Regardless, I am who I am - at least for the moment. I'm over-protective. My main aim in life, since the moment my daughter was born, was to let go. I have distinct memories of those being the first thoughts in my mind when I held her. "Your Dad is precisely the kind of person to wrap you in air bags and never let you leave the house." It was my fear - and my determination - not to be the guy I'm most prone to be.
I'm pretty proud of how I've done so far, although I do still want to shelter her; it's my natural state, after all. She sometimes revels in this. As a, thus-far, only child, there's a part of my daughter that enjoys having things done for her. As much as we challenge (read: force) her to do things for herself, we're still often in too much of a hurry to make her buckle her own seatbelt (and she's six, I know, it's embarrassing).
While I have always marveled at just how quickly she's grown up, I've still be unprepared for just how quickly she's grown up recently. It's not linear, but exponential. Last year, in Kindergarten, she'd make the occasional pun and her inferences blew me away. Now, as a first-grader, she's her own person entirely - smart, aware, and thinking with depth and breadth way beyond what's fair for a six year old. I've realized that the influences and ideas from which I might naturally want to shield her or be the one to present are already very present in her mind and in her life and she's dealt with them in ways I can only define as impressive.
I've spent a fair bit of time working with young people; the number one thing I've learned in that time (as I'm sure I've said here before) is that they always know, experience, and understand more than their parents would ever believe. What I'm learning as a parent is that my previous work with young people does not exempt me from that axiom. No matter what my expectations for my daughter's engagement with the world might be, they're going to fall short.
This is both terrifying and incredibly comforting.
I've never been a big fan of the emphasis our society places on safety and security. I think it's usually overkill and often exacerbates an atmosphere of fear over any kind of relief. As part of that, I've struggled with the vast array of "drills" they do in schools these days, to prepare for all kids of trauma. Last year, in Kindergarten, I thought I was told the school didn't do lockdowns, so I put off my worry. As first grade approached - and entry to the "big" elementary school - I mused, out loud, about how I might approach my daughter's school to perhaps surreptitiously take her for ice cream, or something, when those drills occurred.
She overheard the conversation and while I don't remember her words exactly, they went something like, "we did those last year, Dad, where we all sat quietly in the corner so people couldn't see us from the door - nothing will ever happen in school, but we have to make the teachers happy."
I don't know if that's how it was presented to them, but I'd like to think my daughter has both learned a thing or two about Christian social critique from her old man and maybe inherited both sound logical reasoning and a compassionate heart.
In the end, the whole experience has helped relieve some pressure. I don't have to work extra hard to make sure my daughter is her own person, because there's nothing else she can become. I'll have an influence on her - for good or ill - but from the moment she was laying there in my arms, screaming her giant, grossly-misshapen head off, whatever control I thought I might have was simply an illusion.
I suspect the sooner we learn that lesson, the better.
have a dinner, I guess there's music. It's a big deal and it's become the largest ball of stress in my life the last few weeks.
My daughter hasn't mentioned it yet, but they're planning to promote it heavily in school, so it's coming. She also loves dressing up and dancing (she's a regular hit at all the middle school dances she gets to attend). I've got a lot of problems with this thing. One, it's from 6-8 on a school night, first of all. Our daughter pretty much needs to be in bed by 7:20 or she's an absolute terror the next day. I mean, it's her teacher who will have to deal with her (after we battle to get her dressed and out of the house), so in some sense, I can pass the buck on good parenting there. I've also got a meeting that night, which I could miss, but would keep me from doing as good a job as a member of this committee I've given quite a bit of time to over the past couple years.
Those are sort of neither here nor there issues - they'd happen with any events at the same time, regardless of content - I just wanted to vent about the added stress they cause. The real issue is what this whole thing says in the first place.
I get a Kindergarten dance. I'm not typically a proponent of school dances, but "dating" isn't really a thing anymore and they've become something other than the pressure to couple up that was more prevalent in the past. It's a chance for kids to blow off steam and have fun. I'm all for that. My daughter loves to dance - the whole thing seems great. Why are we making it into a gender specific, fancy event? It really feels like Kindergarten prom and that just seems like a terrible idea.
It's cute. Don't get me wrong. I understand the appeal. Little people all dressed up, taking pictures with their parents. The image and experience of little kids dressed up like adults is heartwarming and fun. I remember that series of black and white photos that circulated some years back of the little boy and girl dressed up in formal wear. It's the whole reason BabyGAP was ever a thing. Little people looking like big people is super cute.
Is that really good for our kids, though?
Society really seems to want our kids to grow up fast. I know the media trend is to point out how much slower kids are becoming independent now than in previous generations, but we're also realizing that "adulthood" doesn't biologically start until at least 25. Still, we've set up a culture in which kids are supposed to look and act and engage in things that just aren't for kids. It's a mixed bag, because we seem to be giving kids the time they need to become independent adults, but we're spending this whole extended childhood dressing them up like adults (both in the fashion sense and the societal treatment).
