Translating my thoughts into words.
This winter break I was fortunate enough to have access to one of the teaching studios on campus. I had a ton of fun with the family and a special session with my son (and his LEGOs). These are the three of the family that my wife likes the most and will soon adorn our home walls.
So from our family to yours, we wish you a happy and blessed New Year!
There will be time enough to get here.
Last night I had the pleasure of meeting with a group of Penn Staters from HP, one of whom has become a friend over the last few years. His son has just entered Kindergarten and he is already reading. This is becoming more and more common, that children should be reading earlier and earlier, and we have all seen the videos where kids are reading from the age of 6 months with a special system that can be yours for only 4 payments of $19.95! Our son is entering the second grade and while he is reading very well now (he just passed/exceeded the standards test for beginning of the second grade) he only started reading last year. Was he behind? Are we bad parents?
Some would say the answer is yes, we are delinquent as parents. We should be getting our children to read as soon as possible to give them every advantage. Certainly we read with our children, often noted as the most important thing a parent can do for their development, from their earliest days on. But I am in agreement with Malcolm Gladwell who in an interview commented that this push for early reading is misplaced. Reading is not like a sport where repetition allows one to build upon skills and develop new ones. Sure, vocabulary will increase but it is not like one is developing better “reading muscles.”
Our daughter was also a bit slower at reading, but by the time she had finished second grade, however, she was reading all of the Harry Potter books then published. This summer she read constantly and wrote over 100 pages of her own fiction. I am not worried.
What my friend and I noticed was that his daughter is only three years older than his son whereas our daughter is six years older. His son saw his big sister learning how to read and joined in, wanting to do everything she did. From our son’s perspective big sis had always been reading and often read to him. There was not then the same challenge or incentive for him. Different context led to different results. Will his son be farther along by second grade than my son?
As far as reading goes, not likely. Just because you are already reading doesn’t mean that you are comprehending more difficult concepts. (Math is a different subject entirely, double entendre intended.)
Sports, as I suggested, are different again. My son is soccer mad and plays all the time. You can definitely tell the difference between those kids who have played soccer for the last two years and those just starting. But even there the learning curve is not so great that an athletic and focused child can’t become very good very quickly. Remember Tim Duncan, NBA two-time MVP? He didn’t play basketball until he got to college.
The moral of my essay? Care for your children, never neglect their education, and let them have a childhood.
I am discovering what some of you probably already know. Having a pre-teen (and I suspect teenage) daughter is like dating all over again. I worry, will she like me? Will she be my friend on Facebook? Why won’t she return my calls? I of course know that I cannot be too needy, otherwise she will shut me out and think I am a creep, but I need to show enough affection and attention so that she knows I am sincere. And what do I wear? I have to be cool, but not too cool.
Anyone else feel this way? Love is worth it, of course, but we are just beginning and I am not sure my nerves can take it. 
Fortunately, as when I was dating her mother, she is definitely worth it! It also helps that our son is 6 years old, which is so different that it balances things out. We can just go play Star Wars Lego Wii or soccer and all is right with the world. All in all, I am a very bless man and I am so thankful for them both and my bride, their mother.
I have been a bit hesitant to share this openly on the blog since it transparently comes from current circumstances in my own life, however a recent discussion with some close friends and being shown a blog post directly on this topic at the Christian Monist has me wanting to share some thoughts with you.
In the post Kids – Between Jacob and the Jelly Bean the Christian Monist questions the path on which most Evangelical parents would want their children to follow as they grow.
I think if you polled most Evangelical parents and asked them to choose one of two paths for their kids, I know the one they would choose . . . path one.
Path one, the Jelly Bean path, is where they go to church faithfully, support the pastor and elders in everything they do, they dress well, never get tattoos, never use a long list of words esteemed by Evangelicals as being bad. They never drink alcohol in case they might offend some “weaker brother” somewhere. They are very, very nice. On this path they substitute dogma for thinking. They believe what they are told to believe and never doubt it. They suppress their raw human frailties deep out of sight and never, ever mention them outside their silent thoughts, alone in their beds in the middle of the dark night of winter.
Now, as it happens, we have been having some of these discussions within our family. To preserve some sense of privacy for those involved, I will simply say that one of our children is at one of the innumerable junctions that we all face at various times in our lives with regards to the company we will keep, the culture we will adopt, and what we will believe. So CM’s comments are very relevant, particularly since I have been engaged in this very conversation with said child this week. My problem with the approach outlined by CM is that there is a false dichotomy. After presenting path one he offers path two. (more…)
If you follow my blog at all you will know there hasn’t been much to follow as of late. And this semester is always busy for me with with graduation for honors students, recruitment of new students, and this year I was chairing the search for one Dean while we were completing the search for new associate dean. The June was going to be different! June was completely set aside for me to work on Targum Ruth. Until I lacerated a tendon in the index finger of my right hand.
Now I am dictating a blog post to you via MacSpeech Dictate, which is working like a champ, but has a relatively limited vocabulary when it comes to Biblical and rabbinic literature. The surgery actually well earlier this week and I’m hopeful that I will be out of the cast by the beginning of next week. In the meantime, I thought I would share a couple of thoughts I’ve had recently while in church.
From John Steven Fernandez on flickr, used under creative commons
Two weeks ago we decided to visit a different church for an evening service that was “contemporary and contemplative.” I was looking forward to a contemporary service and I knew the pastor was a good preacher. What we had, however, was 50 minutes of a total of three songs and one verse which lasted 25 minutes. Now I recognize that we all worship in different ways and each of us at different times worship in different ways so I sought to take this time to be in prayer and meditation, as intended by the worship leaders. Our 12-year-old daughter and six-year-old son, however, could be forgiven for becoming a bit impatient with the service. As it was, they were not and were very well behaved and our daughter paid quite a bit of attention to the worship and the sermon. The problem is, she has a bit too much of her father’s sarcasm in her.
At one point the worship leader began to improvise on the words singing over and over again “God of breakthroughs.” I had my head bowed and my shoulders began to shake lightly. My wife tapped me on the shoulder and asked if everything was all right. I looked up smiling and said, “God of our grapefruits? Isn’t he God of all citrus?” Needless to say, I was not setting the best example for our children.
