Savvy Daddy - For super dads everywhere

Home alone with the kids

tony — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:06:17 -0800

by Andy Van Horn

Sure I can handle it

My wife asked me take care of our daughter so she could be a volunteer advisor at a drug prevention camp for a week in July. What was I going to say? "No." I am 37. I have multiple degrees in education and I taught school for 9 years. I now work from home with an incredibly flexible schedule. Most people would kill for the situation I have in order to be a single parent for a week. I can handle this. She asked in February. You would think that this would give me enough time to be ready. Oh silly daddy, that meant I had only 5 months to get ready. Here is what I learned.

Zone D is the way to go.

While I am a musician by training, I understand sports and I live in LA where the main sports team is the Lakers (sorry Orlando). Man to man is a valid defense in sports but when your opposition gets naps, seems to draw on an endless supply of energy, does not need to earn money and gets to sleep for 12 hours-while you do everything you could not do when she was awake (like relax, clean, cook, think)-then man to man will not work. She can wear you down, even at 3 feet 6 inches tall.

This is what I learned. Make sure to take advantage of support, any support. By the end of the week, I had to take a 2 hour break to get rid of a headache. If I had not then I would have been a horrible dad when my daughter got home from pre-school. I had the advantage of working from home so I made up the work at night. So I also learned to use the resources you got. Friends, family, educational TV (or any TV), flexible work schedule, whatever will give you some time to yourself to reenergize. Let someone else carry the load for a little while.

2 minus 1 is not 1 but 0 in parent math

That is the amount of time that is now your own. As soon as my wife left to go to "drug camp" (I got more sarcastic about her trip as the week progressed), I realized that the big things were not the issue. It was the little stuff. I give my daughter baths on a regular basis, I make lunch, I got breakfast and dinner covered, I put her to bed, I get her dressed but I never do all of them in one day, much less 5 days in a row. While my wife would do some of the things listed above I would check email, look at a sports score, or think about going for a run (or actually go for one). This week my personal time was gone. It was not watching the super bowl or a night out with friends that I missed but rather the 15-30 minutes spread over a day that gets your brain in a different place.

New Respect for Single Parents

My mom was a single parent and I know she had it tough. She raised two boys on less than $30,000 a year, with no such things as video games, food delivery or summer camps that would take us for weeks at time. But she was smart. She got my brother and I involved in sports (both of us were horrible at it but we had fun) so we were at practice and games a couple of days the week. This gave her time to reenergize. I realize that this is what everyone needs.

The Return of the Mommy

She came back. Child and father were thrilled but mommy was not feeling well and slept for 14 hours and then needed the next day to recover. So daddy was not yet off duty but a weight was lifted. She would read a book to our daughter while I could see what was happening around the world. Just knowing that there was back up was a great feeling.

Not Dead Yet

jimdenny — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:47:00 -0800

By Jim Denny

Jackson, my 10-year-old son, has taught me many things about the world around me. A shower - no matter how long - is never long enough. It is never too late in the day, nor too close to bedtime, to enjoy a good snack. And it is not against the laws of physics to project toothpaste from the sink of the bathroom to the ceiling of the bedroom around the corner. The world is a mysterious place, and I am immeasurably grateful to have him around to unveil these wonders, along with countless others, every single day.

Perhaps more meaningful, however, is what Jackson has taught me about myself.

This was the first Christmas where Jackson was in on the "Santa secret." So, he knew it was his mom and dad who forked over the cash for his new iPod Touch, rather than some kindly bearded man up at the North Pole cobbling things together with the help of a few elves. And he appreciated it. He truly did. But realizing I had a child who is reaching that point where the realities of life start to creep over the bulkhead of childhood wonder gave me pause. And watching how he took to the iPod Touch without hesitation, fluently navigating his way to the app store and downloading more free apps than I could ever imagine needing in my lifetime, convinced me that the years between us are actually quite tangible.

"Why do you need all of those?" I asked. "You'll never get to all of them.

