All posts by Kirsetin

What’s With Boys and Shorts?

September 27, 2010ParentingKirsetin

During the summer months, my boys wear shorts and short sleeves like most everyone else. But the summer season is quickly coming to a close around here, and my littlest one insists that he is “so hot,” and must wear shorts.

Do you think the schools understand that he’s my third boy? Do you think they realize that being a little cold might be good for him in this situation? I’m not so sure. But I am certain that some caring parent in the drop-off line this morning watched my shorts-wearing boy with pity, wondering how on earth his mother could have sent him to school in shorts. I, for one, simply asked, “Who is that child’s mother?”

This is one of the biggest surprises to me as a parent: that no matter how we try to treat our children equally, birth order matters. There isn’t a chance in the world that I would’ve allowed my first son to trot off to school with chilly legs. Or ugly t-shirts, for that matter, but that’s a different story. But by the third time around, I’ve learned to look at things differently. And to choose my battles.

Wonder what he’ll wear tomorrow?

Dangerous Games…Is Football Safe?

September 20, 2010Parenting, sportsKirsetin

My stomach and heart lurched simultaneously. As I type, I still find it a little hard to breath. What do we do, as parents, when we read about Owen Thomas, the football lineman for Penn who recently took his own life?

Life is a series of risks. It’s a trade-off here, a decision there. It’s riding a roller coaster, flying on a plane, playing a game.

As a rational person, for example, I understand that there is a very low probability of anyone stealing my son from the bus stop. Do I still worry about it from time to time? Sure. Do I keep him from the bus stop? No, I don’t. I suppose it’s a roll of the dice, but I know our odds are good.

Similarly, we ride planes. We have hurled through the air, with our children, in a big hunk of metal, through the night and over an ocean, even though I had acquaintances on this flight. As I got ready to begin my semester abroad, they were returning from theirs, but they never made it home. My friend, Laurie, was supposed to on that flight with them, but stayed behind for a week of travel. I can’t imagine how hard it was for her to get on the next plane to come home. But, still, we fly.

And football? Would it be easier if we had the numbers? If my son weren’t born clutching a football? It’s his own thing, see? We’re not a football family, we didn’t groom our boys for the field. Soccer! Tennis! How about basketball? But football? No. It wasn’t our thing. And then one day, this tiny little guy grew up to be a whole two years old. He watched. He learned. He turned three and started catching and throwing. He watched and learned some more. His whole being is wired to this sport. And, naturally, if the doctors could say that for-sure-this-sport-will-hurt-him, we would have to say, “No. Choose something else.” But thousands of kids play and don’t get injured. So we roll the dice. But I’m sick to my stomach over this one, and incredibly sad for Owen’s parents.

Please, football lovers, coaches, owners, hear this. Hear his story. NFL, college, high school coaches…make this game safer for our boys. Make is safer so they can love it and so the moms who love them won’t wonder if we’re rolling the dice with our very own boys.

Getting Kids to Read

September 17, 2010books, kids, ParentingKirsetin

Earlier this week an interviewer asked me for some tips on encouraging kids to read. I gave her my off-the-cuff response, but the persistent little topic has stayed with me all week.

This is a tough issue for some parents, because reading is so critical to education. Too often, we push our kids to learn to read–to understand how the letters on the page form words–rather than teaching our kids to love to read, which I would argue is an entirely different goal.

When kids love a story, they eventually want to connect the dots. They want to understand how to make those words for themselves. For some kids, this comes early and easy. Others struggle more, in the beginning, but eventually they get it. We just have to keep reading with them and be patient.

If you’re looking for ideas, you can find a few ideas in the following posts from my archives. Here are the summaries, and you can click through if you want more info.

1) We can’t read to our kids often enough.

2) We can’t read to our kids (and they can’t read to themselves) when they’re watching TV or plugged into PlayStation or blah, blah, blah. You get it.

3) Pick great books.

3) Keep reading fun.

A final note: I’m a huge fan of Daddy’s Super Summer Reading List, because our kids enjoy reading and look forward to a fun list of new ideas from dad every summer. However, I’m not a fan of assigning kids who don’t like to read a certain number of books they have to read in a certain amount of time. It’s like torture for the poor kid. Instead, I’d choose a great book–a classic, maybe–and read it aloud to that child, whether he’s 7 or 11. The drawback, obviously, is that reading aloud takes forever. I read The Cricket in Times Square to the boys a few summers ago, and it took ages to finish. Everyone was hooked though–all ages! I’ve found that when kids are engaged in a good story they’re more likely to read a page or two on their own to see what’s going to happen next. And if I have to choose for them to want to read a page or two, rather than trudging, begrudgingly, through a book I’ve “assigned”? I’ll choose the wanting every time.