Hair We Go Again

By: Ted Peterson

 

I think we’ve got a pretty good handle on most aspects of parenting Mikey. The care and feeding of our three-and-a-half-year old hasn’t exactly gotten boring, but the “Oh my God, what the hell are we doing?” moments seem rarer and shallower than once they did.

The exception to this is on the subject of hair. Completely falling into the cliché of the clueless Caucasian parents, the hair of our kinky-haired heir is, pun intended, quite a tangled web.

The cliché seems to be true even among the rich and famous. While browsing around a web board for advice for our son’s hair care, I came upon several discussions about how Madonna and Angelina Jolie were not doing an adequate job caring for the hair of their respective adopted daughters, Mercy and Zahara. Obviously, there was a general acknowledgement that it’s unlikely either lady was hands on with the washing, moisturizing, and braiding, but still, the comments were withering.

The best thing Ian and I have done is embrace our ignorance. A week after we got Mikey, we brought him to his first stylist, Althea, who has classes wherein she teaches white parents how to care for their adopted black or biracial kids’ hair. Only in Los Angeles.

Althea gave us our first advice on Mikey’s hair, sending us off with a shopping list of special shampoos, conditioners, and combs. She also put the fear of God in us, letting in on the whispered conversations particularly common among black women seeing kids with badly kept hair. Almost as bad, she said, were those parents who simply shaved their boys’ hair to a shade above bald, for easy care but no personality.

No fear of that. We are fascinated with learning all things about Mikey, and hair is no exception. At least, we had a boy: anyone who has ever seen Chris Rock’s hilarious and oddly moving documentary about the politics and enormous expense behind the world of black women’s hair “Good Hair” has an inkling of how many traps are along that path.

Althea worked in a salon filled with the type of ladies “Good Hair” was about, spending many hours and lots of money on weaves, relaxers, blowouts, and other techniques completely alien to us, even as gay men who never frequent Fantastic Sam’s, and aren’t strangers at the local manicure / pedicure clip joint. Under her tender but firm hand, Mikey obediently let himself be shampooed and deep-conditioned, even sitting under the heat lamps really let his dry follicles drink deeply. Unfortunately, Althea spent most of the time chatting on her headset, and ended up clipping rather weirdly.

We held off getting Mikey’s haircut for a while, until Ian, on a whim, took Mikey into a children’s hair salon convenient to where he was shopping that day. They assured him that they could take care of African-American hair. With hindsight being 20/20, it should have been a sign when they said everyone got the same hair conditioner regardless of the texture and type of hair they were sporting. The salon was so cute with balloons and bright colors, he was seduced. I don’t blame him. It wasn’t until thirty minutes later, when he was putting Mikey into his car seat and noticed that the leave-in conditioner was turning the consistency of thick putty that he realized he’d made an error. Two shampoos and an hour later, Mikey’s hair was free of the sludge, and he was not the only one who was cranky.

We decided to skip haircutting for a while. Ian and I decided that our ideal hair for Mikey was that of Will and Jada Smith’s son Jaden, who had grown an afro two feet in circumference which he later – when he played the new Karate Kid – turned into cornrow braids. All it would take is time. We diligently did our best, and in time, he had a hairstyle we thought was very cute, a vast mane full full of corkscrew curls like mini-dreds.

This is where we faced an interesting cultural divide. Our white friends agreed with us that it was adorable. Our black friends thought that it was cute but a bit wild. No one ever said anything to us, but we started thinking about what Mikey would think, looking back on his childhood photos. Maybe it was time to brave another trim.

The next stylist we used was thanks to Groupon. A salon in Santa Monica, which had a children’s and an adult’s section, advertised a Mommy and/or Daddy & Me special, which sounded charming. Lots of dads out there imagine themselves coaching their son’s Little League games or helping them carve blocks of wood to make into pinewood derby cars. I imagined my son lying in the salon chair next to mine, both of us sighing as our stylists suds up our hair and kneaded our scalps.

Unfortunately, though the treatment was called Daddy & Me, in actuality they couldn’t do it simultaneously. It’s hard to enjoy your shampooing when you have one eye on your bored kid running around the salon. By the time Mikey could be worked on, he was ready to go and squirmy, and the stylist cut a little here and a little there. It was even less even than his last two cuts.

That was November of last year, and we haven’t taken him anywhere since then – almost six months. Mikey’s mane grew tall and wide. I came upon the name of a stylist who was praised all over Yelp, and we dragged Mikey in.

We like Mikey’s new haircut and so does he.

