Family Friday: Beyond Batman

With the release of Batman:  The Dark Knight Rises in theaters, retailers have brought DVDs of the Batman shows that I grew up with - namely Batman:  The Animated Series and Batman Beyond - to the forefront. We snatched up Season 1 of both series. While I was watching an episode of Batman Beyond, I felt I had an insight into the tragedy at the midnight showing of  The Dark Knight Rises.

In the episode, "Golem," Willie is a picked-on kid at the high school that Terry - the new Batman - attends. After being picked-on and pushed around by a bully, Willie's frustrated dad demands, "So what are you going to do to the guy who did that to you?" "When someone pushes you, you push back," and "I'm not raisin' no wuss." When Willie asks how he should deal with it his father replies, "Hit 'em where it hurts. You figure it out." Driven over the edge by the pressure of being picked on and the added pressure from his father to do something about it, Willie steals his dad's golem - a twenty-foot tall robot that works with a human controller. Willie uses the golem to destroy the bully's most prized possession - his car. An encounter with Batman during this incident accidentally fuses Willie's mind with the robot's, making it possible for Willie to control the golem without using the remote control. This also means that when the golem gets damaged, Willie feels it. He continues to attack the local bullies and even confronts his father, throwing his taunts back in his dad's face and almost killing him when Batman intervenes. Of course, Batman saves the day and Willie ends up in a juvenile facility, but I want to focus on Willie's relationship with his father and the influence this had on Willie's actions.

 Willie's father was insistent that Willie fight back against his persecutors by any means necessary. I don't think Willie was trying to earn his father's acceptance by stealing the golem; I think he wanted to show his father how destructive he could be while taking his father at his word. So what does this have to do with the Colorado grad student who shot up a theater full of people watching The Dark Knight Rises? It goes to show the sort of familial relationships that can produce a killing mindset. We can't assume that the killer in this instance had this kind of family relationship, or even one like it, but it is worthwhile for us to think about these factors before we blame all of the killer's motivations on the movies. And of course, we must always remember that Batman himself never kills or condones killing.

Family Friday: Children's Medicine

Something must have happened to children's medicine. Somewhere, someone must have decided that children don't need children's medicine - that they can take the same over-powered solid pills that adults take. Because that was what the doctor prescribed for Shawn this week for his ear infection. Shawn is a heavy for his age, but I don't think it's enough to require a level of antibiotic that gave me bad side effects as an adult. At 8 years old, Shawn is far from mastering swallowing a pill whole. That required me to grind the pill up into powder and mix it with applesauce and cinnamon. Of course, that just made the applesauce taste like medicine and not the other way around. The only way to get the pill down in a timely manner was for me to divide the lump of applesauce/medicine into a number of smaller, more manageable-looking lumps and get him to take them in succession. The advantage of this method was that I got to review fractions with Shawn at the same time that I got his medicine into him. It was an operation that took almost all my patience. But Shawn told me he loves me. It is these all-too-infrequent rewards that make the work of childcare worthwhile.

Family Friday: The Things We Do...

This post is dedicated to the crazy things that parents do to look cool for their kids. I think that, even more than showing off for a romantic interest, parents are driven to jump through hoops in the hope of gaining their children's approval/pride. The words, "That's my mom/dad. He/she is the coolest," rank right up there with, "I love you." How do I know? Experience.

I was talking with one of Derrick's roommates about a video game he was playing, one that takes more time and skill than I possess. I'm mostly a casual game-player. I enjoy puzzle games, fighting games, as well as some other games that don't require skills above button-mashing. More on that in a different post. So I say to the roommate, "I haven't played that game. I'm not really much of a career gamer," and Shawn pipes right up with, "You're not much of a gamer at all."

 Shawn was born with a controller in his hand. Me... not so much.

I don't know what came over me. I had a sudden, intense, and overwhelming desire to take a game and play it until I was good enough to impress Shawn, despite the fact that I don't have the time for that kind of practice and I never had any previous inclinations toward marathon gaming.

The point of this example is to highlight one of the less common ways we show love for our children, because we definitely wouldn't behave so irrationally if we didn't love them so much.  

Family Friday: Food Fights

Is it me, or is it getting harder to get kids to eat? I don't just mean vegetables, I mean anything that doesn't come in a pre-printed package. At this point the only food I have made that Shawn will eat without complaint is meatballs. Even when Derrick made hamburgers Shawn refused to eat one. He only wants to eat hamburgers from McDonald's or Burger King. Does anyone else have this problem? True, Shawn doesn't see homemade food much when I'm not around, but does that mean that it's too late? Is there any hope that I can get this kid to eat a normal meal with us like a normal family? Anyone out there who understands what I'm going through, please feel free to share your story, solution, or perspective.

Family Friday: The Four Agreements and "Domestication"

I interrupt your regular waves of the Decepticon invasion to bring you Family Friday. I want to do a weekly series of family-related posts. Although I do not have any biological children of my own, I have plenty of exposure to an 8-year-old, Shawn. I have watched him grow from toddler-hood and I played a large part in his early development. So these posts will mostly concern my experiences and my thoughts about these experiences. On occasion, I will also spend time talking about children's media, since kids absorb so much from the media they are surrounded by, especially movies, television, and video games. But today, I'm posting a bit of parenting theory that occurred to me while I was reading The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.

A quick summary for those who have not read this book. Ruiz explains how the belief systems and social norms that govern our lives are made up of agreements that we have made with ourselves, with other people we know, and with society at large. Some of these agreements are positive in nature, while others are harmful to ourselves and others. Ruiz seeks to show us how to have less suffering in our lives by emphasizing the positive agreements and breaking harmful agreements until only the positive agreements remain. Of course, when you break all those negative agreements the will leave a void that you need to fill up to keep the negative agreements from coming back. Ruiz gives us four very powerful agreements to keep our harmful agreements at bay. They are:

• Be impeccable with your word
• Don't take anything personally
• Don't make assumptions
• Always do your best

What I like best about this book is how easy it is to understand and implement the concepts and strategies in the book. Ruiz uses plain language and clear examples. Best of all, four agreements are easy to remember and keep in your mind. If you read the book over and over again, it will act as positive reinforcement that will make it easier to honor the four agreements. It doesn't even get boring, as with each read-through you will notice new points that you missed before, and that can help too. That's a lot of bang for your buck since the book is short and relatively inexpensive (MSRP $12.00) as a result.

My only issue with this book is a parenting concern. Not surprisingly, we learn how to make agreements from our parents. We even learn many of our first agreements from them. Ruiz calls this process "domestication." He gives the impression that this domestication  process is harmful to the child and causes suffering later in the child's life. Adopting the four agreements is supposed to reverse this domestication and return us to our natural state. This sounds great, but those of us who want to avoid inflicting the past generations possible mistakes on the future generation are faced with a problem:  If the "domestication" method of raising children is wrong, what should we do instead? Most of us were raised by a system of punishment and reward - "domesticated" much like a puppy. I can buy into the idea that this method is harmful but I don't know any other way, and this is the one piece of vital information that is missing from Ruiz's book.

I don't have the answer, so I put the question to the collective consciousness of the Internet. Any thoughts or ideas of how to successfully bring up children without a system of punishment and reward? Please comment. For the children you have, the children you one day want to have, or the children you never want to have yourself but at least want to be healthy and pleasant enough for you to share the world with.