Posted by: bobnthuan
on Monday April 26, 2010
Three times in recent weeks an uncomfortable topic has come up in conversation with my kids; child molestation. First,my children have heard the constant drip drip drip of charges in the news against Catholic priests. Secondly, something happened at my kids’ elementary school a few weeks ago that prompted a call to the police. Finally the movie Precious came out on DVD. Child molestation is not an issue my wife and I had planned to address in detail at this moment but now that it has come up, I figured it was time for my 12, 11, and 8 year old to bec0me aware that this issue not only exists but is a topic open for discussion in our house.
I found, however, that the harsh reality that some people feel the need to touch children in a sexual way is almost impossible to explain. When my kids asked the inevitable question, Why?, I really had no words that get at the motivation of a molester. I can explain how someone might commit suicide or kill another, but I cannot put myself into the shoes of a person who molests a child. Yet I felt I owed them some kind of explanation. The conversation went something like this:
I first asked my kids if they knew why a police car was parked out front of their school the previous week. Of course they did. I wanted them to first describe what they knew about the incident so that I could listen to the words they used and gauge their initial level of understanding. This particular incident involved not an adult but two kids (I am being deliberately vague here because it doesn’t seem right to give specific details of an incident that is being handled by other responsible parties). I asked my children to try to imagine where one of their classmates would get the idea that was so bad that someone else called the police. I suggested there might be two possibilities: the kid had the idea on his own or he got the idea from someone else, perhaps an adult. If the child got the idea on his own and acted on it, then we can’t feel too sorry for him. I described what this child’s life might be like if he gets expelled from school or is called to account for his behavior. However, if the kid got the idea from an adult, I told my kids that the incident might not be entirely the students’ fault after all. Perhaps he was doing to others what an adult had done to him and that our hearts should go out to him. We had no idea what the truth was, but I found it easier to talk about a hypothetical scenario than talking about reality.
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Monday March 8, 2010
When my kids ask me to check their homework, the unspoken part of the request goes like this: "Daddy, please tell me which ones I got wrong so that I can correct them and get my 'A.' " But I look at their homework in a different way. I want to know "Does my child understand the concept being taught?" Those are two very different things. I have kids in second, fifth and sixth grade and I have found that there are two approaches you as a parent can take to checking homework: one is to lead them to the correct answer, and the second is to make sure they understand how to solve problems.
- My son's 2nd grade class
I think the first thing to note is that it is okay for your child to make mistakes. It is not your job as a parent to make it easy on them by directing them to the mistakes. I have a strong suspicion that my kids' teachers can easily sniff out homework done by a student versus homework done by the parent but in the student's handwriting. That is why I often opt not to point out mistakes in homework unless it is an error that is repeated over and over. That said, general sloppiness bothers me (adding instead of subtracting, spelling an easy word wrong) and I wrestle with pointing out sloppiness in hopes my child will be more careful or letting it go and letting the lower grade teach my kids to be more careful. (I find it difficult to teach a child to check their work and not race to finish. If they depend on you to catch their errors, then they will never learn to catch mistakes themselves.)
The second thing is to say is that it is okay -- and perhaps beneficial -- to go off the homework sheet. By that I mean that I give my kids extra problems that mirror the ones they've been assigned. The goal is to check if they can solve math problems or spell words that they haven't seen before but fit with what they have already learned in school. For example, on spelling lists if my kid misspells "night," I'll ask them to spell "bright" and then maybe "sight" just to see if they can pick up the pattern. I might throw in "bite" to see if they can adjust on the fly. Same goes for math. If my fifth grader has a difficult time adding fractions, or my sixth grader can't solve for "x", then I will make up in my head a couple of extra problems that are solved the same way as the problems in the homework but with slightly different numbers involved. I find that when my children realize they can solve Daddy's made-up equations that they are more confident doing similar problems in school. They actually "get it" in a way that others who only did the assigned problems and nothing more.
