Self-service

We had a breakthrough this morning. Now, bear with me, because this probably seems insignificant, but Caroline got her own breakfast. Ok, maybe it IS insignificant, but I think it represents an important step for her in her progression towards adulthood.

 

 

It's not that I was worried that we'd have to get her cereal for her when she's 18, but I think it's important that she learn to do things on her own. 'I can't do it' seems to be one of her favorite phrases, especially when she's tired. I think the knowledge that she can, in fact, do things for herself, like get her own food, will help her see that she is actually quite capable.

 

Also, if she gets her own breakfast, it means that I don't have to, which is an important consideration for next week, when Michele's away and I have the kiddos all on my own. Maybe I can get her to walk to school on her own, too...

 

 

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A new approach

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the kids were driving me nuts. For some reason, every time they opened their mouths that weekend, it was like nails on a chalkboard. I blame this on the full moon. My jangled nerves have now recovered, and the kids have actually been pretty good at playing together and entertaining each other.

Occasionally they do fight. Today they were mad at each other for whatever reason, and they had a fight about who was madder.
"I'm so cross at you!"
"Well I'm crosser than you!"
"No you're not, I am!"
"No, I am!"
And so on and so forth.

Just a few weeks ago, I would have been beside myself that they were arguing over something so patently riduculous as who was angrier at whom. But not today. Today I am a new man. No, I haven't gotten a Valium prescription, I've discovered the concept of Idle Parenting. OK, it's not exactly an approach endorsed by the American Academy of Pedriatics, but it does mirror my own sentiments pretty well: leave the kids alone and let them sort out their own problems.

I'll step in if someone's getting hurt or they're straying too far from acceptable norms (this morning, they were kissing each other's butts. No idea where they got that, but I had to draw the line on that one), but otherwise, I leave them to just have fun by themselves. At the moment, they're playing moles. I'm the daddy mole. Not sure what a real daddy mole is supposed to do, but this daddy mole is gonna just keep blogging. Oh, I'll still play with them, but I refuse to feel guilty about doing my own thing most of the time.

This approach has benefits for both me and the kids. I get to do my own thing now and again, and because I don't feel so obligated to forgo my own pastimes in favor of theirs, I have more patience and energy for them. This morning, Michael broke a plate because he was doing something I've told him a zillion times not to do. I was actually surprised by how not angry I was. Sure, I told him off a bit because the situation would have been avoided had he simply not done what I told him not to do, but he wasn't being malicious, he was clearly upset about it, and he told me exactly what had happened without being evasive, so I didn't give him too much grief about it.

I think it also benefits them by letting them figure out how to get along. By not stepping in every time one of them starts whinging at the other, they have no choice but to find a way to get along, even if it's by separating themselves. And I've discovered something completely unexpected: almost without fail, if left to their own devices, their fights end in fits of laughter.

We'll see how it goes. If nothing else, this gives me more time for blogging.

A case of bacon

One of my colleagues recently resigned to go travelling for a year. He and his girlfriend will be visiting pretty much everywhere but Antarctica over the next 12 months. At one of his myriad leaving dos, the subject of food and the availability, or lack thereof, of familiar food products in various parts of the world inevitably made its way into the conversation.

Now. I'm not one of these people who travels but eats at McDonald's. I have made a genuine and modestly successful attempt to enjoy all that the local cuisine has to offer no matter where I am. I've eaten jellyfish and chicken feet in Hong Kong, pigeon and snails in France, Wiener schnitzel and bratwurst in Vienna. I've eaten curry at a gas station. And I like most of the food here, too. Sausage and mash and a pint of bitter (warm nd flat, thank you very much) is one of my favorite meals.

But while I believe that a certain flexibility and adventurousness of palate is a vital attribute for successful travelling, I do confess a longing for certain American-style items. Bacon is one of the biggies. The bacon here is thick and fatty and salty, more a fried slab of ham than anything else. So it was with a good deal of surprise when Steve, the aspiring world traveller, said that among the things he'd miss were being able to get a decent cup of tea and a rasher of bacon. This wasn't a case of Steve never having had American bacon - he had - he simply preferred British bacon. I was shocked, partly at the realization that there are people who actually like the bacon here, but largely because it hadn't occurred to me that anyone would like the bacon here.

It's obvious that our tastes are predicated at least in part by what we're accustomed to, but I think I really thought that once someone tried American bacon, they'd just realize what they were missing all these years and become an immediate convert. Clearly this isn't the case. There's nothing inherently superior about American bacon, just as there's nothing inherently superior about cold beer, or French wine. The percieved superiority of any one thing over any other rough equivalent is entirely subjective.

There's some evidence to suggest that people's appreciation of wine is directly proportional to its price; a more expensive bottle is judged to taste better. Clearly there's more to our tastes than just, well, how it tastes. I'll try to bear this in mind next time I'm feeling that sense of culinary superiority. In the meantime, though, I'm glad to know that our local Morrison's supermarket sells Oscar Mayer American bacon. Yum.

Well, thats lousy

One of the differences between the US and the UK is the school system, specifically, the expectations of the school around attendance. In a country where parents are summarily arrested for keeping their kids out of school, one develops a somewhat different outlook when considering whether to send the kids to school on a given morning.

