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Super Mom Fantasies!

Posted on by Frank
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We used to get parenting magazines delivered to the house and online P-zines delivered to my face at this laptop.  In the early, bewildering days of being a dad they seemed useful; chock full of ideas for soothing crying infants and dressing them up as vampire garden vegetables for Halloween.  A little further on and they became resources for articles on how to keep toddlers busy with yarn, Styrofoam or popsicle sticks.  But as our kids moved into preschool and beyond I found the rags on child rearing to be more and more useless – every snack recipe they printed included fucking raisins and each month they provided new variations on how to never discipline your kids.  Stopped renewing them a couple years back and I’m rarely scanning child-development articles online unless I’m caught by something asinine looking on the NY Times Health page.  Or when a friend sends me a link hoping to incite a rant.

And my friend, and cool as fuck mother of two, Caroline recently just did that:  You could click on the link if you want to read the article with its Bounty paper towel ads. But since I cut and pasted the whole thing below it’s not so necessary.  Rant follows.

“No More Time Outs – Why I’m using other ways to discipline my kids”

Stephanie Thompson

I try very hard not to give time outs to my children; I think, in general, they’re a bad idea. What better way to breed anger and resentment in one’s progeny than to stick them somewhere away from you, just at the moment they probably need you the most?

I understand the time-out tactic (or the older-kid version of sending one to one’s room) on a number of rational levels. Both parties, parent and child, often have to take a minute to compose themselves, to let the anger of the moment subside in order to have meaningful dialogue. It sometimes seems necessary, especially with three-year-olds in full tantrum mode, to put them someplace else for a time to restore the collective sanity. But it occurred to me recently, when my 7-year-old lay on his bed in misery, that I never wanted to leave him there too long, at any age. I never wanted him or his brother to have to sit with their bad mood, to build up the sad, lonely, angry thoughts that often occur to one when left to stew alone.

Isolation as punishment is a problem. Solitude of the not healthy kind is rampant in our society, and it’s easy to see why when I myself am tempted to send my children off to distant locales just because it is easier to shun them than to face the difficulty head on. But if members are not willing to stick around and tackle the issues, both families and communities can become fragmented and disjointed. It’s vital that we hug one another, even at times of upset and anger — especially at times of upset and anger.

Take the day when my older son, 9, asked me to get him a glass of water while I was in the midst of making dinner. I stood there, surrounded by obvious duties, as he calmly read Harry Potter, waiting to be waited on.

“I’m sure, darling, you can get it yourself,” I said, mustering all the sweetness I could in my voice, gesturing to the drawer right below his feet where the cups live.

“You’re lazy,” he said rudely, staring straight at me. I could see in his eyes the comment was partly in jest, but I was in no mood to joke.

“Really?” I said. “Really?”

My first impulse was to send him to his room, so I did, shuttling my now-sorry-for-the-comment son determinedly up the stairs while vociferating loudly all that I had done for him and others that day, all that I did for him and others every day.

“Are you still mad at me? Do you hate me?” he sobbed from his bed, thirty seconds into his exile.

My heart softened. “No, and No,” I said. “You can come down…”

Mad as I was, I couldn’t leave him there, crying and guilt-ridden.

He walked down the stairs and hugged me, crushed his little self into my middle desperately and then looked up at me with his big brown eyes. “I’m sorry Mommy,” he said.

“I know, Sweetie,” I said. “I’m just tired and have done a lot and I get upset when you don’t appreciate it.”

He nodded and wiped away his tears. “I know.”

The evening went well after that, everyone tip-toeing around tired Mommy, just like I like. Maybe I’m a wimp, maybe it will bite me in the behind in the long run, but lengthy sob sessions, long separations seem silly to me when a few minutes of explanation could suffice.

Yes, until your children are the age when you can actually reason with them, perhaps time outs are useful for settling everyone down. But from the minute they can really understand what you’re saying, coming back together and communicating honestly to make it work seems like such a better, if often challenging, option.

