the gregory walsh interview
I’m sitting in the Albuquerque airport Easter morning after a really lovely visit with folks from the Humanist Society of New Mexico. Spoke to the chapter meeting, sold some books, gave the seminar, had a great dinner in the gorgeous home of the chapter president with a painfully beautiful view of the Sandia Mountains.
As nice as the trip has been, I’m awfully glad I won’t be winding through another airport security line for five weeks.
Several trips back, after speaking at the Center for Inquiry in DC, I sat down for an interview with Gregory Walsh, a filmmaker working on a documentary about religious disbelief in America. Greg did quite a nice job editing me into coherence:
The ‘Out’ Parent: column by Noell Hyman (Agnostic Mom)
The “Out” Parent
guest column by Noell Hyman
This column also appears in the March 19 issue of Humanist Network News.
________________
I walked into my child’s preschool one day right before class was to let out. There was a lobby full of parents and one of them raised her voice above the crowd to say to me, “I noticed your license plate says AGMOM. What does that mean?”
Those of you who have read my articles or blog will recognize it as my blog name, Agnostic Mom. While most of my friends know about this, it wasn’t something I wanted to shout across a crowded room of parents at my child’s preschool. Yet there they all were, staring at me, curious.
I had figured out an evasive strategy for these types of situations. It goes like this. 1) Give a vague, answer, like “Oh, it’s just a blog name I used to use.” 2) Immediately change the subject. For example, “What are the kids doing? I was so worried I’d be late today because I was…”
My strategy, which I only used in the most threatening situations, seemed to work until the principal of my older children’s elementary school took notice of the plates. Thanks to my state’s Open Enrollment policy, my kids attend a progressive public school that is outside of our district. But don’t get the wrong idea. The school is progressive by Mormon-dominated Mesa, Arizona standards, and most of the students are Mormon or active in some other Christian religion.
As I was dropping my kids off at the front of the school one morning, the principal, always happy and enthusiastic, swung the car door open for the kids to get out and asked me, “What does AGMOM mean?”
I gave my usual “blog name” response, but before I could move on to strategy step number two he persisted, “But what does the AG stand for?”
I had one of those moments where the world somehow pauses for you while a page worth of thoughts and images swim through your mind. This is the argument happening in my mind during that moment:
He can easily kick my kids out of this school or not allow them back next year.
Yeah, but he’s progressive and liberal in his philosophies.
Progressive or not, he’s a Mormon and a believer.
But he has filled the school with non-Mormon teachers…he’s got a reputation for openness.
I blurted it out, “It means Agnostic Mom.”
He got a look on his face that suggested a realization he had probed in the wrong place; as if to say, “Sorry for making you answer that. It’s really not my business.”
He waved goodbye, and immediately the librarian stopped me to say hi. “What does your license plate mean?”
I couldn’t believe it. Twice within a minute? But the worst was done. The man with the power to end the type of education that is perfect for my children already knows what it means. Nothing else matters now.
“It means Agnostic Mom,” I said, and flashed the librarian a big smile.
Surprised, he let me go, and life has continued as usual. My children were accepted to return to the school next year and even my preschooler will get to start in August for kindergarten.
While Arizona is conservative, the state leans libertarian. Even most Mormons follow a “Live and Let Live” mentality. Things might have gone differently if we were living in Kansas, a part of the less-tolerant Bible-Belt where I finished high school. But after five years of telling people I’m atheist or agnostic (whichever term I feel like using at the time) I have not lost a friend and neither have my children. They have chosen to be open about not believing in gods, as well.
Once in a while there is even a surprise response. Like the time my daughter replied to a cafeteria discussion of Jesus with, “I don’t believe in Jesus.” Her closest friend, whose mother I befriended more than two years prior, answered, “I don’t either.”
In all those play dates when we swapped ideas on vegetarianism, environmentalism, travel and arts, religion never came into our minds. I had no idea. So when my daughter told me her story, I called and the mother was just as surprised and delighted as I was.
