When to declare yourself the benevolent dictator...

By Dad 

Kids across America are finishing up their summer camps and saying they've had a great time.

Dora (14), Penny (11) and Cathy (7) are finishing up their summer schools and saying....

….well, they're not quite as effusive as the summer camp crowd.

“You’ll thank me when you’re older,” I tell them.

“Thank you for what?” Dora says. “Stealing our childhoods?”

This is a conversation I’m never going to win.

Sure, I could say that summer school will help them land a great job, and give them a shot at being financially secure before they’re 35.

But they'd listen to that about as intently as subway riders listen when some car-hopping panhandler asks for money because he's "not robbing you."

If the kids answered at all, it would be to say that future job prospects don’t make for very exciting Instagrams.

As for thinking about being 35, that’s off their radar given they're still celebrating birthdays with cakes sporting the same number of candles as their ages.

So forget all the child-psychologist blather about “dialoguing” with your kids when you want them to do one thing, and they’ve got their eye on something else.

By the time you get their agreement, they’ll be parents themselves.

Far better to play the role of benevolent dictator and set stringent new routines focused solely on your plan.

Anything less and they'll think there's a chance they could be doing the "something else" that's on their mind.

Our summer routine sees me taking the kids anew to schools in Manhattan’s Chinatown, which has a concentration of summertime learning to meet demand in the Chinese immigrant community.

I escort the younger two, while Dora, whose classes start in the afternoon, travels there alone.

I quickly learned that Penny and Cathy were paranoid about being spotted by their friends in our Upper East Side neighborhood. As Penny put it, “They’ll think we’re dumb if they see us going to summer school."

Really? So kids outside the Asian community (as are mine) think that summer school is mainly for catching up rather than for getting ahead.

No wonder students of Asian families – who see summer school as an opportunity to advance – account for more than 60 per cent of enrollment in New York's select Specialized High Schools.

Anyway, to address Penny's fear, I ended up being more benevolent than dictator as I found myself carrying both kids’ backpacks until the subway.

To make the charade more believable, the girls insisted I also walk several paces behind them.

For sure the spectacle of a seven- and 11-year-old walking without apparent adult escort along a busy city street would, in most parts of America, see some Good Samaritan rush to their side to ask if they'd lost their mommy.

In Manhattan, it's all the kids can do to save themselves from being trampled by the cavalcades of commuters with eyes fixed on hand-held gadgets rather than what's in front of them.

But it's not just the high-tech crowd who pose dangers. There are low-tech terrors too – like building maintenance workers hosing down the sidewalks at the height of the morning rush hour.

Water silly time to wash the sidewalk

These "hosers" (Canadians and U.S. fans of the Bob and Doug McKenzie skits of the 1980s will get the double entendre) create veritable flash floods right in the middle of Manhattan.

Their cascades continue even after they switch off their hoses, which they never do until you're a split second away from entering the area they're spraying. (If you're lucky, you'll come across a hoser who doesn't halt the spray. Sure, you'll get soaked, but you can now sue the building for a large amount of cash because, of course, you were wearing Savile Row.)

Anyway, the flowing water is fine when you have adult legs and can step over the multiple rivulets. But the kids have to wade through them, turning each day's trek to the subway into a lesson on the hardships of traversing the Oregon Trail.

All that's missing are the Indian attacks, but even they could be simulated if I were to take my mother's advice and arm the kids with water pistols to hit back.

You can't say a thing to the hosers since many operate on the same level of arrogance as post-9/11 security guards: "Hey, I'm doing this for you!"

Doing what? Leaving my kids with soaked summer shoes and dirtied calves from the dust-infused droplets kicked up by their heels?

Bob and Doug McKenzie: "Those hosers are real hosers, eh?"

I'd like to know why the hosers feel the sidewalks need an 8 a.m. cleaning as opposed to one at 10 a.m., when there are fewer passers by.

I doubt Freud ever pondered this circumstance, but I note that they're firing gun-like device on a crowded street, and no one gets killed.

That's it! They're all auditioning to be stars in some New York City cop show.

Or maybe they're just clueless.

Which brings me to another mentally challenged group when it comes to scheduling the service they offer: dog walkers.

They're out there during the morning rush hour with anything up to 10 dogs on leashes streaming in all directions. It's a tangle waiting to happen for kids in their path.

Despite the hazards, the girls stick to my benevolently dictated routine. We arrive each day at the subway, where I return the backpacks to the kids ahead of our next task: squeezing ourselves and the bags into already packed cars.

For this, I recommend dressing oneself in business attire. Doing so gives the impression one has all the professional responsibilities of the other commuters – plus the added burden of two young charges.

More commuters than you might think react to this little white lie by giving the kids seats.

