My last post was not very mature and I feel sort of bad because it made Kevin feel bad for dragging me to Home Depot and so now I feel bad for making him feel bad. It’s not that I hate going, it’s just that once I get there I am overwhelmed with how many things are in this world that I know nothing about. I don’t even know that most of them exist, and every time I learn about some new quangle wangle I’m amazed that someone — probably many someones — worked hard to design and develop and refine and produce an object with such an incredibly specific application. Maybe I grew up with parents who were so innovative and clever that they fixed every problem with only five or six different items. Or I just wasn’t paying attention.

Since one of the very few things I got in trouble for when I was a kid was not listening for my name, it’s probably that I wasn’t paying attention.

And this is where we see where Nicolaus gets two of his primary challenges in life:
1. Listening for his name or being addressed in general.
2. Pushing himself to learn something difficult.

Because as much as we cajole and beg and wheel and deal and go talk to our manager to see what we can do to get him into this conversation today, it’s only fair to admit that he inherited a lot of the basic structure of my brain. In some ways that’s good! He is full of interesting ideas, he has an amazing memory and can articulate deep emotions. He is never bored. But he is also in his own world most of the time. And when he runs into something that’s hard to understand or confusing or difficult, he instantly throws a wall up around it and walks off to look at paint chips and rugs.

That’s only a metaphor because all of the things in Home Depot make perfect sense to him. Unlike his mother he understands how tools work and he loves them dearly. But other hard things like reading and forming his letters properly and riding a bike, things that are just plain difficult until it all clicks, those are things that make him fold his arms and walk away.

We want to help him overcome this tendency. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to help. What would’ve helped me as a kid? What helps me now?

Once in awhile when I’m overwhelmed by something I don’t understand, just for fun I decide okay, screw it. I’m going to stand here and ask stupid questions until I understand this. It takes a lot of energy. But eventually oh! Ah ha! I do understand now! If just barely! So that’s how a sewing machine does it — it’s got TWO NEEDLES that is so clever! Oh so that’s how an engine works! Well isn’t that cool! Wow. People should use this for everything.

But pushing myself to understand something complicated either happens because I’m forced to learn it or because I decided on a lark, like picking up a crossword puzzle when you normally don’t. Hey, let’s see if I can understand how this works?

Is it possible to trigger that “hey it would be fun to challenge myself” impulse on purpose? And could I help an eight year old do the same thing?

His reading sometimes improves dramatically for a week or two and I start to breathe again. See there, he just needed time. See there, the practice is working. See there, I’m a good teacher for him after all. But then all of a sudden we’re back to tears and frustration over words that he knows. Words that he reads in a flash if you hold them up individually. But put them in a sentence and it all goes to hell.

Same for writing. I can stand there and focus with laser beam eyes and WILL him to start letters at the top. But if I break concentration for even a second, he’s right back to laboriously drawing them from the bottom and wondering why writing is so exhausting. Days when his eyes well up in tears or he puts his head down, I can see the wall going up and those are the times when I feel like I’m not qualified to teach this kid.

Then we have days like today where the good news is that the kids are cheerful and unflappable. Getting along really well. The bad news is that they are so locked in to each other, so ready to say something that will make the other one laugh, that getting any real work done felt ridiculous. I wonder if anyone ever delivered the exciting news to the king of England that hey guess what! The American colonies have settled their differences and gosh, actually, they are getting along GREAT these days. Constantly getting together to plan things and come up with ideas, writing things together. And we even heard they’re planning to get together in Boston for a party! Isn’t that neat?

Today we started early; we worked on math and reading and history and handwriting, and all of it was in counterpoint to their many, many opposite-day jokes and random words and poop-related puns and oh my god the day left me feeling like one of those substitute teachers in movies with spit balls in her hair. Poor Kevin came home in time to hear me lecturing his sons on rudeness and not interruptingness and RAWR JUST WRITE THE LETTER THE NORMAL NONHILARIOUS, NON OPPOSITE, NONPOOP-RELATED WAY because guess what! On opposite day, you can still be punished. The opposite of a time out is not in fact a trip to the Lego ‘n Donut store. The opposite of a time out is me killing you because oh my gosh, forget public school, today I was ready to send them to public crocodile farm where the vision statement on the sign outside reads: A high-achieving farm where every crocodile gets to reach their greatest potential and talent for eating children.

