Tag: learning

Tolerance Is Not A Virtue
14 Nov
Posted in Scary Mommy 14 comments

Tolerance Is Not A Virtue

Over the weekend, while I was giving my son a bath, we started talking about Disney’s Robin Hood. My son said he liked it — except for the ending, when the main characters kiss and get married.

“Ya know, you might want to get married someday…”
“I might want to marry a boy.”
“You can do that.”
“Boys can marry boys, and girls can marry girls.”
“That’s right. The important thing is that you marry someone you love.”

(I’ll stop quoting our conversation there, before he expressed his desire to marry Mommy and also to marry multiple friends from his kindergarten class.)

The conversation got me thinking…

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How To Explain Trump To Kids
26 Sep
Posted in Lists 13 comments

How To Explain Trump To Kids

My six-year-old won’t be watching the first presidential debate tonight because a) he’s six and b) he doesn’t need to hear the terrible things people will say during the debate, and by “people” I mean me and by “terrible things” I mean the filthy words I will be yelling at the screen every time Trump speaks.

In a perfect world, Donald Trump will get crushed in November and retreat back to one of his gross hotels, never to be seen again except all the time everywhere because he is a craven opportunist with absolutely no shame and the media worships him. But that’s fine, he can have his TV appearances, so long as I never have to explain to my kids why a misogynistic bigot is President of the United States.

But it’s possible, and in order to be prepared for that possibility, I’ve begun trying to think of ways to explain President Trump in terms my six-year-old can understand.

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Underrated Milestones
13 Sep
Posted in Uncategorized 4 comments

Underrated Milestones

My second kid turned eight months old yesterday. He has a few teeth, we’ve started easing him into baby food (with disastrous results), and he’s looking to crawl any minute, which is going to severely complicate my life and increase my stress level.

Meanwhile, the original kid started first grade last week. He is about to lose a few teeth, tried oysters for the first time over the summer (loved them!), and, most significantly, is dangerously close to being able to read the channel guide, thus preventing me from lying about his shows not being on.

This is all very momentous, obviously, but when do my kids’ developmental milestones start benefiting me?

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Who Needs Beat Bugs?
25 Aug
Posted in Music 3 comments

Who Needs Beat Bugs?

When I found out I was going to be a dad, I had a lot of plans.

Not “this will never happen” stuff or “I’m going to do things the right way! stuff – I knew even before he was born that my pre-parent ideas were unlikely to stand up to reality. But I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to teach my son, especially when it comes to pop culture stuff I planned to pass down.

Some of them are still pending – I still can’t wait to show my kids The Karate Kid and introduce them to “The Wire” when they’re older – but a few of them have taken hold with Detective Munch already, particularly Star Wars, superheroes, and The Beatles.

So while I appreciate Netflix’s cool new show, I’m happy to say I beat “Beat Bugs” to the punch!

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Love Trumps Hate
09 Aug
Posted in SERIOUS! 13 comments

Love Trumps Hate

The other day, I was whining to my son (turnabout is fair play!) about having to watch the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” again. It’s become his entertainment of choice, and I hate it. I HATE IT. So I told him that if he keeps liking it, we can’t be friends.

And then he schooled me: “Dad, we can still be friends even if we don’t like the same things.”

Stupid kids and their innocent wisdom making me feel dumb. Too bad he’s wrong.

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