"You're going to download some sort of virus," I warned.

I knew exactly what I sounded like. I sounded like my parents. The echoes of mom and dad saying "I don't understand why you kids even want that Atari thing" or "Computers? Ha! Why would I care about computers? They can't do the dishes, can they?" haunted me from the dark corners of my mind. I have become the old person who "just doesn't understand."

So, Jackson taught me what I thought was a very simple lesson about myself - I am old. But in reality, his lesson for me didn't actually end there.

Jackson's birthday is on Christmas Eve. His uncle gave him a Ripstick. A Ripstick, for those of you who don't know, is to a skateboard what roller blades are to roller skates, yet decidedly more unstable. It has a single castor at the front and one at the back. It looks something like two oblong ping pong paddles fused handle to handle. The front and back move independently, just to make things exciting, I guess. According to the instructional DVD that comes with it, it is actually possible to propel yourself uphill by shimmying back and forth and somehow maintaining your balance as you try to forget that the only things separating you from the unforgiving pavement below are two wobbly, gyrating wheels. Jackson was very excited to have his very own Ripstick. And for some strange reason, I was excited to learn how to ride it.

And so there we stood in the driveway, staring at it. We bantered theories back and forth on how one might get onto it without planting his face into the concrete. We talked about which foot should go where, or if it even mattered. Eventually, the talking had to end. Jackson stepped up and, almost immediately, tilted himself off. Again. And again.

"Dad, can you do it?" he said with the slightest bit of frustration in his voice. In fact, I was almost stunned by how his sincerity drowned out the frustration. Did he actually think I could do this? I was never into skateboarding. I've only tried to snowboard once. As excited as I was by this new toy, I was equally sure it was something I would never lay a single foot upon. For an old guy like me, this thing was a deathtrap. And yet, there Jackson stood asking for me to show him the way.

"We'll take turns. How ‘bout that? We'll teach each other," I said.

And so it began. We stutter-stepped. We wobbled. We watched the instructional video a second time. And then, we started to roll. I even managed to catch a wheel in one of the driveway cracks and take a tumble without breaking a bone. I don't even think I bruised my ego. In the epitome of role reversal, Jackson ran to my side to see if I was ok. And on his very next try, Jackson started cutting turns back and forth. We were far from experts, but we were balanced and moving.

A couple of more times that day, we headed down to the neighborhood clubhouse to take turns riding around the empty parking lot. We were sharing an experience neither one of us had ever had before. For that moment, we were both free to experience the wonder of life, unfettered by the conformity of experience. We had found a new frontier together. There was no young, no old. Only the thrill of the new.

It is true. I may be old and only getting older. But Jackson has taught me that I am most assuredly not dead. Life, according to Jackson, is not yet finished revealing itself to me.

Fatherhood requires that I pass the benefit of my experience on to Jackson, in hopes that he will use the knowledge and understanding from it to reach heights far beyond my own grasp. But at the same time, Fatherhood begs me to rely not solely on the experience of my past but also to share in the sense of wonder that can only come from doing something you have never done before. Fatherhood, in short, is as much an adventure as it is a responsibility.

The other day, Jackson offered to buy me a Ripstick of my own with some of his leftover birthday cash. I just might have to take him up on it.

Is football safe for kids?

Philmundo — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:01:48 -0700

by Phil Stott

About a month ago, my brother-in-law sent me a video of his four-year-old son's first touchdown in a flag football game. It's remarkable in several ways: first, that my nephew seems to understand the purpose of the game at such a young age-when he gets the ball in his own half of the field his first instinct is to head for the opposition end zone. Second: he understood that once he crossed the end zone line, he could stop running. And, third, he threw a proper football pass to the referee when returning the ball. A couple of weeks later, as if to prove it was no fluke, he did it again, and my brother-in-law again captured the evidence on video. Clearly he's a boy who's going to grow up loving his sport, and perhaps even has a natural aptitude for it.

