Bad logic from Annie's Mailbox

Annie's mailbox response to a parent whose son's girlfriend doesn't have a curfew:

You might consider raising his weekday curfew by one hour as long as it doesn't affect his school performance, but giving him unlimited freedom is actually likely to create some insecurities. We feel sorry for Holly, whose parents give the impression they don't care about their daughter.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know that's the conventional wisdom. But think back, in first person, to your own adolescence. Think about the first time you, personally, didn't have a curfew, or it wasn't enforceable, or it was otherwise feasible for you to stay out however long you wanted.

Did you feel insecure? Did you feel like your parents didn't care about you?

I don't know about you, but I felt pretty much neutral about the whole thing. I didn't even feel anything strong enough to say I felt liberated. It was just "Finally I can let the evening's activities take their natural course without having to be home at some completely arbitrary time." Since then I have once in a while felt a glimmer of liberation, just like how I sometimes revel in the fact that I can sleep until noon and eat junk food for breakfast and no one will stop me, but overall it was a small sigh of relief that life was now more reasonable.

Actually, if anything made me feel insecure or that my parents didn't care about me, it was arbitrary rules. Arbitrary rules made me feel like my parents didn't care about me, personally, as an individual, with my own personal needs. It made me feel like they were trying to parent an archetype or a stereotype, or trying to pat themselves on the back for being such good parents. "You can't go to that boy's house unless his parents are there. Look at us, we are such good parents, much better than the parents who let their daughters go to boys' houses unsupervised." As it happens, they didn't have to worry about the boy. I couldn't even get him to kiss me. However, I didn't feel comfortable around his father and wasn't about to go to his house if the father was there. How could I feel secure and cared about with rules like that?

Open Letter to "Need Help" in today's Dear Ellie column

From today's Dear Ellie:

I've been married for three years and am increasingly frustrated with my mother-in-law.

She has a gambling problem and often cannot pay her rent, or her basic bills. She has major health problems, yet smokes and is extremely overweight.

My husband and I help her financially when she needs it, but it's more difficult for us lately. I'd like to arrange an insurance policy for her, to help with the cost of her funeral expenses should she pass away. I feel that due to her careless lifestyle and health problems, she may not be around very long.

No other relatives are in a secure financial position to assist with final expenses. Or they'll refuse, since we're always bailing her out.

How do I bring this up to my husband? How do we talk to my mother-in-law about signing a policy for funeral coverage?

I cannot take one out on her without her knowledge. I feel my husband should be the one to talk to her. When I've mentioned this before, he got very angry and didn't want to discuss it. I'm just trying to avoid a disaster, not looking to make any money off her.

Need Help

First of all, broach the subject with your husband by talking about funeral planning/wishes for after death in general. Do your own wills and plan your own funerals if you haven't already. Bring up Baby Kaylee who was recently in the news to steer the conversation towards organ donation. Then once you're on that, ponder whether you know your own parents' wishes (aging parents, you know) and ask your husband if he knows his mother's wishes.

Then your husband can use the same technique to find out his mother's wishes.

Allow some time to pass and price her wishes to find out whether you can afford them. Then, at a calm and neutral moment, have your husband say to her "BTW, Mom, remember a while back you said you wanted to be buried in a solid gold tomb? Today I just happened to stumble upon how much that costs and there's no way I can make that work. Do you have insurance or pre-planning or anything?"

At this point she should either agree to insurance or take responsibility for pre-planning. And if she doesn't, she has been duly informed that her wishes cannot be fulfilled without some action on her part, so you're off the hook for not doing more than you can afford.

Leaving kids unsupervised

1. An article in Salon mentions in passing that Parents Today now wait for the school bus with their kids instead of the kids waiting at the bus stop unsupervised.

This made me think of Erica.

Erica was a neighbourhood girl a year ahead of me who would sit on the mailbox. She'd climb up on top of the red Canada Post mailbox and sit there waiting for the bus to come. I don't know why, that's just what she did.

Obviously, you're not supposed to sit on the mailbox. But there were no grownups around to stop her, so she sat on the mailbox. It was a harmless way of breaking the rules.

A lot of harmless rule-breaking went on at the bus stop. If someone had seen SNL or the Sunday Night Sex Show, they'd tell us all about it. If someone knew a dirty joke, they'd share it. People would apply the make-up their parents said they were too young for. People would eat the junk food their parents had banned from the family home. People would remove the toques their parents had insisted they wear. All against the rules, all ultimately harmless.

