Pink and Blue Gender Rules

“Dad-dito, I wish that boys could like princesses the way girls can.” M-ito told me this today while we were hanging out at our favorite coffee shop in town, Espresso 77 (his favorite drink is a hot chocolate or milk, and I like their latte).

“Boys can like them too,” I said. We’ve told M-ito this since he was an infant. He likes red and pink, dances ballet, and loves dinosaurs and insects. Recently when he chose a pair of shoes from the girls section at Payless I said to him – “Those are girls shoes,” and he replied, without hesitating, “Dad-dito you told me there are no girls or boys things.” Mom-ita then said, “You can buy whatever kind of shoes you like.” I agreed. We have to practice what we preach.

“I know,” M-ito said, “but they don’t.”

“There are boys who like them too, it’s just that sometimes their parents tell them not too, or other kids make fun of them because they do, so they stop liking them.”

“Yeah,” M-ito said.

“As you get older, you’ll see more girls will like other things that boys like too. It changes a little as you get older – a little.”

“I wish it could be like that now.”

“M-ito, you can like whatever you want to.”

“I know.”

“Good,” I said. That’s good.  

What’s in Ned’s Head?

Of all the gifts that M-ito received – and as the only child in our combined families to date he received a lot – What’s in Ned’s Head? takes the prize so far as his favorite, followed by The Story Book by fundex. Oh there’s lots of others he plays with but these seem to be the ones he spends the most time with and the one’s he asks me to play the most. It’s only been three days but patterns have already been set. Why is Ned’s Head so interesting to him? Well, first there’s the gross-out factor. You stick your hand inside a large head – from either the ears or the nostrils – and search for items inside like bird poop, a used lollipop, barf, a used q-tip, a tooth, a brain, an alien, or a dirty diaper. That’s about all you have to say as far as the why is concerned. They even give you additional blank cards (the card you pick directs you to search for a particular object each round) so you can add your own stuff to Ned’s Head. M-ito has so far added a rubber snake, a rubber lizard, a pterodactyl skeleton, and a ladybug. It doesn’t seem to matter who wins (finds their object first) to M-ito. He simply likes to dig inside the head for treasure. Fundex comes up with a winner again.The second game, The Story Book Game, is a card game that contains a deck of 54 cards with items/people on it like a hammer, a singer, a little man, a lobster, etc… Each person picks a card and has to use the card in the story the players are creating, card by card. Each player has to retell the story correctly and in order up to that point then add his/her own card to the mix. A recent example from a game this morning goes like this, “There once was a hammer that fell into a well and needed a rope to get out. It was friends with a singer who also needed a rope to fix her microphone. Before she could fix it she got hungry and ate a hamburger and a lobster. But before she could eat the lobster a mouse came along and carried it away…” You get the idea. So far we’ve made it up to fifteen cards. M-ito wants to make it to all 54.

Mayonnaise and Mustard

When I was seven I remember thinking my mom was playing head games with me with my lunch. I remember hating meatloaf sandwiches because the kids at school made fun of me because my lunch smelled bad (or perhaps stronger than the average lunch?). Then I remember my mom making me meatloaf sandwiches and me telling her to not make them anymore.

She said, “But you love them.”

I told her I didn’t.

The same thing happened with hamburgers. My mom said I liked mayonnaise and mustard on my hamburger and I told her I never liked it – that she was wrong and crazy for even suggesting it. I’m pretty sure I only ever liked ketchup. 

M-ito told me yesterday morning that he didn’t like oatmeal with raisins. He told me he didn’t like the raisins at all and that he’d never liked them. And… that he hated oatmeal. I reminded him that he’d been eating oatmeal and raisins for about a month now, almost every day. We played a game. I hid the raisins at the bottom of the bowl and he ate them with the oatmeal. It was the only way I’d get him to eat the oatmeal. “I hate oatmeal. I hate raisins,” he said again, arms folded across his chest.

This happens a lot with M-ito. He loves strawberries and then all of a sudden he hates them. He loves broccoli and then he hates it – never liked. “Why did you buy them when you know I hate them? I’ve told you a million times I hate them.” Hmm.

Usually I find out he’s changed his mind about a food right after I’ve stocked up on them from the grocery store. I’ve got a lot of oatmeal to eat on my own right now. And… many packages of raisins.

Maybe I did like mayonnaise and mustard on my hamburger?

Nah. That’s crazy. 

Who’s on First?

M-ito was eating his dinner last night – actually we were all eating together, for once – Mac and Cheese and Hotdogs (adults also had salad) – when M-ito said, “I do only fight with you two.” 

It sounds out of context the way I wrote it so here’s some background. We’ve been having fights every day – one or two per day – on the usual five-year old things, like putting on clothes in the morning, getting out the front door in the morning on our way to school, washing hands before eating dinner, washing hands after pooping or peeing, eating anything at all (especially in the mornings), and going to bed. Mom-ita has remarked many times to M-ito, “Why is that you only have fights with us about these things and not your teachers or your friends at school?” She’s so smart. M-ito never really answers.

