Parenthood: Week 340 – First Grade

First grade has this feeling that it’s the grade where “real school” starts. Yes, I know that the work in school during kindergarten, and junior kindergarten, are essential and critical, but that’s not howit always feels.

For many students, first grade is when they have desk for the first time. This means that the curriculum is more structured and less play based. For my little guy, it means regularly having homework, that really is work.

There isn’t some miraculous developmental leap that occurs the summer before first grade, it’s just the place that we have placed a shift in the school experience for children. In some ways it’s important that we reflect that at home, and in other ways it’s important to push against this.

The effectiveness of the work at school is dependent on the support at home for the work that happens in a school. The highest ranked schools are completely ineffective if the parents aren’t on board, and with parent support and commitment, schools that seem to be of a lower quality can successful serve the educational needs of students. This is why I fully support the work at my son’s school even though I don’t agree with everything about my son’s school.

I’ve been a teacher for fourteen years, and I have Master degree in education. I know what I’m talking about. While this means that I have strong opinions on how I feel that education should be in our country, I’m also smart enough to know that there are many different factors that affect education in our country. So my “agreement,” isn’t essential to supporting my son’s teachers.

Look, I think Ollie gets too much homework. I’m of the philosophy that children overall should get less homework and first graders shouldn’t get any. However, I’m still going to support Ollie in getting his homework done. Ollie needs to work within the structures that are given, and he needs to step up at school from the work he did last year. It’s difficult at times, but this is the push that the school administration and teachers feel is best, so let’s do it.

At other times at home, there’s no need for a push or a “step-up” to another grade. Ollie can play with the same toys, watch the same shows, and read the same books he enjoyed at home last year. He still gets to be as goofy around the house, and he gets to cuddle as much as he wants.  Home is a place of comfort, where you don’t have to have the answers, and instead of being a “grown-up,” you get to be yourself.

Ollie is sometimes really tired when he gets home from school. There’s a lot to manage socially and academically. I appreciate all that they do at school to push him in ways that make him grow. I want to support that at home, at the same time, I feel like he needs a break to not worry so much on how to be and to simply “be.”

Year 10: Week 6 - Queer Eye For The Teacher Guy

When I grow up, I want to be like Jonathan Van Ness. The grooming expert on the new version of Queer Eye is one of my favorite cultural personalities.



I love how Van Ness is proud of different parts of his identity, and I admire the fearlessness that he is willing to share different parts of himself. I appreciate the care in which he uses his privilege and his platform to elevate others and speak about important issues, and I am inspired by how he helps people with care, and love.

One of the things I love about Van Ness is how he expresses joy and enthusiasm. Without shame, and without hesitation, he will scream and jump up and down if something excites him, like when he met Sophie Turner.


This moment is wonderful.  At first glass it seems over the top, but it really feels genuine as the video continues.  Even if it makes some people think he’s geeky, so what? Who doesn’t want to feel this way about the world.

I want to be more like Van Ness when I teach. I don’t want to be phoney, but I want my students to see in a bigger way what I love about music and sharing my time with them. I have enthusiasm inside of me that I sometimes don’t let out. Sometimes it’s a reflection of my nature. I am introverted, and socially more reserved. Other times it’s because my instincts tell me that if I am more stoic, my students will behave better.

Here’s the thing, students may behave better with a teacher a being more serious, but this is only through fear, and a focus on self-control for the sake of compliance.  Students can find a way better way to behave better by being excited to learn by a teacher's genuinely joy.

A student who is witnessing a teacher reading a book or talking about a piece of music an open expression of joy is going to listen closer, and more intently.  The inspiration from this joy will inspire them to work harder with the material.   With a meaningful purpose, student disruptions are less.  Students worked better when they have feel the meaning of the work through a teacher's passion. 

This week it was dancing along with my 3rd graders to a routine I taught them that went along with "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire.  There was my reading of Hip Hop Dog with unencumbered expression and enjoy.  The week also featured me dancing to songs from Moana in front of the student body as students were getting seated before an assembly.

It’s not always easy to do these things, but just like jumping into a swimming pool once I get, it’s awesome and so much fun.  Like swimming it these moments leaves me exhausted, but there's never regrets. 