Then last week, my washer repairman asked me what my license plate means and I told him, “Agnostic Mom.”
A smile grew on his face and he practically shouted, “You don’t believe in god?” I laughed, “No.” And suddenly he wouldn’t stop talking, like I was the first person in years he could share his stories with.
I can’t think of a circumstance now where I wouldn’t feel comfortable answering a question about my license plate. Venturing into that territory has been a positive thing for me. Introducing believers to a happy godless person is a positive thing for everyone.
____________________________
Noell Hyman (pictured with son Aiden) is a stay-at-home mom of three children, living in Mesa, Arizona. The once-blogger for AgnosticMom.com, was a regular columnist for Humanist Network News. She is the author of two articles in Parenting Beyond Belief. She now blogs and podcasts on her favorite subject, which is the visual art of story-telling through scrapbooking. Visit Noell at Agnostic Mom or at Paperclipping.
wondrous strange
- March 17, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting, Science, wonder
3
The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature… It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human intellect.
Lewis Thomas
Connor (12) was studying for a science quiz on cells, muttering about eukaryotes and pseudopods and such, like it was the driest of all possible subjects. Life…*yawn*
I was working on a way to liven it up for him when I realized, to my amazement, that I had never shared with him (or with you, as far as I remember) one of my favorite science videos. It’s an award-winning computer animation of the internal workings of a single white blood cell, animated by the good folks at Xvivo:
Connor lit up like a, like a…like a seventh grader who suddenly found his homework interesting.
Well…more interesting, anyway.
_________________________
[N.B. Great book with the same effect: Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher]
EyePlejjaleejins
Yesterday I read through a parenting book called How to Raise an American. The book is full of helpful advice for raising children with an unthinking allegiance to the nation of your choice. This one is pitched at the United States, but the techniques described will work equally well — and have worked equally well — to produce unquestioning loyalty to almost any political entity. Lithuanian, are you? Just change the relevant facts, dates and flags, and this book will help you create a saluting servant of Lithuania, singing the National Hymn with pride:
Lithuania, my homeland, land of heroes!
Let your Sons draw strength from the past.
Let your children follow only the paths of virtue,
working for the good of their native land and for all mankind.
(To foster an even higher degree of rabid Lithumania, leave out the part about ‘all mankind.’ Pfft.)
It goes without saying that the same techniques promoted in this book fostered unthinking allegiance to Germany in the 1930s, China in the 1950s, and probably Genghis Khan in the 1220s, for that matter. These are irrelevant, of course, because we are very, very good and they were all very, very bad.
All the same, I’d prefer my kids forgo unthinking allegiance in favor of thoughtful critical engagement. That way, if our nation ever did do something bad — hypothetically, campers, hypothetically — my kids would be in a position to challenge the bad thing, though all around them salute and sing.
It’s Kohlberg’s sixth and highest level of moral development — to be guided by universal principle, even at a high personal cost, to do what’s right instead of what is popular, patriotic, or otherwise rewarded by those around you.
EyePlejjaleejins
During her after-school snack several weeks ago, Delaney (6) asked, “What does ‘liberty’ mean?”
I realized right away why she would ask about ‘liberty’ and was once again ashamed of myself in comparison to my kids. I don’t think I pondered the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance until I was well into middle school. When I was her age, I’m certain that I thought “EyePlejjaleejins” was one word that meant something like “Hey, look at the flag.” I certainly didn’t know I was promising undying loyalty to something.
“Liberty means freedom,” I said. “I means being free to do what you want as long as you don’t hurt someone else.”
“Oh, okay.” Pause. “What about ‘justice’?”
“Justice means fairness. If there is justice, it means everybody gets treated in a fair way.”
“Oh! So when we say ‘with liberty and justice for all,’ it means ‘everybody should be free and everybody should be fair.'”
“That’s the idea.”
