Memories

Another year ended huh? I bet it’s been a doozy. You had ups. You had downs. You had victories. You had disappointments.

And so did your kids.

So, how will each of you remember it? Will you remember it? What will mark the completion of a season, what will cement the lessons learned from its events, what will bring healing from its conflicts and pains? 

Sometime late in the year, I heard someone mention the idea of capturing each year’s events and themes in a kind of family history. It got me thinking…

The Aldin family could certainly benefit from such a tradition.

And so the idea I’ve come up with is to keep a permanent record of the next few years in the form of a ‘book’. For all I know, it’s been done before. But not by our family.

Each of us gets to answer the questions below, and choose two digital photos that represent our favourite memories of the year just gone. Then on New Year’s Eve, we’ll read our answers and “talk story” about 2007, before placing them in the book.

The questions are simple:

• My favourite movie this year:
• I really enjoyed going to the __________ because _____________________.
• Three cool things about my birthday:
• My holiday:
• A cool thing that God did:
• My achievements:
• The hardest thing I had to do was…
• Something I wish didn’t happen:
• A funny thing I heard:

2007 has been an incredibly emotional year for us, full of the extremes of grieving and celebration, public conflict and making new friends, villains and heroes, kids moving schools and my wife changing jobs, etc etc. I’m hoping this new tradition will bring closure and bring us even closer together.

Do you have a family tradition to close out the year and leave a record for your kids for later ?

On the 11th Day of Christmas:A Few of My Favourite Things

When I were a lad, oh matey, did I ever love Christmas day!

Of course, I still do. These days, it’s a shear joy to watch my kids’ delite as they open their own presents while later I revel in the tastes of Christmas food. But as a kid, it was all about my presents.

Here’s my five favourites, the ones I remember giving me the greatest joy and the ones that also I played with the most…

1. The Six Million Dollar Man doll action figure, complete with bionic eye (you looked through a hole in the back of his head and objects far away looked slightly closer).

2. The slide that miraculously appeared in the backyard when I was five. Wheeeeeeeeeee! 

3. The Star Trek (TOS) phaser. Unfortunately in late 70s’ Australia, Klingon disrupters weren’t available, but a Federation weapon was nearly as good.

4. The spud gun – you know the pistol sized ones where you shoved one end into a potato, gouged out a bullet and fired it at your sister or the dog. The difference between winning or losing a neighbourhood battle could often come down to who’d brought the most spuds with them.

5. But the piece de resistance [French for best present ever] was the Super-8 movie camera I received in 1980. This black aparatus (with the screw-on handgrip) got one hell of a workout over the next few years. My friends and I made some of the wierdest films ever made – which were made all the better by the 1981 addition of a projector which we could use to actually dub sound onto them. Can you believe it? Home movies with sound?! The wonders of pre-video technology…

How ’bout you? What were some of yours?

On the 10th Day of Christmas…

On the 9th Day of Christmas…

Ho ho ho, Merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry Chrissstmas!

On the 8th Day of Christmas: Holidays and Non-custodial Dads

Holidays.

Is there a more emotive word for families? It can surface feelings of excitement and longing, or of anxiety and dread.

For some men – those who don’t live with their kids – it can also bring up some very sad or frustrated feelings.

An article I came across recently looked like a very helpful foray into that territory with tips (the author says) gleaned from a group of therapists. Here’s a sample:

The holidays tend to be an emotional time for non-custodial dads. There is just something about the holiday season that puts us in a nostalgic mood, remembering the good times for the most part. Our holiday memories are often romanticized, and many of the traditions families create become negative or impossible after an estrangement, separation or divorce.

So, given all the emotion and the nostalgia, what is a non-custodial father to do during the holidays? How do you make new memories and new traditions? What should you do to make the holidays as positive as possible for your children, who are possibly hurting far worse than their non-custodial dad?

So. Go check out Handling the Christmas Holidays as a Non-Custodial Dad …

And if you have the time, the inclination and you’re a Non-Custodial Dad (there has to be a better term!), you might like to leave a comment here and tell us what helps you not just handle them but enjoy and enhance them…

On the 7th Day of Christmas: Charity Begins @ Home

I am a big believer in generosity and charity.

I don’t always practise it, but I do believe in it!

Christmas is that wonderful time where the “spirit of giving” can actually possess us to  help other people who need it, to be generous, to share, to be kind. We start to smile nicely at people who cut us off in traffic and only flip them the bird after they’ve turned away. We deny ourselves so that others may be blessed …

Who am I kidding? It usually brings out the worst in us.

Folks, if we want the me-me-me-get-outa-my-way-freak!-greed-is-good mindset to not grip our kids, we need (in most cases) to teach them intentionally to be generous and empathetic, to become a little self-effacing in the face of the needs of others.

(I’m gettin’ preachy, aren’t I? You can tell me straight. I can take it)

So in reaching for the magical make-my-kid-a-saint stick, you might also want to refer to the simple article How to Teach Generosity (to your preschooler), the main points for which are below (the article expands on them).