With commuters who are taking up more than their fair share of space, I find that being politely obnoxious is the way to go. I’m talking about riders who take up two or more seats thanks to their ample girth, or overfull bags, or bicycle, or shopping cart, or mobile food stall, or pet carrier, or craving for space to sleep, or batty behavior – or even their pungent smell. 

Sadly, my self-ascribed benevolent dictator role stops short of giving me the power to set a benevolent secret police onto these people. So I fantasize about dangling a foot, or devilishly placing a bag, in the path of the more selfish ones as they alight from the subway car.

I'll post an account of the result when I do – as long as I've avoided arrest.

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Trust, but verify was good for nuclear disarmament, less good as a parenting tool

Dad thought: "If it was good enough for Reagan..."

By Dad

Ronald Reagan was fond of the Russian proverb, Trust, but verify –  especially for making sure the Soviets fulfilled their nuclear arms-reduction promises.

A classic oxymoron, it means you don't trust the other side at all.

That's perfectly fine when the other side is able to wipe you off the map.

It's inviting trouble when your "adversary" is your 14-year-old daughter and she finds out you've been checking up on her.

I used the proverb as a parenting tool after Dora failed to produce this year's school Fitnessgram.

That's the health report the Department of Education issues to tell parents whether their kids are in shape or not.

Dora said hers “disappeared” from her backpack.

We're talking here of a space where old class papers, empty gum wrappers and even the odd sandwich remain unmolested for eons.

Nothing just "disappears" from Dora's backpack.

I figured the Fitnessgram's absence meant Dora was hiding bad news — that she was unhealthily underweight because of her persistent meal skipping.

It was time to trust, but verify.

First, I boned up on Body Mass Index, which the Fitnessgram uses to state whether a student is over or underweight.

Only math teachers and fitness gurus can ever remember the BMI formula. When I looked it up on (where else?) Wikipedia,* I also learned that the concept has been around since the 1830-1850s.

Here are some other events that occurred during those decades:

• Survival-of-the-fittest naturalist Charles Darwin was on his historic voyage in HMS Beagle

• The Irish were seeing their BMIs plummet because of the Potato Famine

• The United States got a little "fatter" with the annexation of Texas

In other words, it was a long time ago.

Much deeper research (I took the trouble to google "BMI WebMD" this time) revealed BMI's also criticized for giving skewed health-risk readings for people who are:

… very active, very inactive, lean, not lean, big framed, small framed, short, tall, old, sick, ethnically Asian, African American, Native American and Hispanic.

Will anyone left in the United States please stand up?

Despite these flaws, I still couldn't stop myself from asking the DOE to send me a copy of Dora’s Fitnessgram.

When it arrived, I realized I'd verified when I should have quit at trust.

The DOE says kids with BMIs between the fifth and 85th percentiles are of “healthy weight,” and Dora’s was in the 26th percentile.

Dora's BMI: Nothing to Hide

Oops.

On this occasion, I got off lightly.

Dora treated me to an, "I told you so..." when I admitted to her I'd obtained her Fitnessgram, and that it had ruled her healthy.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been equally gracious at the signing of the 1987 nuclear arms reduction treaty.

After Reagan reminded him that the United States would "trust, but verify," the Communist Party General Secretary quipped with a smile: "You repeat that at every meeting."

Still, historians say Gorbachev was privately incensed by Reagan's approach.

So what's Dora really thinking?


* Always free of charge, research on Wikipedia is also currently free of guilt. Their pesky call for at least a $5 donation "if Wikipedia is useful to you" is just an annual year-end affair. Compare that with Public TV, which makes us feel awkward several times a year and annoyingly interrupts my Friday-night Brit comedies. That said, click here to donate to PopPsychology911.com. Give generously "if PopPsychology911.com is useful to you."

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Fitnessgram Post Script

Dad's logic: If officials say this kid is fat, that means Dora is thin

By Dad (again)

“This kid is fat,” screams the New York Post headline next to a picture of a pencil-thin nine-year-old named Gwendolyn Williams.

Gwendolyn very obviously is not fat, but the Department of Education says she’s “overweight” in her Fitnessgram.

Gwendolyn also told the newspaper the same thing happened to her friend.

Now, you never know with the Post how much of their reporting is entertainment and how much is news.

Check out another of its recent "fat-focused" stories, this one about (admittedly tubby) New York Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon:

Page by larrybrownsports.com

Headline: LARDBALL*

Introduction: Crack about Colon's consumption of peanut butter.

The news: Farther down the story; it seems to have been how Colon led his team to its latest win.

The response: The baseball player's teammates boycotted the article's author, Mike Puma.

But there was no need for Post cuteness in the Gwendolyn piece. Just straight reporting had you shaking your head in disdain at the DOE.

Which in turn meant there were implications for any kid who'd received this year's Fitnessgram.