I'm not advocating for a sheltered experience. Not at all. I think we do far too much to "protect" our kids from things they should dealing with from an early age. We haven't hidden the notions of death or sex from our daughter. There's not much she can understand about either at five years old, but we're certainly not keeping her in the dark. What bothers me is what appears to be a total loss of any understanding of childhood, that kids are developing and learning and growing. They're not just little adults.
I'm sure my wife would laugh that I'm even writing about this, because the thing I'm most guilty for in parenting is not understanding my daughter's developmental level and expecting her to be more mature than she really is. I'm not saying I'm an innocent here - I guess I'm trying to implicate myself in our collective cultural failing.
It's hard enough to be a kid in our society, a real kid, with all of the pressures and exposure that happens by pure accident - or at least unintentionally - do we really need intentional, specific measures by which we're treating our kids like mini-adults?
I know there are some voices out there who advocate moms and dads taking daughters and sons out for practice "dates" to help them understand how they should be treated and how to treat others. I'm not sure that's a bad idea, really, but is it appropriate for 8 year olds, simply because our culture has already taught them by then what dating is and told them they should be looking to partner up with someone?
It just feels like we're rushing things. Yes, I'm as upset as everyone else with the lack of responsibility this generation of young people expresses (which is probably a frustration every single generation for all of time has always felt, we should remember), but I wonder if some of this "extended adolescence" might not just be kids realizing that they never had the childhood they deserved, because they grew up in a society that wanted them to be cute little adults from the very beginning?
I don't know if any of this makes sense or if it's just Ryan caring too much again, but something about this event feels off and I'm trying to make sense of it. I really, truly don't know what to do. It's not going to be something we can avoid and, as I said, the only uncomfortable messages my daughter will get are implied and not overt.* She's not going to know anything's out of the ordinary here and I guess that's the real problem.
*I guess outside the ridiculous sexism of splitting this into daddy/daughter and mother/son. Seriously, if you need to do a boys night and girls night, that's fine, but why stipulate the gender of the person who accompanies them? I mean, my wife would be happy and unconflicted taking my daughter to this thing - and I wouldn't have to feel guilty about missing a meeting, problem solved. This is as much for the parents as it is for the kids, so why not let ALL the parents participate. Gosh. I should write a letter - that will promptly be ignored, because I'm a crazy nut and my daughter will be in a different school next year.
My nascent Presidential campaign got a boost this week when I made it onto the list of official write-in candidates for my home state of Delaware. Now my neighbors and local friends can vote for me for President, which is cool. I asked my wife if she was going to vote for me and I got a hesitant state. After a split second, I responded that I didn't really want her to; I know what voting for a woman for President means to her, plus, she's a Democrat anyway, so it's win-win.
We all know Hillary Clinton is far from a perfect candidate. She's the favorite in this election and likely to win, probably comfortably, only because the GOP put up the worst possible opponent. As Uncle Joe said today, "He's not a bad man, but his ignorance is so profound." Clinton is a terrible politician. Everyone hates her on the campaign trail, but she consistently surprises people, even her opponents, while in office. Republican Senators praised how hard she worked during her time representing New York and they only began to attack her time as Secretary of State when it became clear she was definitely running for President.
I would say she under-promises and over-delivers, but that doesn't quite sum up Hillary Clinton. It's more than she over-promises, but no one believes a word she says in the promising. People just find her entirely untrustworthy and there's a whole lot of reason for that (some justified and others, not so much), but I'm not going to get into it here.
What I'm more interested in is her tendency to over-deliver. Now, admittedly, that's not hard when expectations are near zero. Of course, her supporters love her and can see nothing, but good things. I'm guessing, though, most people are pretty well aware of Clinton's shortcomings. She's intensely political (well defined as "basing your words and actions on the expected or desired response of others) and terrible at hiding it.
I think this is a really good thing for her, for us, and for women.
Barack Obama came into office on a messianic air. His hope and change slogan energized people into genuinely believing he could change government and the country at large. The guy is a different, for sure, but not in any way that could move the behemoth of US political culture. It's not something that can be moved or changed in the ways people want - not even Donald Trump, with all his can-do bravado and unconventional, politically-incorrect tendencies can really do much of anything to make things work differently. Those are just facts.
The problem for Obama was, though, that people expected this kind of change in ways they hadn't for a very long time. We had to accept, pretty quickly, that the hopes and expectations had to be grounded not just a little, but a lot. As much as some might love and respect the guy, Obama's Presidency, when measured against his campaign rhetoric and aura, our first black President is going to feel generally disappointing.