Demonstrate generosity.
Discuss other people’s wants and needs.Teach your preschooler that sharing can be temporary.
Show that you disapprove of selfishness.
Pile on the praise. (Whenever your preschooler does share)
Set some toys aside.
Let your preschooler learn from his peers.
Look for the reasons behind her stinginess.

At our house? Over the last 5 years, we’ve taught our kids to “tithe” on their pocket money. That is, they put 10% aside all year and then decide who they will help with it around now. It took a while to catch on, but it has.

Currently they’ve gotten a TEAR catalog and decided that they could afford to provide one home with clean piped water in India and maybe buy some schoolbooks for another child (all the while making jokes about what they’re actually going to buy for themselves with the money. At least, I think they’re joking. . .)

How have you encouraged your kids to share their toys, or to give to others who are less fortunate?

What worked? What didn’t?

On the 6th Day of Christmas…

Dads, got lot’s of I’m-gonna-be-stuck-in-a-confined-space-with-bored-kids time coming at ya fast? Need more activities and ideas than you can shake a holly-branch at?

You need to visit Black Dog, my friend. Depending on the age of your kids (and their interests), there’s got to be something here to save your bacon, whether it’s a puzzle that you race them to finish – or a lame joke that will send them fleeing from your presence screaming so you and the missus can have some alone time.

That reminds me:

Q. What do snowmen eat for breakfast?

A.  Snowflakes.

… Hey, where ya goin’? Come back!

***

BREAKING NEWS: Got an early Christmas present today: my very own slingshot monkey!!!!!!! Tried to get footage, camera broke down, more news at 11.

On the 5th Day of Christmas … MORE WIERD GIFTS!

More gifts for Christmas … if you’re struggling for ideas ….

What’s that you say? Something about “bottom of the barrell”? Oh, no there’s worse than that…

***

My kids would do it. Don’t tell me yours wouldn’t!

***

Who made these action figures? Weren’t they ever children??

***

You think that’s tasteless? How about this next one for a finale?

***

At $13.95 – ya just gotta doo it.

And now finally, we’ve scraped the bottom of the barrell…

…actually, that towel wasn’t too bad …

On the 4th Day of Christmas: Christmas Lies?

Poor little guy …

I’ve written before against the evils of Santa Claus…

Actually that’s not true. I just made fun of him. Much to the (very mild) disgust of Hula Doula (who remains a good buddy and has forgiven me for being a curmudgeon).

So I didn’t really write that Santa Claus is a dubious myth…

But someone else has. Dawn Fry’s article is worth a look-see. And while “You Better Not Lie” is a little extreme, it does make at least one interesting point, one that I actually am inclined to agree with.

When children finally figure out for themselves (or their parents confess) that Santa is make-believe it can feel like a huge betrayal. People that they trust the most have been telling them that Santa is real.

Some adults think that it is okay to lie to children when it is for their own good. That may be true in some cases but where is the good of a short-term fantasy that damages a child’s core sense of trust?

Hmmm, now I know many of you will be horribly upset with the writer … and by association – ME! And I repeat that I think that Dawn is overstating it, but she raises a good question about the boundary between fantasy and lies. 

I’ve never been one to just swallow what the dominant culture tells me is true or to follow what it says to do without examining it for myself.

And I’ve always wondered why we insist on children believing this particular myth, and why many of us get so anxious and angry when someone else threatens to burst the Santa bubble ["How could you tell my 9 year old son there's no Santa?!? You beast!!"].

For my part, I really don’t care whether someone tells their children there’s a Santa Claus or not. Our choice has always been not. And this is partly because we wanted our kids to trust us and partly - as my wife puts it -  “We don’t want someone else to get the credit for the cool presents we give our kids!”

So how do you feel about this?

Do you think I’m some kind of bah-humbug-scrooge-beast for not perpetrating spreading a wonderful magical joyous story?

Or do I have a point, and do you also tell your kids “There ain’t no Santa, so ya better keep me happy if you want them presents!”?

***

DISCLAIMER: Aldin children enjoy their Christmas. They get presents, have a tree and decorations, eat until their stomachs threaten to burst [and the food additives send them scaling walls that would challenge Spiderman], and find ways to do good deeds to others.

On the 3rd Day of Christmas… WIERD GIFTS!

Well, maybe this is not the right one to follow up yesterday’s post about the Church of Stop Shopping anti-consumerism movement. Still I got a chuckle out of finding this stuff, if not buying it…

 If you’re starting your wish list now, these are genuine products available to put under your tree…

Mmm, toilet lollies…

***

Nerd toys! (”Amazing push-button shushing action!” oooo!)

***

Just in case you’re missing school on your holiday, young one. [Me? I'm feeling queasy.]

***

Why not?

***

Because all children dream of having OCD! I know I did…

Next Page »