If DOE is reporting kids to be plumper than they actually are, the kids it's designated as only just healthy would actually be underweight.

In my case, that would be Dora, who's had the appetite of a hibernating squirrel since turning 13.

Or rather, she barely touches her food at home, since I hear that she eats anything put in front of her when she visits her friends' homes.

This is an amazing metamorphosis of her taste buds that, contrary to all known laws of nature, reverses itself when she returns to her own house.

So unless I encourage her to take all her meals at friends' homes, I fear the Gwendolyn piece suggests I'm under rising pressure to find foods that Dora will down at our family mealtimes.

I get a mumbled response when I ask her what she'd like me to buy. Is that the result of diminished energy due to food deprivation, or teenage reticence to answer her dad?

Gladly, Dora’s younger siblings both had Fitnessgrams that showed their BMIs to be well within the “healthy weight” range – even when I apply the “Gwendolyn” adjustment.

* This was the headline of the print edition

OMG I think I might be fat

Weigh to go: Dad's trying to get the girls to eat more

By Dad 

If there’s one thing the girls are not, it’s overweight.

Yet …

• 13-year-old Dora finds any excuse to skip meals.

• 10-year-old Penny complains about having “fat” legs.

• Seven-year-old Cathy hears her sisters blubbering about blubber and wonders whether she has a problem too.

Should I blame the schools, society, Tyra Banks?

While it’s just talk for now with the younger two, Dora has shed pounds she didn’t need to lose.

Denying that she's slimming, she blames her dad for serving “nothing” she likes.

But her favorite foods of one week are "disgusting" the next. Even pizza's off her current consumables list.

I learned this when I presented her with a triple-cheese pizza. I thought it was an offer she couldn't refuse.

She refused.

Who can keep pace with such chameleonic tastes?

All that Dora downs with regularity is the meat of her evening meal.

I say: “Take just a forkful of each of your veggies.” She reacts as if I'm suggesting she ingest strychnine.

With her lost pounds and appetite of an obligate carnivore, Dora could be the face of some meat-only weight-loss plan.

Maybe we’ve got something marketable here.

But I’d rather she identify the foods she likes, and stick to her decision long enough for me to buy and plate them.

For trying to please her palate without a list is like searching for a winning lottery combination – without the hope of landing a multi-million-dollar jackpot.

Complicated

While Dora's sisters are more cooperative at mealtimes, Penny's belief she has fat legs has its complications.

It spawned a new problem after I apparently shocked her to the core with a personal revelation.

As she sat on a park bench and lamented about her "wide" thighs, I explained that I was also 11 when – seated on a wooden chair playing triangle for my school band in England – I thought I had fat legs.

"The flat surface makes your legs spread out," I said. "It doesn't mean they're fat."

Her reaction was swift and blunt.

"You only played the tri-an-gle?" Penny said, exaggerating each of triangle's syllables in a way that expressed pity, disappointment and surprise all in one.

I saw immediately that my credibility was now shot for pressing her to practice her own band instrument – the clarinet.

Anyone adept enough to coordinate blowing and finger wiggling so that tunes sound out could never respect some chump who banged two pieces of metal together.

I should have listened to KISS – not the headbanger band, though at this point I was ready to bang my head on just about anything out of frustration. No, I mean KISS, the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid principle.

By keeping it simple, I'd have told Penny to just stick to sofas, period, when looking for somewhere to sit. And I certainly wouldn't have tried being the sensitive dad with stories about my past.

All of which leaves Cathy and her sister-induced worries. Being only seven, her appetite thankfully still overrides her weight concerns when dinnertime arrives and she's got a favorite dish to get stuck into.

But I'm sure it won't be too long before she's as complicated as the other two.

Buying a Grad Dress: Dad Just "Doesn't Get It"

On our shopping list: a black dress – because Penny doesn't want to be showy 

By Dad

One downside to the girls having been born three years apart has made itself apparent.

Both Dora and Penny are graduating this year – meaning this pressured Pop faces the trauma of grad-dress shopping twice over.

It's not something that should be left to the last minute (as I learn from leaving it to the last minute).

My preliminary inquiries – aka frantic calls to my mother – teach me that the task requires careful consideration of the following points (maternal advice in italics):

• The girls’ tastes: If I like a dress, the girls won’t, and if the girls like a dress, I won’t. Only option to keep the peace: capitulate. 

• The tastes of their friends: To impress this crowd, the dress must be unique and conformist at the same time. Since the two are mutually exclusive, we'll never impress the friends. 

• The edicts of the schools: Best to go along to get along, or join the PTA and spend a year organizing fund raisers just to have a chance at influencing the rules as they are made.

• The possibility a final choice will clash with a fellow student’s choice: If accused of copying, flip the charge and say we’re shocked that we’re being copied! 

My bid to add cost to the list leads the girls to question their pop's ability to grasp the importance of the occasion.