Parenthood: Week 339 – Sleep Training

Sleeping on the floor next to Ethan’s crib is an improvement…

Ollie really liked his crib as a baby and a toddler. Yes, he had his moments when he needed to be rocked for what felt like hours before he would settle down in his crib, however in general he enjoyed his crib. He would wake up smiling in his crib, and sometimes choose to roll around and play in it. When we eventually moved him into a twin sized bed, we had to teach him that he could get out of his bed to find us and go to the bathroom. He liked his crib so much that he never thought to try to climb out of it. Ollie assumed that his big boy bed was the same and that he needed help to get out of it.

Ethan is different. He didn’t take to being swaddled as well as Ollie did. In addition to being a different person with a different personality, I was a different father. Five years later older, and having him in the winter with less of a paternity leave (my paternity leave with Ollie started in the Spring and carried through summer break) changed my approach. I simply didn’t have it in me to walk around with him in my arms, or rock him to sleep. So instead I would cuddle him in bed with me as he fell asleep.

This became the norm, and for a good portion of the his life he has co-slept with me and Diana. I am not going to get in a co-sleeping debate here. I don’t think that Ethan has any advantage over Ollie because he co-slept with us, and I don’t think Ethan is behind in any ways because he spent so much time cuddling with us in the middle of the night.

Co-sleeping worked out fine for a while, but then Ethan got bigger and more active.  And after Diana got pregnant, we realized that we really had to get him out of our bed. It got to the point that the only time that any of us got any sleep was if I left with Ethan and slept with him in the guest room, or if I left to the guest room and Ethan slept with Diana. Our queen-sized bed simply isn’t big enough for all three of us, let alone a fourth little one growing inside of Diana.

One of my summer goals was to sleep train Ethan. Yeah, that didn’t happen. However just like potty training with Ollie, once I eventually got around to it about a month ago, I regretted not doing it earlier.

I went with the “put the baby in the crib, let him cry for a couple minutes, pick him up to calm him down, and then put him back down, over and over, stay in the room until he falls asleep and get out of there when he's asleep” strategy. The first night this took two hours. Ethan cried and cried. I kept picking him up to calm him and he would scream as soon as I put him back into the crib. At some point late into the night, Ethan was standing and leaning on top of the crib-rail and fell asleep standing up, eventually slumping down onto his mattress.  It was so funny. 

The second night it took forty-five minutes. Within one a week we got to ten minutes of rocking, followed by ten minutes of me sitting on the floor next to the crib. After two more weeks, all Ethan needed to calm down was for me to be sitting or lying or sitting next to his crib.

Like all things in parenting and child development, sleep training doesn’t happen in a straight line. In the past two weeks, I’ve literally slept on the floor next to his crib for hours in the middle of the night. Sometimes it works and I army-crawl back into our bedroom, and other night, it doesn’t. This past week, two times, he slept with me on the floor next to him but he eventually started screaming so I gave up and he needed up in our bed.

I'm not complaining, other parents have it much worse.  It's part of the work of parenting.  It's frustrating a lot of the time, but after seeing how well Ollie sleeps, I know it's worth it. 

And yes, there were many times I simply considered buying a bigger bed laying on the floor at 2 in the morning.  It's not so bad sleeping with a toddler, but at a certain point it just gets weird.  So let's just take care of this before it gets to that point. 

Year 10: Week 5 - Permission

Children spend time holding back who they are, and who they want to be. In the process of exploring the different facets of one’s identity, many of us learn the harsh lesson that this process can in dangerous and can open ourselves up to ridicule from our peers, and disapproval from adults in our lives.
Children think about all of kinds of things, and learn explicitly or through the transfer of social norms that certain things shouldn’t be said, or discussed. These things include  topics around race, gender, feelings, and fears that are some of the most important topics to discuss. However, our students learn that like Voldemort, these thoughts are known and shared by all but not to be spoken out loud.

A classroom full of students who holds back, and don’t speak their mind in a way seems like the preferable situation. This would help with classroom management, and it would make it easier to give instruction. If teaching students to be compliment is the goal of education then let’s keep these children inside of themselves. However, if our goal in education is to help students be active and positive members of a democratic society that fights oppression and refuses to let any person like this current “president,” any power, then we need to give them permission.

We need to give students permission to work slowly when their brains need time to process, and when they are fascinated and want to dig deeper. They need permission to take a different route, to work hard and to get the wrong answer. Students cannot learn unless they are give the space to learn differently.

We need to give students permission to exercise their power. Young people deserve to have their power be acknowledged by adults, and they need our help to learn how to use their to make their own world more equitable, and just. Acknowledging children’s power does not lead to a powerless teacher, it leads to a true sense of responsibility and community.

