Half Changed World

T’s dad has been saying that we should take the boys skiing.  In particular, he’s suggesting that if D doesn’t learn to ski soon, he’ll never be "really good."

Cons:

• Skiing is ridiculously expensive, even at the dinky little mid-Atlantic ski areas that have almost no slope.  Between lift ticket and equipment, it gets up close to $100 a day per person.  We think long and hard about spending that kind of money.
• Especially when there’s no guarantee that the boys wouldn’t try it for 5 minutes and then want to go home.  D still has his training wheels on his bike, because when we take them off, he panics when he picks up any speed and puts his feet down.
• Downhill skiing is never particularly environmentally friendly, and is particularly not-so in the mid-Atlantic, where pretty much everything you ski on is man made.

Pros:

• Skiing is fun.  Downhill skiing is as close to flying as I’m ever likely to get without mechanical assistance.
• T’s dad is right that it’s easier to learn when you’re young, and not as discombobulated by falling down.
• D picked up skating this winter (on an indoor rink) pretty well, and many of the skills are transferable.
• I can imagine that at some point in the boys life, they will have friends who ski, and they may feel deprived/outside/something if they don’t know how.  Yes, this is a huge marker of class privilege.  But both T and I did learn to ski as children, and in some real way, I think we both feel slightly guilty at the idea of not passing this opportunity on to our kids.  Especially since we’re probably slightly more affluent, not less, than our parents were when we were young.  But — even setting aside the fact that T grew up in Michigan and could learn to ski on a local hill — I think skiing just wasn’t as crazy expensive a sport at the time.

When I blogged about the "privilege meme," I promised a post about the differences, and overlap, between privilege as measured by money and privilege as measured by social class.  I keep postponing that post, because it’s a complicated topic and I want to get it right.  But if I wait until I get my thoughts totally sorted out, I’ll never get to it. So here goes with some rough thoughts, and hopefully it will at least get the conversation started.

As noted before, the privilege meme included a bunch of questions that are mostly about money — did your parents own their own home, were you aware of bills, did you have a phone at home, do you have student loans, did you get to travel abroad — and a bunch of questions that are more about social capital — did your parents read to you, did they take you to museums, did they attend college.  Some people got very heated about this, arguing that they shouldn’t be considered "privileged" even though they were read to, had books, etc, because their family was very poor, and it was just because their parents prioritized education that they had these things.

So, the first thing to lay on the table is that these are in fact two different dimensions of social class, and it’s possible to be privileged in one respect but not the other. But, the next thing to point out is that, in practice, there’s a great deal of overlap between the two.  I’m thinking of the chapter in David Shipler’s The Working Poor about the upper-middle class mother who is impoverished by her divorce and her subsequent choice not to work full-time, so as to be able to spend more time with her children.  She’s quite low-income as a result, but is able to leverage her social capital to get her children scholarships at fancy private schools and other middle-class privileges.  Her experiences prove that you don’t have to have lots of money to have privilege, but it’s also quite clear that she’s got a lot of things going for her that the typical low-income single parent doesn’t.

There’s a couple of different explanations for the overlap between poverty and lack of home-based educational experiences, and depending on which one you think dominates, you come up with very different policy solutions for fixing this (if, in fact, you think there’s a need to fix it):

• One school of thought argues that it’s really about the money — if a parent can’t afford food, then books are a luxury, and parents who are working 80 hours a week to pay the rent don’t have the time to do things like attend parent teacher conferences.  This points towards cash transfer solutions.
• Another explanation is that parental characteristics like lack of English skills or learning disabilities lead to both poor labor market outcomes and to inability to navigate systems (such as libraries or schools) on their children’s behalf.  This points towards two-generational approaches, and education aimed at parents.
• A third explanation is that it’s cultural.  This has lots of variations, ranging from the stereotypical — poor parents don’t value educational opportunities for their children — to the sophisticated — Annette Lareau’s work on "accomplishment of natural growth" versus "concerted cultivation."  This points towards lots of tongue-clucking and finger-pointing, and possibly towards conditional cash transfers, which give low-income parents cash incentives for desired behaviors.