And then what happened? I don’t remember why, but at some point in the day, everything changed. I showed them the TMBG song Science is Real and that led to clicking on the one about Elements and that led to both kids being very excited. They pulled out the Science bin and spent the rest of the afternoon working as scientists. They replaced the batteries in the old microscope and found all of the slides and read the different specimens. Then they put polymer beads into a beaker of water. Then they worked on experiments with lenses and water and oh – back to the microscope. They jumped into each other’s questions, they pulled different stuff apart to study it, they drew pictures of what they saw. They made guesses, they refined their ideas.

The during dinner, I reviewed some of the geography we’ve been talking about and Graham asked a few questions which led me back to a lightening review of the history of humankind. They didn’t make a single joke about underpants. They listened and — wait, there was one joke about the name Mesopotamia hahaha Messy-Potty-Me-A get it? — then at some point in my lecture they quietly pulled out paper and markers and started working on maps of their own. Without being told, they just decided that this would be more fun to listen to if they could draw related pictures at the same time.
And it was great.

Whenever Nicolaus puts up a wall to block himself from learning something new, the problem may be in his physical brain or it may be a bad habit or just part of his personality, but it isn’t his fault if he doesn’t learn it. It is MY job to break through it. It’s easy to feel frustrated and ready to give up on teaching a kid like Nicolaus how to read. There is a perfectly fine public school just up the street. It’s easy to throw my own dang wall up! See? Full circle? This is something that’s hard to do and doesn’t have easy answers and I can’t go back or around it or sidestep it. It’s a puzzle. If humans can solve all of the puzzles they solve with all of the millions of solutions that are for sale at Home Depot, surely I can solve the one little puzzle of helping one little kid learn how to solve the frustrating puzzles that he inherited from me.

The weekends are like whole weeks that are squished up into fewer meals and more time being lazy lazy lazy and then remembering oh my gosh! The weekend only lasts this long! Run around and get things done before Monday comes and poops all over everything.

So we do, we run around and get things done and it’s never enough. Kevin made progress on a big wholesale order. I cleaned the kitchen twice, got one side of the garage straightened up, and fixed the broken shelves in the boys’ closet where they house any of their stuffed animals that are imprisoned for offenses ranging from Failing to Comfort a Wounded Child to Felony, NOT BEING THE RIGHT KITTY. More of them are political prisoners than I am comfortable with, but it’s not my closet or my plush animal collection and so I try not to intervene. Kids have to wrestle some of these morally complex situations themselves, that’s what I learned from the 1950s black and white sitcoms that Nickelodean could afford back when I was a kid. Steve from My Three Sons and Donna Reed and those bratty twin cousins’ mom/aunt would encourage their kids to do the right thing but would never force the youngsters to set animals free. You want kids to come to those conclusions on their own before they go out into the real world and find themselves high up in some sort of dictatorial regime and all of a sudden they don’t know how to assert themselves and do what’s right. Anyway. The weekend was a busy one. All of them are.

You know what it’s like? It’s like real life pauses for two days and we get to try and catch up. But it doesn’t work because it turns out all week when I say “I want to clean up and organize all of our school shelves” what I really mean is “I want to watch movies and eat strawberries and take naps and maybe go to a pet store and spend $40.”

And Kevin says “I want to add fluid to the hydraulic pump for the garden’s weeds before my truck needs changing and the worker bees start to backflow into the main rudder on our coolant leak.” but really he means “I have so much to do it will OMG never get done but a trip to Home Depot is a good place to start.”

So I agree to go to Home Depot even though after ten minutes I am so bored that I want to die. I grab one of our kids and try to use talking to him as a shield to protect me from whatever I will learn about if I stand here and look at these house parts. Three more minutes and I take the kid by the hand and announce that we have to go and look for light bulbs; it’s an excuse to wander off and go look at all of the things that could maybe be used to make art projects. Like massive oil pans = resin casting! And plexiglass = monotype printing! And cans of Oops paint, well, that’s obviously good for everything. Then I make my way through the organization section and dream about what it would be like to be rich enough and smart enough to be the kind of person who comes in and buys all of these closet things and takes them home and installs them — oh or no! has them installed — and doesn’t return to the closet over and over all day to marvel at the gorgeous drawers and shelves because this isn’t strange to them. This is normal regular life for this person. Of course things are nice and smooth and organized. That’s what the whole house is like.

