Raising a child in an anti-capitalist household has its unique challenges. How do we help her see the importance of solidarity and the emptiness of Disney Inc. is an ongoing process. While we encourage her to pick up Marxist literature, das Kapital is a little short on the important attractive pull of goofy images that draws 2-year olds to the page.
Havana and a couple of comrades went out last Sunday to the flea market to give out flyers for people seeking to fight capitalism. Essentially the flyers had things like - "trouble with your landlord, trouble with your boss?" We were looking for a new direct action case to fight for the Campaign for Renters Rights.
Havana was pretty well behaved. She even gave out a few flyers.
A few days later Havana picked up a few flyers on our dining table and handed one to Karen, "are you in trouble? Are you in trouble?" she enquired to her mother with an empathetic look on her face. Karen had missed the flyering and slightly confused asked, "in trouble with who?" to which Havana, thought twice and answered with the only authority figure she could think of: "in trouble with teacher?"
She had picked up from her 4-year old buddy Joaquin that being in trouble with teacher was something to aspire to. As Lenin said, three steps forward and two steps back.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Language, Thought Development and Music
When faced with difficult questions, in particular when her parents are asking her to recollect a common moment, Havana has developed a method. I ask her, do you remember such and such, to which she replies, definitively, "Yes." Encouraged that we are about to have a real conversation, I then ask her the same question, and she glazes over and says, "Tell me!" It goes something like this.
Dad: tell mummy what we did at the park today, do you remember?
Havana: Yes
Dad: well, what did we do?
Havana: Tell me
So what we have here, clinically, is either a child that honestly can't remember anything about what she did at the park today, or can't be bothered to think about it, or doesn't want to get drawn into an innevitably boring conversation at a semi-adult level.
Anyway, the new development, what I call the West Side Story phenomena, is the latest tool our daughter has developed to avoid adult-like conversations.
Havana has over the recent months developed her singing voice. What it lacks in carrying a tune it makes up for in unintentional comic content. Unfortunately, as loving parents, however bad Havana's singing is, it always sounds beautiful to us. For the untrained ear it can be compared to the singing of a happy drunk, a meandering tune that loosely strings together a combination of actual words and phrases, alongside slurred incomprehensible ones.
Karen has never liked Musicals. She conceives them as movies with plots that are irritatingly inturrupted by songs. She considered the Crouching Tiger movie in a similar vein: a plot irritatingly inturrupted by fight scenes.
Well, now after we have repeated the "Tell Me!" saga outlined above, instead of it ending there, Havana has begins to express her inner happy drunk. She just goes off into her own musical composition.
As we attempt to introduce a dialogue she replies by breaking out into song, deliberately aiming to irritatingly interrupt any adult effort to plot a conversation.
Dad: tell mummy what we did at the park today, do you remember?
Havana: Yes
Dad: well, what did we do?
Havana: Tell me
So what we have here, clinically, is either a child that honestly can't remember anything about what she did at the park today, or can't be bothered to think about it, or doesn't want to get drawn into an innevitably boring conversation at a semi-adult level.
Anyway, the new development, what I call the West Side Story phenomena, is the latest tool our daughter has developed to avoid adult-like conversations.
Havana has over the recent months developed her singing voice. What it lacks in carrying a tune it makes up for in unintentional comic content. Unfortunately, as loving parents, however bad Havana's singing is, it always sounds beautiful to us. For the untrained ear it can be compared to the singing of a happy drunk, a meandering tune that loosely strings together a combination of actual words and phrases, alongside slurred incomprehensible ones.
Karen has never liked Musicals. She conceives them as movies with plots that are irritatingly inturrupted by songs. She considered the Crouching Tiger movie in a similar vein: a plot irritatingly inturrupted by fight scenes.
Well, now after we have repeated the "Tell Me!" saga outlined above, instead of it ending there, Havana has begins to express her inner happy drunk. She just goes off into her own musical composition.
As we attempt to introduce a dialogue she replies by breaking out into song, deliberately aiming to irritatingly interrupt any adult effort to plot a conversation.
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