We'd also do other things that weren't against the rules, but you just couldn't do in front of grownups. We'd take a "Who's your ideal celeb crush?" quiz in Y&M. We'd bitch about our English teacher. We'd concoct elaborate plans for one of our number to Talk To A Boy. Harmless, not against the rules, but not for the ears of parents or teachers.

The bus stop wasn't utopia. The bullies were there too, and for this reason I wouldn't have minded if it was normal for parents to wait with us. (I wouldn't have wanted my parents there if it wasn't normal, but if everyone else's parents were there - or even if there were just a few supervising grownups to keep the bullies down - I wouldn't have minded.) However, I didn't feel any less safe than at school, and I do see its value as an unsupservised public space for kids.

So this makes me wonder what effect it has on kids to be closed out of unsupervised public space. When they can't sit on the mailbox, how does their adolescent rebellion manifest itself?

2. A Globe and Mail writer blogs about the difficulty of butting out of her kids' post-secondary education.

This makes me think of the value of OAC (i.e. Grade 13).

OAC students were generally over 18, and the OAC courses were managed with that assumption. Students who were over 18 could sign themselves in and out of school rather than needing a note from their parents for every absence. As legal adults they were accountable for their own education, and the teachers actually couldn't talk to the student's parents without the student's permission. As a result of this OAC classes didn't have the custodial element of other classes and didn't presume to be accountable to the parents. (It's possible that the parents of a minor OAC student might have been allowed to go talk to the kid's teacher, but it just Wasn't Done.)

Many students in my school started taking OACs in Grade 12 or even Grade 11 (for various reasons that I can get into if you're interested but are irrelevant to this blog post). I started taking OACs in my Grade 12 year, and becaue I was born in December I was 16 years old when I started my first OAC class. Starting at the age of 16 I had courses where if a teacher was absent, the class was cancelled. Where the teacher wasn't expecting a parental signature on my report card, and wouldn't give a parent-teacher interview without my permission. Where I wouldn't be disciplined for missing class, I'd just better damn well catch up and not accrue 20 unexcused absences. I was still in high school, still living at my parents' (and still expected to be), I just had full legal and personal responsibility for my own educaction.

For one year, half my classes were like this. For the next year, all my classes were like this. Then the next year I was in university, by which time it didn't even occur to me or my parents that they might possibly have any business interfering with my academics.

This may vary for people who are more mature or people who are old for their year, but for me OAC was a valuable transition and a key part of preparing me to take responsibility for my own university career.

Why do parents want their kids to play outside?

This train of thought was inspired by today's For Better or For Worse, but it happened to me all the time in real life and it's a trope you often see in comic strips and other media.

Parents tell their kids to stop watching TV and play outside because it's a beautiful day.

Why do they care? Seriously. Why do they have this need for their child to stop what they're actually enjoying and go through the motions of enjoying the beautiful day?

You often see this in older contexts where the kids don't need to be immediately supervised, so it's not that the kids' presence indoors is stopping the parents from enjoying the beautiful day themselves. In fact, in the comic strip context, the parent most often stays inside while kicking the kids outside. Why?

Random thoughts from childhood

1. When I was a kid, a lot of the grownups around me assumed that if I was into something, that must necessarily be because it's trendy. Like that the reason I was into it was because it's trendy, and if I'm into it that must be a sign that it's trendy. Strange logic, that. Some of the things I was into were trendy, but others weren't. Like everyone, I'd pick and choose what I liked and what worked for me from everything that crossed my path. I seriously doubt any of the adults were into only trendy things, so why would they assume that I was?

2. When I had to do presentations in front of the class at school, the things the teachers would critique would always include symptoms of my shyness (talking quietly, not making eye contact, playing with my hair and other nervous tics). I know that a confident presentation is better than a messy presentation, but I do wonder if they seriously thought I could speak in front of the class with confidence when I couldn't even sit quietly in the classroom with confidence. I'm fine with the grade itself being lower for a messy presentation, but based on the nature of their comments it seemed like they thought that I could actually carry off a smooth presentation but just...wasn't.

Once in music class we had this assignment where we wrote a page or two about our favourite song and what it means to us. Mine was a song that reflected my feelings at the time (unrequited, of course) for a certain boy, and I wrote a very nice and meaningful blurb. Then, unbeknownst to me in choosing a song, we had to present them in front of the class. And the boy in question was in the class. So I made a stammery, heavily edited presentation, thanking the god I had recently ceased to believe in that I'm physically incapable of blushing. In the comments I got back, the teacher seemed genuinely baffled that my written submission was so good but my presentation was such a mess.

