the year. Unless, that is, you plan to have Santa call your kid in the middle of July. And I would bet that this would only work so many times before the child ended up either desensitized to the Santa calls or figures out the gimmick.

Oh, and one more reason why this is just plain stupid; how about parents actually put forth the effort to raise their kids themselves? Is that asking too much? Instead of paying a couple of bucks to have “Santa” ridicule your kid, how about trying to connect with your kid. Engage and reason with them.  Affirm and recognize their emotions and discuss possible outcomes of their actions along with alternatives.

Raising kids is hard. And I know parents are looking for help wherever they can get it. But easier is not better. A $2 app from Apple may seem like an easy way to buy good behavior from your kid. But I don’t think it’s going to help your kid in the long run.

But what do I know? My daughter is only almost 4. Check back with me in 20 years. But I suspect that I will say something similar.

The feels. We has them.

We’ve been having some major feelings lately about going to work/school to do our jobs. My daughter is going through a period right now where being separated from us is the worst thing in the world. This may change in a week or a month, but right now it presents a challenge anytime we need to get anywhere by a specific time.

And when one of us is working late or (heaven forbid) gone overnight, it leaves the other to deal with the fallout. That said we are doing well. We’re giving our DD the space she needs to have these feelings, have them acknowledged by us and working through them. Luckily, we can afford the time to give this opportunity to our daughter, unlike the guy who parked behind me at school. As I was climbing into my ‘smug’ producing Prius, I overheard him snap at his daughter saying “Quit screwing around!” Or as my wife would translate: Stop having emotions! They’re conflicting with my schedule! This is what Napoleon Dynamite would sound like if he had a kid. Only he’d be yelling at his kid for screwing around with his nun-chucks.

I’m awfully glad that I don’t need to be anywhere so desperately that I would respond to my kid in this way, especially as they’re just learning to experience these strong emotions.

There were a lot of snotty tears this morning. But this is how I left her at school.

And maybe looking forward to playing with my old Starwars toys was incentive enough to get us both through this day. 

Nice try, Barbie

Barbie has always been controversial. The “Math class is tough” debacle highlighted my formative years.  Upon further investigation, I have discovered the many ways in which Barbie has erred through the decades. See the top of the list HERE.

But then Mattel recently released a video like THIS showing girls they can be anything they imagine. My first reaction to this was awesome! Mattel finally got something right with Barbie.  On Barbie’s Instagram page there are images of Astronaut Barbie, Surgeon Barbie and Firefighter Barbie dating back as far as 1965. So while it’s easy to get caught up in all of the mistakes that Mattel has made over the years, one cannot acknowledge those mistakes without also admitting the successes. (even if her proportions continue to be grossly inaccurate)

As an alternative, there is Lammily. This realistically proportioned doll just appeared in the last year or so and I think it’s a great concept. My wife immediately purchased one for our daughter. It’s now sitting at the bottom of a box and has received very little play time.  Most everything she owns is at the bottom of a box somewhere in lieu of an empty box that has been well played with sitting in the middle of the living room.

My almost 4 year-old hasn’t yet asked for a Barbie. This makes me pretty happy because it’s one more thing I don’t yet have to deal with. I suspect I will soon enough, but there’s nothing like putting it off as long as I can. She’s growing up fast enough as it is already.

But now there’s Talk to me Barbie in which your child can have a two way conversation with one of Mattel’s biggest commodities. This is accomplished because Barbie is wi-fi enabled and uploads your child’s recorded conversations to the Toy Talk website where an appropriate response is generated. What could possibly go wrong?!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge technology/futurist nut. I’ll be first in line for a self-driving car. I suspect that in the near future, everything we say will end up being recorded and saved on some server somewhere. But for now, while I can’t choose my daughter’s friends or the conversations she has with them, I can at least choose her toys. (Don’t get any ideas, grandparents!)

