I recently experienced one of the things on this list. See if you can figure out which one it is:
Things that don’t go together easily:
That’s all I’m saying.
What is wrong with parents?
Today, my wife and I went to see two vastly different films, Wall-E and The Dark Knight (reviews to follow). In both films, there were families in the audience that made me want to go up to the parents and say “What are you thinking?! You have an important role to play as a parent, and you’re screwing it up!”
For the family in Wall-E, that would have been a bit of overkill, I grant you. The father was there with his two boys, probably around 5-7 years old. I don’t have any problem with kids being in that theater - in fact, I expected kids to be in attendance for that one. The problem was that the younger boy was repeatedly, and loudly, talking during the movie. I don’t blame the kid (much). He was just excited and wanted to show his dad that he understood what was going on (it’s possible that he’d seen the movie before, judging from some of what he said). The problem is that the father didn’t take the opportunity to teach the child to be quiet, and courteous to others. Eventually the brother said something to him, and then his dad chimed in, somewhat ineffectively, in telling the boy to quiet down. That’s just backwards. Why was the brother taking the lead there?
There were also a pair of older kids - teens - loudly bounding up and down the stairs and across the front of the seats, so that may have made me a bit more irritable toward the talker. But still… if the father doesn’t teach their kid to be courteous now, he’s just setting the kid up to become that bounder in a few years.
But the one that really bothered me was the family in The Dark Knight. They didn’t bother me because they were disruptive, mostly, but because they were there. These parents brought a 2 or 3 year old girl to an extremely loud, very violent movie. The second the movie started, she began to cry. And who can blame her? The noise alone was an assault to her senses! The parents didn’t take her out of the theater. They did comfort her in her seat, but come on… for the first 10 minutes of the movie, every time the audio quieted down a bit (which was not often), I could hear her crying. Eventually, that stopped, but I am still really disappointed that these people would subject their young daughter to sitting still that long (3 hours, from the time they first sat down) without relief, let alone for a film that is so clearly not something she should be seeing. It’s just wrong.
Parents have the responsibility for teaching their kids, and for protecting them - in big ways, and small ways. These examples are two of the small ways. Sometimes the small ways bother me more, because they’re easy to overlook, but add up to more problems later.
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve recently reconnected with a lot of friends from my high school youth group through the wonders of Facebook. It’s been a lot of fun. There are now over 40 of us, and over 150 pictures, many of which are proof that the 80’s should never return.
But all of those pictures are of teenagers having fun - even the couple that show us in serious mode in Bible studies. We were enjoying learning how to apply the Bible to our lives, and simply being with each other. But most of the pictures are of someone doing something odd or funny (there are a surprisingly high number of cross-dressing photos… almost all of which were part of skits). We had a lot of fun.
Predictably, this has had me reminiscing a lot about those days, and about what it felt like to be a teenager. It’s been a long time and I don’t think about it often. When I do, it’s usually the moments that make me cringe that come to mind. But in truth, it’s a mixed bag of experiences: awkwardness, isolation, triumph, and togetherness all collide in both messy and wonderful ways. I remember the excitement of what it felt like to have a crush on someone, yet be unable to act on it because of fear. I remember feeling inferior in every athletic experience I had (because I usually was), yet thrilled when I somehow pulled it all together to win a game against the top player or be a useful part of a winning play. I remember feeling completely alone in a crowd, until someone caught my eye and genuinely smiled, happy to see me.
Now I’m a father, and in my mind’s eye I’m watching my two daughters grow up to be teenagers. Right now they are two and three years old. They’re playing in the park with their friends. It struck me today that it’s likely that at least some of these same friends will still be around when they reach their teen years. In ten years, will they have a crush on one of the boys they’re playing with now? Will those friends feed or starve their sense of self-worth? Will they be sure enough of themselves to have fun acting goofy, or will they be too worried about what others will think?
Will they want to spend any time with me?
I’m getting ahead of myself. I know that. I can actually influence a lot of those situations with what I teach my girls and how I treat them. I look at those pictures on Facebook and I pray that my daughters will grow up to have the quality of friends and fun that I had.
For all you dad’s out there, and mine specifically, Happy Father’s Day.
Thanks for all you’ve taught us, thanks for all the fun we’ve had. Thanks for the trips to the parks, the encouragement, and the discipline. And most of all, thanks for not killing us when we put a hole through the car battery (that may only apply to my Dad…).
Thanks for the support and the love.
And now, a message from the younger generation…
“Can you tie this to my eyebrow?” [referring to a balloon]
After throwing a blanket over her own head: “POOF! She was gone.”
3-yr old: “You can’t tell me that!”
2-yr old: “Why?”
3-yr old: “You’re not a grown-up!”
2-yr old: “YES I AM!”
3-yr old: “NO YOU’RE NOT!”
