"Having Sexy"

I don't think I need to tell you my dilemma. The title should be telling enough. My son has only just finished Pre-K and I am having to deal with "sexy." As the little girl in the opening of Annie Hall tells the Woody Allen character, "Even Freud said there was a latency period."

My son had his "girlfriend" over (that's another story). We were watching TV when suddenly: Are they having SEXY?

This after almost 20 minutes of surfing the channel guide for something age appropriate for my son and his friend to watch.

The Cats! It was the cats! We have two. A male and a female. The male has been particularly randy these last few weeks. They male mounted the female right in plain view just a foot or two from where we were sitting.

I don't know how much faith I would put in the people who created Spongebob to inform me about sex and my kindergartner but what I read on their site seemed to make common sense.

The Parent Center at the Baby Center site has a more authoritative name and provided much more information. In fact the Parent Center has a "How to Talk" for almost everything under the sun.

Most of the sites say the same thing. Speak calmly and openly. Don't make stuff up. Don't rush to judgement. And admit when you don't know stuff. Of course, despite my training as an educator and my liberal social views, I became the perfect caricature of the uptight old Christian school marm - Look Away Children! Look Awayyyy!

Blame it on conditioning? The insistence on silence and avoidance by a sexually repressed society? Contrary to my education and my liberal views, when it came speaking to my son about sex, I am a hypocrite. Caught off guard by the situation, my instinct was to avoid the issue and ignore it (which is what I did). I shooed the cats away and ask my son and his "girlfriend" to continue to watch TV. They did but I suspect that the question had not been forgotten.

I tried to follow up with my son the next day but it was too little, too late, and it was more of a talk about coming to his mother and me with questions about the body and what the cats were doing. I spoke to him about not touching other people's bodies and about how "No means No." But we just never got around to talking about sex. In fact, I don't think the word ever came up.

The Good, The Bad

My eldest son and I were watching Heroes one night. He asked me, "Daddy, who are the good guys in this movie?"

I replied that there were no real good guys or bad guys, just a lot of good guys doing bad things.

He watched some more before responding: "Daddy, I'm confused."

Something clicked for me at that moment.

There must have been men fighting or he would not have noticed that there were two sides in the story. My son is still very young. The books we read him and the stories we usually let him watch draw a distinct line between the "Good" and the "Bad." However, the books usually don't go into why the wolves or witches do the things they do that make them bad. 

Joseph Campbell was all over PBS touting his "Power of Myth" when I was in college. Almost like one of their fundraiser drives, after heavy airplay, he disappeared into oblivion; available only to fans and casual browers of the PBS video catalog. Though Campbell's focus was mythology and not parenting, I have found meaning in Campbell. At 40something that meaning is changed from what it was at 19.As we age from children to adults, at some point we need to leave good and bad contructs of perception and accept a new paradigm that mires perceived good and bad acts in more complex dances of motives and emotions.

But what does that mean to my son? How do I clear his confusion? Motives and emotions are hard enough to understand at 40. How do I explain them to someone who is just building his vocabulary of emotions? I need a "Now" answer.

It would have been easier to have villified one character over another. We see it in political and religious campaigns all the time. Good Guy/Bad Guy. President Bush brought the adjective "evil doer" out of radio scripts into modern day politics. Religion draws dangerously distinct lines between what is called "Good" and what is called "Bad" - though it seldom practices what it preaches (sorry, couldn't resist the jab).

The scene from Bedazzled where Dudley Moore is dancing around Peter Cook just popped into my head. It's in this scene that the Devil (Cook) explains to the movie's protagonist, Stanley (Moore) why he fell out of favor with God. He explains that he had been loyal to God for centuries and then God one day says that his son Jesus is in charge. The Devil says he loved God so much that he just couldn't follow Jesus, so he and a few other "True Believers" revolted.

 My son and I watched the rest of the episode in silence, absorbed by what was going on. I was engaged on what would happen next and I would like to believe he was engaged in trying to understand why what was happening was happening.

TAG, You're It!

My wife's and my latest dilemma has been over Talented and Gifted (TAG) programs. She favors them, whereas I do not. She believes students in these programs have better access to a school's latest and greatest resources (e.g. equipment, books, and teachers). She believes our son would be better challenged academically in a TAG environment.

