Leave it to Beaver

We got a DVD with 20 Leave it to Beaver episodes on it from the library and have been working our way through them for the past couple of weeks.  My girls are 8 and 11 3/4.  They had never seen the show before.  I don't think it runs in syndication anymore.  We did the same thing last year with Gilligan's Island (also not running in syndication anymore) with equal success. 

Beaver impresses me upon rewatching as an adult and more importantantly as a father.  As a kid, I only noticed the hijinks, but now I see the parenting magic.  Like me, you may remember the Cleavers as the perfect parents.  Rewatching, they were anything but.  They made mistakes and misteps, but they learned from them and became better parents every week.  Watching the show as a parent is fairly encouraging. 

My kids absolutely love the show.  They run around quoting the show and can't wait to watch more episodes.  They love to compare our family to the Cleavers (how could we ever measure up).  My wife even likes it. 

In summary, the show is just as good as you remember it and is a great show to watch as a family.  Wally and the Beav will soon be just like family themselves. 

The Ballad of the Spelling Bee

Ashli participated in her first spelling bee.  It was a community planned event that divided kids up by grade level.  There were 14 fourth graders from various schools.  What surprised me is that words would take out numerous people at a time.  Gnaw took out 3 kids and llama took out 3 more.  Ashli was defeated by the word ballad.  She spelled it ballet and I think she thought that is what she was supposed to be spelling.  I don't think she was familiar with the word ballad, at all.  When she got out there were only 3 other people on stage.  She was the first speller for the round and the person immediatly behind her also misspelled ballad (balled), so Ashli tied for third.  She was a lot more upset about being eliminated than most of the kids. 

Leading up to the bee, she didn't really study.  Jung, of course, was pushing her, but I told her to let Ashli handle it her way and see what the results are.  Before the competition, Ashli was very confident that she would win.  I told her that confidence was the right attitude, but that studying would also have been a correct attitude.  In the end, she was tripped up by a word that she wasn't familiar with.  Had she studied, she might have seen it once or twice.  I told her this while talking once we got home. 

All in all, she did very well.  I told her I was proud of her and how she could have improved her performance.  I don't think she will ever misspell ballad again. 

It was this year

I have been waiting for it to happen.  Every year for the last 4 years I have awaited this moment on this day.  I knew it would happen someday and this year it did. 

Ashli came to me and said, “I hate this.”  She was filling out Valentine’s Day cards.  I asked what was going on and she said that she was having a hard time picking which cards to give to which boys.  Not because she liked them, but because she didn’t.  She wanted to make sure that the boys wouldn’t think she liked them based of her Valentines. 

I remember the same thing going through my mind when I was a kid.  There was also the anxiety over which one to give to the girl you really liked so that she might intuit that you liked her and wanted her to be your Valentine for real.  Boys have the added disadvantage of having to give cards to other boys.  As there are usually 5 out of the pack of 20 that say something like “You are super!”  All the rest always had cutesy Valentine’s phrases.  So unless you were in a classroom with only 5 boys, there were going to be boys that got a “Be mine, Valentine” from you. 

Odd thing, after I got my cards, I never really looked to see what the boys or girls cards said that I didn’t like.  I only had eyes for the one from the girl(s) that I had crushes on.  Those little slips of folded paper never revealed any romance, but it didn’t stop me from worrying about it every year.  Glad to see my neurosis was passed down. 

Proud Parenting Moments

blogger Tags: ashli, ally, reading, books, parenting, proud

This morning, I had one of those rare proud parenting moments.  One of those moments that reassures you that you are doing a sufficient job in raising your child.  There are a lot of cool moments when your kids do something that make you laugh or make you happy but the ones where they make you proud are fewer. 

This morning as I was getting ready for work and the girls were waiting for their breakfast, I told my youngest to read the book she had gotten from the library.  She grabbed the book and sat down in the recliner.  Her sister came and sat beside her.  They made an arrangement; The oldest would read the left hand page and the youngest would read the right.    My oldest patiently let her sister read and only helped her when she was asked or something was mispronounced. 