2-yr old: “YES I AM!“
3-yr old: “YOU’RE NOT A GROWN-UP; YOU’RE IN A BOOSTER SEAT!!“
2-yr old: “What?”
3-yr old: “You’re in a booster seat. Look.”
2-yr old: “Oh.”
Those who know me may assume my own daughter can also do this. She can’t. Yet.
Smart kid. 
The Players:
So I’m sitting in my office, writing an email, the entire house quiet, when I hear Mom enter the playroom downstairs and stop short. Then an exclamation: “OH! What are you doing?” When that was repeated for the third time with the same mix of shock, wonderment and distress, I started listening closer. I couldn’t make it all out at first. I heard something about “don’t ever do that” and cleaning the chair. It was when I heard the terms “diaper,” “change,” and “don’t ever” all in the same sentence that I quickly went downstairs. Here’s what I saw:
Little Mommy with an eyes-wide look of “what happened? How did this go wrong?” on her face as Mom leads her slowly, carefully, away from her little chair. The chair is sitting next to the changing station, where Stinky is laying, legs splayed, bottom uncovered, except for some brown and white streaks (”I put cream on her!” Little Mommy was heard to say proudly). On the chair is… well… a diaper… and its contents… not at all well contained.
At some point, Stinky had informed Little Mommy that she needed a diaper change. Since Mom was indisposed, they worked together to — the order here is a little fuzzy — take Stinky’s pants off, move the chair to the changing table, climb up (it’s above head level for both of them), take off her diaper, “clean” her off with diaper wipes (also not easy to reach), and apply cream. It’s probably the best teamwork they’ve displayed all day. I’m not sure how the open diaper came to be on the chair. I’m not sure I want to know. I do know that when Mom brought Little Mommy back into the room, the latter was without her shirt, and I heard a lot of hand washing going on.
The diaper’s contents were mercifully solid. There was still a lot of cleanup to be done, on both children and the chair. It should be said that it was an impressive job for a 3-year old. She got almost all the steps covered. She even got the cream. It was the wrong cream, mind you, but she thought of it.
I think we got through to her that she was never allowed to do this again. I think. My poorly hidden laughter may have undermined that message a little…
Technorati Tags: parenting, diapers, growing up, toddlers
When I returned from my vacation yesterday, my computer would not recover from hibernation mode (i.e., it wouldn’t turn on). I went into a local computer store today to ask a couple questions and my wife and kids stayed in the car. Apparently my wife was explaining to my 2-year old why I was in the store, because when I came out, my daughter asked if my “proputer” was broken. After I confirmed it was, she was quiet while my wife and I talked about the rest of the day.
Then, in a quiet moment, my daughter said seriously, “Do you have some tape?” I was completely puzzled by that apparent non-sequitor, but my wife clarified that she meant tape to fix my computer, like we would use to fix one of her toys! When we said that was a good idea, but this couldn’t be fixed with tape, she said, “Oh,” and looked a little disappointed.
She put a smile on my face while I was getting more depressed about the state of my primary computer.
I love my kids (and I wish this problem was fixed so easily).
Technorati Tags: parenting, computer repair, children
I’ve been quiet on here for a couple weeks due to some time pressures. Lots to do during the lead-up to Christmas, as I’m sure you can all understand. I had it all planned out - a full week of vacation to get it all done - but then some problems at work forced me to give up most of my “free” time. The week after Christmas was spent running around to stores with gift exchange related activities and trying to catch up on my online reading.
Basically, I’ve been too tired to blog.
But as I said, I have been reading, and I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff. I thought the last day of the year should be a good time to throw my thoughts at you once again. Here are some of the topics I’ve been thinking about lately:
So there you have it. Some of the topics I’ve been thinking about lately. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them become posts of their own next year. And I’ll still have movie and tv reviews up from time to time (though I seem to be the only person who reads those). For what it’s worth, I’m also thinking about making some new static pages on the site.
What thoughts have occupied your minds these last few weeks? What’s important to you? Drop a comment and let me know (comments are moderated and may not appear immediately).
I hope you all enjoy your New Years celebrations! Welcome, 2007!
I’m probably way behind the times on pointing this out, but I just found this link and needed to post it.
It’s a one-minute movie showing the transformation of a model from pre-make-up to head-shot-on-a-billboard, and is the best example I’ve seen of displaying how distorted our view of beauty (and reality) have become. The resemblance of the finished product (and I use that term purposefully) to the real woman is almost unrecognizable.
It really does bother me that we are so twisted in the way we market beauty in our culture. Not only is it an example of how gullible we are as a people, but it is damaging many of our children - particularly girls - who are trying to attain standards of beauty that are literally unattainable in the real world. It’s very disturbing.
(By the way, one of my pet peeves is the loose use of the word “literally” in popular language. I employ it here in its correct, primary usage. Watch the movie. This post is in the “technology” category for a reason.)
Technorati Tags: transformation, beauty, standards of beauty
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