Jon Cogburn's Blog

trying not to lie to your own kid

Thomas turned 4 in October, and he's just at the age to get excited about Christmas. At his insistence we actually bought a plastic version of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, pictured at right.

Now he won't stop telling me about Santa Claus. I don't know where he picked up the entire story (not from us), but he's obsessed with it and it seems to bring him great joy.

Since Thomas was an infant I promised him I would not lie to him. So what am I to do?

What I've taken to doing is going along with the whole charade but very carefully telling him that Santa Claus is a mythological creature. And now when Thomas enumerates Santa's virtues he excitedly adds that he's a "mythological creature." I think he thinks that being a mythological creature just means you are extra cool or something like that.

Is this still too dishonest? I don't know.

And I don't know what I'm going to do when the subject of professional wrestling comes up either. I mean, it's not fake. It's not. But the outcomes are predetermined and part of the fun as a kid watching it is not knowing that they are predetermined.

The problem is that when he gets old enough to actually watch professional wrestling, he will know what the word "predetermined" means, and have enough on the ball to figure out any synonym I can come up with.

unintentional wisdom from children

My four year old Thomas has been learning to salute the flag at Mother's Day Out. So this morning he very proudly told me, "I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of a miracle."

He also consistently refers to his sister's Audrey's Barbie doll as a "barbeque doll."

And the other day he kept saying over and over again, "Honor God and love Jesus," prior to stealing toys from Audrey. The history of the world right there. . .

Santa Dog is coming to town

One more thing I've learned from my kids

Thomas will be three in three months.

One of the great things about this age is that he really gets a kick out of helping out. For example, when I feed the cats or dogs, let the dog out, or take the trash out he's right their and I have to engineer everything in a way so that he gets to do some part.

Of course as a two year old he's completely incompetent at these tasks. Cat food gets all over the floor. The small bathroom trash can ends up overturned. Etc. But he really gets a kick out of helping and I'm not going discourage him from attempting to be productive. Plus it's a blast.

But here's the weird thing. I wonder how universal this phenomena is, where people's enthusiasm for a task is inversely proportional to their skill at doing it. As Thomas becomes more competent at tasks such as taking out the trash, he will certainly end up being much less excited about doing so. To what extent is this kind of thing a universal facet of the human condition?

Andre Agassi was on NPR selling his book a few weeks ago and he really did make being a professional tennis player sound pretty horrific. He was the greatest in the world for a while, but it was always at best a love/hate thing for him, mostly hate (for very good reasons that he lays out in the book). Or consider that David Bowie recently said that he didn't enjoy performing live that much. Or consider the original band for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. By the time the play had run for a year or so, Stephen Track, John Cameron Mitchell, et. al. constituted one of the best rock bands of all time. But after making the movie they all went on their separate ways. I wish them all the best, but what is the chance that any of them are going to rock out at what they do as much as they rocked out with Hedwig? How to explain this except with the hypothesis that the better you get at something the less tolerable that very thing becomes?

Is this just a reflection of general human fallenness, just part of the Freudian "Thanatos" that reliably leads us to undermine ourselves. Or is it external? Does the world systematically discourage competence? I don't know. As far as our weaknesses go, I do think the world tends to sympathize the least with that which makes us most pitiable (all neurotics know this in their heart of hearts). But as far as strengths, I don't know.

[Note: all of the above is a thought experiment. I'm sure there are people that are very good at what they do and don't end up loathing that very thing. And if I had more time this morning I'd continue the meditation, but with respect to the punk rock DIY aesthetic and rocking out at things you aren't that great at; that side of the equation leads to much more cheerful conclusions.]

I'm too exhausted to come up with a caption for this

From Zufußenheit to Vorfußenheit and Beyond

better living through tortillas

It would be nice if tortillas brought adults this much joy.

four dumb things I've heard about parenting this week alone

(1) My dogs are my children.

Dogs feel pleasure and pain, clearly have emotions, and are on the borderline of being autonomous. We have strong moral obligations towards them, and a dog owner should have maternal and paternal feelings towards their pet. Moreover, people who buy a dog, put him on a chain, and leave him alone in the yard to go crazy are horrifically cruel and deserve long spells in prison and worse.

