Lizards and Siblings and Sugar Rushes, Oh My!

A child’s birthday party is now an occasion for some time away from the responsibilities. It is not the oasis that a child’s stretch at the grandparents can be, but it is a break to dawdle in a cafe for a few hours. The conversation gets to be distracted and meander wherever it wishes rather than aim to be inordinately adult. The parties are becoming a recurring visit with the same characters, snapshots of parents only known by their children’s names. A drop-off to get a sense of how close to the template the occasion is, a moment to get reacquainted and perhaps ensure contact info has been shared or updated and then the next few hours proceed.

If the party goes well, the kids let you know that they’d love to do that themselves. Over the past six years there have been gymnastics parties, indoor playgrounds, Chuck E Cheese, zoo visits, baking your own pizzas, a visit to a fish hatchery and the occasional family-hosted games efforts. Our variations on the theme included a science-oriented party where kids could make their own slime and do experiments with dry ice. (It did actually go over well because rather than despite the slime. With the kids, anyway.) Today’s party featured lizards and amphibians. 

Despite our impulse to cringe at the thought, we were intrigued and Gabriel was all in. Our arrival was a quick refresher on the familiar themes: the harried final preparations; the awkwardness amongst the kids about gifts before there was a designated place to deposit them; the uninvited 3-year-old sibling who has turned up for every classmate’s birthday party for the last 12 to 18 months. (I don't believe anyone has had the nerve to tell the children's father that only one of the kids was invited.) A more recent wrinkle in our party preparations is the dubious trust we place in Gabriel when he insists he knows the right present for his friend. Okay, but I was wary about his insistence that Ninja-go Lego was the ideal gift for the birthday girl. When getting the gift with him the day before I forgot to get a gift receipt, which probably earned me the standard disapproving sigh issued in all instance of paternal indifference, "Men."

Ahh, onto the lizard man.

He arrived in a pick up with his menagerie stashed in two Rubbermaid containers, one of which had holes punched in it for ventilation. My first thought was the resemblance - in both appearance and demeanour - the man bore to a lumbering, monosyllabic neighbour. 

He settled in and perched his containers on one of the fold-out tables that the community centre was replete with. With the preparations were completed in the next room and the kids streamed in one-by-one, he sat with arms crossed in front of the two empty benches the kids would perch upon for the showing of the animals. Terse would sum up his demeanour. He would pose no threat to Jack Hanna's reputation for charming audiences. Once the kids settled in, he gruffly insisted on silence to not disturb the animals by being too loud. I was left to wonder if he had the animals merely so he could insist on silence in every possible situation. "I have geckos here!! Shut up!", he could likely wail to neighbours who broached his tolerance for decibels. He did not quite go that far, but his opening statement expressing his requests for proper behaviour included an extended treatise on the difference between stories and anecdotes, which would start with "Once I..." or "My mommy...," and questions, which started with "Who, What, When, Where and Why." He would answer the questions. I decided to play it safe and forego asking, "How old" and "How big" questions. The distinction between questions and anecdotes had, I suspected, more to do with the one nerve the birthday brood of six-year-olds was standing on rather than the noise sensitivities of the reptilian.

Needless to say, the lizards and toad bridged the gap their handler was reluctant to broach. After the kids had the opportunity to see their first gecko, toad and snake of the morning, I concluded the handler was not going to get much friendlier or more talkative. Gabriel was caught up in the textures and wonder of each creature and tea beckoned. I took my opportunity to slip away.

At party's end, the adults agreed that the animal handler left them wanting for something more. I felt that he was more frightening that the animals could have possibly been. So far Gabriel hasn't expressed a desire for the same gent to do the party for his 7th birthday and the birthday girl's mother added that her daughter had actually gotten into LEGO Ninjago thanks to Gabriel's influence and that it was better for her than Barbie dolls. 

And for those things I am thankful.

Fear and Loathing the School Lunch (Break?)

With my son in the school system now, I am participating regularly in the monthly school council meetings. On Wednesday night my presence as one of the two dads that regularly attend meetings earned me a welcome greeting from the school principal as I came in. By name. (I suppose it is a safe time for principals to know me by name. Right?)

The meeting was similar to previous meetings that I had attended. Familiar topics were covered but an interesting one came up this time around: the length of the school lunch break. It turns out that the students only have a 20-minute break for lunch and at that point it is time for the kids to get outside for a bit of playground time before launching into the afternoon. One of the parents raised the concern after volunteering to join the kids for a visit to City Hall.  During the tour the kids were asked about whether or not they composted food and from that discussion it came out that the kids are composting a good portion of their school lunches because they don't have time to eat. From what I could gather from the discussion, the lunch break is limited, in part, out of deference to the school bus schedules that require the school day to wrap up at a time that squeezes the rest of the day to a degree that limits the flexible use of time throughout the day.