All well and good, I thought. As someone who loves sport myself (albeit the other kind of "football"), I can remember the point in my childhood where I became infatuated with it-and it's lasted to this day. Becoming obsessed by a sport is a pleasure that, while not unique to boys, certainly seems to be more common among them-at least in my experience. Seeing that bloom in my nephew is a heart-warming thing, and I was happy both for him and his Dad, who is perhaps the quintessential jock-one that, to be honest, I don't know would have been able to relate to a son that didn't play sports.

My happiness for them both lasted approximately a week-right up until I read this disturbing piece on pro football in the New Yorker. While the premise of the piece is to present a parallel between football and dogfighting-a case that rests on a link between "gameness" in fighting dogs that keep coming back for more to please their owners and the culture in football of playing through pain, even to the detriment of your long-term wellbeing-the most disturbing evidence it offers is on the prevalence of serious brain injuries among ex football players.

Sure, the piece mainly details autopsy results of guys who have made the pros, therefore subjecting themselves to many more hits to the head-and at greater speeds from bigger guys-than someone who only plays through high school, but the evidence is frightening nonetheless. Guys in their forties showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease normally seen only in the very elderly-the likely cause: brain damage from too many hits. The brain of an eighteen year-old who had "been playing football for a couple of years" with the kind of damage not normally seen in someone at 50, much less his own age.

There's obviously a long way between a fledgling love affair with flag football and taking recurring hits with the force of a car crash, but nonetheless the article left me concerned about my nephew. After all, I became obsessed with soccer at a very young age, and am still playing the game over a quarter of a century later (and, yes, typing that does make me feel very, very old)-who's to say he's not going to do the same with football? Even if he doesn't, even if he only plays until the end of high school, the evidence in the New Yorker piece suggests he's still got a better than average chance of sustaining some sort of damage to his brain from all the collisions.

Given all of that, then, it makes me wonder: is there anyone out there who's happy that their kid's playing football? And if so, why?

Magic for Dads & Kids

tony — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:57:22 -0700

by Brian McGovern

Searching for a fascinating hobby that you can share with your child? Looking for a hobby that can help your child develop social skills and may promote a strong desire to read?

The hobby of magic can do wonders to promote an outgoing personality even among the shyest children. When a child learns how to impress other kids with amazing magic it gives them more self-confidence.

As your child's desire to master magic grows you'll be happy to find that he or she will be eager to read books and magazines about the topic. There's always more to learn.

The art of magic is a perfect hobby to share with kids. Children are fascinated by magic and any father who can do a few cool tricks is one cool dad indeed. Here's a stunt that will amaze and amuse that doesn't take a lot of practice.

The French Drop

Here's an easy bit of sleight of hand that you can use to vanish coins, balls or other small items. Give this a little practice and you'll be able to make things disappear and reappear like magic.

Hold the object between your thumb and index finger of your palm up left hand. Move your palm down right hand towards the object. You're going to move your right thumb right underneath the object. (see youtube video here)

You're going to pretend to take the object into your right hand. What really happens is you let the object fall into the palm of your left hand. Let the object fall into your hand just as you pretend to take it away. Practice doing this in a mirror to make sure that no one can see the object in your palm.

Hold your right hand as if it really contains the object. If you're pretending to hold a ping-pong ball make sure your hand is not held flat. Let your fingers bulge as if they really held the ball. Stare at the right hand with intensity. All your focus must be on the hand that allegedly contains an object. Your audience will naturally look in the same direction as you do so don't peek at your left hand.

Move your right hands up and down as you wiggle your thumb and fingers. While your audience is distracted by this motion let your left hand drop to your side. Make a slow tossing motion with your right hand and pretend to follow the object as it vanishes in mid air.

Pause for a beat and reproduce the object from your pocket or from behind someone's ear or even your nose. Practice this stunt in the mirror for a few minutes and you've got a trick you can use when ever you want to create a bit of fun.

Magic kits make a great birthday gift. Be sure the tricks it contains are appropriate for the age of your child. Encourage your child to practice and rehearse before they try to trick their friends.

