Tag: kids

Fisherland

Oh, it feels good to be on the cutting edge.

The other day, I read about a new sort of free-form playground in Wales, where kids apparently play with garbage and light fires, with adult approval. It’s meant to correct modern parents’ tendencies to shelter their children from every possible bump, bruise, and tumble, and to teach them to assess risk on their own.  It’s called “The Land.” According to an article in The Atlantic:

The ground is muddy in spots and, at one end, slopes down steeply to a creek where a big, faded plastic boat that most people would have thrown away is wedged into the bank. The center of the playground is dominated by a high pile of tires that is growing ever smaller as a redheaded girl and her friend roll them down the hill and into the creek …

It’s still morning, but someone has already started a fire in the tin drum in the corner, perhaps because it’s late fall and wet-cold, or more likely because the kids here love to start fires. Three boys lounge in the only unbroken chairs around it; they are the oldest ones here, so no one complains … Nearby, a couple of boys are doing mad flips on a stack of filthy mattresses, which makes a fine trampoline. At the other end of the playground, a dozen or so of the younger kids dart in and out of large structures made up of wooden pallets stacked on top of one another.

Here’s a picture of The Land:

 

PIC The Land

Despite not being in Europe, we’ve been experimenting with something similar on our property. At the risk of appearing pretentious, we refer to it as “The Yard.” Here’s a recent photo, featuring one of my courageous and confident children:

I don’t tend to hover over her, suppressing her natural inquisitiveness, because I’m afraid she will stab me.

Speaking of cutting edge: seriously, give that kid some space. She will cut you.

The Yard isn’t the only area place where we allow children to naturally innoculate themselves against adult phobias. Most modern bathrooms. monitored by paranoid, over-anxious helicopter parents, are unnaturally sterile and barren places, where cleaning happens daily and natural playthings such as toilet paper, wet toilet paper, and turds, are discarded, rather than cherished as the instruments of adventure. But our bathroom — “The Crapper,” we’ve dubbed it — was shaped by the children who attend it. Which is why I hold it in all day and use the gas station bathroom whenever I can.

One popular feature in The Crapper is a set of three broad planes (some refer to them as “walls,” but we think of them as “canvases”) where children can express their creativity in tactile and olfactory ways. The commercial colors of the toy aisle are banished in favor of the time-honored palate of yellow and brown.  In The Crapper, our children also learn about physics:  will the toilet flush when there is a copy of This Rock in the bowl? How about all the copies of This Rock? How about your little sister? Yes, here is a place of learning.

We also have an area called The Boys’ Room. I don’t want to talk about that, though.

 

The only drawback is that we are having a hard time keeping the professionally trained playworkers around. They show up all bright-eyed with their gum boots and their sweaters with wooden toggles on them, ready to let children be children; but within hours, they’re nowhere to be found, leaving only a small pool of blood behind them. I ask the kids what happened, and they say they didn’t know. One kid did hear a hoarse cry that sounded like “such a thing as bad kids after all,” but other than that, it’s a mystery.

Overall, we are pleased with the results. Our children show no sign of being hobbled by phobias about hygiene or safety. On nights when Daddy works late, they are hardly even appear human.  And we have our philosophy of unstructured play and child-led inquisitiveness to thank. I can only hope that other American parents will follow our lead. Or at very least, drop some of those lawsuits.

At the Register: A Little About Catechesis of the Good Shepherd

I’m working on a fuller article for the future, but here is a little introduction to one of the greatest gifts we’ve encountered in our parish: Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

At the Register: The Evil Child’s Guide to Holy Week

Parents say “Holy Week”; kids hear “Whatcha got?”

Springtime in New Hampshire

We’ve been stuck inside for a long, long time, and tempers can flare

and maybe we don’t feel as sorry as we should

but then Mama calls us in for supper

and we run right in

or at least we try.   (Yes, I actually had to get her unstuck. That mud is not fooling around!)

P.S. No sisters were harmed in the making of this photodrama.  But they did get muddy.  Really, rea

Mary said “Fanks”

PIC annunciation

From John Herreid, here’s a painting I’ve never seen before:

 

The Annunciation by Master of the Retable of the Reyes Católicos (15th century)

Here is a detail, showing the Word of God proceeding from the mouth of the Father:

Cross already in hands. Oh, Mary.

