This is The Nooner, a short daily (Monday - Saturday) newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
Every Sunday, I publish the Dispatches Weekly Digest (DWD), which lets you binge all the Nooners from the previous week. It also includes a meaningful song recommendation, and a short segment I call TMI, where I go off script to bring you backstage, so to speak.
Two more things about the DWD:
It goes on on the main Dispatches channel, so if you’re looking to spare your inbox from the daily emails without missing out on anything, you can specifically unsubscribe from The Nooner section, and still get the Digest on Sunday.
It’s only available to paid subscribers.
The Dispatches Weekly Digest is a labor of love, and I’m really proud of it, and if you want to hear it, I want you to hear it. So, if you can afford it…
And if you can’t, but you still think of yourself as one of my true fans, let me know and we’ll work something out.
Spaceship noises
Pretty much every day, at least once, but usually several times, our six year old boy will bounce and skip around the apartment, holding up something at arm’s length -- a Lego dinosaur, a pirate ship, a spatula -- and make dramatic spaceship noises.
He’s been doing this for years.
Very often, while her brother is at school, and both her parents are busy, our two year old girl will pile a big stack of books in front of her, and spend up to an hour just paging through them. She can’t read yet, but that’s what all the pictures are for.
Other parents frequently point out how good our kids are at entertaining themselves. Their voices carry a certain degree of amazement, maybe a little envy.
“Yes,” we say. “It’s really great.”
What a dismaying number of these parents don’t seem to realize is that, if consistently given the opportunity, kids will learn how to keep themselves entertained.
Instead, I watch parents act like clowns in a desperate bid to keep their kids happy all the time. At the park, at the store, at home, if the kid starts to get cranky, or wander around listlessly, whichever parent is on clown duty will bend over backward to grab and keep their child’s attention and cheer them up, make them laugh, or at least prevent a meltdown.
Parents, I cannot say this emphatically enough: Your job is not to entertain your kids.
We don’t watch a lot of TV, but on the weekends we’ll occasionally put on a good kids’ show. People love Bluey, and we like it too, but I find myself bothered by its intrinsic suggestion that the most important role a dad has is to be the perfect playmate for his kids.
Don’t get me wrong, I love playing with my kids. It’s a special privilege. But most of the time, in most cases, it’s better for my kids to learn how to entertain themselves. Either on their own, with each other, or with their peers.
My job is not to play with them, my job is to help them become good, happy humans. And few things are more important to that objective than helping them learn how to deal with boredom and frustration.
That means that when they start to get upset, or bored, or wander around listlessly, I leave them alone. Frustration is not a crisis, it’s an opportunity.
Once you fully accept this, you can play with your kids because you want to, not because you have to.
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