Wee Wisdom: Parent vs Teacher

I informed Ella and Sophia that I signed them up for summer swimming lessons.

Ella said, “You’re a good swimmer, Dad. Why don’t you teach us?”

“Because knowing how to swim and teaching swimming are different,” I said. “And you only listen to real teachers.”

My 10-year-old thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, that’s true. I don’t listen to you very much.”

I deserved that.

Kids clamor for us to share our infinite wisdom. But adults understand that this is far from a simple proposition. It’s one thing for me to be mindful of our strengths and shortcomings, and quite another to convince our kids of the same. Ella’s suggestion that I do double duty made me wonder: Is it possible for parents to also “teach” their own children?

Tanya and I, like most parents, spend most of our time providing some kind of education our little animals, either consciously or subconsciously. But I have no illusions: I am by no means a teacher.

I volunteered in Sophia’s first-grade class this year, helping to instruct 20 adorable but attention-deprived 6- and 7-year-olds in basic arithmetic and geometry. My first-grade math skills are top notch, so it should have been a piece of cake, right?

Wrong. I gave it my all every week, but my experience taught me two valuable lessons. First, elementary school teachers are saints. Second, it’s important to know one’s limitations.

Ella and Sophia respect my authority as a parent, which is in a constant state of development as the years go by. Yet any time I’ve tried to teach them some kind of specialized skill, they only listen about half the time, and we all end up frustrated. I’ve tried being hands-on, backing off and everything in between, but the lesson invariably loses traction within a few minutes.

Maybe it’s because they see me as Dad, not Coach Kensley or Mr. Kensley. Or perhaps Ella and Sophia sense my tension when I step outside of my usual job description. It might just be that I’m good at bossing them around in parent-type situations, not in the context of instructing specifics.

Whatever the reason, when it comes to learning how to swing a golf club or conjugate a French verb, my kids are savvy enough to only listen to people who know what they’re talking about.

There is a fine art to quality instruction, especially when dealing with young minds that come from a wide range of social and cultural situations. Teaching well requires a combination of knowledge, patience, personality and an understanding of behavioral psychology. I now know that trying to maintain six hours worth of engagement from a group that is, by its very nature, not inclined to sit still is nearly impossible for most of us. There’s a reason it takes a college education to be a teacher.

That’s fine with me. Even when I don’t feel comfortable being the teacher, I can trust that my daughters are willing and capable of listening to the experts.

Loving Leftovers

I eat a lot. I love the taste of food. Sometimes—dirty little secret alert—I eat even when I'm not hungry. And I love leftovers. I'm not sure if it's because I'm cheap, or because I really enjoy the taste. Either way, I'm not ashamed.

Tanya, on the other hand, is judicious when it comes to food. She's the healthiest eater I've ever met. She stays away from sweets and carbohydrates most of the time. She eats when she's hungry—what a concept!—and doesn't when she's not. She also drinks when she's thirsty and sleeps when she's tired, by the way. The Dalai Lama would be proud.

She also doesn't think its a good habit to eat your kids' leftovers. A) it sets a bad example by overeating,  and B) it's gross.

Yet I doubt that I'm the only dad in the world who halts his children from their place-clearing duties to scrape their leftovers onto his plate before the dishes get deposited in the dishwasher. Anyone with me on this one?

I wasn't sure if my kids ever thought this was a big deal. They don't say much when I give the old "kids are starving in Africa" speech, though I firmly believe in that method of guilt stimulation. And they don't seem to bat an eyelash anymore when they see me scarf down the perfectly good food they've left on their plates: a small chunk of overdone steak, a potato skin, or the remains of a half-eaten chicken leg.

There's good meat left on there!

But after we took Tanya out for mother's day a couple of weeks ago, I realized that maybe I've been going a bit overboard. Ella, after putting her leftover refried beans and some salad into a to-go box, snatched a pen and wrote on the top of the styrofoam container:

Ella and Sophia (complete with flowers and peace signs, of course). Dad is Not Allowed to Eat This.

I've gotten in trouble before from Tanya for taking her leftover chicken wings to work without asking,  or eating the remains of a turkey sandwich Ella had from Jimmy Johns. So I left the container in the fridge for about five days, eyeing it every time I pulled out the milk or some other leftover-filled tupperware. My mouth watered at the potential taste of refried beans with my breakfast eggs, sprinkled with hot sauce; or maybe a quick bean, cheese and veggie wrap on my way out the door to an errand. I didn't even touch the shredded lettuce and tiny diced tomatoes that had become slightly soggy. But for Ella's edict, I would have.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I asked Ella: "Are you EVER planning on eating your leftovers?"

