More Parenting Definitions

Last time around, a commenter observed that I seem to be coming up with sniglets here, which I'm sure he meant as an insult, but which I have decided to treat as a compliment.

Baguette Skins – the crusty shell of a baguette that your kids leave for you to eat after pulling out and eating the soft fluffy bread center.

Drive-Thru Swap – After driving-thru at Wendy’s or McDonalds on one day to grab a meal for your kids, when you intentionally drive your spouse’s car through the drive-thru the following day so that the fast food employees do not recognize that you’re feeding your kids fast food every day.

Handshake Drugs – A style of paying a babysitter employed by most parents, where the money is palmed and handed over to the babysitter in the most discreet way possible (Why? Are we worried that our kids secretly think that the babysitter has a platonic crush on them, and that’s why she comes over?)

Sandwich Birth Order – When you have three or more children, with only the youngest and oldest of the same gender, like Girl Boy Boy Boy Girl.

Living Close to Home

There’s an odd thing in other major America cities: Other City bars. Washington or Chicago have “Boston bars” or “Ohio State bars” or “New York bars.” Cleveland doesn’t have any Other City bars, I’m pretty sure because no one from other cities ever actually moves here, or at least not enough of them to support a bar. Practically everyone that’s here in Cleveland is from here or from around here.

But several other cities have Cleveland bars. And therein lies the problem.

When they grow up, my kids are going to grow up and they are going to move away. I’m trying to come to grips with that, the fact that it is highly likely that they aren’t going to live anywhere near Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland is the 15^th largest metropolitan area in the nation, yet young kids clear out of this place like they clear out of Podunk Population 102 towns throughout the Midwest (and like they clear out of Lincoln Park in Chicago on December 23).

I said a few weeks ago that I was going to explain reasons that I wanted to have 3 children. This is one of the reasons: I live in Cleveland, Ohio, and if you live in a Cleveland and want to have at least one kid stay in the area once they grow up, you better have a whole bunch of kids to improve the odds. In fact, 3 probably isn’t enough.

Living close to home is underrated in our society. A lot of people, particularly in the upper middle class and above, act like if their career calls for it, they’ll move anywhere. Especially in academia. People assume that if you’re offered a slightly better professorship across the country, you’ll pick up and move for that slightly better job. But it’s everywhere. Good students often go to the best college or doctoral program they can get into. Doctors go to work for the best hospital they can get a residency at.

Sometimes I hear someone about to move for a “better career opportunity” and I think that they must be joking. In my life, I would have moved for friends, for better weather, for love, to get laid more or to be near family. Moving for a career … yuck. That kind of requires you to admit that you want to have a career in the first place, requires you to admit that you’re into your career, that you care deeply about your career. I’m just too immature for that.

Technically I grew up 60 miles away from where I live now, but my wife grew up a mile away, and I think living where you generally grew up is a great thing. Your friends are your lifelong friends, and you know their parents and their families firsthand, not just from stories. Your relationship with your parents turns into one of equals as see each other enough to learn to live with one another, instead of continuing into your 30’s the somewhat stunted relationship so many have when they live away from their folks and only see their parents for a week a year (and, during that week, 24 hours a day is spent with them, inevitably bringing back all the old frictions). If your brothers and sisters stick around, you not only maintain a relationship with them, but develop one with your nieces and nephews.

This summer, my wife and a friend, both drawing on their decades of experience with the Cleveland area, put together a set of Cleveland-centric kids’ activities that was really impressive, a list they never could have figured out if they weren’t from here. I’m trying not to turn this into a love letter to Cleveland. The ability to do that could be true about any city someone is from. But having my wife from here, we know where the closest drive-in and putt-putt courses are, which playgrounds have the new equipment, the best place to see a sunset out on the lake, a good route for a family bike ride, the street that are full of college kid rentals, which Chinese places are crappy and which are worth bothering with. We know that all of the Rib Cook-offs in town are a rip off. We know where to sit so we can see the Air Show for free and which fireworks are the best and where to sit for them too. We get to actually go see the sports teams that we love, and listen to the hometown team on the radio and on the local news. And, on the love letter to Cleveland side of things, here’s a list: Cedar Point, Towpath, Voinovich Park, MOCA, Parade the Circle, the West Side Market, Beachland Ballroom/Cleveland Agora/Grog Shop, the Saffron Patch, The Colony and all the Lee Road bars; Coventry Road; The 4^th of July at Public Square; the Feast of the Assumption; Slyman’s; Put-in-Bay; University Circle generally; all the amazing bridges over the Cuyahoga. And that just scrapes the surface.