That's not the sum total of our understanding of his Presidency; it wouldn't be fair. But for anyone who lived through that election, the disparity between expectations and reality will be strong and deep - at least in some part of our memory. It's sure going to make some people who may have reservations about race to say, "we tried that, not doing it again." Those are just the facts; they shouldn't be intertwined, but they are, at least in some measure.
Now we're close to electing the first woman President and no one expects anything from her. She'll be entering office as one of the least liked Presidents in history. She's going to be able to set her own mark. Whatever she accomplishes will be judged against low expectations, which can only be good for her and for women in politics. She'll be writing her own story rather than trying to live up to unrealistic expectations.
Yes, Republicans will likely hate her, although she has tended to be more centrist than her party on some things, especially war and foreign policy - so there's a chance she'll be pulling her own party towards the middle and earning some grudging respect, at least from people who are opinionated, but not partisan.
I'm not saying Hillary Clinton will be a great President; I'm not voting for her. I do think, though, that she's representing women well, and serving in the near impossible task of ground breaker. In US history, when women have advanced their own rights and standing in society, they've needed someone at least one generation ahead of her time to put the final cracks in the glass ceiling - a woman seemingly impervious to criticism and determined to do things her own way in a man's world.
I don't necessarily think our expectations of these Presidents is or has been because of the respective ground they're breaking, but they are intimately connected. Hillary Clinton, if elected, is going to be in a far, far better spot than Obama. No one expects her to do anything - except maybe the 51% of the population that see something in her more than just a politician; and they're going to have quite a bit of grace.
In the end, I'm still just holding to the reality that 1) my daughter will see a woman in the white house, and 2) she's only going to remember about this President what I tell her about this President (at least until she's old enough to want to read history for herself). Those are two really important things for me to remember going forward.
So, we're a game playing household here. We've probably got upwards of 50 games on shelves and in drawers all over the place. As Eva has grown up, we've wanted to keep challenging her with new things. Once she learned to count a bit and tell the difference between colors, I figured Candyland would be a great way to start her on games - super simple and also fun (at least in my very old memories).
I grew up playing Candyland. A lot. I have two younger brothers, so even when I got old enough to realize it's a game with absolutely no choices, totally determined by the cards, I continued to play it because they liked it. Despite what had to have been a lot of boring afternoons, I have nothing but great memories of the game. I realize now that there have been several iterations of Candyland through the years; the one I remember looked like this:
At some point, they added characters, which is vaguely remember, so perhaps friends had this version:
I went to the store to purchase Candyland for my daughter. I figured it would be pretty much the same thing I remembered. After all, if you're selling a super simple board game for four dollars, why shake things up much? I got the box home and opened it up to find this:
I was pretty speechless. The first thing I noticed was how busy the board is - colors and pictures and patterns all over the place. I wasn't confident my child could even figure out where the path was she was supposed to follow with her little pieces. Then I looked at the characters. Instead of little cartoonish creatures (since, you know, they're supposed to be made out of candy I never really expected them to look like people), they had essentially stylized adults.
It's tough enough to keep my daughter away from the societal pressures towards body image and forcing children to grow up before they actually grow up, it was really just devastating to see Candyland piling on. I mean "sad." I chose that word intentionally. This is typically the kind of thing that would really make me mad. I'd be spouting off to everyone and calling the company and all that. As it is, it's been like eight months and I'm just now getting around to writing about it.
I took the game back to Walmart to return it. I told the customer service lady why. She said, "I know. We get these back all the time." That's sad. It's all sad. It just makes me sad for the whole world.
I guess flashy and sexy is what sells, even if it's just a toy for toddlers, but it's still really sad. Thankfully our neighbors had a Dora version of Candyland with Dora characters (which Eva loves), so we've been able to play it (and we play it a lot).
I know those outside pressures for societal conformity are inevitable. She's headed to preschool in the fall, and I know there's going to be a lot of messages to process. That's a part of life - whether it's sad or not - at the same time, this isn't a solo concern for me. You can google candyland and find a dozen blog posts similar to this one with the same complaints. At some point we have to questions whether these things are selling because people like the images and messages or just because there aren't other options, because we're desensitized to it all.
A couple years back we got turned on to some people trying to do it differently (hint hint - she just had a birthday, but Christmas isn't too far away - hint hint). I'm not sure why there aren't more people speaking up for some sense of balance and responsibility from the people who, like it or not, are forming the next generation. I could definitely go on about this for weeks, so I'll stop there, but it felt like this was something that I needed to get off my chest.
Swiper is, as you might have guessed, a fox. He generally shows up to swipe things. He takes stuff and hides it nearby, thus requiring Dora (with help from kids watching at home) to find it. Sometimes Swiper is slow and Dora's mild rebuke, "Swiper, no swiping" helps him come to his senses and give up his klepto-quest.
