Category Archives: Parental Guidance

The Terrifying Brangelina Boy-Making Machine!

lifenstyle.jpgA tweet by Onion scribe/artiste Maria Schneider (aka @writtennoise, auteur of Pathetic Geek Stories) pointed me to this hideous cover of a recent issue of Life and Style. As you can see, it’s a “before-and-after” shot of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s daughter, Shiloh. In the before pic, she looks like a typical little girl. In the after shot, she has short hair and is wearing a cardigan. The cover screams WHY IS ANGELINA TURNING SHILOH INTO A BOY? and laments the fact that Shiloh has “No girlie things”! “IS IT HARMING THE 3-YEAR-OLD?” ZOMG!

Despite being a magazine aimed at a largely female audience, this publication has forgotten one very important thing: You can’t force a three-year-old girl what to wear anything she doesn’t want to. Trust me. I am legally required to clothe a three-year-old girl, and I know that they have no qualms about letting you know when they’re unhappy with your choice of outfit for the day (or anything else, for that matter).

At this young age, kids simply like what they like. It has very little to do with the peer pressures that emerge later. For whatever reason, Shiloh likes dressing this way now. The chances of her wanting to dress this way for the rest of her life are about as slim as her watching Dora the Explorer when she’s in college. How many things do you do/like now that you liked/did when you were three? And if she does grow up to wear “boy” clothing, it’s because she wants to, not because Crazy Angelina Jolie “made” her that way.

When I found The Wife and I were having a daughter, one of the first things I thought (other than PANIC) was, “I’m not gonna have any of that princess crap in my house!” Because I associated the whole Princess Phenomenon with a mindless philosophy of entitlement and passivity that’s resolutely anti-feminist.

But somewhere along the line, she got exposed to Princess Stuff, and she likes it. She’s not super into it, like she wears a tiara to day care, but she does like it. So she has some princess-y toys and some princess-y outfits, and the world has continued spinning on its axis. Hopefully, if I raise her right, she won’t turn out to be a Kardashian.

She also likes some non-girly stuff, too. She often makes me play Spider-Man–of course, I always have to be Venom and get wrapped up in her webs and carted off to jail (which greatly resembles our bathroom). As I type this, she’s watching an X-Men cartoon, which she asked to see (screamed, actually). Her love of these things has nothing to do with me. I have never forced her to watch any of them. I learned very early on that when you force a kid to watch something, 99 times out of 100 they will hate it.

Even so, every now and then, she will say of something–even if it’s something she likes, like Spider-Man–“that’s for boys!” As if she shouldn’t watch/play with it. I have no idea where she gets this idea from. She certainly doesn’t get it in our house.

But she has to leave our house sometime. And when I see things like the garbage linked above, I realize she must just get it from the air, living in a world that tells her from infancy that there are certain things she can’t like or do or think or be. I could have kept every item of princess-iana out her hands and sight, and she’d still be exposed to caveman attitudes like this.

Thanks, world.

Masterpieces of Kiddom: Axe Cop!

axecop.pngA whiles back, I wrote about a site called Tiny Art Director and how it represented one of the darker, more soul-crushing aspects of parenthood–how your children can be Heathers-level cruel to you on a daily basis. But kids do cool stuff, too. Like make up hilarious stories with enormous universes and characters ruled by a logic that only makes sense to them.

Witness Axe Cop, an online comic drawn by an adult but “written” by a five-year-old. Apparently, the young auteur (Malachai Nicolle) tells his stories about the titular character to the artist (Ethan Nicolle), who illustrates them. Magic ensues.

I will not ruin your experience by revealing any details of the exciting Axe Cop story arc. Suffice to say, it’s pretty much exactly what you might expect from the mind of a five-year-old. Click and enjoy. I promise awesomeness.

Thanks to namethebats, who first alerted me to said awesomeness.

A Girl After My Own Destructive Heart

One more Baby story to close out her birthday week, if I may.

The Baby has this habit of spotting a random toy just as we’re about to leave for day care in the morning, then grabbing it and insisting on taking it with her. If it’s something small, like a Yo Gabba Gabba action figure or a spider ring, I say okay. If it’s something big or ridiculous, like a book or a chair, I say no. If I say no, she immediately throws a fit, and I have to figure out how to distract her so I can get her out the door.

This morning, she really wanted to take a plastic pumpkin (the kind used for trick-or-treating). I said no, and she went ballistic. I carried her out onto the porch and closed the door, but she flung herself against it. It carried her down the stoop and walked down the street with her, but she was still upset.

If I get this far and she’s still crying, I try to find something nearby to excite and distract he, like, “Oooh, look at that squirrel running around in the tree!”. But this morning, none of the usual sights are working. s

brokenTV.jpgThen, at the end of our block, I spotted an old TV someone had thrown out on the curb. It lay screen-down, and some vandals had obviously gotten to it, because there was glass all over the sidewalk and the side panels were kicked in.

“Oooh, look at the broken TV!” I said, and made a smashing noise.

Immediately, The Baby stopped crying and started laughing. “Broken TV, oh no!” she squealed, and imitated my smash sound. Her anger about The Pumpkin Incident was completely forgotten.

We turned up another street, walked another 10 feet or so, and The Baby said, “Daddy, you remember the broken TV?”

“Yeah, it was funny!”

“It was FUNNY!” she said again, made the smashing sound, and laughed hysterically.

Perhaps I should be a tad worried about this, especially considering that time Predator lulled her to sleep. But then again, maybe I should have expected this, because I think breaking stuff is funny. I thought that when I was a kid, and I think that now. I have no idea why. It just touches a dumb, primal Laugh Button within me. When Dave Letterman used to throw junk off the top of a five-story building or crush them with a 80-ton hydraulic press, I was in heaven.

So The Baby has the I Think Breakin’ Stuff Is Funny Gene. In celebration of her birthday, this weekend we’re taking her to the demolition derby.