And a short interview with my daughter, who is almost 5. I am not sure why the conversation started with a discussion of her rabbit Daffodil’s  eating habits; and YES I fluffed at least two opportunities to clear up theological misunderstandings. But around 2:53, she says something that never occurred to me before, but I bet she’s right:

After the angel told her she would have a child, and He would be Son of the Most High, she said . . . “Thank you.”

Cisgendered Bears and Other Horrible Things That Have Happened to My Mommy Brain

A few weeks ago, a mom of my acquaintance got The Three Little Bears from the library, but was irritated to discover that the story had been bowdlerized for 21st century sensitivities.  Gone were the heteronormative Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. Instead, we just had three genderinoffensive bears, one big, one medium, and one small. What. A. Crock.

PIC three bears Galdone

 

But when she posted a picture, I thought, Wait, that’s got to be Paul Galdone, who has been illustrating for a lo-o-o-ong time. I looked it up, and sure enough, this version of The Three Bears came out in 1972. Definitely post sexual revolution, but hardly an era when devious children’s illustrators were stretching the definition of family — at least not in mainstream children’s books.

Following a hunch, I did some quick research, and discovered that the “Three Bears” story was first written down by Robert Southey in 1837, and — lo and behold, the original version was about three male bears. I don’t think they were some kind of transgressive, tradition-flouting bears shacking up in the woodsy version of Castro Street. They were just three bears trying to deal with porridge in the way that they thought best.

PIC three bears Southey

 

Now, I don’t blame the original mom for thinking there was something hinky going on. We really do have to be on constant alert for hidden and not-so-hidden agendas driven by people we wouldn’t trust to boil an egg for us, much less teach our kids what is normal and what is not.  At the same time, being on constant alert can make us a little nutty, and we begin to see bogeymen in every corner,

PIC Francis afraid

 

when sometimes it’s really just your chair with a robe hanging on it in a sinister way.

When I read books that are 25 years old or more, I play a little game:  I scan the illustrations and text to see if anything would jump out at the typical concerned mom if it were written today. Look for it, and you’ll find quite a lot! I’m not even talking about deliberate naughty easter eggs that they’re assuming most people will miss, like what the obviously drunk animators snuck into the backgrounds of ancient Bugs Bunny cartoons

PIC Looney Tunes with porno poster

 

I’m just talking about things that people didn’t used to flip out about, because there wasn’t any real threat of a concerted, deliberate effort to change children’s ideas of what is normal (or the threat was in its earliest stages). Lots of topless people, bottomless people, guys who may or may not be super gay, and so on. These things pepper old kid’s books for decades, and no one batted an eye.  People simply didn’t used to be on high alert at all times.

All that being said, I’m not sure what to make of a strange and hilarious book we just found:  Monsters by Russell Hoban (who, speaking of a chair with a robe on it, did the wonderful Frances books) and illustrated by Quentin Blake.

It’s a funny little story about a boy — maybe eight years old — who likes to draw monsters (and oh my gosh, the illustrations are perfect-o):

His mother asks him whether he wouldn’t like to draw other things — “houses, trees, birds, and animals” — but he is only interested in drawing monsters.

All of John’s monsters were violent.  They fought with passing strangers and random spacecraft and they fought with one another, and if they found themselves alone they made threatening noises to themselves while waiting for somebody ugly to turn up.
‘GNGGHHHHH!’ they said, “NNARRRGH!” and “XURRRVVV!”

He reassures his worried parents that he is fine, getting along with his teachers fine, getting along with the other kids fine.  One day he begins to draw a monster that is really big — in fact, he can only get parts of its huge, bristly monstrous tail on a sheet of paper. This one “somehow seems more serious than the others.”  The parents are worried, but the art teacher reassures them that “Boys are naturally a little monstrous.” They go to the doctor, who prescribes a pill, and tells them to come back if the drawings keep coming. Which they do.

