Tag: Parenting

Sing Her a Lullaby

 

My three-year-old niece Vichara would sometimes demand that my mother sing her a lullaby for her afternoon nap. Vichara’s older siblings and cousin all grew up with their grandmother’s lullabies.

I recall reading an article about how millennial parents are less likely to sing lullabies to their children than those over the age of 45. None of my Gen X friends sing nursery rhymes or lullabies. A handful could recall a tune or two. My siblings and their spouses can barely hum. It’s unfortunate because lullabies are a source of comfort and a soothing emotional connection between a parent and child. Lullabies and nursery rhymes have also been clinically demonstrated to help children develop their linguistic and cognitive skills.

Emily Jashinsky of The Federalist is in for Jim today. Emily and Greg cheer Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears for powerfully speaking the truth on parenting, guns, and many other issues to Bill Maher on Friday and pretty much every day since she took office last year. They also groan upon hearing the very predictable news that the Chinese spy balloon was actually able to gather intelligence – including signals – despite the Biden administration insisting it prevented that from happening back in February. Finally, they scratch their heads and wonder why former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is running for president in 2024 when it appears he’d have little chance even if Trump and DeSantis weren’t running.

Where Is All of This Going?

 

Acting upon the suggestions I received from some of you regarding my daughter, I found myself placed in a new spiritual proximity to vibes and tensions and thought-patterns any sane person should want to avoid.

I am not a Catholic. That’s just a statement of fact, not an opinion. I only mention this for context because several of the suggestions were posited by those of the Catholic faith.

However, I am curious. When Pope John Paul II passed, it hit me quite hard. Who knew? I dove into learning about him, and by doing so, I learned things I hadn’t known about the Catholic Church. For the first time, I saw a grand intellectualism I’d never known about. And I also saw a fascinating and compelling mysticism.

How the Left Views Parenthood

 

Last week, a district court judge dismissed a case brought by disgruntled parents against the public schools of Montgomery County, MD. The judge, an Obama appointee, sided with the school district against the parents, offering his blessing to the district’s policy of secretly “transitioning” children without notifying parents. The Washington Post ran a story about the case. I’ll quote from the top-rated comment on the Post piece:

If you treat your child as a human being with inherent worth, dignity, and the right to both privacy and self-determination; if they know you love them for who they are as a person regardless of who or how they love or what body they inhabit; then you have laid a foundation of trust where there will be no need for them to withhold anything from them.

[Member Post]

 

Today, my kid’s party registration arrived in the mail.  It was changed to Democrat.  When I asked why,  the answer was something lame about primaries.  In CA, party-specific primaries are a thing of the past.  I have mentioned as much. Preview Open

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

Game Night (Reprise)

 

I’ve discovered a dynamic tool that teaches kids adding, subtracting, counting money, saving money, and making change. They learn a range of new vocabulary, practice reading, work on fine motor skills, and pick up some wisdom about life. The kids can’t get enough of it. No, it’s not some fancy computer game. It’s not a LeapPad, and it’s not a stuffed animal that talks to them. It’s a $10 Monopoly game from Wal-Mart.

Now, my mom warned me back when I was talking about getting the game for them that it would go over their heads. They took to it right away, but Mom was right insofar as playing Monopoly with a five-year-old and a seven-year-old is not like playing with my friends back when I was a pre-teen and young teenager. No, playing with these small opponents is a great deal more taxing. When you play Monopoly with young children, don’t be surprised if the following occur:

What Kind of Old Man Will I Be?

 

A couple of weeks ago, I was texting with my son, and he mentioned that he and the stand-up dame he’s been dating the last couple of years were thinking about settling down and having kids. He wanted to know what I wanted them to call me. “Grandpa, pee-paw, grandpappy? What?”

And that got me to thinking, I’m going to be an old man. The signs of the twilight that lies just beyond my horizon are already beginning to show. I sometimes watch reruns of 20+-year-old TV shows (Stargate SG-1, to be specific)  I frequently launch the wrong app on my phone. And just this last week, I had a chatty conversation with a bank teller!

Abigail Shrier’s ‘Irreversible Damage’

 

Others have already commented on this book on Ricochet. In particular, Susan Quinn wrote this very nice post that drew heavily from it. I commented on a Bari Weiss interview with Abigail Shrier here. I’m sure other members have mentioned it, and several Ricochet podcasters have interviewed Ms. Shrier.

I spent a couple of the past few days in planes and airports and had an opportunity to finish a book and read two others, one of which was Ms. Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.”

My Grandmother, My Mother, and Me: 100 Years of America

 

This study of three generations, although cherry-picked, subjective, and anecdotal, does tell us something.

  1. Although easier and more luxurious, my life is more complicated than my grandmother’s.
  2. In daily living and career options, the ordinary American citizen has prospered in ways that stagger the imagination.
  3. Families in the ’40s and ’50s  labored to provide housing, food, and clothes, while my increasingly pampered generation fights to keep perspective on what is real and important.

 

To Horrify the Modern Sensibilities

 

“Dad slaughtered about 100 chickens each Friday to deliver to customers on Saturday. It was the job of the younger children of the family to hold the feet of each chicken as Dad chopped off the chicken’s head with a careful swift swing of the ax.” She goes on to describe her participation in the next step of de-feathering the carcasses.

