Tag Archives: how much is too much

I GTalked my kid to ask him what he would like for breakfast today…

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As over-thinking, ironically introspective, neurotic, obsessively over-analytical as I am, this incident strikes me as seminal. SEMINAL. Mark it on the calendar.

We have all seen those cartoons, parodying the increasing importance of texting in the life of teens and even preteens, showing kids texting each other while sitting next to each other on the sofa, or kids and parents texting each other while in the car, or family members texting each other while around the table, TXT “Could you pass the salt please?”

We all laugh. Then we tsk tsk and exclaim, “What the world has come to?”, while simultaneously congratulating ourselves for not being like the characters as depicted in the cartoons. And then we worry that it may become a reality. It is in some way part of reality, we begrudgingly admit to ourselves.

It happened on a Saturday morning towards the end of a school year, the rare time when we did not have any place to rush to and my son was playing the ever popular Runescape on the computer in my study. Normally, it requires a lot of yelling back and forth, impatience, frustration, foot-stomping, indignation, accusations of ingratitude and false accusations for breakfast to be served. Since I had my laptop working in the kitchen, I thought, “Hey, why not Gtalk him?”

Ping. “What do you want for breakfast?”

Ping. “What the…” “Mom, is that you?”

Ping. “LOL. What do u want for bf?”

Ping. “Pancake pls.”

It soon evolved into a Q&A session where the 11 yo asked me some words he’d learned from his fellow game-players but instinctively knew were “bad words” that he should not use. First right up:

Ping. “What does Jizz mean?”

Ugh, Jesus. Why can’t his father be doing this? “You don’t want to know.”

Ping. “It is close to jazz.”

“Believe me. It is not.”

Ping. “tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me”

Fine. “Have you learned reproductive organs in your health education yet?”

“No. But 6th graders did. We didn’t go.”

I explained that he would learn about it when he has sex education in the 6th grade. Upon that, he said, “Yikes!” in spoken language which I could hear from the kitchen.

For good measure, I emphasized that it is NOT a shortened form for when you want to say “Jesus!”

Then we moved onto:

“Mom, what does f-g mean?” “It is banned from this other site.” “People would say this to me whenever I kill [their characters].”

Well, the usage originated from The World of Warcraft, I believe. “You know the word ‘gay’ and how we agreed that we would not use it to make fun of people?” “There’s this word that is even worse than ‘gay'”

“Oh. I know that word.”

Me. Thinking. “How the hack does he know? Where did he hear it? And who the F called my kid that word?!”

Somehow it does not seem as lecture-y through Gtalk to make him promise he would not use this word. No matter how common an expression it has become in this game or anywhere else. It is a principle thing.

Although I can only hope that he keeps his promise when I am not around, which will happen more and more often now that he’s 11 going on 30, I am glad that we had this chance to talk. So, so what it is through Gtalk?

Inside the Chinese palace is full of tragic tales and horror stories…

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The said Concubine Zhen entered the palace when she was thirteen and soon became the Emperor’s favorite. I guess the Emperor’s still-young (according to the modern standard) windowed mother, the Empress Dowager Cixi was not too fond of this fact.

There are so many titillating stories about Cixi. I often wonder whether she was born evil or was forced by circumstances to grow into such a ruthless power-hungry figure.

On our outings to admire the various palaces, I could not help but tell my eldest the horror stories behind the grandeur of Chinese dynasties, including what it means to be an eunuch and what it takes to bind a woman’s feet.

I think I have forever scarred him. “All that glitters is not gold.”

Mission accomplished.

Towards the discussion of race with a 6 year-old…

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Every day is a trial and error in my effort to bring my kids up the “right” way…

Here is an incident happened last month which I have been chewing over and over:

My 6 year-old came home excited one day to tell me all about what he had learned at school about MLK, about Rosa Parks, about the civil rights movement, and about what it was like before for people of color. (Except, of course, he did not use the ultra PC term, “People of Color”…)

“Do you know that the white people had their own sinks, and they wouldn’t even let the colored people use them? And do you know that the white people get to sit in the front of the bus, and the colored people have to go sit in the back. And guess who gets to sit down if there are no seats left? The white people!”

