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Monday, February 27, 2006
a day in the life
I was researching something completely unrelated to parenting (XM radio, which we just got; can't decide yet if I love it or not) when I happened upon a two-year-old article in the SF Chronicle containing the following sentences:
"Sandy Montag doesn't worry now when he takes his young children on a long drive in his SUV. He has a new toy that most parents will understand -- an in-car digital satellite television system.
With hundreds of channels of entertainment, from the Disney Channel to HBO, to keep them occupied, they're silent. "It's like you don't even have them. You can baby-sit and drive at the same time,'' Montag said." --"Satellite TV in the car, on the move", SF Chronicle, 11/10/2003
Is it just me, or is that just so wrong, on so many levels? I dunno, maybe I'm not "most parents". First you have the children's father talking about baby-sitting them, as if he's some clueless teenaged boy stuck in a vehicle with some young people and no idea at all what to do with them. This father revels in his children's silence, expressing relief that it's like he doesn't even have them when he can shut them up with the Disney channel (or... HBO? How old are these children exactly?) while he shuttles them from one place to another.
I really hope for their sakes that his children haven't read this article; don't you? Whoopee! it's so nice to know that Daddy's happiest when he can pretend he doesn't have us! Their poor little psyches.
I'll grant that having children in the car for extended periods can occasionally be a source of some high-magnitude stress. Are we some kind of freaks, though, in that generally some of our more pleasant times when we're on trips happen in the car on the way there and back? There's no computer, no DVD player (ahem); there aren't any bedrooms to disappear into. There are just these four people who enjoy each other and who frankly are the most important people in the world to each other. We're together, we're comfortable, we can talk at length about whatever crosses our minds, or listen to music and discuss it, we can watch the scenery go by while we listen to stories on tape that become as much a part of our memories as our destinations do. It's -- it's actually -- fun.
I started out this post feeling a kind of disgust for a father who had so distanced himself from his children that he felt the need to spend thousands of dollars on a system for his vehicle to serve as an opiate for those little aliens in the backseat who might otherwise, who knows, talk to him. Somehow, though, I wind up pitying him. How much he misses.
********************(when I use these asterisks it means I can't think of a clever segue but I'm about to talk about something unrelated to the above. Pretend I just wrote something scintillating and witty that will weave this post into a coherent whole, will you? thanks.)***************
We had the kind of day today that makes up for every bit of sibling rivalry and yelling and arguing I've dealt with (and dealt out, to be fair) in at least the past... three months? :) I feel a need to record it, so that when I'm having the kind of parenting day that drives me to the brink of, say, spending thousands of dollars for a digital satellite tv system for my car (so that I could toss the kids in, crack the windows, shut the doors, and flee for an hour or so, of course), I can pull up this entry and remind myself that really life is bliss. There was not an argument all day long (not even one spat! I am not kidding!). The kids did their chores without complaint. We had a fantastic and fun and productive school day, which included the following (ooh, a list!):
- C created a set of "acts" wherein she dressed up in costumes and did brief one-girl shows as: the Statue of Liberty (Jenn, your silver bolero has found a use. Hope you don't mind), Paul Revere (never were the colonists warned more cutely), a caveman (bearing a fearsome whiffle ball bat as a club), and Ben Franklin (carrying a kite and a key).
- T devised a series of "inventions". There was a time a few years ago when he did this with almost all his free time, but it had been a while, so it was really nice to see him at it again. Pacifists would, um, not like these inventions. However, he may have a brilliant future in the Department of Defense. Stay tuned.
- C read two entire American Girl books in one day and wrote a (painfully cute) summary for each.
- T wrote a report on a book about blue whales that surprised me with its excellence. All of a sudden the boy who would devise the shortest sentences possible so as to fit an entire paragraph on a single line of his journal, if possible, is writing coherent, lengthy (for him) treatises on the migratory patterns of ocean mammals.
- We made a really pleasant rainy-day trip to the library where we checked out stacks of books and only ONE movie. Nice change, that was.
- Both children set up "offices" in their rooms, using Sterilite tubs and an assortment of official-looking oddments including a flag consisting of a colored scrap of paper taped to a suction-cup arrow so as to stay upright. They were governors. It's funny, because when my brother and I were similar ages, we did the same thing, although I think we were just lowly office workers.
- my son vacuumed his bedroom and enjoyed it. It's a miracle. He likes folding laundry, too! No, you may not borrow him. He's, uh, needed at home.
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Not to end on a low note or anything, but T could use your prayers. He's having a hard time right now; three of his very dear friends are moving away in the space of the next few months. I've always envied him a little, having a network of close Christian friends living nearby, but in the space of about two years, most of them have or will have moved elsewhere. Two of these coming up are hitting him particularly hard. Not that the friends who remain aren't wonderful -- but he's feeling the loss, a lot, right now, and I can't fix it for him. So... you know. Just in case you were short on things to pray about. thanks.
Comments
Rachel, didn't you know that if you put TVs (with cable!) in each room of the house AND the car, you never ever have to deal with your child? Duh. A whole new world opens up when you can act like you don't even have them. Ugh.
As for T, of course he's in my prayers. That is just terrible for him. If anyone knows how hard good friends are to come by, it's me, and I feel for him.