We need to give students permission to talk about the issues of race and gender that they see in the world around them. Only by teaching children to talk about diversity, can they fully see and understand the oppression and injustice in the world. Too many students feel that the act of acknowledging race is racist, when in reality refusing to articulate race as an observation or an issue is what is truly racist.

We need to give students permission to feel and emote. They need space to reflect on their emotions, and process the powerful and complex feelings that make up the human experience. Only by giving students permission to feel deeply and express feelings in ways that they feel comfortable, can students grow academically, and more importantly, grow as human beings.

We need to give students permission to be fully human, to be weird, to be unique, to be kind, to be angry, to be confusing, to be loved, and to fully love. They need to know that it’s okay to be human and that they aren’t problems to be solved, or students to teach, they are first and foremost people. They deserve to be respected, and valued.

Our students can change the world.  They just need permission. 

Parenthood: Week 338 – Cooking With Children

I choose to cook.

You can’t do everything for your children and your family. It is impossible to cook homemade meals, clean a house, do yard work, help your children with homework, do laundry, do dishes, play with your children, take care of yard work, and have time for self-care. The solution for the modern parent is to simply not do all of these things.

Diana takes on a lot of these duties, many she shares with me, and a lot of other stuff like yard work and house cleaning we pay others to do for us. One thing that I chose to take care of myself is cooking. Many people eat out or take out more often than we do, not because they are bad people, but simply because they choose to take care of their lives, and their families in different ways than I do.

Almost every day I will cook at least one dish. If the meat and starch is leftovers I might roast some broccoli. Three of four times a week I cook a full meal. Sometimes this might include boxed macaroni and cheese, but more often than not I’m cooking most of the meal from scratch.

Often Diana is around to keep the kids out of the kitchenm but many times I’m managing cooking dinner while watching the kids. So here are some tips I’ve figured out over the past six years on how to cook with children around.

1. The Oven Is Your Friend
If you’ve got a little one who is insisting on being held, putting them down in a play pen for ten seconds to slip something in and out of an oven is a lot more effective and safer than trying to hold them (or let them scream) while sautéing something in a pan. If I know I’ve got needy kids on my hands, dinner is roast chicken thighs, roast broccoli and baked sweat potato time. Yes, the stove-top faster, but the oven allows you to not need to actively pay attention to the food, when you need to actively pay attention to your children. 

2. Time Everything
When I’m cooking without my children around, I don’t really feel a need to set timers. I can keeps multiple times in my heads to for different dishes, and I have the ability to check on the progress of food. With kids are involved, my ability to keep track of time completely goes. The only times I’ve ever come close to burning food is when I’m cooking with my children around. So, I run multiple timers, even for a time as short 2 minutes. I’ll keep a timer my phone, on the microwave, and an egg timer while my children refuse to let me pay attention to the food.

3. Prep Whenever You Can
There’s a lot to do around the house after your children go to bed, but if you can spend some time prepping it can make a world of different. Cooking with needing to worry about chopping, slicing, and dicing is a whole different process. You can hold a baby in one arm while you put in prepped ingredients into a chili, but you can’t hold a child and chop at the same time. Parboil potatoes, marinate meats, chop veggies, and measure out spices. The closer you can get to basically have meal prep kit level of readiness, the easier it will be to cook with children.

4. Go With Plan D
I can be a pretty stubborn cook sometimes. When I set my mind to doing something a certain way in the kitchen, I often don’t want to compromise. However, with children around, sometimes you just have to change you plans. That may mean you go with a frozen veggie instead of fresh. Or you start a stew, realize that your children simply will not give you the time and space to cook so you order in a pizza. There’s no shame in holding off on that amazing salmon dish until lunch the next day, if you have to go with plan D to get your family fed.


One of the ways that mother expressed her love to me was through cooking. This is something that I do for my family. Sometimes my children appreciate it more times than others. It can very stressful, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s worth it. However in this crazy world, it’s one thing I can do for my children, one part of their day I can control.  Someday they will realize how I showed them love through food, but for right now knowing I'm doing right by them with the food I put on their plate is enough. 

Year 10: Week 4 - Relationships

There are so many things that make a school special, that make it a place where students feel welcome, safe, see, and known. As children do more of what we say, then what we do, one of the most important ways to ensure that our students have a great school is that the adults value each other, and their contributions.

I have very different relationships with the adults  at my school. All of them are colleagues, and peers. Some are on the side of the spectrum in which we know each other’s names and are cordial with other but that’s it. There are those in the middle of the spectrum with whom we share friendly encounters. And there are friends, real friendships. Some of them are more situational, friendships that are formed and nurtured because we work together and then there are the friendships that have extended beyond the work place.