When I grew up, if you were sick, you didn't go to school. If you had a fever, you stayed home for 24 hours afterwards. This simple system obviously left itself open to abuse (a radiator was always a useful device for skipping a much-feared test), but the net effect was that kids didn't repeatedly spread their various illnesses through the class.

Here, though, kids are sent to school regardless of their ailment. Fevers, stomach viruses, run of the mill colds. Head lice. Yes, kids are sent to school even if they have lice. I'm sure most of you remember those days when lice was found on some poor kid (usually the least popular kid in the school), and then everyone was called down to the nurse's office for a hair inspection, and the unlucky few who had the little critters in their hair were quietly sent home. Well, they don't do that here. Instead, the kids just go to school every day. And, naturally, this leads to epidemics - of lice and of many other things.

Caroline had lice yesterday. One of her friends had it a few weeks ago (her nanny told us) and naturally we've been checking her hair every day since. It's not a big deal, there's a treatment for it which seems to be reasonably effective, but I still find it odd that people don't feel compelled to take even the slightest precautions to avoid spreading diseases and, ick, bugs. Contrast this attitude with that of the Japanese, where sick people wear surgical masks to avoid spreading their germs, and the cultural difference becomes even more obvious.

Yuck. I'm all itchy now.

Reduction Redux

On Wednesday our department had its reduction in force exercise (I wrote about the prospect of this in a previous post, in which I participated, though not, thankfully, as a victim.

Having been through several of these in the past, I know the drill. The calls start at 9:00, and by about 9:00:01 absolutely everybody in the firm knows exactly what's going on. By 11:00, it's all over, the managers have a meeting to tell everyone it's done, then we all heave a collective sigh of relief and go back to work, albeit much subdued.

This one was different.

For starters, it went on for a looong time. Our group lost a relatively small number of people compared to some others, but the calls didn't start on our floor until about 1:45. And the meeting meant to provide reassurance that it was all over wasn't terribly reassuring; where the message is normally 'that's it', the message on Wednesday was basically 'that's it - for now'.

But the biggest difference this time was my involvement in the process. The senior managers were all occupied with HR doing the layoffs, so as the only senior-ish guy left on the floor, I had to make sure that the people being let go took their things quietly and left without a fuss. This was most unpleasant for me, though I feel bad about feeling bad, because at least at the end of the day I still had a job. Many of my colleagues didn't.

As they don't publish a list of people let go, it's only through osmosis that I've begun to see the extent of Wednesday's activities - a bounced email here, a summarily cancelled meeting there. In the past week, I've also received a flood of LinkedIn (a social networking site which allows people who worked together to contact each other) requests from former colleagues. It seems that lots of people I know, many of whom I've worked with for years, are no longer gainfully employed. And these aren't people that you'd generally say were part of the fat; we're cutting into the muscle now.

But this is how it is in the financial services industry. The press makes much of the size of the pay packets of people working in this industry, but the reason for this, which has only just sunk in for me, is that careers in this industry are often short. Banks are pretty much just buildings, the real assets are its people. The only way banks can scale up or down is by adding or removing staff. Trouble is, very few of us, myself included, take this reality into consideration in our lifestyle. Our spending tends to be in line with our current earnings, we don't discount for the possibility that the earnings river can easily dry up.

The other difference this time around is that all of the firms in our industry are cutting staff. Normally, when people are let go from one firm, then pop up shortly thereafter at another. Eventually, they come back when things get better, and the cycle continues. We're an incestuous little bunch. This time, though, because everyone's downsizing at the same time, there's not a lot of room at the other firms either. People are saying that you need 12 months of reserves if you get laid off today. Let's see, we've got, um, not nearly that many.

After this week, I feel really fortunate to have a job. I hope it stays that way for a while.

Bully Update

So here's what we've done so far.

- I had a talk with Caroline to let her know that we're on her side and that we're going to help her stop this sort of thing happening. I also let her know that Olive has no right to push her, or anyone else around. This conversation was a little difficult because I had to explain the concept of a 'right', which is pretty abstract for a 6 year old.
- Michele made an appointment for us to discuss the situation with Caroline's teacher.
- I practiced 'Hey, don't push me!' with Caroline until she could say it loudly and firmly.

I realized tonight that maybe my initial reluctance to deal with this situation myself was because it sort of forces me to relive the memory of being picked on. I wouldn't be much of a parent, though, if I let that stand in my way.

There were no more incidents today. We'll see how it goes.

Super Tuesday

Today is Super Tuesday. It is also Pancake Day. These two things have nothing to do with each other, but they certainly do make it a special day. Let me explain.

Pancake Day is the name by which Mardi Gras is known here. You see, the weather is generally much too iffy here in February for drunken mobs to revel in the streets. That sort of thing is much more suited to summer, so the Notting Hill Carnival is conveniently scheduled for the August bank holiday. So today, instead of parades and string bands and public intoxication and the inevitable nudity that attends it, they have pancakes. Hence Pancake Day. It's much more civilized, though not nearly as much fun.