So because of this, I find myself wondering if the teachers were grading ruthlessly objectively, or if it genuinely didn't occur to them that talking in front of the class would be extremely difficult and some people might not have it in them. After all, teachers are people who have chosen to make their living talking in front of a classroom every day, maybe they honestly don't know that some people just can't. (Just like how in unedited and unreflective moments I sometimes find myself thinking "I don't see what the big deal is. Just learn French, it only take a couple of years of intensive study.")

3. Speaking of the classroom, the one thing my resource teachers were always trying to get me to do was raise my hand and answer questions in class. At that time, I knew the answer to literally every question the teacher would ask (because their teaching method was to ask questions about material they'd already covered, not because I'm such a fricking genius) but I never raised my hand because it conflicted with my continuing mission of becoming invisible so the bullies would forget about me. Even now, with adult knowledge and 20/20 hindsight, I can't figure out how raising my hand and answering questions would have been helpful to me. I knew the answer and I knew that I knew the answer. I don't see how it would have made a difference to my education to raise my hand and announce to the class "HERE I AM AND I KNOW THE ANSWER!" I do see how it would be helpful to the teacher who was trying to conduct a class, but I don't see what it would have done for me in terms of my own enrichment.

Parental forgetfulness

I've blogged before about how odd it is that parents seem to lose the ability to identify with the child half of a parent-child relationship, but this one blew me away.

I overheard part of a conversation where a mother of teens was talking to the mother of a baby. The baby's mother was talking about how much angst they were going through with teething, and the teens' mother said "Just wait until I tell you what happens when she gets her period!" The baby's mother replied "Don't even tell me!"

It's like they have no firsthand memory of what it's like to get your first period! The baby's mother is my age so there's no reason why she shouldn't remember her early teens, and it is her biological child that she gestated herself so I know she menstruates. But they're talking about this as though it's something completely Other that happens to your kids rather than something that we've all been through!

Parenting is futile

Think about all the behaviours that parents try to limit or restrict in their children.

Now think about how many of those limitations or restrictions are relevant to adults.

We can smoke and drink and have sex. We can go out whenever we want with whomever we please and go driving around in a car if one of us has one and come back as late as we want and stay up as late as we want before going to bed. We can talk on the phone or play videogames or watch TV or go on the internet as much as we want with no restrictions, and if we hear a swear word or see someone's boobies it's no big deal, not even worth mentioning really. We can have whatever cake or cookies or candy or junk food we want in any quantity without having to first drink a glass of milk or eat 11 peas or any other arbitrary rules. We can wear all the make-up we want, plus high heels or short hemlines or low-cut tops or bras with the best engineering money can buy. We can dye, pierce, or tattoo any part of our body humanly possibly. We can totally just walk into a pet store and buy a puppy. (We don't, because it's morally wrong, but we totally can.) We can leave our beds unmade and our clothes unironed and take hour-long showers and leave the house looking like that.

And we do whatever we want out of this list, whenever we want, to no ill effects.

And yet for the first 18 years of our lives, our parents were desperately trying to restrict these behaviours.

What would have happened if my parents had banned Barbie dolls

Broadsheet discusses parents forbidding their children from owning Barbie dolls.

I had dozens of Barbie dolls - either 27 or 37, I forget which. I liked them because they let me be a girl (in that playing with dolls is a girly thing to do) and they let me role-play at being at the fun parts of being a grown-up woman (dressing up in grownup clothes and heels and, later, having sex.) I'm sure my parents weren't too thrilled with this. They tended to discourage girly things, and I'm sure they didn't want their kids coveting fancy clothes or role-playing sex. However, they did not ban Barbie from our house, which is a good thing because if they had it would have been far worse for my self-image.

You see, as I've mentioned before, I'm very femme mentally but don't look very feminine physically - especially not when I was a pre-pubescent child. I've always been bigger than average for my age, I have a big nose (just like my father's) and a heavy brow (just like my father) and unattractive dark skin around my eyes (which I'd never seen on another person when I was a child). I'm clumsy and awkward and say and do the wrong thing (just like my father). My feet are enormous and rather ugly (just like my father's). My body hair has always been black and more copious than average (just like my father's). I was the first person in my class (male or female) to be able to grow a mustache and the only person (male or female) at the Grade 5 pool party with hairy armpits. When my hair was short people mistook me for a boy all the time, which is why I now wear my hair hip-length.

