Aug 27 13 comments
Heart Strings, Papa Prattle, Pointless Posts, Public Service

Warning Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!

Not too long ago I posted about our Chicago vacation. This incident happened while we were at the Shedd Aquarium, and I had forgotten all about it until just a couple of days ago. It’s been on my mind ever since and I wanted to put "pen to paper" before I forgot about it again.

It started out like any normal day at a major attraction. The lines into the building snaked around the facility’s grounds, the sun was beating down on us. Children complained, parents grumbled. Finally getting into the building was a treat. We paid our admission fee and blended into the crowd of stroller pushing shlubs.

We meandered through the aquarium’s many vignettes, alcoves and rooms that peppered the facility until we came to a large enclosure that housed animals of the Pacific Northwest coast. Because it was supposed to emulate the Northwest I looked forward to it being nice and cool. Instead it was hot, crowded and noisy. A very large group of people dressed in bright yellow T-Shirts had taken over the facility and were climbing all over the chairs, handrails and static exhibits, shouting, laughing and yelling as they cavorted around the furniture. There were other people with the same yellow shirts with the words "STAFF", or some other similar word, emblazoned across their shirts scurrying about trying to keep the peace, but because of a combination of the staffers ages, inexperience, and general "outnumbered-ness" they were doing a pretty inefficient job of it.

I took a quick assessment of the situation and realized that the group was made up of individuals of varying ages and mental disabilities. I loosened my jaw and calmed down a bit. I have a difficult time with unruly behavior. I don’t allow my kids to act like wild animals, specially in public, and I expect other parents to do the same. This situation was different however, so I went from rolling boil down to tolerant simmer.

My baby sister belongs to a "Type C" group and they go on field trips all the time. She is considered "High Functioning", similar to some of the aforementioned yellow clad individuals, and is extremely affectionate – sometimes to the chagrin of family members. I am pretty familiar with individuals, and groups, of this nature.

I scanned the main room and found a small observation area tucked away behind a submarine display where we could view the Beluga Whales under water . I navigated my family through the melee and hustled them into the cavern like doorway. I breathed a sigh of relief as we ducked in and I started looking at all the informational plaques and doodads on the wall

imageOnly a couple of minutes went by before I heard exited female voices shouting a boy’s name and "NO! STRANGER, STRANGER!" repeatedly. My parent radar snapped on as I whipped around and looked towards the source of the commotion. I fully expected to see a little boy running towards a group of people he didn’t know as his smother-mother ran after him, instead all I could see was a large, towering, big boned man on the other side of the little room as he lumbered quickly towards me. Two 5′ 2"/ 100 lb. women were wrapped around his waist and arms, trying desperately to keep him from walking in my direction. We locked eyes as he barreled towards me, as oblivious of these two small women as he would have been had he had dryer sheets stuck to his shirt. I reluctantly readied myself for a physical confrontation.

In the few seconds after bracing myself I realized that although he was much larger than I was, and his unblinking gaze looked very determined, he meant me no harm. He wore a yellow shirt, just like the rest of the group, and an inordinately small child’s backpack was strapped to his back. The "dryer sheet’s" shirts helped clue me in also.

He finally reached me and grasped my shoulders as I put my hands on his shoulders to hold him at bay. This finally gained the girls some leverage. He struggled to pull me towards him as one of them caught her composure and sternly said his name along with "He’s a stranger! We don’t hug strangers!" to no avail.

I realized that developmentally he was probably the equivalent of a five year old and only wanted some affection, so I told the girls that it was OK (like there was any difference at this point). I loosened my grip on his shoulder and he gave me a big bear hug (something my sister likes to do to me). I hugged him back and patted his back. After a few seconds he gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek, released his hug, and allowed the girls to easily lead him away from the small crowd that had developed behind us. One girl gently, but firmly, tried to reinforce the "STRANGER!" rule to him as the other, in damage control mode, apologized to me profusely, and thanked me for understanding. I waved off her apology telling her there was nothing to apologize for.

As they walked away I unclenched every joint, and muscle and tried to shrug off the adrenaline. I knew that I had just broken a cardinal rule that the staffers try to reinforce to all their "kids" time and time again, but just saw no other way around the situation. I hoped they understood my position, and I hoped I didn’t just undermine everything they worked so hard to instill in their wards.

I replayed the incident in my mind several times over the course of the day and tried to figure out why he was so focused on hugging me specifically. There were other people in that room, and I am not particularly cuddly or huggable, just ask anybody who knows me (If I were a zoo animal I’d be more of a porcupine, skunk, or possibly even that dung flinging monkey). Of all the people that it could have happened to that day I’m glad, and thankful, it happened to me! Can you imagine how bad it could have been for him had he chosen to hug a jumpy homophobe, jacked up on testosterone, as he tried to impress his cadre of similarly minded, intolerant friends (I saw a few of those in the facility that day). The outcome could have been very, very different.

