Parenthood

Bad Parenting Tipping Point: The DVD Dilemma


Is it nudity or violence? What tips the scale and motivates a parent to make the “off limits” call?

The daughter is enthralled by the story of the Titanic. Her cousin lent her a book when we were last in Iowa, and when we got home she actually checked a documentary dvd on the disaster out of the library … and watched the whole thing in one sitting.

Okay that last part she gets from me. I love historical documentaries. I once celebrated the Fourth of July holiday by watching Ken Burns’ Civil War* from start to finish.

But Dee’s fascination with Titanic went into overdrive when she discovered there was a movie about it.

Nothing beats history except the Hollywoodization of it.

For a decade plus old film, it is still surprising hard to check out of the library. I had to get in queue, and we waited a month.

And as the credits rolled, I had my reservations.

“People die,” I reminded Dee.

“Yes,” she said, “I know that. The ship sank.”

“This is only sort of make-believe,” I cautioned.

“I know,” she replied in that tone. THAT tone. The one that reminds me that she isn’t feeble-minded and that I am being over-protective.

So I girded myself, and we watched the first half on Friday night.

It’s a horrible movie. Very James Cameron. Cheesy. Trite. Insipid dialogue. Caricatures in place of characters. CGI that wouldn’t pass muster on a Wii.

And the acting? Aside from Kathy Bates, who couldn’t be awful if she tried, it was spectacularly awful. DiCaprio and Winslet give it their all – but the script was hokey and stacked against them from the opening bell.

But even as death loomed, what really made question my parenting skills were the bare breasts.

Yeah, not the liberal use of “fuck” and “shit”, or “shite” depending, but nekkid titties.

We are not particularly modest in our household. I don’t duck for cover when the daughter is about, and Rob and I sleep in the nude.**

Perhaps it was the suggestiveness? Eight is still a bit too young for the “full monty” explanation of sex.

Last night was the infamous “Jack sketches Rose in the nude scene” and by this time, Dee was firmly indoctrinated into the “Jack is an artist, so it’s okay” camp.

But the sex in the car?

Nothing is shown. It’s all suggested and then cut-away to another scene before coming back to find them sweating and undressed (ironically, Winslet’s breasts – so prominent during the “art” scene are strategically covered now.)

“Um,” Dee said, “are they naked?”

“Yes,” I said – steeling myself for a “grown-ups in love sometimes get naked when they kiss” explanation.

“Hmmm,” and her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed and she said no more.

Bullet dodged for another day.

But then came the iceberg. The panic. The rising water. The frantic, and tragically doomed, people scrambling for boats.

After a scene which highlighted a father lying to his young daughters so he could get them onto a life boat with their mother, she asked,

“Can I have a tissue?”

“Should we turn this off now and finish later?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “You and Dad and I would have been on a boat together, wouldn’t have we?”

And of course I didn’t lie to her. It was women and children first and the majority of the men on Titanic who had any balls or integrity went down with the ship.***

She hasn’t asked to watch the end today. She knows Rose lives and that Jack dies. We talked about that in advance. But in the larger scheme, this isn’t make-believe. People really died. Dads really died.

Maybe I should have copped out and told her the movie wasn’t appropriate for kids – and maybe it really isn’t – but she watched the documentary already, and it was far more grim and real.

At eight I was still watching Disney mostly. Was I better off for being sheltered?

I have vetoed films that I know other kids her age have seen already. Pop stuff. Fantastical but dark.

She doesn’t want commercial tv. She is far less exposed to the over-sexed culture and mindless distraction that numbs mind and soul than the majority of her peers.

She knows death first hand, so it’s pointless to pretend it doesn’t exist.

And it’s futile to shield her from the fact that human beings mainly exist to couple. The world revolves around that … and killing each other.

I am betting it will be a while before she asks to finish the movie and when we do, it will not be in the evening before bed.

*I still marvel at how the Civil War became Ken’s. Alien historians a thousand years from now will marvel that one man caused all that destruction a hundred years prior to his own birth.

** Rob, by the way, is covered up and if  Dee were a boy, it would be the opposite situation. For example, I began shooing my nephews out of the room when I dressed when they hit five. Although, I am not so concerned about the over five year old boys whose mothers bring them into the women’s change room at the pool. That’s their problem.

***And yeah, that sounds sexist but seriously? Who would really cheer on the idea of men first in a situation like this?

Sins of the Mother (or why my child isn’t popular)


One thing I didn’t factor in to my decision to procreate was the fact that my child’s early socialization would be largely dependent on my own ability to make friends. And I just don’t make friends. Not really and not easily.

My life has mostly been barren where close relationships are concerned. Growing up, I never had a best friend. I flitted from crowd to crowd. Jockettes. Band geeks. Newspaper nerds.

A college friend, who also went to high school with me, once commented,

“I never could figure out why you hung out with us (band geeks) when you could have been friends with anyone.”

And that’s the heart of the problem. I could be friends with anyone and so I am friends with very few. My personality is not calibrated to crowds, in or out. And friends were work. Work with dubious pay-off. On those occasions that I did put in the time and effort, my reward was second-rate. I seldom made the top-tier friend status with those who I was really attracted to as people.

Some of this, I know now, relates to my life’s mission. But some of it gets back to my distinct lack of “follower” DNA.

How does this relate then to motherhood?

Come to discover that my daughter’s popularity, or lack thereof, is directly proportional to my standing in the eyes of her friends’ mothers.

At the moment, I am a down arrow in terms of stock value.

It’s been coming. I saw it. The dance moms noses have actually gotten longer looking down at me this year for my indifferent regard for protocol. A few of them are in danger of becoming cross-eyed from all the askance looks they’ve shot my way.