Then we snicker at the idea of someone using the floor model showers or potties, and then we have to go to the carpet section and look at samples. I don’t like carpet but oh if I DID I would want this color or this other color. Hey are those rugs? Then we flip through the towering rug flip book and pretend to be tiny miniature people. Most of the rugs are boring. Lame. Lame. Eh. Oh wow! Pretty! Etc. But the kids think all of the giant rugs are fancy and beautiful.

“This one is really naturey. It looks like a forest!” It’s covered with very Country Cottage English Ivy.

“Yeah, doesn’t it?”

“Can we buy it?”

“No. It costs thousands of dollars.”

“Well in my piggy bank I have an infinity dollar bill!”

“No, save that. Don’t spend that money on rugs.”

“But it’s infinite.”

“I’m not sure that it is.”

“Oh it IS. No matter how much of it I spend, I still have all of it left.”

I start to argue but why are we having this conversation? I might as well be over there learning stuff with Kevin in the things aisle. But that’s how we roll, me and my kids. Detailed discussions and debates over things that were silly in the first place. But I tell you what kid, when you grow up you can come back here and buy this rug.

“I will. I will actually probably buy all of these rugs if they still have them.”

Very good. Your apartment will look amazing.

Then Graham and I need to go look at industrial flooring options for the studio, which we aren’t planning to re-floor any time ever, as we are renting renting renting for lord’s sake. But it’s fun to think about what we would use for durable, safe, nice-looking flooring if our landlord decided to do the good Christian thing and just give the house to us, for free.

Then we walk over one more row and see funny signs like BEWARE OF DOG and there are also mailboxes, which is great. Then one more row and hi! It’s Kevin and Nicolaus! Oh I like them! The boys celebrate their reunion with a little bit of obnoxious wrestling until we tell them hey now, cut it out, we are in a STORE. Kevin invites me to come with him to the section of rolled chain/pipe fittings/ screw bolts and that’s where right there in the middle of Home Depot, right there in the aisle, Kevin asks me my opinion on which thing he should buy. Man. Now I have to force myself to focus and listen to what the problem is and what exactly we are looking for. It’s only hard because I was conditioned at an early age by commercials on those Nick at Night shows to only care about Cabbage Patch Dolls and to be a nurturing creative mother and to conform to my gender role and oh wow. I just… don’t well… um… hey wait, would this one work?

Kevin patiently explains that no, that’s an elbow bolt and what we’re looking for is more of a wrist joint and also those are high-tempered steel and not quadratic aluminum which is all we need for this application. Oh. Right. So I scan all of the labels and words, dozens and dozens of packages, all color-coded without a legend anywhere, all marked with sizes and threading levels and… oh hey! Is this it?

“Yes!” Kevin might or might not say, “That’s it. Awesome.”

And then we pay, and no Nicolaus you cannot buy another flashlight or a knife or a Dremel or anything that costs more than the five dollars you brought with you and please stop spinning around you are going to hit those people behind us who are buying long metal rods, you are going to hit their rods with your face and then it will be all of that. And it’s about to start raining outside so let’s get through this paying part quickly. Kevin and I secretly pick up candy and put it on the counter so it beeps and into the bag before the kids can see it.

By the time we make it out to the car, it’s storming like crazy and we are all soaked and we jump into the car with our little bag of hardware and now we all have to get buckled in and it’s already Sunday night, time for dinner and bed and then the weekend’s over.

You aren’t a workaholic.

You aren’t career-driven

or even ambitious.

Which isn’t to say that you’re lazy! No no no! When you’re working you work hard, you pay attention, you do what’s right.

What I mean is that you aren’t climbing anyone’s ladder, or putting in long hours just to help out at the office or building metaphorical bridges or moving the mouse’s cheese or practicing synergy or networking or so on, because that stuff isn’t what’s important to you.

But this year there were a lot of days when you woke up before sunrise, drove to your job, worked all day at work and then came home to huge jewelry purchase orders that had to be filled right away, purchase orders that we actively sought out on purpose. There were a lot of weekends filled with so many necklaces or cufflinks to make that you barely had time for dinner. Why? Why the heck would we fill up your time with a steady additional gig?