My son only attends school in the mornings at this point, but it still caused me some concern. For all of the signs that the school is doing creative progressive things with the way they are teaching the kids and engaging them in other topics and issues - whether it is in merely retaining a music program for the kids or making empathy a theme for the kids to discuss and learn - there is the niggling feeling that the institutional machinery will impose itself.

It is easy to get your back up against the bureaucracy or other efficiencies that schools embody for the sake of educating kids in the way that they do. I could also crank up my anxieties in the way I could when I had the sense that the system was no better than the most disengaged teacher and that the needs for control over the kids, numeric assessment or measurement of performance, a limited range of perception of children's abilities and interests... I could go on.

But... lunch break?

The impression I got from the discussion was that the length of school lunch -- 20 minutes of eating time -- was a matter that the school administration was aware of and that they just had to come up with the best, most flexible solution. Still, they are hemmed in by the school bus schedule which ultimately sets the tone for the the beginning, end and lunch of the day. The questions this scheduling raises are significant. How structural is this problem? How many people, how up with the school board need to be involved in resolving it? Does the principal have the autonomy to come up with a solution that aligns with what an education ought to be and what our schools were built for? The answer to a lot of these questions may be nothing more than, "Well... uh...," unless of course the suits manage to find the right track to do platitude karaoke to.

There is, granted, a dilemma in the question of how long kids ought to have for a school lunch. The goal is to get the kids fed and given some outdoor time during the time allowed for lunch and ensure that the day ends when it is supposed to. In all of that, there appears to be a lot of rigidity. I would not want me son to have all the time in the world to dawdle through lunch, but at the same time I would not want him hitting the wall in the early afternoon and being less able to learn because he did not have enough time for lunch. While I would respect some expectations that he take responsibility for feeding himself promptly, there is the lingering anxiety about his routine being regimented or mechanized and lunch being the thin edge of the wedge that contributes more than it ought to school success.

I have told myself from the outset that it will be up to me to help my son succeed in school and not to leave it entirely up to him and his teachers to determine what he learns or what skills he develops there. The lunch issue is one example of how the System can -- intentionally or not -- demand conformity in the face of cumbersome short and long-term consequences. At this point I feel that the people I would be working with at the school will want to come up with the creative solutions and I will have to figure out how to counter this and come up with ideas and solutions that may resolve this when my son, who is easily distracted from his food at the best of times, faces that time squeeze September.

The Bicambrial S-Shaped Snow Fort

The east wing of the project, after about
45 minutes of construction

A meander through Riley Park was aimed at a stay in the playground, something to postpone the inevitable request to sit in front of the TV on a sunny Saturday afternoon. He, in snowboots, wanted to break ground through the virgin snow while I choose the well-worn path to keep my feet dry. It was not long, however, until he was changing his path to follow my steps and spare himself a demanding trudge.

That well-beaten route lead to an abandoned snow fort that was just asking to be augmented with a few more bricks. Gabriel quickly took interest in the snowy citadel and set about excavating other snow bricks to add to it. There was an odd machismo that took over. Gabriel's voice deepened as it has on occasions when one needs to take charge of the situation or fulfill the essential role of foreman on the project. He turned into this hybrid of engineer and battle leader as he looked at ways to build the fort higher and to set aside the perfect pieces to fulfill the role of gun or missile. His focus toggled between the two mindsets fluidly as he set about ensuring the structural integrity of the fort and the effectiveness of potential weapons. I followed orders as well as I could, though I did insubordinate at times to pursue the possibility of procuring a piece of snow large enough to serve as the fort's roof. My efforts caused a pair of collapses, but these were quickly repaired and I aimed for closure at the top. Gabriel, however, wanted to make sure the walls were low enough to allow snowballs to be launched at potential opponents.

The snow was the appropriate solidity to make huge bricks that probably weighed over 30-40 pounds and will leaving a tell-tale imprint on my back and hips tomorrow morning. There were loose chunks nearby which we added to the walls with ease but before long a fun part of the process was to jump on the edge of the snowpack to break off a chunk and then heave the whole piece over to the fort or to break it up into smaller pieces that were easier to heft and to brick into the structure.