His favorite trick of the month when fighting with us is to place his fingers in his ears and say, “I’m not listening to you.”

This is usually followed by me saying something ingenious like, “Then I’m not talking to you until you take your fingers out of your ears.”

Followed by M-ito saying, “What?” 

Followed by me saying, “I’m not talking to you.”

Followed by M-ito saying, “What?” It’s like an old Abbot and Costello routine.

Part of M-ito’s routine has also included eye rolling, mouthing words we can’t hear as if he’s mocking us (that always makes me feel warm and toasty when I come home from work), and a body posture that is so thirteen, and not five, that it is scary. We tell him to stop the eye/mouth/posture now as soon as it happens, and that’s when the hands go to the ears and I say, “Then I’m not talking to you until…” and M-ito says, “What?” Third base, as Costello would say. 

So last night, after a small dose of pre-dinner fighting, we ate together and M-ito turned to us and said, “I do only fight with you two.” Then he smiled around his hotdog, hotdog roll, and ketchup. It does sound better when put in context.

What My Son Eats

A five-year old’s diet.Breakfast:

eggs (only crambled or hard boiled – though not the yolk – and scrambled with ketchup only)

oatmeal with raisins (I hide the raisins and he finds them and eats them with some oatmeal but leaves the oatmeal when the raisins are all done)

waffles (only the mini-kind)

pancakes

OJ

toast

guarnitas from the Columbian bakery

bunny love cold cereal

strawberries

mango

Lunch and or Dinner:

peanut butter and jelly sandwich

sliced turkey or chicken sandwich

grilled cheese

mac and cheese

spagetti and meatballs (no sauce)

grilled chicken or tandoori chicken (not the spicy part)

broccoli (sometimes)

cauliflower

pizza plain or with chicken or with mushroom

mushrooms of any sort

rice

salmon terriyaki

hot dogs 

Food he’ll Eat Anytime:

icecream

cookies

brownies

chocolate cake

jello (this is new)

candy (but especially M&Ms and Chocolate Kisses, and lollipops)

I’m sure I forgot something. Mom-ita will just have to remind me.

M-itoism: On Self-Control

Mom-it and I are sitting in our dining area (which doubles as my office) and M-ito has just finished dinner. He asks us if he can look at www.blokus.com to see what’s on the website. (I don’t think he really understands what a website address is but he’s been saying he wants to visit www.blokus.com since we bought the game.)

It’s 7:05pm and too late to play any more games but I promised M-ito he could look at the website with me after dinner. Mom-ita, clearly not happy with me – and rightly so (yet another instance of Dad-dito not thinking) – acquiesces. “But,” she says, “I don’t want to have any arguments or fights over this, M-ito. You’ll go right to bed after five minutes, no longer.

M-ito moves next to me and turns to face Mom-ita with a big smile. “I won’t get upset this time,” he says. “I will only get upset in here,” he puts both hands on top of his head, “but I won’t act out.”

Mom-ita and I both crack up and www.blokus.com comes onto the screen.

Don’t Smoke? or Smoke?

There’s a new advertisement on the four sides of a square garbage pail by the front door of my son’s school, also next to the children’s playground. The image is of a giant cigarette, standing out like a beacon of light amidst a dark background. The words are hard to read unless you get close and are clearly meant for an older audience. It’s an anti-smoking-in-movies campaign for pg and g rated films. This is not a bad cause, the problem is, the advertisers didn’t think through what small kids, say under the age of 10, would think of the advertisement. Or perhaps the administration of the school didn’t think through its placement on the school grounds.

One five year old, not M-ito, upon seeing the advertisement said, “It looks like a giant cigarette. I thought smoking was supposed to be bad for you.”

And so a public service campaign to help has miscalculated and done the opposite of what it intends to do. I still remember the Nova campaign from business school where the Chevrolet Nova was sold in Spanish speaking countries and tanked becuase the Chevrolet marketing people didn’t realize that Nova (no va) meant “Don’t go.”

What is supposed to be an anti-smoking campaign may well become a smoking campaign. Didn’t somebody take a look at these posters before they put them up in front of the school? Didn’t the advertisers focus group this and target it for a certain age group? And if they did, did it really play well to grade schoolers? I’ve been doing public health work for over twenty years and drug prevention work for that whole time and I just can’t believe this passed a focus group test, much less the test of any parent who has a child in grade school. At the least, why didn’t the giant cigarette have the universal sign for no-smoking across it (the large red circle with a line through it). Mom-ita already explained to M-ito what the poster says and what it means so we’re covered there but the image, its placement and its continual daily message to all who enter the school and exit it needs to be addressed now.

Mom-ita and I will be talking to the school adminsitration about this tomorrow morning, M-ito in tow.

M-itoism: Farts & Yawns

“Farts are like a yawn only it doesn’t mean you’re tired. A yawn means you’re tired.”

That about says it all.