“Are you still mad at me? Do you hate me?” he sobbed from his bed, thirty seconds into his exile.

My heart softened. “No, and No,” I said. “You can come down…”

Mad as I was, I couldn’t leave him there, crying and guilt-ridden.

He walked down the stairs and hugged me, crushed his little self into my middle desperately and then looked up at me with his big brown eyes. “I’m sorry Mommy,” he said.

“I know, Sweetie,” I said. “I’m just tired and have done a lot and I get upset when you don’t appreciate it.”

He nodded and wiped away his tears. “I know.”

The evening went well after that, everyone tip-toeing around tired Mommy, just like I like. Maybe I’m a wimp, maybe it will bite me in the behind in the long run, but lengthy sob sessions, long separations seem silly to me when a few minutes of explanation could suffice.

Yes, until your children are the age when you can actually reason with them, perhaps time outs are useful for settling everyone down. But from the minute they can really understand what you’re saying, coming back together and communicating honestly to make it work seems like such a better, if often challenging, option.

Ok, beyond my stance that the phrase time out is solidly retarded, this piece falls under what I call “fiction”.  A little fantasy where the dialog, actions, props are all contrived to generate a scenario from the writer’s dreamland of minor infractions, incongruent reactions and blissful endings.  That ‘s how most of these articles go – tales of innocent children temporarily infected with rudeness saved and returned to angelic states by parents with tantrum crushing hugs and bottomless wells of love.

The premise itself is also silly.  She snapped for her kid calling her lazy in a half-joking matter? Sending a kid to solitary for that is kind of stupid.  Should any of this have happened at all my guess is that he might have done something worse that she won’t own up to.  Perhaps the cherub threw a water cup at her head or called her “FAT and lazy”.  I love how the other kids went “tip-toeing” afterwards.  They  must have been terrified: Better watch ourselves before mom goes batshit again and sticks us in lock-up for half a minute…

But, for now, we’ll ignore the bullshit nature of the article and take it seriously for a bit.  Because it does reflect a current trend in child raising – the notion that anything negative in discipline is unequivocally detrimental to the well being of your children.  Make them feel bad for doing bad things at your own peril.  Give a kid a time-out and you’re crushing his soul. Might as well tell him that he’s the stupidest child in history and put a cigarette out on his arm.  Funny that so many of these essays suggest there are better disciplinary techniques to employ yet never actually bring them up, leaving the implication that only love and endless, engaging conversations will correct all bad behaviors and lead to well balanced kids ready to inherit the earth…

Heavens to Betsy – is all of this hyper-enlightened parenting honestly working?  Take a good look around and see if things are really better.  Are all those kids raised on organic flax bread and gluten-free tit milk until they’re four looking healthier to you?  Do you notice if all the extra-sensitive parenting has been producing a more well-behaved generation?  Because I see pale little crybabies everywhere; selfish as hell and allergic to everything. And very few of them capable of saying “thank you” for the epinephrine when they’re asphyxiating from the peanut molecules which rode into the room on a latex balloon.

Discipline should have a negative aspect to it. You can’t stop a child’s tendency towards bad behavior just by telling him/her that you’d prefer he/she behaved differently.  There has to be a downside for a kid doing bad things.  Taking something away informs him that his fuck-ups can lead to personal losses. Sending him to his room gives him time to stew, feel isolated, hate your freakin’ guts and, finally, to actually think about what got him there in the first place.

Negative discipline also prepares these immunologically challenged urchins for the world they’ll enter later in life.  You need to let kids encounter some dirt and germs and allergens in order for them to build up tolerances to those things.  Likewise, if a kid has no experience with negative consequences for bad behavior she’s going to be monumentally crushed later on when she gets fired for being a lippy douchebag to her boss.  She might run home to seek the affirmations of mommy and daddy’s cuddles but my guess is they’ll be too busy drinking off their parenting failure to care. Everybody loses in the future just to ensure that the feel-good illusions of the present remain intact.

