Santa Is Watching….

For all of the rush and hassle that has become of the commercialism of the Holidays, I must say that Christmas is one of the best parts of having young children.  There is nothing like the shine in their eyes throughout December, or the magic that happens once you light the tree for the first time of the year.   The house is filled with the smells of holiday baking and every one is a little extra nice.  Well, maybe not that last part.  But that is where the real magic of the season lies.  Santa.  Santa is the greatest motivator of all time.  Tony Robbins has got nothing on Saint Nick.  The mere mention of the big guy (not Tony Robbins, though I hear he’s quite tall) can get my kids to do just about anything.  Not only does Santa motivate, he also disciplines.  If my kids are fighting, (hey when aren’t they) I just have to mention that Santa is watching.  But that’s when my four year old had to point out that he didn’t see Santa, so how could Santa see him.  That’s when I had to inform him that while he was at school, elves came to our house and installed hidden cameras that broadcast his actions at the North Pole.  These cameras are not only at our house, but also at restaurants, shopping centers and most other public locals.  Often, if rotten activity is detected, an elf calls our house (via the ringer button on the telephone) and points out this ill behavior and reminds us of the consequences.  True, this won’t work the other eleven months out of the year, but, for now, Big Brother Santa is watching.

Too Much Education Too Early?

I’ve had two recent discussions lately that centered around the idea that parents today push their little kids too hard and expect too much of them, too young. The first was with my mother and law. Now she is no fan of education to be sure. She hated school and, frankly, two of her three children are the picture of what happens when you denigrate education: They are both under-achievers who don’t read and also don’t see the value of an education. Her son was the one child who went against his parents’ wishes and left home for college. He is a successful testament to the power of education. My mother in law was arguing against full day kindergarten. In fact, she doesn’t think kids should be in preschool. “They start too young, they are just babies, why do they need to learn how to write when they are three?” “A full day is too much for a five year old! Poor little thing!” Uh, well, they learn to write when they are three so they can learn to read when they are four or five and um, a full day is okay for a six year old? But I took this whole discussion with a grain of salt; considering the source and so on.

However, today I had a very intelligent, educated, well-read friend (no kids and no desire; one of those wonderful aunt types) say that she feels every parent she meets today is pushing their kid to be a prodigy of sometime, putting them in rigorous tutoring programs in preschool and getting them every educational toy on the market to try to have the brightest kid around. I admit that this perspective surprised me, coming from her. I see all extremes, not a trend towards kids being under too much academic pressure. Heck, I met a mom the other day whose child didn’t learn to write his name until he got to kindergarten and now she’s worried he’s going to end up in remedial classes since it never occurred to her he’d need to know any of this stuff before getting to school.

I grew up in a house with no TV and parents who focused a good deal of attention on my academic ability, even before I was in any kind of school. I could read, write, and do basic addition when I got to kindergarten. I certainly aspire to my daughter doing the same (if not better, don’t we all want that?).  At the same time, I’d never considered more extreme measures to do it than those of my parents: notebooks, attention, learning through natural curiosity.

I invested in one of those first-grade writing notebooks with the big spacing and the colored lines as well as larger pencils that are easier for little hands to grasp. Sometimes I write things for her (Dear Santa…) and she traces my words with a highlighter. I also let my daughter choose a workbook from Boarders that has turned out to be something she asks to do almost every day. I follow the advise on the book and limit her to a couple of pages a day so that she ends wanting more and I wait for her to ask to do it; it isn’t an assignment. We’ve just finished the first one–Kumon’s book of Uppercase letters–and she chose the book of numbers 1-30 for her next workbook. Maybe it is more than she really needs to be doing right now. But I can see that she knows I value it, and she values the time and attention it gets her, so I’m as optimistic that it will pave the way for a love of learning as I am that it will help her better learn how to write her letters and numbers. I know from my own experience that there are the values of our parents that we embrace and those we reject… and that both help shape who we become.

Gender Fender Bender

I’m not what you’d call a girly-girl. Never have been. Also don’t often get confused with a guy; could be the plentiful hair & boob combo. I wear dresses occasionally and skirts mostly in the summer, when it is too hot for jeans. I work in a male-dominated area of publishing, I love gadgets, I snowboard… And my husband is also (not surprisingly since he married me) not all into “traditional” gender roles. His hair is longer (and curlier) than mine and he digs that we enjoy going to car shows together.

So why, oh why does my three year old not want to wear anything other than a dress and tights (leggings will not do!)? Why is it a punishment to ask her to wear jeans? Why did she want a bra so badly–ya, that’s right, I said a bra–that I had to go out and get her some lovely camisoles and tell her they are the little girl equivalent? The other day we were at Amanda’s and my daughter was wearing her favorite wee camisole that features Cinderella and I prompted her to show it to Amanda (hey, we’re all girls here) and after cooing that it was, in fact, adorable Amanda wisely wondered why on earth such a thing exists. Uh, because 3 year old girls who only get to watch about 30 minutes of TV a day, none of which includes the Bratz or MTV, are asking for them, that’s why!

The hyper-feminine child thing isn’t really a problem, I suppose. Except, perhaps, for weather- and certain activity-related issues. And I shouldn’t pout over the adorable cords or other pants I’ve bought, which sit idol in my daughter’s drawer. More than anything, I’m just baffled. We parents may think we influence these things, but I wonder how much we do. Perhaps I am influencing her in subtle ways or maybe it is all the positive feedback she gets from friends and strangers alike when she’s wearing a dress. In any case, there won’t be any pants under the tree this year; I got the word out to Santa that we’ve got a girly-girl in our house. Of course I just may be able to get her into snow pants to use that snowboard she asked Santa for…

Illuminating Sesame Street’s Dark Past

A friend of mine shot me a link to an article examining Sesame Street through a pair of today’s politically-correct glasses. Based around the release of the show’s original episodes on DVD, Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times writes about her surprise when viewing the first disc at being met with the warning: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Say what?

Heffernan writes a splendidly tongue in cheek take on what is “wrong” with these old episodes, including such scandalous subjects as a lost lonely girl taking the hand of a strange man and going back to his house for milk & cookies with his wife while her mother is located; a character not only smoking a pipe, but then eating it; and of course, the biggest shock of all: the presence of grumpy characters! No “Prozacky Elmo” types, as she describes today’s painfully cheery regulars. Wow, how traumatic for kids to find out that once you could ask someone to help you find the way home, that some people smoke, and that (gasp), it might be okay to be grumpy once and a while, rather than medicate any unpleasantness away. Sunny Days indeed.