“Hmm,” she said. “I like that.”
I like it too. A fine, fine idea. I also like the idea that the next time Laney said the Pledge, she had a little more knowledge of just what she was pledging her allegiance to.
There’s an email that circulates quite a bit during the times we are asked to stand united against [INSERT IMPLACABLE ENEMY HERE] — the text of a speech by the comedian Red Skelton in which he recounts the words of an early teacher of his. The teacher had supposedly noticed the students going through the rote recitation of the pledge and decided to explain, word for word, what it meant:
It would have been interesting, even instructive, if Skelton had held up a photo of himself and his class saluting the flag, which for the first 50 years was done like so:
This gesture was replaced with the hand-over-heart, for some reason, in 1942.
Delivered in 1969, Skelton’s piece is a bit saccharine in the old style, of course. And I’ll refrain from answering his rhetorical question at the end, heh. But the idea itself — of wanting kids to understand what they are saying — I’m entirely in favor of that.
Getting kids to understand what the pledge means solves one of the four issues I have with the Pledge of Allegiance. There is the “under God” clause, of course (which the Ninth Circuit court essentially called a constitutional no-brainer before wimping out on procedural grounds) — but that’s the least of my concerns.
Far worse is the fact that it is mandated, either by law, policy, or social pressure. No one of any age should be placed in a situation where a loyalty oath is extracted by force, subtle or otherwise.
Worse than that is something I had never considered before I heard it spelled out by Unitarian Universalist minister (and Parenting Beyond Belief contributor) Kendyl Gibbons several years ago, at the onset of the latest Iraq War, in a brilliant sermon titled “Why I’m Not Saying the Pledge of Allegiance Anymore.” At one point she noted how important integrity is to humanism:
One of the most basic obligations that I learned growing up as a humanist was to guard the integrity of my given word. Who and what I am as a human being is not predicated on the role assigned to me by a supernatural creator; neither am I merely a cog in the pre-ordained workings of some cosmic machine. Rather, I am what I say I am; I am the loyalties I give, the promises I keep, the values I affirm, the covenants by which I undertake to live. To give my loyalties carelessly, to bespeak commitments casually, is to throw away the integrity that defines me, that helps me to live in wholeness and to cherish the unique worth and dignity of myself as a person….We had better mean what we solemnly, publicly say and sign.
And then, the central issue — that the pledge is to a flag, when in fact it should be to principles, to values. One hopes that the flag stands for these things, but it’s too easy for prcinples to slip and slide behind a symbol. A swastika symbolized universal harmony in ancient Buddhist and Hindu iconography, then something quite different in Germany of the 1930s and 40s. Better to pledge allegiance to universal harmony than to the drifting swastika.
The same is true of a flag — any flag. Here’s Kendyl again:
I will not give my allegiance to a flag; it is too flimsy a thing, in good times or in bad; if it is even a symbol for the values I most cherish, that is only because of the sacrifices that others have made in its name. I will not commit the idolatry of mistaking the flag for the nation, or the nation for the ideals. Yet I must find an abiding place for my loyalty, lest it evaporate into the mist of disincarnate values, powerless to give any shape to the real lives that we live in the real world. Therefore my allegiance is to my country as an expression of its ideals.
To the extent that the republic for which our flag stands is faithful to the premises of its founding and to the practices that have evolved over two centuries to safeguard our freedoms and equal justice, it has my loyalty, my devotion, even my pride. But to the extent that it is a finite and imperfect expression of the ideals to which my allegiance is ultimately given, to the extent that it falls into deceit and self-deception, into arrogance and coercion and violence, into self-serving secrecy and double standards of justice, to that extent my loyalty must take the form of protest, and my devotion must be expressed in dissent.
It remains to this day one of the most eloquent and powerful speeches I have ever heard. And it continues to motivate me to raise children who pledge their allegiance conditionally rather than blindly. That will make their eventual allegiances all the more meaningful.
