We were at the playground where Chandra was playing on one of those spinny things, taking turns with another boy. I overheard her say–very matter-of-factly–to the boy, “You look like a monkey.”
The little boy was Black.
I instantly picked up Chandra with a stern, “That is not a nice thing to say.” and carry her off. Chandra melted down as she knew she did something wrong. After three minutes of demanding “space” she calmed down enough to where we could find the family to go apologize. Which was adequately done.
Then came the second part, the conversation with the other dad. I explained what my daughter said, her apology and mine. Then I tried to ask, “Is there anything else you think I should talk about with my daughter?” It was hard asking a question, since it can very easily come off as, “And how do you think we should solve systemic racism in America?” and/or putting the burden on them to solve my problem. But I think it was important for me to put myself in the place of seeking help. The other dad was very calm about it, he thought that it fundamentally came from a place of honesty, similar to how his daughter has two friends she calls brown Sarah and white Sarah. It’s important to talk about differences to we don’t accidentally impart a sense of faux color-blindness. It was a good conversation and I hope to see them again at the park.
After an extensive debrief with the Benalish Mom, we settled on the following:
Don’t freeze.
This is learned skill that I adopted from a friend who has an MD in child psych and three kiddos. If something happens that requires discipline, take action immediately, even if it’s the middle of a wedding ceremony. Pick them up and remove them from the situation so you can parent without the distraction of being the center of attention.
It’s not just your offspring, it’s also you.
For me, it wouldn’t be enough to just send Chandra to bellow an apology. It was important to have a conversation with the other dad. First, so he would have all the facts. What if his son mentioned, “A little girl said I looked like a monkey.” on the drive home? Second, I felt like I had to own my portion of what happened (more on that below) and share in the shame. There’s a line (I think it’s Ibrahim Kendi but I’m not sure) that if you want to be a force for positive change, then you have to be willing to put your privilege at risk. I have the power of ignoring that this happened and distance myself from it by putting it entirely on Chandra to apologize. She’s three years old. Clearly I have culpability here.
Review unthinking choices
What culpability is that? Well due to the legacy of redlining in our neighborhood and the economic realities of full-time childcare, we realized that this was probably the first time Chandra had played with a Black child her own age since developing language. Sure we read lots of books with a diverse cast of characters, but there is no substitute for human interaction. As such, we’re going to make sure that we take the time and plan outings further out from out neighborhood. Be in places where we are the only white faces (in restaurants, parks etc.).
Defector is a truly lovely website that defies easy description. I guess I would call it a sports website if only 20% of the articles are about sports. One of their regular columnist is just coming back from paternity leave and has a great insight on babies: you must have One Good Trick. Take it away Chris:
In order to capture maximum engagement from the baby, you must have at least one move, and your move had better be strong. Her grandmother’s move is “Patty cake,” and it is the Dirk Nowitzki one-legged fall-away of go-to baby moves. Unfortunately, once the baby has experienced grandma’s “Patty cake,” you cannot hope to utilize it in your own bag of tricks. You simply cannot execute the “rolllllllllllllll it” line with grandma’s irresistible suppressed giggle, nor can you hope to hit the supersonic pitch she reaches for the first syllable of “put it in the oven for baby and me!” Your “Patty cake” would be like the Dirk fadeaway executed by Aleksej Pokuševski. The baby would simply swat it back in your face.
Similarly, do not hum the theme song from Bonanza while rapidly cycling the baby’s legs. Her uncle does a best-in-class version of this, and the baby practically screams with excitement at it, and your rendition, by comparison, will be shit.
So now I’m trying to remember what my bag of tricks was for Baby Chandra. Like all things parenting, these neurons get blown away pretty quickly (i.e. chronic sleeplessness). The classic was a thrilling rendition from Pride and Prejudice (the last live show I watched with Benalish Momma) of the pompous clergyman, Mr. Collins. The actor had a great, grandiloquent, “My lord AND patron… Lady Catherine de Bourgh!!” that I adapted for Chandra. The key was to launch her hands into a position of victory/triumph for the shouted “de BOURGH!!!”
