I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Parents are a competitive bunch.
Despite the fact that every single one of us is just taking shots in the dark and flying by the seat of our pants, we’re still constantly trying to one-up each other when it comes to both our parenting styles and our kids’ accomplishments. Instead of uniting against our children, the authors of our pain, procreation tends to make parents close ranks and face off against one another.
In multiple ways.
A couple of weekends ago while we were visiting my parents in Connecticut, my oldest brother made a cameo after work.
He’s a sixth-grade teacher and he’d just finished his school day, so he stopped by our parents’ house to say hi to his nephews and grade some quizzes before heading home. I was working at the kitchen table and amidst my typing and his red-pen scribbling, I suddenly heard him say, “98! Way to go, Mia!”
He was genuinely happy that she had done well on his quiz.
Teachers are amazing. Arming them is idiotic.
Read more about Arming Teachers: This Is the Best We Can Do? …
Last spring, my wife’s sister and her boyfriend came to join us on our trip to the beach, and they brought their kids.
Except they aren’t *their* kids. Not yet, at least.
They’re foster kids.
So A Wrinkle In Time hits theaters this weekend. The book is a big deal to a lot of people, but I’ve never read it (blind spot!) and my 7-year-old hasn’t gotten to it yet, and as such the movie isn’t really on my radar.
Well, it wasn’t on my radar, until I came across a little bit of controversy over the poster. It prominently features the female lead and the mostly female cast (does Oprah even have a gender? I feel like she’s singular), all bathed in pastel colors, and it ignited another discussion about gender stereotypes.
Apparently, someone thinks the poster doesn’t appeal to boys. To which I say: who cares? It’s a poster!
We all have big plans for what we want to teach our kids, the values we want to instill, the pop culture we want to pass down. We all have big plans for molding out children into the kind of people we want them to be.
And then we actually have the kids, and life intrudes.