Well because you have all this damned talent, see. And we’re trying to build our tiny company into something we can grow and rely on a little more. Oh and pesky debts. Which are coming down now! Thanks to your many hours in the basement spent sawing and rolling and finished and stamping out metal.

So thank you for that.

It’s been so awesome for the boys to see you in the mode of making things again. It’s good for them to see the merit of creativity and hard work and innovation and problem solving, but more than that I think it’s a chance for them to meet the guy you are outside of being their daddy, if that makes sense. Plus the rolling mill is just cool.

What amazes me is that even though it has been a physically completely exhausting year, you used every remaining speck of energy to spend time with us. It never occurs to you to push your kids aside or to stay home while we go to the park. Whenever it’s logistically possible, you come to all of their classes and playdates and hanging-outs and running-arounds… we’re a close family because for some reason you seem to like spending time with us.

We are now leaving the little kid phase of our parenting endeavor. No more peepants, no more spoon-feeding, less carrying, less doing things for them. In a way it’s sad, right? But in another, more accurate way, it’s awesome. They buckle themselves in, they make their own snacks, they put on their shoes, they feed the pets. They even comply with bathroom-related social conventions mostly on their own.

And they build toys, grow plants, work on inventions, create games and jokes and work work work all the time on new ideas and fixing things and now instead of “Daddy, carry me!” it’s “Daddy, will you help me get a piece of this electrical tape?” or “Daddy, you’ve GOT TO COME SEE THIS thing we made.” or “Can I borrow your jeweler’s saw for a minute?” or “Let’s see if we can really make this FLY!”

TL;DR: I think you’re going to enjoy the next few years.

Even though parenting 5-10 year olds is sort of terrifying. We’re a little more world weary and mistrusting and realistic than we were when they were little babies. Now there’s this pressure to get it all right. They’re old enough to articulate all of our shortcomings and they’re old enough to remember it all later. Scary.

And humans are breakable and ultimately mortal. Terrifying.

And the energy needed to really keep everything balanced in our day to day lives is more energy than we have. Frustrating.

But the thing with kids is? Time marches on anyway. They keep on going, and in the middle of stresses and worries and tears, they run up and say “I figured out how to spell dog farts!”

I won’t tell you to stop worrying, because you can’t. Me either. All we can do is do our best to help them stay alive long enough for them to grow up into the people they were going to become anyway.

Which speaking of nature, it’s so funny that Nicolaus says that he is more like you than Graham is. He says that you and he have basic brain patterns in common, that he got more of your DNA than mine. It’s funny because it’s 100% not true. He learns things from you but at his core he is all of the overly serious, neurotic, easily overwhelmed, messy, literary, anxious and demanding person that I am. He looks like me. He procrastinates, he doesn’t like being pressured.

But I love that he perceives himself in your light rather than mine. As long as he is striving to be like you, he is pushing his own limits, working to do better, and bringing balance to his life the same way I did when I moved into your apartment back in 1995.

Graham on the other hand is plenty like you. He likes to pick on people, and he doesn’t care that much what anyone thinks, but he loves a very lucky few people with his whole entire weird little heart.

What else?
You took them fossil hunting

and then marched a quarter of a mile with a giant ammonite fossil on your shoulder because they HAD to bring it home.

You take good care of their mama, make her feel loved and happy.

When I wasn’t sure that we could handle this dog’s puppy habits, you were the one who saw the true Beezus. The Beezus she would become with just a little training and a little maturity. And oh my holy heck, you were right. I know pets are a hassle, but the intangible goodness that she has already brought to their childhood is so, so, so worth having to tell her to leave stuff alone.

The kids needed her. She is amazing. Thank you for helping with that whole emotional process and for only groaning once when you heard the dollar amount price on our rescue mutt.

And I’m awful sorry she tried to kill you by crawling under the seat and eating the wires that connect the driver side airbag. It was an accident. She would never want to hurt you!

Anyway.
I know you’re tired, and i know being an adult with two kids and two jobs and a lame wife is a lot but believe me, the energy you put in through each week makes a difference. We are turning a corner in a lot of ways, and our dreamy ideas for a someday life don’t seem unrealistic now.

Sorry this is all over the place. You’re at the store, so I only have that much time to write this. While I’m typing and uploading photos, Nicolaus is watching the silly videos he made yesterday about how to do metalwork. Oh my holy goodness! I love you dearly but your kids are goofy. It’s all your fault. I can’t even concentrate because his video is so silly he is laughing so hard at how funny his movie is oh my gosh what have we done.

