I've been neglecting this place as we kind of get everything together and while I deal with my own issues going on, but some stuff I've had sitting on my desktop for a bit:
* Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, both by Dale McGowan, are great atheist parenting tomes and on sale for the Kindle for the next few weeks. The physical editions have a prominent space on our shelves, and they've been indispensable in a lot of my approaches to how I want to handle religion and such with the future spawn. It's not the bomb-throwing type of atheist writing, either, so if you're not an atheist but curious, Parenting Beyond Belief in particular may still be of value to you.
* Three Huge Mistakes We Make Leading Kids, and How to Correct Them was an interesting read. I fully agree with everything he wrote, and the idea of self-esteem over hard work and dedication is a key one for me that it's going to be interesting to break. While we plan to homeschool and thus will miss a lot of that, it's more the mentality of society at large and the "we must never be offended" style of thinking that's becoming pervasive and may be reaching critical mass when our kid needs it the most. The ability to be risky while also being smart is quite possibly the most important thing I can pass along.
* I liked this longish piece by Paul Lockhart, "Lockhart's Lament," which makes an interesting contrast at the start between why we like learning music, but hate learning math. I think it says a lot about how we approach learning, and it's something I keep going back to even though I read this a week ago.
We have a month to go! Eeeeeeeeep.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Literacy, Books, and the Coming Kiddo
Ann & I were talking over the weekend about how it's going to be a little weird when it comes to consuming media and stuff with the kid around. We're both pretty much on the same page - we're not into censorship, but there's definitely no need to, say, be watching Mad Men with the rugrat around, either. Why this is a bit of a weird situation for us, however, is because we're absolutely surrounded with books. Many of them are for kids, yes, but many more are for adults, some significantly so.
While two articles came out in the last few days that made me think about this more, the one book that is probably on my shelves right now that I a) love and b) is hardly appropriate for many adult audiences, never mind a teenager, is Alan Moore's Neonomicon. It's a comic book of Lovecraftian creepyness with the added benefit of borderline-gratuitious orgies, rapes, and murders, all in their illustrated glory. It's a great book in spite of its content, but it's not one I go around recommending to people, and it's certainly not one I'd necessarily want my kid reading anytime in the next few decades. There's a reason it's part of a pretty big banned book controversy currently, after all.
Now, we didn't have graphic novels around the house when I grew up, but my mother was a fairly voracious reader as well. She read a ton of Stephen King, I admit to maybe getting into The Thorn Birds or some of the really silly romance stuff on the shelves when I was much too young to even have a clue, but I learned to read at a very early age and I would pretty much read anything I could. My mother had no real rule about books - if I wanted to read it, I could. If I had questions, I could ask her - this resulted in a particularly awkward situation in second grade following my reading of Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, but that's a story for another time. And, frankly, I rarely read the adult stuff she had around the house. I still haven't actually read any Stephen King, and most of the books from her collection that I've saved are more for posterity/memory's sake than their literary value - I figured out that science fiction and fantasy were my books of choice around the time I hit fourth grade, and that was the end of the curiosity regarding my mother's books.
My experience with my mother and books (a post all its own someday) came right back to me when I read this piece by Jo Walton over at Tor. The gist:
Walton refers to a blog entry at The Captive Reader, which expands on the idea even more:
In both cases, the discussion is more about understanding what is being read, not so much content-appropriateness. I can get behind that plenty - while I'm in Walton's boots where rereading a book is difficult for me, I can think of countless books I've read that I think back and say "ohhhhh..." and then move on. But isn't that necessarily the case when it comes to more (for lack of a better term) objectionable content as well? Yeah, I read Disclosure much, much earlier in life than I probably should have, but it's not as if I didn't understand what the two adults were up to on a superficial level, even if the point of where the book was going was probably lost on me for another few years. It's just part of what it is, and I'm certainly not scarred by it today in adulthood. If anything, my mother's lenient policy on books and reading has made me into a better reader today, as I've had probably ten more years than your average reader to figure out what I like and don't like, and experiment with both great and not-so-great works in the meantime.
Yeah, I might move Neonomicon up to a more secluded shelf once our little spawn gets older. He or she might still reach for Game of Thrones, or Judy Blume, or whatever when they're too young as well. I think there's a difference between reading abstractions on a page that you have to visualize as opposed to having the image splayed across your screen in a moving picture. As Ann put it, it's active reading versus passive watching. I wish my mother was in a more coherent place where I could thank her for giving me that leeway to find my own path in the worlds that books open up, and it's a gift I definitely want to give to my own kid moving forward. In the end, I suppose I just have to trust that we are, in fact, made of hardier stuff, and there's a way to be responsible as well as keep a respectful, trustful distance.