From an account written by Mrs. Tabby’s mother (who would have been one of the aforementioned younger children in the family) recounting her childhood in Illinois, which would have been very late 1920s into the 1930s. Mrs. Tabby discovered the account, which had been written about thirty years ago, while cleaning out her parents’ house following their deaths in recent months. When she read that part to me, I immediately imagined how horrified many of today’s overprotective parents would be at the very thought of having young children participate in the process of slaughtering the animals that become our dinner. I know @cowgirl  and probably others are not. But I think many would be.

Ayaan talks with Amy Chua about how America has always demonstrated a poor understanding of tribal relations in other cultures, a weakness that makes the country ill-prepared to navigate the increasing tribalism of its own domestic politics. Amy shares her work on ‘market dominant minorities’ and ‘super-groups,’ as both women express concern about the growing political “us vs them” mentality in the United States.

Amy Chua is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School.  She received both her A.B. and her J.D. from Harvard University and was Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review.  

Parenting Postscript: Our Best and Worst Decisions

 

In 1994, my dad introduced me to a friend of his and mentioned that I was engaged. My dad’s friend, with humor and kindness, told me, “Ah, yes. Marriage.  There’s nothing like marriage to show you who you really are.  Smokes you right out.”  All these years, I’ve  retained the image of a small frenzied mammal running back and forth in his tunnel until he finally pops out of his back door–heaving, exposed, and vulnerable–to gulp the fresh air.  Except in my case, it was not marriage, but parenthood that really smoked me out.

Christian blogger and author Tim Challies expressed it best when he described some challenges of being a parent as “muddling through.”  Yes–we can read all the books, survey parents we admire, attend Love and Logic conferences, determine to be kinder and gentler, ask for help on Facebook.  Yet, few children arrive as a neat, predictable package.  Each comes as a unique little creature, a complete person, yet pre-loaded with potential to be nurtured and developed over years.

I Get It Now, Dad

 

June 2011– Now that I have my own kids, some of the stuff that made no sense to me when I was growing up has become clear. I fully grasp why certain behaviors evoked a response from my dad. He and I might have different approaches in dealing with similar kid situations: my dad would have been quick and efficient, no fanciness or equivocation. Nevertheless, it makes sense now.

For example, when I was a kid, I liked to read more than I liked to do almost anything else. Reading ranked a close second with playing outside. For sure it ranked high above “work” or “chores” or “listening to Dad explain something maybe related to chores.” Occasionally when I was engrossed in a story, my dad would emerge from his office and decide that something needed explaining. I would get up from where I had been lying on the couch, fix my eyes on him, and let the book dangle at my side, careful to have my finger at the right page.  Then suddenly, inexplicably, in the middle of what he was saying, my dad would grab the book, send it sailing across the room, and say, “You need to get your nose out of that book.” I’d be flabbergasted. Why, my nose wasn’t in the book. Hadn’t it, along with my eyes, been pointed at him?  Hadn’t I been nodding in all the right places?

The Mother Nurse

 

Over the last decade, I’ve had the privilege to play nurse to three beautiful kids. It is a mother’s prerogative to believe that her offspring are the most beautiful in the world, but I’m confident it’s true in my case.

This time has had its share of illnesses and chronic issues that challenge my skills at figuring out what is an immediate concern versus something that can wait for medical attention. It began during my oldest’s first Christmas, a decade ago. He developed a fever while visiting family and being my first, I didn’t wait a second. I found the local urgent care and took him in. I learned about Bronchiolitis and was eventually prescribed a “nebulizer” that aerosolizes medicine to be breathed into the lungs. Interesting device. The attachments are even more interesting when it comes to pediatric patients.

[Member Post]

 

I knew the moment I opened my eyes this morning that a change of scenery and routine was today’s priority. Too many days/weeks/months of the same old, same old was starting to take a toll on my outlook, energy, and mood, and it was time for a reset of sorts. A quick shower, a mug […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

The Best Stage of Parenting

 

There’s a scene in Father of the Bride that I relate to these days, as a parent of two young adult daughters. In the scene, Steve Martin’s character gapes as his grown daughter morphs into a tiny girl in braids who pipes up at the dinner table to announce her upcoming nuptials. My girls aren’t getting married yet, I’m happy to say. But I get the spirit of the movie scene when I watch all the little ways my daughters behave like grownups when I clearly remember bringing them home as helpless infants and then muddling through years of thwarted attempts to train them in basic responsibility and focus. It has dawned on me that somewhere in the last few years, something took, and now I can only drink in each delicious moment as these kids confidently lead their lives and reveal their depth.

Several little ways they have of showing ownership and wisdom have me not gaping, but wondering warmly at where my reluctant, fairy-obsessed, teacher-vexing progeny of lax parentage went, and who replaced them with these delightful grownups. Moms and dads struggling through the frustration and fog of various childhood stages, take hope:

Good Advice(s)

 

If wisdom lies in learning from the experiences of others, then I am not particularly wise. My M.O. is more of a barely-learns-from-his-own-repeated-mistakes sort of thing.

But let’s start with the piece of advice I did take when my wife and I were expecting our first children: twins. We were talking to an older co-worker of mine whose twin boys were already on the other side of college. “Let me give you the most important advice about raising twins we learned early on.”

Karol Markowicz joins Kay Hymowitz to discuss raising young children in New York City.

“Raising a family in the city is just too hard,” concluded The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson last summer. But in Park Slope, one of New York’s most desirable neighborhoods, thousands of families thrive. Still, parents must navigate a host of challenges unique to urban life, including pricey housing, complex schooling options, and sometimes-unfriendly public spaces.