Bad Parents' Reading List.

Under the department of, "What were they thinking when they wrote this, and why didn't these characters lose their children or get arrested?" I'd like to chat about some odd stories. Feel free to add your own analysis or additional titles in the comments.

1. Green Eggs and Ham. Is it just me, or is Sam-I-Am harassing this poor unnamed chap? And does the dude get Stockholm Syndrome at the end or what? Although he was quite sure at the beginning of the book that he wouldn't like green eggs and ham in any location you could name, he suddenly LOVES them and thanks his stalker dude for going to all this trouble. It is out of control. Stockholm, I'm telling you. The Sam-I-Am guy runs over people with cars and presents mice and goats to him as suitable tablemates. Fer real.

2. The Clifford series. They let their grossly oversized dog roam all over the neighbourhood, causing havoc. Why is the dog-catcher or the National Guard not doing something about this dangerous animal? Just its poop alone is enough to cause a neighbourhood nuisance, nevermind what would happen if the animal got overzealous and rolled over onto someone. This is not a normal family, folks. This is some sick animal husbandry sponsored by Monsanto or something. I dunno.

3. No list would be complete without the Cat in the Hat series. WHY is Mother out and what is up with the strange guy in the outlandish hat? Every time I read this, I keep thinking the Mother should NOT be leaving her children alone and where is CPS at a time like this?

I suppose from a Freudian perspective, Mother is the absentee parent who only vaguely figures into the story (as in, "What would Mother say?"). It is also notable that the father's conspicuously absent, although he has $10 shoes just lying around in the closet. $10 was a lot of money back in the days this was written, but somehow? They couldn't afford a babysitter.

The fish. The fish is the superego, right??

Apparently, though - thanks, google - there are a whole series of lessons on how The Cat in the Hat incorporates the themes of id, ego and superego. Really. I got something like 10 pages of search results. Maybe the fish really is the superego.)

4. There are probably about 50 others. The plotline of We're Going on a Bear Hunt book Rose brought home from the children's library at the preschool demonstrates extremely poor parental judgment throughout. Just imagine taking an infant and a toddler on a bear hunt with no rifle, and traipsing through the river, the mud and the snow without appropriate protective gear. The incompetence is astounding.

But anyway, there are probably a good 50 more books out there with wackadoodle parenting. I don't get why many of the truly funny and cute books for little children seem to be so... emm - twisted? - when you think about them. I'm sure there is some psychoanalytic website that covers the "howcome," but I guess I didn't type in the right search words.

You Get Nothing.

"Disinheritance hurts.

"My father never visited the grave of his father, I have never been to my father’s grave . . . and my sister’s children have not yet been to their mother’s grave. It’s nearly impossible to 'pay your respects' to someone whose last message to you is, 'I didn’t love you or value you.'" Article.

On the one hand, it's just stuff. Stuff doesn't matter in the big scheme of things and often not getting the stuff we think we deserve can bring up the feelings of jealousy and pain we shouldn't even have.

Your stuff belongs to you, and when you die, you are not obligated to give me one little penny in your will. Now mind you, it would be NICE if we're good friends or family that you leave me a small something, a momento, a wish-you-well parting gift just because you can't take it with you. I would appreciate that, but I don't think it's my *right* to receive it. How about this: use up every penny except burial expenses. Then there is nothing left to fight about. Sounds good to me.

I'm sure the parents had their reasons for giving all their stuff to one particular child or skipping certain people. I don't know every blogger and advice column writer personally, so I can't say that the "reason" is necessarily vindictiveness. It might be. Most people aren't like that, though.

"When our mother died, my sister and I never had a harsh word. My mother had been cared for by my sister. My mother had asked me if I would be upset if she left the house to my sister. Now, this was not the trump tower, but I shared with her that I thought that was the caring thing for her to do. My sister had spent many hours taking my mother to the medical center, doctor's offices, and many nights returning to relight the furnace. When my sister and I were cleaning out mother's house, we had a really good time. It was just the two of us... I am sure our mother was aware of us and appreciated our respect. My sister has since died, and I still think of that night." (readsalot212, from the article)

Waah!