If books are that path, I don't think I'll complain.
While two articles came out in the last few days that made me think about this more, the one book that is probably on my shelves right now that I a) love and b) is hardly appropriate for many adult audiences, never mind a teenager, is Alan Moore's Neonomicon. It's a comic book of Lovecraftian creepyness with the added benefit of borderline-gratuitious orgies, rapes, and murders, all in their illustrated glory. It's a great book in spite of its content, but it's not one I go around recommending to people, and it's certainly not one I'd necessarily want my kid reading anytime in the next few decades. There's a reason it's part of a pretty big banned book controversy currently, after all.
Now, we didn't have graphic novels around the house when I grew up, but my mother was a fairly voracious reader as well. She read a ton of Stephen King, I admit to maybe getting into The Thorn Birds or some of the really silly romance stuff on the shelves when I was much too young to even have a clue, but I learned to read at a very early age and I would pretty much read anything I could. My mother had no real rule about books - if I wanted to read it, I could. If I had questions, I could ask her - this resulted in a particularly awkward situation in second grade following my reading of Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, but that's a story for another time. And, frankly, I rarely read the adult stuff she had around the house. I still haven't actually read any Stephen King, and most of the books from her collection that I've saved are more for posterity/memory's sake than their literary value - I figured out that science fiction and fantasy were my books of choice around the time I hit fourth grade, and that was the end of the curiosity regarding my mother's books.
My experience with my mother and books (a post all its own someday) came right back to me when I read this piece by Jo Walton over at Tor. The gist:
I’ve talked before about starting to read something and realising it’s too old for me and leaving it for later...and how I’m still doing this with E.R. Eddison at the age of forty-eight. It’s a good habit, because it blames myself and not the book when I can’t get into something. It’s quite distinct from thinking “this is awful,” which I think often enough, it’s “this is beyond me right now.”
But is there a right age to read a book?
Walton refers to a blog entry at The Captive Reader, which expands on the idea even more:
The age at which we read a book is of vital importance to the way we experience it but that does not mean that each book comes with a correct age at which to read it. You are not only going to appreciate Vanity Fair if you wait to read it until you are forty-five but you will perhaps appreciate it differently than you did at fifteen and twenty-five and thirty-five. You will understand more and miss fewer allusions but that does not mean you will enjoy it more.
In both cases, the discussion is more about understanding what is being read, not so much content-appropriateness. I can get behind that plenty - while I'm in Walton's boots where rereading a book is difficult for me, I can think of countless books I've read that I think back and say "ohhhhh..." and then move on. But isn't that necessarily the case when it comes to more (for lack of a better term) objectionable content as well? Yeah, I read Disclosure much, much earlier in life than I probably should have, but it's not as if I didn't understand what the two adults were up to on a superficial level, even if the point of where the book was going was probably lost on me for another few years. It's just part of what it is, and I'm certainly not scarred by it today in adulthood. If anything, my mother's lenient policy on books and reading has made me into a better reader today, as I've had probably ten more years than your average reader to figure out what I like and don't like, and experiment with both great and not-so-great works in the meantime.
Yeah, I might move Neonomicon up to a more secluded shelf once our little spawn gets older. He or she might still reach for Game of Thrones, or Judy Blume, or whatever when they're too young as well. I think there's a difference between reading abstractions on a page that you have to visualize as opposed to having the image splayed across your screen in a moving picture. As Ann put it, it's active reading versus passive watching. I wish my mother was in a more coherent place where I could thank her for giving me that leeway to find my own path in the worlds that books open up, and it's a gift I definitely want to give to my own kid moving forward. In the end, I suppose I just have to trust that we are, in fact, made of hardier stuff, and there's a way to be responsible as well as keep a respectful, trustful distance.
If books are that path, I don't think I'll complain.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
#MidwifeWitchcraft
A text I got from Ann as I sit right across the room from her:
She ensures that her doctor gave her the okay, but there's something amusing about her torturing our child for the gratification of feeling it move when it's -3 months old...
Sometimes I put frozen veggies on my belly to wake baby up. It's kicking now :) #MidwifeWitchcraft
She ensures that her doctor gave her the okay, but there's something amusing about her torturing our child for the gratification of feeling it move when it's -3 months old...
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
On Santa, Sandy Hook, and Staying Straightforward
Last Friday, I wanted to share this article about "The Santa Lie", which posits the following:
Santa is something I've struggled with, moreso now with the kid on the way. Much like having to handle the whole god thing in a house with parents (Ann & I) who are atheists and grandparents who are not, the Santa thing is a little complicated for a lot of reasons, and can be a learning experience at the same time.