My parents often tried to discourage me from girly things and point me more towards boy things. I don't know why exactly this is - I don't have a brother so I have no idea which parts of their child-rearing were about raising girls and which parts were about raising children - but I suspect a lot of it had to do with because being girly is less convenient. A kid who doesn't care about clothes is easier to shop for than one who wants to be a pretty pretty princess (and I was especially complicated because I wanted to be a pretty princess but had no idea what kinds of clothes I wanted to accomplish that and hate the process of shopping.) A kid who wants to dig in the garden is more useful than one who runs away screaming "EWWWW! Worms!!!!" It's easier to get everyone off to school on time when no one feels the need to do their hair and put on make-up than when you have two kids wearing a total of five kinds of foundation between them.

However, because I was already wanting to express and present as far more feminine than I was capable of, whenever my parents tried to discourage me from something girly or encouraged me towards something more boyish, I felt like they were saying I don't get to be girly because I'm not pretty enough, and should just be a boy instead. I was nowhere near capable of expressing this at the time, but that's how I felt. They said "You can't wear a skirt because you'll be running around," I heard "You aren't girly enough to dress like a girl, so you may as well just act like a noisy smelly running-around boy." (This is back when boys were yucky.) They made me help my father with home improvements or join him on a bike ride, I heard "You're practically a boy anyway, so you have to keep your father company with his boy stuff." (And to add insult to injury, when my sister didn't have to do this stuff (in retrospect probably because she was too young) I felt like it was because she's prettier and looks more like a girl so she doesn't have to do the yucky boy stuff.) So if they had forbidden Barbie dolls, I would have taken it as "You're not pretty enough to play with these pretty things like all the other girls."

I did like some boy toys and boy activities too. I like legos and trains and science fiction and video games and dodgeball and Ninja Turtles. But these were never a source of conflict. I could do them, I like them, people never tried to stop me, they never made people think I was a boy. It didn't feel like gender expression, it just felt like doing stuff I liked. I don't like them because they're masculine (or even despite the fact that they're masculine), I like them because I like them. But with girly toys, there was always an aspect of gender expression there. I guess it's similar to how if I like a dress it's partly because it makes me look feminine, but if I like running shoes it's because they're nice running shoes.

Now I did (and probably still do) have body image issues, but that had nothing to do with the Barbie dolls. For example, the thing I hate most is the dark skin around my eyes, but that's because I never saw anything similar on anyone else ever except cartoon portrayals of evil. (I have seen it on other people since, but no one who was around when I was a kid had anything like it.) I hate how my stomach sticks out no matter what because my waist is so short there's nowhere else for my guts to go, but that's more from cultural disdain for fat rather than anything to do with Barbie specifically. I'd still have that even if I'd never met a Barbie doll.

But mostly Barbie's figure was irrelevant because I was pre-pubescent when I was playing with her, and she represented a grown-up woman. I did aspire to be a grown-up woman one day, but I certainly didn't want to be one yet. My Barbie play was just forward-looking role-play for one day when I was a proper grownup with breasts and heels and lipstick. I didn't have big breasts or mile-long legs when I was playing with Barbie, but that's fine because I didn't want them yet. I wanted to be a pretty little girl, not a sexy grown-up woman. And by the time I had matured enough physically that I had a woman's body and matured enough mentally that I wanted a woman's body (i.e. in the now instead of in the indefinite future), Barbie was irrelevant. When I wasn't getting laid, the other girls around me who were getting laid were relevant (what does she have that I don't?) and when I was getting laid they were irrelevant too because I was quite clearly sexy enough.

All banning Barbies would have done was make me feel more like I wasn't good enough for girly stuff when I was a child. So it's a good thing my parents didn't.

Edited to add: I started out just writing this as an anecdote, but I think I have a broader conclusion. A lot of the time when parents don't want their kids to have Barbies, it's really that they don't want them to want Barbies, or to want what she stands for. But if the kid already wants Barbies (or whatever else the parents are trying to ban), banning the thing isn't going to stop them from wanting it. So when parents are inclined to forbid something, they should first think about whether what they really want is for the kid not to have the thing, or just not to want it.

Parents vs. dog people

I like to interact with dogs, and sometimes I feel moved to interact with children (damn ovaries!). I start the interactions the same way with both: by smiling and (if appropriate) saying hi, then I continue if the creature responds positively.

Somewhere between 50% and 75% of the time, the dog people try to temper the dog's interaction, by making it sit or scolding it about approaching me. I'm not sure whether this is intended to protect the dog from me or to proect me from the dog. (And I'm not sure what an appropriate response on my part is - I want to pet the dog and it seems to want me to pet it, but I don't want to mess up its training. But it doesn't seem fair that dogs with stricter training should never get to play with a willing passer-by.)