The complete text of Kendyl’s talk is here.
syawedis gnikniht
I’ve recently posted a screed or two about the overscripting of our kids’ time and the tendency to spend too much of it in front of screens. It was pure poetic justice that led me to the exception to the rule: a scripted screen activity that’s an invitation to fantastically creative divergent thinking.
Called The Impossible Quiz, it’s a thinking-outside-of-the-box quiz that “asks” 110 multiple-choice “questions” like the one above. The fact that I have to put both “ask” and “question” in quotes gives you some idea of the lunacy of this thing. By the end — as if you’ll ever reach it — you’ll be forced to think outside of more boxes than you knew you were in.
Hugely recommended for a certain brand of 12-year-old (e.g., my son, who’s well into his second hour right now) and up.
yakety yak
- March 04, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In death, My kids, Parenting, reviews, schools, values
- 5
By the time our children are of school age, we take their talk for granted. We have turned all our attention to their reading and writing, not realizing that talk is still the motor that drives their intellectual development.
–from Raising Lifelong Learners by Lucy Calkins
One of my favorite things about dadding this family is the five-way dinner conversation. Becca and I recently realized how rare it is that the five of us are NOT together for dinner — maybe half a dozen times a year, if that. I don’t think having dinner together is the magic bullet so many soc-sci pundits currently make it out to be — more likely a co-variable for some other good things — but it is, without a doubt, the best possible opportunity to talk. And boy do we.
As Lucy Calkins points out in her fabulous, simple, sensible book Raising Lifelong Learners,
Just sitting at the table to share a family dinner in no way guarantees shared conversation. Frequently the rule, unspoken or not, is that adults talk only to each other. Children are expected to carry on their own separate conversation or to just be quiet. It makes all the difference in the world if children and parents expect that conversations will be shared. This means that when I talk with my husband about my work at Teachers College, one of my sons will invariably interrupt with questions. “What do you mean the cost of benefits is going up? What are benefits?”
This happens in our family all the time, but it wasn’t until Calkins drew my attention to it that it registered as something special. Our family conversations are completely integrated, which gives the kids access to topics they’d otherwise never intersect. It surely helps them see themselves as more actively connected to the world around them. Sure, Becca and I have our private conversations, but we either remove ourselves from the throng or just raise a finger at the first question and say, “This is Mom and Dad’s time.” More often, though, they are welcome to listen in, and find themselves privy to many topics that adults might often think would be uninteresting to them.
So I love our dinner talk. You never know where it’ll start or go. One of the five of us will throw a topic in the air like a jump ball and all the rest leap at it. It’s fantastic. I just adore it. I’ve written before about breaking down walls between domains of knowledge for kids — like our family’s “open shelf policy” — and our dinner table is a good example. No separate adult and kid conversations. Everybody’s in, age 6 to 45.
In The Read-Aloud Handbook, Jim Trelease notes that the average American adult spends 6 hours a week shopping and 30 hours a week (!) watching television, but one-on-one conversation in homes between parents and their school-age kids averages less than ten minutes per parent per day.
Calkins points to oral language as the foundation of all literacy, and conversation in the home as the best possible catalyst for its development. Don’t look to school to develop it — as researcher Gordon Wells learned, kids engage in even less conversation with an adult in a given school day than at home, and what interactions there are tend to be narrow and scripted. Most of the time, teachers (for understandable reasons) are trying to get kids to STOP talking.
Last night it started with reggae. I decided we really need some around the house. Erin asked what it sounds like, and I did a few bars of Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” That led to Bob Marley, then to the Rastafari movement and the whole extremely weird Haile Selassie connection, which, if you don’t know about it, enjoy. Connor mentioned dreadlocks, then asked if Marley was still alive.
“No,” I said. “He died when he was 36.”
“What from?”
“Cancer,” I said, “sort of.” He really died of religion, but why go there.
“How can you sort of die of cancer!”
