Star Trek Parenting

My daughter is eighteen months old. Her favorite word is "dog". She loves dogs. Whenever she sees one, she gets excited, points, and calls out "Dog! Dog! Dog!"

Sometimes she does this whenever she sees a cat, or a rabbit, or even a squirrel. This is quite understandable: she's generalizing furry, four-legged animals as dogs. Sometimes, however, she does this to people, which was a bit worrisome.

And sometimes she does this when there's nothing to point at. She'll point in the general direction of trees and brush and say "Dog," when there is no dog, or any other animal, present. This vexed me until last night, when I suddenly realized what was going on.

In the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Benjamin Sisko encounters the beings that the Bajorans call "the Prophets" and worship as gods. They have difficulty communicating with each other until Sisko realizes that he experiences time differently than they do. He lives in linear time -- that is, he experiences one moment of time, and cannot move to the past or the future, except in succession. The Prophets, however, experience all points in time simultaneously; they can be in the past, present, and future, all at once.

So, why does my little girl point at nothing and say "Dog"? It's because she, as a very bright and talented child, is not limited to linear time. She experiences the past, present, and future simultaneously. When she points at what I see as nothing and says "Dog", there was in the past, or will be in the future, a dog there.

The Plan

My daughter is sixteen months old. This is one of her electronic toys. Push an animal button, and a voice identifies the animal and then makes its sound. Push a number button, and the voice says the number.

Here's what I have in mind: train my daughter to hit the 6 button three times in succession so that she will do so, without prompting, the next time that her grandmother visits.

Your Kid, Your Responsibility, Our Ears

Amy Alkon relates the story of a woman and her screaming 2-year-old son, who were thrown off a Southwest airlines flight (before takeoff) for causing so much noise. Southwest eventually apologized and gave her a free flight voucher. Alkon expresses my own opinion:

I know, I know -- because I am not a parent I cannot possibly understand how hard it is to keep a child from acting out. Actually, that probably has more to do with the way I was raised -- by parents I describe as loving fascists. As a child, I was convinced that I could flap my arms and fly, but the idea that I could ever be loud in a public place that wasn't a playground simply did not exist for me [...] It really does come down to this: Your right to bring your screaming child on a plane ends where the rest of our ears begin.

There have been times when I've had to leave a public place because my daughter was out of control. It's inconvenient, but my screaming kid is my problem, and other people shouldn't have to put up with her noise.

A parent has a duty to deal with his/her misbehaving child. No one else does.

HT: Instapundit

Parenting Advice

So my daughter is now one year old and crawling all over the place. She absolutely loves books and will often crawl over to her shelf, grab a picture book, and then drag it over for Mommy or Daddy to read to her. When she hands you a book, your job is to read it immediately, and she will let you know quite loudly that delay is unacceptable.

Sometimes she will drag a book over to the dog and prompt him to read it to her. But he is a dog, and so does not. This gets her very frustrated and again, she expresses her feelings vocally. My question is, experienced mothers and fathers: how can I get my dog to be more cooperative?

Winston Churchill Motivational Posters

If you haven't ever seen the blog The Art of Manliness, you must check it out. It is a clarion call for and examination of (an idealized) classical masculinity. Most recently, the authors produced a series of motivational posters using pictures of and quotations by Winston Churchill.

While preparing for the birth of our first child, my wife and I considered different baby names. I thought that if I had a son, he should be named after a great man that he could really look up to. Winston Churchill was easily within the top five (others included George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and William-Adolphe Bouguereau). Well, we had a girl, and my wife prudently pointed out Winston is an odd name. The latter is sad, for Sir Winston would be the sort of man that I would like a son to emulate.

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round for All Eternity

One of the strange things about having a kid is that a new genre of music suddenly invades your life and takes up housekeeping. Many of these songs demonstrate an ability to get stuck in one's head and never leave. That's how, recently, I found myself quietly singing "Baby Beluga" one evening while walking the dog. In public. It couldn't have been something cool, like Metallica's "The Unforgiven" that decided to take up residence in my brain. It had to be "Baby Beluga".

A Winner In Our Bad Parenting Contest

For our contest on bad parenting advice for new daddy Gavin Richardson, the winner is Bro. Dave:

Hold a contest and allow complete strangers to name your next child!

His prize is to name Gavin's next child, as well as mine. That's two names, unless the unlikely occurs and Gavin and I have a child together. But I digress. Dave, claim your prize.