"No. You can have them," she replied, as if she had no sense of my pain.

They tasted so good.

Curse you, goddamn curse words!

Last week, Ella downloaded a song from itunes called "Run This Town," by Lucy Hale. It came from the soundtrack of a movie called A Cinderella Story: Once Upon A Song—a kids movie—which is going to make what comes next sound a bit bizarre.

While we were eating dinner, we heard a lyric that said, "kissing your ass isn't what lipstick is for." For the record, Tanya and I don't seek out songs with inappropriate lyrics, but as all parents who have ever listened to music know, this kind of stuff happens. We roll with it.

Without breaking stride from chewing her dinner, Sophia said, "She said a bad word." She might as well have said, "Pass the salt," or "I played tag at recess."

I was impressed with Sophia's nonchalance regarding differentiating between an event to avoid at all costs, and a tiny blip of impropriety. She will surely need to know how to manage such situations throughout her life, and I want her to be able to succeed.

Ella was a bit more amused. "Kissing your ass isn't what lipstick is for! Hah!" she exclaimed with a smile.

They both looked at me, waiting for a response. I stayed quiet and kept eating.

"Ass isn't a bad word, it means donkey," Sophia said. "Maybe she meant donkey. Like, 'put on lipstick to kiss your donkey,'" She pointed across the table to a vague spot in the kitchen. "Right Dad? It's like, 'Hey, I see an ass! Kiss it!"

I thought it was pretty funny to hear my 7- and 9-year-old daughters say the word "ass" over and over again, though I'm probably somewhat evil for it. We had a good laugh for a while, and once another song came on they seemed to forget all about what had happened a few minutes earlier.

Making light of such situations is not unusual in our house. And the more we do it, the more I realize how harmless it is. What's the big deal about blurting out a few grown up words every once in a while? My kids hear me say "shit" or "fuck" if I spill something or break a glass. They cover their mouths in disbelief—Dad cursed!—and we move on. I remember as a kid hearing my parents doing the same things. It's not exactly child abuse if they hear this stuff; they might as well get a bit desensitized to it before the teenage years roll around.

My wife likes to say that words only have as much power as we give them. I agree. And besides, it makes randomly uttered curse words sound pretty goddamn, motherfuckin' funny.

Lessons from Anne Frank

Ella's been reading a book about Anne Frank in her fourth grade class. Not Anne Frank's actual diary, but a third person biography written for elementary schoolers. Since they began reading it a few weeks ago, Ella has come home very interested in Anne's story, excited to uncover more. She learned—and relayed to us—about how Anne hid in an attic for two years, died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, about Hitler and the Nazis, and the scourge of racism in Europe at the time of Anne's too-short life.

Ella is very aware of half of her family's Jewish heritage (my side). She enjoys partaking in traditions like the Passover seder and lighting the candles on Hanukkah, and learning about Jewish customs, as well as the customs of other religions and nationalities. So I was happy that her school felt it was important to expose its young, impressionable students to powerful stories like those of Anne Frank's, and to the themes of tolerance and acceptance.

Last Wednesday, Ella and I were browsing through a used bookstore and we came across a copy of Anne Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl." Ella's eyes popped out of her head.

"Is that Anne Frank's real diary?" she asked.

"Well, it's not the actual, original—"

"No, I mean a copy of the real book? With Anne Frank's actual writing?"

I nodded and bought it for her. She carried her book with her to dinner, and Ella read me Eleanor Roosevelt's introduction, and another couple of pages. "I can't wait to read this!" she nearly bursted. "I'm so excited to learn more about Anne Frank!"

Before bed that night, we put aside the other book we were reading together and dove into Anne's first few diary entries.

Anne Frank at work

Dear Kitty...

Within three pages, Anne tells of how Jews were forced to wear a big yellow star on their clothes to show that they were Jewish. My 9-year-old didn't see why that was a big deal.

"It's humiliating," I explained.

She didn't get it.

"It was the Nazis' way of singling out the Jews to make them feel different, and afraid. Do you see?"

Ella shrugged.

"Imagine that no one was allowed to eat pancakes, and you were part of a small group that liked them, and everyone who liked pancakes needed to wear a big pancake on their shirt," I said. "Wouldn't you feel awkward? Embarrassed? Afraid?"