Aug 07 8 comments
Humor Central, Pointless Posts

ROADTRIPPPP!!!

ROADTRIP! – No word in the English language makes me me shudder like this one. Smells, visions and memories from childhood come streaming back, making me want to curl up in a fetal position and rock back and forth violently while sucking my thumb when this word is uttered.

I come from a large family, and cramming 7 kids and 2 adults in a 5 passenger Japanese car (don’t forget luggage) was a common occurrence for us. This was back in the day when child safety seats and seat belts had not yet been invented, or enforced.

A little background:

We lived in a podunk little backwoods town and the closest "Metropolis", was over 500 kilometers, which equated to 10-12 hrs due to bad roads. We would journey to the big city every summer to get school clothes, visit relatives, and see the sights. This was also a business trip. Mom and Dad had a small grocery store back then, and Dad was always searching out new products to sell in the store. He would buy samplings of new items from the big stores in the big city and put them on our shelves back home to see if they would sell locally.

The road to Metropolis was called "South Road". It was mostly a two lane road riddled with potholes, switchbacks, hairpin turns, road construction and the occasional washout (roads destroyed or carried away by heavy floods). This was THE only road from the North to the Southern part of the island, and because of this, Diesel exhaust belching commercial vehicles plied up and down its length like confused Salmon to deliver goods and passengers to the rest of the island.

Back to the story:

In an effort to get on the road early to beat the traffic Mom would boil eggs and hotdogs in the wee hours of the morning and put some boxed orange juice on ice in a cooler. She would then wake each of us up, have us change into comfortable clothes for the trip and they would both hustle us into the waiting vehicle and bed us back down in specific locations, which was dependent on our sizes, ages, and tolerance for one another. We’d be on the road by 4 or 5 am and Dad would drive for about an hour or two before some of us would start waking up looking for something to eat.

The fun begins….(not really):

Mom would start handing out paper towels with a hot dogs and boiled eggs to each kid. After eating we’d be thirsty so out would come the triangular juice boxes we called "Tetra Paks". They tasted like unsweetened fake orange juice concentrate.

I’m a poor traveler to begin with. An inner ear problem necessitates me to be able to see the road so I can face my head in the general direction of a turn. Looking in one direction while turning in another causes me to get dizzy. Compound this with sitting in the back seat (can’t see the road) with a "hey look at that!" head snap, the smell of boiled eggs, hotdogs, diesel fumes, freshly paved asphalt, Dad’s jackrabbit pothole avoidance slalom, the country’s summertime temperatures and humidity…..it was just too much for my poor stomach to handle.

Sometimes I’d get my head out the window fast enough, sometimes I wouldn’t. Either way, and at those speeds, there was always the dreaded "splashback". Dad would grumble and pull over and I’d get out quickly and let my stomach retch the rest of  breakfast up. While the nasty, fake orange juice’s acidity burned my nasal passages Mom would clean me up with some lemon scented wet towelettes, make me rinse out my mouth, give me a mint or some gum, and off we’d go again, to the tune of 6 siblings calling me names and chiding me for my weakness. Woo-hoo, only 8 more hours till we get there.

So at this point I just added 3 new "scents" (lemon, mint, puke) to the car that could trigger another event. This is about the same time that the digesting boiled eggs and hotdogs started making themselves known in the car’s cabin. More "scents" added on their part = more fountain action on mine. It was at this point in the trip that "Pull over Dad! He’s gonna blow again!" would be shouted repeatedly for the rest of the trip. By Lunchtime I’d be dry heaving; Time to reload. More new smells, more new projectiles – yay! This scenario was replayed several times a year for well over a decade. I AM SO GLAD I’M ALL GROWN UP!!!!

People have the misconception that I am a control freak because I insist on driving during long trips. Oh contraire! They don’t understand that I NEED to be behind the wheel for the sake of the rest of the vehicle’s occupants. It’s been many, many years since the last time I emulated the Diet Pepsi/Mentos phenomenon, and if I play my cards right, it’s going to stay that way.

The "Silver Lining":

It wasn’t all bad. Because of my solid reputation of being a bad traveler I always got a window seat, No one’s arm or elbow was resting on my stomach, and everyone always gave me a wide berth. When you have a hair trigger stomach, while in hot, cramped, fetid quarters, that’s a good thing.