Here’s the advice we have received so far:

1. Don’t shampoo hair more than once a week.
2. When shampooing, use Just For Me brands.
3. When shampooing, use DevaCare No-Poo.
4. Comb hair through every bath with Kinky-Curly Knot Today.
5. Condition with Dermorganic masque once a week.
6. Moisturize and detangle daily.
7. Moisturize with Miss Jessie’s Baby Buttercreme.
8. Moisturize with jojoba oil.
9. Moisturize with olive oil.
10. Style with Kinky-Curly Curling Custard.
11. Use Infusium to make the hair more manageable.
12. Don’t use Infusium or his hair will calcify.
13. Use a Miracle Brush to detangle.
14. Use a wide-toothed comb to detangle.
15. Use nothing but your fingers to detangle.
16. Have him sleep on satin pillows, because cotton will soak up all the moisture and product

What we do with all this advice is we follow it all. Randomly. I have to say, no one has come forward to us and said we’re making our son look bad. And some folks have said we’re doing a good job with it. Of course, those are the folk we tip generously.

Booksmart

By: Ted Peterson

Youtube, like Wikipedia, IMDB, and other vast databases disguised as websites, sucked me in the other day with a series of legendary music videos, movie moments, and TV commercials. A new modern classic I had almost forgotten is the Yes on Proposition 8 one from 2008, where the child comes home with a book called “King and King,” and tells her mom, “Guess what I learned in school today? I can marry a princess!”

The mother gives the same expression moms have been giving in commercials since the 1950s when faced with the horror of dish pan hands, ring around the collar, and that not so fresh feeling. The mother evidently believes that her elementary school-age daughter is on a one way road to Lesbotown because Proposition 8 failing = gay marriage becoming possible in California = school kids learning about there being different kinds of families = some kids who are little same-sex-oriented deciding to go for it. And that’s a bad thing, because it would be preferable for her daughter, if she indeed had gay tendencies, to stifle her feelings for Snow White, and see if she can make a loveless life with the Huntsman work. In that lesson taught for decades, it’s better to be unhappy than gay.

The variation on this commercial’s message is that some folks objected to homosexuality “being taught” in schools at all. In editorial after editorial, from then and now, you can read about parents objecting to this, as if homosexuality were in itself a field of study with films, text assignments, and lab work. The fear is real enough, I believe they believe it, even though to my mind, that makes them quite clearly stupid.

Teachers have a tough time in schools, dealing with parents and their strange beliefs. I understand from Mikey’s preschool teacher that one child several years ago shared with his or her classmates, “My mom says that the world is going to come to an end in 2012.”

As a teacher, you’re supposed to respect different religions and belief systems, but sometimes, you gotta say, like Mikey’s teacher did, “That’s not what we think here.”

The truth of the matter is that there’s a reason why everyone who has the best interest of tolerance for gays at heart encourages people to come out of the closet. It’s harder to hate and fear The Other if you have a gay or lesbian as a friend, family member, or neighbor. Mikey’s friends at school know that he has two fathers because we drop him off at school every day together as a family. They know which one of us is called “Daddy” and which one is called “Papa,” and they discuss it with their parents. If it were true that they were being “taught homosexuality” by our very existence, they would pass the subject with all A’s, since they recognize that there are at least two grown-up men they know who, like their own moms and dads, love each other so much, they have enough love to share with their child.

I do have a little bit of sympathy for the parents who wish to shelter their kids, at least for a little while, from the facts of real life that they might not fully embrace themselves. Because people know that Mikey loves books, we get boxes of books from friends whose kids have outgrown them, and subjects of some of the books are, let’s just say, not always what I would have chosen. I want Mikey to know the Bible, even though we’re not religious. It’s right up there with Shakespeare and Greek Mythology as the foundation of all western literature. I’m not crazy about the fact that he’s already been given some books with pretty heavy religious overtones, but so far he’s taken it as the same fantastical fiction as talking animals, pet dragons, flying lost boys, and small men who tirelessly stalk you to urge you to eat green eggs and ham.

Mikey’s favorite book right now combines a bit of fanciful religiosity with a theme which we fortunately haven’t had to face yet – death, and specifically, the death of a pet. It’s obviously the sort of book good Christian families give their kids while they’re grieving from such a loss, and it’s titled, “Angel Cat.”

The good Christian family in the book has a pair of cats with oddly Taoist names, Yang and Yin. Yin, perhaps fuzzled by her dark cosmic feminine energy, doesn’t look both ways crossing the street, and we see in the distance the blurred shape of a car heading right for her. Silly cat. The next page, we see the big maple tree where they’ve buried her, and the kids ask the parents where the cat is. Obviously, the parents could point towards the lump of earth on the lawn quite plainly visible in the illustration, but instead they say, “In heaven.”

The kids then ask whether she’s an angel. The parents agree she is.

It’s not really clear yet whether the parents believe this or not. It’s a bit of unorthodox scriptural reading to say so, but we are told that the kids in the book, Gillian and Matthew, felt better by being told this. Far better to assure the kids that that’s the way the universe operates, the book seems to be arguing, that to either say, “I don’t think so” or even “No one knows, but I hope so.”