I don’t care what other women – or people in general – think of me, and that is a statement I haven’t always been able to lay claim to over the years, but it bothers me that my lack of popularity reflects on Dee, who should be judged (well, she shouldn’t be judged ever really) on her own merit. She is a person in her own right after all and not just an appendage of me. Unlike many of the mothers I have met since becoming one, I didn’t have Dee to fulfill any thwarted childhood dreams of my own.

Recently, there was an “incident” with a ballet teacher that prompted me to pull Dee from the school just a week before the year-end performance. My doing this was based on Dee’s emotional well-being. I didn’t want to force her to continue when it was clear that the teacher had no regard for her as a person and saw her as merely a backdrop for her more talented students. This wasn’t the first problem with this particular teacher and forcing Dee to gut it out would have  – in my opinion – taught her that taking abuse from people is what “good girls” do for the greater good of her friends. Being female is enough of a trial in this world without reinforcing the ridiculous notion of “sucking it up” as a virtue.*

I earned a bit of scorn for this from the mothers of Dee’s dancemates. One in particular demonstrated her ire when she forbade her daughter – Dee’s school classmate – from dancing with Dee at the school talent show.

Dee has wanted to perform in the school performance since kindergarten. Her friend agreed to do the ballet number they’d learned together, but her mother won’t allow it. Retribution.

Only it’s directed at me through Dee. Which stinks. I have no patience with people who use children to prove points to adults.

Fortunately, Dee really doesn’t understand what has occurred. I sent a note to her teacher to let her know what happened and to keep her on the alert for anything that might come up.

Dee’s friend and her twin sister host an end of the year day long party and sleep-over the weekend after school gets out. Dee has always been invited. This year I doubt she will be. Another social conformity lesson for me that my daughter will have to pay for and won’t understand. The sad thing is that it won’t change me. I am unlikely, at my age, to bend to the will of people who I wouldn’t have chosen to make friends with in the first place.

It’s not that I dislike these women. They are nice. I’ve had pleasant conversations and passed time in their company. I am just not … I don’t know … someone who feels the need to run my life by committee or needs a lot of outside approval or validation? It’s hard to explain.

I made the right decision for Dee. I am her mother first and the children who were in her dance groups are not my primary concern. I find it hard to fathom that any of them were greatly affected by Dee’s absence anyway. The attrition rate at the end of the year performances (there are two) is high because they fall on weekend evenings and in this neck of Alberta – in June – that’s RV and lake lot season. People bugger off on the weekends. We don’t have a long summer season and no one squanders the tiny bit of time we get.

*There are times and places for sticking things out but not when you are being used or treated badly.

A Soul is Worth $32 GST Included


When you decide to screw a person over for money, you calculate the risk that the amount of money saved is directly proportional or greater than the amount of grief the person you are screwing can dish back at you. More importantly though, you are calculating that your karmic footprint will not be so weighty as to dictate a future stint as some kind of insect.

At least that’s how I roll.

I learn over and over that this is not the case for most people.

Dee’s dance experience ended on a sour note. Hindsight, with all her clarity, tells me I should have made the decision to quit for her after the festival competition fiasco, but I allowed the owner of the dance studio to sway me (and make me feel as though it was my fault Dee wasn’t enjoying dance and a bad mom to boot) and I, inadvertently, swayed Dee by reminding her of her completely non-reciprocal responsibility to the other girls in her group who were counting on her to show up for the end of the year performance.

The studio owner, however, was being shrewd at Dee’s expense. She has a policy of requiring 2 weeks notice for termination of lessons and then refunds the balance. With nearly six weeks to go, she would have had to refund 4 weeks times 3 classes worth of funds.

No, I didn’t see that one coming. She suckered me good.

The dress rehearsal for the end of the year performance was its usual fiasco. I don’t think anyone involved has even the slightest idea of how to manage that many children at once and as I have mentioned, the teacher in me seethed at the lack of foresight and the blatant waste of adult time.

I had mentioned my concerns to the studio owner, and she ignored them as she does everyone’s concerns and complaints. It is her modus operandi. Nod, smile in a non-committal manner and then pretend the conversation never took place when she is called to account later.

Did I mention that after Dee missed the ballet rehearsal (because of the issues that I brought up weeks before) she stood in the back stage hallway and sobbed for nearly 10 minutes while people from the studio hurried around, casting uneasy little glances as they passed but not saying a word to me or Dee?

Yeah, that’s why I issued the executive order – way too late – and decided that Dee was done for the year. No one at the studio cared about her or her feelings. The ballet instructor is a teenager who has an agenda that centers squarely on herself. The more dance groups she teaches and choreographs for who go off to competitions and do well – the better her resume. That’s bottom line for her.

When the stage manager offered to let the ballet group rehearse again – 4 minutes tops – with Dee, her teacher said, “They don’t need to.”

And fuck you too.

The studio owner called the next night. It was the usual dissembling attempt to get me to take the blame for Dee having missed her curtain. Nothing is ever her fault and, rather than argue, I simply stated facts until she changed her story – three times and still without accepting responsibility or apologizing.

Apologizing, by the way, goes a long way and should usually be the go-to when a customer, which I am, is feeling slighted, which Dee and I were.

The conversation ended abruptly when I heard my cell phone ring and I knew it was Rob calling from the airport. Nothing was resolved, but after discussing things with Rob, I sent an email asking for a refund for the tickets to the final performance on June 4. $32.

Today, I ran into one of the other dance moms at Costco.

“Did you get the tickets?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“For the performance last night, ” she said. “They gave me your tickets to give to you when I saw you last night, but I never did. Did you finally get them?”

“Um,” I thought about trying to explain but decided against it. “Don’t worry about it. It worked out.”

It’s not worked out. Not by a long shot.