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Dad Diary

 I'm amazed by the idea of moral growth; I have worked with children before, but never with three-year-olds. Also, one's students tend to behave; there is something different when the child in question is your own child. Your own child knows you're not the teacher; you're just the parent. So anything goes.


My son is irritated, so he unhinges his jaw and grinds his teeth into my forearm. "I don't mind that move so much," says my spouse, "because it makes me think of a little puppy...."

At other times, my son wants to set the stage for his own wrongdoing. "Hi," he'll shout, in a sort of delirious way. "Hi, Papa!" And he'll lock eyes with me as he pulls a large clump of basil up from the soil, out of the garden.

We're told that the root of controlling behavior is a sense of inner chaos; if I feel a kind of roiling motion within my own interior life, I can act out by policing others' choices. And so my son is intensely interested in my daughter, and he'd like her to color within the lines. He calls her "Doe." He'll say, "Doe, SIT DOWN!" Or, at bedtime: "Doe! UP THE STAIRS!!!"

A big source of relief for me has been the series "Felix and Fiona," by Rosemary Wells. Fiona is somewhere near my own child, in the realm of moral growth. In one book, she forgets to bake cupcakes for a friend--so she lies and says that second-grade bullies stole and ate the cakes. She actually names the bullies, and a show trial occurs; this easily sends my own mind back to Kindergarten, or first grade. In another book, Fiona falsely claims to have used the bathroom, then the pressure builds, and she poops her pants in the middle of an exciting science experiment. I love, love, love this character.

I often hear from my neighbors who have teenagers: "My child stopped speaking for a year." "We're dealing with the Safe Sex Talk." "Someone has done a body-snatcher operation on my daughter, and we now have a sullen zombie in our house..."

I understand that I'll eventually see today's issues through a nice, rosy, lovely, nostalgic haze.
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