I always pause at that moment in reading to consider this, the analgesic advantage that religion offers to children at these moments, but Mikey encourages me to keep reading.

The story moves on to winter, and – spoiler alert – describes how Yin, as an angel cat complete with wings, sees a spark from the fireplace set fire to the downstairs rug, and flies upstairs to wake up and rescue the family. Actually, only the little boy sees the angel cat, and when he later tells them that angel cat woke him up so he could wake up the rest of the family, they react with laughter and skepticism. Evidently, the family’s belief in the divinity of the souls of domesticated animals was just a very thin white lie.

We’ve been reading this book for a couple weeks now as part of our regular rotation, and Mikey loves it enough that several nights, like tonight, when I couldn’t find it on the bookshelves and tried to substitute another beloved book for it, my son wasn’t having any of it. Fortunately, we found it. As I was reading it tonight, once again, the religious aspect gnawed at me, and I began to feel like the mom in the commercial, faced with her daughter loving the book, “King and King.” What was it about this book that was filling a void in Mikey’s soul? What were we postmodern, alternative parents out here in the wacky West Coast not supplying? Could we start with Unitarian Universalists and work our way?

Finally, I asked him, “Why do you like the book so much? Is it the cat? Do you like that she has wings, and that she became an angel when she died?”

“Hold on,” Mikey said. He flipped some pages back until he found the page he wanted. “I like the snow.”

That was it. Our son who has only lived in southern California loves this book because it’s the only one with snow.

I wonder what anti-gay-marriage parents would learn from their kids if they actually asked and listened themselves. It might just be that they like the snow.

Damaged

By: Ted Peterson

Ian and I did an interview which will appear in the newsletter for the Alliance for Children’s Rights about some of the myths of foster adoption. Some of the myths were about whether it was difficult for same-sex couples to adopt (it’s not) and whether the biological parents can take the children away after the adoption (no, they can’t). Then the next myth we were presented with was whether children in the foster adoption system are damaged. That was a hard question to answer.

We wanted to say that the kids in foster care are just like all kids everywhere, but that’s not really true. Ask any social worker and they’ll tell you that the vast majority of kids in foster care were born with drugs in their system, crystal meth, cocaine, alcohol, and more, in some combination. Even if they weren’t born with those poisons in them, something bad happened to put them into the system. Their bodies suffered abuse, most often in the form of neglect. It’s dishonest to say these aren’t damaged kids.

We’ve been incredibly lucky with Mikey. He was carried to term with no drugs detected in his system. He’s in great health -mentally, physically, and emotionally -but he’s not even four yet. It’s hard to tell what effect having three different homes before he was two years old will have, but it’s unrealistic to think that there was none. He was developmentally trying to form bonds with people and they kept being broken.

Of course, the scars of that damage are all on the inside. Anyone who meets Mikey is not only charmed by his personality, but by his good looks. Not that he hasn’t suffered his share of bumps and bruises like any 3-year-old. The week before Easter, there was an incident while playing basketball where the flesh just below Mikey’s eye had unwanted contact with a fingernail. The timing wasn’t great for a bloody gash, with the photo op of egg hunting around the corner and school pictures the following week. Luckily (thanks Neosporin!), the scratch had faded away in time for the school pictures, and at Easter, it gave him a tough look which let the other kids know not to touch his chocolates.

After the child’s initial pain has subsided, I think many parents worry about these scratches and bumps and how it reflects on them. On one hand, we know that every kid who isn’t in a bubble gets them; on the other, we don’t want anyone to look at our kid, and then look at us, and think, “Child abuse!” I think that comes from the same part of the brain which makes you panic even though you’re not doing anything wrong when a police car pulls up next to you at a traffic light.

So those shallow scratches fade away, but sometimes an injury’s deeper. Sometimes, there’s a scar on the surface or deep inside, which very few can see.

The thing about discussing kids as being damaged is that it makes it sound like they’re a chair partially eaten by termites, or a scratch on a car bumper, or a hole in the bottom of a shoe. Kids aren’t objects which can either be repaired or are ruined for good, or things which lose their value when they’re hurt.

In Mikey, his early experience losing home after home has made him more empathetic. He watches everyone around him, at home and at preschool, and is the first person to give hugs when someone is feeling bad.

That damage has been done, and we can’t undo it. It’s fucking unfair, but it’s not all bad.

The cliché, of course, is that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Like so many clichés, it’s true.

Stage Father

By: Ted Peterson

In more ways than I can count, becoming a father has improved me as a person. I’m laughing all the time. I am reminded to look at the small miracles, like rainbows in the lawn sprinklers, which fascinate my son. I get regular and real cuddles and kisses. My partner and I have discovered new depths to our relationship. And yet, occasionally, there’s evidence of the less attractive signs of parenthood.