But that feel-goody present is what’s led me to suspect all this over-mollification of kids’ feelings really has more to do with parents’ emotional well-being – particularly in their need not to feel bad about themselves. With all this cuddly-wuddly stroking versus actually teaching children about prices to be paid for fucking up grown-ups dodge having to feel like bad guys. Who wants to feel that they’ve made their princess sad about her hissy fits or made their li’l slugger cry after he stabbed a cat?  Chat up a boy and get him an ice cream cone after he sets fire to the basement and one  can go on feeling like a parenting champ.  Never put kids in time out and buy them iPads when they break their iPods and you’ll all be BFF’s for years and years and years.

Well, at least until they turn thirteen.  When they’re going to hate you anyway.  And when it will be way too late to do anything about their behavior issues.

Stay Tuned for:  Huffing Airplane Glue as a Dyslexia Remedy

For Adult Disciplinary adventures get my book, Jackass On A Camel    

                                                             

Fugazi Suede – The Girl’s Got Style

Posted on by Frank
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Probably another one of my parenting fails, mainly since I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t realize that brand-consciousness could exist at such a young age or that wearing precisely the right stuff would be important for 5 year olds.  Again, I had become my mother… “jeans are jeans, Frankie,” she’d say while holding up a pair of bell-bottom Tough-Skins so close to the pile of Levi’s that “all the other kids” were wearing…

Hold it, better back this up to the back story:  Halloween ’11.  G had decided to be Juliet (The Slut of Capulet) this year.  Picked her costume out in August and stuck with it straight in to October when I finally agreed to purchase it (she has a “minor” habit of changing her mind*). What it didn’t come with was matching shoes. Just as well as costume company shoes suck, falling apart halfway through trick-or-treating.  So it was off to Target where we were bound to find some compatible footwear.  Since her costume consisted of a full length velvet dress all we needed was a pair of kicks which wouldn’t look stupid whenever they poked out from the Renaissance skirt.

Target was good to us that morning – we found shiny gold slip-ons and mauve/pancreas colored boots.  The boots got the nod and were in the cart when Elsie noticed the black boots.  They were the UGG style – suede and fleece lined in that tiring Australian oeuvre that looked lousy on arch support.  Those were the boots for her costume she said.  I didn’t think they were so on point, thematically, but she insisted.  Big deal, I thought.  Winter was coming and she’d need some warm stuff.  I threw them in the cart – kept the other ones too, convinced she’d come to her stylistic senses by the 31st.

So, Halloween:  Candy, late fall snow, cold fingers, mediocre haunted garage, blah, blah, blah.  The costume worked, black boots and all, but it ain’t the story.  Those freaking knockoff UGGs were.

They immediately became G’s favorites – easy to pull on and the squishy, comfortable fleece inside gave her an excuse not to wear socks which she’d never been cool with anyhow.  Then a few weeks past Halloween she came out with “these aren’t real UGGs are they?”  Internally I was saying, “They ain’t, thank god.  The real ones are pretty fucking expensive for stupid looking boots designed for Sherpas or Village Idiots”

“Not exactly, monkey,” I said, “Just a different brand.  Why are you asking?”

“K. and M. said they weren’t real.  They laughed”

Good goddamn – that went straight up my ass and into the “I hate all fucking children” lobe of my brain.  My seething was intense, as I’m both physically and emotionally protective of my neat little apes.  The girls crapping on G’s boots were twelve year old friends whom she adores and they laughed at a little girl’s shoes for having the wrong label?!  Grrrrrrgh, that IHAFC lobe was churning up images of tween girls choked and beaten with ugly sheepskin boots.