“Well…” Oh fine. “A cancer developed in his toe. He could have had the toe amputated and been fine. But Rastafarians believe you should never cut a part of your body away, or you give up eternal life. So he refused the surgery, and the cancer spread to his brain and liver and killed him.”
We chewed on that in silence for awhile, then Becca said something about an article she read yesterday about steroids in sports.
“That’s the drug that made that wrestler-guy kill his family, isn’t it?” Connor asked.
“Oh. Chris Benoit,” I said. Turns out it wasn’t actually steroids, though they thought that at first. Severely brain-damaged from years of concussions, Benoit killed his wife and son and hanged himself, not 40 miles from here. Becca explained that his head injuries from wrestling had made his brain stop working right, which made him do this terrible thing.
Now some might reasonably flinch at cancer, amputation, performance-enhancing drugs, murder, and suicide as dinnertime chat for children. It’s just as often puppies and butterflies, I promise. But on this particular night, we wandered into some unusually dark spaces. My kids will ride any conversational wave that comes along, and I think their worldview and points of reference will be all the more rich and diverse for it.
So where were we? Oh yeah — Chris Benoit going crazy and killing his family.
Suddenly, six-year-old Delaney’s eyes widened, and she burst out, “HEY! That’s just like that hero!!”
“What?” I said. “What hero?”
“The hero! In the myth! Hercules! The one who killed his wife and children because the goddess put madness in his mind.”
For ten full seconds I had no idea what she was talking about. Then I remembered: About a month ago, we read a strange episode in the life of Hercules, one I always forget about. Juno, queen of the gods and wife of Jupiter, always hated Hercules, the offspring of one of Jupiter’s affairs. So she placed a temporary madness in the mind of Hercules, during which he killed his family. He was horrified and spent the rest of his life in search of repentance.
I showered her with my amazement. She had made a connection between a Roman myth and current events — not the first time she’s made that sort of link.
I can’t wait to see what’s for supper tonight.
the days keep coming
Once again I’m humbled by a child. And this one’s not even mine.
One of the questions I get most often is how on Earth we can help our children to be “OK” with death. Or words to that effect. Like so many oft-repeated questions, it’s not quite the right one. It implies that I’m “OK” with death, for one thing, and I am NOT. It also implies that, when it comes to consideration of death, kids are in a more delicate position than adults.
Pfft!
An adult comforting a child about death is like a terminal cancer patient trying to make the guy next to him in the waiting room feel better about his restless legs syndrome. Prior to age eight, and often long afterwards, kids do not have a firm concept of the finality of death. And there’s the golden opportunity: get them pondering death while it’s a fuzzy shape on the horizon, before they really, truly get the purpose and inevitability of that swinging scythe.
But the traditional approach has been to shield kids from it during the very stage in which they could do some of their best and least fearful grappling. Then, once they’re old enough to grasp it more fully, they are blindsided by their first major encounter. Granny-in-a-box, perhaps. For me it was age thirteen, and my dad in the casket at 45 — the age I turned this morning, in fact.
Heh. I’m OK.
PBB contributor Kendyl Gibbons recommends emphasizing the continuity of life as one of her five affirmations in the face of death. The realization that life itself continues after the death of one person can be both comforting and something of a revelation for kids.
Like most such revelations, we don’t often have to feed it to them. A wondering child will find his or her way to it. Regular MoL visitor Jim Lemire dropped me a reminder that the youngest kids are capable of grappling with death in a subtle and profound way. Here’s Jim’s son Jack, three-and-a-half, discovering the continuity of life all by himself:
You know, days do keep coming even after you die. We know people who have died and the days still keep coming. So after we die, the days will keep coming.
Don’t look to adults for anything half that profound.
___________________
(Thanks to Jack’s mom Linda B. for the original post!)