All this being said, I must quote Ben Kingsley. "No. No. No. No. No. No. No."

Do you wake up every few hours to spend up to an hour feeding, changing, and playing with your dogs? Do you make sure a responsible caregiver is with your dogs 24/7? Are your dogs the most important thing in the world to you, even more important than your spouse? Would you and your spouse give your lives for the dogs?

If the answer to any of these questions "no," then your damn dogs are not your kids. If the answer to any of them is "yes," you need professional help beyond my purview as a tenured professor of Philosophy.

(2) People on planes don't mind crying babies.

No comment should be necessary, but several people have told me this one now. So here goes.

Human beings innately respond to the cry of an infant. We were almost certainly selected by evolution to want to do something to help when we hear it. So when your baby is crying during the whole flight you are causing psychic disequilibrium to the nicest (most empathic) people on the plane. As decent parents it should be enough psychic disequilibrium for you not to subject your baby to the United States sub-third world airline travel in any case. Which brings us to the next lie.

(3) He's at a great age to fly.

First off, nobody is at a great age to fly on any of the United States carriers. The airports are smelly, overcrowded pits of schizophrenic level noise pollution (thanks bluetooth and CNN!). The flights are late half the time. The airplane seats could be used by the Spanish Inquisition. The air on the planes is painfully dry. The surfaces of the seats, trays, etc. are filthy, literally crawling with living fecal bacteria. The planes are overcrowded way past what fire code sensibly requires for buildings on the ground. The bathrooms, if you are lucky enough to get to one, are both tiny and filthy. You can get stuck in an un-airconditioned, overcrowed plane on the runway for hours (has happened to me several times). And invariably the guy next to you is: (a) way too big for the seat (I'm guilty of this), (b) destroying the little bit of air you have with the unbelievable stench of McDonald's "food," and (c) won't shut the hell up during and after shoveling that garbage into his disgusting maw.

No sane person would put themselves through this, let alone a defenseless baby. In addition to the above: (a) the pressure change (airliners are pressurized at 10,000 feet, which is powerful enough to kill a couple of people a year when their intestines explode from not being able to equalize to it) can be excruciatingly painful to babies, (b) you have to get on the stupid plane at a designated time (which you don't know ahead of time, because the planes are late) independent of whether your baby is hungry, needs to be changed, or freaking out about the damn airport and in need of comfort.

All this being said, in many other countries (including most small Asian countries that were considered second and third world during the Cold War) flying is not nearly as horrible as it is in the United States. The seats are rationally designed for the human being's spinal column. The planes are not as overcrowded. The airports are quiet and meditative. The employees are not overworked and actually help you. And you can actually have some rational expectation that your flight will arrive when it is supposed to (making planning for getting the child on the plane much more doable). Who knows?  Maybe in such countries it wouldn't be as impossible.

Unfortunately though, it is hard to see air travel getting anything but worse in the United States. Consider our other withering infrastructure (levees, rail, bridges, telecom, etc.), crappy education system, falling behind in pure science, our medieval healthcare system where doctors spend half their time on the phone with stupid insurance companies and have to hire a whole staff just to deal with them and where universities do all the drug research and pharamaceutical companies spend half their profits on advertizing and guzzle up the rest, etc. Even though all of the statistics are widely available on the web, and all you have to do (for example) is just talk to an actual Canadian or French person about their healthcare, the vast majority of Americans have no idea that the rest of the civilized world is now beating us now in every way except for helping to make life overwhelmingly miserable for the people unfortunate enough to live in countries with oil (though we seem to be getting worse at that as well). WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!  No we're not. The only positive quantifiable thing we lead the world in is graduate education, which accounts for our technological edge (albeit one that France, China, and India are quickly catching up with). Ironically, the politicians who warn us about becoming "The France of the 21st century" are the most antagonistic towards higher education and towards the immigrants who make our great graduate education system possible. Go figure.

The upshots are: (a) don't expect transportation to improve one whit in the United States any time soon, and ergo (b) don't subject your child to air travel.

(4) He needs to be eating solid food.