That and I would balance diaper cream on her forehead and belly when changing her diaper. But I think that was mostly for my entertainment. Anyway, good column and very entertaining comment section with the parents chiming in with their signature moves.
It is known that one of the best payoffs of parenting is indoctrination. Yes yes, we all want to avoid the pitfalls of forcing your child to dance to the dreams of the parents. But wouldn’t it be AWESOME if you could get them to play Super Mario Bros. 3 with you in two player mode and enjoy what you grew up with? Let’s just leave aside the fact that you would be trying to get them to enjoy a 30-year old game.
Anyway, the Benalish Momma leaves me to do daycare drop-off in the mornings. This means I have total control over Lil’ Chandra’s sensory inputs for ~15 minutes a day. To some this might not sound like to much. To those I say: you lack vision. So let the indoctrination begin with… orchestrated video game music!
It’s a pretty short jaunt from playing video games, to listening to video game music (litereally designed to be easy background listening) to then getting classy and enjoying orchestrated video game music.
It’s worth noting that I’m allowed to listen to this on the Sonos only while cooking. The moment–and I really do mean to the second–the cooking is finished, the Benalish Momma smoothly changes the channel back to KEXP or something similar. What’s particularly amusing about this is that this house rule grew up organically without ever being explicitly discussed.
I want to be clear that the payoffs are worth it. Is it incredibly adorable when your toddler requests, “Center of Commerce”? It is! Side note: Octopath Traveller was a JRPG with a fantastic battle system, truly astounding music, and was deeply hollow with how they set up the episodic plot. Happy to rant about this in the comments.
I’ve been getting more ambitious lately. I introduced one of the battle themes but called it the “Jumping music” when Lil’ Chandra was feeling bouncy. Now she also requests, “Decisive Battle” from time to time. Success!
As our earlier entry, often it’s great to find a toddler book that you know you can reliably find several dozen more of to keep your brain from melting into a puddle of goo. However, it can also be great to find a good “one-off” book. Either for a gift, or change of pace, or just some elephant and piggie fatigue. Here are some winners in the Benalish household:
Escargo
Bonjour! This is an adorable story of a snail and his journey across the book and the sadness of how no one ever chooses the snail to be their favorite animal. There is a salad at the end of the book, a perfect salad with a light vinaigrette and *no carrots*. Or are there?!? Fun fourth-wall breaking and a great opportunity to try out your best French accent. “Au contraire! I can be very fast! I am the wind itself!”
Dragons love Tacos
A staple, so this is hardly an “under the radar” book, but a fun story of dragons, their well-known love for tacos, and best practices on holding a taco party to befriend said dragons. Just make sure you don’t have any spicy sauce. Has some fun “act along” bits “Hey dragons! How do you feel about spicy sauce??” that remain a hit.
The Rabbit Listened
This is a little more on the “let’s all just have a good cry together” spectrum, but it’s an adorable story on listening, frustration, feelings and all the rest. Frankly, it’s a pretty instructive read for the non-toddlers too. You mean I’m *not* supposed to leap straight to solving a problem? Sometimes I should just listen? Cosmic.
What do you do with a Problem?
I’m cheating slightly since there are some “sequels” (What do you do with an Opportunity, etc.) but another one of those, “Fun to read… yet also a very good reminder to adults on best practices of Being an Adult.” The art is really solid too: evocative to read and a good page turner.
The Five Forms
A young girl finds a book of ancient Chinese wushu (“kung-fu”) and chaos ensues! The author’s son is apparently a serious practitioner of wushu so the physiology of the difference stances and philosophy of the forms are all quite accurate. And while I’m probably at one extreme of enjoying a toddler practicing “Heron” and “Dragon” forms, I suspect many others might as well.
