Book Review: The World Deserves My Children

When Natasha Leggero got pregnant at forty-two after embarking on the grueling IVF process, she was over the moon. But once her feelings of bliss dissipated, she couldn’t help but shake the lingering question: Am I doing this right? And then, Should I be doing this if the world is about to end?

In The World Deserves My Children, Natasha explores themes like “geriatric” motherhood, parenting in an environmental panic, fear and love, discipline (and conflicting schools of thought on how not to raise a brat), and more. Ultimately, Natasha determines that motherhood is worth it. After all, where do you think the next five generations of humans will be if the only people who are having kids don’t believe in science? The world deserves my children.

Parental Moments

I had two moments yesterday, as a parent, that filled me with two different emotions.

The first was pride. Yesterday, my son as part of his boy scouts program volunteered for two hours to be a bell-ringer for the Salvation Army at the local mall. He was there with another scout and an adult scoutmaster. This is part of his community service work to achieve his next level in scouts. It was very rewarding as a parent to see him out there, gladly ringing the bells and wishing people a "Merry Christmas" - whether they donated or not.

The second was concern. Last night, my son got a text message from a friend of his in class to go check out a YouTube video. My wife was there with him and checked it out with him. Turns out the video was of a bunch of girls the same age as the boys - at a pajama party, cavorting around and being silly. What was concerning was the girls in the video were classmates of my son and his friend. Twelve year old girls - putting video of themselves up on YouTube. One of the girls was the daughter of friends right across the street. And she was the one who told my son's friend how to find the video (word is she has a crush on him). Now, I didn't see the video - my wife said there wasn't anything sexual about it. What concerns me, as a parent, is that kids aren't thinking twice about what they put on the Internet. Like FaceBook and MySpace, these can turn into tools predators can use to target our children. Very very disconcerting to me.

Education Motivation

This week my son was able to get an XBox 360 game system which he had been asking about for many months. Initially we told him that we had enough game systems in the house and that we were not going to purchase another one for him. This wasn't the first time we had this stance with him.

About three or so years back, he wanted to get a Playstation 2 - mostly because he saw a cool game come out exclusively for that system. Up to that point, he had an original Playstation with only a couple games and a Nintendo GameCube, bought mostly because of his interest in Pokemon games which were pretty exclusive to that platform. We told him that if he wanted a Playstation 2 that he would have to save the money for it himself. Well, he did just that. He gave up spending his allowance from the beginning of the year through Lent. By Easter, between his allowance and other saved and earned money, he had enough to buy his PS2. We figured that was a good lesson for him at age nine - that you need to save your money for what you want.

Jump ahead to this summer. While he liked his Ninetendo Wii well enough, he really really wanted to get the XBox 360. Again, we said we would not buy it for him just because he wanted it. We decided to strike a deal, given that the new school year was coming up. We told him that if he could save up half the money for the new system (those suckers are very expensive) AND if he could earn A's or B's in all of his classes for the first nine weeks of school that we would pay for the other half of the new game system.

Report cards came home on Wednesday of this week, and he managed to pull straight A's. So, we picked up the new system and one game (again, he paid half on this first game and we paid the other half) - Madden 2008.

But, there was also an additional condition to this deal. Should his grades slip out of the A/B Honor Roll during subsequent grading cycles, that would mean that the system would become off-limits for him until the next report card period completed. We will expect the grades to be back up into A/B Honor Roll in order for him to re-earn the priviledge to use the system. In short, by paying for half the system, we reserved the right to repossess our "half" the system until the grades were again acceptable. And, not surprisingly, the parental "half" of the system consists of the power cable, the controllers and the video input cables to the television. Amazing how that worked out. ;)

Hard-ball parenting? Maybe. I like to think of it as more of creative parenting, providing a way for rewarding positive behavior (in this case, good grades). So far, he earned the grades to get the system. That means he'll have it to play for the next nine weeks - up into the middle of January. I'll keep you posted on whether or not he'll be playing any of those new games he'll want at Christmas by the time Valentine's Day rolls around.

A Pleasant Compliment

On Saturday morning, I managed to accomplish my goals at the Hickory Comic-Con fairly quickly (meet Roy Thomas - check, get the business card of an artist to email him later about doing a commission for me - check, look through dealer boxes - check) and was heading out the door with my purchases in a bag (a near full run of Just Imagine - Stan Lee's mini series where he reimagineers various DC heroes - twelve books gotten for $6, I might add - a bargain since each book new had a cover price of $5.95 each). On the way going out, I ran into Eddie, the manager of Time Tunnel Comics and son of the shop owner.

Eddie and I were talking about the show and how it looked to be a good turn out based on the first couple hours. He then asked where my son was. I explained that my son was off at a thing for the boy scouts and that I was flying solo for the show. Then Eddie paid me an amazing compliment. He said he noticed how I interact with my son when he comes to the shop sometimes with me and that he felt my wife and I were doing an amazing job to raise such a polite, well-behaving and obedient young man.

Wow. That's something every parent never gets tired of hearing.

Eddie, who doesn't have any kids yet but plans to someday soon, said he often observes parents and their kids - both at the shop and around town and at shows. He thought it was great that my son and I share interests. He says he often sees parents drop their kids off at the shop for card tournaments on Saturday and take off without ever seeing them inside, etc. He said those unsupervised kids can be unruly and not likely to follow the rules, etc. Or kids will come in to the shops with their parents and be demanding about getting stuff, to the point of tantrums. Eddie noted that if I tell my son "no" or "not today" that my son doesn't push the point. And, lastly, my son is very respectful when talking to adults. Often if Eddie is there, he will politely ask about tournament promo cards, etc. If my son wasn't able to make it to a tournament, Eddie will check to see if there are any extra promos left and will give him one.

We talked a bit more as I was heading out to leave and he was heading out for a smoke. We talked about how kids today are more into the cards and the video games. I've tried to get my son into reading comics but he has only done so sparringly. In general, reading is not one of his favorite things. When it comes to getting him to read for school, I often have to hope he'll find a series he likes so he'll be apt to read more of the books. We agreed that kids today would rather skip reading about Wolverine when they can "play" Wolverine thanks to the advances in video games. I can certainly see that. My son has learned a lot more now about cars and football (college and pro) thanks to the video games he likes to play. Same with his evolving taste in music - thanks to the Guitar Hero line of games I have gotten him to appreciate more the classic rock genre. Because of this learning factor, I cannot discount the games entirely as worthless.

Anyway, it was a really nice talk and a nice way to cap off a good morning. I do want to add that it is always enjoyable to patronize a business where the staff or owners take an active interest in building a repoire with their customers. My old comic shop in Raleigh was like that because of Ken, the owner of Capital Comics. It is nice that they're more than just concerned about what you are buying each week.