Posted by: mary at February 28, 2006 05:58 AM
I do not like the idea of having a dvd player in the car. they get enough tv at home.
"It's like you don't even have them. You can baby-sit and drive at the same time,'' Oh that seems sad to me! Babysit your own kids? I dont get that.
so what is XM radio like? Toney has been talking about getting it off and on for awhile. Is it worth it?
Posted by: debi at February 28, 2006 10:08 AM
It's kind of like the parents who have the DVD players in their vans and use them for 20 minute trips to the store. While I'll admit, I've toyed with the idea of using them for a long trip (like 3 or more hours), there is just so much more to be enjoyed from a road trip! Sad state of affairs in this nation.
Posted by: Shelly at February 28, 2006 10:29 AM
"All of a sudden the boy who would devise the shortest sentences possible so as to fit an entire paragraph on a single line of his journal, if possible, is writing coherent, lengthy (for him) treatises on the migratory patterns of ocean mammals."
From everything I've studied/read, this happens fairly often with bright males. It's yet another reason why hand-wringing in schools over the child's "development," supposed to occur at their scheduled intervals, is fruitless and needless. Some kids barely speak when very young, the parents freak out and worry about autism, and suddenly the child starts speaking in full sentences. It happens. The idea that everyone learns the same things at the same time in the same way is perhaps the pedagogical thing that I hate most about school.
Okay, now that I got THAT out...
It sounds like you guys had an amazing day. I'd love to have witnessed all that, especially the desk preparation for the "governors" and the papers. :) What a great family.
Posted by: Kristen at February 28, 2006 11:25 AM
First of all, that was obviously an advertisement marketing a product to a type of person that probably isn't the norm. If it is, that's disgusting, but I've been trying to be optimistic lately and I would like to believe that it was just stupidly marketed. Rest assured, it IS only an ad...
Kristen that is so true about some kids not speaking at a "normal" age. The ex Greek's younger brother didn't say one word until he was five. Then he just started talking one day. He's a total jerk, but he got straight A's in Chemistry!
Rachel, I've been keeping T in my prayers and thoughts. I know how that feels so much and although you may not be able to fix it you can certainly make it a whole lot easier to take, but I'm sure you already know that ;-) Give him my love.
Posted by: jenn at February 28, 2006 07:45 PM
Kristen and Jenn: LT did the same thing with potty training and reading. I'd work and try and think of creative things to encourage him and push and nothing, and then -- click! one day it was like he'd been doing it all along.
Jenn: It was actually the beginning of an article about the new technology; wasn't even in an editorial. The sad thing is that a lot of parents don't find pleasure in their kids' company and don't exactly know what to do with them (as a homeschooler, I hear from a lot of them: "How do you DO it? I really couldn't be around my kids all day; I need time without them or I go crazy." I've actually heard this verbatim from many mothers, many of whom I consider friends). I'm sure the guy didn't even realize what he was saying -- any more than the "couldn't be around my kids all day" moms do. (and honestly, probably, they don't mean it quite the way it sounds, either.) Culturally it's not the norm to be around your children all the time, or even most of the time -- it's expected that they'll probably go to day care and definitely to school, and the parents will go to work, and interaction between parents and kids will be limited to weekends, rushed mornings, and tired evenings. Oh, and summer vacations, when those same moms are going crazy waiting for school to start again.
Posted by: Rachel at February 28, 2006 10:28 PM
Being around your *family* all day isn't currently our cultural norm; George Burns once wrote that because he and Gracie worked together he figured that they had the equivalent of a hundred years of most people's marriages. (And he was grateful for every minute of it.)
I agree with your point: parents don't "babysit" their kids, or maybe it's more accurate to say that people babysitting kids aren't being parents. For me in particular, I think I would need breaks but minding babies and toddlers - but I think I'd enjoy homeschooling.
In older books, the kids are always doing charades or otherwise acting out scenes for an audience to guess -- I bet C would like the game. Offhand, I think I remember it in Alcott's Eight Cousins, which she's probably too young to read but maybe not to be read to. (And it's got lots of boys in it, for LT.)
Posted by: dichroic at March 1, 2006 08:59 AM
On the first part of your post (the part above the dashes, a brilliant transition device, by the way), I agree about 85 percent. The 15 percent disagreement is that my family has used a little portable DVD player on long trips, such as to Missouri and New Mexico. One of my kids gets carsick reading, and the other reads but gets tired of it after awhile. We do talk as a family and listen to music together, but when you're in the car sometimes 10 hours at a stretch, it's nice to have a few hours where everyone is quiet. It's kind of like a 70 m.p.h. nap time (except for the driver, of course!)
As I grow older, though, I see TV more as a thief and a mistress and an indoctrinator than as a friend, so that's where the 85 percent agreement comes in. We regulate how much TV our kids watch, donlt allow any TV on Sundays, and have said no to TVs in bedrooms, even though "all our friends have them." If our kids had TVs and personal computers in their bedrooms (not to mention their own cell phones, which some of my 9-year-old daughter's friends have), we'd never see our kids except at meals.
I have had those days of serendipity, where everything comes together for a moment so beautifully that time almost stops. I like to think of it as a brief, weak foretaste of heaven.
I'll pray for T as well.
Love your blog...
Posted by: Muley at March 1, 2006 03:58 PM