Ostensibly, Swiper is a villain. But there are no villains on Dora. They're very good about separating people from what they do. Dora and her crew readily admit swiping is wrong, they continually reject Swiper's actions, but they never seem to reject him. He gets invited to parties, he gets cards like other people. When there are special cookies for everyone, Swiper's right on the list. There are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in Dora's world.
It would be easy for us to laugh and say, "what a wonderful childhood fantasy." I could even see some people upset we're not preparing these kids for the real world (as if this is the job of cartoon monkeys, et al). I find the opposite true. It's a beautiful depiction of the world as it is. Our society tends to send the message of "good guys" and "bad guys," because it serves the interests of power, but, in reality, we're all people. As much as we don't want to admit it, that makes us all essentially the same. The very best of our actions are possible from any of us; so are the very worst.
There are no bad people, just people doing bad things. Yes, our actions shape us and change us, but they only do so in how we respond to things. They change our actions and our inclinations. They don't change us. Deep down, we're still the same people, even if our humanity is lost beneath the effects of a lifetime of evil.
Obviously, Dora's world is far more simplistic than the real world. She doesn't face the sort of existential challenges that exist in ours, but her world does offer some picture of what the world could be. I say that with gospel hope. My faith tells me the future is a world in which we're all loved and valued as the humans we are. At some point, we may reach a world where bad actions are removed, but until then, we're still called to treat people like people.
Swiper gets to participate in the world of Dora, despite his propensity to swipe. He takes and hides and is cruel for no real reason, yet he's treated as one with a specific place in the system. That is not to say we need evil to emphasize good, but simply that all are welcome, all are included, all are loved. Exclusion comes from our own choice; it's not forced on us - at least in the world as it should be.
Dora might be seen as foolish. She continues to treat Swiper well, even as his presence tends to be bad news. She approaches him as if the past is no indication of the future (the story is a bit different when he approaches her, but then again, the challenge is only to his actions, not Swiper himself). I admire the lesson Dora is teaching my daughter. If we really believe that love will win, that love can change the world, it's something worth being foolish for. Dora gets that. I hope my daughter will, too.
Anyway, over the last couple of weeks, Eva's comedy has changed slightly. Now, when she's asked or is asking a question, she'll often replace one word with something else. What's your favorite food, Eva? Headbands, she'll answer, then laugh at her own joke.
I realized today, though, that this is comedy. She's figured it out. At its core, all comedy - at least spoken comedy - is saying something people aren't expecting. Everything from the classic, "Take my wife, please, take her," to Seinfeld-ian observational humor (What's the deal with airplane bathrooms...), even to vulgar or gross-out comedians (Did she just say that?), is just timing. It's saying something people don't expect. The key to being great at it is figuring out exactly the right unexpectedly thing to say at exactly the right time.
Obviously my daughter is not going to be headlining in Vegas anytime soon, but she's got all the tools.
**Yes, this was short, but it was an interesting notion, just a bit too long for a Facebook post, plus everybody loves it when they see pictures of my daughter. Win-win-win all around.
I realized in that moment, the full extent of my hopes for fatherhood. I can remember vividly, even as a teenager, seeing a young child walking with her dad, holding just one of his fingers in her hand and feeling some sense of longing or completeness. A baby grasps your finger that way from almost the first day they're alive. Grabbing is something we're pretty good at. It happens to often, I know I've come to take it for granted.
But in that moment last night, it all came back to me. There's something visceral in that little hand, the trust, the lack of pretext, which communicates something beyond words. There are a lot of fears in parenting. Mostly they stem from the inevitability of your child's life being out of your control. Things will happen to her - school will be bad one year (or ten), the neighbor kid will push her down, some jerk of a date will treat her undeservedly at prom - and there's nothing I can do about it. I wasn't prepared for those moments, when life is just impossible to figure out and you're paralyzed with what to do, but know you must do something. That's scary.
At the same time, there's the little hand, holding my finger. Even if I'd never had kids, the image, the idea of it would still echo through my mind, reaching for some part of me born to connect in that way. Reproduction is biologically ingrained within us, after all. When people ask what I think about kids, I typically tell them I'm still intellectually against the idea, even though I love the one I've got an awful lot. That answer is a vague attempt to relate with words the experience of early this morning.
Having children doesn't make much sense; there's far too much that can (and will) go wrong. But there's also something - something indescribably right - about the whole process. It's this "rightness" that drives animals to fits of rage if separated from their young and it's also what prevents neglectful, irresponsible parents from putting their kids in a situation that's better for them.*
I suppose this can all be explained scientifically, biologically - a child is vulnerable and an appeal to the self-satisfaction of a parent aids in survival. That may be true, but if we're going the way of explanation, I'll just stick with the memory of my thirty-third birthday, laying beside my daughter while she fell asleep holding my hand.
*And why I'll once again affirm that parents who do give up their kids for the kid's own good are the greatest heroes on the face of the planet.
