It's no good in the living room.

[orange]

Originally posted by Tiamat
And what exactly was it that you would do with out us again......?

Starve. No one would cook our food

[Tiamat]

SNOT!!!

[Flubber]

Mrs Flubber is great and we share a lot of interests but my den has a computer and a small tv.

and as for parenthood, I am hoping to survive and thats all. baby now due in 9.5 weeks

[Lancer]

JohnT, just caught up on all your posts. I guess someone somewhere always has it worse...

Zkribbler, one could say they "drag us", or one could say we follow our Cheneys...both are correct.

Sten, deciding whether something is a big decision or a small one is a small decision I take it?

[Switch]

I agree, literature at an early age is good. I had it, and I'm turning out pretty well. Once your kids old enough, I HIGHLY suggest Bearnsteen Bears (or however you spell it ). That was my staple book as a kid.
And another thing I heard is good for helping to develop children more, is trips. Travel a lot. If you can't afford it, then at least travel a lot in the nearby region. I'm 16 and I still don't mind going for a week or so with my parents. Last summer we spent 2 weeks travelling to Newfoundland.....not a trip I suggest taking by car .
And music, I would say, is the most important thing (I'm 16, so feel free to take all I say with a bucket of salt). Classical, is supposed to be good (Mozart makes you smart or something).

Well, now let me get back to my own age and stop giving adults advice. And feel free to shoot back at me for stupid comments as well. Like I said, I'm 16.

[JohnT]

Actually, Sophie prefers Bach believe it or not. When we play Mozart she's take-it-or-leave-it, but Bach... Bach gets her dancing. Especially the Brandenburgs.

[monolith94]

See JohnT - that's what I'm talking about. I'm not saying to read Plato to your infant . Reading storybooks every night is great though - it helps to nurture a love of reading. Stuff like "Runaway Bunny" and "Goodnight Moon" and Dr. Seuss - classics like that.
Also, I think that building blocks are awesome, although for more around 5+ year olds. I spent so many hours on those things, creating palaces, making up stories in my head, etc...

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Tiamat
And what exactly was it that you would do with out us again......?

Work on cars, gamble, hunt and/or fish, drink beer & watch football, have f@rting contests, read porn. OMG, did I say that out loud?!?

[monolith94]

Out of all of those, the only things I might participate in are the football, porn and maybe a bit of beer - although I've always liked more higher class liquor than that...

[Ted Striker]

Sten Stenish,

What if you balanced it out though?

Say, teach him Plato but also have him learn a nice fade away jump shot and some gangster slang!

[Sten Sture]

Balance is the key to a good jump shot. Balance and confidence. And learning new dialects is always helpful, which is why I read a story like a drunken Scotsman tonight. The diversity of the city is really amazing for our daughter. She even has some friends from the US that have just one mommy and one daddy!!

In my experience parents do engage in what is known as the baby olympics. My little Johnny is reading Plato at 18 months or whatever. It is pretty easy to get caught up in teaching your kid to impress your acquaintences instead of learning what your kid needs to learn. Most of the time it is pretty harmless (and my daughter does know the planets in order) but some do go overboard trying to get their kids into the best preschool, so they can get in to the best grade school, so they can go to Exeter and Harvard (with a year at the Sorbonne) and become a wealthy lawyer - all at the age of two. Some of it is pretty unfair to the little tots.

I am by no means an early childhood education 'expert' of course, but there you have it!

[The Mad Monk]

JohnT, if you want an escape from P. Rex, have you tried Dora on your kid?

[JohnT]

Oh, yeah. She likes Dora the Explorer as well. But Barney is special - Sophie just adores Barney.

"DEE-DAH!!!" - Sophie's word for Barney, usually screamed.

"Da-da-DAH" - The first three notes to Barneys theme, sung repeatedly.

[JohnT]

In which JohnT rants against his younger self.

You know, back before I was a parent, here was my take on the entire situation:

"My kids gonna be smart. If I had a choice between a happy and "normal" child or a moody and "smart" child, I'll take the smart one any day. I'm not going to waste my kids time on all that stupid crap - you know, Santa/Barney/dolls/etc. The first book I'll read her will be, if not Shakespeare, then at least a good political/economics text - how about "Wealth of Nations?" I'm going to have the kid start reading before the age of 2, s/he will be able to read the newspapers when they're 5. Not only will s/he be able to solve differential equations by the time they are 7, they'll be able to do them in their heads - backwards!"

But such an agenda would be torture - for the parents and especially for the kids. The idea of actually perpetrating such a selfish agenda on my daughter almost makes me tear up.

A lot of you are talking about your memories - well, Sophie is at least a year-and-a-half from developing any long-term memory, which means that if you remember your parents reading you Twain (or the Berenstein Bears), you were at least twice as old as my daughter if not more.

Sten is right: there is such a thing as "Age Appropriate" and while reading Twain to Sophie isn't necessarily a bad thing, it will not accomplish much given that she doesn't even understand the concept of "narrative" just yet. We'll wait until she is 5 or 6 or so before we start bringing out the Literature.