So despite the best of intentions Astronaut Barbie, Surgeon Barbie and Firefighter Barbie; your presence will not be needed here. I appreciate the positive role models and commercials encouraging confidence but until the arched high-heeled feet go away and a more realistically proportioned figure is represented, Barbie has no future here.

I will probably be eating these words at some point.

The well played -with box

Better style than Barbie

Doing our Best

Parenting is hard.  I don’t think anyone ever looks at the prospect of being a parent (planned or not) and says “I’m just going to do a half-ass job raising this kid”.  Every parent is going to try as hard as they can to raise their kid to the best of their ability.

I’m pretty judgemental when it comes to parenting and I see what I believe to be horrible examples of parenting in the world. (Like that time I overheard a dad telling his daughter that she couldn’t get a toy that was meant for boys.) I suspect other parents are equally judgemental of my ‘style’.  But I’ve gotten pretty good lately of reminding myself that this person is just trying their best with what they have.  And I don’t have any idea what kind of environment they themselves were raised in. For all I know the father that I mentioned above was physically and/or emotionally abused growing up. Maybe he was born into a horribly sexist family and I’m actually seeing a more watered down version of that sexism. I still don’t believe this is morally right, but it is a step in the right direction.

So to all those parents out there that I might have smirked at or given the stink-eye to, I truly apologize.  It is insensitive of me to judge you without knowing the circumstances of a given situation.

Parenting is hard. Every parent thinks about their own childhood and how they vow to do things differently or the same.  Fortunately, (or maybe not) there is now the Internet and more information than any parent can possibly sift through.  We pick and choose what we want and try to do what sounds good to us. 

For me, articles like this about not being perfect are a good blueprint for the kind of parent I would like to be. But even in striving for less perfectionism, no one is perfect. I have raised my voice unnecessarily when speaking to my daughter. I have acted poorly in communicating with my family. Ideally, I should apologize after these incidents, but I don’t always. 

Parenting is hard.  I’m doing my best. Go ahead and judge me because I will continue to judge you. But after we judge each other, let’s remember that we’re all just working with what we have. Nobody is trying to be an ass. We just can’t help ourselves.

Buddy VS Sweetie

I can’t stop myself from calling my daughter “Sweetie” and her friend (who is a boy) “Buddy”. I don’t do it on purpose.  I realize that I’m perpetuating the assignment of gender roles using the terms “buddy” and “sweetie”. But it’s involuntary. No matter how much I tell myself that I won’t play into gender stereotypes, it happens.  So much for being the self-actualized, twenty first century feminist papa.

Today was the first time I actually stopped myself and used the word “buddy” when getting my daughter’s attention.  Thankfully, she either didn’t notice or didn’t mind because she didn’t say anything.  In the past she has vehemently declared that I cannot call her “buddy”.  But only in the same way that she tells me we can’t “like” each other because we’re father/daughter.  We can only “love” each other.

 I try not to beat myself up over the buddy/sweetie thing.  But it’s hard not to hold myself accountable when I see some of the abhorrent shaming and bullying that happens online and what mostly likely occurs in the real world.  Unless I can make the change happen in myself, how can I expect the rest of the world to stop being an ass towards women and little girls.

Privilege

There are a lot of different kinds of privilege.  Being a white middle class male I am keenly aware of the advantages that I have in life. 

                It’s the privileges that I need pointed out to me that hit me in the gut like a ton of bricks.  Usually it’s my wife pointing them out to me.  Like being able to change shirts in public, for instance.  As a man, I would never be in danger of being arrested, chastised or otherwise berated if I decided to change shirts in public.  Women are not offered the same luxury.  At least not yet, for those of you paying attention to the “Free The Nipple”(Wikipedia link) movement.  But that’s a whole other topic.

                This privilege of being able to change my top in public seems obvious but I hadn’t really thought about it until recently.  I wonder what other privileges I have taken for granted.  I wonder what privileges my daughter will and will not have due to her status as a female.