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Monday January 11, 2010
Tagged in: Untagged
My wife and I have four children aged 11 to 3 of mixed Vietnamese and American blood. We have tried to educate them about their ancestors--where they came from and what each of them accomplished in life-- in hopes that our children would grow up with a keen understanding of their roots and a sense of gratitude toward long-dead ancestors who both suffered and thrived so that current generations could live better lives. We started out 11 years ago by naming our first child Hanh-Thien after the ancestral village of my wife's mother's family. Our second child was named Thai-Binh after the home province of my wife's father. Our living room features a Vietnamese-style ancestral altar with pictures of deceased relatives from Hanoi, Saigon, Iowa and California going back generations. We live three generations under one roof, allowing my children to grow up close to their grandparents.
But I worried that lighting incense and listening to family stories here and there might not be coherent enough way for my children to grasp the complicated and fascinating merging of a Vietnamese and American families into one. That is why during my recent and ongoing period of unemployment I took up a side project of scanning old photos, attaching captions identifying each person in the photo and perhaps telling a story that dates to the period of the photo. The project was massive and time consuming. It took about three months to complete. I estimate that I thumbed through about 10,000 photos dating back about 100 years, scanned about 1,000 of them, and choosing the best 430 to include in a 100-page family history book that I designed and wrote using free MyPublisher software.
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Thursday December 31, 2009
In this installment, I write about how to square the problem of kids, Christmas, and the bad economy.
Last year at this time I lost a night of sleep after my children grumbled about what they thought was a paltry Christmas. My 11-year-old son, for example, was irked that his younger sister got a slightly nicer cellphone than his. In the midst of a global recession that caused some families in our neighborhood to lose their homes to bank foreclosure, I felt my kids needed a better understanding of what was going on in the world and to temper their unseemly sense of entitlement to the latest $60 videogames, $10 first-run movie tickets and the latest iPhone gadjits.
The day after Christmas, I arranged for them to make two phone calls. The first one to their 89-year-old great-grandfather in Denver and ask him about what Christmas was like for him in 1932 during the Great Depression. Then they talked to the local power company and got some stats on the number of families in and around our zip code who were having a cold, dark Christmas because they could not afford to pay their electric bill. They were instructed to ask questions and write down the answers. In the end, they actually kind of enjoyed the exercise, learned something, and understood why Daddy was making them do it. But would it stick with them? I didn't know.
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Wednesday December 23, 2009
Tagged in: Untagged
In this installment, I try to answer the question, "How hard is it to get a kid to clean up after himself if he's used to adults cleaning up for him?" The answer is pretty ugly.
This afternoon just before lunch, my almost-three-year-old stood on a table and dumped out about six plastic containers of toys onto the floor. Then he tossed all the pillows off the sofa. His cousin was there with him. He got excited and dumping stuff was fun. It wasn't anything mischievous or foul, just his thing. 99% of the time someone cleans up for him. This time (and a few times in the past) I asked him to clean up his own mess. I resolved that I would wait him out no matter how long it took. I wanted to see how long he could hold out before putting up the white flag and beginning to clean up....
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Tuesday December 15, 2009
Tagged in: Untagged
Six months ago I pottytrained my two-and-a-half year old using my Daddy method--burn all the diapers in the house and go for broke. It took three weeks of diligent work and lots of dirty carpets last July but we got there. I was so confident that we even took a five-day trip with no diapers in the "diaper" bag and we had no accidents, not even sleeping at night.
But it is now six months later and my son's early warning system has gone haywire.
He used to run to the toilet and spray all over the bowl and say, "That was close." Once every couple of days, I'd have to toss a pair of wet underpants into the laundry. No biggie. But more recently that number has ticked steadily upward.
Tonight, he wet himself at least seven times and maybe eight in a frustrating five-hour interval.
I have tried the patient we'll-get-over-this-hump-together approach for a while. Then I tried letting him know in a stern voice that peeing in pants made Daddy mad but peeing in the toilet made Daddy really happy. Then I tried cutting back his liquids, mostly at night so that he didn't go so much. Tonight I reversed course and started what I'll call a forced-practice routine in which he drinks as much as he can handle so that 30-45 minutes later he has to pee a whole lot in a short period of time.
I don't know what comes next. He seems at a total loss as to why a damp spot appears in his crotch every hour or so. And my focusing on it seems to have him wigged out.
I don't concede defeat easily and have told my wife that we are not going back to diapers. Anyone have suggestions? Please send them now. I wrote about this at
www.therainracer.wordpress.com if you wish to leave your pearls of wisdom there. If not, leave it here and we can discuss it. Thanks.