And I guess the fourth option is to say that it doesn’t matter the explanation, but what we need is better schools and preschools so that even kids whose parents don’t provide educational opportunities and support have a chance to get ahead.

At dinner tonight, I asked D if he knew why we were celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday.  He said that King was famous, and that he worked so that blacks and whites could both do things equally.  Fair enough for a first grader.

Last year, D’s class was almost entirely African-American, with one other white kid.  This year, at a different school, his classmates are more diverse, with a majority Hispanic, but a scattering of white, black, and Asian kids.  He considers almost all of his classmates his friends, with Pokemon the main unifying interest. When he draws a generic person, he reaches for the brown crayons.

But we’re not living in a non-racial utopia.  One day D came home sad because a classmate didn’t want to play with him, and he explained it as this boy only wanting to play with other kids with brown skins.  I didn’t know what to say. We’ve been trying to set up a playdate with another kid for months, but it hasn’t happened — I’m not sure whether it’s the language barrier, cultural issues, or just that family’s lack of interest. 

D’s invited about 8 of his classmates to his birthday party next week, and we haven’t heard back from most of them.  I’m afraid that my super-sensitive kid is going to be heartbroken if they don’t come.  And I’m concerned about what message he’s going to take away if it’s only white kids who wind up coming.

I don’t think it’s race per se that’s the barrier, but economic class and language may well be issues.  Some of the kids’ parents probably don’t own cars. Our house is only about half a mile from the bus stop, but the buses run very seldom on weekends.  Or non-fluent English speakers may feel awkward about calling us to RSVP.  We’re going to ask his teacher if we’re allowed to bring in cupcakes so he can celebrate with his friends in any case, but I’m still worried.  I’m probably overdoing it with the party preparations (a papermache pokeball pinata, a jigsaw puzzle with a secret message) to compensate.

This is a sponsored review, part of a MomCentral blog tour.

When I was asked if I would be interested in participating in a blog tour for some new Cranium games, I jumped at it, because we’ve enjoyed everything we’ve tried from them.  The Super Fort was N’s big Hanukah present this year, and Hullaballoo has been a mainstay of kids parties for several years. 

The games are part of their new "Cranium Bloom" line, which is aimed at preschoolers.   The boys were excited to see what was in the package that arrived, and hovered over as I opened it.  N loves to cook, so he immediately focused on the Let’s Play Count and Cook Game.  It’s a cute game, where by rolling a die, you find the ingredients needed to make different dishes.  Each round only takes a few minutes, and after I played it with the boys once, they understood the game well enough to play against each other without my help.

Things I liked about the game:

• Quick play is a big relief to any parent who has desperately tried to cheat to let their kid win chutes and ladders just to end the game.
• Everyone works together to find the ingredients, so it’s basically luck that determines the "winner."  So the 4 year old and the 7 year old can play together and both have a chance.
• The game has some good suggestions for how to build on the cooking theme.

Things I didn’t like about the game:

• Not particularly interesting for adults.  Probably inherent in a game for preschoolers.  For slightly older kids, I think Cranium’s Balloon Lagoon is more fun, because there are some activities (like launching the frogs into the pond) that are challenging for adults too. 
• The box only had pictures of girls and women.

The other game they sent was the Let’s Go to the Zoo Seek and Find Puzzle.  This is a puzzle with big pieces, that once assembled turns into a "can you find" game?  This was of more interest to D than to N, who likes very simple puzzles, but gets frustrated with harder ones easily.  So this got less play, but I still think it’s a nice idea. 
***

While I’m on the subject of games for young kids, I wanted to toss out the names of some others that we’ve enjoyed.  You really don’t have to torture yourself with Candyland:

• Hisss
• Zingo
• Catch the Match

In the movie Pump Up The Volume, the Christian Slater character has a line where he says "At some point, I realized I was never going to be normal. And I said, f— it, so be it."  I saw this movie with a friend from high school, at a theater somewhere in the middle of Queens, and I laughed so hard at this line that I literally fell off my chair and the few other people in the theater all turned around to stare at me.