I agree with my wife that TAG programs have better access to a school's resources than mainstream classrooms. However, I also believe that TAG programs are elitist programs meant to establish social and intellectual hierarchies. I am afraid throwing our son into a TAG program would cause him to support the unfair and condemning social and intellectual hierarchies that exist and subvert the notion of social responsibility and conscience that I hope to instill in him.

I Googled "dangers of talented and gifted programs" and then "negative impact of talented and gifted programs" (and then I Yahoo!ed) but didn't turn up anything - though I am sure there has been research done on the impact of TAG programs on the social and intellectual development of TAG students and mainstream students. I did manage to find an opinion piece regarding the impact of a TAG program on students that do not get selected.

I wonder what the impact would be, if you provided low performing students with TAG access to resources? Among the resources, you would have to include a "safe" environment. One where the student felt confident about letting his or her "guard" down and fully exploring the content assigned.

New York Magazine ran an article about the New Explorations in Science, Technology, and Math school (NEST+m), a TAG school that was to serve as an example to the rest of the public school system. However, in my opinion, the principles on which it was founded were misguided. NEST+m was founded on the desire to build a "private school" in a public school setting. Instead of building on the positive aspects of the New York City public school system, NEST+m adopted all of the negative aspects of the private school system - elitism, social Darwinism, profiling, etc.

Why do people believe that the education in the private school system is superior to that of the public school system? I am not convinced that the private school system provides a better education than the public school system. For me, it is an issue of nature v. nurture. For me, if you provide low income students with the same environment upper class students are privileged to in private schools, you could generate the same results. Of course, you would also have to address issues of "safety." BUT provide a safe environment for students to learn and they will learn.

Students stop learning when they stop being challenged. In my surfing for information about the negative impact of TAG programs, I came across a legal sounding document from Virginia regarding how TAG students are identified. It was a long piece about the racial inequities inherent to TAG programs. It stated that the criteria for determining TAG students often overlooked those students labeled as troublemakers or had a history of acting out. It stated that some of these students might be TAG students. It stated that these students acted out because they were not appropriately challenged.

Like any other parent, I like to think my children are filled with great potential. As a parent, who is also an educator, I struggle to distinguish "true" academic potential with parental pride. Would my son make a good TAG student? Would he be able to be both the TAG son my wife wants and the socially conscious son that I want?

Bang! Bang!

The one thing I was insistent about when my eldest was two was that there be no guns. Unlike the other kids, even water guns and the kind you make extending your thumb and pointing your finger were not allowed. My son is now five and guns have made their way into his play. He sees them in the cartoons he watches, on the news, other kids, comic books and the regular kind - Everywhere!  

In hindsight, my decision to ban all gun play was irrational and harmful. Keeping my son from a "bad thing" did not prepare him for what to do when that "bad thing" was all around him. I'm jumping the gun here (pun intended), but how is he going to handle a situation where he is 15 and the kids around him are all smoking pot or just cigarettes? In hindsight, my banning the "bad thing" from his life left him unprepared to deal with other "bad things" later on. In my ban I destroyed any opportunities for "teachable moments."

In hindsight, it was not so much the guns that bothered me. It was where he was pointing the weapon at that concerned me. I hate to sound like an NRA goon, but in this case it was "people that kill people," not the gun. My ban on guns did not stop him from pointing his imaginary web shooters, iron palms, Ultraman ray (made by simply bending your arm in a 90 degree angle), etc. at the "evil" object or person.

There has been a lot written about little boys and aggression. Some years ago, my wife and I swore by a documentary we saw on PBS called Raising Cain. It addressed aggression issues in boys and talked about the "boy pysche" in the modern world. It made the claim that aggression was natural in boys and that ignoring it or suppressing it could be harmful.

When I read a recent Parental Advisory on Babble, it reminded me of my snap decision to ban gun play and being hit with the consequences of being wrong.

Guns and aggression are inevitable in the life of a 21st Century boy. I have lifted my unenforceable ban on gun play for my boys. I have replaced the ban with talks of proper gun play conduct and appropriateness.

Native Tongue

I want my children to learn Chinese because:

1. I'm Chinese.
2. It is important to me that my children retain a cultural connection.
3. I have always regretted that I am illiterate in my parent's language.

It was always a given that my children would learn Chinese. My wife and I did not question it. The dilemma occured when my wife and I were deciding which dialect they would learn: Cantonese or Mandarin? The other issue is that I really don't like the way Chinese is taught. The classroom is very traditional and uninspiring.

I do not have fond memories of Chinese school. My parents stopped sending me shortly after I started. I got into fights with the other kids. I started late, so was a year or two older than the other kids. My friends played baseball on the weekend. I didn't think it was fair I had to go to school. I speak Cantonese awkwardly and am completely illiterate.

I cannot even write my own name in Chinese. I have to ask my father to write my children's names. I don't even know why I insisted my children have Chinese names. My Chinese name serves no other purpose than to remind me of my shortcomings. Even my grandmother called me by my English name when she was alive - and she was the one that gave me my Chinese name!

So I wonder about the wisdom of sending my children to Chinese school. It is "awakening" for me to be in the position my parents where in when they registered me for American kindergarten in Queens. They did not have an intimate knowledge of the English language, just like I don't have an intimate knowledge of Chinese. I struggle to understand everything I am being told. My wife and I speak English at home. We do not share a common cultural dialect.

I toy with the idea of going back to school and getting a BA in Chinese Language. I want to be able to read in Chinese, regardless of the dialect. But I know I am a poor student. I have tried several times to learn Mandarin and have not made any progress. It is struggle to stay focused.

I wonder if my sending my children to Chinese school is a decision made from ego (a way to compensate for my own shortcoming) or if I truly believe it is beneficial for them in the future.

Birthday Bash

Recently, my wife and I argued over whether or not to throw our son a birthday party. She wanted a large party with all of his classmates. I wanted something more intimate with just the nuclear family. 

This year, our son's birthday fell at an opportune time. It was Spider-Man week in New York City, Free Comic Book Day, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Asian American Heritage Festival. I felt it would have been enough to spend the days up to and after his birthday attending one of the events going on around the city. I felt it would have been more "intimate." It was time to bond with him. And it was more than just one day.

My wife felt that it was important to have a more traditional celebration with a party, cake, and candles. This was his first year at school. He had attended his classmates' celebrations and had been asking for his own party. She also felt that this was a very important birthday for him. This birthday marked a benchmark in his life. We last had a big party for him when he was three. We hired a storyteller and rented the backroom of a cafe.

Recently, I read an article on Babble called "Birthdays Gone Wild." The author wrote about how much time, planning, and money she had spent on her son's birthday parties. Once, she even rented a lion cub from a local zoo! She wrote about how frustrated she was that her son seemed to have no memory of the great birthday parties she had thrown for him. He only remembered running around and playing with his friends. She realized that the parties she had thrown for him were more for herself than for him. The parties helped relieve the guilt she felt over being a working mom. Needless to say, with each year the parties became more and more extravagant until she came to the realization that the size and expense of the parties did not matter to her son, who only wanted to play with his friends.

This year our son got a party with all of his friends and we celebrated throughout the week with a special activity here and there. It worked out well for everyone involved. I spent the day with him and our youngest. My wife had a party waiting for him when we got home. We don't have the resources to rent a baby lion but "Birthdays Gone Wild" was a poignant cautionary tale for all future birthdays.

Dumb Daddy

I've been an "Idiot Dad" more than once. More than once I have convinced myself of a truth just to be proven otherwise. More than once, I had made up my mind before I heard the whole story.

This happens most with my eldest simply because he is the eldest and the way we interact is booby trapped with opportunities for me to jump to poor conclusions.

It happened last Saturday. I got upset at him because he didn't finish his breakfast. I scolded him for not finishing his food. Eating is an issue with him. Where his younger brother has a healthy appetite, it is rare for my eldest to ever want to eat anything (including the sweets that other parents complain about).

Still angry, I asked him to brush his teeth and get dressed. We had a dentist appointment that morning. We walked quickly to the subway station in silence. On the train ride, I stopped being angry and spoke to him about why I was angry and why it is important that he eats his meals. The remainder of the morning was fine after that. He didn't even wince as the dentist cleaned his teeth and he entertained himself quietly as he waited through my teeth cleaning.

I knew something was wrong when he said he wanted to go home. Usually we spend the latter part of the morning together after our dentist appointment. We window shop, visit the nearby comic book store, go out to eat, some times even a movie. This time, he just wanted to go home. When we got home I realized why - he had developed a temperature since getting out of bed. That was what probably made him eat even less than he normally does!

I am an idiot! I should have known. The signs were there but for one reason or another I was OK with my conclusion that he was just being difficult about eating his breakfast. I didn't think that he was out at the playground the day before. It was unusually warm. The temperature dropped that evening. We left the window open. He caught a chill. I didn't dress him warm enough the morning of the dentist appointment. His chill blew up into a fever.

I am an Idiot Dad and not only did my eldest suffer for a week with a cough and fever, my youngest caught the bug too. I did too. I am even more of an idiot because after the first time I didn't listen to my eldest, I swore I would not do it again.

(I will tell you about how I became an idiot in another post).

Namesake

What will I tell my sons when they ask how my wife and I named them? Will they ask? My sister was named after a race horse. My father says he named her after a race horse that won on the day or some time during the week of her birth. I was named because he wanted something "different."

I say that both my wife and I picked the names for our sons, but the truth is I picked them. She just agreed. We had two names that we really liked for our oldest. We went with the one that was softer to the ear and had more meaning in Chinese numerology. We didn't know at the time that we would be using the name we didn't choose for his younger brother. A harsher sounding name in English. In Spanish, smoother.

A fun fact about my children's names: Neither my wife's or my parents can pronounce the name correctly. The consonant sounds do not exist in either of our parents' languages.

The boys' names were easy. My wife and I struggled over what to name a girl. Initially, we thought our second would be a girl. We had a girl's name picked out for our first just in case, but for one reason or another, we felt it was necessary to revisit girls' names. I think it was me. I was unhappy was the name we had selected before. But I had no alternatives to choose from. We wrestled with names it seems up to the day our second was born.

Both my sons have Chinese names that they do not know or can write. My grandmother chose my oldest son's name and my father chose my youngest son's name. My grandmother had passed away before he was born, so the responsibility fell on my father.

Their Chinese names are simple to remember and to write. That was my one request. My Chinese name is complicated and hard to write. I remember at one point in my life when it seemed like I was going crazy, my grandmother wanted to change one of the characters in my Chinese name because she felt that all of the ornate dashes brought about a "disharmony." I had refused.

Actually, it sort of made me angry. It was the name she gave me. And even though I could barely write it, I had become very possessive of it. It was after all - My Name! I believed all of the little ornate dashes were strengths and not a weaknesses. I believed they symbolized "versatility" and not "disharmony."

My sons' names begin with a solid unbroken character. The second part of the name is not so "unbroken" but the strokes are limited. There aren't a lot of dashes all around. I believe this will make sons more straightforward and driven than I was, especially in adolescence. Also, their names both bring to mind the sun, which brings to mind new days on spring mornings. Which brings to mind the subtle and unconscious need for hope and new beginnings.

My grandmother passed away shortly before my oldest son's first birthday. I still do not use my Chinese name for anything. I still cannot write it. However, it is still my name. I hope my sons feel the same about their Chinese names.

Trust

It is a horrible feeling not being able to trust your mother. Recently, I have had to draw some pretty thick and deep lines in the sand when it comes to my mother. It has not been easy.

I know she did not mean to do it maliciously. I know she thought she was doing the right thing. And I have no intention of trying to change her. But she can be very controlling and sometimes in her need to control her environment, she can be insensitive to the people around her. She can be extremely hurtful.

I do not blame her. It is my fault and the fault of my wife's for not addressing the issues earlier. It is my fault and my wife's for not enforcing our boundaries and reminding my mother of them when she first crossed them. Instead we ignored it and my mother mistook our passivity as our condoning her actions. Now, I have stopped it and my mother says she does not understand.

I have to be very rational and very clear with my mother. I need to control the conversation. If I do not, she breaks off into hysterics. She gets emotional. When she gets emotional my wife buckles to her whims. When she gets emotional, I hang up the phone.

She used to be able to manipulate my sister and I that way. She used to manipulate us by crying or screaming and yelling. But we are grown now and somewhat more self-aware. All sincerity is lost in the knowledge that she has used this tactic to gain control in the past. My sister has not spoken to my mother in 12 years. I am not my sister but I am tempted. All I have done is restricted her visits with my children to once a month.

She kept saying she "didn't understand." I told her that she is very controlling and that sometimes her need to control hurts people's feelings. I told her that my wife does not stand up to her and that is a problem when it came to decisions regarding our children. I kept on at her, listing instances of when she crossed the line with me, until she relented and said, she didn't agree. I told her not understanding and not agreeing are two different things.

Drawing Lines in the Sand

I have drawn lines in the sand with my family. I have had to set boundaries. It was difficult at first. It started with my father and grandmother. I had to get them to call before "dropping by." I also had to get them to agree not to drop by so often.

It hasn't been easy. I know their feelings have been were hurt. And, in hindsight, there have been times I made decisions out of personal convenience instead of a greater good. I have said, No, to family gatherings, if the boys were sick or if the weather was bad or (and I hate to admit it) if I didn't feeling like dealing with my family.

It is important to me that my children bond with their grandparents - all three sets of them! It is more important that my family is healthy and happy.

I grew up not knowing much about my father's side of the family. I knew only that my grandmother was a second wife and that my father was her only child with my grandfather. He had several children with his first wife but my father was the only child he had with my grandmother. At least this is what I have pieced together.

My wife's family is very close and my mom's family is very close. Being close means that life is not always cheery. Sometimes being close is too close. Recently, I have had to draw a thicker line in the sand for my mother.

My mother comes over to "help" my wife manage the house and our two sons. It began as a visit once or twice a week but then grew into a visit a day. Some weeks she even came on the weekends. My wife and I no longer spent time alone with our children (especially the our youngest child). Her visits had become more of an inconvenience than a source of help and support. She made greater and greater demands of us and took control of how our youngest was being raised (including issues of health and medication).

I have asked her not to come over anymore. However, I have yet to confront her about her actions. She doesn't know that anyting is wrong. I simply told her that my wife, my kids, and I needed some "nuclear bonding time"; bonding time as just a "nuclear family."

Just Like Momma Used To

I joke that my dad was the typical stony Chinese dad. I joke that the only time he spoke to me was to tell me that I was blocking the TV. My dad is a nice man. In hindsight, while he was the one that gave me most of my spankings, it was usually at my mother's request.

Before the divorce, I can remember him laughing and joking with his friends. He has since lost contact with them. The divorce really sent him for a loop. He cried in front of me. I was a teenager. I was cold. I told him, if she (my mother) really wanted to go, let her go, and move on.

A positive byproduct of the divorce was that my father and I actually started speaking. I mean having conversations that went beyond the weather and whether or not I needed money. Unfortunately, now that we were talking, we realized that we didn't understand each other. He couldn't understand how I made sense of my world and I couldn't understand how he rationalized his.

This doesn't mean that we didn't keep trying. We still don't understand each other but the range of topics we speak about has increased as the number of "life decisions" I must make increases. Also, having met one of his college friends from Hong Kong, and sharing stories,  I have come to realize that he and I aren't that different. He was a big partier in college too.

Where my dad was not engaged, my mother was controlling. My mom and I had a great relationship until I learned it was OK to say, No, to her. Up until junior year in high school, when I discovered New Wave music and the school theater club, I didn't really care about what I wore or how my hair looked. I had a terrible puberty and lost any feelings of attractiveness during it. So up until junior year I really didn't care what I looked it.

I gave up on my mother my senior year of high school when I got my ear pierced. It was still pretty taboo then. She was furious. I joke with her now that by the time I graduated college, many of her male interns and even some of her male staff had earrings. They did the "Italian" (the one diamond stud in the ear). I had flamboyant hoops and expanded collection in college.

College was really the time I "grew up." My parents were distracted by their recent divorce. I was eight hours away by car or bus and free to explore all of the things I thought an arty poet musician wannabe should be doing.

In adulthood, I have come to accept that my father and my mother wanted a different son. They wanted someone who better fit their mold of "All American." In my mind, I did. I was very "American." It just wasn't the America they were hoping for.

I am scared now. I see a lot of my mother in me. Do I control my sons too much? Am I too demanding? I also see my father in me. My eldest son acts differently around me than around my wife. She says it is because he and I don't "spend enough time with him." I say, I do. But do I? She says we don't interact when we are together.

Decades from now, if they are sitting, writing about their childhood, will my boys feel I controlled them or was uninterested in what they liked? Is knowing that the potential is there enough for me to stop and have a better relationship with my children than I had with my parents?

If They Are Anything Like Me

You can’t help but compare.

Oh he has your eyes.

He has your mouth.

It’s a real ego spurt when someone says my sons look like me. I don’t know why, It just is. I’ve thought about it every now and then, in quiet moments after a good day when everything falls into place. I’ve thought about it and still don’t know why it makes me beam.

It just does.

At least it does until I really think about it. It can be quite damning. I am not the most handsome daddy out there. I am not the most successful, the most daring, the smartest, the coolest, the richest, the nicest - I am not much of anything except mediocre – and I’m not even the most at that.

I know people mean it as a compliment and I certainly take it as such, but when I really think about it, No, my sons shouldn’t look like me. They should be better. They should be more handsome, more successful, more daring, smarter, cooler, richer, nicer, and so on.

When I think about my life, I think about all of the opportunities I let go by because I was too scared to ask or too frightened to act. I think about all of the mistakes I’ve made and the people I’ve hurt because my ego got in the way of doing what my conscience told me to. I think of all of the loss and sadness that could have been avoided, if I were the right person at the right time.

It scares me sometimes to think that either of boys would end up like me. It scares me to think that they would end up on the wrong side of a situation that might bring them harm, physically or emotionally. I can’t watch Law & Order: SVU anymore because I have nightmares about my boys ending up as one of their stories “ripped from the headlines.” Every once in a while, something on the news, something on TV, will set me off and I’ll be awake nights upon nights, panicked over the possibility that that could happen to one of my kids.

And while my imagination runs wild setting up all sorts of desperate scenarios, I know that it would be just as equally painful (if not more) if I were to be overprotective or dominated their lives in some way.

If they are anything like me, they would hate me.

My "How I Met Your Mother" Story

If you would have told me six years ago that I would be married with children, I would have laughed and said, No Way! I wasn't even dating then. I joke with friends that I planned on my girlfriends getting incrementally younger and I got incrementally older.

I like to think how I met my wife is a great New York story. I met her because she wanted to take over the lease to my apartment. I had gotten into a housing lottery and had an opportunity to own my own place. She had just broken up with the brother of a mutual friend. We didn’t really have a long courtship. Our relationship moved pretty quickly.

We don’t speak to that mutual friend anymore. The rumor was that our mutual friend was pretty upset that we got together. We should have made an effort to speak to her, but there was too much “entanglement” and neither of us wanted to deal with it. We did see her by chance on the street shortly after QT (our first son) was born. We walked right by each other. It was sad. I wish I would have spoken up or said something. At least I would know that I tried to reach out to her.

Anyway…

She came to look at my apartment on a Sunday, called me on a Wednesday, we went out to dinner on Friday, she stayed until Sunday, and moved in shortly after. For several months it was me, her, her two dogs, and my cat in our tiny Brooklyn apartment. I had been there since getting my first “real” job with the not-for-profit that taught Constitutional Law. We were happy there. We had just met and didn’t really have any heavy decisions weighing on our relationship. I can remember we had one major fight. I don’t remember what it was about but we went to see a relationship counselor.

Sometimes, I think we should go back. I felt the counselor made some good points. I am carefully to consider them when my wife and I fight now.

The early days of our relationship were spent looking forward to moving into Manhattan. Our first year in our new home was peaceful despite the evolving politics of being on the Board of Managers. In fact, that’s what we argued about most after moving in. She wanted me to join to Board, but did not support any of the decisions I made as a Board member. I was angry because joining the Board was her idea. And I did not like the idea that I was supposed to be a puppet.

Then 9/11 hit. We had only been in our new home a year when 9/11 hit. A sad truth: I had never noticed the towers from the landing of our home until they fell. The pillar of smoke seemed to rise for a week before dissipating into a gray fog that wafted through our streets for another week. The smell of paving tar still sends a momentary jolt of sadness through me. And we were among the lucky ones, we were running late, so were saved from the heart of the devastation.

The following Saturday, my wife announced she was pregnant. We considered our options, but who were we kidding, we were excited about our baby. His brother followed two years later.