Give it a try! You may really enjoy taking your child to magic shows, visiting magic shops and even attending conventions and lectures sponsored by local magic clubs.

Hijinx is a professional magician in New York.

Freaky Fortnight: Credit where it's due

tony — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:12:37 -0700

by Phil Stott

So last Friday saw one of the best things I've read about parenting recently come to a close: Slate's Freaky Fortnight feature. The basic premise of the feature was that a Slate editor, Michael Agger, would switch roles with his wife, Susan Burton, for two weeks. In short, she would do his job while he stayed home in Brooklyn and took care of the kids. Both then blogged about the experience, and also put regular updates on Twitter.

Of the two, it's perhaps not surprising that I enjoyed Agger's posts more-mostly because I found them informative in many ways on the whole question of being a Dad who works. Over the course of the two weeks, he covered a whole range of issues, but I was hooked when he began his first post with the following quote: "My oldest son is 4, so it's a little early to tell how much fatherhood has changed me, but I have noticed two things. I stopped moping. (There's not enough time.) And I really, really love the office." It's hard not to get hooked, I suppose, when someone is willing to be so honest about their experiences-and doubly so when the words he's writing put my own thoughts into words.

Actually, that's what I most enjoyed about the two weeks of blog postings: the fact that both writers-but Agger in particular-seemed to keep putting my thoughts on the parenting thing into words. As a writer, I'll put my hand up and say that it's kind of humiliating to be beaten to so many punches, but I've always believed that the best thing to do when you find someone who does something better than you is to pass it on to others. (Plus, I'm consoling myself with the thought that because they only had a two-week assignment-and a fairly intense experience to base their writing on-they're mining a rich vein that gets harder to sustain the longer you write about it.)

Anyway, in that spirit, here are a couple of my favorite observations from Agger's posts over the two weeks. Each of them struck me as having distilled a basic truth about the art of being a Dad in this day and age.

When considering how his priorities have changed since becoming a parent, Agger commented on how his attitude towards work has shifted. Gone are the concerns over fulfillment, or ladder climbing. Instead, he comments that "now the job thing has simplified: gotta feed the family." As someone who only began looking for a regular 9 to 5 job when my wife got pregnant, I can well understand the truth in that statement. (And, on an inter-generational, universal sort of note, my own father also claims that he went to work every day with the attitude that he could quit any time he liked: something that lasted until my brother was born. At that point, he says, "I realized that it wasn't only me who would suffer if I lost a job.")

As the experiment wore on, Agger came to realize that he didn't really know his youngest child. Not in terms of personality, but in the rhythms of his days, the simple things you miss out on when you spend between 8 and 12 hours a day outside of the home. Thus, when he took his kids to a park, he found himself over-parenting to compensation, prompting the following observation: The "stay-at-home thing requires a different pace. I had to remind myself that I did not have to pay attention to Will all the time. I would have to slow down and be less of a spaz." What mostly-weekends-through-necessity Dad can't resonate with that?

For brutal honesty (and because I felt more than a pang of guilty recognition), I also love the following quote: "I do my share of dealing with the kids in the morning, but I don't have that internal monitor that Susan has. The kids aren't always on my mind. They are always on Susan's mind."

And, just because I've read reams of advice on being a writer-none of which is much use when it comes to facing a blank screen-I loved the following quote: "Giving parenting advice is a lot like giving writing advice. You can say a lot of things that sound very intelligent and thoughtful, but when it comes down to the actual act, it's mostly intuition and the inescapable fact of who you are." In fact, I like that so much that I may just write it down and keep it somewhere.

Apologies to both Slate and Michael Agger for basically stealing your work for this post, but as I said before, I'm a big believer in giving credit where it's due. (Burton is also due a whole bunch, but my appreciation for her has to be limited to silent applause given her lack of dad-ness!) And, just to prove that I'm not some mere plagiarist, here's the link one more time. Click it-I promise you'll find something you like.