It was great that they sat there reading to each other.  It is one of those times that you know are fleeting.  The oldest is almost 10 and will soon hate her sister tagging along.  The youngest is 6 and will soon not head her sisters guidance.  What made me proud though, was the way my oldest handled it.  The patience and lovingness she showed were beyond words.  I pulled her aside afterwards and told her that she was a great big sister.  And yes, I told the youngest that she did a great job with her reading.

They were reading Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. 

Tomboys

My wife is upset because Ashli has officially categorized herself as a “Tomboy.”  I thought it was cute when she said it, but my wife completely freaked out.  She is afraid that being a tomboy will damage her socially for the rest of her life.  I am getting a lot of the blame for this as well.  My wife states that she was a Girly-Girl up until she was four and my wife started working nights and I had the kids alone during the evenings.  My wife has told me that I am not a good influence on them (yes, it does make me mad). 

 

I don’t see anything wrong with tomboys.  It could be a phase, or it could be that she just likes to be more rough and tumble.  Either way is fine with me.  As a father, the girly-girls are cute and cuddly, but a father doesn’t really bond with that type of girl.  The girly-girl, in my opinion, is more prone to Freudian or Oedipal thought processes because they feel that they are the princess and need a prince to save them.  At pre adolescence, that prince is often the father.  Yuck!  Ashli, doesn’t need saving; she wants to be the hero and do the saving. 

 

It isn’t as though she is an all out tomboy either.  She has grown to not like pink so much and she hates the Disney Princesses, but she still likes Hello Kitty and littlest pet shop and pretty much anything else that is cute.  She still wears dresses and skirts, but she does so while riding bikes or doing the monkey bars.  She loves playing catch with me.  She loves all animals, even reptiles and bugs.  Her favorite TV shows are Pokemon, Teen Titans, and Dr. Who (she has watched blink about 500 times).  She has made it clear that we are not to get her Barbie dolls for Christmas.  She wants a DS with Zelda.

 

I can’t seem to comfort my wife on this one.  I don’t understand where her fear is coming from.  I don’t think that I am even the right sex to understand where the fear is coming from.  I understand that she wants a girly-girl to dress up and make look pretty and that Ashli often has messed up hair from running and playing.  But, Ashli still loves to dress up and look pretty.  Maybe culturally I am unable to understand her fear.  I don’t know how tomboys are treated in Korea or if she even understands what the term implies.  I think she might consider it to mean transgendered.  That worries her.  She wants normal kids that grow up to be normal (yet exceptionally smart, beautiful, and successful) adults.  I think tomboys are normal and she does not.

 

When my wife told Ashli that she had to change, Ashli rebelled.  Ashli said that it was who she was and she couldn’t and didn’t want to change.  This turned into a shouting match between the two of them about being who you are.  Of course, my wife was mad at me for this.  I don’t do all that phony self esteem crap they sell in schools about being perfect just the way you are, but I do tell them that it is okay to be different from other kids.  I mean, they are half Korean, so they are always going to be different from other kids in school.  I have to teach them to be proud of their differences and not worry about what other people might say. 

 

I think my wife is taking the wrong track.  Instead of discouraging being a tomboy, she should encourage girly-girl behavior.  It would be as easy as having a make up party, or having her put on a fashion show.  I am sure there are other things she could do too.  My wife says I need to change the way I am around her to get her to change and that I shouldn’t be so male with her.  But, when Ashli has played dolls or Polly pocket with me in the past, I got noticeably bored really fast.  On the other hand when we wrestle in the living room it can go on for hours.  My wife doesn’t really play with the girls.  She is more concerned about education, so she does a lot of work with them.  If they want to play they have to do it on their own.

 

My wife doesn’t see it yet because she is so young, but Ally is following directly in Ashli’s footsteps.  She wants to be like her big sister.  She gets played with in a rough and tumble manner and watches her sisters Tae Kwon Do class.  If Ashli is wrestling with me, Ally jumps right in too.  Ally still loves princesses and pink, but how long before Ashli’s distaste for them rubs off.  Yes in a soon to be future, we have two tomboys and then my wife will really go crazy.

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