Blog Entries

Exactly One Gazillion Pieces

admin@squareparents.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Why is it that when looking for suitable toys, it's so so difficult to find anything that contains less than exactly one gazillion pieces? When you choose two toys, what you're actually getting is two hundred separate and distinct objects. Oh, it's great to see the excitement of mini-me digging into a new toy, checking everything out, and handing all the pieces, but then what happens exactly 37 minutes later?

Obviously, given the prevalence of such toys, people are currently buy [...]

Giant Steps

admin@squareparents.com — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Child development is often an uneven process, and happens in fits and spurts. Interestingly, it's been argued, notably by Dr. Harvey Karp, and probably others, that children from birth to about 5 years of age are essentially replicating the evolutionary process, and moving right along at about 4,000 years per hour, give or take a thousand or few years.

From there, they follow the evolutionary road of homo sapiens (of course), through the various stages and branches of the species, [...]

Expert Advice

admin@squareparents.com — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Consult the experts, but don't rely on them. There are "experts" out there for everything. In many ways, this makes sense, with the advent of market segmentation and specialization, and the ease and volume at which information can be distributed.

But who are these "experts" exactly, and when are they most useful? For what topics is expert advice appropriate? It's surprising, if not outright shocking, how easy it is to become an expert in a given field. Even the term expert is h [...]

School Daze

admin@squareparents.com — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

What's the best school, and how does a parent get their kid or kids into that best school? This is a topic that can reduce otherwise highly educated people into blathering idiots devoid of all rational thought, except during those lucid moments when they become merely stupid.

Why does the subject of education seem to make people so violently unintelligent?

The question of the best school is on the mind of many a parent, regardless of the kid's age. It could pertain to dayc [...]

New Forms of Entertainment

admin@squareparents.com — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

At one time, there were all sorts of home tips that fell under the heading of folk knowledge. Less was often more. Good folk knowledge usually always used (and still does use) the general principle of pulling, rather than pushing. This is the reason why many folk remedies, tips, and tricks had lasted for as long as they did. Retro-fitting hand-me downs, cough and cold remedies, home processing and storage of food, making impromptu toys, knowing when to tell which classic story, any many [...]

The Small and the Large

admin@squareparents.com — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

The smaller and insignificant the issue, the more ferocious and convoluted the fight.

This is most notoriously true of academia. You don't need to watch very many episodes of NOVA before you see professors at some conference arguing about the nature of the surface of Venus, and whether it formed in one way or another. It won't be long before they're calling each other names like 'poopie head' and insulting each other's alma maters.

It's a curious phenomenon, and directly [...]

Good Cop Bad Cop

admin@squareparents.com — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

The Good Cop/Bad Cop routine is the oldest one in the book, and one of the most effective. It also requires a high degree of collusion between the parents. Collusion is secret agreement, often for neafrious or illegal activity. Think of it as the parents being insider traders, with the kid in the role of the SEC.

Kids will always try to break the parents' collusion, knowingly or not, by exploiting any inconsistencies, looking for gaps to run through, attempting end-arounds, and [...]

Soccer Parents

admin@squareparents.com — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Parents, watch your progeny on the pitch, but be careful. You're only really allowed to secretly wish them success on the field of battle. Publicly, of course, it's just about playing the game. But isn't it more fun to actually, you know, win?

Ah, soccer in the spring. There's a lot of different advice out there about young children and sports, and the advice tends either not to give any firm conclusions, or is contradictory. A popular theme wrapped in excess verbiage is that you [...]

What A Drag It Is Getting Old

admin@squareparents.com — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

... says it all. This wasn't something that was supposed to be part of the deal, it was something abstract and far away and curable by a variety of health and beauty products. At the same time, there's been an inkling of what is coming from all of the ads on TV featuring products with terrible side effects. Bleeding ears are apparently a small price to pay for eliminating a ferret allergy.

OK, so you get older, and so do the kids, and you grad [...]

Keyboards Nefariously Purposed

admin@squareparents.com — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Some parents exhibit the very worst behavior, probably don't realize it, and wouldn't particularly care if they did. Interestingly, this is very similar to the way kids often behave, particularly in the early stages of socialization, which explains quite a lot.

Enough examples of both abound on the playgrounds, shopping malls, local supermarkets, or wherever else you find parents and kids. Everyone has known or currently knows some parent living in some kind of Oprah alt-reality wor [...]