Reading books to your loving, adoring child is a true highlight. Trapped into repeating “Lonky Zonky goes Kablooee” for the 39th time to your squirming, not-asleep child is a definite circle of hell. That said, for some reason there are books that are a delight to repeat. Also key: if there are multiples by the same author. This helps keep the books fresh while reducing search costs. Below are a selection of the Best of the Best for Team Benalish.
A grand champion of children’s lit, Mo Willems was a former Sesame Street animator and his books are just rock solid. From breaking the fourth wall (We are in a Book), to a trilogy of loss and redemption (the Knuffle Bunny saga), to a reluctant pigeon, Mo Willems is both prolific and shockingly funny/clever/heartfelt.
This is a little more Benalish Dad-centric, but it turns out that there’s a generation of D&D nerds who graduated to parenthood and are eager for instructional ABC books that read, “C is for Chupucabra with a lot to digest. D is for Demon who can be such a pest.” Fun, nerdy, and with delightful pictures, the authors have been branching out into some longer form material too.
Frankly, more children’s books would benefit from a touch of dark humor, and this story of a bear who lost his hat, and the lengths to which he would go to recover it, is actually pretty funny. Great art too.
Written by Neil Gaiman (of Neverwhere and other dark contemperary fantasy), it’s a story of a panda with a big, big sneeze. Also has a good building rhythm, (“Are you going to sneeze?” “Ah, AHH, AHHHHH. No.”)
Translated from Japanese, these books are an absolute delight. Also a very nice change of pace from Western toddler literature, these books follow two sisters on their semi-magical, very low key journeys through the woods, the town, the snowy day, etc.
Part of the “Wordless Trilogy” these books are in fact, quite wordless. But the gorgeous art (and a modern retelling of “Harold and the Purple Crayon”) is very fun to read and create the story along with your Nugget.
Several months ago my father pushed a book into my hands. Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood. I carefully explained to him that Lil’ Chandra isn’t even in preschool yet. With a haunted look in his eyes (I have a younger sister), he carefully enunciated, “You cannot begin to prepare too early.” So it sounds like I have *that* to look forward to.
But the good news is that the read was both highly entertaining and pretty interesting. The author is a therapist at an all-girls school, so she interwove stories (some highly amusing) with the academic literature. The basic conceit comes from Anna Freud, that teenage girls transition into adulthood along seven dimensions: ending childhood, finding a new tribe, harnessing emotions, contending with adult authority, forward planning, romance, and self-care. Any given young woman might be at different developmental stages among the strands, it’s not like they move in lockstep.
Hasn’t been a lot of Magic lately, simply because we tackled the next major boss fight: potty training. My basic parenting paradigm boils down to “pick as few conflicts as possible, but commit to victory in the ones you do fight.” Sure I’d prefer it if Lil’ Chandra wouldn’t whack the table with her wooden spoon, but I’m not going to die on that hill. The corollary to that is that the parents need to know when there is a fight looming and prepare accordingly. The last one was sleep training, over two years ago. I describe it as “a fight” because you’ve reached a stable equilibrium with nighttime feedings and you have to deliberately disrupt it to get them to stop feeding every 2-3 hours and start sleeping through the night.
Well it turns out potty training is a lot like that except this time they are armed with poop. The Benalish Phalanx adopted the Oh Crap methodology by Jamie Glowacki. It’s a pretty interesting read and a pretty hardcore take. Her stance is pretty simple: potty training consists of teaching your offspring to recognize the feeling of having to pee or poop and take action (tell someone, remove the pants, &c &c) accordingly. If you think about it from their point of view, diapers are a pretty sweet deal. They don’t have to do anything and someone else does all the work! So you have to commit to break it. Pick a fight.