Discovering Diversity: guest column by Roberta Nelson
DISCOVERING DIVERSITY
Guest column by Rev. Dr. Roberta Nelson
_________________________________
Today when we welcome a child into the world, we know that it is a welcome into a constantly changing and challenging place. Our roles will include being parent, mentor, and guide. Our children, young people, and we ourselves cannot be sheltered from the many changes world presents. If we are not to stifle our children’s curiosity and questioning on this magnificent journey, we will need to be learning along with them.
Today the school system that my children attended includes a diverse Asian, African American, and Hispanic population. Within five years the white population will constitute a minority. In addition, there are new issues of class, gender, and politics
We cannot hide. This stunning diversity opens doors of understanding to religious rituals, language, foods, celebrations, clothing, and ceremonies. Being a companion and guide requires an open mind and heart. It invites us to let go of fears, misunderstandings, and prejudice. We need to acknowledge our own past learnings and experiences and to invite open conversation within the family about where we learned or experienced them and what has helped us to change. This way of being is not esoteric or removed. It is lived in the every day as we open ourselves to new understandings.
There are many doors to open:
1. One of my family’s most memorable experiences was serving as a host family for a student from India while he attended university. In many communities there are opportunities to host high school students from other countries. Our young people could partake of similar experiences.
2. One of our daughters served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, West Africa. She continues to share her experiences with groups and individuals of all ages. There are returning volunteers in most communities.
3. I know of local schools where the whole school spends the year exploring one country through stories, music, art, food, and information. Some of the best resources are people in the community who have traveled or lived abroad. Families that travel can plan trips that provide a wide variety of discovery. For seniors, Elder Hostel is a valuable source of opportunities, some for children and their grandparents.
4. Some of the richest and least expensive sources include your local library, PBS station, and local colleges or universities.
5. The Yellow Pages can be a good resource for locating religious institutions in the area that we could otherwise overlook.
6. Today, there is a wide array of stories for children of all ages that can open doors of understanding.
7. Some museums specialize in particular cultures and groups, e.g., the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African Art are both part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Perhaps the hardest for some people to explore are the opportunities in our own workplace, schools, neighbors, play groups, and sports. The first step is often hardest. More than one overture may be necessary before a shared experience takes place.
It is crucial for nonreligious parents to include exposure to religious diversity. As I wrote in Parenting Beyond Belief,
[I]n order to understand current world events, coworkers, neighbors, and friends, we need to be religiously literate. Parents especially need to help their children to be aware of the great diversity of faiths and cultures….Choosing not to affiliate or join a religious community does not shield a parent from [religious] questions—you will still need to be able to answer some or all of them.…Regardless of whether we call ourselves religious, we are our children’s first and primary educators….If you do not provide the answers, someone else will—and you may be distressed by the answers they provide.
If you wish to visit a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue, be sure to make arrangements in advance to explain that your children will be with you and why you are interested in coming. Be sure to have a family discussion when you return.
The challenge of our time is well summed up in words often attributed to Søren Kierkegaard, “To venture causes anxiety, not to venture is to lose oneself.”
__________________________
THE REV. ROBERTA M. NELSON, DD is Emeritus Minister of Religious Education at the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland. She is coauthor of the curricula Parents as Resident Theologians, Parents as Social Justice Educators, and Parents as Spiritual Guides. She authored the essay “On Being Religiously Literate” in Parenting Beyond Belief. This column also appears in the February 20 issue of Humanist Network News.
wild thing
IN DEFENSE OF CHILDHOOD
Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness
by Chris Mercogliano
ONE
Note the author’s hair and shirt:
TWO
Read the subtitle of his book.
THREE
Recall high school English:
Children reverting to their natural murderousness
in Golding’s LORD of the FLIES
FOUR
Recoil in horror.
FIVE
Send your kids to military school.
Mercogliano is to John MacArthur and Reb Bradley (of the previous post) as a walk in the woods is to a caning. They could hardly be more starkly opposed. He rightly rejects the notion that children are boiling pots in need of a lid, painting a well-supported picture instead of children as dough in need of yeast and room to expand.