Just for the record, now that I’m an adult, my own family goes on road trips all the time. Five people – air conditioned, DVD player/video game havin’, seven passenger vehicle. No hotdogs, boiled eggs or paint stripper fake orange juice allowed. My kids will never know how good they have it.

Mom and Dad….I forgive you.  ;)

Jul 17 18 comments
Fatherhood Friday, Heart Strings, Papa Prattle

Lost and Found

ff My wife took our kids to a local water park a couple of weeks ago. I was at work during this excursion, wiling the day away with full certainty the kids would have a great time likely at the cost of my wife’s wits. I was right on both counts.

This particular park does an excellent job of helping parents keep track of their kids. They go so far as to sound an alarm every 15-20 minutes which serves as an opportunity for the kids to exit the water so they can be counted. The lifeguards are pretty relentless about this too. If some kid decides he doesn’t need to get out then no one else goes back in until he does get out. There’s even a drill that takes place in the event a child comes up missing. The parents are asked to lock their arms and wade into the water together (as long as they don’t have small children to tend to) searching and clearing the area directly in front of them. I lean toward the overly cautious side so these steps are just the kind of thing I like to see.

On this day the alarm sounded and kids were counted. Just as everyone was heading back into the water a mother cried out. She couldn’t find her daughter.

My wife and girls were at the park with our neighbor, another mom, and her two boys. They quickly sat the kids down on a blanket and directed them to NOT MOVE. The parents locked elbows and began wading into the water while others began looking in other areas of the park. My wife was looking over her shoulder at our kids almost constantly. The children sat on the blanket. Stock still and wide eyed.

Within minutes the girl was found. She had wandered outside the water area and was just out of sight. She was returned to her mother and I imagine there was a collective sigh among the parents and lifeguards.

When my wife returned to our kids, who still hadn’t moved, our four year old girl Ava asked, “Did you find her?”

“Someone did honey. She’s right over there with her Mommy. Everything is fine. Are you ok?”

Ava looked up and asked, “Kids really do go missing?’”

My wife responded, telling Ava that kids do sometimes go missing and our occasional warnings to she and her little sister are real. She explained that we just want to keep everyone safe and together.

3601377756_d3a1cb002d Ava said she understood and had a great big hug for her mom. The littler one, Jada, was also keen to what was going on and wedged herself in between the two of them.

My wife relayed this story to me on the phone after they had come home and the kids were down for their naps. I was obviously relieved there had been no tragedy’s to report.

When I got home that evening Ava met me at the door. She filled me in on what had happened at the park. The detail she remembered was impressive. The hair color of the girl that had slipped away. The color of her bathing suit. How she had hugged her mom when they were reunited. Ava also told me that “sometimes kids do go missing, Daddy”.

I told her, “I know” and we hugged for a good long time.

This may have been a tough way for her to learn the truth of the dangers that are out there, but I’m grateful she learned.

Jul 15 7 comments
Papa Prattle, Public Service, Tech Talk

ItzaWinner – ItzaBitza

I’m not a gamer. Never have been really. I was moderately interested in good old Mario Bros. for a time and could rock Galaga like there was no tomorrow in my early teen years.  The only console I own is a Wii and that’s just because I won it. I did have a brief stint playing Starcraft but that’s pretty much it. Games haven’t been of much interest to me.

Lately we’ve been introducing Ava, the four year old, to computer games. We started with the basics, Reader Rabbit, Living books (Stellaluna is a favorite) and the like. Most of these games were given to us by family members which is great. Ava wiled away lots of time with these games. Eventually though she became bored with them.

Way back in February, otherwise known as the bowels of Michigan winter, I was looking for quality kids games that were affordable. I happened upon a contest PG was hosting and ended up winning that one too. Trust me, I’m not near as lucky as this post would lead you to believe. The prize in this contest was a copy of ItzaBitza.

ItzaBitza is fabulous software. It took Ava a few months to really get the hang of it. We would let her play for a bit at her own pace and for short amounts of time.  Within the last several weeks she has really wrapped her head around how the game works and is having an absolute blast.

I’m not even crazy about calling it a game. It’s so much more than that. The interaction is unlike anything I’ve seen in a program for a child. Ava can move the mouse over the words in a sentence or instruction and the game reads them to her. This is helping her learn to read as well as improving her accuracy with the mouse. The game tasks her with drawing different things which often place the character into action. She can’t be lazy about it either. The game seems pretty good at detecting a scribble, and discarding it, when it was expecting a house or tree instead. The fun doesn’t end with drawing things either. The items that are drawn can be put into motion much of the time. Imagine a plane your child draws in the game flying across the sky with a simple shake of the mouse. Really excellent.