I swear this isn’t a staged photo
So back to the book. She spends the first 25% scaring the crap out of you: tales of kindergartners with atrophied bladder control so they constant wet themselves in school, etc. She then lays out a simple groundwork to do a clean break from diapers in “blocks”: no pants then commando then short outings then you’re done! It reads very easy, though in the author’s defense she spends a lot of time running through the various contingencies.
Here’s the rundown. The first day (or more) is spent in the house with no pants while you watch your child like a hawk. Your goal is to learn the tells that they have to potty (hopping, dancing, slight crouch etc.) then you whisk them to the potty, get them to pee in the target, and celebrate. Once that is complete, you add pants (or a dress) so they practice their own agency: pushing the pants down first &c. Once that is complete, you start working in brief outings. So how did we do?
Captain’s Log
12/13/19
We took Friday off work to start “Block One”, no pants and taking turns watching Chandra like a hawk. You stuff them full of apple juice so they get more reps (might be peeing as often as every 20 minutes). No asking, just firmly stating, “time to sit on the potty” and hope luck strikes. It’s worth noting that you really do have to stare at them unflinchingly. I got distracted once while on duty and there was an immediate accident. Still, by the afternoon we felt in rhythm with no accidents and the Benalish Momma and I actually congratulated ourselves on how well it went and how it could only get worse.
Double sweaters were her sartorial choice to offset the lack of pants
12/14/19
We were correct: it got worse. We put pants back on, which reduced the cuteness by 20% but also reduced paper towel consumption by 80%. The day began in disaster: two immediate accidents while there was a parental “discussion” occurring. Once was coincidence but two caused us to shelve the “conversation” and just seethe quietly until nap-time. We switched from pants to a dress, got some wins, then a truly pissed bed-wetting during the nap. Friends came over bringing delicious take-out, which was welcome. But the distraction of just having people around caused a serious backslide before bed. Here are the notes from the day:
8:20: failure, at the chest, no hopping just peed. Cried, embarrassed. 8:40: failure. Parents arguing, I missed a cue, cried, embarrassed 9:50: failure. Was looking at the lights right by the potty, spinning, and then peed. No crying, a little embarrassed 10:10: success! Wearing a dress, went over and peed, no prompt or warning. 10:20: poop success! Some farting, she sat a few times, then pooped while looking at us
NOTHING
3:30: wetted bed during nap. Pretty angry for a while 4:05: pouch offered and snack. “Apples on fire” (see right.) 425: tried, read DT, said poop but nothing 450: walked over to the potty and peed. 525: tried, read DT, nothing 630: failure, jumping with friend while dad was shouting downstairs for help, ironically 730: finally asleep.
12/15/19
Entering the final day before returning to day care, morale was very low. It felt like almost no progress was made yesterday, worried about daycare, just no fun. then Chandra shined like a glorious, peeing-on-command star! There was one “accident” when I refused her a juice pouch and then had a hot streak.
12/16/19
We dropped Lil Chandra off at daycare with a stack of spare pants and whispered prayers. Upon afternoon we were informed that she pitched a perfect game! The celebration and smugness was tangible.
You get the idea.
Nighttime training
We chose to do the “Full Cortes”: burn the boats, no retreat, the only way out is through. There were to be no diapers in the house: not for naps, not for bedtime, nothing. This is just rolling the dice for naps, but for bedtime wake them every x hours to try and pee them. How often is x?
Good fucking question!
There is no answer to this and the first few days are just guess-and-check. Here’s the log from Night 2:
Bedtime @ 8:10: after two bluffs of claiming wanting to potty then nothing, she peed the third time with me. Wtf. 1:15 am: wet the bed 4:00 am: dry, sat on the potty nothing. Went to bed, then she said “I need potty”, put her back on the potty and she peed while I walked around. Bluffed another, went to bed. 7:15 am: woke up dry. Morning poop downstairs.
