DadCentric

Is There a Right Age to Show Your Children Poverty?

I just opened an email with a subject line of "hola."  It said:

We wish you happy new year love of Christ in the health of my family and we hope soon to Nicaragua...

A few weeks ago, I was invited to fly down to Nicaragua to visit a school some friends' charity has supported for the past five years.  I signed up to see some volcanoes and maybe do some surfing.  Instead, I tied hundreds of bead bracelets around little brown arms and tripped over myself while trying to play soccer.  Mostly, though, I tried to figure out how children living in structures smaller than my garage could be so damned happy.

I also tried to figure out why one of the founders of the charity, Brent, brought his two daughters, ages two and three. When I saw them at the airport in Atlanta, I thought Brent was crazy.  By the time we flew home, I thought he was wise. 

If you live in America at the median income level of just under $50,000/year, you're in the top 1% of the world in terms of income.  Even a four-person family that's "poor" in the United States making $20,000/year is in the top 10% of the world.  But bloggers are way above median levels, which means most of our kids will potentially be spoiled, or if we're not careful, entitled.

How do you curb that effect?

I think they need to see how people in other parts of the world live. 

I'm planning to return to the little school in the mountains of Nicaragua in May 2012 to assist with construction of an additional building, and I've invited my wife and our 16-year-old to come.  But what about the five, three, and one-year-old? 

The child with whom I spent the most time is five.  I'd love for my five-year-old to meet little Jeremy and his family.  However, I want relationships to develop, not for this to be a "let's go somewhere to look at people who are different from us--like at the zoo!" trip.

One reason we haven't gone to Disneyworld is that I'd prefer to do it one time, and for that one time to take place when all the children are old enough to appreciate and remember the experience.  Is charitable travel to economically depressed areas of the world analogous?

I used to think it was, but now I think Brent's right.  Exposing our children to a less affluent part of the world at early ages, so that they grow up knowing not everyone looks like they do and has all the opportunities they do, is better.  Especially if the location is one where a few people can make a difference and improve the lives of the locals while developing relationships with them.  And, I want them to embrace studying other languages.

The email at the beginning of this post is from Jeremy's father, Rafael.  I handed him a business card after I finished the cup of coffee his wife gave me in their den, in case he were to get access to a computer any time soon and wish to stay in touch.  I told him I hope my niños can one day come play with his niños.  But will they?  If so, at what ages? 

Discuss.

Gene Marks, The "If I Were A Poor Black Kid" Guy, To Write Advice Book For Dads

Forbes contributor Gene Marks has certainly stirred up some controversy. First, there was this post, Why Most Women Will Never Become CEO, in which Marks states that women will never become CEO because they're women. Then, Marks penned a post entitled If I Were A Poor Black Kid, in which he offers suggestions to poverty-stricken urban black kids based on his experiences as a middle-class white small business owner/columnist for magazine read by rich white guys, because really, one's pretty much the same as the other. Some of the pearls of wisdom Marks offers:

• "If I were a poor black kid...I'd become an expert at Google Scholar."
• "(If I were a poor black kid) I'd use Skype to study with other students who want to do well in my school."
• "If I were a poor black kid I would make it my goal to get into one of these (magnet) schools. Or even a private school."
• "If I were a poor black kid...I would learn how to write code."

See, Poor Black Kids? It's TOTALLY easy to escape soul-crushing poverty, rise above our failing public school system, and steer clear of a judicial system that tends to drop the hammer on young black men. Just get into a private school and learn how to write code! Like Theo from Die Hard did!

Now, word comes that Marks will be releasing a handbook for new dads.* The working title is If I Were A New Dad. We've gotten our hands on the manuscript, and here are a few choice bits of advice from Mr. Marks:

Educational Powerball

The crowd flowed in to the brand new gym. You could smell the newness. Rubber and plastic. Paint and polyurethane. The only scuffs on the floor were from our shoes. 

700 pairs of shoes, give or take. All of us there that night to see revealed the destinies of our children.

Or not.

The charter school lottery. The Peanut's number was 485. Out of about 1000 total--present and absent--competitors.

People shuffled in and took their seats. All kinds of people who were all kinds of tense. 