I think I’m avoiding so far the worst one, being the helicopter parent who frets over development milestones, skinned knees, and every minutiae of every danger that could face Mikey. I am guilty, however, of the cousin of that psychosis, where all my adult conversations – even with people who don’t even have any interest in having kids – turn back to stories about my adorable boy. And, worse, I am in danger of becoming a stage dad.

Everyone thinks that their kid is the cutest, most talented, most brilliant, and funniest creature yet spawned. Those of us who live in the vicinity of Hollywood have to live with the temptation that this wonderfulness needs to be and easily can be shared with the world. In Dayton, Ohio or Billings, Montana, parents love to hear from friends, family, and kind strangers, “Your kid is amazing. He could be a star.”

Only here do we then think, “Oh, yes, let’s do that.”

When our favorite boys’ clothing designer, Fore!! Axel and Hudson announced an open casting call on Facebook, we submitted a couple photos of Mikey on a lark. They replied back immediately that they wanted him for the photo shoot.

It went pretty well after he understood about standing on a mark and why Daddy and Papa couldn’t be in the picture with him. The biggest direction he had ever been given when taking a photo was to say, “Cheese.” A couple of the shots they took will probably be in their Fall “Look Book,” so evidently they got what they were looking for.

Some friends with contacts at model agencies have taken some of the pictures we’ve given them, and we might be getting some representation soon for more work.

Immediately, of course, one’s mind goes to all the True Hollywood Stories of child stars with unhappy lives – Corey Haim, Dana Plato, Brad Renfro, Mackenzie Phillips, Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, the list is long. Worrying about the dangers of superstardom, though, is like fretting about a lightning strike. It’s a million percent likely not to occur, so there’s no reason not to get out and have fun.

If doing the photo shoot was serendipitous, and sending photos to agents is simply logical, it’s hard to come up with a good reason for the most recent, goofiest of projects. Perhaps you’ve seen the commercials yourself: Tyson’s Chicken Nuggets want you to submit a picture of your kid eating their product. The winner gets, not money, but fleeting fame, with his or her mug in ads in various magazines and a billboard in Times Square.

It’s a blatant attempt to sell product to vain parents. I was unable to resist.

In addition to being absolutely adorable, as I’ve mentioned, Mikey is funny as hell, so as creative photographer, I thought I’d get him to sing some songs, mug for the camera, and generally try to be as silly as possible. In that I succeeded, and we had a great time. The actual pictures, however, just look like I’m documenting some kind of tragic, involuntary seizure.

Check it out:

We picked the least weird one and submitted it. Near as I can tell from Tyson’s “Wall of Smiles,” every single daft parent of every single halfway presentable child in America submitted one. It’s worth a visit just to see multiple spellings of Addison, Chase, and Jayden. Oh, and if you want to see Mikey’s picture and vote for it, I suppose I shouldn’t stand in your way.

vote here 

Now, excuse me while I practice my rendition of Rose’s Turn from “Gypsy” in the mirror …

An Interview with Ted Peterson

An Interview with Ted Peterson by The Next Family

TNF: How has it been blogging for TNF?

The horror, the horror. Heh heh heh, I’m kidding, of course. It’s been great, but challenging. When I started blogging three years ago, there was a lot of drama going on: becoming a foster parent, getting our first placements, dealing with the new experience of being a parent, and finally adopting our son. Since then, we’ve established our routines and the dramas are thankfully few and far between. That’s good for my life, but not great for finding subjects to write about. I’m getting more comfortable now, telling our stories which are really just everyday stories. One of my friends says -I think kindly- that I’m sounding like Erma Bombeck.

TNF: How is your family like every other family and how is it different?

All the ways we’re different aren’t so unusual one by one, but when you add them up, we are the weird. We’re a same-sex couple who adopted a biracial son, for starters. My partner Ian is British, though he’s recently picked up American citizenship as well. Culturally, he’s a super-Brit, and has taught our boy to love Marmite and bangers. I am a Midwesterner boy with a close, loving family, but when you dig a little deeper, we’re pretty eccentric and quite proudly so.

When we get together with any other family with a three-year-old, we speak the same language. Potty training and preschools, stubbornness and sleep deprivation, toys, books, Disney this, and Disney that.

TNF: Did your family accept you and your lifestyle? If yes, explain and if not explain what you have done to help them to accept your decisions and your lifestyle.

When I came out to my parents, the first thing my mom asked was if I was seeing anyone special. I told her no, and she said that I should try to find someone, because life is so much better with someone to share it with. They would know, my parents are best friends. When I met Ian and brought him home, they treated him as one of us immediately – which on recollection, is pretty strange. In a sense it was a test to see if he could hold his own, and he passed with flying colors, and that was the end of that.