This was exhausting and a very unwelcome throwback to infant feeding (waking 2-3 times a night to start). However, I think it was really helpful. There’s no mixed messages of “sometimes diapers, sometimes not”, it hardened my resolve to get it right since there is no going back, and it gave Lil Chandra some extra chances to feel the sensation of having to go to the bathroom. Cons: it was very, very exhausting. However, we are down to a single waking right now, steadily increasing how long she holds it, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
tldr
Potty training is hard, there’s no way around it. The author recommends doing it earlier rather than later (20-30 months) as they are less willful and–to repeat–they are the ones armed with feces. I would recommend Oh Crap, but that’s the danger of the sample size of one: all I really know is that it worked for us. Here are some supplementary pieces of advice
Make a long weekend of it and tag-team it. Staring unblinking at your child is exhausting and trading off 1-hour shifts really helps
Schedule *nothing* for that weekend. Seriously, NOTHING. No house projects, no visitors, no outings. If friends want to help, have them drop off food and leave. One parent is completely committed to staring at the child and the other is doing the basics keeping the household intact (food prep, cleaning etc.)
Make sure that all parental figures are on the same page for the plan and the strength of will.
I do recommend doing the simultaneous nighttime training, but it sucks.
It is hard to find a “good weekend” to potty train. We’re busy, there’s always something that needs doing, or upcoming travel. I get it. But calendars abhor a vacuum so it’s on you to proactively carve out the space to do it.
One interesting side-effect of checking out ebooks from the library is that by the time the book arrives, I completely forget who recommended it or why. But Kindle told me that Positive Discipline was checked out, so off I went.
The good news is that it started off with a bang. It made a really fascinating distinction: discipline and punishment are actually two very different words that get blurred together when talking about parenting. Think of the discipline of a samurai or monk; it’s not really about punishment per se.
Unfortunately that was the peak. The rest of the book was just recycling the most generic parenting advice you could possibly imagine. Be nice to your spouse. Have a shared plan. Don’t physically harm your child. In fact, there’s probably some sort of literary drinking game where you take a shot each time the authors exhort you to “not spank”. You probably won’t make it out of chapter 2 without acute alcohol poisoning, but you’ll have a lot more memorable experience.
The shallowness of this book was kind of a mystery to me until I realized that the original book is just “Positive Discipline”. So this version, ages one to three, is either filling in a gap or a delightful cash grab to help cover the authors’ second mortgage. So I’ll read the real version (by process of elimination appropriate for 4+) when we get a little closer to that particular Rubicon.
After the unqualified success of our first trip with Lil’ Chandra, we tempted fate again and did another two week trip with her!
Have a plan for the plane
When Lil’ Chandra was last on an airplane, she was a tiny nugget, easily contained, easily pleased with a bottle, and happy to snuggle on your chest and fall asleep. None… none of those things are true anymore. There are opinions, there is a schedule, and there is mobility. For our 9-hour flight, she skipped her nap, was delirious for four hours, and then collapsed two hours before landing. Both ways. Aside from the basics (food), I recommend bringing the following:
During Lil’ Chandra earliest (and pre-earliest) days, I tried to keep a semi-regular journal of what was helpful and what was not helpful. What resources did we keep going back to and which baby classes had me pleading with the Benalish Momma to cut class at lunch. What’s funny about it is that the sleep deprivation is so real, I have almost no memory of any of this. However I have reason to trust the author knew what he was talking about at the time. –May 2019
So you’re having a baby! Congratulations! We’ll start off with the first rule: YMMV. You’re Mileage May Vary. Much like wedding planning (and anything else that is both expensive and emotionally fraught) the only rule is to figure out what works best for you as a couple. Plus, there is a major “N of 1” problem with all parenting advice: just because it worked for Lil’ Chandra does not guarantee that it will work for you. I tried to keep everything here at a higher level, more of a framework for the struggles we faced and how we made decisions. This is a sketch of what worked out for our family. This has into two parts, the pre-birth prep and the whole “omg baby” part.
Benalish Dad 