It was enchanting to see how Gabriel's mind went into his version of project management speak as he set specifications for how it ought to be done and want he envisioned for the outcome of our work.  He tested the walls for their resistance to large snowballs, he uttered "stability," and "strength" with an authority that suggested that play was an opportunity to unleash vocabulary left dormant and untouched in the ho-hum of everyday school life. That deeper voice may have been this pent-up desire to command. I'm not sure why it came out as deep and authoritative as it did, unless it is the influence of the Han Solo voice in the Star Wars audiobooks he listens to. He even surprised me by declaring, "Cut" at the end of my video of the completed project.

The entire exercise in breaking the snow and putting into place ultimately lead to another wing of the fort being constructed. Gabriel's original intent was to add an exterior barrier to the fort but in short order it was connected. In keeping with the spirit of project management, a few other boys and their father took an interest in the fort and before long the five of us were adding to it and there was this vague sense of some landmark of an ancient civilization emerging from our efforts. I know, I know, it will melt or get kicked over at some point. We are anticipating just enough melting and a wee bit of a freeze to solidify the structure and extend the life of the structure before it relents to the next chinook or the coming of spring.

As Gabriel's plans for the fort unfolded and as the project expanded it was remarkable to see him in near-rapture as he chugged away in pursuit of his completed vision. The hefting and breaking of snow and its placement in the walls of the project as it unfolded kept him in motion for nearly two hours, oblivious to hunger and fatigue. Eventually, thirst got his attention but only after I coaxed him on our way to home. We will look forward to visiting the project over the next few days, but it was most fun to see him play foreman or boss for a few hours as the fort unfolded. 

Tying Laces

Over the last few weeks or months I've noticed more and more headlines about the bad consequences for young children exposed excessively to smart phones. I might dare to suggest I've been inundated by the articles but I do not believe you can claim to be inundated by something so deftly avoided.

The theme of those articles is familiar, of course. They follow the template of the articles that have talked about the impacts of video games, heavy metal, excessive television, rock and roll and so on back through time. I give the litany not to diminish the validity of the current articles about the cell phone exposure. The one article I actually read said that kids were getting into less trouble because they were content to stay in their room texting or Snapchatting rather than getting into mischief. Actually, the barrage of headlines left me thinking that my son was not getting that much screen time. I suspect though it will escalate. A recent conversation about initiatives aimed at showing families how to eat together and converse enough to develop their children's language skills suggest that the articles are not as alarmist as I might think.

One thing I am conscious of with technology overall though is that kids are, essentially, getting nudged down the digital path at the expense of any other. There is a clamour to teach kids to code and while I'm not opposed to that I would like to see at least a bit of balance. In his 1979 book Teaching As a Conserving Activity, Neil Postman suggests school take, what he calls a thermostatic approach.  In theory it would be a scenario where educators, conscious and equipped with the barometers to see where society is trending at a certain time, act and educate in a way to strike a balance and avoid overemphasizing what society or the market is pushing for.  In this digital age, more exposure to the  analog would be welcome... (he tapped away on his keyboard.)

I'm conscious of my son's development of skills that I have taken for granted from my schooling. Cursive writing is no longer emphasized in schools and after a generation of velcro, I may be among the last to remember learning to tie shoes as a part of my primary education. In the fall of 1972 everybody in my class put in the time to work on the task.  I remember in later years one of my aunts, a primary school teacher, telling us how she had made it clear to the parents of the kids in a particularly large class that the students would need to know how to zip and tie before the start of the year. I doubt she was expecting 100% mastery before Labour Day, but enough to leave her with a manageable few.

I was still conscious of my experience in days of yore and chipped away at his reluctance to do it. There were struggles and frequent bouts of frustration punctuated by, "I can't do it." There was an hour where we got oh so close before he was truly fed up with the task and I relented. A few days ago, with his head clear of the frustration he encountered with the laces 10 days earlier, he nailed it.  He got it twice in a row, albeit rather loosely, did a single bow a few times and argued about how those single loops would count toward three successes I had requested and then got it.

Apart from saving my back and being a step toward getting him into the laced runners that he aspires to, there are other benefits.  I'm sure the fine work will be a step toward improved motor skills and there are also significant links between knot-tying and mathematics and the sciences.  It has quickly become a point of pride for my son, who asked me to watch him tie his shoes when I dropped him off in the morning and boasted to the nearest adult of his new prowess.  (She responded with the appropriate expression of surprise and approval.)

Cursive may be on my to do list a few years down the road and that, I assure you will be a long battle. Luring him into it with a stylus for a tablet is not the leverage I'll be seeking though.

Parental Guidance: With Authority or Upon Reflection?