But I have never in my life had anyone try to temper my interaction with their child, not even total strangers. They let me say hi to their kid, they let me do finger-grabby with their baby, they let their kid tell me all about Dora the Explorer, they let me convince their kids to press elevator buttons for me, I've even had strangers stand by smiling while their toddler hugged my leg like I was her new best friend (I thought she had the wrong person, but even when I looked down and made eye contact she just kept hugging my leg and smiling back up at me).

I'm not sure what this means. If it had to be one or the other, I'd rather get to play with the dogs.

Things They Should Study: why can't parents identify with their kids?

When people become parents, they seem to lose the ability to identify with the child half of the parent-child relationship. Even when thinking in the abstract about situations that don't involve themselves or their kids, they can never seem to get past "How would I feel if I were in that kid's parents' situation?" to reach "How would I feel if I were in that kid's situation?"

This is strange. All parents have been kids. Every parent I've ever talked to can still remember things from when they were kids. They can think about their favourite toy or their first crush or a teacher they hated and remember how they felt in that situation. So why don't they seem able to think about how their child self would have felt in a parent-child situation?

Someone should really study this from a psychological and neurological perspective.

Things that are completely unlike video games cannot be used as a viable substitute for video games

There has been a lot of anti-gaming sentiment in the media lately, and a lot of it has been suggesting things that parents could have their kids do instead of gaming - sports, outdoor activities, family board games, etc.

The problem is that these activities don't do for the user what video games do.

Video games occupy part of the brain while letting the rest of the brain roam freely. It's an indoor activity that you can comfortably do in any weather and in any clothing. Because it's indoors, children don't require immediate adult supervision so can be given some modicum of privacy. It's a solitary activity, so you can use it to unwind from the stress of a day full of social interaction (especially helpful for introverts). If you're playing a multi-player game, it's something you can enjoy with people you have stuff in common with.

The proposed alternatives don't do these things. While gaming lets me think by occupying the part of my mind that would get bored from just sitting and thinking, sports occupy just enough of my mind that I can't think freely, while not providing me with any significant entertainment. Gaming can be done indoors in any clothes and in any weather, but outdoor activities require that you get dressed appropriately for outside and make yourself suitably presentable. Video games can be done in privacy from one's parents, while outdoor activities require supervision and family activities have parental involvement. Gaming can be done alone, but sports and family activities must be done with others, thus making them draining instead of re-energizing for introverts. Multi-player gaming is done with your online friends, whereas organized sports and family activities are done with a group of people whose composition you have no control over.

None of these activities provide users with the same benefits as gaming. They are completely different things and no substitute for gaming. If so-called experts feel the need to propose alternatives to video games, they should come up with alternatives that users would enjoy the same way as they enjoy video games.

And once again, children provide perspective

So I finally got off my ass and did my errands. Behind me in line at the grocery store was a lady with two small children - I'd estimate their ages at 2 and 4* - who clearly needed some food and a nap. Mein Gott what I have to do is easy in comparison - in comparison to both the mother and the children!

I can go about life without ever having to worry about someone else's Dora the Explorer doll, and if all I want to do is go home and curl up with my favourite stuffed animal I can just go and do that. I can buy what I need at the grocery store without someone wheedling for some junk food every two seconds, and if I want some junk food I can just throw it in the cart without asking anyone's permission. I don't have to organize my life around someone else's bladder needs, and if I have to go to the bathroom I can just go without someone telling me to hold it or scolding me for not going earlier.

All I have to do is put on some music, pour a glass of wine, and tear through 3,000 words of translation. (Don't worry, it gets carefully revised tomorrow without the influence of music or wine, it's just most efficient to do the first draft by brute force and the distractions make that go easier.) Compared with grocery shopping with a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, dead easy!

*Most people I know who are in a two-child family spaced two or three years apart think this is a bad spacing. The eldest is old enough to get used to being an only child, but too young to really appreciate (both in the sense of "think is little and cute" and "empathize with the greater needs of") a baby, and still needs a lot of parental attention that might take away from the baby's needs. With a wider spacing, like five years, the older sibling is more independent and more able to appreciate a baby. And apparently (or so I've heard) with really close spacing the older sibling doesn't become accustomed to or remember being an only so they don't resent the lack of full parental attention or the need to compromise to accomodate the younger sibling. And yet so many people continue to space their children at two to three years. I wonder why? Perhaps no one tells them. (I certainly couldn't think of a tactful way to tell someone to space their children differently.) Perhaps they grew up in different family configurations themselves. Someone should do a study on how the configuration of the family in which people grew up affects their later family planning as an adult.