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Friday December 4, 2009
I think one of those moments when parents earn their stripes is when they have to choose between punishing their child for a screw up or allowing the experience of the screw up serve as the punishment. Take, for example, my daughter in fifth grade who let a monthly book report assignment go until the night before it was due and then stayed up past 2 a.m. last night to finish it. Should she be punished for procrastinating or is going to school on five and a half hours of sleep punishment enough?
A few weeks ago, my eight year old got himself into a similar bind and I told him to go to bed and suffer the consequences of turning in unfinished homework. But last night when my daughter found herself in the exact same situation, I called my wife (who works nights) asked her not to not say anything when she comes home and sees her daughter sitting in her room working way past bed time. I am playing a double-standard but I had my reasons:
I wanted to see how she would handle the pickle she put herself in; would she leave the assignment undone in order to get some sleep and take the worse grade, or would she stay up super-late, do good work and get the higher grade but go to school bleary-eyed and sleepy the next night? I wasn't sure which way it would go. Neither my wife nor I yelled at her or said anything. We gave her the space to do whatever she was going to do without her parents input.
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Thursday November 5, 2009
"Where did I go wrong?"
As a Dad, that is the most terrifying question I can think of. My desire to avoid that question is a motivator in my parenting day-to-day. When my first son was born 11 years ago I felt like I had forever to make an imprint on him. But as he began to grow, and his siblings were born and they began to grow, it dawned on me that actually my window is quite short.
That's why I like to lay in bed and talk to my children one-on-one with no one else around. That's why I like to take my kids on roadtrips and go camping in the woods. That's why I have four children, but look opportunities to spend time with each of them alone, just the two of us. It is one reason why I take pictures every opportunity I get. That's why I spend hours making 100-page photo albums at the end of every year. All the smiles, all the laughter, all the good times need to be documented so that someday I can look back and know for absolute certainty that I did everything in my power as a father to give my children the best childhood they could ask for. I want it to be irrefutable so that someday when my children go through their own trials and tribulations, they can march confidently through the adversity knowing that they had the best upbringing their parents could possibly muster.
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Wednesday November 4, 2009
I have four kids aged 2 to 11, three of them are at their prime "play date" years, and the two older ones have their own cellphones (which means they can organize their own play dates and only need to secure parental approval at the final step). As a result, we have hordes of kids over almost every day. In fact, we should replace our front door with a revolving door and a click counter to keep track of the foot traffic going in and out. Occasionally either my child or one of their friends gets a nutty idea in their head and something boneheaded happens. That is just kids being kids. My daughter once complained to me after a birthday party that her friends trashed her bedroom. Another time, one of my kids' friends ate nine popsicles during a sleepover. This is an inevitability. So what to do?
I think there is only one way to handle it: that is, hold your children responsible for the actions of their friends.
On the scale of parenting maneuvers, this particular move carries a high level of difficulty. We all know it is hard enough to get kids to clean up after themselves. Getting them to clean up after their friends is even more difficult. But the most difficult of all is teaching your kids to control their friends so that messes never materialize in the first place.
Posted by: bobnthuan
on Monday October 19, 2009
A few weeks ago I had a serious talk with an old friend until 2 in the morning about raising our kids. He has two young kids. I have four. We marveled about how our kids are growing up with many advantages that we did not have at their age, and wondered if perhaps they have it too well.
Like my wife, my friend came to the United States as a war refugee from Vietnam. His family –dad, mom, and four brothers– lived in a cramped apartment in New Jersey. His dad supported them on a near minimum-wage job while the kids were tossed into the public school system before they knew much English. They suffered greatly during those years. His youngest brother tragically drowned one day, sucking the life out of the family and causing his mother to suffer a breakdown that led to crushing medical bills. He overcame all that, and the hardship he went through made him the man he is today.
The thing is, this conversation took place while we were blowing through a bottle of wine in his nice home in the suburbs. Our kids and our wives were asleep upstairs in the four spacious bedrooms. He pointed out the dilemma he thinks about all the time: he wants to provide for his kids so that they never have to suffer like he did. But if he does a too good job of providing, then his kids might grow up soft. The real world can be a harsh place, and there is something to be said for having the strength of character to deal with whatever gets thrown your way, but how do you pass that on to your kids?