I began reading In Defense of Childhood two weeks ago, only to have it snatched away by Becca, who is devouring it and feeding me selected, pre-chewed bits. The book is essentially a howl of protest against the current regime of one-test-fits-all education and the use of drugs and regimentation to beat what Mercogliano calls the “inner wildness” out of children.
Hes quick to counter what that phrase brings to many minds. He is not advocating chaos. He is, however, advocating a wider definition of what is acceptable and even what is good in our children’s emotional and intellectual explorations. And he backs it all up not with the hunches and personal preferences so many parenting authors use, but with sound research in the social and behavioral sciences. (I’ll post about some recent research shortly.)
One of his most heartfelt pleas is for parents to create some unstructured space and time around our kids — to limit, among other things, the two things that most constrict our kids’ freedom to explore the world and their own minds: electronic screens and organized activities.
Both of those things can be greatly beneficial to kids in reasonable doses, of course. But I agree with Mercogliano that we’ve tended in the direction of overdose in recent years. I have friends who carry their family schedule like a proud cross, noting that their daughter goes straight to piano lessons after school, then straight to swimming, then dinner, homework, and bed, with soccer and gymnastics on the weekend.
One such friend recently called on a Saturday afternoon to ask a favor. “What do you guys have going today?” she asked.
“Just hanging out,” Becca said.
“HA! Oh my gosh, you must be kidding.” She then rattled off the mind-juddering structure for her family’s day, with more than a hint of martyred pride.
Our kids do participate in group activities, and get a lot out of them, but we’re keen on protecting their unstructured, self-guided time as well. A few days ago, with Mercogliano on my mind, I decided to watch how Delaney (6) spent the five hours between getting home from school and bedtime. Here’s a very rough sketch:
2:30
Snack.2:45
Rode her bike.3:30
I went outside to find yellow nylon ropes tied from the mailbox to a tree in the front yard, then up to the porch railing. I have no idea what they were for, but she loves to create worlds in her head and act them out.3:32
Found Delaney on the couch in the basement, reading aloud to her dolls.4:00
Laney played “Purble Place” on the computer.4:30
Laney walked dog around the house on 16-foot leash. Several priceless Ming vases smashed to ruins.5:15
Dinner (Mongolian beef and fried rice). Talked about the circus we saw on Monday and our planned trip to the beach in June. Laney told about a post-President’s Day exercise in her class. Each kid said what s/he would do as President. Laney said she would fix global warming and help ducks get through the ice on lakes to find their food. (Damned liberal! Say no to the duckish welfare state.)6:00
I heard the sound of the Macarena coming from the living room. I didn’t even know we owned a recording of the Macarena. Laney had taped a string across a wide doorway and was doing the limbo to the music. We all joined her. As with all things requiring physical skill, I suck at limbo. Down came the string on my chin, and they laughed at me. So I put it up again and stepped over it. Who’s laughing now??6:30
She played Candyland with Erin and Mom.7:00
She read Oh, The Places You’ll Go! aloud to Mom.7:30
Bedtime. Sang So Happy Together by the Turtles. What an unbeatable song.
The ability of my kids to play creatively and independently has come to pass mostly in spite of me, not because of me. I have many shortcomings as a dad, but Mercogliano and his trusty sidekick, Becca, have finally mostly cured me of one in particular, one that I’ve been fighting for years. When my kids climb a tree, I tend to yell, “Be careful!” When they climb the monkey bars, I tend to stand beneath them like a mother hen. When they start running up the sidewalk toward the park, I almost ALWAYS yell, “Don’t trip!” Stupid! Stupid! I am convinced that I do more harm to their inner wildness, sense of exploration, and personal confidence with all my clucking than any harm a skinned knee could ever do. I was kidding about the Ming vases, but there was a time when I would either (1) follow Laney around, fussing and fretting about damage both actual and possible, or (2) simply ask her not to walk the dog in the house. There was also a time when I would have tsked about tape on the woodwork and taken down her limbo string. Not kidding! I can be a complete idiot.