There have been plenty of reviews written for ItzaBitza so don’t feel like you need to take my word for anything. The software only costs $20 and there’s also a trial version available. Go ahead, kick the tires.

Jul 13 7 comments
Papa Prattle

Growing, weaving, kinship

We were walking from the horse pasture back up to the house. I was leading and the two little girls were walking and talking behind me while I was thinking ahead at whatever task was left to do. This must have occurred early in the fall of 2008 which would have made Ava a new 4 year old with her 2 year old sister Jada always following along after her.

I’m not sure what the two of them had been discussing but I took notice when Ava ran past me without her little sister struggling to keep up.

“Ava, where are you off to?” I called after her. She stopped and turned to meet me. Her hands settled with authority on her hips.

“Jada asked me for help and I don’t want to help her. I’m going inside.” Ava replied with no small amount of attitude.

I glanced back at Jada who didn’t seem bothered by this lack of support. Something else had caught her attention and while she was still following me toward the house the line was no longer straight but moving in and out of the shadows of trees and backyard toys. I knelt to meet Ava’s eyes with my own.

“Honey, Jada is your sister and when she asks for help you need to do what you can to help her. The two of you are going to need help from each other a lot as you grow up.”

She said something to confirm she heard what I said and went off into the house. Jada and I now following her lead.

A week ago my wife and girls met me for lunch at a park near where I work. None of us had been to this park before. The girls had time to play for a bit before I had to head back to work and they back home for naps. Kids and parks have always amazed me. I know this isn’t true of all adults, but when I am in the company of a large group of people my first thought is not “who am I going to make friends with”.  This is, however, exactly how my girls seem to react when entering into a group of their peers.

The girls played together and separately, moving in and out of circles of other kids at the playground. On a few occasions Ava would point out a girl and comment that she looked to be the same age as she. Off she would go to introduce herself and before we knew it she found a core group of girls all 4-5 years old.

Jada had been playing mostly by herself. In and out of the sandboxes, up and down the slides. Eventually she went to seek out her big sister and upon finding her asked if she could play with her. It was at this moment that one of the other kids chimed in to say “only big kids are playing here.” Ava didn’t lose a beat. She turned to the girl, the self proclaimed big kid, and told her, “It’s OK. This is Jada. She’s my little sister.” Ava then turned to Jada and grabbing her hand said, “c’mon Jade. You can play with us.”

theseSistersIt seems Ava has learned to hear Jada’s call for help even when it isn’t said aloud, and Jada has learned she doesn’t always have to ask for it. These girls of mine, these sisters, they’re starting to get it.

Yes they are.

Jul 10 24 comments
Papa Prattle

B(Brain) cells

I visited the Museum of Science and Industry last weekend while on a family vacation to Chicago. While I was there I happened across a booth in the museum where a museum employee was explaining anti forgery techniques the US Mint uses to thwart the illegal replication of US Currency. Something about lab coats and microscopes just draws me in.

As I sat there and listened to the rehearsed spiel and the show-and-tell I realized I was probably the oldest guy in the group. I was amidst raging hormones, 20 something’s and a smattering of wiseacre
10 year olds. I felt old, but enough about that.

As lab coat guy handed out some US currency for us to peer at through the microscope the 20 something beside me chirped “This is blurry!” Lab coat guy and I looked at her incredulously as he said “Turn the little white knob until it becomes clear”.

BrainCellI just shook my head and went about peering through the microscope at different things as my mind raced. I remembered my childhood. One of my fondest memories is playing with my microscope. I would scoop stagnant water out of a pond, or mount a dead fly onto a slide and I would sit there for hours marveling at the minuscule world that existed right under my nose. I felt pity for the person sitting beside me, for her generation and the ones after. Most of them would never know how exhilarating it is to discover things on your own, rather than it being handed to you. I left the museum a few hours later, but that feeling stayed with me for a little while.

A day later we packed the van and started the three and a half hour trek home. Twilight came and as darkness became more pronounced the glowing GPS screen in a passing car piqued my interest. I watched as the facsimile of a road curved on the screen in unison with the real road ahead. It brought back the memory of the microscope incident at the museum. More spoon fed information. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology, but there is something to be said about figuring things out on your own and not being spoon fed by a machine. There are way too many stories of accidents because a person was following the directions on a GPS and slammed into the side of a brick wall that wasn’t supposed to be there (per the GPS unit).

