Archive for category Parenting Tips For Those With Children
The Blankie Variations
Posted by Keith Spillett in Parenting Tips For Those With Children on September 6, 2012
(Night. Daddy, Moses and Blankie lie on a bed. All three stare into the darkness. All is quiet)
Daddy: Moses, you know that Blankie is actually your brother, right?
Moses: No. Blankie’s not my brother. Blankie is a blanket.
Daddy: Not yet. Blankie is only 5. He doesn’t become a blanket until he’s 18.
Moses: Daddy, Blankie isn’t 5.
Daddy: Sure he is. He’s very advanced for his age. Did you know that he’s an expert in archery?
Moses: What’s archery?
Daddy: Shooting a bow and arrow.
Moses: Daddy.
Daddy: Yes.
Moses: Blankie can’t shoot a bow and arrow. He doesn’t have arms.
Daddy: He uses his corners.
Moses: Oh.
Daddy: And he speaks three languages…
Moses: Really? Are you joking?
Daddy: No. He speaks English, Spanish and Cantonese. He is also semi-fluent in several regional dialects native to Ethiopia.
Moses: Oh.
Daddy: He only reads Russian and English though.
Moses: Oh.
Daddy: He’s read most of Tolstoy in the original language.
Moses: What’s Tolstoy?
Daddy: It’s a kind of medicine. For people who can’t sleep.
Moses: Blankie can’t read.
Daddy: Shhhh. You’ll hurt his feelings.
Moses: Daddy. Blankie can’t read because he doesn’t have eyes.
Daddy: Good point.
(Silence)
Daddy: Did Blankie ever tell you he was the starting fullback for Baylor on their 1995 Liberty Bowl winning team?
Moses: No.
Daddy: And did Blankie ever tell you he was the Attorney General under Richard Nixon. And that he quit rather than fire Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski?
Moses: No.
Daddy: And did Blankie ever tell you that he once saved a fishing village in Alaska from a giant squid?
Moses: No.
Daddy: And did he tell you that he was the bass player on the first and second Borknagar albums?
Moses: No.
Daddy: Oh.
Moses: Daddy?
Daddy: Yes.
Moses: He didn’t tell me because he doesn’t have a mouth.
Daddy: Oh. Well. Yeah.
Moses: Blankie isn’t real.
Daddy: You are going to give him a complex.
Moses: What’s a complex?
Daddy: A group of buildings.
Moses: Oh.
Daddy: It’s time for the two of you to go to sleep.
Moses: Blankie doesn’t sleep.
Daddy: Well, he’s going to be tired in the morning.
Moses: Yeah.
(They stare at the ceiling)
Daddy: Good night, son. Good night, Blankie.
Moses: Good night.
Blankie: Good night.
(They do not move)
Invisible Kid: The Noodles O’Callahan Story
Posted by Keith Spillett in Parenting Tips For Those With Children on October 9, 2011
Noodles O’Callahan is a bright, good-natured 8-year-old boy. He is a third grader at John Q. Poindexter Elementary School in Tupelo, Mississippi. He likes ice cream and pizza, loves his 2 pet dogs and dreams of one day becoming an astronaut. He is a healthy, happy young man who suffers from one terrible problem that deeply effects every aspect of his life. You see, Noodles is invisible.
Invisiblilty may seem to be a strange ailment for a young person to have, but it’s more common then you know. 1 in every 10,000 Americans are born invisible. These young people often are made to feel different and unwanted. In many cases, invisible children are ignored by everyone in their lives including their parents. People bump into them without bothering to apologize, they are never picked to play games with the other kids and in some cases they are not even picked up from school. People simply forget about them. Noodles is one of the forgotten. This is his story.
Noodles was in my kindergarten class three years ago. They train you for all different types of scenarios when you are at the Academy. You know how to deal with loud, aggressive children, you know how to deal with the ones who struggle to learn to read, you know how to work with the shy ones, but they never tell you how to teach an invisible child.
At first, I let Noodles keep to himself, ignored and avoided by other children. One student even stepped on his foot and did not apologize or even acknowledge he had done it. I let Noodles play quietly in the corner for a few hours, but after a while I couldn’t take it. I started calling on him during class discussions only to be met by an icy silence. The other students were perplexed as to why I was calling on a student that they claimed wasn’t even there. I was called into Principal Murphy’s office. When he asked me why I was talking to a student that didn’t exist, I nearly hit the roof. How dare he dismiss Noodles’ existence!!! What gaul the man had! I exploded at him. The nerve! To just pretend an invisible student didn’t exist was the worst crime an educator could commit in my eyes.