"I guess."

I couldn't understand how my curious, intelligent 9-year-old wasn't getting my point. I had to dig deep. "The Nazis tried to make the Jews out to be evil," I said. "By making only them wear yellow stars, they were basically saying that Jews were not equal to everyone else. That's racism and it's mean, and wrong."

Why did Ella have such a hard time grasping how being required to wear a star on one's clothes was humiliating, offensive, and blatantly anti-Semitic? Then it came to me: maybe her hopeful, idealistic brain simply couldn't process the motivation behind hatred. My frustration began to morph into relief. And envy.

Ella looked like she was still processing my words. I felt like I had to say one more thing to hammer home my point. But instead, I hugged her tight, and kept reading.

Thank You, Book Club

I've run many drafts of Seeking Blue, the novel I've worked on for about ten years and finished in March, through my writers critique group for the past seven years. They've been invaluable to me, providing not only unwavering support and encouragement, but also keen insights and eyes for detail for everything from grammar to plot, character development and setting, themes and structure. I've dissected my novel all the way down to the sentence level, and had my writing buddies do the same.

But it's been done chapter by chapter, scene by scene, one to three chapters at a time. Even once it was done, no one had read Seeking Blue from beginning to end. With a finished draft already submitted to agents (8 rejections so far) I needed a different kind of critique. I needed readers.

So I took a big step and had Tanya's book club read it. I could not ignore this opportunity.

"Readers" are different from writers, most notably in that they don't parse through every word with tweezers. And while that kind of thing is absolutely necessary to making a story shine, readers look at a book differently. They welcome original conflicts and the characters that populate them, and they seek to be entertained. If the story doesn't speak to them, they may not even finish it. Plus, they view it as a whole, not a collection of individual parts.

I distributed Seeking Blue to the group and I accompanied it with some guidelines. I wanted big picture stuff, like the believability and quality of the character arcs, pacing, plot, point of view, setting and dialogue, all within the framework of the complete manuscript, along with any smaller details on which they felt necessary to comment. But more than anything, I sought honesty. If they liked it, great. If not, a bit less great, but I needed to know why.

I know them all to some degreee, and consider a few of them very close friends. Despite their pledges of honesty, I was worried that they might subconsciously hold back from any scathing and purposeful commentary because it's hard to separate an author from his work, especially an author they already knew. I reiterated my requests at the beginning of the meeting.

They didn't disappoint.

While they all enjoyed the book in general, the two-hour discussion was more than the praise-fest I had feared. From each unique perspective, Lydia, Tanya (who, as my wife, I should mention, has always been unconditionally supportive), Kerri, Kellie, Roxanne, Bettina, Kelly, Victoria and Jesa bounced back and forth with cogent arguments, intelligent critique, and specific notations on certain parts of the story that moved them, or needed clarification, or that simply didn't fit. They were not shy in describing situations they thought needed more explanation, or didn't feel realistic or plausible. They discussed Jack, Noah and Elisa—characters I created—as if they were real people; they discussed the situations in which these characters found themselves as if they had actually happened in real life. They debated the relative merits of each protagonist, all the way down to such minutiae as the appropriateness of their names. They questioned whether scenes needed to be omitted, added, or amended. They pondered motivations and realism and the need for jargon. They suggested improvements. They didn't always agree. They engaged all my specific questions. In short, they helped me figure out how to make Seeking Blue better in ways I hadn't yet thought of.

Many of them expressed their thanks to me for allowing them to read my work, even though I was the one who was most appreciative that they even finished it, given their busy lives, and spent their time and energy to give me feedback. I was proud of my accomplishment and happy with their critique. And I will certainly make some changes based on what they told me.

While the ladies were gathering their things, Kelly told me how cool it was to be able to ask the author direct questions.

I was the author. Pretty cool.

Once almost everyone had filed out, Jesa said something that will resonate for a long time. "I know how hard you've worked and I know it's not published yet, and whether or not it ever gets published doesn't matter." I didn't know where she was going. "Always remember that for a couple of hours, your characters were real people doing real things, showing real emotion. Tonight, your story came to life. You should be proud of that."

Indeed, I am. And for all you provided me on Thursday night, Book Club Ladies, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

Advice, anyone?

One morning before school last week Ella said, "You have a website. I want one, too. How do I make one?"

I asked Ella what her goal was.