Presently, our will is set up in such a way that each of our living children will receive equal shares of whatever we have. It may be that in the future that we will have to amend that. Some of our children are handicapped and may get more or less depending on the tax law or whatever when we get closer to the time... you know. For now, the "custody" base is covered: all minor children will be shipped off to New York to live in a three-bedroom house with my brother and his wife and the several cousins they don't know. I'm sure it would drive everyone crazy, but it's the best plan I can make on my budget, so my husband and I had better not die any time soon.

The Style. The Look.

Patrick loves these pants. Actually he has about six pairs of pants. They are all the same size, same brand, same colour. Seriously. His dad is the same way, but ol' Dad needs to buy new pants for work (same brand, same colour) when his old ones show signs of extreme wear. I got tired of Patrick putting mailing tape all over his pants at school and having people feel sorry for him. He must have come up with some odd story to tell his teachers that they would have sympathy for him and give him an entire roll of mailing tape AND a bit of masking tape so that he could make a smiley face on top of his knee.
*
I SWEAR I asked him if he would like some new pants and shirts before the beginning of the school year. He said no, reasoning (correctly!) that I would take the old and ratty ones and throw them in the trash. Well. He didn't quite phrase it that way, but still. As you can see, I at least don't want him walking about with gaping holes over the winter and patched these up as best I could. Who thinks Patrick should ask his mom for three new pairs of pants? I mean, Mom orders these things on the internet, just type in the same size as always and *zing* order complete. Would YOU go to school like this to save your mom $25?

Yet More School Stories.

Elf isn't doing so badly. I'm letting him flounder and figure it out for himself. It looks like every now and then, though, he might need a little hint about what to say and do.

I've been asking him to do things like tell me the names of two other students this week, and tell me what people are talking about in the lunchroom, and tell me about what you are saying in class, and all sorts of things like that. It worked very well in Mr. McC's class last year. He eventually learnt the names of six other children and was able to even tell me a little bit about a few of them. This year, not so well.

At least he does seem to want to talk to me about things. But he's making more than a few social mistakes. One of the teachers had an "icebreaker" sort of conversation a bit ago and went around the room asking each of the children what they were doing over the weekend. Elf's response? "None of your business."

Yeahhh, he has been coached that next time, "I'd prefer not to talk about it," or "Can I please skip my turn?" would have been better answers. The teacher also had a "discussion" about "respectful behaviour" as well.

Or this. Elf has figured out that table "18" has the best conversations. They don't have very interesting chats at 15, Elf told me. It got pretty boring there, and Elf wanted to (I guess??) talk about something else.

"Could you please spice this conversation up a little bit?" he asked them. "My mom wants to know alll about the things we talk about here, and I don't want to have to give her a bad report."

Can you believe this approach didn't work?? Can you? Things just don't work out for this kid and he's trying to figure out why. So. He can go to "table 18" on W days or something like that. They have the best conversations. One of the things they do is play some sort of "pass the expired milk carton" game and another is to discuss which food is the nastiest and plan a large "last day of school" food fight. I'm now cluing Elf in to the fact that the last day of school is NOT a good day to sit with the people at "table 18."

Patrick is trying to teach him to say "Yo Mama said so" at the table as a good way to socialize. I dunno, I guess that's what the high school kids do, so maybe it will be avant-garde at the middle school. I remember hearing this "Your mama" thing in college. One fellow from the 'hood just threw, "Yo mama so fat she breaks chairs" or somesuch into the conversation. MYYYY, was I insulted. I told him he didn't know my mother, and how dare he? He thought this was all HILARIOUS and started in on other Mama being fat jokes. I told him for his information that my mother lost QUITE A BIT OF WEIGHT on Nutri/System, so that just shows how much he knows.

Rolling, he was.

Watch Your Kid.

Sarita Holzmann made an offhand remark on extracurricular activities at a homeschooling convention. One listener felt freed.

"She explained that she had just come from another session where the speaker said she should never put her children in extracurricular activities. He had said that good homeschool moms keep their children with them at all times."

"I know that different approaches work for different families. And many do well with no outside activities. But when I had my kids at home, a select few extracurricular activities provided a great blessing to my family and those around us."