(Image: Slate.com)

Staying positive in the job hunt

Philmundo — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:57:43 -0700

by Phil Stott

So I've been keeping an eye on the bill working its way through the House (well...it's stalled at the time of writing) to extend unemployment benefit payments to people in States where the unemployment rate is above 8.5 percent. Unprecedented times calling for unprecedented measures, the bill would give long-term unemployed people in my home state of New York benefits for up to 99 weeks, according to the New York Times-provided they became unemployed no later than October 27, 2008. In order for that to happen, however, the bill needs to overcome Republican objections.

While I'm tempted to just fire off a missive about the divisiveness in the political arena in this country, that's not the intention I sat down with. What really motivated me to sit down and write this is the fact that such legislation is needed at all-in short, that there are people out there who, despite their best efforts, have been unable to find employment for almost two years.

I know only too well how disheartening it can be going from day to day with no prospect of a job in sight; when I first arrived in the U.S. in the fall of 2006, I was on a visa that didn't allow me to work-a situation that didn't change until April of 2007. For the first six months of my life in this country, then, I was essentially a kept man, sitting at home all day with little more than daytime TV and the internet for company. I don't know if my visa situation made the ordeal better or worse than attempting to look for a job in a recession, because I don't know what's more hopeless-putting in a ton of effort with only a marginal chance of it paying off (there are currently over 6 unemployed people for every vacancy out there), or not even seeing the point of putting that effort in because you have no idea when-or even if-the government is going to get around to clearing you for work.

What the experience-and the search for employment that followed it when my papers did come through-taught me were a few strategies for survival (as well as a couple of things to avoid) which I'd like to pass on now.

Do: Make lists of things you need to get done, and check them off as you do them. Having tangible evidence that you've achieved something is a great way to keep you sane and prevent you from spending another day staring at a computer or TV screen doing nothing.

Do: Try and establish a routine. Whether it's a couple of hours of dedicated job-searching in the morning or a run in the afternoon, having designated activities to structure your day around can prevent you from focusing on how slowly the time's passing.

Don't: Be afraid to enjoy yourself. Sure, being unemployed sucks. And it sucks a whole lot more if you have a family to try to support. But that doesn't mean your every waking minute should be a nightmare. Even simple (and free) things like taking the kids to the park can be a great boost for your state of mind.

Don't: Give in to the internet's dark side. Sure, there's a ton of "interesting" stuff out there (some of it less than family- or marriage-friendly), but it's important to maintain a sense of perspective. I developed something of an online poker habit during the winter I was sequestered-spending hours just sitting essentially involved in a mindless activity-and I wasn't even playing for cash! And, for all the hours I spent doing it, not once did I get up from the computer feeling good about myself. General rule of thumb: if it's not something you'd do on a computer in an office environment (or if the wife is around), don't do it when you're alone. As the saying goes: character is who you are when no one is looking.

Do: Get out and socialize. Having arrived in this country knowing only my wife, I found the social aspect the hardest to come by. In short order, though, I managed to find a soccer team (which eventually led to some coaching work when my visa papers came through) and a couple of guys who were occasionally available to hang out for a couple of hours during the week. That human contact made a big difference to my mental health. For the same reason, consider volunteering wherever possible-even if it's only helping a neighbor get groceries.

The bottom line is that it's important to stay connected and in a positive frame of mind-for yourself and your family as much as for the sake of your job hunt. And remember: it can all change at any moment. If you are looking-and especially if you've been looking for a while-keep faith. And good luck.

Having Kids vs. Overpopulation

Philmundo — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:50:23 -0700

by Phil Stott

I had the great fortune to be able to attend the World Business Forum at Radio City Music Hall recently, and to hear speakers like President Bill Clinton, George Lucas (yup, that one), management guru Gary Hamel, and Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman all giving their views on where they think we're headed in coming years.

While I could have listened to Clinton speak all day-and on any subject-the speaker who gave me most pause for thought was a guy called Jeffrey Sachs. Another economist-he advises President Obama, as it happens-he gave a speech titled "Economics for a Crowded Planet" that really struck a chord with me.