"My own advice column. People email me with questions and I answer them," she responded without the slightest hint of superiority one might expect from someone with barely any life experience who plans to give out advice. Ella has the absurd confidence of the oldest 9-year-old I've ever met. 

I told her that it takes time and energy to build a website. Some people pay a lot of money to set up nice ones. Then remembered that I built one myself on Blogger and it was actually fairly easy, even for me. I was about to tell her that but by the time I put the cereal and milk on the table, Ella had already googled "how to start a website" and had set up ella22.simplesite.com.

"I'm going to call myself Miss Advice," she said.

With her own email account, she sent messages to everyone in her contact list, inviting them to check it out. Tanya posted a link to Miss Advice's website on her Facebook page.

After school that night, Ella logged on to check out her progress. She had 66 hits on the first day of her website's existence. To put this in perspective, I think The Dad Life has had a few days with hits totaling in the 40's, and I was thrilled. Of course, I've also been spending 2-3 hours a day working every angle I could think of (including using Tanya and her 8 million Facebook friends) to publicize my blog and increase traffic. Not that my writing is so fantastic, but I'm 38, have written a newspaper column since 2009, articles for a couple of different magazines, and have even received some complimentary emails over the years. I've written a novel, for Chrissakes.

Ella is 9 years old.

I have to admit, Ella's success bothered me initially. I was envious of how she took about five minutes to do something I'm still trying to figure out. I felt awful.

That night after dinner, we sat around the living room as Ella went about her business as a pint-sized version of Ann Landers. With my MacBook perched comfortably on her lap and Sophia looking on admiringly and quietly next to her older sister, Ella tapped out advice to all who sought her wisdom via the internet. Everything from summer fashion to getting rid of pet hair to parenting, Ella doled out sagacious and completely logical counsel better than I ever could have. The kid is good. Seriously, log on and ask her about anything. You might be amazed.

I watched her expression the whole time, and I was truly in awe. Pensive and positively sanguine, Ella read each question, sometimes aloud, sometimes not, before answering. She was confident yet relaxed in pondering each query as if the person were lying on a couch in front of her and paying $100 an hour.

Tanya was thrilled at Ella's new venture. And once I snapped out of my childishness, I could barely contain myself with a mixture of laughter, amazement, pride, love and admiration...tempered by just a tiny, harmless dose of envy.

Ella is smart and savvy and wise beyond her years. She's confident. She's in the moment. Most of all, she has no idea how amazing she really is at this point, or how much better she will surely get.

Maybe I should ask her for some advice.

Encouraging Our Readers

This morning Ella informed me that Selena Gomez was engaged to Justin Bieber, but they broke up while on a trip to Mexico.

"Why?" I asked.

"They got in a fight."

Apparently, Selena wasn't happy about something (mercifully, Ella spared me the lurid details of this particular situation) and she departed from their trip early, leaving her erstwhile fiance to languish alone in the Mexican sunshine. Poor J Beebs.

"How do you know all this? How do you know it's true?"

"Uh, Dad," she said, obviously irritated at my stupidity, "I read it in a magazine? The April Tiger Beat?"

Oh.

Our tendency toward voyeurism seems to start at a young age. Ella loves to read magazines that tell her all about the comings and goings of the celebrities she loves, like Taylor Swift and One Direction. At least she's reading something, regardless of whether it ends up being true. Not that Tanya and I have to worry.

Since she learned how to read in kindergarten, Ella has lived on the "bookworm" end of the reading spectrum. She devours books of all kinds, from novels to reference books. She's discovered the joys of gaining information and losing herself in the exciting world of fiction.

With a writer father and a mother who polishes off two to three books a month, I guess Ella's hunger for reading should not come as a surprise. Sometimes, I admit, I bristle at the notion of raising a gossip-starved child who will spend her days tethered to a tablet, smartphone or other electronic device waiting for the latest news on who's marrying whom and which celebrity was caught doing what in front of the paparazzi. But I guess that's where Tanya and I come into the picture.

There is a lot of recent information pointing to the harm of exposing our children to excessive electronic media, especially when they're young. (Check out the "mediatrician" from Boston. Interesting stuff...and scary.) We limit screen time and try to encourage one-on-one, personal contact, especially at meal and bed times. And this far, it seems to have worked. Ella and her sister, Sophia, are both very compassionate, attentive, intelligent, eloquent girls who value time with Mom and Dad more than they value a screen. If that's the case, I'll gladly accept regular updates on Justin Bieber's love life.