Keep your wits about you and keep them sharp. They are your best tool……. and they don’t require batteries.

ff

Jul 08 8 comments
Heart Strings, Humor Central, Papa Prattle

A wailing wall all her own

We figure it shouldn’t take much to construct one. Some stone and a little concrete should do just fine. We could even get it done on the cheap and just use mud to keep it together. The mud might lend a bit of romance to the structure allowing it to age quickly.

We took a long drive to Colorado last year. While we drove, and the kids slept, we listened to “The Secret Life of Bees” audio book. Great story. One of the main characters carries sorrow on her sleeve with such urgency and transparency that her sisters send her away to their version of the wailing wall when the emotion gets too intense. She always returns looking a bit lighter for having shed the weight of the sorrow, however temporary it may be.

When we listened to this part of the story my wife and I looked at each other and said, “Jada needs a wailing wall.”

jww Jada is one emotional little girl. She’ll be fine one moment and just crushed the next. For her there’s always some act that justifies her sorrow. The issue is the lack of rhyme or reason. She may crash because she’s frustrated she can’t get her shoes on properly, or because she woke from her nap too soon. Maybe a bug landed on her while playing outside. Who knows. What sets her off one day, or hour, may not set her off the next.

She’s also a master at bringing her mother, sisters or I into the breakdown. If she feels slighted in the least by ones actions the response has been, “but you’re my daaahhhdddeee (or mmaahhmmeee or siiissttaahhh)” with the saddest little eyes you could possibly imagine. It’s kind of adorable when it isn’t making us twitch.

To try and combat this behavior, and help Jada work through it, we encourage her to use words to express herself rather than sobbing. She has a great vocabulary so the notion that she can’t express herself shouldn’t apply. We try introducing distractions also. We’re hoping the older she gets (she’ll be three next week) the less the meltdowns will occur. Hoping.

What seems to work best is just sending her to her room. We don’t do this in some disciplinary fashion. We simply tell her if she can’t calm down on her own, or won’t let us help her get over whatever crisis is unfolding, there is little reason the rest of need to listen to her. Nine times out of ten she takes this request and runs with it, emerging minutes later with the proclamation that she is done crying.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t share that Jada is an exceptionally happy kid most of the time. Let’s just say she has a firm handle on the extremes and we’re going to continue to work on living in between them.

For the moment we’ll just stay stocked up on ear plugs and tissues. Something tells me that living in a house full of girls these items are going to come in handy anyway.

Jul 06 4 comments
Papa Prattle

The value of context

Disinformation is most effective in a very narrow context. – Frank Snepp

When I think of how we communicate and find information now, as opposed to just a few years ago, it sets my head to spinning.

Texting on a phone barely leaves room for a complete thought. The same can be said of services like Twitter with its 140 character limit. While I kind of like the idea of learning to get a point across in as few words as possible the truth of the matter is, a conversation online may span days or weeks and a handful of messages amid other conversations and other messages. The context is easily lost.

Goodness knows many adults have a problem keeping and placing comments and conversations, whether online or off, in the proper context. So the question for the parent becomes, “How and when do I teach my child the value of context in day to day conversations?”

My oldest kids are 18 and 14. The 18 year old does a pretty good job of getting the full context before reacting or making a decision based upon something he heard or read. The 14 year old is a different story. She lives in a world filled with text messages and abbreviated facebook conversations.  I believe the notion of getting the full context is just too much work for her if it requires scrolling beyond a few screens. It’s probably important to point out that she does understand context. She just doesn’t seek it. Hopefully she will realize the benefit of the seeking part before it bites her. However, she is a teen and they like to learn through mistakes it seems, at least I did.

Considering contextIn addition to the two teenagers I also have three younger kids, all girls and all under the age of 5. The 3 and 4 year old speak and communicate very well. The seven month old just wonders why no one else speaks her language. We do teach the idea of context to the 3 and 4 years old, explaining it as “the whole story”. I think they get it. They understand when they come to their mother or I with a complaint or need we often ask the why or how questions rather than just handing out some punishment or object of their desire. This comes at a cost though and is where I think the value of context can be tarnished.

When you teach a young child the value of telling or seeking the whole story they actually get in the habit of doing this. Even when you may be too tired to hear it, or too tired to answer it, or too preoccupied to entertain it. They bring the story or questions with them. Every. Single. Time. How we react to this when we just haven’t got it in us is a pretty big deal. I’ve found the best thing is to just be honest about it and tell them you need 15 minutes, or you’ll get to the bottom of it tomorrow or some such thing. I’m hoping that if we can stick with this practice and set the proper example now the shift to defining and seeking context in their online world will not be the struggle or after-thought it is for many people today.

Just don’t cast their inquiries and investigative nature aside, or leave them with the impression that context isn’t important. It is important, and they should know it.