I was reminded of this line by Laura at 11d’s comment this weekend that "I think it helps that I have never placed a whole lot of stock in normality."  It made me realize that while I’ve long ago made my peace with being weird, I’m not quite there yet with respect to my kids.  I want them to be happy.  D’s already come home saying that kids have teased him, and I know that’s part of life, but I still want to strangle them.

D says they call him short. And you know what?  D is short, and he’s probably always going to be short.  Physically, he seems to take after me, and I’m short. Plus he’s on inhaled steroids for his asthma.  So what can he do?  He can ignore it, or try to turn it into a joke.  He can tell them they hurt his feelings, or find other kids to hang out with.  He can try to fight the kids who tease him, or tell a teacher.  Mostly I think he needs to get a little thicker skinned, but I don’t think that’s something you can learn by being told — you need to figure it out yourself.

He’s also said that kids laughed at him because he was licking the sweat off of himself after they were running.  I had to work hard not to laugh myself when he said that.  D can’t control that he’s short, but I don’t think it’s crazy to think that he could choose to save licking his own sweat for when he’s in private. I wouldn’t suggest that someone pretend not to be smart, or hide her sexual orientation in order to fit in, but this doesn’t seem like such a fundamental thing.

When we were talking about Madeline L’Engle after her death, one of my friends who does a lot of work with gifted kids commented that Meg clearly thinks it makes sense to pretend not to be as smart as she really is; she only gets in trouble because Charles Wallace is totally incapable of doing so, and Meg gets in fights defending him.  The problem with pretending is it’s hard work, and you miss out on friendships with the people who might actually like you the way you are, and if you’re good enough at pretending you sometimes forget who you really are.

The best fiction I’ve ever read about these issues is a comic called Zot! by Scott McCloud. Zot is a teenage superhero from a parallel dimension, but in the last 8 or 9 episodes that McCloud wrote, he gets stuck on our Earth and hangs out with his not-quite-girlfriend Jenny and her group of weirdo high school friends.  They’ve never been published as a trade paperback, because the press that put out the earlier volumes of Zot! went under.  I just found out that HarperCollins is going to publish all of the black and white Zot! episodes next year, as a single volume.  I’m really pleased.  (The Zot! book is now available for pre-order.)

The other morning I asked D to get dressed, and when I went into his room 10 minutes later to check on him, I found him sitting in his underwear reading.  I just had to laugh, because I can’t tell you the number of times my mom found me with one sock on, reading or just staring into space.  While it can be annoying to have to repeat myself 3 times before it registers on him that I’ve even said anything, I’m just pleased as punch that he’s becoming a real reader.

On the other hand, I’m sort of selfishly bummed by his choice of reading material, which is almost exclusively manga.  He’s read all the Naruto that the library carries, and is now working his way through the Yu-Gi-Oh books.  It’s not that I think that comics aren’t "real" reading –but it’s not the stories that I dreamed about sharing with my children.  D still wants to be read to, but he’s less and less willing to let me pick the stories, and has almost no patience for chapter books of any sort.

Added to clarify: I’m thrilled that he’s reading, regardless of the content.  But there are so many books that I was personally looking forward to reading with him that he’s not interested in….  He won’t watch baseball with me either.

In general, when the boys are watching TV, T. lets them alternate choosing what to watch (from the menu of shows that we approve and have TiVo’d).  I sometimes follow that pattern, sometimes tell them that if they can’t agree on something, there won’t be any TV watching.

Lately, D has figured out that he can improve his bargaining position by offering side deals, or bribes.  So, tonight he offered N one of his water bottles for choosing Tom & Jerry over Max and Ruby.  N happily accepted.  Yesterday the price was a nickel.

