I don't like some kids.

Yesterday at the park Jake was sitting in his stroller and we were walking toward him. Two kids, maybe 5 or 6, walked around the corner with toy light sabers. They saw Jake and said, "A baby! Let's kill it!"

Then they saw us and got all scared. They went off to the grass and started bashing each other with the light sabers.

As they were hitting each other they chanted, "Kill the baby! Kill it!"

Thomas the train is a negative show.

In an older blog post I wrote how, as a parent, you learn to watch television critically. I argued that TV was much too flashy for children and is probably bad for their brains:

"The problem is that every time the screen on the TV changes it makes a little flash. In the old days, the screen didn't flash much because it didn't change much. Now when you watch TV, it's almost constant flickering and flashing."

I didn't mention content, but that's another thing you have to be aware of. Take the very popular show "Thomas the Tank Engine". It's a British show about a blue train named Thomas. And it's very bitter and mean spirited.

In every episode the trains are mean to each other, jealous, reckless or behaving badly. (It's a British show so what do you expect - British people are mean and cranky.)

I mentioned this to another parent and he said that I need to "get over it" and that Thomas has "good messages" and that I'm "too uptight". Maybe.

But Jake only has the attention for the first half of the show. He sees the meaness and then loses interest and never sees the resolution. Basically, he's being exposed to mean behaviour.

Most other shows are fine. The characters are nice to each other. My wife tells me that Care Bears is brutally horrible and that they're vicious to one another.

And of course Looney Tunes is bad because it's violent and mean. Don't think it's on much anymore as it's no longer poltically correct. My friend informs me it's on every day on Teletoon Retro. Oh.

The Koreans are hardcore when it comes to schooling.

At the elementary school where I work we have a group of Koreans who come and take classes from about 3pm until 8pm. They're international students, sent away from their parents in Korea to learn English and experience our education system.

From 8am to 3pm they're in our school, then until 8pm they're in "Korean" school. They also go to school Saturdays.

These kids are young - 10 years old. Wow, that's hardcore. But apparently it's the norm in Korea. The children there apparently have 12 hour working days. After "regular" school, their parents send them to academies at night where they learn even more.

Apparently there's immense, cultural and parental pressure to succeed in school. If you don't get top marks, you don't get admittance to university or good jobs. Your station in life is directly correlated to your marks and your academic success.

I heard tests are mostly multiple-choice and there is very little teaching and promotion of creativity.

Nice to see our Korean overlords are building drones to one day rule over us and ensure we conform.

Brandon.

I'm terrified of this kid here at the school where I work. His name is Brandon. I'd say he's about 8 or 9.

He smashed a door window to a classroom and he pointed this out to me proudly one day. "I broke that!" he said.

I just nodded.

Another day he came up to me and shouted, "What's your name? I SAID WHAT IS YOUR NAME!"

Another time he was karate chopping the classroom doors with is foot and my boss went out to ask him what was wrong and he shouted, "SHUT UP!!!"

He's often screaming in rage and smashing or kicking things. He's surrounded at all times by 2 special needs workers.

I went to the washroom today and saw him run into the girls washroom. I went into a stall and locked the door, praying that he wouldn't come in.

Television gives me a headache.

When you have a kid you start to watch television much more critically. What shows are good for kids? What shows are awful?

The sad fact is that most shows are terrible. TV has changed tremendously in the last few years - mostly due to digital editing. Reality shows use editing to the extreme to construct a "story" around a bunch of people.

The edits are quick flashes of facial expressions, voice overs and action shots - often placed out of context and out of order. They condense 24 hours of film into 45 minutes.

The problem is that every time the screen on the TV changes it makes a little flash. In the old days, the screen didn't flash much because it didn't change much. Now when you watch TV, it's almost constant flickering and flashing.

That can't be good for your head. It's a major reason why we don't let Jake watch much TV. When we do watch TV with Jake, it's mostly live music (less flashy) or youtube videos.

Much Music or MTV is unwatchable because of the flickering. Reality shows are almost unwatchable. Even some kids shows are flashy, including Sesame Street.

Barney is pretty good because the screen doesn't flicker much. Unfortunately it's super annoying.

We've gone overboard on literacy.

I was just talking to a teacher here at the elementary school and he showed me the grade 5 curriculum. Physical education was a half a page of goals and instructions. Social studies was a page long, same with science and math.

Reading and writing was 3 or 4 pages long. He said, "We've gone overboard on literacy." I asked him why and he said, "Because women have started writing the curriculum."

Then he got more serious and said, "Because kids don't read books anymore."

I said, "Is there a correlation between the length and detail of the curriculum and success at reading?"