On one hand, I was glad that he learned so much and seemed to be grasping the concept/idea. On the other hand, I winced every time he used the term “colored people”. I sat him down and gently asked him where he’d learned that term, he said from
a book he read at school. My guess was that the book describes the situations in the past, esp. in the South, and there were signs on which “Colored people only” and “Whites only” were shown. But as a Kindergartner, my son did not understand that the term is no longer in use. Political correctness is not factored into his choice of vocabulary yet.

Although he is probably too young to understand the concept of Political Correctness, I did try. I explained to him that we no longer use that term to refer to people with tanned skin, and that now we use the term “people of color”. For example, mommy is a woman of color. He looked at me, puzzled. I am not sure how much he understood.

I wrote the teacher a long letter and here is her response:

“We read the book last week. The book we read showed the signs for ‘Colored Only’ above water fountains and bathroom doors, as well as referring to those terms in the story. There was quite a discussion about unfair laws. We talked about everyone having color in their skin. People are not white or black – there are different tones of color. The phrase you used, ‘people of color’ was introduced. We also used, ‘African-Americans’ as a term as well.

I try to keep the concepts simple and easy to understand because the terms are so abstract. The main goal is to teach how we are all alike and all different as well as respect.”

By god this whole thing is complicated since NAACP has “Colored People” in its full name: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It is confusing sometimes even for adults, let alone Kindergartners.

I was caught off guard again when my boys heard on NPR the term “Black women”, when a lot of discussions happened around Michelle Obama’s role as the first Black First Lady, and what it means for Black women, and also, especially, young Black women that are just forming a sense of themselves. My 6 yo asked, “What do they mean by Black?” Probably the first time he heard the term so loud and clear, and it registered in his head that it means more than just a color but something else.

So we started a discussion on “African American” = “Black”, but you want to be careful when you use the term Black because you need to use it appropriately otherwise people may be offended or hurt. And the most appropriate term is probably “African American”.

“Why do they call themselves Blacks? Their skin is not black, just tanned. Like your skin is tanned, just different. But Auntie R’s dad (who is Asian Indian) is not Black even though he has dark skin too?”

(I mused, inside my head, about the usage of the term “Blacks” to refer to any non-white people, including the large population of Asian Indians and their UK-born descendants in the U.K. That would have made my duty as a parent a lot easier! But I refrained myself… Maybe some other time…)

From there, we got into a discussion on why President Obama is African American and NOT African even though his father was from Kenya. And the conversation quickly turned (or deteriorated) into who is American and who is not… And the question inevitably came up: “So Samantha next door is Korean and not American?” “No, no, no! She is American just like you guys. It is just that her grandparents came from Korea and that they still honor some Korean customs and traditions… If you want to label her, she would be Korean American. But you know, it does not matter what kind of American you are, and you shouldn’t label people anyway. It does not matter: you are all Americans!”

So, yeah, I was mentally kicking myself for singing to the tune of “We are the World”… and secretly praying, “Gosh. Please please don’t ask me what being an American mean… Not on this car ride… I need to write a thesis just to answer that question!”

Abraham Lincoln rocked this house last night!

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In commemoration of Lincoln’s Bicentennial on February 12, PBS is showing a series of documentaries on Lincoln, both his life and death. Last night, PBS aired the extremely well-made documentary on Lincoln’ death, “The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln”.

Ok, who has heard of a 6-year-old crying because he had to stop watching a documentary to take a bath? Mine did! He cried through the whole bath to the point of hyperventilating, and only stopped crying when he was led in front of the TV to finish watching the documentary. It must be because of all the things on Lincoln he has been learning at school this month… I wonder how much he was able to understand?

This is the same kid who exclaimed, “Abraham is so lucky! He was born on President’s Day!”