Part of the reason Sachs' speech stood for me was because he was one of the few presenters at the conference who seemed unable to find any sort of silver lining to the challenges we're facing as a society. He wasn't exactly predicting doom and disaster, but his core point was that we're all going to have to get used to getting by with a lot less in future-the reason being that there are an ever-increasing number of people on this planet, and all using more resources than ever before. And, given that we're already using more resources than the planet can sustain, something's going to have to change.

One of the key points in Sachs' speech was that the current rate of population growth on the planet is unsustainable. We've grown from around 6 billion at the turn of the millennium to an estimated 6.8 billion today, and current projections have us surpassing the 9 billion mark sometime in the 2050's. (By contrast, Wikipedia puts the global population in 1900 at a scant 1.65 billion.) What's most frightening about those figures is that Sachs estimates the planet can only sustain 8 billion-meaning we'll be at crisis point before most of our kids are in their 40s.

As parents, one of our most basic hopes is that our kids grow up to lead better lives-and in a better world-than we did. Now I'm not complaining; I've had a pretty good life thus far, and lived it in a reasonably stable and peaceful world. My real concern is that, with all the problems that a population crunch is likely to bring with it (forget wars over oil, fresh water could become a reason for conflict) the world my kids will inherit is likely to be much less stable, and much more crowded. And obviously, as someone who's brought one child into this world-and is awaiting the arrival of a second in February-I'm part of the problem.

Therein lies the root of a question that I just can't seem to get a handle on, no matter how hard I try. If, as Sachs claims, population needs to be capped at around 8 billion, how do we go about achieving that? The practical answer is to promote family planning around the world, but the much larger philosophical questions remain: In a world where controlling population is a must, is it possible to make a decision about who does and doesn't get to have kids, or how many they can have? If it is, how do we make that decision? And, knowing all of that, should we be having children at all.

That last question seems to me to be the key to everything. I was aware of the overpopulation debate before having a child, but I went ahead and did it anyway-and it's been the best thing I've ever done. For me-or anyone else in my position-to then turn around and tell someone else they can't enjoy the same rights would be a classic case of "do as I say, not as I do."

So there's the issue: as parents, we're directly responsible for contributing to the overcrowding of the planet. Sure, you might not be having 12 kids to help you eke out a living in an economic backwater, but numbers are numbers, and even your one or two offspring add up. How, then, do we reconcile that with the need to keep the planet liveable for the future generations we're so busy creating?

The Disciple Debate

Philmundo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:27:50 -0700

by Phil Stott

There's something of a debate developing among two of the more venerable news sources in this country over the issue of using time outs to punish a child-and it has the potential to get very confusing for parents.

Specifically, The New York Times published a piece a little while back suggesting that "conditional parenting"-holding back affection when a child misbehaves, or lavishing praise when they do something right-could lead to children feeling like they have to please their parents at every turn, and result in them growing into bitter and insecure adults. Then, this week, a blogger at Newsweek fired back, claiming that Times writer Alfie Kohn "overstated the science he had to support his argument," and suggested that an equally compelling case could be made to support conditional parenting.

See what I mean about confusing?

As someone who has been using a form of conditional parenting (time outs) since my daughter was old enough to understand the concept, my initial reaction on reading the Times piece was to knock up a few hundred words about how guilty I felt and throw it on Savvy Daddy as a conversation starter. A couple of things stopped me, though. First, upon re-reading the article, I realized that Kohn hadn't suggested any kind of an alternative, which meant that he was essentially asking parents like me to throw out the one effective disciplinary tool we have and to replace it with...nothing. And, second, the way the piece was presented reminded me of so many of those articles that find their way into the media only to be instantly contradicted by yet another "scientific study". (See the red wine is/isn't good for you debate for an example)

The third thing that put me off is that my parents essentially did the same thing to my four siblings and me when we were growing up, and yet none of us harbor any kind of resentment towards them. The reason? Because they made it very clear-and often-that they loved us. So when we were punished, we realized they weren't "withholding affection"-they were mad because we'd let them down. That's a crucial difference.