I know very much how sexy the lure of other cities was for me, and will be for my kids. New York is an amazing beast of a city. Chicago, at its best, feels like a Cleveland or a St. Louis or a Milwaukee, but just hipper and bigger and smarter and faster and better looking. Columbus and Indianapolis are just so damn friendly. I understand the impressive pluses of a Denver or a San Diego or a Seattle or a Sante Fe or a Boston (Dallas and Atlanta, on the other hand … those I don’t get at all).

But you don’t pick from scratch. You're from somewhere.

And I am going to tell my kids exactly that some day. You are not an asylum seeker coming in from a foreign country and freshly choosing where to live from a menu of choices. You have a history here. You don’t pick from scratch.

I won’t unduly pressure them (OK, I probably will unduly pressure them, but I hope I won’t), but I really do hope that my kids live around here when they’re grown. Living elsewhere doesn’t mean that they don’t “get it,” but if they live here, I’ll have one more data point of proof that they do “get it.” And really, I think that they’ll have a more satisfying life if they live here.

But I also think that I’ll have a more satisfying life if they live here. I mean, I’m (hopefully) not moving, and I like my kids, quite a bit, and expect to like them for a long time. And I’ll tell them that too.

Allowance? What's In It For Me

Probably belatedly, the wife and I began giving our 8 and 4 year old kids' allowances this past Winter/Spring. After doling out the allowance for a good 6 months or so, I've realized several things that make me wonder why I didn't start handing out the dough several months' earlier.

First, holding the allowance over their heads is an excuse to make your kids do chores around the house, something my wife is semi-successfully using. My children are fighting back, of course, utilizing their world-class whining skills, largely bringing the standoff to a draw, but at least my wife is armed now in this battle to try to get them to do chores and clean their rooms.

Second, as part of my attempt to emulate life from 1950's TV shows, I have a change bowl near the back door of my house into which I deposit the contents of my pockets at the end of each day. The allowances are normally drawn, in part, from that change bowl. In the past, change sometimes mysteriously went missing. I don't know that the kids had any real intent to steal; it was just that the ownership of the change was never firmly established and it seemed like just another toy to them. Now that they know that they are getting paid from the bowl, if anyone touches the bowl they come running to me to tell. No one is cutting off their source of funds!

But really, the most important reason to give an allowance is that is serves as a magic cloak that you can wear when hanging out in the checkout aisle of a store with your kids. They want tic tacs, a crappy yo-yo, a cigarette lighter? There's no need for you to buy them anything. All you need to do is say "maybe you can spend your allowance on this." (note: when kids get older, you can change the response to the more brusque "what the hell do I give you an allowance for?"). Of course, they never have the money with them.

(note: don't fall prey to the "I'll pay you back" line. They are your kids. They owe you, if you think about it, tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in room and board, educational expenses, etc., none of which you're ever going to see. What makes you think they're going to pay you back for the $1.50 they just borrowed from you? Also, payday lending is getting outlawed in many states, so you can't charge them high interest rates anymore, so it's just not profitable).

With these benefits, there's no doubt in my mind that providing an allowance is a good idea. The problem I'm having now is determining the proper amount. One of the divorced kids from my kids' school is was alleged to be getting over $10 by the second grade by compensating parents. The children of the hippies at our kids' school are getting nothing still ("Teach kids about money! No way! Down with capitalism!"). Right now I'm giving my 3rd grade $3-4 a week and the kindergartener $1.50 a week, but I have no idea if that's the right amount or not. I didn't think I'd be able to get away with giving them different amounts, but the younger one hasn't thought to complain yet. Actually, since he normally leaves the money lying around the house on the floor anyway, if he complains I'll just up his allowance to $100 a week, since I'll be able to get it back at the end of the day anyway just by walking around and picking it up.