Well meaning relatives are constantly haranguing us about this: (a) whether Thomas is getting enough food, and (b) why we aren't giving him cereal yet. Contra this: (a) all the books we have say that we're doing things the right way, (b) our doctor specifically told us not to start him on cereal until after the next visit, and (c) he's a happy (see enclosed photographic evidence), healthy (talk with our doctor) baby. We have expressed this to the relatives over and over again, to no avail. We're supposed to go against what our doctor says because of what they remember (possibly incorrectly) doing in the 1970's. Jeez.

You can't win.

On the other hand, one of the many great things about parenthood is that stuff that used to irritate the hell out of you seems much less consequential. I'm going to go read "The Angry Rooster" with my little buddy (Thomas, not my dog Charlie) now.

lies, damn lies, and fatherhood

With the exceptions of people living in totalitarian states and those sad, deluded people in our own free country who still choose to watch Fox News, at no point in your life will you and your spouse be lied to as much as the time surrounding your bringing of life into this world.  Here are my favorite five- in chronological order.

(1) Being pregnant feels great!

I don't know if this is the result of the Puritan/Hallmark/Disney infantilization of American Culture, or if the need to believe this runs deeper.  Simply put, it's not true. Being pregnant feels like being old.  And Charles De Gaulle said being old is a train wreck.  Before later saving France multiple times, the man invented the blitzkrieg only to see his books translated into German and adopted by Hitler's generals.  France ignored him at their extreme peril.  Don't you!

(2) You should [insert dumb*** course of action here]. It's natural. 

This is usually in reference to some truly awful idea about how you should deliver or raise your child.  For example, it's "natural" to forgo anesthesia, to give birth at home away from emergency medical attention, and then to let the baby sleep in the bed with you.  All stuff our stone-age ancestors had to to do.

There is no way to be nice about this.  The Flintstones was a cartoon and Dances With Wolves might as well have been. 

The equation of "naturalness" with "good" is the dumber, hippy drippier, version of the equation of "god desires it" and "good."  To show how ignorant this is in the case of nature (for the case of god, read Plato's Euthyphro), I quote the king of artifice, David Bowie-

The earth is a bitch
Weve finished our news
Homo sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay

News to hippies. Mother nature doesn't care about us, and to the extent that she cares about anything, she has special contempt for stupid people like you.  "Nature" is a violent slaughterhouse interspersed with sleep, death, and extinction.  Science is our best ally against nature, and you are an unwitting fifth column in this noble war.

There are more species of insects than human beings.  Prior to modern dentistry, people had agonizing toothaches for at least one-third of their adult life. 

If it is selectively advantageous for most of a species' infants to die, and for most mothers to die of childbirth at some point, then mother nature will bring that about.  And she did for human beings.  We gained immense advantage both by walking upright and having large brains relative to our body size.  So much advantage that it made up for the all too predictable result- creatures with the narrow hips necessary for walking on two legs have a horrible time giving birth to creatures with big heads.  As a result, the human childbirth is vastly more traumatic than that of other mammals and human babies are born vastly less developed than other mammals.  So, for most of our existence on this planet (prior to us having the good sense to develop technology to defeat nature) a vastly higher percentage of human mothers and offspring die as the result.  There's your mother nature for you!  Thanks Mom!

So when somebody seriously advises you to forgo an epidural or episiotomy, or to give birth with a midwife, or to sleep with your baby in the bed with you, tell them to get stuffed.  The cult of nature is one more example of how the far left and the far right are exactly the same.  It's a fascist ideology.

(3) Don't worry. Babies are sturdy. 

This is told to potential fathers who realize that they are clumsy slobs and are terrified they might drop or not hold the baby right.  It's usually communicated right before the wife hands the potential father a very young nephew or niece to hold.  Then you inevitably see his rictus of terror and desperation as he freezes up and prays to all of the Gods of any pantheon with which he is familiar.  "Please God [or Ganesh, Angus Young, etc.] don't let me drop this baby or screw up and somehow not support his neck correctly.  Please!"

