Tag Archives: things kids say

A Reason as Good as Any

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Conversations that happened yesterday…

(Proving that thank goodness I work fulltime so I don’t spend too much time talking to my kids…)

 

[On the way to lunch]

13-year-old: My friend is jealous. He thinks we have the coolest license plate ever! [Be rest assured: It is dorky.]

8-year-old: Oh, mom, we should keep this car forever so we can keep our license plate.

13-year-old: Dummy. We can keep our license plate even when we have a new car.

Me: Actually they have made the rule so that people can pass down their license plates to their kids.

8-year-old: You mean when you die, we can have the license plate?! Cool!

Me (failing to be concerned by his excitement):  Actually you two will probably fight over it. We need to get another cool license plate.

[A lengthy discussion ensued regarding what other cool (and equally dorky) license plate we could get]

[At the restaurant]

Me: Ugh. I forgot my ring… Speaking of my ring. I need to update my will. Now that I have lost both my engagement ring and my wedding ring, I no longer have anything to pass down to you.

13-year-old: Nice job, mom!

8-year-old: You mean you have written down what we are getting when you die? When you die, do we get everything?

Me: Technically, no. When a person dies, and if they’re married, their spouse would get everything. That’s how most people set up their wills. Oh, remember that Mr. Monk episode? (Yeah, we are polite to fictional TV characters) Remember the guy had to pretend that his father died after his stepmother? They both already had kids when they got married. The husband left his son everything; the wife left his daughters everything. The man actually died before his wife, so the son would have lost everything. That’s why he went through the trouble to make sure that people think his stepmother died after before his dad.

[Pause while the boys digested the twisted plot line]

8-year-old: Can you do me a favor? Can you and dad never get a divorce so this thing won’t get so complicated?

 

Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t.

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Because of my racial/ethnic/cultural/educational make-up, I do not watch what I tell my children: I tend to over-explain everything and over-analyze everything for them. I also like to point out instances of racial/cultural prejudices and stereotypes disregarding whether they may be too young for such identity politics theory talks. Sometimes I feel sorry for them ’cause I have ruined quite a few “plain, good old fun” movies and shows for them.

A downside of such vigilance (or as the mainstream society likes to label it, Paranoia, or as Fox and Friends like to call it, Rampant political correctness that’s ruining this country’s cultural identity and core) on my part is that once in a while I would slip and my kids get to call me out on it.

Then they pile it on thick.

 

While we were discussing my 13 year old’s birthday party earlier this year, he mentioned that he really would like to go to the penny arcade before the sleepover at our house. Naturally, I tried to talk him out of it.

“Are you sure your friends will like the penny arcade?”

“Duh. It’s the arcade, mom. Of course they’ll like it!”

“How about the twins? They don’t seem to be the kind of kids that would be interested in going to the arcade.” Honestly, I said that based on my observations of how their parents care really about academic performances and how studious these two kids are.

“Mom, don’t be such a racist! Just because they are Indian, you just assume that they like to study all day long and they don’t like to do anything fun?!”

My bad.

 

On our way home from the blockbuster movie Thor, The Husband asked Mr. Monk, our 8-year-old, who he would like to be if he had to choose: “Thor or his brother Loki?”

“What kind of question is that? Why did you ask him that? Who would have chosen Loki? Of course everybody wants to be Thor!” I interjected because of the whole sibling rivalry thing and I did not want Mr. Monk, sensitive that he is, to dwell on the fact that the younger brother Loki is less than ideal in the movie. (Let me just put it this way so I won’t ruin the movie for you…)

Beside, from a pure aesthetic point of view…

 

From the backseat a voice immediately piped up, “Oh sure, everybody wants to be Thor. Everybody wants to be the blond-haired, blue-eyed guy.”

Mind you, The Husband is of Scandinavian descent and sports blond hair and blue eyes. (Alas, there ends the similarities between him and Chris Hemsworth… I just need to keep on telling myself that I do not like hairy men…)

“Oh yeah, the blond-haired blue-eyed people are the good guys. And the dark-haired guy nobody likes him.” My oldest continued. “Yeah, let’s just kill the brown-haired guy and the dark-haired people. This is a Hitler movie! A Hitler movie!”