Umm... Sarita is too kind to the other speaker. Or maybe this is why *I* am not a speaker at these things. I'da said that barring some unusual circumstance, this whole idea of never letting your kid out of your sight is really wack after he turns about 3 or 4. "Good homeschool moms keep their children with them at all times??" Do those words jump off the page to anyone else but me? Nevermind the extracurricular activity thing a sec.

I'm not saying that leaving your kid in day care 50 hours a week when he turns six weeks old is a great idea if you can help it, either, but wow. This is not normal, folks. It almost sounds like someone is afraid the child will get away and start talking, really talking, about what is going on at home. I mean, read this. Imagine yourself as a child in a family where all the children have to be in the room with Mom and she spanks your siblings when they misbehave. You also get spanked when you are naughty right in front of everyone. Notice there is no time limit on this little session or guidelines on when to stop slapping. Well, let me correct that. I guess this torture session goes on and on until the kid learns to mind. (I hope not!)

And maybe the home discussed here is a very nice one and things never get truly awful. Maybe the people who write these things have generally more compliant children and things never got out of control. I don't know... I just think to myself that encouraging someone to 1. keep her children with her at all times, no matter how frustrated she is; and 2. administer corporal punishment for misbehaviour, is practically begging for someone, somewhere, to snap. I think having friends to call on to take your child when you're about to lose it is a good thing. I think having someone your child could build a relationship with outside your family is a good thing.

Not that our family has any of those things and I am speaking down to anyone else who can't find it. When Elf began public school, he was locked in a closet by staff. Don't tell me it's homeschool parents who are abusive; it can be anyone. I homeschooled Elf for several years and he is now attending a different school that we trust. I also stopped allowing my children to go to Sunday School not because I want to "tomato stake" or anything like that, but because the children's pastor restrained my son. This pastor then refused to sit down with me and make a plan about what to do or take any training whatsoever. People like that do not get my child and I don't care what spiritual title they have.

So, I do understand keeping your child with you always if you have to or if no one wants to have compassion on your family. I do. But like Sarita, I think it's a good idea to let your children out of your sight every now and then if you can reasonably trust the adult in charge. I would love for my children to have friends they can visit with or even activities that don't always involve *Mom.* Why not??

Monroi

Emperor's new Monroi! This handy-dandy (and $400) device replaces the old pen and paper "notation sheet." On the Monroi, you tap the pieces and enter the moves. You can see in the top picture that on this game, we're on move number 5 in which white moves a pawn to the d3 square, and black moves bishop to g4. We don't quite have the hang of it yet, but it will eventually make notating so much easier. No need to get the board out, move the pieces around and *try* to decipher what Emperor has written. It will make his private coaching minutes ($$) more effective because going over his games will be much faster.

More School Tales

Here's a story Elf told me, pretty much verbatim:

Something exciting happened at school yesterday. It was awesome. In Communication Arts (English), Mrs. P is really really scared of SPIDERS. And guess what? There was a big egg sac under her cabinet and we got to see all the spiders come out of the eggs! It was AMAZING. And Mrs. P got upset because there were HUNDREDS of tiny li'l baby spiders and they all crawl everywhere, all ways at once and under things. Some of them went into her desk and lots went around the room and into our desks and some were going into her supply closet and getting into the books.

Mrs. P gave everyone paper towels and rulers and told them to squash the spiders instead of reading today. We didn't see any mommies and daddies spiders but these spiders were light brown. (Listening to the story, they sound like poisonous BROWN RECLUSE spiders.) Mrs. P called the custodian RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF CLASS and he moved projectors and other things around. They found lots of dead mommy and daddy spiders and they were brown, the big kind you are scared of. (Brown recluse? Oh yayy.)

I know Mrs. P had a bad day but it was SO FUN to watch all the spiders hatch and then go hunting for them in class.

(Here I asked him about the bus.)

On the bus, I know I am the last stop. The bus driver told me when to get off after I got lost that first time. I am listening to all the words everyone says because I want to hear *swear words.* So far what I hear is a lot of yelling and someone said "crap." They're yelling about something I don't get. They are also talking about things I don't know about. I sit in the front and the bus driver talks to me a lot but I don't understand what he is talking about. I am trying to be polite and listen carefully but everything is confusing.