My parents eloped, and even though I think they were puzzled that we felt the need for a big party to celebrate our marriage, of course they came. They weren’t at all puzzled by our decision to adopt, and they cried along with us when we lost our first two placements. Now that we have Mikey, he forever wants to see Grandma and Grandpa, and of course the feeling is mutual. It’s too bad they’re on the east coast and we’re on the west, but we manage to see each other a couple times a year.

TNF: How do you juggle the work at home with your jobs?

I was lucky enough to be able to take off the first four months we had Mikey, which was so important for bonding. When I went back to work, Mikey went to daycare, which he loved, but I predictably was guilt-riddled about. Now, we’re at preschool and we have a routine, which includes two alternating nannies who pick him up from school. It’s tough though, because my industry demands I put in more than 40 hours a week, so I often will just see Mikey first thing in the morning when we bring him to school, and dinner and bedtime.

Juggling work and home is a work in process, but the one thing I’ve figured out is that when I’m home with Mikey, unless I’m in my office, I am 100% there for him. No checking email or texts while we play. I am happy to let the phone go to voicemail.

TNF: What lessons do you feel are the most important to teach children in this day and age? Are there any lessons they, or perhaps we as parents should unlearn?

It’s funny, I never think about lessons. I believe that play and learning are the exact same thing – ideally throughout life and certainly in childhood. Playing with Legos and setting up train tracks, dancing and singing nursery rhymes, trips to the zoo and the beach and the theater, all are all about learning.

I was talking to a friend of mine about whether everyone should challenge authority, or whether childrens and teenagers should learn to do as they’re told. I said I think children and teens should especially challenge authority, and they do whether you want them to or not. The word “challenge” makes it sound like an aggressive, confrontational act, but I take it to mean a variety of actions – question authority, engage with authority, ask “why” of authority, et cetera.

Children and teenagers should grow into independent adults capable of critical thinking, and the only way to that goal is generally polite, thoughtful, practical, but unrelenting challenging of authority. Including us, I might add. Our job is not to avoid conflict but to help our children win arguments with us.

TNF: Any words of wisdom to pass on to our readers?

I think the chief secret of my relationship with my partner and my son is that I find them both incredibly interesting. I want to be with them all the time and ask them what they think, whether I agree with them or not, and I feel them doing the same for me. The result is that even though we’re a family that laughs a lot, we’re also a respectful family in the best sense. I think that’s the most solid foundation you can build for relationships.

First Sleep Away

By: Ted Peterson

I decided to take Ian out for dinner and a movie for his birthday on a Friday, and I asked my brother Michael if he could watch our son Mikey. Mikey technically wasn’t named for Uncle Michael – our son already had that name when we took him into foster care at 20 months old — but they are definitely as close as any nephew and uncle. Michael’s wife, Mikey’s Aunt Kelly, and his daughter, Mikey’s cousin Natalie, are just as dear to him, so they were ideal babysitters for a couple hours. Instead of just agreeing to watch Mikey for a couple hours, Uncle Michael threw out the suggestion that Mikey spend the night at their house so we could have a real night out and a sleep-in the next morning.

This would be the first time for Mikey sleeping away from home and parents. A pretty big deal. We said okay, let’s give it a shot.

On Friday, after we dropped Mikey off at preschool, I drove Ian to work so we can have one car that evening. I got home at about ten in the morning, and began making my list of things that I need to try to squeeze into an overnight bag.

At 10:15, I got a phone call from the preschool.

“Mikey might have swallowed something he shouldn’t have,” his teacher explained.

Evidently, he was in the play kitchen with a two inch solid plastic bunch of grapes and popped them in his mouth. His teacher told him to spit them out, and when she got to him, they weren’t in his mouth anymore. Nor were they anywhere in the play kitchen to suggest he had obediently spat them out.

By 10:45, I was at the school, and my 10:50, we were at the hospital emergency room which is conveniently right across the street.

A set of x-rays later, it was determined that the obstruction had moved past his esophagus and would probably “pass on through” in a couple of days. Something to look forward to!

By 1 o’clock, Mikey was back at school, having lunch and getting ready for a nap, and I was at home, wondering if a kid who swallowed plastic grapes should really be sent off overnight without us.

While I debated with myself and then brought Ian up to date on the phone, I packed the overnight bag. Some snacks he might miss from home – roasted seaweed for one, and peanut butter and chocolate cereal (no, not together). Shark jammies. Multiple underpants, shirts, pants, socks. Buzz Lightyear blanket. Hop On Pop book. We only had room for two small stuffed animals, so I went with the pink tiger and the penguin “Pillow Pet.”