Men in ties and shirtsleeves milled around a long folding table at the front. The table held a big, stainless steel, stock pot. Inside it were little pieces of paper with precognitive powers. There was a video camera set on a tripod in the middle aisle. They said if our number was called that we should "let'em hear it." Put on a good show for the camera. They told us they were making a documentary. Their "own version of Waiting For Superman." For those that don't remember, Waiting For Superman was an anti public school documentary released last year that was so full of shit the Academy of Arts and Sciences wouldn't even consider it for a best documentary nomination. You know how bogus your documentary has to be to be considered full of shit by Hollywood? Last year's winner: Hot Tub Time Machine.

Then there was a speech.

THE MOVEMBER JUGGERNAUT IS UNLEASHED!

We had a great time doing Movember last year. What? You don't know what Movember is? Well! Here's a brief recap, from last year. To repeat: 

Cancer sucks. It may actually suck more for guys - 1 in 2 men, compared to 1 in 3 women, will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. And prostate cancer kills - an estimate 32,000 American men will die from it this year.

So as we did last year, a few of your DadCentricians will be growing out the hair on our upperlip to raise money for the cause. Unlike last year, we've joined forces with a bunch of other great dads to form The Ultimate Movember Team. It's like a 70's version of Justice League International, starring our fearless leader, the guy who put together this massive coalition, Harry Reems lookalike Doug French! (Google "Harry Reems" at your own risk.) And we're off to a roaring start - over $2,500 has been raised already. To donate, go here. We'll be posting pictorial updates on a weekly basis; to see how the DadCentric guys are doing, check out our Facebook page, which will include more photos and links to our individual sites. Will we feel self-conscious about our 'staches? Hell no. For we follow in the footsteps of giants:

 

Why It's Important To Teach Your Kids About Gun Safety

Guy shoots bottle. Gun jams. Guy looks down barrel of loaded gun. What you think is going to happen, happens. Kids, remember: guns don't kill people, stupid people with guns kill people, and occasionally themselves. (Don't worry - this guy lives, and we assume that he'll take Dick Cheney up on his offer to go hunting.)

In Defense of Boys

The opinions contained below are mine, and not necessarily those of DadCentric. But they might be.

Pardon me a rant...

We've been so obsessed with empowering our girls, rightfully so, that we've allowed society to de-power our boys. I'm not referring to the sexist stereotypes of men having power over women -- nobody wants to raise another generation of Mad Men (except, possibly, the tobacco and daytime drinking industries, respectively). Rather I'm talking about the power of boys to meet their full potential and the power of self that they hold within.

Some see this through the lens of misconception, however, empowering girls is not about taking power from boys or vice versa. It is not a race, or a case of gaining an edge over the other. It is about all children having the same opportunities, and the means to meeting them. It is about understanding that despite a shared goal, all kids are not all the same. It is okay to take different paths to the promised land. Even better, it should be encouraged.

Some will say that "boys will be boys." Others will say that it is cliché, a blank check to excuse wayward behavior. They are all right. And they are all wrong to varying degrees. Boy will be boys should not be an excuse. It is not pure justification. Boys are boys, and as such there are proven differences within their developmental and maturation process that should be taken into consideration while trying to mold them into the men they will someday be. 

First Day Of School: Into The System

There was a shell-shocked quality to the teacher’s voice as she stood before the gathering of parents and kids and told us that her class was five students over the state limit, that as of a week or two prior, it had been eleven students over. There were groans from parents throughout the classroom, some standing, some trying to fit their grown-up asses into kid-ass-sized chairs. For a moment, I thought the poor lady was going to do that crazy laugh thing that people do in the movies when faced with a situation so ridiculous and overwhelming that it threatens to crush their sanity.

It was the Friday before our oldest son started Kindergarten, and we were down at the school for the Meet The Teacher gathering. So far, his entrance into the world of elementary school has been something of a mixed bag. Most of the items we’ve pulled out of said bag have been pretty tasty - lots of M & M’s and Kit Kats and little boxes of Junior Mints. But, like the crowding issue, we’ve come across a few stale Baby Ruths and some off-brand yuckbars as well.

You know what? I’m going to drop this whole bag-of-candy metaphor right here, like a sack of melted Bit-O-Honeys.

Meet the New Math

Remember when you climbed on the bus for the first day of a new school year then you'd turn your head to see your parents fighting back the tears?

Now, as a parent yourself, you know that feeling.

Joy.

Pure, unfiltered, fully leaded joy.