Super Tuesday, on the other hand, is wholly American. It's the day on which both the Republican and Democratic parties hold nearly half of the state primaries. Some of the more civic-minded of you will be shocked to learn that, among all of the considerations surrounding moving here (where to live, how to get to work, will I ever see my stuff again), we never once considered how we might vote whilst living abroad. This may be because we seldom voted whilst living in the US.

However, today, I was seized with a sudden and inexplicable need to cast my ballot for the next Democratic interviewee for the job of Most Powerful Person In The World. OK, so voting in a primary isn't exactly the same as voting in the actual election, but I think it's ironic that my sense of civic duty seems to have been heightened dramatically by living outside the cosy confines of the good old U.S. of A.

And so it was with high spirits that Michele set out from Wimbledon, children in tow, to meet me in deepest, darkest, poshest London, where Democrats Abroad was holding a primary election, just for us ex pats. How, you might ask, does that work? Apparently, and the Democratic Convention, there are 51 delegations - one from each state, and one from the DA. There are 22 DA delegates, which isn't all that many, really, but hey, every little bit helps.

At first, all was well. We arrived at the venue without incident, though there was a substantial queue, the event having just begun. Inside, though, was mayhem. Last election, the Democrats Abroad organization hired a hall for 400. This time, there were probably 400 people in line with us 5 minutes after the doors opened. Had we registered? No. OK, go stand in that line. 40 minutes later, the children and me both needing a drink, we had the precious ballots in our hands and were ready to cast our vote for party and country. But where to deposit the ballots? Ah, therin lies the rub. Up several flights of stairs we were told. This was not the best arrangement for people with two small children and a stroller. Bright idea - I'll take both ballots and Michele can take the kids outside to consort with the news crews and hopefully get a little airtime.

Of course, as you might imagine, one person submitting two ballots caused something of a stir amongst the hair-and-voice-made-for-politics election monitors. Incredibly, in the First World, one person is only allowed to submit one ballot. This despite my having asked the competent-sounding vounteers manning the registration station downstairs, and having received enthusiastic permission from said staffers. There may also have been a certain amount of reluctance to allow me to vote twice because there were camera crews everywhere around me as I turned in my ballot. In the end, I ended up just dropping Michele's into a box marked 'Ballots' on my way out.

Back home, children in bed, Michele and I tucked into our very English curry and decided that yes, it had indeed been a super Tuesday. Even without the pancakes. Let's hope our guy wins.

Bully

Here's something you might not know about me. As a child, I was teased. A lot. I was fat, and uncoordinated and bad at sports and not terribly sharp-witted when it came to retorts. "I know you are, but what am I?"

And so it is really terribly painful on many levels to see Caroline, who has never been anything but gentle and kind-hearted and loving, being targeted by a bully at school. We'd like to think that our daughters, at least at this age, would be immune from the sort of behavior that is generally exhibited by 12 year old boys, but sadly, they are not. Caroline's an easy mark; she cries at some of the most insignificant things. And I think it is because of this hypersensitivity that one of the girls in her class has decided to work out her aggression on Caroline.

Today, this girl, we'll call her Olive, told some of the other girls at lunch that she was going to "do something" to Caroline. And she did. Olive pushed her. Hard enough, evidently, that Caroline fell down. Caroline told us about this incident tonight.

I never had the nerve to tell my mother when I'd been given a hard time. I remember Billy Rinehart giving me a face full of dust and small rocks on the playground in kindergarten for no obvious reason other than because I happened to be there and he'd decided he didn't care for me all that much. I don't think I've ever told anyone about that. I've saved that particular painful memory to share with all of you. Feel free to squirm uncomfortably. Go on. I'll wait.

But this isn't about me. It's about my little girl. My flesh and blood. One of a very small number of people for whom I'd gladly give my own life to save hers. So what to do? The first instinct, of course, is to encourage Caroline to fight back. Hit Olive. Hard. But of course, this is like telling a man who's dying of thirst in a desert that he just needs some water. If Caroline had the means to fight back, she would have done so already. I think we need to find a more useful approach, or at least a more practical one.

We could talk to the teacher, I suppose, but I wonder what this would lead to. Anger management discussions with Olive, added stress for the separated parents, more bullying in retribution. Trouble is, I know Olive's father. We've met a few times at school functions. We're in the same line of work, so we trade shop stories and share our dreams of doing something more. He's a decent guy trying to raise his kid under trying circumstances, and not the sort of person you would feel unremorseful, maybe even privately gleeful, to bring down a peg or two.

Still, I can't stand by and let my daughter be victimized by his kid. Other strategies that Caroline might use, like walking away or telling the teacher, seem weak and ineffective, the sort of thing a parent might advise his child to do when he can't come up with anything better. Or doesn't care enough to.

The more I think about this, the more I think we need to step in here. I'm conscious of setting the precedent of fighting Caroline's battles for her, but there's a qualitative difference between the sorts of things she's complained about Olive having done in the past and this. Olive has no right to push Caroline or anyone else around, and Caroline needs to know that we're on her side. The last thing I want is for her to feel like she deserves bad treatment at the hands of anyone, because I think that attitude will do more damage than any amount of parental protectionism.

I'll let you know how it goes.