This past week there have been moments that have reminded me how important these relationships are, and much they mean to me at this school.

There’s the 3rd grade teacher who refers to students and adults around the school as “friend.” She makes a point to do this in front of the children so that they see that she values her relationships with other people. I saw on the other end of the of an empty hallway talking towards me, and as she approached me, she said “good morning, friend,” and with a smile and a nod, it was clear that this wasn’t about putting on a demonstration for her students, she was truly acknowledging me as her friend.

Sometimes a five minute conversations can feel much longer, not because it dragged on but because of the power of the connection during such a short encounters.  This was a chance encounter. We don’t see each other very often, but we have always expressed respect to each other. I asked her how this year had been going, and instead of giving me a polite short answer she opened up about some of the struggles in her family that I see mirrored in my own experience.

Then there was the activity in our faculty meeting. It was an exercise in exploring listening skills and empathy. We partnered up and were asked to share a memory of doing something for the first time. One person told the story while the other person listened and took notes for the purpose of retelling the story at a later time.

When we were asked to partner up none of us really thought too long about it and just paired up with were near us. As we settled down to share, it occurred to me that the person I was sitting across from was one of the first people I met at this school ten years ago. This was a person I shared challenging times, enrichment time and hilarious times with at this school.

This experience, the stories we told each other in the frame of this exercise were shared as friends. What I told her I wouldn’t have told to every person at this school, and perhaps this was the same experience for her. It was a moment of personal sharing, of colleagues learning from each other, and fostering a friendship that is one of the reasons that this space is so special.

Yes, this is personal, and powerful for myself, but it’s also about my students. Students may not explicitly understand the relationships between their teachers, but they can feel it in the interactions between adults, the way teachers share the space in the school.

It’s worth it to stop and spend a couple more minutes socializing with a colleague or taking a chance to get to know someone you don’t know as well. In doing what we expect our students to do, we are helping creating an atmosphere for our children to succeed.  Also working on relationships remind us of the effort and work that we ask our students to do every day as they move through their day and create a community of friends and learners with their peers.

Parenthood: Week 337 - Quality Time

Ollie jumped from rock to rock along the shoreline.

Only a couple minutes earlier he was carefully holding my hand as he navigated the gaps between the large stones that made up the Northwestern University lakefill. The fall air warmed us  gently upon us last Saturday morning as I felt the gently wind off of the lake. Ollie got further and further away from me and for a moment I wondered if he still felt my presence. Then he paused looked back and happily yelled, “daddy.”

Ethan has started Kindermusik class at Northwestern three weeks ago. We’ve been going to campus together for the Saturday morning class. Diana takes Ethan into the class and I’ve been spending time with Ollie on the lakefill. We’ve taken our scooters around and explore the shoreline, and the had the opportunity to spend some time together.

People talk about this idea of “quality time.” One of the compromises of modern parenting is that sense time is often limited with our children, we try to make ourselves and each other feel better by repeating the idea that “it’s not about the quantity of time we spend with our kids, it’s the quality of time.” It’s a nice thought and while I don’t disagree with the idea of quality, there does need to be a certain amount of quantity to build any relationships, and for time to actually be quality. Yes, an hour with your kids when you are distracted by your phone isn’t as meaningful as half an hour when you are actually paying attention to your kid, but why can’t we just have an hour without the phone?

Anyways…

After dropping Diana and Ethan off, I put a timer on my phone so let us know when we had to head back without checking my phone. We followed the path to the lakefill. Explored the rocks and ran around the weeping willows. Underneath one of these trees was a campfire. I showed Ollie how to take the ashes to scrap him name into the stones. We returned to this spot and threw these rocks into the lake and watched the ripples travel across the calm water.

There were times that we talked, and other times when we were silent. Sometimes he told me what he wanted to do and other times I gave him suggestions. Sometimes we would be close holding hands, and other times Ollie was far ahead in the distances. No matter how far away he got, he knew I was there, and even though we didn’t talk, we were sharing something meaningful beyond words. At times I didn’t know what to say to Ollie so I just let the silence sit between us.

Quality time are times when life is hard. When tears come and tantrums occur. The important and meaningful times are not always on beautiful days. Sometimes they do happen on days likes these when forty minutes and each other is all we need to experience what makes life meaningful.

I have to say that I'm proud to know you
And I’ll never be the same because we met
You might not miss this
I will.