Parenting and the Piano Man

Rico called me last night. Rico’s a carpenter and is part of a close-knit group of us who were involved in leading a massive wildcat strike back in ’99.

Next week our family’s heading out to visit my mum and brothers back home and so Rico and I got onto talking about parents.
Rico had a ‘strict’ step dad. He made him pick out the branch that he was going to whip him with. If he ran away, his dad would wait till he was in the shower and catch him and whip him there. My dad was cut of a similar cloth. When we were kids he was a police officer and a violent man. Rico and I joked about how different we are as dads, compared to our own dads.
Karen and I are deliberate parents. There are a lot of theories on methods of early parenting out there. From the ‘let them cry’ theory to ‘attachment theory.’ The method of parenting Karen and I use is closer to attachment theory, although we aren’t about to have our child sleep with us in our bed till she’s a teenager.
Every parent should do whatever they think is best and we don’t judge any parent. But that doesn’t stop us having an idea or two about what we think is best.
The ‘let them cry’ theory, of letting babies cry themselves to sleep, in our eyes, is a method that leads to a kid with a weak sense of self and more likely to be insecure. This method seems to be less popular with working class parents and more popular with parents from the management class.
Karen did a review of Oliver James’ book They F*** You Up – How to Survive Family Life, which anyone can pull down at http://bringdownbush.org/h-r/tfyu.htm. To us, the ideas and evidence of this book confirmed that if you teach a child values of solidarity from the day go, that you will raise a stronger child. We’re trying to raise a fighter that can survive the horrors of this capitalist world.
Back to the phone call. Rico is also trying to dump a piano on me. He’s been long irritating his neighbors with the sounds of this instrument that he ‘appropriated’ about 5 years ago. Rico’s piano skills always sounded beautiful in his own head, but to the rest of the world, that’s where the pleasure started and ended.
Finally, the piano got moved out of the front room and out to pasture in his backyard. Rico not only severed its former rank, but further humiliated it by covering the thing with a big blue plastic tarp. I could tell he was wracked with guilt.
Rico tried to convince me, “it’s only been out there 3 days!” As I inched in interest, I could almost hear his pulse rising, “I could put in my truck for you tonight!” he said.
After I hung up, I pictured Rico stepping out the backyard and patting his piano reassuringly. There was some hope.
I’m gonna call back tomorrow and check with his missus on the piano’s dimensions. Karen remembers the piano being the size of a full-sized truck.