 

(I have been sitting here for 15 minutes, trying to come up with a tidy ending for this post. I don’t know how to end this post. So I am just going to end it abruptly and go to bed considering how it is 4:43 am…)

We are all in this

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**The following is a repost from Martin Luther King Day, 2010**

Mr. Monk, my 7-year-going-on-50-old child, asked me last Friday at dinner,

“Mom, is it true that you would not be here if Martin Luther King did not give THAT speech?”

I was caught by surprise, I’ll be completely honest. Although I understand the impact Dr. King’s speech has had on the American history, culture and psyche, it has never occurred to me that what Dr. King said from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 23, 1963 would have material effect on my personal fate. After all, I was not even born then in 1963. What’s more, I was born in Taipei and grew up there and did not make my way to the U.S. until 1993.

I looked at my husband, and although he looked as puzzled as I was, he did give me the “a-ha” look that confirmed what was racing through my mind. Mr. Monk was right.

The Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal law enacted in 1882, was not repealed until 1943 (China was, after all, an ally during WWII…) when Chinese already residing in the U.S. were permitted to become naturalized citizens. However, it was not until the Immigration Act in 1965 when the federal law in the U.S. was relaxed enough to allow large number of immigrants, especially from the non-European parts of the world (contrary to the belief by the politicians at that time, I am sorry to point this out), to enter the country legally. The Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. King in the 1960s opened the eyes of many Americans to the rampant racism permeating the country and therefore made the passage of the Immigration Act even thinkable.

“You are right. It is possible that Mommy would not have been allowed to enter this country if the Civil Rights Movement had never happened.”

As I looked at Mr. Monk, his beautiful face, wondering what was inside that little head of his, it came to me: And there was the laws against interracial marriages!

Anti-miscegenation laws were not eradicated completely from the U.S. until 1967. As a matter of fact, as recently as in October 2009, a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana refused to officiate the civil wedding of an interracial couple, citing his concern for the wellbeing of the interracial offspring produced from such a union. (No, I am not making this shit up… I wish I were. Believe me.)

I added, “You are right. Without Dr. King, it is possible that daddy and mommy were not even allowed to get married.”

“And that means I would not even be here!” Mr. Monk said with amazement, looking pleased and proud that his existence on earth was made possible because Dr. Martin Luther King gave that speech, 47 years ago.

And he was right.

If it is round and comes in pairs…

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My boys are becoming more and more uncouth each day, and I am not doing anything about it because deep down I think I am a 13-year-old boy.

I am going to blame it on Austin Powers though. Lately they have been watching Austin Powers. All three of them. Yeah. I know.

Mr. Monk loved all the bathroom humors and antics and in fact, was so excited that he could not sit still,  jumping up and down through the movie. I could hear his excited, high-pitched laugh all the way downstairs through the closed door to the master bedroom where the TV is.

Nowadays the easiest way to start a fit of giggling around our house is to show them something round, and in pairs.

The boys saw the failed muffins

and decided that the muffins looked like boobs.

Mr. Monk: Oh mom!  They look like, you know, boobs!

12-year-old: (To his brother, with his mouth stuffed with one of the burned and misformed muffin tops) Hmm. If you don’t want to eat your boobs, I will have your boobs.

Me: (Trying not to laugh) Do not make fun of boobs.

Mr. Monk: Yeah. We would have died without boobs. You know mommy would not have been able to feed us… and we would have starved.

Me: Staying out of this topic because I did not want to explain to him, again, that I only breastfed for less than two weeks

12-year-old: Or we would not even have been born if daddy were not attracted by mom’s boobs…

Fortunately, at this moment, the conversation was derailed by my asking Mr. Monk what he was doing [No. Don’t ask] and we moved onto a discussion of penis vs. balls vs. ball sack vs. scrotum.

Boobs and balls. Boobs or balls? Boobs or balls?! Cake or death?! (Sorry. Got carried away a bit over there…)

Hey, at least we are using the correct anatomical terms.

Teaching Kids Simple Words: Bees

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So we have to worry about our kids learning about Bees now?!