It was enlightening to learn that John Wilkes Booth asked for newspaper to be delivered to his hiding place (some pine bushes) so he could read about the public reactions to Lincoln’s assassination; he was surprised and saddened by the fact that he was perceived as this monstrous murderer and not as a savior who carried out God’s will to save the nation from self-destruction. He kept a meticulous journal while in hiding detailing his reasoning and conviction for doing what he had done, hoping that the future generation would see the light and agree with him.

In addition to “The Assassination”, there will be a series of shows dedicated to Lincoln this week. The most notable one, in my view, is the 2-part series by Henry Louis Gates “Looking for Lincoln“. Gates is an outstanding historian dedicated to African American histories. There have been considerable attempts to re-evaluate Lincoln as a pragmatic politician, as a man of his time (harboring the necessary biases and, frankly, racism). And in Gates’ own words, “My urge to judge Lincoln outside of his times is a strong one.” Of course, none of these theories or “re-reading” are taught at the grade school level.

My kids would probably never hear, from their teachers, what Frederick Douglass said about Lincoln at the dedication of the Freedman’s monument in Washington D.C. in 1876:

“He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration.”

Like many prominent historical figures existed outside of the school textbooks, Abe Lincoln was a complicated individual, shaped by his times and circumstances, worked with whatever conditions he was thrown in. Frederick Douglass recognized this because he continued to say:

“I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”

To be able to explain the complexities of who Lincoln was (and is), I will need to be able to explain to my kids the complexities of race. The school curricular seem to concentrate on teaching our kids that everybody is the same yet different at the same time, that in the end, it does not matter what the color of your skin is. By singing to the tune of “We are the World” (I am dating myself by bringing up this song…), the real issues of race and ethnicity and the reality of remaining racism are then glossed over.

Once again I asked myself: how much of the ugliness should I teach them and at what age? And yes, I am fully aware of their privileged position to even have such a choice about “when to learn about race and racism”…

p.s. The Freedman’s Monument is not without controversy itself. Many in the African American community are infuriated, and perplexed to say the least. You can see why from the picture of the statue itself…

“You are not going to heaven because you are a bad mommy.” Religion? Yikes!

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This was not said in a huff or a tantrum. This was said matter-of-factly, more an observation than an accusation. A conclusion drawn by my 6-year-old because, well, he has noticed that we do not go to church on a regular basis. We are not particularly religious although both of our boys were baptized in the Catholic church. We are obviously not regular church-going folks. I am not even Christian. We simply do not talk about god at home. I wonder where he got all these ideas about god, Jesus, and heaven.

The other day he asked me whether I am one of God’s children, and I told him, no, out of honesty. Later I explained to him that not everybody believes in god, and heaven, and not everybody believes in the same god as he does. and therefore not everybody is going to heaven. In fact, “You and daddy and your brother are going to heaven when you die, but mommy will not be there… Mommy believes in reincarnation.”

(Maybe I should have lied? This would have been one of those times when a white lie is harmless and maybe even beneficial?)

Fortunately, at this age, they do have the attention span of the fly, so he was quickly distracted by some other mysteries in life. Crisis diverted. For now.

Note to self: research books on “How to talk to your kids about religion if yours is a multi-faith family”… Yikes! Who says parenting gets easier as they get older?!

Questions from your kids: How many people are there in the world?

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Here is your answer, as of January 13, 2009 (US Time)
U.S. 305,610,552
World 6,753,669,055
This is pretty neat, courtesy of U.S. Census Bureau’s Pop Clocks.
At my boys’ insistence, here is the counter part: Statistics on death…
(Yes, my kids are naturally morbid, considering how many comic books and movies inspired by comic books they have had encountered.  Neil Gailman is to be blamed, IMHO…)
Number of deaths: 2,448,017 (2005 U.S. census data)
Pondering when is the right time and age to explain to my 6-year-old the plights of people around the world, and how much to tell him…

How do you explain WAR to a 5 year old?

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About 2 weeks ago, my youngest asked me, “Mommy, is there a war now?” I was startled by this question, but quickly steadied myself and said, “yes, honey, unfortunately, there are wars all around the world.” “No, I mean, is there one that we are in?” Pause. “Yes, honey, unfortunately, there is at least one, in this country called Iraq.”