About 3 o’clock, I fired off an instructional email to Uncle Michael about Mikey and the potty. I explained that at night time, he’ll remember some time, and wake up sometime, but it can be iffy. If Uncle Mikey really wanted to be safe, I said he should pick him up two or three hours after he’s been sleeping (not two or three hours after he’s gone to bed, which is very different), carry him to the toilet, and make sure he pees before putting him back down into bed in a 90% unconscious stupor. To be doubly sure, I added one other item to the overnight bag – a big absorbent pee pad to put under him in bed.

I picked up Mikey at preschool a half an hour later, and by five o’clock, we were pulling up into the movie studio lot where my brother works. He met up with us in a golf cart, and in true Hollywood style, we drove us around for a sight-seeing tour. At his office, there were piles of snacks, and the indulgent uncle steered Mikey towards the donuts, while I pointed out the bananas and apples, but said he could have whatever he wanted. He went with the banana and a cutie orange.

Back in the parking lot, we exchanged bags and installed the child seat, and I said to Mikey as soon as I had him buckled down, “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow. Have fun!”

Mikey burst into tears. “No, Daddy! Stay with me!”

I guiltily ran back to my car, and got the text from Uncle Mikey less than five minutes later: “We’re fine. No tears. Having fun.”

And so they did. They went out to dinner, to a playground, and then out for ice cream. While Ian and I were out for dinner and then to a movie, we got a stream of texts and photos of our boy having the time
of his life.

Late the next morning when we picked Mikey up, we got the rest of the story. Yes, there had been an accident in bed that night, but no big deal. Yes, he had cried for us for a few minutes that night and then
again that morning, but again, no big deal.

Everything was no big deal, which is a very big deal.

Uncle Mikey showed us that Mikey had found a photo of us at Uncle Mikey’s and Aunt Kelly’s he wanted to sleep with. That’s the only thing we didn’t think to include his overnight bag.

Next time, I’ll remember.

The Old and The Restless

By: Ted Peterson

In the last blog, I listed what I thought was a fairly complete list of the ways our family is clearly not typical: we’re transracial, same-sex-couple-headed, and multicultural, with one father American and the other British. Obviously, we have plenty of peculiarities beyond that, but I thought that’s all that was obvious until last weekend, when we were the guest speakers at the Southern California Family Foster and Adoption Agency’s orientation class for prospective parents.

We told everyone the story of our family: Ian and I going through similar orientation classes, becoming certified, getting two placements and losing them, and our experiences adopting and parenting Mikey. There was not a dry eye in the house – except for Mikey who spent his time playing with the iPad, and watching Rio for the seventieth time.

The questions flew at us about dealing with the loss of our first two kids, balancing work and home life, the process of being certified as foster-adoptive parents, our experience with getting services from Los Angeles Regional Centers, and how we learned to do Mikey’s hair. Finally, a couple who looked much like us raised their hand.

“I don’t know how to say this nicely,” one of the men said inauspiciously. “But we have concerns about being an older couple getting a young child. Did you?”

After we crawled back upright from the floor, we laughingly assured the fellow – who on closer inspection, was much older than we first assessed, and was probably senile – that he had nothing to worry about. Then we placed emergency calls for botox and full-body lifts.

Of course, we’ve done the calculations, how old we’ll be when Mikey graduates from high school and college. Assuming he becomes President of the United States at the absolute youngest he can, we figured, we’ll be pushing 80. They better give us comfortable seats on the dias during the inauguration ceremony.

Nowadays, everyone’s having kids later, right? Everyone thinks about Madonna, but she’s a spring lamb adopting her second child at 50, compared to the wizened papas in Hollywood, where we have examples like Rod Stewart who became a dad for the seventh time at 66, the same age as Clint Eastwood when he had his last one. It’s not even a new trend in the biz. In 1962, when Charlie Chaplin was 73, his 11th child was born.

The thing about celebrities though is that they’re generally rich and in a good physical shape, both of which help. It helps to be in good shape and be younger than your years so you can keep up with your kids, play ball and race, and dance to the Wiggles. It helps to be rich because then you can just hire younger people to do all that for you and your kid.

So far, we’ve done pretty well keeping up with Mikey. It probably helps that we both quit smoking two years before Mikey came along. He is, however, getting bigger and still wants me to carry him from time to time. I know to lift with the legs, but my legs aren’t very useful when he’s already in my arms and sees a cupcake with his name on it. The resulting squirm is what threw out my back two months ago.

It’s times like that which make us understand the benefit to having babies in your teens and twenties. Actually, it’s a perceived benefit, because actual parents in their teens and twenties often feel trapped, stuck at home with their kids, when they want to be out clubbing like those of us without kids did.

Of course, George Bernard Shaw recognized this when he said “Youth is wasted on the young.”