Obviously the pair are at that age when 90% of girls turn into vile, sneering snatches who turn on each other at the drop of a hat. And I realize that brand consciousness is huge from junior high onward but had no idea they’d turn their garment-tag derision on a kindergartener and even tease her about it.  Elsie was hurt and decided never to wear her “FUGGs” again.  WTF?  Those girls were soooo not gonna see their thirteenth birthdays…

I tried explaining that the girls hadn’t been laughing at her or trying to be mean, that they were at an age where their brains change.  They giggle all the time, no matter what they’re talking about, and they’ll say mostly stupid things for the next fifteen years… So I tried to instill the idea that brands shouldn’t matter as much as picking out stuff she liked as well as having comfy feet.  Then I realized I was talking to a girl who’s five and probably over-talking my point.  She really wanted to know if she could get some UGGs too, so I told her that if she was nicer than those pre-teen douches Santa or someone might come through for her at Christmas.

And sure enough, as my daughter is neither d-bag nor idiot, she was pretty good and her aunt & uncle got her the ones she’d picked out.  I was pretty impressed with her choice – knee high, black suede, side-zipped thingys with some dangling leather straps on each.  The kid’s got style; there was nothing UGGish about them apart from the label. Still have issues with the price tag for those little kids’ boots, but what the hell – her aunt & uncle are now extra-awesome in her eyes, she was happy, Merry X-mas, and all that good shit.

Until a week later, of course, when she came stomping in from playing to yell,

“M. & K. said these aren’t real UGGs either!!!”

Lordy, I was going to have to march down the street and punch a couple of girls in the throat. What the fuck was wrong with these kids? But my daughter wasn’t hurt this time – she was pissed.  “I showed them right here,” she said, pointing to the little label, “Those girls are freaking idiots!” That’s my girl – standing her ground AND peppering her language with mild invectives….

“That’s right,” I said, “And when you see them again, tell K. the ugly blue ones she’s been wearing for two years still look too big and that M. is too skinny for fat boots – she looks like a weed in a flower pot!”

One of the Cool Girls

Thought better of that quickly though and told her to forget what I’d said – being mean ain’t very cool.  Good enough to just point out they were wrong without being nasty back.  But it still had an effect on her – in the best possible way.  She pulled her spankin’ new UGGs off and put her old Target knock-offs on.

“I feel like wearing my FUGGs anyway,” she declared and headed back out to play.  And she’s still putting them fugazi boots on as often as the “real” ones.

Now if I can only put some of her individuality into her brother; he just started whining to ditch his pricey Reeboks for some retard/ghetto-chic DC sneakers like some of his nimrod pals…

*See the Spider Man Drama of ‘08 

Coming Next:   You’re Just Too Ugly For Mommy to Love…

I Bet Katy Perry is Naked a Lot, Dad…

Posted on by Frank
5

What I Learned from the Grammy’s with the Volume Off:

I learned that nobody knows who Chris Brown is. That became obvious from the conversation at the bar. Who is that?  I dunno.  Is that Chris Brown? It might be… Who’s Chris Brown?  

CHRIS BROWN?

I was also reminded that the music is not half as important as the size of the army convulsing behind you. Given the outlandishly retarded scale of choreography at the Grammy’s one might argue that the songs are irrelevant altoghether. I blame Michael Jackson.  Ever since “Beat It” no visual performance of a dance song can exist without four hundred drones going into seizures behind the singer.  The Dancing Extras Union must be a hell of a powerful force, because we’re talking about 30 years of exactly the same crap.

Where MJ had the trademark hand on his belt everyone else since dropped their paws a few inches.  Now the benchmark is being able to keep one arm pointing at six thirty through your crotch while leading a squadron of hopping orangutans and ducks with hip dysplasia. Are any of the ludicrous choreographies memorable?  Any particular steps notable? Nope, it’s simply silliness as a rule, and as Humpty Hump once put it: No two people will do it the same, You got it down if you appear to be in pain

Other notable revelations from Music’s Big Night –

Alicia Keyes is getting a little chunky yet still wildly hot.  But I am convinced she changes her skin tone depending on what venue she’s playing.  I’ve seen her almost fully Caucasian on the Today show and for the Grammy’s there could be no doubt that Ms. Keyes was black as she tickled the ivories next to that grizzled white hag, Bonnie Raitt.