“You just don’t get it,” they scream. How could I think about money when their reputations will be on the line as they strut across the stage to take their ribboned scrolls?

 Focus

Penny gets my initial attention because her ceremony is just days away. At 10, she's moving from elementary to middle, and her school has ruled the girls wear a dress or skirt for the occasion.

Problem One: Penny turned hostile to wearing dresses and skirts at age seven, opting for shorts (hot days), leggings (mild days), and pants (cold days).

Of course, it's a dad's job to find solutions (especially ones that relieve his workload). The obvious solution here: Cry discrimination.

It's just not PC* for the school to demand that the girls go dressed as – of all things – GIRLS (traditionally attired ones, at least).

If there's any group that will react to a charge of being unPC, it’s the teacher establishment.

I decide to write to the principal to insist the rule be scrapped in the name of gender equality/freedom of expression/kids' rights (the principal can take her pick).

It seems like a great plan. But – as my Scottish mother's favorite poet, Robbie Burns, warned in his poem To a Mouse – even great planning can be knocked off track.

Actually, his exact Scots words were: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley."

Yes, I thought you'd like that I give it in standard English first.

What goes "agley" for my plan is that Penny does an about-face. Resurrecting her fear that any intervention by her Dad embarrasses her, she declares she'll go in a dress after all.

Worse, she says she doesn't want to be showy, so the dress has to be black.

Problem Two: Department store inventory managers aren't known for stocking black dresses in kids’ sections on the eve of summer. Something about black costumes being associated with wicked witches, funerals and fiends like Dracula, I should think.

Indeed, in mall after mall, we find kids’ dresses in a kaleidoscope of cheery colors all screaming summery fun.

Black, however, remains true to its definition as the "absence of color" – and is absent from the stores’ collective proclamation of estival joy.

As success evades us, I can sense Penny’s rising frustration, so I lead her to the young women’s sections, where there are indeed a few black dresses.

Alas, they're all too big, leading Penny to declare: “This is the worst day of my life.”

I hold back from breaking the news that she’ll face far more “worst days” as the years mount. Instead, I accept that this one signals she's done for the day, and switch my focus to Dora.

Mall

Dresses and skirts have always been a part of her sartorial tastes, so surely she'll pick an outfit with relative ease for her transition from middle to high school.

Problem Three: To find time to search, Dora insists on canceling all her upcoming appointments that don't animate her personally. 

Just weeks ago, a doctor prescribed physical therapy for Dora to treat a sports injury to her foot. With the immediate pain now gone, she says she can't make her next session because, as she puts it: “When am I going to shop?”

Dora also insists on skipping an award ceremony hosted by the test-prep school that helped her pass for entry into her next destination: New York’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School.

Without having been to any such ceremony before, she somehow knows it will be “boring” (that must be her Stuyvesant brain that's giving her such intuition), and argues her time would be better spent in a mall.

So to the central challenge: How to persuade both girls to stop fussing and just get on with the task of buying a just-right dress.

My trying to force the issue through discipline is a non-starter, since there are only so many times I can take away their computer/iPad/iPod privileges. But my giving into their every whim is not working either.

As usual, this Pop is perplexed…


* PC: abbreviation for Pious Cynicism (well, it often amounts to that)

How to survive teen back-chat

By Dad

The first skirmishes of a teen rebellion have broken out in our household.

Just last year, Dora saw me as her Agony Aunt. Now 13, she considers my advice to be as useful to her as a cellphone without bars (which, based on my experience with T-Mobile, is an actual product).

Questions Dora once answered with an interminable stream of sentences all beginning with, "And then ...." are now "intrusions" into her private life.

I can't even take pleasure from her demonstrated increase in vocabulary. At least some of her expanded lexicon comprises the sort of words family newspapers spell using the symbols above the numbers on computer keyboards.

An example of what I'm up against came last Saturday in a Lower Eastside café we'd entered. Dora sat at the opposite end to protest something I'd said – though I had no idea what.

I covered more ground than the café's waiters and busboys combined as I rushed back and forth to see if she was ready to tip me to my verbal transgression.

Silent scowls indicated she wasn't.

It was like being in the dock of a medieval Star Chamber: no indictment, no witnesses, just the monarch's displeasure to declare the accused guilty.

My personal honor was saved only by the presence of Cathy, who, being only seven, is still "immature" enough to be happy sitting next to her dad.

The irony is that we'd entered the café solely to feed Dora ahead of her three-hour Chinatown school class, where strict rules permit little time to snack.

I didn't dare point out my goodwill for fear of being treated to an emphatic: "Why don't you leave then?"

Dora did warm up as we bade her farewell at the school. She smiled – right before she asked me for $20 to buy "supplies for a drama project."