I won’t give away the end, but the doctor gets what he’s got coming, and the boy ends up feeling much better.

Now, if this book had come out in 2014, Russell Hoban would be served with a lawsuit from Gloria Allred, his cause would irritably championed by Camille Paglia, and Tony Esolen would be offering him a home cooked meal drenched in a gravy of tears of rage and sorrow, and Matt Walsh would be saying something that is sorta kinda true, but making it sound so baboonishly false that you want to disown yourself for even halfway agreeing with him.

It would have been a thing, you see, a big thing about how boys are treated, how their natural masculinity is medicated into oblivion, and what monstrous things will eventually happen when boys are not allowed to be boys, or what it is that we are saying to girls by not saying that they are naturally a little monstrous, and so on. But the book is from 1991, when we were still teetering on the brink of Always Being Hysterical All the Time About Everything Especially, ESPECIALLY, What We Are Teaching Our Children.

Uphhh, I’m just so tired. So tired of having to figure out what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate, what’s sending the wrong message, what’s playing into the whole “sending the wrong message” nonsense, and so on. It’s almost a relief to know that kids tend to remember things you weren’t even aware of telling them, and they forget the things you all but tattooed into the inside of their eyelids.

Anyway, I really like Paul Galdone, because he always draws pictures of what is actually going on in the story; and I really like Russell Hoban, because he really remembers what it’s like to be a kid. Thus endeth my analysis. I’m gonna go draw some monsters.

My goober valentines

As requested, here are pictures of the finished valentines my kids prepared to give out today(although it turned out to be yet another snow day):

 

And here is the valentine mailbox my son made:

I’m so proud.  Yes, we carefully screen and censor the few episodes of Futuramathey’re allowed to watch!  I’m not altogether thrilled that Bender is such a captivating role model for them; but at least they laugh when my husband says, “OK, kids. It’s 9:00.  You know what that means: Daddy’s sick of looking at you, so go to bed..”

As for the adult plans, we are (as I mentioned) watching House of Cards and eating the rest of the chocolate I bought. He likes the gross gooey ones, and I like the gross fruity ones. And that’s why you need two people in a marriage.

In which my kids make Valentine’s Day weird and creepy

We’ve been doing 3-D lollipop valentines for the last few years. Here is how it turns out when a normal family does this project:

PIC 3D lollipop valentine

 

Cute, eh? It is easy:

1. Take a picture of your kid extending a fist toward the camera.  Leave some blank space in the background for the lollipop and message.

2. If you like, photoshop a greeting onto the image.  If you are alert, you will remember how to paste things in with a transparent background; and if you care, you will be able to talk your kids out of choosing tacky images.  (This year, I was neither alert nor did I care.)

3. Print out enough photos for the class.  We use Walmart’s photo service – turns out fine.

4. Using an Exacto knife, make a slit above and below (or on both sides of) the fist.  Insert a Dum-Dum or other lollipop through the slits, so it looks like the kid is holding a giant lollipop, and tape the stick in place on the back of the photo.

Here is what we have so far this year (before getting prints and inserting lollipops):
one standard (?) lollipop holder:

 

one kid who wants to have the dog holding the lollipop in his mouth:

one kid who is just a crumb:

and one kid who wants to have the lollipop going in one ear and out the other:

I’m sure the school misses the old days, when we were new and paranoid and sure that everyone would be judging us, so we tried extra hard to seem like decent people.

Speaking of parents as primary educators of children. . .

I’ll be speaking about parents as primary educators of their children on the Son Rise Morning Show this Friday morning.  Seven of my children will be at school, and the other two will be watching Dinosaur Train.  The baby will be yelling, ‘WHERE ‘DUC-TER????” every time the Conductor goes off the screen.  The dog will be pawing frantically at the door of my bedroom, where I do radio interviews, because the only, only, only way he wants to spend his time these days is playing Lonely Dog Rodeo on top of my bed.  He weighs 140 pounds and is not allowed on my bed, but he tries.

Catch the excitement here, Friday, around 8:50.

At the Register: Are You Raising Your Kids?

Take a squint at how you’re raising your kids.  The general impression should be “up, up, up.”