Category: Parenting

We received a package yesterday that was filled with those Styrofoam packing peanuts. C found the opened box. You know the result.

I don’t need to tell anyone who either is raising or has raised a toddler what a destructive force they can be. S remarked how he’s like a tornado, which is totally true. While we were working on dinner last night, we just stopped to watch him for a minute. He literally just goes from one thing to the next, stumbling, bouncing off of furniture, and tripping over his toys, stopping only to destroy something else, and leaving debris in his wake. Total whirlwind.

It’s exhausting, and trying to keep things in any semblance of cleanliness is a huge challenge, but it’s also fun to watch him. Although he does seem to be singularly intent on making as large a mess as possible, I know that a lot of what he does is just part of his development, which, when put into that perspective, is a joy to watch. Seeing him learn new things, and imitate us, and say new words is just plain fun, and worth the mess that comes with it.

(And that mess is fully intentional at times. While feeding him dinner the other night, he started throwing food onto the floor, so I told him no. His response was to look me straight in the eyes, grab a handful of his dinner, slowly move his hand over the side of his chair, and drop everything, never once breaking eye contact, and with a look that was a mix of feigned innocence and glare of contempt. I couldn’t help but laugh, which only encouraged him. That’s where they get you – you need to maintain some level of discipline, but they do something so rotten and so funny at the same time… and the stern facade goes right out the window. In any case, dinner was over at that point.)

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

For his sake, I hope not. Nothing is more depressing than knowing that I still have 30 years of sitting at a computer for eight or nine hours a day – I get to spend the best part of every day (okay, five out of seven) of my prime years in a chair staring at a monitor. Sometimes I envy those in construction or landscaping. I’m hopeful that, by the time he’s ready to enter the workforce (and sometime before I retire), technology advances to the point where we don’t have to sit all day. I’m holding out for one of those treadmill-style workstations. Or some kind of virtual technology that lets me do my spreadsheets while I’m weeding…

C, much to our chagrin, has taken quite an interest in technology. No wooden blocks or stuffed animals for him – he wants cellphones, laptops, and the TV remote. On the one hand, I want him to play with Legos and fight imaginary battles like I used to, and to build forts during the summer, when we were outside from just after breakfast until just before dinner – no TV or video games. On the other, he’s part of a new generation where technology will be entirely second nature because he grows up with it (and he’ll most likely need to learn how to use it for whatever his future career may be). I’m a baby of the 80’s, so I’m part of the first batch that really grew up with computers (challenging my dad to Tetris and Jezz-ball high scoring contests!), and it probably has given me some advantages over my older co-workers who did not. His case is even more pronounced – kids born now will be exposed to so much more than we could have expected even five years ago. Hot technology in my day was a VCR, Walkmans, and Super Nintendo.

In any case, S and I certainly can’t shelter him from all the techie stuff; nor do I think we should. We just want to make sure he’s well-rounded, and knows how to dig a hole, and kick a ball, and start a fire (okay, not for a few years), and climb a tree, and do it all in the real world, not virtually.

Parenting soapbox done.