Just A Little Brit

By: Ted Peterson

I’ve been an Anglophile for at least thirty years. The first Brit I fell for was James Bond, and I’ve remained true through his six incarnations. To this day, no one can beat me in Bond trivia, and I specialize in the worst of the movies, like “Diamonds Are Forever,” “The Man With The Golden Gun,” “A View To A Kill,” and … okay, whatever the second Timothy Dalton movie was. After him were a series of literary icons and Merchant-Ivory film actors, men with fabulous accents and lovely hair, and names like Rupert, Simon, Hugh, and Jeremy. My last British crush was Ian, who I married.

Our son, in addition to being biracial and parented by a same-sex couple, gets the additional gift/complication of having multiculturalism right in his home. Ian has embraced his adopted American culture in so many ways, not the least of which by becoming a citizen last November. But as Mike Myers, who grew up in Canada with a father from Liverpool, once observed, “No one is more British than a British man abroad.”

We have a pillow with a Union Jack on the sofa, and at least two cufflinks which also show off the British flag. We have a signed photo of Princess Diana on the shelf together with tea cups commemorating the crowning of her mother-in-law. And there’s Pimms #5 in our liquor cabinet, which we drink with either lemonade or ginger ale in the summer.

There’s the language. Mikey’s had to learn that when Papa asks for a torch, it’s the same thing as Daddy asking for a flashlight. He frequently answers a question in the affirmative not with a “yes” but a snappy, insouciant English “of course.” The first adverb that Mikey ever uttered was “properly.”

Not that he’s fluent. Last week, we’re driving in typical horrible Los Angeles traffic, and Ian growls that the people ahead of him are idiots.

“Don’t say ‘idiots’!” Mikey cries from the back. “That’s not very nice.”

We agree, but I decide to use British slang to get around it. When someone seemingly won’t let us merge, I mutter, “Come on, wanker, let us in.”

“He is a wanker?” Mikey calls from the back. “Where is the wanker?”

“That guy in the Escalade ignoring our turn signal, he’s the wanker,” I reply.

“He’s letting us in now,” Ian observed.

“Oh, that’s nice, let’s give him a thank you wave,” I say.

“Thank you, wanker!” Mikey cries.

Just so you know, a wanker is more or less synonymous with douchebag.

There’s the food. Those of you who haven’t tuned into Hell’s Kitchen and the hundred other shows featuring Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver may be under the impression that British food is still synonymous with bad food. You may not know that thanks to the likes of Ramsay and Oliver, as well as Marco Pierre White, Nigella Lawson, Heston Blumenthal, Raymond Blanc, Gary Rhodes, Marcus Wareing, and others, there are few more interesting cuisines in the world, particularly when you start combining it with the “colonies.” In my house, all things British belong on our table. Mikey knows that coffee is for grown-ups, but sometimes is allowed some tea, in a 20 to 1 milk to tea ratio.

On a recent Sunday, Mikey began the day by demanding Marmite on toast and then helping me to make sure I did it right.

If you don’t know what Marmite is, it is – seriously – a byproduct of beer brewing, thick and black, salty and bitter, and so questionable that the best the English ad agency that handles it could come up with for a logo is “Love it or hate it.” You smear it on toast and hope for the best.

Here’s Mikey slathering it on:

marmite_mikey

That same Sunday night, we had friends over, and served onion tarts, mashed turnip (called swede by the Brits) and carrots, and steak and kidney pie. After he devoured those kidneys, I’m at a loss about what we can serve Mikey and he’ll refuse.

What, you may be asking, is the American culture I’ve given him? I think that’s pretty obvious. Being excited about other cultures. Until fairly recently, that was understood by everyone to be the American way.

Getting To “No”

By: Ted Peterson

It’s universally acknowledged that the favorite word among all children from 18 months to four is “No.” The term for this among people who like five-syllable words is negativism, and it’s a normal, healthy part of development, as the docile infant discovers that he or she has some amount of independence. Degree of annoyingness varies by child, but it’s grating enough that it’s a central feature of the period accurately called “The Terrible Twos.”

Of course, the echoes of No are imitative as well as rebellious. Last week, after we put him to bed, Ian and I had a conversation about something – exactly what escapes me – that made us both start to laugh. From Mikey’s bedroom, we heard a stern reprimand: “No laughing! I already told you once!”

Once the vocabulary expands and the child can express an occasional “Yes” –to, say, Disneyland, ice cream, watching Dora the Explorer for the twentieth time, potato chips, not going to bed yet, and so on – then you realize that, in Nancy Reagan’s words, sometimes we should just say no after all. After all, the goal isn’t to raise a child who’s obedient, but one who makes smart decisions, and sometimes that decision is to refuse.

We got a phone call this week from our adoption agency about two girls, one a little older than Mikey and her two-year-old sister. They had no relatives except their mother, who was terminally ill. All stories in foster care are sad, and it’s never easy to say no to a placement, but we had to do a reality check, imagining us in our 1200 square foot, three-bedroom, two-bath house, with three toddlers all under four years old.