Grammy Hammy

Adele looked nice and soulful and stuff.  Big, expressive eyes. Still, I couldn’t help but take a little sip of tequila and think “…bet Alanis Morissette can kick the snot out of that sobbing cow”

Dave Grohl is possibly the cheeriest fucker in rock. Can’t blame him, being in one of the last important bands in modern music and now fronting the cash machine that is the Foo Fighters.  I have not seen that dude break his smile ever.

All in all it was nice to have the volume off.  I’m frickin’ sick of hit songs, because my burden is no longer in having to hear an overplayed tune – I have to give thoughtful reflection to each fucking ditty because my kids listen to them. Has to be assessed as acceptable for small people’s ears before allowing it some play in the car. Gotta dig reaching those these points as parents when you become your parents.  Happens everyday, from the things that come out of your mouth (Don’t you get fresh with me, Mr. So and So…) to the weird, “purposeful” poses you strike when answering questions you don’t have the vaguest clue about.

Others are bigger, becoming factors in how you try to stay a few steps in front of your children – whether to protect them, keep them from doing idiotic things or simply to prevent them from having any fun.  Suddenly realizing that all the music kids listen to these days is crap, is one of those moments. You’ve mutated into the same repressed dipshits as your own mom and dad.

I like to delude myself. Say that it ain’t quite the same for me.  The reason today’s radio tunes are silly crap is because they really are – it has nothing to do with me being 43. Matter of fact they’ve really been stupid for decades now.  Creatively, whether we’re talking pop, rock, hip-hop or whatever the fuck “alternative” is now, the music world caught Chlamydia and went barren.  Rarely hear a female vocal which hasn’t gotten computer enhancements. Hardly any tunes which aren’t remixed melodies already made somewhere between 1963 and 2004.  So at least everything is familiar which, as an aging dude, is probably why I don’t hate it all.

What I do hate is current sexual content of Top 40.  Not that there’s so much sex content – but how blatant most of it is.  I’ve always preferred the dirty little innuendos of rock and punk.  It made it easy to play fuck-slanted songs in your room without triggering a conniption in your mother.  And it took more lyrical skill to write those songs. Once upon a time, we all knew what it meant to be “Turning Japanese” and got the full gist of both Devo’s Whip It and Prince’s Little Red Corvette.  There’s very little metaphorical masking anymore.  From Rhianna’s “S&M” to the countless Katy Perry verses which include a threesome, Top 40 is ain’t even trying for slick twists.  This sad surrender probably means we’re quickly headed towards songs with very straightforward titles.  Probably only a year or two away from a Taylor Swift song called “Fucking Billy Joe Makes Me Happy” or a maturing Justin Bieber crooning, “Can I Pork You with My Penis Tonight, Shawty”

The kids are picking up on the sex lyrics too and I loathe having to field their questions at this point. I rapidly switch stations when Rhianna or Britney Spears comes on.  I don’t even want to touch Perry’s “Futuristic Lover”.  Even though it actually aims for metaphoric sex references, the over-the-top repetitiveness makes it apparent she’s trying to get at something.  If G. catches on and finally asks, the only thing I’m gonna be able to tell her is this:  Never, ever, never have sex with aliens – it just can’t turn out good. Saw a space caterpillar get it on with an astrogirl in a movie once.  All she did was scream and get covered in worm barf…

But I don’t always successfully filter what my kids are exposed to. A Personally Monumental Faux Pas: In my attempts to mold my kids into my own idea of cool – I put Rage Against the Machine’s Ashes in the Fall on a cd mix for Jacko.  It’s a pretty great arrangement, so it was sweet to hear him cranking it up in his bedroom. Forgot all about the lyrics when I burned the song for him!  Will always remember them lucidly after hearing Zach de la Rocha in my little boy’s room growling about “the priest that fucked you as he whispered holy things…”

Oops.

Further Reading    and/or    From Coke Whore to Soccer Dad!!!