Bad Parenting Advice

Three years ago, when Jeff the Baptist was about to get married, I held a contest to see who could give him the worst marital advice. The comments are filled with unhelpful suggestions.

Now that Gavin Richardson is a first-time daddy, I'd like to hold a similar contest. What is the most ill-conceived and poorly-reasoned parenting advice that you can offer Gavin?

The winner gets to name Gavin's next child, as well as mine.

Civic Involvement as a Parental Duty

In his most recent column, Jonah Goldberg wrote this intriguing statement:

And that’s what I love about dogs. They just don’t care about such things, and they encourage you not to care either — at least while you’re with them. You can’t say the same thing about children, because they grow up and inherit the society we leave behind. Being a good parent requires caring about politics.

Emphasis added. I understand his argument, but I think that it's overstated. It's the same reasoning as Harry Browne's "burning issue trap": that some pressing threat against the common good requires personal sacrifice.

It's possible for one person to have a meaningful impact on public life, but unlikely, and an individual's resources of time, money, and energy are finite. One must spend them wisely.

I'd like to build a better world for my daughter to live in, but I think that my chances of success are extremely low. I can, however, build a better life for her. That lies within my resources; saving the world does not.

So I could, for example, spend a hundred hours writing letters to Congressmen arguing for Second Amendment rights, or I could spend an hour playing with her. The latter is more likely to benefit her than the former.

This is why, though I am very sympathetic to the Tea Party movement, I have not joined any of their protests or made any monetary donations. Because of the unlikelihood that I will effect any significant change on the nation as a whole, any time, money, and energy that I spend on that movement simply deprives my daughter of that same time, money, and energy.

Now if everyone took this attitude, this country would go to hell in a handbasket very quickly. But I'm not trying to be everyone; I'm trying to be me. I'm not trying to determine how everyone should live; I'm trying to determine how I should live. I'm not trying to make my daughter's future world a better place; I'm trying to make her individual life a better one to live. And I think that therein lies my true parental duty.

Bedtime Stories

More Thoughts on Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

I've finished reading this book. I like Browne's assertion that the individual is the only legitimate judge of how he or she shall live. But I disagree with him on some points.

1. Consequentalist morality.
Browne asserts that morality is entirely relative to the individual, and that such a system works:

Neither do I have to worry about whether anyone is "getting away" with anything. I am not the world's policeman. I know that everyone will experience the consequences of his own acts. If his acts are right, he'll get good consequences; if they're not, he'll suffer for it. The consequences are the only standards that matters -- and I'm certainly not needed to impose those consequences. (349)

This strikes me as incredibly unrealistic. Under this moral system, if a thief breaks into your house and robs you, he hasn't done anything wrong so as long as he doesn't get caught and face consequences.

At minimum, a moral code requires individuals to respect each others' lives, liberty, and property, because...well, because people have a right to live, live as they choose, and have stuff so as long as it doesn't infringe on other people's rights to do likewise.

2. Marriage.
Harry Browne rejects marriage as a concept. He thinks that no relationship should be a permanent commitment, but only at the consistent mutual desire of all of the parties involved. To an extent this is true, but he envisions love as an uncontrollable emotion that can either come and go. But love can be an action verb, a conscious decision made between consenting parties. Marriages can be crushing and soul-consuming, but they don't have to be.

3. Children.
I see the decision to be a parent to be a permanent commitment over a lifetime. I may not always financially support my daughter for her entire life, but I will always love her, and I will certainly support her until she is able to take that responsibility for herself. Browne proposes that if a parent grows weary of a child, simply place that child up for adoption and be free. In his understanding of parenting, a parent is not morally required to remain in the parent-child relationship indefinitely. Browne himself had not seen his own daughter for nine years at the time that this book was published, and he was okay with that, because it was an acceptable price to pay to get free from his marriage. As he sees it, the desire to be free is cause enough to abandon spouses, children, and anything else that impedes one's personal freedom.

I disagree. The desire to be free does not provide justification to abandon all commitments of responsibility.

A Nursery Rhyme That I Have Modified for My Daughter

Five little zombies
I once knew
Big ones, small ones, skinny ones, too
But the one little zombie

That was missing an arm
He led the others with his
"Rhrarr, Rharr, Rhrarr!"

Down to the village
They would go
A-stagger, stagger,
Stagger, stagger
To and fro

But the one little zombie
That was missing an arm
He led the others with his
"Rhrarr, Rharr, Rhrarr!"

