Online Sites for Kids

I have written before about the wonders of some on-line sites including Starfall and Club Penguin. In Slate, a couple of articles on a related theme. Emily Brazelon finds that 11 year olds are not so thrilled with Club Penguin but enjoy other sites. Interestingly, price is the big factor. If it's not all free, it's not all fun.

Michael Agger spends too much time in Club Penguin. It is a very comprehensive treatment for interested parents.

The contract state

Recently, my 8 year old daughter complained that her mother kept reneging on promises. She would promise one thing and then when the time came to keep the promise, she would change it or move it further away in time. It was, of course, all true.

So we had a discussion as to what to do about it. I suggested that perhaps she would like to get things in writing the next time Mummy made a promise.

"What good would that do?"

"Well you would have a record of what the promise is."

"So what? She will just change it again."

"In that case you could point out that it is a binding contract."

"What does binding contract mean?"

"It means that if Mummy doesn't keep her promise, the government will step in to enforce it."

"Really, how?"

"You could take Mummy to Court and a judge would order her to keep her promise."

With that she whipped up Microsoft Word and drew herself up a contract including her consideration not to complain about the broken promise unless it was broken. Her mother was surprised to get the contract, in duplicate, but signed it anyhow.

Tonight, I found myself being presented with my own contract terms. I had, over dinner, promised to let my daughter stay up late over the Spring break if she went to bed early before it. An hour later I was asked to sit down and sign a contract to that effect, including the standard 'no complaint' clause. I happily signed and our signatures were witness and the contract was filed away.

I am a little worried that I have opened a can of worms here. Everything has suddenly gone from informal to highly legalistic. I guess our daughter has a few trust issues. But at the moment I have no complaints.

The unformulaic Ratatoullie

As I wrote last year, Pixar seem to have a formula about their movies -- a good one -- and Cars exemplified that. Well, this year's installment, Ratatoullie, is anything but formulaic. There were no popular songs, no quick jokes intended to play on some bit of popular culture and a setting that was hardly wistful but instead a reminder of how rat infested Paris must be.

I went to see this movie with high expectations. This review in Slate will explain why. Clearly, the critics loved it. Now that review encompasses my impression too -- it did not disappoint. But more amusingly, if there was one big risk the movie took, it was to try and appeal to critics by, in part, being about them. It would have been so easy for critics to play on that with a snappy angle should the movie have failed in its goal. But it didn't and so instead the critics were humbled. When you see this movie you will see why that is so. The analogy will hit you over the head. And for those of us who consume the critics' output, it makes this movie and all the more satisfying dish.

Now, the children want some ratatoullie; anyone got any good recipes?

The key to compliance

This week we had the 8 year old's parent-teacher interview. As regular readers know, this is not something I look forward to. This is not because it represents bad news but more that I don't really know what to do with myself.

Anyhow, the interview began:

"I have to tell you that your child is a delight."

"Really?"

"Yes, she does everything she is told. She is always ready at the beginning of class with her diary on the table. She works hard all day at projects. And she always helps clean up."

"Umm, we are the Gans family. Take another look at your sheet. Are we talking about the same child?"

Turns out that we were talking about the same child, physically at least. At home, 'compliant' is not the word I would use for Child No.1. Sure faced with the inevitable, she is very good and does most things without being reminded. But on anything extra, well, it is a struggle where she clearly believes that if she complies she might be doing whatever distasteful activity it is for the rest of life. Actually, she is probably right about that.

Nonetheless, let's face it, we can't complain. If we are going to have compliance somewhere best that it be at school. Indeed, we rewarded that by allowing her to have more of a free reign with her time at home.

But I was curious. Why was there such a difference? We asked her:

"Well, of course I am well-behaved. They pay me there."

"What do you mean?"

"We get money. Well, not real money but bonus money. I have the most in the class."

Ah ha, so once again she proves that she is her father's daughter. At school they get the price right which is clearly not the case at home. Nonetheless, I don't think we are going to change things here, lest we upset the current happy situation at school.

Giving yourself to the schedule

There was an interesting New York Times article this week about a family who had trouble of keeping track of their cars. To resolve the issue, the mother, writing the story, adopted Google Calendar to resolve the situation:

That’s all they would need to create personal calendars that they could share online with a master family calendar, which would display all appointments in color-coded text blocks. Another thing that set Google apart was a recently beefed-up spreadsheet tool that enables me to create a monthly budget chart that might trick my husband into confronting the truth about our finances. I also had big plans to use the documents tool to make a grocery list everyone could edit.

Turns out that she had mixed success.

For that family, giving themselves over to the need for a group schedule appears to have happened late. For us, it happened a few years ago. The parties escalated (and as regular readers know that is a big problem for us), the after school activities grew in number, there were events at school and just many amendments to a normal weekly schedule. Add into the mix that on certain evenings or on certain days one or both of us might have work commitments or travel and just keeping up became a nightmare.

Our initial pass was to agree to put all events on the calendar on our iMac in the kitchen. The idea being, if it is not there, it does not exist. That was a good solution but sometimes you find out about something at work and don't have access to the home machine. Also, you might need to commit to a work event but can't consult the schedule.

After much angst about whether we could rely on an internet-based means of scheduling, I moved us over to Google Calendar. What a marvel it is. It is so easy to consult, put schedules in, and even link to maps of where to go. We have separate calendars for all five of us and am teaching the two eldest to put parties and the like in the schedule themselves. That way we can train them early before it is seen as an imposition. Big Brother serves best when they are young.

Many people have reacted in horror to this outcome that we use IT to communicate rather than some personal touch. Well, those people do not understand the magnitude of the logistical problem we face. More often than not they have a single person responsible for where the children are. We can't rely on that and so we track them on Google. If we could get some GPS locators on them and tie that back in we will be set. It might seem impersonal but there is nothing less personal than a lost child. Can you imagine the conversation with police?

"So can you tell us where you last saw your child?"

"Well, this morning but her mother apparently dropped her off at a party at 10."

"It is 2 now, who picked her up?"

"It was supposed to be me but it turned out that I was taking another child to Taekwando."

"So the mother stepped in ..."

"Well, she had to take the youngest to another party."

"Have you checked at the 10am party?"

"Well, the invitation went with the child and we have no record at the moment of whose party it was or where it was held."

"Have you thought of putting this on Google? It's free."

I mean, we all want to avoid that.

Influences on children

Two new subversive influences on children. First, apparently, children are happy to eat pretty much anything if it is in a McDonald's wrapper. As I have said before, parents should rejoice at this since it will make their task of getting kids to eat healthy stuff alot easier.

More worrying is a Wash U. study that suggests that Baby Einstein can impair speech development. Hard to see what the mechanism is here but it is not good news for those products. From my perspective, Baby Einstein gave our children a whole sentence of vocabulary: "I want a DVD now."

Toilet riddle

My six year old son has come up with a riddle that I believe may be original.

Q: "What toy can you do wees and poos into?"

A: "A toylet!"

If anyone knows a source for this, please let me know. I couldn't find anything similar in an internet search. He claims he made it up, which is possible.