I happened to read a pair of books, back-to-back, that provide a remarkable contrast to one another in their efforts to contribute to a conversation or the conversation about parenting. The first was a book by a father who wrote from a religious perspective. I bristled at first at the religious elements of the book, but decided to read the book anyway. It was short enough, there was no telling how strong a religious tone it would take and I was confident that I would get something out of the book. That was indeed the case. The complementary book of the two was Sue Klebold's A Mother's Reckoning -- a distinguished, moving and powerful book that will have a lasting impact on me.

Klebold, if the name rings a bell more faintly than you feel it should, is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two young men who instigated the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999. Her book is a detailed account of her efforts to come to terms with her son's actions, and her absolute bewilderment at not knowing that her son was preparing to do what he did as his last days of high school counted down. It has been easy over the years for outsiders to accuse Klebold and her husband, suburban affluence, adolescent disillusionment and the absence of gun control as factors in the tragedy at Columbine and I would count myself among those who opted for those simplicities in interpreting (and shelving) its meaning. The reality of Columbine, so many other tragedies of that nature and, to be honest, everyone of our lives, is that there are secrets that we all keep and ought find a safe ear to share them with in order to connect with one another and be the people that we have the potential to be if those secrets remain tightly wrapped in pride.

A Mother's Reckoning, however, poses a cathartic and detailed counterargument. It is not, by any means an attempt to recast her role in the tragedy. She does a great deal of very open and wrenching soul-searching as she tries to come to terms with the moments that she wishes she could have back and her wishes that she could have influenced the course of events in anyway that she could, right down to the possibility of not marrying her husband. She loves her son, still does. She aches for the losses that she has contributed to are palpable and her efforts to sort through her relationships with her son and examination of the family she has had are brave, open efforts to shed light on something that is baffling in so many ways.

If I were to look at the entire range of my feelings, flaws and interactions with my son with the intensity and critical acuity that Klebold has looked at this moment of her life and everything that lead to it, I would be a much wiser, more informed and compassionate father. While not a parenting book in the sense that the other I book I read was, it will have a much deeper impact on me.

At this point, I am inclined to grant the other book anonymity. It is very much a by-the-numbers book about parenting. The author, a father of five, is quite confident in his approach to parenting and he boils it down to a set of points, each illustrated with a pithy chapter that features an amusing anecdote about something he did right or something another parent did that he disapproves of. The religious forays were relatively infrequent but did make me bristle at times with other aspects of his view of ideal parenting. On more than one occasion, there were suggestions that there were financial means to good parenting or the building of strong memories. On another occasion he excoriates a father he never met for golfing on the weekend and says that all fathers should quit golf. He steps back slightly from this position and he does eventually acknowledge that there are circumstances where golf is not something that fathers ought to quit and fess up that he does not know the father he skewers, but he continually favours making his points, and others, in simplistic terms.

As the religious orientation of the other parenting book emerged -- at first in passages quoted from the Bible that mix easily with adages from Garrison Keillor and other secular voices, but beyond to passages describing the Devil as a tangible figure who is celebrated at Halloween -- the shift from pithy and insightful toward fear-based and narrow-minded made me weary of the confident certitude that the author worked from. The checklist that the author -- as other authors of parenting do's and don't's -- created ultimately lacked a depth or flexibility that would come from the advice that is found in Klebold's book. Whether a book of 10, 40 or 100 "tips," such books leave substantial gaps and perhaps give a parent a sense of inadequacy because they did not do the 63rd item from a checklist or that they forgot much about a book that was actually quite forgettable to begin with.

While those checklists would find their way to the discard bins with some speed, Klebold's book, even as a mere talisman on my shelf, would be a reminder of the need for compassion, patience, sensitivity and intuitiveness that ought to guide a parent through each moment of this vocation.

To Walk Alone

It is just 400 metres. Just.

But it is the walk to school and as much as I want my son to develop the independence he would have in walking himself to school, it ain’t 1972 (when I walked half the distance and crossed only one street rather than three) to get to school when I was in kindergarten. Another factor that may have influenced that was the challenge my mother would have faced of dressing my younger brothers to get them out the door to do the walk along with me.

He made his request to walk to school on his own and, as is often the case, a resolution of sorts emerged before the day was out. Unfortunately, it merely happened to be an opportunity to cop out rather than take the topic as far as we could. The out of school care (OOSC) program he is in, coincidentally enough, sent out an email a few hours after his request to me. In the email, they reiterated their need for the kids to be logged in when they arrive for they day. They did not, however, make it explicit that it was the parents’ responsibility. If I wanted to close down the discussion, I could say that OOSC wants or needs his mother or I to log him in and out when we drop him off and pick him up.  

