THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 29, 1994 TAG: 9407280199
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Boy, there's no end to the things you can learn while standing in line at the grocery store check out counter.
Where else can you find out who's having which extraterrestial's baby, which fast food place Elvis prefers these days or what last name (if any) Roseanne is using at the moment?
And that's just the news that the checker can give you.
If you want to browse through a magazine while you wait, you can learn lots more.
Like how to make your family closer, for instance.
I got the inside dope on that issue last week when I picked up a woman's magazine and flipped through an article by one of today's most respected child rearing experts.
Usually the man makes moderately good sense, but I have a few doubts about his latest effort.
Try this suggestion for instance: ``Do things together,'' the good doc says. Not a bad idea until he comes up with an example which involves gathering the kids around you the second you come home from work, sit down with them in a big rocking chair and ask them how their day was.
Has this guy ever really come home from work through 45 minutes of rush hour traffic in 99 degree temperatures in a 10-year-old Datsun without air conditioning? Has he ever gathered three kids together and asked them how their day was? Has he ever counted the number of vile names a 5-year-old can use to describe his 3-year-old sister?
Trust me. Gathering the clan after work and asking a loaded question like ``How was your day?'' is far more apt to lead to child abuse charges than to togetherness.
Bill and I had our own ritual for that time of day. We went in our bedroom, barred the door and threatened any kid who ventured down the hall with lifelong exile to his room. Then we did unspeakable adult things. Like talking to each other without interruption.
The expert also suggests putting the ``play'' (his quotes, not mine) back in parenting. I was ready to agree with that until I read his suggestion. Ask the kids to tell you jokes to cheer you up after a hard day, he recommended.
How many third-grade knock-knock jokes can one parent survive? How many times must he or she listen to the dirty joke about two white horses falling in the black mud or come up with an answer to what's black and white and read all over?
The answer to that last, by the way, is either a newspaper or a nun who fell in a vat of red ink - depending on whether or not you heard an ``a'' in the red sequence and whether or not you went to parochial school.
My point here is that no real parent would ever, ever ask a kid to tell a joke. A real parent wears ear plugs whenever the hated j-word is mentioned.
He also suggests seeing things from the child's point of view, going as far as to suggest that you try to ``get inside the child's head.''
The last time I heard those words mentioned was in a TV interview with a teenager who had slipped a mickey into her mom's Diet Coke, drove her to the top of a cliff and tried to push the car over the edge.
``Why did you do that, Tiffany?'' the toothy sleaze reporter asked. `` `Cause I was sick and tired of her trying to get into my head,'' Tif responded between gum pops.
``I vote to acquit,'' I yelled from my recliner. As far as I'm concerned, any mom who won't respect the privacy of a kid's thoughts deserves what she gets.
He also has suggested sharing each other's pain. Our President may make political hay out of pain sharing, but my experience has been different. At least so far as my kids were concerned.
Their idea of sharing pain was limited to things like ``Hey, show me that infected toenail again so I can get more pus from it and really gross mom out this time.''
And then there's the bit about creating family lore by telling your kids about your own childhood whenever possible.
The only family lore my kids want to hear - and repeat - concerns who was arrested for what, when and under what circumstances.
The expert also has a corollary to this one. He suggests asking the kids to tell you a story of something of importance that happened to them during the past week.
Which brings us right back to squeezing pus, shoving nuns into ink bottles and watching the interview with the girl who tried to push her mom over a cliff.
If non-stop communicating is the key to family togetherness, I'm afraid that my family is going to have to settle for some old-fashioned apartness.
It's worked so far and I see no reason to change at this stage of the game. by CNB