Then, with the Sandy Hook shooting last week, it seemed both pithy and also provided another learning opportunity for me as well as handling the real world in the future.
What prompted it was a Facebook post from a friend who homeschools her daughter. She was talking about how she could pretty much frame it as she wanted, noting just that someone far away did something very bad. It's sensible, after all - she knows her daughter's ability to handle what comes at her, and how to process, and part of the basic point of homeschooling in general is being able to tailor information and learning to the needs and capabilities of the child as opposed to a more one-size-fits-all-ages approach.
Honestly, Sandy Hook left me at a loss in a lot of ways beyond the pure horror and national conversations. It makes you wonder what you're thinking in bringing a kid into a world where such senseless things happen, it makes you wonder if I'm making the right choices in safety for my own family, and so on. But it also makes me wonder how to approach these sorts of issues with my own child. Sandy Hook isn't going to be the last significant tragedy that happens, and if I want to raise a well-informed child, I'm not going to be able to shield him or her from everything. I know every parent deals with this. I just want to get it right the first time.
One thing I had to cope with growing up was my parents hiding bad things from me when the truth probably would have done better. I don't fault them for trying to do their best for me in this regard at all - after all, "your uncle is sick" is a lot easier to deal with than "your uncle has cancer" - but when you become a teenager and they don't want you to know the extent of what's up with your grandmother, it can be frustrating regardless of intent. Again, no fault, no blame - just not what I want to do.
There's an extended post in me regarding religion and how Ann and I hope to deal with it coming down the pike eventually. But with Santa being the good thing that we acceptably lie to children about with no real ill effects, it's difficult about how all these different things intersect. I doubt my child will need to know the worst of the worst any earlier than they can handle it. I'm sure that, if Ann and I decide to go along with the Santa thing, that we'll handle the eventual reveal with the same type of respect and dignity as we would anything else.
It's simply interesting to me how the events of the last few days speak to the increasing complicated issue of honesty with kids. It feels completely wrong to connect the tragedy with something as innocuous as Christmas, but the way it speaks to the same idea is a strange one that I wasn't expecting.
And, certainly, part of that guilt I'm feeling is knowing that, for many of those parents from Sandy Hook, they're not going to have that opportunity anymore. It makes me want to fast forward to March and give our little spawn a big hug and be thankful that he or she is in our world at all.
We raise our kids to be truthful. We teach them about the laws of physics. And then we tell them that nine flying reindeer pull an immortal fat man and his sleigh through the sky so that he can deliver gifts to millions of kids around the world one night a year.
Is it bad that we lie to our kids about Santa?
Santa is something I've struggled with, moreso now with the kid on the way. Much like having to handle the whole god thing in a house with parents (Ann & I) who are atheists and grandparents who are not, the Santa thing is a little complicated for a lot of reasons, and can be a learning experience at the same time.
Then, with the Sandy Hook shooting last week, it seemed both pithy and also provided another learning opportunity for me as well as handling the real world in the future.
What prompted it was a Facebook post from a friend who homeschools her daughter. She was talking about how she could pretty much frame it as she wanted, noting just that someone far away did something very bad. It's sensible, after all - she knows her daughter's ability to handle what comes at her, and how to process, and part of the basic point of homeschooling in general is being able to tailor information and learning to the needs and capabilities of the child as opposed to a more one-size-fits-all-ages approach.
Honestly, Sandy Hook left me at a loss in a lot of ways beyond the pure horror and national conversations. It makes you wonder what you're thinking in bringing a kid into a world where such senseless things happen, it makes you wonder if I'm making the right choices in safety for my own family, and so on. But it also makes me wonder how to approach these sorts of issues with my own child. Sandy Hook isn't going to be the last significant tragedy that happens, and if I want to raise a well-informed child, I'm not going to be able to shield him or her from everything. I know every parent deals with this. I just want to get it right the first time.
One thing I had to cope with growing up was my parents hiding bad things from me when the truth probably would have done better. I don't fault them for trying to do their best for me in this regard at all - after all, "your uncle is sick" is a lot easier to deal with than "your uncle has cancer" - but when you become a teenager and they don't want you to know the extent of what's up with your grandmother, it can be frustrating regardless of intent. Again, no fault, no blame - just not what I want to do.