A couple of newsflashes here.  (a) You are not going to get your spouse to want to have children by subjecting him to this. (b) If your man is aware that he is a clumsy slob, and nervous about it, that's actually very good evidence he will be a great father.  If you can get him to marry you and he's not an idiot then he'll quickly learn that happiness comes from doing whatever you want (this has been empirically verified).  He'll produce offspring with you, and change diapers and do bottle duty.  It will be the best thing in his life. (c) This one is for everyone, not just future wives.- BABIES ARE NOT STURDY.  STOP TELLING PEOPLE THEY ARE.  They are astoundingly delicate, and every decent new parent experiences terror over this.  If you have any doubt on this point, just look at infant mortality rates in the third world or American south. 

Luckily, the baby's grandparents come to visit right after birth and show the new parents over a period of days how to handle the baby.  This is their penance for having told the couple many, if not all, of the lies on this list.

(4) Babies Travel Great at that Age!

No. They. Don't.

The Yahoo map thingy said Thanksgiving car trip would be four hours, and it took nine and a half.  For parts of that Thomas cried and there wasn't anything we could do about it, which is one of the worst feelings in the world.  My wife has blogged about the experience here.

Let me also point out that people are absolute morons in assessing the very real dangers of travel.  Car wrecks are the number one killer of Americans twenty five and younger. This isn't because younger people are more likely to have fatal accidents, it's only because heart disease and then cancer take a bigger hit later in life.  50,000 Americans a year die in cars or from being hit by cars. There are no public statistics on this, but I would bet even money that in terms of how many years are taken off of human life, riding in cars is far worse than smoking.  Again, smoking related illnesses are not indiscriminate; they hit people far closer t the point they would die anyhow.   

And every person who says that riding an airplane is safer than driving is being misleading.  Per miles traveled, yes it is.  Per trip, it's about as safe as riding a motorcycle.  And flying on commercial airlines in the United States is torturous now in any case.

Evolution primed us to assess the kinds of risks that a hunter-gatherer faces.  As a result, something like terrorism, crime, illegal drugs, or the music of Celine Dion that effects very few of us seems much more threatening than something that affects all of us (and well over a million Americans are hurt in car wrecks a year, it being the leading cause of debilitating brain damage too).   But you won't see one presidential candidate even mention United States airline hell or this this ongoing automobile slaughter that has now taken far more Americans than those who have died in all of the wars, foreign and domestic, combined.

I'm not neurotic.  You are desensitized.

(5) But Grandma Needs to See the Baby!

No. She. Doesn't.

The "grandma" in question here is invariably the baby's great grandmother, who lives out of state in an assisted living facility and cannot be moved to visit the baby.  Due the fact that we have yet to overcome our evolutionary heritage and become gloriously post-human, the baby's great grandfather is almost invariably dead at this point.

The pressure to travel out of state with your child will be intense here, because you don't know how long your grandparents will be with you.  Resist the urge.  YOUR CHILD IS A HUMAN BEING, NOT A SHOW AND TELL PROJECT.

In conclusion- A parent's primary duty is to ensure that his or her offspring are happy.  This does not mean that the child's life will be a series of Hallmark moments, but rather that as much as possible he or she will grow to be healthy, compassionate, creative, wise, intelligent, hard working, and joyous.  Unless your family suffers from Jerry Springer levels of dysfunction, your family will be your best resource in helping you parent well.  If they are zealots, however, you will get number two style lies (and it must honestly be said that left wing idiocy is not equal to right wing idiocy here; bad left wing advice doesn't rationalize child abuse or lead to a rash of gay adolescents committing suicide every year the way bad Southern Baptist style parenting advice does).  If your parents, family, or friends are zealots, factor that in.  Numbers one and three style lies come from people wanting you to reproduce.  Since parenthood is the greatest thing in the world, the motivation here is golden.  However, once you or your spouse are pregnant, they will continue to believe the lies and tell them to you at pretty irritating moments.  There you go.  Number's four and five style advice come from your family members' desires to see the baby and help out.  Again the motivation is love, albeit love tempered by all too human stupidity.  Don't give in.

Finally, your parents did for you all the stuff you are doing for your baby.  They would have, and would still, die for you. They watched helplessly during your adolescence, which was even more hellish for them.  So even when telling them "no" about something, never forget this.