In an amazing metamorphosis, she now eagerly explained that moderately priced Chinatown was the only logical place to shop for the items.

Such fiscal responsibility. I had no choice but to hand over the cash.

Expletive

One night, Dora treated me to a choice word (family newspaper spelling: @!#$) when I snapped that she'd not set the table for the evening meal.

I hadn’t technically assigned the task to her, but expected she'd see the necessity: I was arriving late from taking Penny (10) to swim training, and had yet to prepare dinner.

My point was: Why should I have to do all the cooking AND set the table?

Hers was: What am I, your clairvoyant slave?

My English grandmother would have reacted to Dora's "choice word" by threatening to wash out her mouth with soap and water. My Scottish grandmother practiced far scarier medicine. "I'll put your eye on a plate if you say that again," was her stock response to impudence.

I did what any 21st century parent does: I logged on to the Internet to search for a quick-fix.

One columnist recommended placing a week's ban on the offending teen's cell phone. I tweaked the advice and confiscated Dora's iPad – since taking away her phone would cause me as much grief if I weren't able to reach her when she's running late.

Alas, even my modified discipline backfired as Dora spent the week repeatedly demanding use of my Mac in order to complete a sudden stream of apparently "vital" and "immediately needed" research papers.

She also accused me of using the choice word “all the time” – and confidently insisted she was just following my example. The word may have slipped out from under my breath over the years. But "all the time" – again, declared guilty without proof.

Dora had another point to make: If I want to stop her using the word, I should take her out of school, because “everyone” uses it there.

Fine. Why don't we just move into a bubble?

Like the modern dad that I fancy I am, I'll admit I was a little snappy with my initial complaint. But I was no more grumpy than I've always been – proving that the rules have changed. Described as "sweet and caring" in her kindergarten report card, Dora is now sweet, caring and highly sensitive – at least when she feels her independence is being challenged.

But it's not all uphill (yet). The choice word has gone unrepeated in recent days – within my earshot, at least. And I’ve tried to soften the way I ask for chores to be done.

Still, discourse with this newly minted teen is like walking on eggshells. I’m dreading the day we have the problem times three: when Dora is 19, Penny is 16, and Cathy is 13.

When To Bite Your Tongue

Dad's IHOPping mad, and that makes the kids anxious

By Dad

The kids say their Dad sometimes embarrasses them in public by making a fuss. I call it “Standing up for your rights.”

We were at the IHOP just off Harlem’s 125th Street on a recent Sunday, and the crowd waiting for breakfast was pretty big (that's big as in numerous, not girth, though too many breakfasts at IHOP and you could fit both bills).

Despite the throng, the maître d’ – which is French for maître d’, though that's such a highfalutin name that it's pronounced seat-ing-att-en-dant at IHOP – seated us within 10-minutes.

Kids: IHOP Dad doesn't make a scene

No such luck with time when it came to receiving our family order. Twenty-five minutes passed, and there was still nothing on our table but IHOP's kiddie coloring sheets.

The annoying thing about these sheets is that the coloring exercises sing the praises of the very meals you've ordered, making your wait all the more torturous.

The sheets also come with infuriatingly thin crayons that snap at the lightest touch. This leaves your kids with nothing to do except pester you about the absent meals.

I called over our waiter, who assured me of the imminent arrival of Penny's pancakes and Cathy's grilled cheese sandwich (Dora had wisely stayed home). After another 10 minutes of no food, I cast my eye about for a manager.

Evasive Answer

Like cops, you can never find one when you need one, so over I went to a cash register, where a young waitress told me I'd have to be more specific about who I wanted to talk to.

"There are several managers,” she said.

Really. Was I likely to be looking for anyone but the manager? Her ambiguity did nothing to slow my rising temperature.

“Any establishment has only one overall manager,” I blurted out. “Otherwise there would be chaos.”

As the waitress gave me the name of the purported owner, I could see the kids getting nervous.

I knew what they were thinking because they've expressed their discomfort in the past when I've, shall we say, defended our turf: “It’s embarrassing; people are looking…”

"Everything's fine," I said as I persisted in trying to connect with the owner.

By now the waitress had involved a dining room manager, who – in that maddening practice that's clearly from some customer-service playbook – feigned she knew nothing of the whole sorry episode.

Dining-room manager: "Is there a problem here, sir?"

My hair-trigger thought: "Of course there's a friggin' problem."

My actual words: "You know there is a problem since it's just been explained to you."

She proved I was right when she showed that even the owner was now up-to-speed on the unfolding drama.

She said he was "too busy" to come out from the back to see me, but that he would speak to me by phone if I went to the reception counter.

How bizarre. This owner was but 15 paces away through the kitchen door, yet I had to walk 15 paces in the other direction to speak with him.*

Now the kids asked what I planned to say. Would I shout? Would they have to slide under the table to avoid embarrassment?