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Here is a translation if you have trouble reading the handwriting…

The question was: If you were a bee, would you be a worker, a drone or a queen? Why?

My 7 year-old child’s answer: If I were a bee, I would be a worker because I get to collect pollen and nectar.

He could have stopped there. But of course, Noooooooooo.

He went on to explain: I do not want to be a drone because it is kind of disgusting in a way. You help her by helping her lay eggs. The end.

The kid’s right though. A drone’s life is something you do not want to wish upon your worst enemies. (Oh who am I kidding? I am the exact kind of person that WILL wish these things upon my worst enemies)

“Should a drone succeed in mating it will soon die because the penis and associated abdominal tissues are ripped from the drone’s body at sexual intercourse.” Wikipedia (where lazy people come to find answers)

So die a horrible death or lead a long, sexless life. Which one would you choose?

If only patience could be bought

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I suspect that some of you are tired of me criticizing myself for not being a good mother. Self-deprecating humor can only go this far when you are not a stand-up comedian.  I admit that it does sound like I am fishing for compliments. Or at least, some sort of desperate reach for affirmation. If these were true, or at least intentional, I would not have even brought this up to the light of day. It is easy to keep a perfect facade on the Internet; I could have simply NOT talked about my fear and insecurities.

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"I feel happy when my mom is in a good mood" Oh boy...

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Is it just me? On some days, I get so aggravated by blog posts where the parents seem so perfect: patient, wise, kind, steadfast, consistent, and… Now where is my fucking thesaurus?!… always in a good mood, with “a cheery disposition…. never be cross or cruel”, never raising their voices… Who took my BLEEP thesaurus and didn’t put it away?!

Mr. Monk once told me in amidst of sobs, after a shouting match, “I want Mary Poppins to be my mom!”

*sigh* We all do. Baby. We all do.

“Why can’t you be like the other moms?” He has said that more than once.

The other day he joked, “You don’t have enough patience and you should go buy more patience in the Patience Store!”

I hope this post helps some of you that are reading because like me, you have feared that somehow you have traumatized your child because you are not patient enough and you do raise your voice, nay, you actually do YELL. Unlike “the other” mothers…

Teaching Kids Simple Words: Egg

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7 Year Old: Mom, what’s the yoky part of the egg?

Me: You mean the Yolk?

7 Year Old: No, I mean, which part does the baby chick come from?

Me: Ok, honey, the eggs you are eating? These are not the kind that baby chicks come from.

7 Year Old: Why?

Me: These are eggs that have not been… (Oh fuck!)  Sigh.  Ok.  You know how in order to make a baby? … You need a mommy and a daddy together to make a baby?  Well, the eggs you are eating only came from the mommy hen.  There is no daddy involved.

7 Year Old: How come there are single mommies with children?

Me: *Inserting foot in mouth*  There are daddies.  It’s just that the daddy for some reason is not living with them any more…

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Hind sight is 20-20. Why did I go into unnecessary details? I was all of a sudden caught in a panic that he might decide to not eat eggs due to the baby chick situation, he who only eats 5 kinds of food. I needed to reassure him that he’s not endangering any baby chics by eating eggs. I could not run the risk of eggs being off the menu.

Up next: Why honey was almost off the list.

Interview with my child: “Why I don’t like blogs”

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Mom: How do you like blogs?

Child: I hate them.

Mom: Why?

Child: It is very annoying to me because my mom is being spoiled and wasting time instead of doing something useful like reading a book.

Mom: Why do you think it’s a waste of time?

Child: Because it is like a computer or Facebook and it is wasting time, not like doing something relaxing like eating lunch or doing work.

Mom: Do you think doing my work is relaxing to me?

Child: No. Because doing your work is something you have to do.

Mom: Do you not like my blogging because you feel I am not spending time with you?

Child: Yes. No. Maybe so.

Mom: What if I say this is my hobby and I really enjoy doing it?

Child: Life’s not fair. Deal with it.

Mom: That’s all?

Child: That’s all. I wanted it to end in a funny way.

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"Oh My Blog!" is the new OMG!

