As we've covered many times, the TiBers and TiBettes come from all walks of life. Many are just exiting college while others are far more established. For this thread, the great divide comes in the form of children. I have no idea what it takes to raise a child, but I certainly hear the horror stories and revisionist histories about having kids. Bed time stories are supposed to be one of the last bastions of sanity for the parents as they read bedtime stories and let their children drift off into dream land. Samuel L. Jackson has a different take, which can be heard here. Focus: What kind of advice did people give you as a parent that just never seemed to work? Alt-Focus: What was your favorite bedtime story as a kid?
I was getting a haircut the other day and there was a little kid there who looked 5 but was apparently 2 (they grow them big these days I guess). Anyway he was bawling his eyes out. Just inconsolable. Terrified of getting a haircut, maybe? Who the fuck knows why? He's a two-year-old kid. Every adult in the place was trying to get the kid to calm down. The kid's mom, the various barbers and stylists, some other kid's mom, everybody but me. The way they were trying to get him to calm down was by putting their faces six inches from his and constantly babbling about how everything was going to be OK, would he like a lollipop, it doesn't hurt, etc. etc. This is the same sort of treatment you get if you're in a war movie and you just got hit with a shell and half your torso is gone and everyone is telling you that it's going to be OK in the strongest possible way. The adults were even freaking me out. I keenly remember what it was like to be a child and how different it is from being an adult. Adults just seem to forget that to experience the world as a small child is confusing, often terrifying, and vastly overrated for reasons both rational and irrational. After I got through the hair-shampooing process, the barber (doing his best impression of Leslie Chau from The Hangover) started barking at the kid: "SEE! HE OKAY! SEE! HE FINE! NO HURT! IS FINE!" I just looked at the kid, smiled, and gave him the thumbs up. I was attempting to project calmness, rather than angrily demanding it. The 2-year-old kid shot me a look back that I understood immediately: "what the fuck is wrong with all these people and why are they all yelling at me?" I just kinda shrugged. He shot me another look: "aren't you going to stop them? You're one of them! Stop them from doing that!" I then gave him the universal look of resignation and went back to the barber chair. I know if there's one thing bad parents don't like, it's non-parents telling them to calm the fuck down.
Alt. Focus: My parents didn't read me any bedtime stories, but I did read to my son for the first 6-7 years of his life. My personal favorites were the Dr. Seuss books, especially "Green Eggs and Ham" and "The Cat in the Hat." I would read them with a different voice for each character (for example, the Cat in the Hat had kind of a continental European accent, and Sam-I-Am had a whiny, nasal voice), which can be kind of a challenge at times, but my son loved it.
Alt Focus: All I remember is laughing hysterically at the Judy Blume Fudge book series. Alt Focus 2: Based on the Santa thread. Were there any big lies your parents told you for no reason or to hide the truth of real life from you? Anyone with kids make up fibs for these reasons or just because it is hilarious to lie to little people that don't know any better? I know Ill be telling my kids all sorts of fucked up and hilarious lies.
Alt Focus: My father read to us every night before bed. Sometimes he worked afternoon shifts, so it meant waking us out of bed at midnight, telling us a story and then putting us back to sleep - but I wouldn't have missed those stories for the world. We worked our way through Roald Dahl, Douglas Adams, Tolkien and Judy Blume, but my Dad's 3 favourite books, and the children's books I have the strongest attachment to, are Stone Soup, It Could Always Be Worse and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Dad's always liked showing his kids that life's not nearly as shitty as you think it is.
We both read to our children every night. We have 3, so bedtime/story time is more of a process than an event. I haven't ever told the children to "Go the fuck to sleep", but when they were very young and I was awake at 3:00 AM babbling nonsense to a mindlessly incoherent infant, I thought about it. There is no skill that is better to learn than reading comprehension. Whatever your job or career may be the ability to read and digest information quickly and accurately is critically important. So, we read to them. Also, I have to admit I loved reading the whole 39 Clues series with the oldest one. (This is probably only of interest to the few parents out there.) My own personal favorite is still Goodnight Moon. I love watching my daughter find that mouse.
My dad read me a lot of bedtime stories, but my absolute favorites were the TinTin series. Loved it. I have all of the books, and went on a TinTin pilgrimage in Paris. (I know he's Belgium, but they still represent.) I read them all about once a year. I'm so nervous for the movie that's coming out. If it ruins it, there will be blood.
I will tell my daughter that if any bad boy puts his thing in her, I will collect it with a cigar chopper and a bottle of iodine. I will interview her date for the night while tapping a switchblade against my groin and laughing under my breath. Unless he's rich. Focus: I don't get parents that just scream at little kids all the time over trivial provocations. THEY DON'T GET IT, DING-DONG. You're scaring the living shit out of them and they're unhappy that you're unhappy because they don't know why. And don't yank them by their arm like that, goddamn it. It hurts them and it makes you look like an abusive twat.
Alt. Focus - My mother alternated between reading Dr. Seuss and a compilation book containing most of the heavy hitters in the bedtime story game. She also sang Beatles and James Taylor to me when I was younger and an affinity for both lasts to this day. My father read me Robert Ruark's "the Old Man and the Boy" and it's sequel. This was especially significant to me as I grew up in the same place as the author and fished and hunted with my father much the same as is described in the novel. I would highly recommend this for reading to a son (or daughter) who you want to have a profound appreciation for the outdoors and wildlife and to be aware and observant of old-school principles and values. It certainly had that effect on me. When I got a little older I read from the encyclopedias that my mom put on bookshelf next to my bed until I couldn't keep my eyes open. Of course this has continued in the form of me sometimes article hopping on wikipedia until 3 a.m. I plan on starting my child off on the light stuff and working them up to a chapter of Stephen King or firsthand accounts of African famine and genocide each night. In these times of endless positive reinforcement and American comfort levels that are nearly sinful, a little fear will help put things in perspective for little he/she.
I never remember my parents reading me books to go to bed. My sister is a great mom and I got to watch her in action since she was married when I was in middle school and has 2 kids that I am watching grow up. Reading to your kids at night is a great way to give the end of the day a "period" so to speak, and it teaches kids how to read really early on. Kids tend to have a certain special book that is a favorite and will learn how to sight read a little because of it. Once they get into school and start learning phonetics, it all comes together in their head nicely and puts them way ahead of most of the other kids. We had a whole collection of Golden Books, but they were all located on the shelf behind the toilet. I was only read those books when my mom was attempting to potty train me. She still pulls them out when the grand kids are over and in the middle of a potty training session.
My father start reading a couple pages of this to me, then would make me read it by myself. That's not too weird, is it?