He said, "Yes, an inverse one." He said a lot of the teachers don't bother with it - it's simply too detailed, unpractical and incomprehensible.

Then he gave me an example. "Imagine if the phys. ed curriculum was 4 pages long and kids were taught pre-kicking strategies before kicking a soccer ball, and kids were evaluated on 4 or 5 different aspects of kicking a ball."

I said, "Kids wouldn't want to do it. It would be annoying. They'd want to go read a book."

He nodded his head and I went to the washroom.

The worst things about kids' toys.

You only notice or think about kids toys when you're a parent. A few things I've learned about kids' toys:

- It's really hard to predict a good toy. You can never tell from the package.
- A huge percentage of kids toys are poorly designed or made.
- Some of them do or say weird things. I swear one of Jake's toys yells out "BITCH!!"

Here's a list of the worst things about kids' toys, in no particular order.

1.) Batteries. Some toys use the expensive AAA batteries - and just eat them up like candy. Also, when the batteries die, the toy goes a little crazy and starts shouting out gibberish. Usually at 1am.

2) Some toys have buttons or switches that are too hard to push for kids. Also, some toys don't react fast enough when you push the button.

3) Some toys have annoying little reminders that sound after a few minutes of being idle. "Play with me!!!" Which sucks, because we've just distracted Jake enough to play with something less annoying and suddenly you hear, "Play with me!" and Jake scurries back to play with the annoying toy.

4) Some toys encourage bad behaviour. For example, they make a sound when you throw them.

5) Some toys miss opportunities to educate. When you press an animal button, it makes the wrong sound. Or the songs don't quite sound right. Or one toy promotes its name brand. "Thank you for playing with Leap Frog!!" Marketing.

What attribute would you give all children?

If you could give all children a powerful attribute, what would you give them? For example, if you gave children "patience", suddenly they would be super patient. They would never cry or whine whenever they didn't get what they want right this second!

My first thought would be "self-esteem". But then I don't think that would be so great because it could lead to selfishness or self-obsession, which I think our culture promotes way too much.

Cindy said she'd give them "persistence". Never give up. I think giving up is a good characteristic - or at least an underrated one. We all should know when to give up and move on.

What about intelligence? We'd have a bunch of smart alecs running around correcting our grammar. The good news is that when we're old they would have likely fixed all the problems we created and would keep us alive in dream pods or machines that trick our brains into thinking we're living in a perfect, heaven-like world. Tempting.

What about "morality"? Bor-ring. We need evil. We need a few kids growing up evil to keep us on our toes. All our stories and movies and books are essentially good vs. evil.

I think I would give kids "self-discipline". That would mean controlling urges and would basically eliminate tempers, bad habits, drug addiction and boozing. Kids would grow up fitter, happier and healthier. We could all use more self-discipline.

I forgot to look at myself in the mirror yesterday.

The other day when I was picking up Jake from daycare, I realized that I hadn't looked at myself in a mirror yet.



It was roughly 4:50pm and I was talking to one of the workers. I quickly glanced down at my shirt to see if it was inside out (I've worn an inside out shirt before to daycare when dropping off Jake.) Then I worried about having some huge booger under my nose or mustard stain beside my mouth.



I was just too busy to bother looking at myself. In the morning, I was dealing with Jake and mostly watching him as we brushed our teeth in front of the mirror. My hair's short enough that I can get away with just sightlessly rubbing some gel through there. In the washroom at work I must have just looked at my hands.



When you have a kid, you often forget to do basic things like shower or fix your hair or change out of your grubby food-stained clothes. I don't have the time. Or inclination.



Plus I've seen my face a lot throughout my life and could easily go without seeing it for a day or two.



Speaking of our faces, do you know why we never look quite right in photographs? Because we see our faces non-reversed. It looks weird to our eyes. Normally we only see ourselves backwards (in mirrors), which isn't the way other people see us at all. That's a good analogy to life as well - we don't see ourselves truly as others see us.

My son can read. He’s two years old and has Down syndrome.

On Jake’s two year birthday we were showing him some reading cue cards and I showed him the word “Hi”. He waved. I showed him a bunch of other words, then back to hi. He waved again.

Then I showed him the word “clap”. And he clapped. Today, I showed him the word “nose” and he touched his nose.

He’s two and has Down syndrome. We’ve been signing to him since he was about 6 months old. He stared signing back when he was around a year old. Now he knows more than 80 signs.

We just started the reading thing a few days ago. He loves it. Gets very excited. His default answer to most of the cue cards is “Mom, mom, mom.”

When he reads “clap”, we praise him and clap. He gets excited and starts clapping for the next few cue cards. Very cute.

It’s hard to describe how amazing it is to see your son learn. Especially when your son has challenges and obstacles most people never have to face.