My thanks to my mother-in-law, an elementary school music teacher, for introducing me to this song.

In other undead news: the Boston Police Department used its official twitter feed to confirm that it would warn the public if officers suspected that a zombie outbreak had occurred. (HT: DPUD)

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

It's a children's classic. But I don't like it. Nay, I loathe it, and have for years.

It is a story about a lifelong abusive relationship, and the story implicitly endorses submitting to an abusive relationship -- in the name of love -- as a good thing.

I got to thinking about The Giving Tree after reading this parody of it (H/T). It's more concerned with politics than relationships, but the final page has the tree quite properly telling the boy "You're a real dick."

He sure is.

I've heard it said that it's really about the unconditional love that a parent has for a child. And I'm glad for the unconditional love that my parents have for me. Shoot, they've bailed my adult ass out on more than one occasion. For that, I am grateful, and ashamed that it was necessary for them to do so. But I am certainly not, as the boy is to the tree, never thanking them and only looking for new ways to exploit them.

A better analogy for the story is an abusive spouse. The boy is a husband who orders their lives according to his selfish desires, and regards his wife as only a resource to be drained, physically, emotionally, and financially. And then runs off and has his fun.

Some people get trapped into abusive relationships, and the bonds that trap them are unconditional commitments that they make to love a person, no matter how unworthy that person becomes of that love. The victim sees him/herself as somehow ennobled by a willingness to endure abuse and live a lie for the sake of an ideal.

But there is nothing noble about slavery. There is nothing noble about enduring abuse for its own sake. There is, on the contrary, a moral duty to oneself; to say "I am more than a victim, and I will act accordingly."

This is basically the same rationale I followed when I left Christianity. What I was doing, quite consciously at the time, was exiting an abusive relationship with the Church. There may have been reasons to endure the abuse in silence (e.g. financially provide for my family), but one of those reasons was not that I had an inherent moral duty to do so.

And neither do you. You're a human being, and you're valuable. Whether you want to arrive at that conclusion from an imago Dei perspective, a humanist perspective, or something else entirely, you have intrinsic worth to yourself merely by being human.

You don't have to stay in an abusive relationship. And if anyone tells you otherwise, just say "You're a real dick."

Gun Readiness vs. Gun Security

James Rummel is a professional armed self-defense instructor. I e-mailed him a question about keeping a gun safe from children at home, but still quickly accessible during an emergency. He kindly wrote a lengthy response. Thanks, James!

This Is Inevitable When You Become a Parent

My First Dictionary

My First Dictionary is a hilariously dark satire on modern life in the form of a children's dictionary. HT: Neatorama

Talk to Your Kids about Cooties

[Video Link]

50 Things that Every 18-Year Old Should Know

John Hawkins has a list of suggestions, often similar to my own set of personal laws. What would you add to the list?

HT: Dr. Helen

UPDATE: I think that I'll add some of my own, as I still have a few minutes left on my lunch break:

1. When you move out on your own, invest in a basic set of tools: hammer, screwdrivers, and box-end wrenches, both English and metric.

2. Keep a minimum $2,000 reserve in your bank account at all times.

3. Go to work. Drop trou, bend over, get used to it. Note: you can often choose who you're bending over for, and some pay better than others.

4. Be prepared to move anywhere in the country to find a job.

5. You will not meet and loose the love of your life before the age of 25.

6. You have more options than you think that you do.

7. No one has a right to abuse you, and you have no duty to suffer abuse from anyone.

The Road to Tyranny

I'm afraid that my daughter may have to grow up in a goose-stepping prison society like this.

I blame Obama.

HT: Alphecca

Previously on The Zeray Gazette.

Another Odd Baby-Related Movement.

It's called the Quiverfull movement. I heard about it on NPR this morning.

This is an evangelical Protestant movement in the U.S. which advocates large families on Biblical principles. The name comes from part of Psalm 127, which says that numerous children are a blessing, like a full quiver of arrows.

I would say that this notion would have greater applicability in a society with a lower lifespan and a higher infant mortality rate.

I have encountered variations of the notion that birth control is sinful and that pregnancy should be left up to divine providence. Some of these have struck me as anti-sex, although Quiverfull does not seem to have this bent.

One of the Quiverfull women interviewed on NPR advocated a curious form of evangelism: growing Christianity by outbreeding Islam.

For a contrary approach: vasectomies are on the rise in the U.S. during this recession.