They looked a little dejected as I headed for the reception area.

Discussion

I’ve never yelled with the kids in tow. But I will get into a heated discussion when (in my balanced opinion, of course) the other party is not making sense.

And this owner was not making sense.

After patronizing me with the usual of roll-off-the-tongue apologies, he said the kitchen staff had been backed up.

What nonsense, I retorted. If that were so, how come tables-full of other patrons seated after us got served before us?

In a court of law, I might have won with this irrefutable argument. Any learned judge would have awarded me compensatory damages (the cost of the meal), punitive damages (a coupon for a return visit), and maybe even damages for my pain, suffering and emotional distress (which, after my chat with the owner, was considerable).

But in IHOP that day I got more customer service pleasantries (totally nauseating), a pledge from the owner that he would “talk to the staff” (what do I care?), and an offer to knock 50% off the bill (mildly interesting – perhaps we could eat 50% of the meal and pay nothing).

My inclination was to walk out, but the girls would not have liked that. Already, the fun of visiting the IHOP had gone, and there was no way they’d get excited about going somewhere else.

The food came, we ate it in virtual silence, then left.

Relieved

Penny appeared relieved it was all over. Cathy spoke in my defense: “You had to talk to them because otherwise we would have been there all night.” Too right (even though it was morning time).

Spotting a Dunkin’ Donuts across the road, I suggested we get a sugar fix. Half an hour and a few donuts later, all was forgotten – until the next time.


* Point of Fact: This particular IHOP is the first in the country to install bullet-proof glass in its 24-hour service booth. Maybe this hints as to why the owner shirks mixing with dissatisfied patrons, other than by phone. Click here for story.

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Kids rate their parents: 

Top 10 most embarrassing things about parents

1.   The things they say

2.   Music tastes

3.   Dance moves

4.   The way they dress

5.   Generally uncool

6.   How strict they are

7.   Their age

8.   Their hairstyle

9.   They don’t have much money

10. Their hobbies

Top 20 things parents do that embarrass their children

1.   Kiss/cuddle me in public

2.   Tell stories about me as a child

3.   Say ‘don’t show off’ when I’m with my friends

4.   Sing in public

5.   Shout/sing with car window open when

      dropping you off

6.   Lick their finger and wipe dirt off their face

7.   Dance in public

8.   Shout or tell me off in public

9.   Try to wear cool clothes

10.  Complain in shops/restaurants

11.  They treat me like a child, but I’m an adult

12.  Use baby/nicknames in front of others

13.  Wear old fashioned clothes

14.  Try to be cool in front of my friends

15.  Hold my hand in public

16.  Upload pictures of me to Facebook

17.  Hang around when I have friends over

18.  Love shopping in charity shops

19.  Try to haggle in shops

20.  Show friends/partners my baby photos

Lists from a parental guidance report on a Comedy Central UK survey.

Going for gold, but what if your child finishes as an “also ran”?

Penny pulls out ahead and wins the heat at a citywide meet

By Dad

We have three water babes on our hands since all are strong swimmers.

But after the aquatics division of New York Parks and Recreation Department picked Penny to be part of its elite USA Swim Team, we’ve joked about her getting to the Olympics.

Except that none of us is truly joking; we’re secretly hoping she has a shot.

So we face a dilemma.

Should we go all out with six-days-a-week training sessions – despite all the time and energy doing so would consume for both child and parent?

Or should we be “realistic” and consider the Olympics a long shot. If so, we would limit practice time so that the main focus for Penny can remain her education.

Each night’s training session eats up four hours when subway travel, changing times and warm-ups are added to the 90 minutes in the pool.

Since Penny has at least a couple of hours’ worth of homework each night, she must do a good portion of it on the subway.

If subway seats are not available, she must work late into the night after returning home, raising the risk of burnout.

Yet, not giving her every opportunity to maximize this wonderful chance to develop her talent could mean we’re squandering it.

Athletes who end up with gold medals invariably have stories of self-sacrifice, and how they’re glad they and their families made the effort.

But what about the many additional athletes who sacrificed an equal amount, but fell short of the end reward?

You don’t hear about them as they play catch-up in the career they would have chosen had they not detoured into athletics.

For now we’re making the commitment.

Ribbons won by all three hopeful swimming stars

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When a grandparent passes...

Comforting words from Penny

By Dad

The girls made get-well cards when my dad fell ill in my native Britain recently.

We wondered whether they’d arrive before Grandpa’s expected discharge from hospital a few days later. When his condition turned life-threatening, the new question was whether I could get to see him before he passed.

Dad died at age 81, two days after I arrived in Britain.

Dora took the news the hardest, expressing feelings of guilt for not having gone to Britain with me. At 13, she was in the midst of studying for a career-setting high-school entry exam. There had been no question of her letting that go. But that failed to console her.