Glory be to doctors who listen.

Glory be to a dog with a mellow, trusting, joyful doggie brain and who is commanded by her DNA to fetch any stick of any size, including whole limbs felled by storm, and stack them up on the back porch, which isn’t something we need her to do but she does it with all of her loving might.

Glory be to husbands who use double the amount of garlic because good golly, that was a delicious dinner.

Glory be to thermal postage printers and all things wireless.

Glory be to the bezier curve tool, though the learning curve is steep and fraught with many drunken nights of self-loathing, making it’s mastery all the more exciting.

Glory be to the Large Hadron Collider, which I only barely understand thanks to the Internet and which really: glory to Kahn and Wikipedia and all of the answers we can eat.

Glory be to cheerleader customers, and to friendly printing companies who do their job well.

Glory be to crushed ice from Sonic
And to making friends
And summer nights with sangria
And kids who are scared of bugs staying out late to catch fireflies.

Glory be to those moments when it all works
And to big questions
And to kids who talk fast because they have more to say every day than we will ever have minutes for,
Who are still talking and asking questions late into the night after I thought they were asleep.
Can we buy a whole bunch of magnifying glasses tomorrow? They can be cheap ones. I just need to see what will happen if you put them all in a line to try and make a super magnifier because if so then we should be able to eventually get enough of them that we could look at parts of atoms!

Glory be to the avocados this time of year
And the kind of tired you only get from swimming
And to all of the good people who let me over in traffic
And to the postal service which comes to my door and takes all these things to other people’s doors using a system that is so unbelievably complicated it’s amazing that they don’t just say never mind, this is too much work.

Glory be to the things that dont last long enough — mowed grass, nails that are trimmed, and floors that are clean enough that they don’t make me feel guilty and burdened every time I look at them — even though like I said, they don’t last long enough

And incandescent lights

And cicadas

And ceiling fans

And new sketchpads with ink pens.

In between feeling tired and sore and unequipped for adult life, glory be to those wonderful bits and stretches of feeling safe and spoiled and loved.

That night before bed Graham reminded me again.

“I know… and I will help you with that tomorrow.”

“But will you get all the stuff?”

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

When morning came – well, Graham doesn’t wake up very early so when morning came nothing happened, but when he woke up he ran to find me: “Did you get everything?”

“Graham. All we’ve done since the last time we talked about this is sleep.”

“Oh. But you said you’d get everything tomorrow. And that was last night which is part of yesterday so today this IS that tomorrow so…”

“I know, but sweetie – we have to eat breakfast and clean up and stuff. But I will go get everything today, okay?”

“You HAVE TO.”

Then the day started and I got some work done, and Kevin made bacon while our children put on a demonstration of the special form of martial arts that they invented and if you think I’m joking well you’d just better not cross them is all I can say because Birdie Kung Fu is some serious thrashing about mixed with yoga poses and if you stand too close you could easily get jabbed in the leg or something.

Hello, new readers. I used to be a technical writer, where my crisp writing would have made Basho cry silent tears of joy. My job was to produce clear, elegant sentences whose bare bones were enough to communicate complex ideas about eternal problems of the human condition, like how to service your Triton 2000 series ATM.

I don’t do that job anymore. The point of most of my blog posts doesn’t become clear until the middle of act two, if at all.

So. I was eating bacon and finding myself becoming spiky and grumpy and heard myself shouting things like “Can’t you go be creative somewhere ELSE??” until I realized that I desperately needed a couple of hours away. So I paid Kevin his thousand dollars, and got ready to go. Graham caught me at the door.

“Mama. Will you come back with everything I need?”

“Yes.”

“Pleeeeease do not forget the tights.”

What kind of jerk of a mother would forget the tights?

I went to JoAnnes first, because they have neat fabric and because I hate being able to find what I need. It took me twenty minutes to find craft and fabric glue. It wasn’t in Craft Supplies, Scrapbook adhesives, wood working, or any of the other nine aisles dedicated to kinds of glue. I finally found it in between sticky foam shapes and self-adhesive googly eyes, which makes sense because a lot of times you need craft glue when you’re working with things that peel and stick.