There's an extended post in me regarding religion and how Ann and I hope to deal with it coming down the pike eventually. But with Santa being the good thing that we acceptably lie to children about with no real ill effects, it's difficult about how all these different things intersect. I doubt my child will need to know the worst of the worst any earlier than they can handle it. I'm sure that, if Ann and I decide to go along with the Santa thing, that we'll handle the eventual reveal with the same type of respect and dignity as we would anything else.
It's simply interesting to me how the events of the last few days speak to the increasing complicated issue of honesty with kids. It feels completely wrong to connect the tragedy with something as innocuous as Christmas, but the way it speaks to the same idea is a strange one that I wasn't expecting.
And, certainly, part of that guilt I'm feeling is knowing that, for many of those parents from Sandy Hook, they're not going to have that opportunity anymore. It makes me want to fast forward to March and give our little spawn a big hug and be thankful that he or she is in our world at all.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Risks Worth Taking
I found this post from Teacher Tom to be really inspiring.
In the real world, young children are capable of assessing many of their own risks, but only if they've had the chance to practice; only if they're well versed in the art of critical thinking and not the habits of mere obedience. An adult who commands, "Don't slide down that banister!" might be keeping a child safe in that moment, but is also, at the same time, robbing him of a chance to think for himself, which makes him that much less safe in the future when no one is there to tell him what to do. Better to state the facts ("If you slide down that banister you might get hurt.") and let him practice thinking things through for himself, to consider the possible consequences of his actions, to assess his own risks, to ask himself, "Is this a risk worth taking?"
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Naming Rights
While we won't be naming our child Hashtag, the naming of our future spawn has so far been the most difficult thing for us on a number of levels. We're running into a lot of problems, frankly, and we're still trying to figure out how to solve them.
Among the issues:
* My father's side of the family is massive. My father is the youngest of 14, 12 of them lived long enough to have children, and those children have children now. Some of those children's children have children. This means a lot of names are taken. We could duplicate names without a big problem, but who can say for sure?
* We're a little too well-read. Literally every name one of us comes up with, the other can come up with a reference to attach it to, often with hilarious consequences. We're all a little bitter that Twilight has ruined Bella/Isabella/Isobel for us, and our leading boy name right now is also the name of a child in a well-known movie and a famous author.
The reality is that we'll have to settle on something and that something will have a reference no matter what. That doesn't mean we have to like it, though, but it does help cull the list a bit.
* We're really good at girl names and really bad at boy names. We had a boy name in mind that we've since had to discard for unfortunate reasons, but the one that we have now? That's...pretty much it. And we like the name a lot, but it's one thing to like a name and another to default to it, and I don't want to feel like, if we have a boy, we've defaulted on a name. Plus, we don't have a middle name yet. Whee!
On the girl side, though, we already have a middle name (I'm being a bit of a dictator about it, and Ann's letting me have that one piece), but we have a ton of names in mind and can't really settle on just one. I have a few favorites as she does, and we've already discarded a few, such as the Isabelle Variations and Pella, which I (surprise surprise) read in a book (The Art of Fielding, if you care) and loved, but is also the name of a window company. When we mentioned the name to a few friends, they all said "like the window company?" So that's out.
(On a side note, I hope that, if we have a girl, she becomes a musician and names her band The Isabelle Variations.)
So we're not settled on anything yet. It's been a pretty funny road so far, emailing different ideas and such. We're also taking suggestions - we're looking for quirky and fun without being ridiculous and hipster. Traditional with a twist is good (Ann has a baby name site bookmarked and she spent a little more time in "Steampunk Names" than I'm ultimately comfortable with), but at the end of the day, we want our kid to have a name that will really highlight the type of kid we hope s/he'll be at the end of the day.
Otherwise, maybe we'll have to name it Hashtag after all...
Among the issues:
* My father's side of the family is massive. My father is the youngest of 14, 12 of them lived long enough to have children, and those children have children now. Some of those children's children have children. This means a lot of names are taken. We could duplicate names without a big problem, but who can say for sure?
* We're a little too well-read. Literally every name one of us comes up with, the other can come up with a reference to attach it to, often with hilarious consequences. We're all a little bitter that Twilight has ruined Bella/Isabella/Isobel for us, and our leading boy name right now is also the name of a child in a well-known movie and a famous author.
The reality is that we'll have to settle on something and that something will have a reference no matter what. That doesn't mean we have to like it, though, but it does help cull the list a bit.
* We're really good at girl names and really bad at boy names. We had a boy name in mind that we've since had to discard for unfortunate reasons, but the one that we have now? That's...pretty much it. And we like the name a lot, but it's one thing to like a name and another to default to it, and I don't want to feel like, if we have a boy, we've defaulted on a name. Plus, we don't have a middle name yet. Whee!