What Would Dickens Say?

admin@squareparents.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

The financial apocalypse is upon us, and we had all better prepare for Dickensian Britain, a la Oliver Twist.

"Please sir, may I have some more?"

Greedy little urchin that Oliver Twist was, there was still something almost, sort of, vaguely sympathetic about him.

Fast forward 150 years or so to today's Oliver Twists. It's not some thin gruel that they're demanding, but another three slices of p [...]

Not So Fast

admin@squareparents.com — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

If TV is so bad for you, why is there one in every hospital room? If irradiated food is so bad, why is it served in hospitals? Ditto the Golden Arches.

Is TV harmful, as in does it actually cause harm? And what is the nature of the harm?

The harm that TV may cause apparently ranges from anywhere between 0% and 100%, but there was an accurate percentage in there somwhere. That's essentially what the old studies about the effects of television on young children were saying. [...]

Great Expectations

admin@squareparents.com — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Everyone likes the good kinds of surprises, such as a present or an unexpected visit from a welcome guest..

But then, there are the other kinds of surprises, which are by far the most common, and leave much to be desired. A surprise is an event without warning, one could even say a change in the current condition or routine. But just like the loaded word change, a surprise is usually hoped to mean something positive. In the best case scenario, change is the state of things as they [...]

Earn It

admin@squareparents.com — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100

One general imperative of guiding a child toward good behavior is establishing the idea of responsibility at an early age, however rudimentary, even when it may be a little too early for them to understand. Add incentives. Make him or her earn that special something that they want, something that they value. Giving them everything they want accomplishes nothing, or nothing positive anyway.

It could be a favorite snack, going to a preferred destination (not, say, Disney World) or ac [...]

The Coin of The Realm

admin@squareparents.com — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Credibility is the coin of the realm.

Credibility is the quality or power of inspiring belief. In the context of young children, this means that the kid believes you when you say something. Total credibility is unrealistic due to the workings of their little brains, but more credibility is obviously better than less.

Credibility doesn't just apply to threats of punishment, but rather applies to overall kid management.

If what you say has no credibility, don't sit [...]

With Friends Like These

admin@squareparents.com — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100

It's much easier to pick out and examine someone else's foibles than it is to examine your own. Nowhere is this more true than watching your friends and their kids. Everyone does it to some degree or another, some more and others less. And you wonder how your friends turned out to be parents like that. This is a sentiment that can skew positively or negatively (often both), but it's always there.

Many if not most of your friends have kids too by this point. And as you compare no [...]

Do It For The Germs

admin@squareparents.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Kids - at daycare, the playground, in the lair of the rodent, at the pediatric dentist's office, wherever - are Cadillacs for microbes. Germs pimp the ride with the kids and travel in style on the best gravy train ever. The common rhinovirus never met a kid it didn't like.

Daycare is the Tahiti of the common cold virus: a room full of little kids running around, sharing lunch, tackling each other, dropping things on the floor or ground then put [...]

Bedtime Stories

admin@squareparents.com — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Newsflash from the UK: Many UK parents have given up reading Grimm's Fairy Tales because they're either distressing to the kids, not PC enough, or any one of a number of reasons that someone had enough time to ponder and object to. The article cites the parents as determining that the stories don't carry "the right message," and that "caring parents feel that the bedtime stories could emotionally damage kids."

How's this for emotionally damaging to kids: witnessing a parent afraid [...]

Terrible Thirties

admin@squareparents.com — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100

There's a lot made of the so-called terrible twos. The so-called terrible twos is actually a misnomer, and has probably stuck because of the nice alliterative device. The truth is, they're much worse at three, and for a variety of reasons. They've begun to lie, have their own ideas about how the world should work according to them, possess a shockingly literal form of reasoning that evolves at light speed on a daily basis, and are able to flawlessly imitate things and behaviors that they s [...]

Binge and Purge

admin@squareparents.com — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100

The holiday excitement's over, and it's back to the usual grind, slipping gradually back into regular schedules and doing normal things and back to the same hassles. In the weeks following the holidays, though, there are some added wrinkles, namely all of the new stuff that's accumulated as a result of the holidays. There's just more stuff, and there always is.

Now is the time to take drastic action. Just do it. Purge the old toys, and perhaps even some new ones. This is not eas [...]