“Why?”

“Ummm, some people believed that there were people there that wanted to do bad things to us, to the United States… You see, there was this ruler in Iraq, his name was Saddam Hussein…”

“What is a ruler?”

“umm, he’s like a leader.”

“Oh, like a president?”

“No, not really. More like a tyrant… He has killed a lot of his people in the country, and we decided that he shouldn’t be the ruler any more… He was captured and executed…”

(And thank goodness he didn’t ask me what “executed” mean…)

So as I tried to explain to my youngest, I got more and more unsure about this whole concept.

“So the ruler is not there any more?”

“Right.”

“So when are we going to stop the war?”

“Well, honey, it is not as simple as it seems… We have to stay because now the country is not stable because a lot of people are fighting against each other… And yeah, we all hope that our soldiers can come home soon…

Hey, do you want to go get some ice cream?”

I swear I didn’t make this conversation up and pass it along as a fable or something. This is one of those conversations that, while you child soon forgot about it, keeps you up at night…

So, how do you explain Roe vs. Wade to a 10-year-old boy??

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Am I a bad mom? Sometimes I worry that in an effort to bring up children that are progressive, tolerant, self-aware, and self-reliant, and to make sure that they become “contributing members of a civil society” in the future, I may have pulled a cloud over their childhood. If they are fortunate enough to not to know about “the world out there”, who am I to ruin their parade by telling them the “truth”?

So my 10-year-old had to do a research report on this presidential election. One of the projects was to interview a democrat and a republican, ask them this one question: “What do you think a Democrat (or Republican) believes?” I felt bad for putting our loved ones on the spot: voting is a private matter, in my opinion, and sometimes the true reason someone votes for this party vs. the other is for that person’s conscience to know, and their conscience only. The people we ended up interviewing over the phone, surprisingly or maybe not so much, gave similar answers with regarding to almost everything: such as “A democrat/Republican believes that the middle class should receive tax reliefs.”

The differences we learned from our friends and families are, based on their own subjective opinions of course, “A Republican believes in a smaller government, whereas a Democrat believes in more taxes,” and “A Democrat believes in equality in all people and the responsibilities of the government to come to its people’s aid when they are in need.”

What strikes me the most was the fact that women from both parties see “Roe vs. Wade” as the main dividing line that separates Republicans from Democrats: one mentioned that Republicans believe in the “Right to live”, the other, Democrats believe in “Roe vs. Wade”. My son, being 10 years old, naturally had no idea what they were talking about, and our friends and families, bless their heart, naturally did not want to go into details.

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So, how do you explain Roe vs. Wade to a 10-year-old boy?

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This was why I woke up with self-doubt for my ability to be a good mother this morning: I actually gave it a try last night by giving him a general description of what Roe vs. Wade was about. How successful, I am not sure. My son understandably was disturbed by the concept of abortion, which I didn’t go into too much detail of course. He does not even know how women become pregnant yet, oh my goodness… {{surge of more self-doubt}}

At one point, I could see in his face his regret for supporting the Democratic Party (i.e. Obama in this election: he thinks Obama is the man, and the democrats will bring equality to the society, without me or my husband steering him either way… in fact we were quite puzzled by his interest in this election since we didn’t talk about politics in front of the kids until he himself showed interest in the topic… ) And I was upset with the teacher’s naivete in giving them the homework assignment: how does one talk about this presidential election, I mean, really talk about it, without getting into a discussion on the two sides over the “Roe vs. Wade” issue? How am I supposed to explain to my 5th grader, who despite his uncanny maturity still hugs stuffed animals at night?

I know a lot of people would argue that this is the reason why there shouldn’t be abortion allowed, period, if you don’t know how to explain such a procedure to a child. This way you don’t even need to explain it. To me, this is the reason why the issue of abortion should not be made to hijack the public political debate. It is a personal choice, and yes, I believe that women should have the right to choose. It is ironic to me that Republicans, for all their push for a smaller government, desperately want to extend their control over private matters such as gay marriage and this, and leave public health care issues to strictly between “patients and their care providers”…