As soon as that bus escapes view, all moms and dads throw their arms up and dance like Snoopy at suppertime. We have survived another summer as our children's personal entertainment centers.

That feeling is short-lived these days. The world is too complex and demanding for we breeders to take a break for 10 months, relying solely on underfunded, overburdened teachers to mold little minds. When children go back to class now, so do we parents. Every expert out there beats it into our skulls that we need to "be involved" and "participate" in every aspect our children's "education." How else will the little nippers learn how use quotation marks sarcastically?

This requires getting up to speed on the latest teaching methods and curricula so you can help the wee ones with their studies at home. The most radical changes seem to occur annually in math as opposed to reading, probably because numbers are infinite but it only takes a limited combination of letters to form: "Do you want fries with that?"

Old-fashioned rote learning of arithmetic was first abandoned for New Math only to be trashed for the New New Math. That was replaced by Everyday Mathematics, which was tossed out for Any Day As Long As You Feel Adequately Loved and Nurtured Mathematics. This school year, most schools will introduce what experts refer to as Post-Pre-Post-Modern Digit Frackalacka. Rather than bore you with its complicated theories, here are some math questions a child might receive followed by explanations of how the Triple-P MDF arrives at the answer:

That Kid With The Tiger

“Oh! That reminds me of this Calvin and Hobbes where...!”

That, my friends, is a sentence opener that my mother got very used to/very tired of hearing out of me when I was a kid. Calvin was my dude, right? Even though he was a few years behind me in school, everything he did was awesome. His adventures with his buddy Hobbes were humor at its finest. My mom and I got into debates about the realness of Hobbes.

“He’s only real in Calvin’s imagination, sweetie.”

“No! He’s real! He’s really really real! Calvin’s just the only one who can see him!”

I kind of think we were both right.

My eldest noticed my old Calvin and Hobbes books sitting on a bookshelf a while back, right there next to the likes of Pekar, Gaiman, Clowes, Moore. He brought them to me, asked me to read them to him, his interest piqued by nothing more than pictures that struck him as funny. He’s a year behind Calvin - funny how that works - so some of the humor’s over his head, but plenty of it’s not. But the best part?  I think the little dude’s learned a pretty valuable life lesson. Check this out:

The last time I took this kid to the doctor and he had to get a shot, he screamed “I DON’T LIKE YOU! I DON’T LIKE YOU!” at the nurse, his voice filled with all the vitriol that a five-year-old can muster. And yet, the comic above has him rolling on the floor, laughing uncontrollably, banging his fist on the carpet. “Again!” he demands. “Read it again!” 

Could it be, then, that maybe this kid is learning how to laugh at himself? Let's hope so, for the good of all involved. It’s one of the best things a person can ever learn as far as I'm concerned, one of those handy tricks that makes life flow a bit more smoothly, like a personal lubricant for everyday existence. 

Of course, there are some lessons I’d rather my kids not learn from the boy and his tiger.

It's The 9/11 Cartoon Show! You Know - For Kids!

Quick show of hands - who thinks teaching (not sure if that's the right word) the kids about the horrors of 9/11 via a cheaply made propraganda cartoon is a good idea? Well, you're in luck: former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's new venture, a company called Learn Our History, has just the thing for you:

 

I was half expecting the Ambiguously Gay Duo to show up and punch Bin Laden. Anyway, Huck himself makes an appearance on the company's website, explaining that because schools today are distorting facts and not Red White and Blue washing events and the causes behind them, your kids should learn the truth from his 9/11 cartoon, which doesn't bother with nonsense like "root causes" and "blowback", instead focusing on the important stuff, like God loves America because we love God.

Before you go labelling me as the guy who wants Howard Zinn's version of history in the classroom, consider this: the answer to having "left-biased" (if that's the phrase we're using) curriculum in schools is not dumbing it down with reactionary crap. (A reminder: Christopher Columbus did not, in fact, discover America.) The way to avoid raising a generation of morons: encouraging kids and teachers to take a neutral look at the people and events that shape our history - to teach facts, and not wrap them in mythological trappings.  

Rather than buy this, I think I'll hold off until my kids are old enough to read Lawrence Wright's The Leaning Tower. Unless Mr. Wright can be persuaded to write a graphic novel. On second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea.

(Thanks to Marinka for the heads-up.)