After that, I took an unscheduled vacation. I spent a lot of time around the house thinking about what had happened. Surprisingly, Noodles started showing up at my front door at 8 AM everyday rain or shine. He should have been in school, but I think he felt like he’d be better off spending time with and adult who actually paid attention to him. He would come in and have tea while we discussed what it was like to be invisible. That was nice. It made me feel like I was making a difference.
All of a sudden, things started to get very weird. Furniture started moving around my apartment. I knew he was breaking in to my house when I was asleep and trying to intentionally confuse me. He would start hiding things in places I’d never bother to look. My keys showed up in a flower pot, my wallet showed up in a pair of pants I hadn’t worn in months. One day, I woke up with a bloody knife in my hand. I have no idea how it got there. Noodles must have done it!
I spent hours in the interrogation room trying to tell my story to the police. They simply didn’t believe me. They claimed that I had stabbed Mr. Morganfield and put his head in my own refrigerator. In spite of the fact that Mr. Morganfield was a secret disciple of the Pod People and was planning to begin infecting the human race with a DNA altering virus, I would have never harmed him. Clearly, Noodles received the same information as me and simply acted on it. He had a good amount of pent up rage from years of being unnoticed and must have just snapped.
I now spend most of my days in a heavily medicated stupor eating different varieties of Jell-o. Noodles still comes to visit me. He snuck into my cell last night and began singing old Duke Ellington tunes. I told the guards to shut him up. They just looked at me like I was crazy.
These invisible children walk among us everyday. They are forgotten and unloved. Three years of eating Jell-o and staring at old episodes of Gunsmoke gives you a lot of time to think. When I am released in the year 2041, I plan on dedicating my life to helping them. Their story doesn’t have to end up like this. Help them. For Noodles. For me.
Parenting Stories For Other Parents Who Are Parenting
Posted by Keith Spillett in Parenting Tips For Those With Children on September 17, 2011
Being a parent of young children can be a frightening experience. You love them with all of your heart, but you eventually have to send them out into a challenging, scary world in which you are not always around. As a service to my readers, I’ve been collecting stories mailed in by parents who have had to deal with difficult parenting situations as their children first start school. Here are some powerful tales of parents who have looked difficult situations in the eye and said “Go away, Difficult Situation. I don’t like you. You are a jerk. I hate you, Difficult Situation, and I hope a plague descends on you and your family.” Hope these stories touch you as deeply as they have me….
My son’s first run in with a bully
The other day Bernie came home with a sad, scared look on his face. When I asked him why, he told me that another boy at the school named Jimmy was making fun of him. I felt so angry at Jimmy! How dare he do that to my boy! However, I am a parent now and sometimes it is important to be a rational adult. After all, I am a role model to Bernie and I want him to understand that simply responding emotionally to every challenge isn’t the right approach.
The next day as I was dropping him off, I had Bernie point the bully out to me. I made a note of what he looked like then drove home quickly. I got dressed up in a vampire costume that I had picked up at the local thrift store. Very frightening outfit! I covered my face in white paint and smeared fake blood on to my fake fangs. Then, I went to the school and hid behind a tree. When the Pre-K class came out for recess I leaped out from behind the tree and started running right after Jimmy. He began running away with tears streaming down his face. I chased him around for a while until I finally cornered him. As I looked into his terrified face, I said “Nobody messes with Bernie! No one!!!!” I think he got the message. My son has had several kids give him their cookies during snack time and has gotten to get on the swings first everyday since.
-Anna in Cell Block A
My daughter came home from school wanting a bizarre tattoo
Sure, young children pick up a lot of strange ideas from their friends. Peer pressure is a major issue that affects all kids, even the youngest among them. That being said, I was stunned when our 5 year-old daughter Bunny came home last Friday begging to get an inverted cross tattooed into her forehead. Personally, I’m very open-minded, but this simply was too much for me to handle. I immediately regretted letting my wife talk me into letting her join the afterschool satanic cult that was being offered at the school from 3 to 4 on Wednesdays. Clearly, young children should not be exposed to this sort of thing, whether it be at school or in some bizarre 16th Century French dungeon.
I knew that this was a trouble sign and I responded immediately. I went up stairs to her room and cast her copy of The Necronomicon into the fire. I took all of her Anton Lavey posters off the wall and made her put the heads back on her dolls. Then, I told her she was going to have to listen to records forwards from now on. Sometimes, being a good parent means having to put your foot down.
-Not Satanic in New Hampshire
Living With Flippers One Day at a Time
At age 2, my son Barbara began to grow flippers in place of his hands. Flipperitis is a rare but common disease among young children who have eaten large amounts of tin foil from an early age. When Barbara was ready to start school, we were concerned the other students would make fun of him. In order to make sure that he was not teased, we spent several thousands of dollars to train him in several of the martial arts and get him certified in the use of firearms and small explosives. These weren’t easily skills to learn for a young man with flippers, but through dedication and the use of massive amounts of body altering steroids, Barbara became a threat to the lives of nearly anyone who came within 100 feet of him.