I’m not sure why this bothers me.  Both boys were happy with the deal, and neither one gave up something irreplaceable.   (D has other water bottles; N will get another chance to pick a show in a day or so.)  And they’re learning how to negotiate without our intervention, as suggested in Siblings without Rivalry.    But I still feel like something’s wrong with this picture.

Here’s the latest cartoon for my office’s caption contest:

Vote here for your favorite caption.

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One of my friends said that she thought the cartoon was anti-working parent.  I can see where she’s coming from — the idea that the baby is being neglected because the parents are so busy.  But that certainly wasn’t our intent.  We thought of it more as a comment on non-family friendly work environments, and how frazzled parents are as a result. (Heck, even with T. home full-time, I still often feel like we’re running a relay, passing the parenting baton as we race past each other.)

These cartoons are an attempt to be lighthearted about serious subjects, to start conversations outside our usual wonkish circles.  But they’re inherently a bit ambiguous, with potential for varying interpretations — someone told me she thought one of the captions in our first contest was anti-immigrant.

I’ve got a backlog of solicited reviews, so here’s a bunch of bullets about various things that I’ve been sent recently:

• The good folks at PBS Kids sent me a DVD of their new educational show, coming this fall, Word World.  The learning gimmick is that key words are spelled out, and then the letters transform into the thing itself.  The site says it’s aimed at 3-5 year olds; I think my 3 1/2 year old has already mastered the idea that letters make words that represent things.  But both N and D watched it eagerly, and thought it was very funny.  I asked them whether they liked it more or less than Between the Lions (which is aimed at 4-7 year olds), and they said they liked it more.  N said "it wasn’t scary."
• Yamaha sent me the Konga drum from their new "real rhythm" line.  I rolled my eyes a little at the literature they sent me about how important drumming is to brain development, but it’s a nice drum.  (I do think music is important to kids, but they can make it with a jar full of beans as well as with a fancy drum.) I know my parents spent quite a while looking for a solid kid’s drum when D was a toddler (without a stick, so he couldn’t put anyone’s eye out) and this one is nicer than anything that was available at the time.  And it’s got a shoulder strap, so you can march around the house with it.
• I got a CD of a new release — Lullaby Appetite, by Alexa Wilkinson.  If you’re wondering what the title means, so did I.  And having listened to the title track a couple of times, I still don’t know.  So, I’ll send the disk to the reader with the best (as judged by me) explanation.  Overall, I found the lyrics on this album evocative but not quite meaningful.  But the music is catchy and Wilkinson’s voice is fine.
• Usually publishers email me and ask if I want a review copy, but Friends and Mothers, by Louise Limerick, just showed up on my doorstep.  It’s mommy-lit, Australian style.  I read the first few chapters, and thought they were ok, but put it down in the middle and felt no compulsion to pick it up again.  But Flea read it, and she’s pretty positive about it, so I might give it another try.

All of my parenting email lists and many blogs are abuzz with news of the recall of a bunch of Thomas trains for lead in the paint.  I think it’s drawing a lot of attention for several reasons:

• These trains are awfully popular.  Pretty much every kid I know has some.
• They’re expensive, and they’re made of wood, so they have an old-fashioned aura.  People aren’t surprised that the cheap plastic crap from the dollar store is made in China or Mexico, but they don’t expect the stuff that’s $15 for a little train to come off the same assembly line.
• It’s coming right after there’s been a lot of attention to the impossibility of protecting the food supply from contaminants.

Realistically, I don’t think there’s a need to panic, unless your kid has been walking around sucking on James all day.  While it’s clearly a bad thing, all of us who grew up when leaded gasoline was in common use got exposed to much higher levels of lead.   

(Don’t worry, I will check our train bins to see if we have any that are affected — I think all of ours are older than 2005, though.)

But it does highlight how interconnected — and how vulnerable — we all are in this global economy.  There’s really no way to avoid it.  The part of that NPR story on the food supply that struck me the most is that China produces 80 percent of the world’s Vitamin C.  Unless you’re going to go try to play Robinson Crusoe somewhere, you can’t avoid it.