“Times are tough,” Dora wrote in a card to her grandma. “But we still have one another. I am sorry for your loss.”

Very mature. But her absence continued to play on her mind, for she even focused on not having visited her dying grandpa as the theme for a school essay entitled: “My Biggest Mistake.”

At 10, Penny focused on how lonely her grandma might now be, and said she should come to live with us in New York.

Both she and her six-year-old sister, Cathy, pictured their grandpa in heaven.

“I know that Grandpa passed away, but it’s good that he’s in heaven with his mother and father,” wrote – and drew – Penny in one of her cards.

Cathy had the opposite thought, saying Grandpa might be lonely in heaven because he’d miss Grandma and his children.

She also used her card to give her grandma words of comfort that only a six-year-old could offer.

“You know that not lots of people die that age, so Grandpa is very lucky to die that age.”

It raised a smile out of Grandma.

Cathy's cute condolence

Oriental Express: One secret to stepped-up scores

From Chinese tradition we get Bruce Lee – but also affordable and effective extra schooling

By Dad

It may be New York’s best-kept secret (outside the Chinese-American community).

For years, I’ve been trying to find an affordable formula for getting the kids on a path to the best schools and a top-flight college.

My own tutoring attempts proved an age-old maxim; kids don’t listen to their parents.

As I canvassed for a solution, a couple of Chinese-American parents I know introduced me to the world of supplemental education in New York’s Chinatown.

It’s a mystery to most parents outside the Chinese-American community because many of the schools, if they advertise at all, do so only in the Chinese-language press.

Having now put the girls through Chinatown schools over the summer, I’m ready to declare “Eureka!” (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is). I've found the pocket-book friendly secret to stepped-up test scores.

Dora (13) is well on her way to achieving her goal of passing a crucial citywide examination this October to get into a New York “specialized” high school. She has her eyes on one that boasts eight Nobel-prize alumni (that’s more than many countries can claim).

Penny (10) has started fifth grade of regular school with heightened confidence. She now has the discipline to finish her homework on the early side of Letterman's Late Show.

Cathy (6) is picking out one chapter book after another to read after her first grade public school teacher last year dubbed her reading-skills as deficient (actually, she said they were "developing," because no one is ever "behind" in the politically correct public school system).

This, all for minimal cost compared to what I saw of private school tariffs outside Chinatown – or to one-on-one tutoring.

Brutal

But there is a catch – in the shock your kids undergo if they’re not used to being driven hard.

Boy, do those Chinatown schools set a pace! Make no mistake, they live up to the cultural reputation Amy Chua emphatically spelled out in her 2011 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Do's and don'ts posted in one classroom 

While the teachers don’t scream at the kids like Amy said she did with her daughters, the classroom rules are brutal.

“No shaking legs,” warns one of the more bizarre exhortations listed on a form issued at Dora's school.

"No ostentatious greeting" is another – so think how out-of-place the over-the-top Disney Channel stars would be at a school like this.

Being an eager student will get you nowhere either: "Calling out the answer (is) not permitted," the form says.

Just a minute's tardiness will get a student an hour's banishment to the reception area.

But the punishments for most other infractions have not even reached the maturity of the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (circa 1772 BC).

The code was among the first to state what would happen to you if you broke the law. Compare that to what the form at Dora's schools says:

"The school reserves the right to take any disciplinary action on your violation of the above-described rules" (my italics).

You're at the mercy of the principal – a perfectly nice guy (who just happened to brought up in China during the Cultural Revolution, when nonconformists figured they'd got off lightly if they were condemned to hard labor).

And, like during the Cultural Revolution, some infractions are not even posted, but carry harsh punishments. The school suspended one student for a day because he’d tossed a piece of crumpled paper into the garbage can, instead of walking over at break time and placing it inside.

Finally, there’s also this less-than-subtle admission that the school is driving the kids hard: “During break time, students can sleep with their head on the desk.”

“It’s so hard” Penny balled about the workload at the school she and Cathy attended.

Achievement

All of which brings me again to the pace: all three girls did more in a day than I recall their doing in a week at public school last year.

Penny survived and has even recovered, writing in a short composition during her first week of regular fifth grade: “I know it was for the best and I am better for it.”

Cathy actually thrived throughout her Chinatown experience, and now playfully recreates the setting at home as a backdrop to extra regular school studies I have her doing. (Remember, she’s only six, so starting them young seems to be key, and no doubt explains why she acclimatized so readily to the Chinatown school pace.)

"We made it" the main Chinese script reads in the center

Dora is still attending her Chinatown school to complete a course that takes her to the October specialized high school admissions test.

Her pride in her consistently high scores in biweekly tests stands in stark contrast to her attitude before we signed up for the school.

“Why are you acting like a Chinese parent?” she had barked in reaction to my efforts to push her back then.