On the girl side, though, we already have a middle name (I'm being a bit of a dictator about it, and Ann's letting me have that one piece), but we have a ton of names in mind and can't really settle on just one. I have a few favorites as she does, and we've already discarded a few, such as the Isabelle Variations and Pella, which I (surprise surprise) read in a book (The Art of Fielding, if you care) and loved, but is also the name of a window company. When we mentioned the name to a few friends, they all said "like the window company?" So that's out.
(On a side note, I hope that, if we have a girl, she becomes a musician and names her band The Isabelle Variations.)
So we're not settled on anything yet. It's been a pretty funny road so far, emailing different ideas and such. We're also taking suggestions - we're looking for quirky and fun without being ridiculous and hipster. Traditional with a twist is good (Ann has a baby name site bookmarked and she spent a little more time in "Steampunk Names" than I'm ultimately comfortable with), but at the end of the day, we want our kid to have a name that will really highlight the type of kid we hope s/he'll be at the end of the day.
Otherwise, maybe we'll have to name it Hashtag after all...
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Odds and Ends
Ann had another ultrasound yesterday. I didn't go to this one, and it's probably best that I didn't, given that she wasn't terribly pleased with her technician, who took most of the measurements with the screen turned away, ostensibly so that the gender wouldn't be revealed. It means she missed out on all the fun of seeing the little guy moving around and such, and didn't get a good face photo.
It resulted in tears at Target in part due to the experience, and in part due to the fact that she apparently wanted to eat every cookie there. So on one hand, sadness. On the other, hey, cookies.
The first ultrasound was strange for me, as a lot of this has been for me so far - it's as if my job is completely done in this and now I'm just the dutiful husband who provides emotional support until the little guy decides to join us. As someone who has a "fixer" type personality, I spend a lot of time feeling helpless as all sorts of stuff goes on. I just want to hit the fast forward button a bit, but that's not how it works.
And yet we're still on the back end of this. Four more months!
---
So now for some funnier stuff. Ann (and she's fine with me posting this) started lactating a few weeks ago. At first it was just a little, but she was just leaky leaky leaky putting the Christmas tree up. She plans to breastfeed, and I'm happy about that - I'm not totally convinced of the "breastfeeding is the best way period and you're setting your child up for failure if you do formula" mindset, but I think it's a good thing and I'm glad Ann agrees.
Let's be honest, though. NOTHING up to this point has grossed me out as much as this did.
I don't know if it was the visual, or just the fact that I figured that they, like, switched on following birth or something, but I assume my complete and total lack of preparation for that probably contributed to my immediate discomfort. It's something I'll get over (it's not like I have a choice), but hey.
Progress, though: I offered her a band-aid!
...
A postscript to the lactation thing: my mother wasn't too pleased with the trimming of the tree - apparently she's an Alzheimer's sufferer who hates Christmas now - but Ann was talking about reading stories where pregnant women begin lactating at the sound of babies crying, and it turns out that her body might actually just end up forming an association with my mother yelling at her.
It resulted in tears at Target in part due to the experience, and in part due to the fact that she apparently wanted to eat every cookie there. So on one hand, sadness. On the other, hey, cookies.
The first ultrasound was strange for me, as a lot of this has been for me so far - it's as if my job is completely done in this and now I'm just the dutiful husband who provides emotional support until the little guy decides to join us. As someone who has a "fixer" type personality, I spend a lot of time feeling helpless as all sorts of stuff goes on. I just want to hit the fast forward button a bit, but that's not how it works.
And yet we're still on the back end of this. Four more months!
So now for some funnier stuff. Ann (and she's fine with me posting this) started lactating a few weeks ago. At first it was just a little, but she was just leaky leaky leaky putting the Christmas tree up. She plans to breastfeed, and I'm happy about that - I'm not totally convinced of the "breastfeeding is the best way period and you're setting your child up for failure if you do formula" mindset, but I think it's a good thing and I'm glad Ann agrees.
Let's be honest, though. NOTHING up to this point has grossed me out as much as this did.
I don't know if it was the visual, or just the fact that I figured that they, like, switched on following birth or something, but I assume my complete and total lack of preparation for that probably contributed to my immediate discomfort. It's something I'll get over (it's not like I have a choice), but hey.
Progress, though: I offered her a band-aid!
...
A postscript to the lactation thing: my mother wasn't too pleased with the trimming of the tree - apparently she's an Alzheimer's sufferer who hates Christmas now - but Ann was talking about reading stories where pregnant women begin lactating at the sound of babies crying, and it turns out that her body might actually just end up forming an association with my mother yelling at her.
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