Please Help Them With Your Youth

I like tricking kids.

When babies are just at that age where they realize that I can hide a toy with my hands but it's not gone (object permanence), this is my favorite baby age. They've learned something, and I'm making them use it.

Another great source of entertainment for me is when kids ask questions I know they know the answer to. For example, my son used to come in from playing outside, and find me reading National Geographic magazine. He'd say, "What are you doing?" and I'd say, "I'm baking cookies." Then he'd say, "No, you're reading your magazine." I'd agree, and smile, and ask him why he asked, then. Now, he asks, "What are you reading?" and we occasionally get into good discussions about plant or animal articles.

Mothers that would see us out with our two small children would say, "Treasure this time; it goes so fast!" Parts of it don't go fast enough. Dinner times, for example, are exceptionally slow, and there's not much to treasure about them ("Sit up!" "Drink your milk!" "Don't talk with food in your mouth!" etc).

I've mentioned before, I have a son (who is now eight) and a daughter (who is four...-and-a-half, if you ask her). I'm not a perfect dad, but I do what I can with what I've got. The most treasured thing that has happened between me and my kids is literacy.

Our family was big proponent of singing the ABCs. Then, when they had that down, we all learned our ZYXs, too (yes, my kids know the alphabet forwards and backwards). Shortly after that, we learned character recognition, and we'd drive around town doing errands, and finding letters on signs. They would practice forming letters (usually, the letters of their names) during coloring time. We would read to them often, pointing at the words as we said them.

Naturally, I'll put forth that my kids are geniuses, inheriting a great deal of natural ability from their parents. But the fact is, kids who are exposed to people who read, people who enjoy reading, and people who demonstrate to the kids that they enjoy reading, will be interested in reading. Kids who are interested in a topic will put forth effort to learn it, and any kid that puts forth effort is fun to teach.

The eight year old is well on his way to literacy, having gotten through the second grade this year. He reads longer books, with semi-complex plots. I make him read to me, now, because I enjoy hearing such great progress.

The four year old (FOUR AND A HALF, DADDY!), she recognizes letters, and knows their sounds. It's only a matter of time before she starts seeing words as sets of letters and sounds, and then by "smooshing" the sounds together, she will read words.

I cannot express how wonderful it is to see a child's face light up the first time they realize they read a word using letter-sounds. I still remember it from the boy learning, and I can't wait until the girl does it.

This is the time, for me, to treasure.

Until another time,
Salt

Cat's In The Cradle

My elementary school teachers used to say all the time, "You are unique."

I know my son is getting that, too, because he made a comment about it while watching "The Incredibles" during the scene in the car after Dash got picked up from detention, and the mom says, "Everyone is special, Dash," and he faces the window and mumbles, "Which is another way of saying that nobody is."

The Cub Scout Motto is "Do Your Best." Even before I was in Scouts, my dad was always telling us kids, "You can't compare what you do to what anyone else did. You have to decide you did the best you can, and leave it at that." If I was ever down about my performance in a class or competition, he'd admonish me with, "If you did the best you could, then there's no problem. If you could have done better, then you have something to be sorry for."

I worked as a counselor at a residential summer camp, and I was reasonably well-known among the staff for being full of bad puns and terrible plays on words. Whenever I got a particularly loud groan or boo from the staff, I'd to say, "If you think that's bad, you should meet my dad!" No one believed me, until one weekend, when my dad came to pick me up. I was not quite packed to leave, so he was invited into the staff lodge while I went to my tent to finish packing. When I returned, I waved to him through the window, and we left. He drove me back to camp Monday morning. As I made my way up the stairs to the staff lodge, the camp director met me halfway up. "Having met your dad," he started, "You make a whole lot more sense."

When I was growing up, my dad worked "with computers" (that was my understanding of it). We had some computers at home, I learned some basic programming, but I swore up and down that I was not going to get into programming for a living. I was going to blaze my own career trail, and I ended up going to college intent on majoring in Physics (figuring that was a good science to start in before getting a Masters degree in a narrower field).

I never finished that degree, and instead I ended up with a BSE, an educator's degree with an emphasis in mathematics. I got my teaching license, and started teaching math to seventh and eighth graders.

After three years, I quit. If I had 27 kids in a class, there were three that were great, three that were awful, and 21 that were "just there."  I really value the time I spent teaching. If I learned anything that I could apply as a parent, it's that I need to show my children that I am interested in their education, and that it is important to me. I'm not particularly concerned about my children being the smartest in the class; I will be proud of my children as long as they are the ones putting forth the most effort (you know, doing their best).

That summer, I got a temp job doing data entry. A friend of mine heard I was looking for work, and contacted me about a job opening where he was currently employed. Paraphrasing, he said to me, "You can think in a straight line, you can get a job programming here."

With a few misgivings about it, I did. I learned that I ... really liked it. I got into databases, and optimization, and it really scratched an itch I didn't know I had. The immediate gratification moving from "your program doesn't work" to "your program works" could be had in a day, much different from the full year required to move a class of kids from "you don't know algebra" to "you know algebra."

While working there, I referred my dad to a job opening in the data storage group. One of the company executives commented that it's the first time in his experience he'd heard of a son getting their dad a job.

Until another time,
Salt

Deep Down, I'm a Horrible Person

I live just north of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The winters are long and cold, the growing season is short and mild, and I like it this way.

I have seasonal allergies.  Actually, I have a lot of environmental allergies, but the pollen and mold spores are by far the worst. I help my wife in the garden, not because I like to garden, but because I think my kids need to see living things nurtured and helped to grow (and because it makes my wife happy). So, you see why I like winter...and now, it's ending.

This past Saturday, Minnesota hosted Louisiana Tech in a baseball game in the new Target Field. The Gophers lost, 5-2. Most of the articles I read were about the stadium, not the about game. How nice it was outside, how this was a dry run for the Twins, to see how crowds would be handled, and logistic sorts of things.

I'm not going to lie to you, I was not in favor of a new stadium. When they decided not to put a roof on it, I was completely opposed. However, the trickle-down effect to a local economy from a professional sports team is undeniable, if somewhat incalculable. So, in the long run, it's probably not a bad thing to have (and, it's not my county with the elevated sales tax).

But the whole idea of building a new stadium, so you can offer more amenities (and charge more for them), so you can take in more money, so you can pay better players, so you can have a more successful team, so demand goes up for the tickets, so you can charge more, so you can pay better players, ad infinitum... it just seems like it never really works out that way for teams, you know?

Starting sometime last week, we've had a stretch of good weather here. In fact, the high today (Wednesday the 31st of March) is forecast to be near 80. On the days the Twins have two exhibition games scheduled (Friday and Saturday), there is rain predicted both days.

Don't get me wrong, I don't wish for it to rain on ... yeah, I kinda do wish for rain. But not because I want the fans and players to get wet. Not because I want the game canceled, which would lead to make-up games, which usually leads to double-headers, which would make a friend of mine near-giddy. A side reason I want rain is I'd like to know the color and/or pattern on the tarp they use to cover the infield.

No, the real reason I want rain, is because I love the sound of unreasonable people shouting at other unreasonable people...and a rained out game at the new roofless field would likely cause that. I told you, I'm a horrible person.

Until another time,
Salt