To me, the concept of "unconditional acceptance" is nonsense in the first place-even with your own child. Everyone has limits as to what they consider acceptable behavior to be, and if you make those explicit only to have them breached, you're perfectly entitled to express dissatisfaction or not display affection. The flip side-saying you'll accept someone (and their behavior) without precondition-only serves to legitimize every thing they choose to do, and leaves you with no leverage for attempting to adjust that behavior. And where does one draw the line? When my child hits me? Does explaining that I don't like to be hit, or that it hurts me, cross the line into withdrawal of affection?

Perhaps the most instructive thing in either of the two articles comes at the end of the Newsweek blog, where the writer describes an experiment where a researcher measured Chinese and American kids' scores on a test and-regardless of the child's performance-told each of the kids' moms that their child had done poorly. By and large, the Chinese moms lectured their children (lovingly) and stressed the importance of improving, while the American moms-likely browbeaten by years of being told not to discipline too harshly-talked to their kids about trivial stuff like what to have for dinner, or how their day had been. The results on re-test: "the Chinese kids improved at twice the rate of the Americans." The moral: children need to know when they've done wrong, or performed poorly because they haven't tried hard enough. Without that, how can they develop a sense of right and wrong, or a work ethic? And without those, how do we expect them to function as adults?

All things considered, I'll take the short-term pain of having my children dislike me in the moment as long as I feel that it's working towards the long-term goal of turning out well-rounded, responsible adults. For that reason, my naughty chair is staying exactly where it is.

A Question of Accent

Philmundo — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:37:36 -0700

by Phil Stott

Is it superficial to want to move because I don't like the accent where I live now? Or, more specifically, because I don't want my children to grow up with Long Island accents?

Up until recently, this question isn't one I'd entertained in any meaningful way. My wife and I have had conversations where she's confessed that she'd like to raise our kids in Scotland (my home country), so they'll grow up with "cute" accents. That argument's never had a lot of sway with me, though; the thing about accents is that their beauty (or cuteness) is entirely in the ear of the beholder. When you've heard as many Scottish tongues as I have (and the insane amount of variation on the accent-it literally changes every 30 miles as you go around the country), the "cuteness" of it soon wears off. Plus, if you then live anywhere else, you have to have "the conversation" at least once a week with a complete stranger who's taken aback by your accent-and who usually starts said conversation by asking if you're from Ireland or Australia.

Another reason that I haven't thought much of the question, I suppose, is that Maeve has only recently begun stringing basic sentences together, and she's always just sounded more or less like a baby to me, with no discernible accent. Along with that, I'd always sort of assumed that she'd adopt a sort of amalgam of my wife's Wisconsin twang, some of my pronunciations (I've already got her locked in on "to-mah-to") and the local variation, resulting in something "American" but not overly regional.

Over the last few weeks, though, I've begun to notice a disturbing trend. There are signs-just occasional words here and there-that she's becoming a fully-fledged Long Islander.* Just this morning as I was getting out of the car to board my commuter train into the city, she pointed out of the window and said "many cars." Only, that wasn't quite it. What she actually said sounded more like "many caw-ers." My initial reaction was to assume that she'd choked halfway through, so I asked her to say it again only to be met once again with "many caw-ers." I'm still shuddering now as I think about it. How far away can the moment be where she points to my mug and correctly identifies "Daddy's caw-fee," or the "cute daw-gee" at the neighbor's house?

Now, obviously growing up somewhere with a bad accent isn't the end of world. After all, I grew up in a town which boasts one of the worst accents in Scotland, yet I display very few signs of it-largely thanks to my parents insisting that I didn't lapse into it as I was growing up. And I do realize how elitist and snobbish all this sounds, but there's proof out there that bad accents can hurt your hiring and promotion chances. Who'd want to handicap their kid like that if they could possibly avoid it?