Quite ironic, given where she ended up, and how she ultimately submitted to Chinatown rules.

Many parents outside the Chinese community believe there is some cultural secret to the fact that, statistically, well over half of the students enrolled in New York’s eight specialized high schools that require a test for admissions are Asian (click here for a New York Times report on this).

Our experience shows that there's nothing particularly cultural about it. We didn’t adopt oriental traditions. We just followed a rigorous program. The secret is nothing more than hard work.


Update: In March, 2014, Dora received word she had been offered a place in Stuyvesant High School, the most sought after of the Specialized High Schools in New York. She starts in September, 2014. This is the toughest school to enter. More than 70% of its students are Asian.

Bag-to-School Blooper

In the bag: the girls had to make do with old bags – but the combat boots were new

By Dad

The kids were back-to-school today – lamentably without new backpacks. They wanted bags that could be found only online, but this procrastinating Pop didn't order them in time.

So Cathy packed off to second grade with a colorful picnic bag under her arm – her pencils stuffed in the knives and forks slots.

Penny's using her (now grubby) backpack from last year, and complained that her fifth grade compatriots will think she's “weird” when she shows up with a new bag several days after school has re-started.

Dora was less perturbed because she’s entering eighth grade in new combat boots that we managed to snag at Target over the weekend (they were the last pair in her size, so I almost missed the boat on that buy too).

I tell myself I put off ordering to allow the kids maximum time to change their minds. But overshooting the mark is a bit of a bad habit that I'm sure is a parenting sin.

I hate to think what sort of message it's sending to the kids. One friend (a mother) warned they'll pick husbands who'll never do anything on time. Such huge consequences for a little bit of forgetfulness!

_______________________________

Back-to-School quote for stay-at-home-dad age

(our add in italics):

If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers and stay-at-home dads ~ Edgar W. Howe (American novelist and journalist)

Losing the Space Race

Tudors R Us: The girls keep even their headless Barbies

By Dad

Tired of our Manhattan apartment,* the girls have been asking how to get onto the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

I tell them we're more likely to star in Hoarders – and point to the piles of toys clogging up our abode.

Chucking anything bearing the kids' fingerprints always invites trouble. Major feelings are hurt if our trio catch me sneaking something of theirs into the garbage chute.

“I worked really hard on that," six-year-old Cathy says of anything I'm tossing that she's written or drawn.

We could be talking about a ballpoint-pen sketch of a stick person on dogeared paper torn from some long-discarded notebook: Cathy wants it kept. 

Her sisters once raced to the garbage chute with my prized Churchill collection when they caught me trying to whittle down the number of plush toys all three keep in multiple space-consuming bins.

Little matter that some of the furry animals smelled like they'd been stored in the Parisian catacombs, so long had disuse denied them contact with fresh air.

At the chute, Dora (13) opened the intake door and yelled: "I mean it," as she dangled a volume of the History of the English Speaking Peoples to within a finger's slip of incineration.

Standing in the doorway, Penny (10) blocked my access to the threatened tome with all the determination of the Spartan 300 holding back the Persians at Thermopylae. 

With neighbors beginning to crack open their doors to get a handle on the ruckus, surrender was my only option (this was not – to borrow from Churchill – my "finest hour").

The plush toys stash remains to this day.

Headless

As does just about everything else we've ever bought, including now broken toys.

Most puzzling is why the kids keep their headless Barbie dolls. The younger girls say they still play with them. Play at what? The Court of Henry VIII?

Parental-advice sites typically urge involving the children in any culling of their stuff. That debate would lead to history's longest-ever filibuster in our home. 

Buying replacement stuff is no solution either. When Penny spotted a new lunch bag she liked, I bought it on condition she toss her old one, which had a broken zipper.

Penny agreed, and later swore she’d kept her side of the bargain. I later glimpsed the old bag “hidden” in one of her drawers. Watch this space for the day I confront her on that. 

So, for now, we’re stuck with a shrinking living space as “stuff” continues to consume the apartment. Now, where’s that number for the Hoarders show?

Either that, or we'll just move out and leave the apartment to the headless Barbies and stick people!


* Who wouldn't be tired of this place? It's on the Upper East Side at 10 minutes' walk from Central Park and 20 minutes' from the Metropolitan Museum; it has a roof garden, 24-hour doorman service and periodic parties in the entrance hall. Altogether untenable. And if you detect a note of sarcasm in this footnote, you're right on the money! How tired would they be if they were growing up in a British "council" house, with no indoor toilet, no TV until I they're 5, no refrigerator until they're 13, and certainly no heating in any room other than the living room? Yes, their Pop and millions like him suffered these deprivations, I tell the kids. So what do they say to that?  "That was the olden days," they tell me. Case closed as far as they're concerned.