Tag: kids

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Not everyone’s excited about kids riding free on the TTC. Here’s why we should be.

ttc streetcar

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The new mayor of Toronto, John Tory, [insert Rob Ford tribute video] just announced a huge increase in public transit spending and service that includes every-ten-minutes-or-better service, 50 new buses, four new express lines, 11 new 24-hour lines (!) and FREE TTC rides for kids 12 and under. And, oh yeah, the price of fares is going up by 10 cents like it does every so often anyway.

How awesome is that? People were going to be stoked. I just knew it. I could hardly wait to jump onto Twitter and see all the buzz.

Good point, I guess providing services to your citizens is pandering. I never thought of it that way before.

Me too! WAIT A SECOND … do I sense a touch of sarcasm there? Good thing we force them to go to school most of the time or goodness knows where kids might turn up.

Lemme do my best this guy impression: Are you giving CHILDREN free rides on the SUBWAY?! That’s it, I’m out of here. Cannot deal.

Well, that’s just mean.

Another guy insisted that his four children don’t have to ride for free and everybody else shouldn’t have to be subsidizing them. Well, good for you. I’m glad you can fork over the kiddie fare for the one time a year you take the subway to the Santa Parade. I know single moms who take the TTC halfway across the city every single day to bring their children to daycare that say otherwise.

Finally, one guy just wanted to know where he could get a fake id that says he’s 12. Now THAT is the spirit.

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All our kids need to learn about Black history

Civil rights march on police line, Washinton, DC 1963Civil rights march on Washington, DC police line on August 28, 1963.

We shelter our children by censoring Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, lest they ever encounter offensive language in literature.

But Ferguson still burns.

We tip toe around ideas of race and class, forever tweaking the way we talk about these things as though some sort of semantic twist will be the key to making our problems disappear. It’s as though we believe that if we use language like “person of colour” and “economically disadvantaged” it will somehow make it less true that being a poor, Black man in America means every single odd is stacked against you.

But Ferguson still burns.

If you are a Black man in America, you only have a 54% chance of graduating high school. You have more than a 30% chance of going to jail. And you have the lowest life expectancy in the country.

If you are an unarmed Black man in America, a police officer can shoot you seven times and not even have go to trial.

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Can we stop pretending that kids need more tech?

How much tech is enough

Image adapted from Flickr under the Creative Commons license.

“As a parent, I really resent anything that drives my kids to a computer,” I said. I was participating in a hypothetical group exercise at a social media/PR/marketing workshop a couple weeks ago. Our task was to create a media pitch for a charitable campaign. We were discussing the idea of incorporating a computer game or other digital element that would appeal to children.

This is a very popular idea, let me tell you. My inbox is flooded with pitches and press releases promoting apps, games, tech gadgets and online safety for kids. The summer reading program at the freaking public library had an optional online element, for crying out loud. “The kids want tech”, everybody cries. “And so they shall have it.”

Hold the eff up.

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The Holocaust basically just happened. Our kids should know that.

talking to kids

Israel is observing Holocaust Remembrance Day today and stories and essays about The Holocaust have been trickling down my various news feeds.

What do my kids know about The Holocaust, I wondered. I don’t know exactly, but not very much. My eight-year-old probably has some sort of foggy idea, but my five-year-old almost certainly doesn’t. Have I ever talked to them about it? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

If we were Jewish they would know. They would. And that’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t have to be a Jew to remember and talk about how not very long ago at all, the leader of one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world corralled Jewish people like cattle and led them into concentration camps where they suffered and, for the most part, ultimately died.

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Where my kids think the Malaysian Airlines plane might be

missing plane

In recent “the Internet knows all” news, have you heard some of the theories about the missing Malaysian Airlines plane on Twitter? I’m not quite sure how all of the top experts from countries around the world glossed over the possibility of a black hole or a real-world Lost. So it’s a good thing there are thousands of people, including Courtney Love, scouring grainy satellite images of the Indian Ocean they found on the web and tweeting about them. What would the world’s top intelligence agents do without them?

We told the kids about the missing plane over dinner last night and they also had some ideas. In fact, my seven and five-year-old’s theories were far better than anything I’ve read on Twitter and they hardly even get to use the internet.

1. It flew too high and burned up in the atmosphere.
This is apparently a thing that happens in comic books sometimes.

2. It flew into a cloud that never ends.
I don’t believe anyone has discounted this theory yet.

3. It got stuck in a tree.
I have to admit. This seems unlikely.

4. It got stuck in a building that didn’t have a door but did have a car wash.
This seems even less likely but ten times as awesome. Just stopped in for a buff and got stuck. Sorry!

5. It flew across a desert and got stuck in the sand.
The number of things I lost in the sandbox last summer alone suggest this is totally plausible.

6. It crashed into a really high empty bird’s nest. 
‘Nuff said.

7. Flew into the North Pole and got buried in the snow.
Has anyone even called Santa?

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How to Get Kids to Clean Up

I spent the better part of the Christmas holidays overhauling the playroom. I moved all the toddler and preschooler toys closer to the bottom of the staircase leading from the kitchen so I could keep an eye on Mary from there. I moved an old couch and armchair into the basement and set up a craft table and shelves for Lego and sports cards and board games. I sorted and sifted. I even purged a little.

We kept it up fairly well for a little while. Until last week. 

IMAG0849

My kids most favourite way to play is to pull out ALL OF THE TOYS and spend hours setting them up just so. All of the play food in the play kitchen is okay, but you know what’s even better? Making a salad out of Monopoly money and broken crayons and Lego heads and game pieces! So this right here was just them getting set up. “We can’t clean up! We haven’t even played yet! Tomorrow! We promise!” they sang out in unison. Or something like that.

Before I knew it an entire week had passed and the playroom had been left for dead because even the kids can’t handle the filth and they’ve settled in to take over the main floor as well.

Parents, don’t let them.

1. Tell them to clean up the playroom. Hahaha. This is obviously just a preliminary step. Obviously they won’t listen, won’t care, will get distracted or otherwise not pick up a damn thing.

2. Get angry. Raise your voice a little. Speak sternly. Use their middle names. Do whatever it takes to let them know that you really mean it this time. They will still protest. “It’s too messy. I can’t do it by myself. I’m tired. Whaaaaa.” That’s okay.

3. Hold up a black plastic garbage bag and threaten to throw out all their stuff. Be specific and give them a reasonable task, though. Like, I said anything left on the carpet after fifteen minutes would be thrown out. It’s not fair if you don’t think they can actually finish the job. Then, every five minutes, I prodded them to keep at it. After fifteen minutes, I saw they were working in earnest, so I let them take some extra time to finish the task.

Ta da!

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Okay, it’s not an organizational wonder and the carpet badly needs vacuuming. But still. I can walk through the room!

While this was going down many people on Twitter were pretty insistent that I would actually have to throw out their toys. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. I was maybe going to hide them away for a time or throw out a couple junked up things I wanted to get rid of anyway and let them earn back the rest.

What do you think? Do you have to put your money where your mouth is? Would you actually throw out your kids’ toys?