Anyway, I do take some comfort from the fact that I'm not alone in all this. In addition to all the other incomers with kids I've talked to here, I also know a couple of native Long Islanders who despair at the thought of their children growing up mangling their vowels, and becoming the person you can hear all over the Island bellowing "oh MY Gawd" into their cellphones.

I'm also aware that it's not just Long Island: I met a guy a few weeks ago who confided that he left Texas and moved to Colorado in the 1980s in large part because his now-adult daughter would count by saying "one...two...three...four...faaiive." So what do you think? Is this just too superficial for words, or do I have a point here? And-perhaps more to the point-if I do decide to move, where else should I avoid for terrible accents?

*Disclaimer: there are a lot of things that I like about Long Island-especially the scenery the further East you go-but believe me when I tell you that The Daily Show's Samantha Bee didn't have to work too hard to find the guys in the bar in this clip.

Social Networking and Kids

Philmundo — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:58:23 -0700

by Phil Stott

How many reports of people over-exposing themselves on social networking sites and then coming to regret it do we need to hear before we start thinking before posting or tweeting? Take the recent case of Washington Redskins linebacker Robert Henson venting his rage at "dim-wit" fans who booed their team as an example. Here's a guy who doesn't even make the starting line-up in the team, and yet he somehow feels like he's earned the right to attack the team's fans via Twitter when they show their displeasure with the Redskins' performance. As with all things social network-ish, he started out expressing his feelings to a few followers only to see his comments (52 tweets in all) passed around the internet like wildfire.

Now, I don't much care about how the Redskins play, or the fate of Robert Henson, but what does interest me is how he seemed to forget-or more likely just didn't care-about airing his thoughts in a public format in the way he did. I know that, if I were to lose it like that and make similar comments either about my employer or our customers in such a public forum, I'd probably be embarking on a search for a new job in the not-too-distant future. Because I'm well aware of how powerful viral networking can be, I stay well away from discussing anything of the sort online (at least in a way that can be traced back to me!).

Unfortunately, for those with kids that are old enough to be tech-savvy, it's not enough to look after how you're representing yourself digitally; you need to be aware of what your kids are up to online as well. I know one guy (an ex-cop) who regularly logs into his teenage daughter's Facebook page to see what she and her friends have been up to, or are planning (she has no idea he knows the password). I'm not recommending that anyone go that far, but it certainly doesn't hurt to sit down with your kids, lay some ground rules, and make sure they're aware of the bigger picture when using social networking sites. Here, then, are three things every kid should know:

1)    If you don't want the "wrong" people to find out, don't put it on Twitter

It's difficult to imagine that Henson didn't know that his comments could spread like wildfire across the Twittersphere. But if a more-or-less grown adult can make that kind of mistake, a tween or teen can too. So if they've got something negative (or embarrassing) they need to say about a teacher, classmate or acquaintance, tell them to do it the old-fashioned way: face-to-face. That way, the possibility of viral spreading is all but eliminated; all you have to worry about is someone recording you!

2)    People aren't always who they say they are online

Case in point: Lori Drew, better known as the Missouri mom who is accused of taking part in a bullying campaign on MySpace that drove a 13 year old girl to commit suicide. Having been acquitted of all charges of computer hacking (see the full story in the link above), it seems that there's little police can do to try and bring her to justice, as there's no statute in Missouri against cyber-bullying. While that case is an extreme one, it's also one that starkly underlines the dangers of kids being suckered into believing that the people they're talking to online are who they claim to be. Good rule of thumb: If you don't talk to them in real life, don't talk to them online.

3)    Close your networks

Sure, there's a certain thrill to putting your thoughts and personality out there in cyberspace for all to see. Not restricting profiles on social networks to only people you know and trust, however, greatly increases the chance of all of the previous things going wrong: people misrepresenting themselves, and you, cyber-stalking, bullying, the works. In fact, as parents, it may be worth making this-and the agreement that you get to check in on their accounts every once in a while-part of any bargain with a kid who wants to get involved in social networking.