I want him to have this responsibility and the trust, confidence and independence that would go with it but now it is something that requires a great deal of negotiation with his school, or the OOSC program. It is quite easy to say that times have changed but the institutions have girded themselves with such rigorous caution against liabilities. My wheels are already turning about the negotiations that I could have with either the school or OOSC to discuss him going on his own and, at OOSC, logging himself in. There is a strong possibility that older kids in the program walk themselves there and log themselves in.

For about 2 1/2 years I have walked my son to and from daycare regularly and we put our steps in throughout the week to other destinations, so covering the distance is not a factor and at every intersection my loop of "look both ways, watch the cars" has played incessantly. He actually stops and waves cars through ahead of him, so I now have to coach him up a bit on asserting his own rights at an intersection but at least he is erring on the side of caution. For the third street crossing he has a well-worn pedestrian overpass that takes the concerns of looking both ways out of the equation. At this point, though, I find it frustrating that I have to rationalize this brief walk to the extent that I do because it is unsupervised.

I am confident that the risks, if any, are minimal and that the consciousness of stranger-danger or traffic are in part a factor of our collective fears, being normalized rather than mitigated. The only other people I see when I walk him to OOSC or school are another parent who lives on the same floor on me taking her daughter, and two cyclists coming north on the sidewalk and prompting me to squish to my left as my son walks the top edge of a low cinder block wall he climbs every morning. I know this walk.

There seems to have been a trade-off between low-probability tragedy and in favour of the guaranteed loss of independence and autonomy, not to mention a higher probability risk of a child getting hit by a car given the number of parents drive their kids to school now. There is also the spectre of parent-shaming looming on this matter of letting a child venture out on their own.  It is easy to say that it is not that much time each day for a parent to drop off their kids and it is a good time for my son and I talk each day.  The city, however, is not as dangerous as we convince ourselves it is and having my son develop the skills to navigate himself through the city on foot or by transit are things that would give him the autonomy that I had when I was his age.

When I raised this with him on our walk home he had forgotten about it but I doubt that it will be for long. I will likely wait until it is light in the mornings again and venture carefully toward ramping him up toward this walk or similar walks and assure myself that he can do it and assure him that I want to give him this independence.

The Right Run

Competitive sports have been something I have done my best to keep my son way from to this point. He is going to be six in a few weeks and I have so far avoided the drumbeat to enrol him in hockey or any of the team sports that tend to bring out the competitive instincts of parents who have their own aspirations or agenda. He has been told a few times that he is not going to be playing football regardless of how big he gets.

To this point, he has been relatively active with gymnastics and swimming thus far and we may be at a crossroads with the gymnastics. His most recent round of gymnastics is in the late afternoons which has seen his class relegated to a corner of the gym that affords the older and more competitive kids access to much of the equipment that was the highlight during previous sessions.

Running continues to appeal and there have been more and more opportunities for him to sign up for races. He wants to race me whenever we are walking somewhere and his enthusiasm for it remains unbridled. Today, he had a 2K race and on a bracing, subzero morning he toed the line with about 30 other kids. Before the race, I cautioned him to go out slowly, take his time and save his energy for the second half of the race.

In the 1K race he had last month, he finished in just under 6 minutes, but I was not sure what to expect with double the distance. For an experienced runner, grasping the challenges with pacing, with saving a little energy, whether to compete with the people around or simply with yourself are all hard things to take into account.

As the kids start to cross the finish line and the minutes ticked away, I wondered how he was doing out there with the extra distance and whatever concerns I had eased when he crossed the line in tandem with a new friend and did a high five as the other boy's mother and I looked on. They fell into step together and spent the race getting acquainted with one another and by the time they crossed the line, they were a team. We parted ways probably too quickly, but I was not immediately aware how well Gabriel bonded with this other boy. As he talked about how he told his running partner about himself and his family and learned the same from him, I thought about how I bonded with fellow runners during my favorite races and how, whether we spoke a great deal or not, we shared the run in several ways and got to know each other and cheer each other on as we pursued our goals.

I am fully aware that as Gabriel gets older, sports will pose dilemmas as we weigh the difference between competing and participating. It is still too early for that and there is the simple matter of him finding sports that he is passionate about. If running happens to be the sport, then he has had a good head start and gymnastics will be helpful in developing the balance and physical awareness required for other sports. I am conscious of the blight of the participant medal and hope that he learns the lessons that come with competing but I hope that those lessons are learned in areas or endeavours where he is striving to do his best and find the personal achievement or growth that he seeks rather than in sports where he is less interested. 

In the meantime, I will cross my fingers that he runs into his new teammate the next time he lines up for a race.