SquareParents.com - Cool Stuff For Cool Parents

Exactly One Gazillion Pieces

Written by The Square Parent Friday, 29 May 2009 00:00

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?

Expert Advice

Written by The Square Parent Friday, 03 April 2009 00:00

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.

School Daze

Written by The Square Parent Tuesday, 31 March 2009 00:00

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.

New Forms of Entertainment

Written by The Square Parent Monday, 30 March 2009 00:00

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 other everyday ways of doing things out of necessity are no longer in widespread use.  

What A Drag It Is Getting Old

Written by The Square Parent Tuesday, 17 March 2009 00:00

... 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 gradually become a geezer, or worse, your friends do.  And soon, you're trying to retain some degree of hipness, which then devolves into an attempt at reasonable stylishness, then avoiding frump and slobishness until eventually you just really don't care any more.  And on with the mundane things.

Then there's the direct corollary to this, which is the parents that dress and act like kids.  For some reason it's so difficult to grow older gracefully, and accept the different stages of life.  Apparently, the best antidote against this is to look and act like a kid.  As such, this MO usually produces the worst behaved children, primarily because there's no adult supervision.  Exhibit A is some of the Supernanny episodes, where some of these homes are basically Lord of the Flies type situations.

Now, this brings up the subject of the French.  They sort of act like adults, they certainly dress well enough, drink a lot of decent wine, eat well, and in recent years have been easy enough to find as tourists in any major American city, buying up trinkets and baubles like camcorders and iPods to take home as souvenirs.

The central point is that the French, even with kids in tow, do not do frumpy.  The kids play way more soccer, but try going to some Parisian soccer field and seeing a mom wearing sweats with the words "Hot Momma" printed on the ass in gangsta script.  This is not to say that they're in any way more "sophisticated" than Americans or any similar nonsense.  But it is to say that as adults, they do have a sense of self, and are comfortable with it.     

It would be easy to opine endlessly about the finer points of French culture, the tragic history, the more salient aspects of the nanny state, a long-established tradition of urban living without significant suburbanization, or any other abstract ideas, like the superimposition of nice clothes against all of the dogshit in the streets. 

The thing is, they dress and act like adults around their kids, and have a very well developed sense of adulthood, too, at least on some levels.  They do not try to dress young, and in fact, the opposite holds true - the kids in France are often better dressed than many American frumpsters.  The French kids also tend to be better behaved.

It can't be simply a matter of money, because they actually have less per capita than many Americans, Canadians, or the Japanese.  The more likely explanation is that they're doing it intentionally.   It's something that they think is important, care about, pay attention to, and invest effort into.  This simply can't be that taxing, after all, the French can do it.

All it takes is prioritization, some focus, a little attention, and the will to actually care about what one looks like in public.  It doesn't even take that much money, really, just an easily developed sense of style, or more importantly, of self.

There are enough makeover programs out there.  Watch What Not To Wear or other similar Bravo programs, and follow the cues.  Don't go for literal translations of the people they're using as examples, but rather follow their lines of reasoning, and think about the explanations very carefully.  It's not what to think about specific pieces of clothes, it's how to think about the whole.

But above all, don't do frumpy and don't do kid.  Frump isn't the opposite of dressing and behaving like the kids, it's a different side of the same coin.  

Be stylish, but grown-up stylish.  Look and act like an adult.

What a drag it is getting old.