Criminology

You know how sometimes the most obvious most suitable consequence for a particular crime (either as punishment or to prevent the crime from happening again) is something the criminal justice system can't do? The offender should have the choice between the logical, natural consequence that's normally outside the scope of the criminal justice system, and whatever the standard sentence for the crime is. Standard sentences shouldn't be inflated to coerce offenders into choosing the logical, natural consequence, it should be a free choice where they can go with whatever they prefer.

The first thing that comes to mind for this is castrating sex offenders. I don't know if the castration would mitigate whatever psychopathic tendencies they have (it might vary from case to case?) but if it actually would prevent them from re-offending, why not put it out there as an option? The other case that comes to mind was one from a while back where a lady killed her baby through neglect because she was too stupid to take care of a baby. I forget the details of how the kid died or whatever so I can't google it up, but I distinctly remember that she honestly did not grok that her baby would die if she neglected it. Now the logical thing to do would be to sterilize her, wouldn't it? That's way outside the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system, but if she had a free choice in the matter and chose sterilization, then everyone would be better off and there would be no chance of recidivism.

I'm sure there are some examples that don't involve cutting people's genitals off, but I can't think of any offhand. Psychoanalyze that at your leisure.

*****

The following is a quote from Successful Dog Adoption by Sue Sternberg. Any typos are my own.

Behaviourally adoptable dogs get adopted more quickly than the problem or unadoptable dogs, so the shelter gradually clogs up with the problem or unadoptable dogs. [...] May dogs who start out as behaviourally adoptable dogs wil, over time, deteriorate in the shelter/kennel environment, becoming less and less adoptable with each passing day. [...] The more aggressive, "kennel crazy" unadoptable dogs there are, the quicker the behaviourally adoptable dogs deteriorate because of the heightened state of arousal and aggression in the kennels, until they're all lunging at the front of their cages.

That sounds exactly like my young offenders theory!

*****

Speaking of (young offenders, not dogs), I have a question for people who think Omar Khadr should be punished on the basis that he was wherever it was that he was:

How could he have gotten out of that situation?

I have been 15 years old and taken to a foreign country by my parents, and even with an additional 12 years' life experience and 20/20 hindsight, I have no idea how I could have gotten out of there. How do you plan your escape without unmonitored internet access? How do you buy a plane ticket when you don't have a credit card? How do you flee when you haven't learned to drive yet? How do you get through customs without parental consent to travel? What if your parents are holding onto your passport for safekeeping? How do you judge whether local authorities will assist you or whether they'll just return you to your parents as a runaway? How do you carry this all off with the minimal (if any) pocket money a 15-year-old generally has on them?

People are talking like it's the most obvious thing in the world that he made a fully informed choice to be there, and while I agree that he may well have been able to grok the politics and moral impliciations at that age, I simply cannot see any way that he could have left the situation.

Explain this to me please. Give me specifics, give me logistics, give me solutions to all the problems I've mentioned above. I don't see it at all, help me out here.

And then, once you've explained it, perhaps publicize the procedure to help other teenagers who find themselves forced into untenable situations by their parents.

The mother who drew a swastika on her child

There was a story a couple weeks ago about a woman who drew a swastika on her 7ish-year-old child's arm and then sent the child off to school that way.

I just wanted to point out one little thing about this story. I don't know if it's meaningful given the larger context, but it is a weird thing: she drew on her child! That's WEIRD! Parents don't usually draw on their children. It doesn't make much difference here because of the net weirdness of the story already, but in any other context people would be going "You DREW on your CHILD? WTF?"

The problem with purity rings

So there are these guys called the Jonas Brothers who are apparently all the rage among Kids Today. And, according to a photo caption in the Globe and Mail today, they all wear purity rings.

Upon skimming over this tidbit of information, a dirty evil little part of my brain - pausing only to glance over at the first few paragraphs of the article to check that they're as old as they look (oldest one is 20, that's fine) - thought, "Oooh, a challenge!"

But I don't even especially like them (I was completely unfamiliar with them until five minutes ago and still have no idea what it is they're famous for), I don't find the 20-year-old any more attractive than any other typical person I encounter in everyday life, and the idea of spending quality time with a virgin is not at all appealing. And yet, in one little corner of my brain, that thought still occurred to me.