I also got his red shirt, headscarf, and a yard of shimmery yellow fabric for his cape. Now all I needed was to run to Target and grab a pair of red tights and… Well. There are no red tights at Target. I’ll save you that agony. There just arent a lot of red clothes there at all. Pink leggings would have to do. Then I also grabbed two other pairs of leggings because he likes them and they were on sale and Target will only let you check out if you’re buying three times the stuff you came for.

I walked in the door and he rushed me. “DID YOU GET IT?”

Yes, yes I got everything. Red shirt, red hood, yellow cape — oh but there are no red tights in this town. You’ll have to use these pink leggings, okay?

He grabbed them and hugged them. “Of course that’s okay! I love them!”

And that’s how we came to live with Word Girl. He immediately recruited Nicolaus to be a sidekick/production assistant, cast the dog as a bank-thieving bad guy, and by golly he put on a show. He handed me a large open frame cut out of paper for the parts where the camera is supposed to zoom in on Word Girl’s face; I have to hold it up and pretend I can’t see the rest of his body while he tells me the definition of a word. Most of the definitions he gives even make sense and wait a crazy minute Word Girl is a GIRL OMG HE IS GAY HOLY SHIT AAAAAA!!

And here’s all I really wanted to say:
I’m both glad and disturbed at the number of “young non gender conforming preschooler” stories being covered by the media. On the one hand, it’s good to know we aren’t the only ones whose sons like to wear skirts and look fancy, but on the other hand – what in the living fuck is wrong with our culture that this is considered any big deal? Graham is a five year old random idea generator who changes clothes three times a day. Of course he dresses like a girl sometimes. It’s simple probability.

Little boy claims to be a kitty, parents say they will support him no matter what species he ultimately identifies with.

My son played a World War II game on the iphone and chose the German tank. Should I let him shave his head if he asks?

Study finds that people are interested in things, and in a radical new trend their parents sometimes let them find out more about things.

Child cross-dressing is not new. It shouldnt be news. And the fact that it IS news among otherwise progressive people seems like more of a problem than a few rude old dudes who give a kid grief for being different.

So yeah. For us, future gayness or genderness or whatever elses are such non-issues that they don’t even register as anything to fret about, get over, or accept. Because 1. He is so far from being a sexually mature mammal that whether he will end up being gay or not seems like a weird discussion to even have. Graham has always loved blocks, and as he’s gotten older he loves angles and measurement and geometry stuff in general. A protractor or a new ruler makes a nice reward for him being good at the doctor. Should I start a blog or go on Good Morning America and write a book all about the joys and challenges of Raising an Architect? We will accept him no matter what kind of architect he chooses to become! Doesn’t that make it seem like the end result matters a little too much?

Now. I don’t want to judge the parents who are loudly embracing their child’s gayness because the truth of parenting is that we are all winging it minute by minute and unless you are crushing up Cheez-its and mixing them with vodka to make your own baby food, well hey you know what your kid is probably going to do just fine.

And 2. Orientation is not a good or bad thing. I was talking to a friend recently about this… she was saying that it bothers her when people say “If my child is gay I would love her anyway.”

That sounds like a wonderful open minded approach, but the word anyway implies judgment or willingness to overlook a serious shortcoming. You wouldn’t say, “If my child grows up to drive a blue car I would love him anyway.” or “My son prefers orange juice over apple juice, but we accept him for who he his.”

You know what Graham will grow up to be? Graham. Oh he might not even call himself that – who knows? – but at his core will be the same great rolling blue ocean that’s always been the centermark of who he is.

When Graham wants a barbie or something we hesitate because damn, don’t we have enough plastic junk already? Do we really need more toys?

I am trying to pull these thoughts together into a cohesive point, I promise. Its not up to us to define how our kids think of themselves. We dont discourage Graham from picking out princess stickers or asking for a doll. We don’t point out that it’s a girl thing, or remind him that he is supposed to prefer girl stuff. Why would we do that? His identity shifts constantly. He is just as likely to ask for a ninja mask or a Lego scorpion or a superhero sticker. Five year olds are capricious and trying to nail down their self-perception is like… Christ, there isn’t even a good simile for it. It’s like a big impossible pointless silly thing to try and do.

If we can have any influence over our boys’ identity, we want to shape them to think of themselves as kind hearted, generous, self-reliant and hardworking. That’s really it. Of course, if either of our sons grows up to be a selfish lazy jerk, we will accept him and love him anyway.