From Day One, Barbara was the most popular boy in his class. He is currently captain of the high school swim team and he is only six years old. Even when he sprouted horns over the Christmas break this year, we barely broke a sweat. Kids would have to be crazy to mess with him.
-Won’t Be Messed With In Winnepeg
Six Important Lessons You Should Be Teaching Your Children
Posted by Keith Spillett in Parenting Tips For Those With Children, Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on May 16, 2011
We, at The Tyranny of Tradition, are proud to present today’s guest writer, Jonathan Winthrop. Winthrop is a conservative columnist, syndicated talk radio host, all-around great American and a proud parent of four boys (McCarthy 12, Reagan 8, Goldwater 6, and Huckabee 2). He is the President and co-founder of Americans for Progressive Corporal Punishment, a group committed to teaching family values to bad parents. He is the author of several New York Times best-sellers including “12 Easy Steps to Teaching Your Child To Fear and Respect Authority Figures” “Attila The Huns’ Strategies To Being a Better Parent”, and “Look Mom, No Values: A Parents Guide To Living In A Fallen World”.
I know, I know, your young children are learning lots of bad habits from television and from that Odd Future Wolfgang Kill’em All rap album you just bought them. Parenting can be a tough job. But, parenting is the most important job in the entire world. After all, without children there wouldn’t be adults. If there weren’t adults, who would be there to produce a lasting supply of inexpensive consumer goods. Without inexpensive consumer goods, what would drive our economy? As you can see, without children, our world would quickly turn into a communistic hell on earth. I’ve put together a list of six really important lessons that you should be teaching your children so that they don’t end up hooked on crack-cocaine or becoming a “community organizer”.
Don’t Talk To Strangers
It’s the oldest piece of advice in the book. Strangers are a threat under all circumstances, particularly when they dress like they are in 1970s cop films or have foreign accents. If your child doesn’t know a person, chances are that person is looking to cause them terrible harm. Strangers have done terrible things throughout history. John Hinkley was a stranger to Ronald Reagan when he tried to assassinate him back in 1981. Had Reagan died there is no doubt that an Iron Curtain would have descended on the United States stifling freedom for the next thousand years. Be a good role model for your children by ignoring anyone who asks you for help and not saying hello to anyone unless you have known them for at least three years.
Don’t Be A Sucker
Lots of people are trying to take your money from you all the time. Sometimes, they want to give you valuable things in return like toaster ovens or televisions with picture-in-picture capability. Sometimes, they are looking to take your money and use it on drugs or food. Most people on the street simply can’t be trusted. If they are behind the counter at a reputable store in a good part of town, that’s one thing, but according to a study done by the Heritage Corporation 97 percent of people who are who live in bad parts of town are either “highly dangerous”, “just can’t be trusted” or are “too lazy to go out and earn a living.” Do not give them money under any circumstances. It will contribute to a vicious cycle of poverty and Islamic radicalism.
Don’t Let Other People Blame You For Their Problems
Just because you were born in the greatest country in the history of the human race doesn’t mean you should feel bad about it. Most people are looking to blame you for their problems when their suffering is actually caused by the fact that they have made bad decisions. Everyone starts equal in this life. Don’t let their statistics about people being “born in poverty” confuse you. According to a study done by the American Freedom and Values Council For A Freer America, 96 percent of Americans who are wealthy have better morals and make better decisions than those who make less than 50,000 dollars a year. You are where you are because you worked harder than anyone making less than you. Teach your children to be proud of what they have achieved and scornful of those who haven’t achieved as much.
You’d Be Better Off If It Weren’t For Them
Social programs like affirmative action and gun restriction laws have weakened most Americans’ ability to live a happy, free and safe life. Teach your children to be active participants in government by stopping the government from taking your money and giving it to other people just because they are “hungry” or unable to provide themselves with adequate shelter. Thomas Jefferson once said something like “Government is the enemy of free people everywhere, particularly when it gives the money of hard working people to undeserving losers.” He was right. Teach your children that government and special interest groups like illegal aliens are responsible for most, if not all, of their problems. That way, when they become adults they will have absolutely no problem getting rid of government organizations that are slowly rotting America away like the Food and Drug Administration.
Without Math We Would No Longer Be Free
America has fallen behind in math test scores around the world. According to a study done by the Americans For a Freer Society With Better Test Scores, 103 percent of American 8th graders can barely count up to five. If this trend continues our children are going to become adults who are unable to figure out how much of their weekly check goes to building important tools of peace like stealth bombers and aircraft carriers. They will never be able to experience the joy and pride one feels when counting how many more nuclear missiles we have compared to the rest of the world. Then, they will never know how truly lucky they are.