So why am I telling you that I had these unsavoury thoughts? Because I daresay it's one of the least creepy possible permutations. There are people who are far creepier than me, who would look at people who are far more vulnerable than a 20-year-old man, and think "Oooh, a challenge!" with far more enthusiasm and single-mindedness than I did.

Why would a parent want to make their kid wear a label for these people?

Motherfucker.

There's a sort of conventional wisdom that having a present father is good for a child, and you tend to hear this most and loudest from people who didn't have an involved father. But if you ask people who do have an involved father, some of them appreciate it, others wish he would STFU. It's like people feel more disadvantaged by the lack of a father than they actually are advantaged by the presence of a father.

The other two things that work this way are siblings and university degrees. I've often heard people who don't have siblings wanting to have more than one child so their children can have siblings. IRL you will find siblings who are close friends, but you will also find siblings who don't get along at all. And people who don't have university degrees often think they're panacea, employment-wise, but those of us who do have degrees know this isn't the case.

I think what people need to remember about relatives is that any relative, even a parent or sibling, is just another person in your child's life. They may or may not be a positive influence, just like any other person may or may not be a positive influence. Even if you, personally, like both of the people involved, they may not still like each other.

And I think what people need to remember about university degrees is that there are employers who don't want to hire people with degrees for jobs that don't strictly require a degree, and employers for jobs that do require a degree often don't want to hire someone without experience. So if you don't have a degree and make a living, say, waiting tables or doing customer service you might pressure your child to go to university so they can have a better job, but then your kid may graduate and find themselves in the position of not being able to get a degree job because they haven't had one before, and not being able to get a job waiting tables or doing customer service because they have a degree.

Random weird advice column letter

I stumbled upon this old Annie's Mailbox while googling for something else.

Dear Annie: I am a retired naval officer. Two weeks ago, my 16- year-old daughter had a date with a young man I had never met. My wife, a teacher at the school, said he was a good kid.

When the young man showed up to get my daughter, he sat in the car and honked the horn (strike 1). I went out and told him she was not ready and he should come in the house. He did and then proceeded to call my wife by her first name (strike 2). When he tried the same with me, I very sternly said, "You can call me 'Sir.' " Finally, when my daughter came down, he blurted, "It's about time" (strike 3). At this, I blew my stack.

In military fashion, an inch from his face and speaking loudly, I proceeded to tell him that I will not allow anyone to come in my house and treat my family this way. I grabbed his coat and threw it outside and informed him that unless he also wanted to end up on the ground, he would walk out and never see my daughter again.

My daughter cried, as expected, but my wife has not spoken to me in two weeks. She says this is the way kids are now and I should remember that I no longer wear a uniform. She thinks I owe "Junior" an apology. I told her he owes our family an apology for his lack of respect.

Tell me, Annie, was I wrong? My wife and I will do whatever you say.

Obviously, father, you have never been a 16 year old girl. I'll bet you anything she specifically instructed her date to honk instead of coming in so he wouldn't have to deal with her asshat father. Your date is someone you like and choose to spend time with; your father is someone whose presence is forced upon you. Protecting your date from your father's unpleasantness is far more important than having your father like your date.

Bad headline (sub-headline, actually)

Most brides-to-be and their parents say asking for her hand in marriage shows respect.

It doesn't say anywhere in the article that most brides-to-be think this. It says that 47%-50% of grooms (surveyed by a wedding magazine, which means it probably skews more traditional than the general population) did ask for their prospective bride's father's permission, but there's nothing statistical. about what brides-to-be and their parents think of this. It goes on to say, non-statistically, that this reflects that my generation is allegedly more traditional than previous generations and citing the fact that 69% of brides take their husband's name (aside: isn't it inappropriate to publish something so heterocentric on the fifth anniversary of same-sex marriage?), but I don't think the two things are related, because I would take or append my husband's name for exactly the same reason that I would be offended if he asked my parents for my hand in marriage.

But the reason why this headline worries me is because I'm afraid it will make people think that asking your intended's parents for permission is de rigueur. But the fact of the matter is it isn't a neutral act. For people who don't like it, it's downright insulting. A lot of people work very hard and go through a lot of angst to assert their independence from their parents, and the last thing they need is to suddenly be treated once again like an incompetent chattel of their parents by the one person they love most in the world. For me, this might even be a dealbreaker. Intellectually I'd probably be able to see that it's just a well-intended fuck-up, but emotionally I don't know if I could stand to share a bed with someone who would think even for a minute that my parents would have a say in something so personal. To say nothing of what its implications for the balance of power within the relationship! I don't get to make my own decision about marriage on my own authority but my spouse does? That's so...Taliban!