I’m getting better. She broke nothing, and the tape came off the woodwork just fine. And even when there is a broken glass or spilled juice or skinned knee, I’ve begun to accept it as a very small price to pay for the acres of freedom all around that little casualty. Laney had a great day, in part because it was hers to create and run around in. And because we try our best not to overhover or overschedule, she knows how. As she gets older, she’ll lose some of that freedom to homework and organized activities. But if we can get her hooked on unstructured, self-guided play now, she’s likely to jealously protect whatever free minutes she can to be a wild thing at every age.
____________________________
A post by Judith Warner about the overscheduling issue
The Social Policy Report study to which she refers, which claims the syndrome is a myth
The Over-Scheduled Child by Alvin Rosenfeld, MD
drips under pressure
Christian parenting expert John MacArthur
I have no use for experts. An “ex” is a kind of has-been, and a “spurt” is just a drip under pressure.
That was one of my favorite jokes for several weeks in junior high. Ahh, such sophisticated wordplay, thought my be-pimpled self, something Gene Kelly’s wise-ass Hornbeck might have said in Inherit the Wind, cigarette bouncing at the corner of his smirk.
I’m up to my own smirk in experts right now — mostly parenting experts — as I continue the writing and research for a second book on parenting without religion, tentatively titled Building Satan’s Army, One Lil’ Soldier at a Time. I rarely read something that isn’t useful. Sometimes it’s solid and smart — I promise I’ll give you some excerpts from those eventually — but there are also the howling whoppers, terrifying nonsense from top-selling parenting authors, useful in a kind of don’t-let-this-happen-to-you way. I mentioned Joyce Meyer’s million-selling Battlefield of the Mind a few weeks ago— the one that warns us that reasoning can be harmful or fatal if swallowed:
Satan will look for your child’s weakest area and attack at that point. He will attempt to fill your child with worry, reasoning, fear, depression and discouraging negative thoughts.
I’ve run across some similarly ridiculous advice recently. The theme this time is the inherent depravity of our children. I’ve come to call this “boiling pot parenting” — the notion that, unless sat upon with great force, our kids will tend toward murderous psychopathy of the Lord of the Flies variety, and that our primary job as parents is to clamp the lid on the seething kettle of evil that lurks in our spawn.
You think I’m exaggerating. I can tell by your expression.
Here’s evangelical superauthor (170+ books) and radio minister John MacArthur from Successful Christian Parenting (Thomas Nelson, 1999):
The truth is that our children are already marred by sin from the moment they are conceived. The drive to sin is embedded in their very natures. All that is required for the tragic harvest is that children be allowed to give unrestrained expression to those evil desires.
In other words, children do not go bad because of something their parents do. They are born sinful, and that sinfulness manifests itself because of what their parents do not do.…There’s only one remedy for the child’s inborn depravity: The new birth — [to be ‘born again’].
More in this vein turns up in Reb Bradley’s innocuously-titled Child Training Tips: What I Wish I Knew When My Children Were Young (Foundation for Biblical Research, 2002):
Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered: he wants what he wants, his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toys, his uncle’s watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is dirty; he has no morals, no knowledge and no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, but all children are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a killer, a thief, and a rapist.
I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn that Reb, a “biblical parenting” enthusiast, is also wild about hard and frequent spankings, with paddles and other weapons. I don’t know if his subtitle (“What I Wish I Knew When My Children Were Young”) is meant to imply that his kids have turned out criminals, killers, gypsies, tramps or thieves. I rather doubt it. But if they did, I also doubt that insufficient thrashing was the cause.
Okay. Next time, I promise I’ll bring you some of the good guys — intelligent, insightful folks like Lucy Calkins and Chris Mercogliano. But for now, lemme just register my vote for the unintentional sad comedy of John, Joyce, and Reb:
