A moving story

We've finally learned as a society that movement is essential to health. Not a big revelation, until you think about how hard we try as a society to keep kids motionless and silent.

As soon as we can, we shuffle them into classrooms of other kids and tell them to sit still and do nothing till told differently. Then, when they're older, we wonder why some of them get planted in front of the TV or behind a desk and do little else but add to their posteriors.

I'm glad summer vacation is here for Jordan. We spend a few hours a day reading, writing, learning, and part of it involves watching science programs on the computer screen. My desk, pictured, includes a NordicTrack ski machine that I use a few minutes most days. I have it set up for Jordan to use when he's here. Can't keep him off it, so I figured might as well size it for him.

While a program about the Kileaua volcano was on, I left Jordan in the chair and went to the kitchen to fix a cup of coffee. When I came back, Jordan was on the exercise machine while watching the program.

Did he deduce that his future life would be better if he trained himself now to keep active? Did he decide he needed to increase his heart rate so his brain would be fed more oxygen and he could learn more thoroughly? Or does he enjoy moving around on the NordicTrack and feel like he could do that AND watch the volcano show?

Movement is natural for children. Becoming a stationary blob takes a lot of effort from well-meaning parents, teachers, and employers. As a society we need to change that paradigm, drastically and soon.

I prefer my fertilizer from the bag

Don't you just love how people let their dogs walk them around, especially when they stop in front of your house to defecate, urinate, and dig around?

Have a clue, dog people! That's nasty.

I used to have a dog, and when I walked her in public, I walked her, not the other way around. I didn't stop in front of somebody's house and say, come on, Fido, crap in this stranger's yard. No, I took the dog to a common area, a walking area, away from where kids might play, and that's where the dog was trained to go.

Even if you clean up the poop, the germs are still on the ground, don't you think? I have yet to see anyone with a spray bottle, spraying down the affected area and drying it nice and fresh.

One thing you never see in the grassy area outside my window: Kids playing. I do not wonder why.

I don't like public education

Jordan came home last night with a paper on which the teacher wanted a parent signature. The paper was an assignment that was supposed to be a letter, but Jordan had taken very little time with it and obviously was goofing off, not trying, and had produced something barely readable. I was upset. For two reasons.

First, that he would try to pass off such terrible work as anything near the best he could do made me shake in my socks. Had to count to ten to keep from going ballistic.

And second, because this is the type of stuff he's learned at school. How to goof off. How to laugh at butt, fart, and underwear jokes. How to be rude. How to get away with as much as possible, and how not to care a whole lot if he does get caught now and then.

If not for the fact that his writing and art abilities were many times better as a four- and five-year-old, I'd not complain so much. But they were. His skills in those areas have decreased. His math skills are the same as they were two years ago, and if I hadn't kept at him to remember those, they would have deteriorated, too, because they haven't made it to his skill level in his school work yet. And they won't make it this year.

The only reason that he can read as well as he does is because he wants to. Reading is necessary to understand many of the video games he plays.

I suppose I can take consolation in that, other than the property taxes we pay, his public education is free. But for some reason, that provides small comfort. And for the amount of taxes the house that he lives in requires, I don't think the deal is good at all. Unfortunately, we can't direct those taxes to anything else.

I will never believe that public school, as it is designed today, is the best way to teach a child. For parents who treat school as little more than daycare, it's all right, but for me, it seems to be nothing more than time to goof off, socialize, and conform to the lowest common denominator. But like so much else in the U.S. today, there's nothing better for the price available.

Mad thermals

I strive to be a writer in my playtime, and to help, I'm in a critique group of various individuals who usually do not agree on anything much in the realm of writing. It's a good cross-section. Somebody's bound to like what you do. And somebody isn't.

A recent story I wrote for kids dealt with flying and the science of flying, specifically thermals. Couple of people couldn't believe that kids seven years old would have any idea what a thermal is. To them I say: watch some Sesame Street once in a while. But I say it with a smile firmly planted because everything we say to each other is given and taken with a grain of salt, which, I suppose, is meant to season the comment and make it more tasty.

From the photo above, taken at the Wright Patt Air Force Museum in Dayton, you can see the evidence that at least in the case of my son, flying is a way of life. He's known about thermals for at least two years, and while he might not be able to give you the scientific reason for their existence, he definitely knows they exist, that they are more prevalent on south-facing hillsides, and that they help you fly.

Couple of years ago, I observed him and a friend flying, and the other guy said, "Wow, Jordan, you got mad skills."

I could only agree.

What's good for the goslings...

Another soccer season is over and a new softball season begun. Our amazing kids have learned the game of soccer better and better, they've become good friends, and I've grown as a coach and a human being.

It's tough sometimes being positive when kids are doing the opposite of what you ask them, when they don't listen to you at all, when they don't listen to anything at all except the voice in their head that says to do anything but play soccer. It's tough for me, anyway. I'm not naturally a forgiving person. It's against my nature to put up with being ignored and to keep trying to make children listen.

But that's what I worked on doing, because you know why? That's what we tell the kids to do: Don't stop attacking the ball. Keep after it. Don't stop.

It wasn't till the last game that the message sunk into my head deeply enough to make an impression that lasts. But it did, and now I'm ready to coach softball. I think.

Tony the Tiger would be proud

At best I'm an optimistic pessimist, or maybe a pessimistic optimist, either way, it equals out. So I don't know how my son has developed into such a positive force. Maybe it's because his mom and I have always strived to give his thoughts and feelings their due importance.

Don't misunderstand. We don't negotiate every little thing. At least I don't. If it's green bean casserole for dinner, that's what it is. No begging for something else. For one thing, if it's green bean casserole, I probably don't have anything else. Besides, I add a little Tabasco and a touch of garlic and make that casserole rock, dude.

One day I made a new recipe of chicken and cabbage burritos, and I could tell by his face that the combination did not work for him. So I let him eat the chicken by itself, along with a side salad. (I think the disgusting cabbage made the salad taste better to him.)

So I keep it real for him, just like I'd treat (as I've said before) any obnoxious stranger. He deserves at least that level of respect. He is, after all, a human.

I took him to school this morning and pulled to the curb where we line up and let kids out. The principal came over and held the door for him. "Hi, Jordan," he said. "How are you today?"

Jordan steps out of the car into the 53-degree weather, big (mostly empty) backpack, shorts and aloha shirt, uncombed hair, and said as he closed the door, "GREAT!"

"What a good answer," principal Schwieterman said.

And I had to agree, though I'm not sure how it happened.

Listening and the Stupid Co-worker

"Do not say that again."

Have you ever said those words to your child? How would you like it if someone said them to you?

Children are developing adults, and their mental and physical abilities often clash. For instance, the cognitive abilities of their brains develop much sooner than their speech abilities. So they can understand a whole lot more than they can verbalize.

Likewise emotions. As a child, basic emotions form the nucleus of every other emotion. Children may have all the more difficult feelings in their repertoire, but they've only got a limited number to describe them. I believe four of those are: happy, sad, mad, and scared (though scared could be a combination of sad and mad). I think nearly all emotions can be described, to a degree, as portions of those four.

If your child yells at you or says he's not going to do something you tell him to do, should you command him never to utter those words again? Sure, if you want him to be afraid to tell you how he feels, or if you want him to know that what he feels is wrong, bad, unimportant, and stupid.

When I hear those words (which I did yesterday from a 250-pound skinhead to a 30-pound kid who was obviously repeating sentences he'd heard at home), I want to ask if that's how the adult treats co-workers or friends. We've all had to put up with them at some time or another. But how many of us have told them to shut up, grabbed them by the arm and dragged them upstairs to their room, smacked their bottoms, made them take a time-out?

What if the baby could have said: "Oh Father, I'm feeling jealous of my baby brother because you and Mother coo and ah over him, making me feel unimportant. Every time he poops himself, you stop what you're doing and change his diaper. And now, all I want to do is play on the playground a while longer; yet you don't seem to care. I'm feeling just a bit insecure in my dealing with you at this moment."

Would Dad have said, "Don't you say that again"? I think not. Unfortunately, the child didn't have jealousy, insecurity, or self-worth in his vocabulary. He was just mad. Whatever the conversation between father and son, the son left pouting and defeated, unable to speak his mind.

My chest fills with parental pride at how my son fearlessly approaches kids and asks them to play, thanks them for playing when they leave or he leaves, treats younger and older kids with the same respect and gleam in his eye. No, he's not perfect all the time, but I never discount what he says or feels and always get to the bottom of negative emotions he displays. We don't always solve them, but at least we understand them.

I'd do the same for any stupid co-worker.

Pancake Serenade

I am a lover of the pancake arts. They inspire me to many things. We have no IHOPs in the Dayton area, and this is a travesty of pancake justice. Thankfully, we have many memories of IHOPs in Colorado. One of the earliest memories my seven-year-old son has is of him and me going to IHOP for specialty pancakes.

"That was in Colorado, right?" he asked me. "I remember we used to go there a lot, didn't we?"

Jordan was aged three through five during this time, so it's cool that the memory stuck with him. His brain is developing so fast now, many of those toddler memories are being wiped out.

We also stopped by Sonic once or twice a week in those days. For those who don't know, that's a fast-food joint where you pull up to signs outside to order your meal, and it's brought to your car, often by roller-skating waiters or waittresses. Jordan would unbuckle from the seat, take off his shoes, and go crawling through the Vibe station wagon we had at the time. It had a sun roof, too, so of course he'd be sticking his head through that, weather permitting.

The last time I asked him about that, he didn't really remember it. Stupid me, I didn't take any pictures of it. Stupid! Always take pictures, people. It's the 21st century.

Being without a member of the IHOP franchise nearby, I've had to perfect my own pancake art, and can report success. Whenever my son stays with me, we have pancakes the next morning.

One of the best memories I have of my own dad is the making of pancakes on Sunday mornings. Not every Sunday, but there was a period of time when it was semi-regular. I'm very glad to pass down that positive memory to my son.

Passing, shooting, and reading

Basketball coaching continues to be rewarding. The kids are doing much better at passing the ball. Some still have trouble guarding without going all helicopter on the opponent, and there is the problem of agressiveness causing more agressiveness till finally one or the other is called for fouling. Invariably, he doesn't understand it because the other kid was going it too. The no-touch policy works for a while, but soon, it's back to guarding by gymnastics.

Jordan's on the medium height segment of the team, though one of the younger. Next year, he'll be on the far end of the age range. He'll also be a bit more mature. He's already high up on the maturity scale, able to give up the bad percentage shot in favor of a pass inside. That's a hard lesson for this age to learn.

Tonight, he's playing computer games. I'm amazed by the online games and how they've grown over the past couple of years. They look like expensive games now. And Jordan plays them way better since he's learned to read.

Knowing that he has a good time reading is another high point for a writer daddy. His writing skills haven't quite caught up yet, but just to watch him sit and read a story book, that is about as good as it gets these days.

A better day coaching

After our 7- and 8-year-old basketball kids were pelted in their first game by a group of kids who looked closer to 9 and who played closer to 14, I was a little fearful that my first foray into coaching had been a mistake. More so for the kids than for myself.

We'd missed our weekly practice because of snow and frigid weather on the 14th, so we went in without proper knowledge. This led me to a vigorous practice on the 21st where I explained proper guarding techniques. Most of them understood in practice, but when they got in the game, it was more of the same bunching around whoever had the ball. But that's normal.

We'll work on defense again this week, and add a few offensive maneuvers to get them away from dribbling into the mass of bodies and losing the ball, either by having it stolen or because they throw up a lob pass in the middle of the pack.

All in all, I think we scored more baskets this week. I was busy trying to keep our benched players on the bench and watching the clock so I could do substitutions. I felt semi-victorious in the knowledge that most of our players on the court had a better idea of what they were doing.

So far, so good

Today was the first day back to school for kids in my son's elementary school. We're all proud to note that he made it through the day on the green light, and he was able to wake up on time without a lot of trouble. I was worried that his late nights staying up till 11 and 12 might give him a problem when school started back, but the night before the night before he zonkered out by 10:30, so that helped him get back on schedule.

SAHWAHD has seen schedules change drastically since the boy has been attending school. There's much more time to be at-home working, and less time to be at-home daddying. Just like when he started half-day prekindergarten, and when he potty-trained himself, Daddy feels a little less needed, a little less important in the life of this fellow who has changed his life. It felt good teaching him the year of kindergarten in half a year, and it felt super-good when he passed his Iowa tests with supersonic flying colors. I'm a little sad that he's kind of floating along scholastically now, but he's having fun learning how to work the system, and in the end, that's as important as learning how it's supposed to work.

I still maintain enough contact with him to let him know that there is a level of expectation above and beyond what the state has in mind. He knows that he can float or he can rise above; it's up to him. Right now, he chooses the path of least resistance to the computer games--unless somebody's there to chase him around. And after 10 laps around the house upstairs and down, I'm usually ready to sit down for some games myself. Hoping to build up to 20 laps by year's end.

So far, so good. :-)

Whose teeth are these?

Watching a new human become aware of self is fascinating for a parent. It's been a couple of years since Jordan first started asking for his hair to be styled a certain way. For a year or so, that was spikes. The last few months, he's been combing it straight forward, like in the picture here. Hair is controllable, but another part of his face isn't: his teeth.

He started losing them kind of young, plus he got his six-year molars at four, so his mouth is full of teeth. He had a pretty nice smile before the front ones started coming out, and he's still got a wonderful smile, especially when you combine the full effect of his cheeks and eyes. A recent question he asked me told me how much he's thinking about his looks.

"Why are my two front teeth so big?"

It's rough growing up, having your parts fall out, regrow. Your clothes get too small, too short, too tight. You bump your head on things you used to be able to walk under.

And your teeth don't always fit in your mouth.