“Ah,” said my mom when I told her. “Two little girls would be so darling. I think you should have said yes.”

We didn’t. I still think about seeing one of the guys in our foster-adoption class, before Mikey came to us but after we had lost our first placement. He was sympathetic to our story and when we asked him if he had a placement, he informed us that he and his partner had been placed with siblings, an eleven-year-old, a six-year-old, and a two-year-old. I looked at his blank face as he added that his partner, an actor, was in Canada, so most of the time, it was just him with the three kids.

It sounded like the sort of horrible idea that turns out to be wonderful, but he was forcing me to ask, “So, how is it working?”

“It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Nothing else has come close.”

The lesson is, kids are great, but don’t be stupid. Learn to say no.

Negativism is also marked by a competitive “I can do it myself!” streak, which doesn’t show any signs of abating in our child. It may be that this has passed being a developmental stage and is now a personal trait. Grabbiness is another feature of the age, and there we’ve been lucky. Mikey has long been a good sharer, even when deep in the grip of the Terrible Twos. That’s great, but just like there’s a time to say “No,” there’s also a time not to share.

Case in point, something you don’t want to share in today’s email from his preschool: “We would like to inform you that there is a case of lice in the Two’s Room and Preschool Room that was found as of yesterday.”

Charming.

The Best Blog Ever

By: Ted Peterson

It’s been understood in our house for some time that the way to motivate Mikey is to appeal to his sense of competitiveness. He’s not a morning person, and will remain under the sheets, eyes closed, resistant to gentle nudges and more forceful shakes, until you say, “Hey, I bet I can get to the bathroom faster than you.”

“Nooo,” comes the zombie-like groan.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m faster than you. I’m super fast.”

Eyes open. “But I’m fast like a cheetah!”

“I don’t think s-”

And he’s off, blankets and sheets flung aside, down the hall, jammie bottoms flying off in his wake. He has all sorts of things that he likes, movies, books, toys, music, but none of these will make him go from 0 to 60 mph like winning a competition. Mikey has no fussiness when it comes to his food, because the moment we say we don’t think he’ll like something we’re eating, he’ll plead for a bite and insist that he loves it. He likes to dance, but it became an obsession at a holiday party when some older kids were playing the video game “Just Dance,” and Mikey asked for a Wii remote so he could play along.

“I won! I won!” he yelled afterwards, fortunately oblivious to his actual score.

Now, I could point out that this behavior is totally in line with his age developmentally, but 90% of the stuff about developmental milestones is, I’m convinced, just an excuse for a different kind of competitiveness. That is, one of parents, which is clearly much less adorable. The fact remains that parents have long known that the best way to get a three-year-old to clean up after himself, better than chanting the horrible and ubiquitous “Clean it up, clean it up,everybody, everywhere” song from Barney, is to simply say, “Hey, who can get the most toys back into the box?” And then duck as the toys come flying.

It’s also probably worth pausing here to acknowledge the simple fact that competitiveness is historically considered a masculine trait, and therefore both desirable and encouraged. Not only by parents, but by the general public. I hope that should we have a daughter, we’ll be equally amused and indulgent when she wants to show off.

The best kind of competitiveness, of course, is the self-motivated kind. Sure, it’s effective when I declare some mundane activity to be a game which Mikey is inspired to win, but there’s twice the power when Mikey sees his friend doing something and becomes determined to master it as well. One evening, he came to us with a serious expression and said, “I don’t want to wear diapers to school anymore.”

And that was it. His friends were using the toilet, so he was too. Potty training more or less accomplished.

Today, we were pressing our code to open the door to preschool, and Mikey pressed the pound sign as usual as the final button to unlock it. One of his buddies came up behind us, and pushed in all the buttons himself. Once inside, we signed Mikey in on a computer using a passcode. Again, Mikey’s buddy, just behind us, punched the buttons on the keyboard, signing himself in. Two separate number and letter codes, and Jimmy knew them both.

Mikey whispered to us, urgently, “You have to show me how to do it too!”

And we will, and he will master it because in his mind, he has to.

That sorta touches on the negative side of this competitiveness. It can lead to an unhealthy peer pressure. And when something that’s not a good thing like getting up, eating healthy food, using the toilet, or learning numbers and letters becomes the object of the competition, it can be hard to turn it around. At Mikey’s school, there’s been some name-calling which they’re trying to nip in the bud. My friend Susan, who has a son Mikey’s age, says that at her school, a couple of the boys have been punching each other in fun – she calls it “preschool fight club” – and the habit shows signs of catching.

I don’t know where Mikey gets his own competitive spirit, but I hope that if it shows a dark side, we’ll be able to handle it. Actually, I know we will. Because we’re awesome. You know.

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