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This post is brought to you by Just Humor Me who shared her new OMB! Award with me. Thank you, Diane! There are rules associated with this award:

A. doing a video blog (vlogging)

B. writing a blog post while in a state of intoxication (drogging) or

C. blogging about your most embarrassing moment (embarraslogging)

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Originally I had this evil scheme of making begging Mr. Monk, my 7-year-old, to vlog for me since he’s been having a lot of fun with Flip video. I made the mistake of forgetting to use bribes not easing him into this idea, instead I ASKED HIM NICELY.

“No.” He said without even giving it another thought.  “Here’s your pencil and paper. Go!”

“What?”

“Well, you want to interview me right? Ask me questions. I answer. You write them down. Don’t you know anything about interviewing people, MOM?!”

What did he mean? Writing stuff down longhand? I haven’t done that since, well, grad school!

“How about this? How about if I write your answers down on my blog?”

“What?” He sounded rather indignant, sensing entrapment. “You want to write about me on your blog. Again?”

At the end, the exhibitionist in him won the battle.  In fact, I made the mistake of pushing forward with my REAL question:

“Do you not like my blogging because you feel I am not spending time with you?”

After he gave me the deliberately ambiguous answer which spelled out, to me, the real reason behind his discomfort with my new obsession “hobby”, he was rather upset.

“You ruined everything! I want ‘Life is not fair. Deal with it.’ to be my last line! Because I really want it to end in a funny way!!!”

So I manipulated the interview script to give him what he wanted.

“Good. Now can you print it out for me?” He couldn’t wait to show it off to his brother. “Look! These are my words!”

Later when we were getting ready for bed, he penned a poem calling his brother a Computer Geek and a Facebook Freak. Nice I know. But hey, we encourage artistic creativity in this household!

“Mom. I know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be a writer!”

So… Who is a future blogger in the making?!…

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It is extremely hard to decide whom to pass on this award to since all of you are wonderful bloggers. This may be a tall order: Anybody up to give VLOGGING a try?

Vagina-blogging? I guess we have all (except the handful of male readers I have… I am a sexist now too, I guess…) been VLOGGING all this time.

Video Blogging. Anybody up for it?

Bueller? Bueller?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEXfASbPbDM

Teaching Kids Simple Words: Part 1

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I have learned in my parenting career that the fewer letters there are in a word, the more the potential of it being an extremely difficult concept to explain to your child. Some small words are deceptively simple. Small words with big, heavy baggages.

Mr. Monk used the word “gay” in the bad way the other day.

As soon as he said it, he knew he did something wrong. The air froze. The earth stood still. His brother sucked in his breath and for once, was speechless.

“It’s ok. Mommy’s not mad.” I reached for his hand and walked him upstairs to his room where I could talk to him quietly, without my 12-year-old chiming in whenever I took a breath as if he couldn’t wait to start parenting himself.

“I am sorry. I know I am not supposed to use this word, unless of course I am using it the right way.”

“What is the right way of using the word?”

“Being happy?”

I had to make a split decision at that moment to decide whether I should seize the opportunity to educate him or to prolong this “shielding”. I remembered this excerpt from NurtureShock:

How to raise racist kids?

Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

Congratulations! Your children are well on their way to believing that <insert your ethnicity here> is better than everybody else.

I decided to talk about what it means to be gay, to not make a big deal out of it, in the most basic manner, especially since we do see a lot of gay characters now on TV and in the movies, for which I am pleased.

We also just finished watching Modern Family in which a gay couple was portrayed just like any other suburban couple in a sitcom.

“You know there are people who are gay right?”

He nodded.

“Do you know what it means that they are gay?

“That they are happy?” Then he chuckled in a way that said he didn’t believe his answer and he was proud at his own wittiness.

“It means that… some people when they grow up, they realize that, well, … Ok.  Instead for a man to have a girlfriend, he has a boyfriend.”

“Oh.”

“And there are women who instead of having boyfriends, you know, they are in love with their girlfriends.”

At this moment as I write, I realized that I didn’t use husbands and wives. Please allow me to explain my oversight as that because I was discusssing the matter of heart and love with him at that moment, I unconsciously used the term boyfriends and girlfriends because that’s what people get when they are in love. Boyfriends and girlfriends.

