Children

This blog is a lot about parenting.

Hence, children appear a lot: the good, the bad and the down right very bad.

So do monsters. My kids see plenty of them.

But for how long?

The imagination runs wild and then comes computers, the Internet and reality.

The Sound of Silence

by Charles Newbery

Posted in: Children

"Hey, Dad. This is banging good fun."

As a kid, my house was noisy, very noisy.

I don’t know how my parents survived.

At probably the noisiest point, we were two teenage girls and three boys under the age of 10. The girls would stop spinning Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones and we boys would start blaring punk rock and then taking a whack at playing it ourselves in the garage, the eldest at one point on vocals, the middle one on drums and me the youngest on bass guitar. We never made it out of the garage, and that may have been a big reason why one neighbor started gathering signatures for our ouster from our leafy Brentwood Glen neighborhood in West Los Angeles and later threatened to take us all out, quite literally. It could also have been the skateboard ramp out front or our firework bonfires that ticked him off.

I can’t remember the specifics or even the noise. [click to continue reading…]

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Call It What It Is

by Charles Newbery

Posted in: Children

"Now class, it's like math, you call it what it is."

WHATEVER YOU CALL it, it is what it is: a fart.

Not long ago a father with a newborn asked me, a father of three children under the ages of eight, the correct terminology for when a baby, well, passes gas.

I thought about it. There must be dozens of alternatives, if not more. Botty burps, gas, pump, trump and wind. Then there are phrases like pass gas, cut the cheese, let off a bomb, drop a bomb, rip off a loud one or break wind or let it fly or let it rip. I could go on.

I wrote back and told him to try flatulence. [click to continue reading…]

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Double Trouble: Sibling Squabbles

by Charles Newbery

Posted in: Children

"Hey, don' t shoot!"

MY SON YELLED at his younger sister, “Don’t do that!” followed by a pause and then a louder yell of “Mummy!”

The youngest comes running into the playroom where I’ve just finished putting up a chalkboard. I’m on a ladder now in the next room hanging up curtains, out of site of the three year old.

“I need to make a drawing,” the youngest says to herself, picking up a piece of chalk and speedily drawing on the board as if to show us parents (she’s not seen me) that she’s been busy and can in no way be linked to the incident with her brother. [click to continue reading…]

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Into the Forest: A Walk in the Wild Turns Wilder

children, parenting, slow parenting, free-range kids, argentina, pinamar, forest, walking

THE WIND BLEW and the sun was warm as winter came to an end in Pinamar, on the coast of Argentina. My three children, each carrying a stick, walked into the forest, and as they entered the sand dunes and pine trees transformed into a land of the wild. That’s when our life began. We [...]

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Big Gulp

daughter, growing up, pinamar, parenting, children

IT’S THE BEGINNING of the next stage, and I’m teary. My eldest daughter is eight and she’s declared her graduation to adult meals. “I don’t want a child’s meal,” she said. “No toy?” I asked. “Yep. No toy.” Simple as that. One day a kid, the next day approaching adulthood. She’s growing up. But to [...]

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Super Solidarity

children getting along, siblings, parenting, relationships, diet, milk allergy

WE’RE PREPARING FOR a big change in our diet, at least for my son. The six year old may have an allergy to milk and dairy products, from cheese to chocolate and dulce de leche, a sort of caramel that he likes to scoop out by the spoonful. Milk, in its powdered form, goes into [...]

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Let It Rain (More)

IT’S A RAINY holiday and my children are stuck in the house and they are well beyond boredom. “There’s nothing to do,” the seven-year-old girl tells me. “We’re bored,” the five-year-old boy says. They look at me glumly when I tell them to watch the falling rain as it splashes outside the window. It’s something [...]

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The Pine Trees

A WHILE BACK, my wife and I were walking with our three children down the street in Buenos Aires when we ran into a cousin. “Well, I’ll be,” she said . “If it isn’t the whole cast of Pine Tree Paradise right before my very eyes!” She’s a reader of this blog. She follows our [...]

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Heave Ho!

I’VE NOT SIRED humans. My three children are ants, I swear. They’ll move the entire playroom to the living room over a day. Heave ho! Here we go! Grin, smile and move it back. That’s what us parents do. But what’s the use? The ants will be up in the morning. Heave ho! Did you [...]

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The Partridge Family

WE’RE MOVING. WE’RE out of Recoleta, out of a building that doesn’t want our dog. Out of a building of angry faces – and into something better. We hope. We’d anticipated the expulsion from our apartment in Recoleta. The building’s bylaws say no dogs. We rented on the understanding that our dog, an obedient yet [...]

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