So, to people who are considering proposing marriage: do not do not DO NOT ask your intended's parents for their hand in marriage unless you are absolutely 100% without a doubt certain that your intended actively wants you to do so. Err on the side of treating your intended with the respect they deserve as an autonomous human being. You can always ask their parents afterwards.

To parents: if you can put your parental ego aside for a moment, you have a great opportunity to do some good here. If anyone ever asks you for your child's hand in marriage, tell them "No, I won't have my child marrying someone who doesn't realize she's an autonomous human being who gets to make her own decisions." Then they will, of course, have to defy you and get married, but you will have given your child a vote of your confidence in their abilities as an independent adult, and the symbolism of the whole thing will be so much more powerful than the antiquated symbolism of asking the parents' permission and **shudder** giving away the bride.*

*Added bonus theory: the most symbolically appropriate person to give away the bride would be not her father, but her previous partner.

I wonder if doing speeches in school makes people fear public speaking?

(I just noticed that the noun is speech but the verb is speak. No wonder it took me forever to learn how to spell!)

When I was a kid, we had to do speeches in school. It was like three or five minutes of talking in front of the class on a prepared topic. And this was so scary! You had to think of something, and research it, and make a speech out of it, and hold your peers' attention, and talk in front of EVERYONE! And your appearance and topic and eloquence and interestingness and who knows what else are all up for the very worst of elementary school scrutiny!

I'm wondering if this made us more afraid of public speaking than if we hadn't had to do it until we were older. No adult audience is as judgemental as a classroom full of 12-year-olds. Plus, (as I've blogged about before but can't find now) when you're in school your presentations are all about stuff you don't have any particular knowledge of - you have to do the research and become an "expert" specifically for the presentation - whereas in real life we're only ever asked to speak publically about stuff we are already experts in. I'm a very shy person, but I find that speaking in front of other adults about something that I know enough about that other people might ask me to speak about it isn't even in the same order of magnitude as doing a speech in front of my Grade 3 class. And actually, now that I think about it, doing Show and Tell in front of my Grade 3 class (about something I'm knowledgeable about and interested in, and on a completely voluntary basis) was something I could do without a moment's though, but doing The Speech for the same amount of time was the Worst Thing Ever!

I wonder if by making speeches such a big deal, they inadvertently taught us that public speaking is Big And Scary?

Chemo or death?

There's an 11-year-old who is being forced by CAS to have chemotherapy against his will. What surprises me about the reactions to this is that a lot of people seem to think that no one could make an informed decision about whether to let themselves die at the age of 11. Now the particular boy in this case has FAS, which might make a difference, I don't know enough about it, but people are saying no 11-year-old whatosever could possibly make this decision, which really surprises me.

Death is serious. It's the most permanent thing ever. You're gone, forever, never coming back. But because it's so serious and permanent, that actually makes this a less complex decision (and a decision more within the range of an 11-year-old's abilities) than some of the other decisions a person might have to make in life. You get survival statistics for the chemo treatment (which I have seen published but can't find ATM), you get a description from the doctor of what death without chemo would be like, then you go home and mull it over for a bit. In light of the foregoing, do you want to cease to exist? (y/n). It's not as complex as having to decide whether to save the life of a pregnant woman or her unborn baby. It's not as complex as house/apartment/condo/downtown/midtown/north york/what if i get married/what if i lose my job? It's not as complex as if you've been kidnapped by the Congolese army and they tell you to rape your child or they'll kill all your children. It's not even as complex as trying to figure out how far to drive to buy locally grown produce and what if it's not organic and what if it goes bad before you can eat it all? If you reduced chemo or death to an algorithm, you wouldn't even need a big chart to work it out, you could use an old-fashioned scales.

Thinking back to when I was 11, I did have some trouble with nuance. I knew I had to leave the church, but couldn't express why. I don't think I could have diplomatically suggested that someone wear something else. I couldn't have seduced someone even if I had wanted to. I probably wouldn't have been able to grok transgender. But I understood that death was permanent just as well as I do today. I haven't had any new information or enlightenment about the permanence of death since then. I don't know if I could have single-handedly made a decision about whether to get my pet put down at that age, but I could have decided whether to get myself put down just as well as I can now.

Actually, now that I think about it, earlier in childhood I tended to see it more in black and white: Death bad, life good. Then as I accumulated age and experience and maturity, I started to grok that sometimes mere survival is insufficient, in the words of Seven of Nine. It occurs to me that perhaps the fact that this boy thought of the idea of letting himself die may indicate that he is capable of grasping the nuances.