I crouched down and held onto his shoulders so I could look him in the eyes.

“Did you know that I have friends who are gay?”

He looked surprised.

“I have a friend, a boy, you know, a male friend, he is gay so he has a boyfriend.” I continued. “I also have a very good girlfriend and she and her girlfriend have been together for longer than 10 years!”

“Wow.” At this his eyes widened.

“Yup. I met saw them not too long ago. They look very happy together. Actually I think they get along much better than mommy and daddy. They don’t seem to fight a lot.”

A smile.

“It must be because they are girls!” A lightbulb lit up over his head.

Then he added, quieter now, while looking down at his own feet, “Or, because they don’t have kids?”

Oy, gevalt!

Athletes

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I don’t know where my oldest gets his athletic prowess. I guess we lucked out.

He started gymnastics at our park district when he was three years old because I did not like the idea of sitting in the sun, the rain, or the cold for ball games. When he was seven, he was asked to join the newly-formed Boys Team  and he started his “career” in competitive gymnastics. It did sound impressive when I told people that he went to the State Championship. I am not one of those pushy and hyper-critical parents. I am amazed by the gymnastic moves my oldest can do, with ease, and most of the time, with grace. But I will be completely honest: there will be no Olympic medals in the future. He is good, could definitely do better, but not that good.

We attend his meets and hold our breath and watch, ready to comfort him or to cheer him on. It is getting harder and harder to sit in the audience since every event now involves the risk of him falling off or falling down. I don’t think I will be able to watch without having a heart attack as they start doing more and more dangerous “tricks”.

How do parents of Olympic athletes quiet their hearts when it is happening? What happens if something wrong happens to your child’s routine? How do you stop the ache in your heart, fortify it, and find the right words to comfort your heart-broken child? I used to wonder about that.

As my oldest reached the higher level in gymnastics, the routines became harder. Because he grew in height without packing on the pounds, his muscle strength (or lack of) does not allow him to perform as well as before. This became very obvious when he attended his first competition this past season.  Less then half way into his floor event, he fell, sat heavily on his bottom, not once, but twice. I could hear the gasps from the audience even in the noisy gymnasium. I will be brutally honest with you: it was painful to watch. I wanted to turn my head and close my eyes. NOT because I was embarrassed, please believe me when I say this, but because the urge to go to him right away and hug him was so strong that I physically felt ill. I had to sit on my hands to prevent them from flying to my mouth or chest and bite my lips so I didn’t break down and cry.

But he got up and finished his routine. He was not frazzled. Much to my surprise, when he exited the floor, he was neither in tears nor pouting; he walked back to where his team was sitting and fist-bumped his coaches.

THAT was one of the proudest moments I have had as a parent.

He has learned to fail. Or rather, he has learned the ability to not get bogged down by an accident or a mistake and forge ahead. He has learned the ability to remain calm and focus on what is ahead. An ability that I am sorely lacking.

Several days later when I was sure it was safe to touch upon the subject, I asked him with a frankness bordering on admiration,

“What was going through your mind when you fell and sat on the floor? How were you able to get up and continue with the routine? How did you find the strength to be so brave?” I was truly amazed by this young person’s (“My own son!”) will power to remain poised under such duress.

“Well, it’s nothing really. The coach has always told us to NOT think about what has happened and just focus on what’s next in the routine. We just need to focus and finish the routine. I don’t notice the audience when I am doing the routines. I just focus.”

Focus. Grace under fire. I believe these are the things that make athletes such special people. Any athletes, no matter the rankings or the scores. They don’t become broken-hearted by a single setback. They just do it again, and again, and again.

At his second meet when my son once again did not place and I once again agonized over what the right things to say to console and encourage him, he bounded to the bench where I was sitting in just one stride, plopped down, and before I could say, “I am sorry honey…”, declared with a smile, “I have achieved my three goals today.”

“I was telling everybody this. I have three goals for this meet and I reached all three of them:

1. I had fun
2. I did better than last time
3. I was not physically or emotionally scarred permanently.”

I laughed and slapped him on his back.

THAT was another one of the proudest moments I have had as a parent.