The kids and I took advantage of the midweek holiday to hit the movie theaters.
If you haven’t seen “Kung Fu Panda,” go. My 4-year-old loved it, my son rated it 9 out of 10 and I was still chuckling as we left the theater.
As we drove home afterward, my 12-year-old and I discussed “kids” movies, specifically why he tends to prefer Dreamworks movies over those released by other studios.
It was a pretty broad generalization – I mean, Dreamworks was responsible for “Bee Movie” – but I could see his point. He likes comedy, and movies like “Kung Fu Panda,” “Shrek” and even “Madagascar” manage to find a way to amuse viewers of all ages.
Why?
As we discussed the movies we ALL like, they all seemed to have one thing in common: butts.
Well, that’s the way my daughter simplified it.
I think it’s more because they have unlikely heroes who break the archetype because they have traits that we can relate to.
We like that the ogre gets the girl, and that the princess realizes that looks and social standing aren’t all that counts.
We like that the caged animals in “Madagascar” can’t deny their true natures. That’s something that transcends different cultures, because if you Google “Alex and Marty” (I was checking their names), you can find the scene where the lion bites the zebra in the butt on YouTube, dubbed into foreign languages, i.e., “Madagaskar – Alex biter Marty i baken.”
[youtube DSAzGaqj1qY&hl]
We like “Kung Fu Panda” because just the concept of a roly-poly panda doing kung fu amuses us.
It puts the impossible within reach.
That isn’t why the movie is successful, though.
In this case, the pacing was perfect. The moments that could have been corny took unpredictable twists. My son noted that they didn’t go for “cheap jokes,” but rather extended scenes that allow for more complicated humor that keeps you laughing even as they deftly move the plot along.
Mostly, though, it was just a fun family film that doesn’t play off the last successful kids’ movie.
The value to me, though, is it’s one of those movies where the entire family leaves in a good mood and when you’re trying to entertain a kindergartener and a middle schooler at the same time, those movies can be hard to come by.
I remember being crushed when I was told that I couldn’t worship the Greek gods because they were (gasp!) mythological. It was similar to the crushing feeling I felt later when I discovered that the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot story was romance, not history. (Okay, 24 years after seeing Richard Harris on stage as Arthur, I’m still a believer.)
My son, who went through his Arthurian and Greek phases in reverse, is now fascinated with the Olympians and happily mispronounces their names in every conversation, despite all the “Xena” episodes he was exposed to as a tot. (And no, I don’t believe that show was historically accurate because it messes with “The Odyssey.”)
Why bring this up? Because I’m a big believer that anything that can get kids and their parents to read together is a good thing. My son couldn’t talk me into reading a series about warrior cats and I’m kinda over dragons, but when he started tossing out names like Zeus and Ares and Hermes, I was intrigued. When he reopened our ongoing satyr vs. faun debate, I had to see what he was reading. I borrowed his copy of “The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan and I have to say, it was pretty good. Not “Harry Potter” good, maybe, but heaps better than “Eragon” good.
Juvenile fiction is hit or miss. Anyone trying to keep up with their kids’ taste in books knows what I’m talking about. Kids are easy. They don’t discriminate much. Seriously. Warrior cats?
Anyway, when my son and I can agree on what qualifies as a “good” story, I get excited. After reading the first book in Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, I expect that Greek mythology will the the subject of conversation for weeks to come. I’m looking forward to it.
I don’t know that I’d recommend it to friends without kids, but if if you’re looking for a conversation starter with a young fantasy-lover, Riordan’s series is a good place to start.
Although some may argue that I’m a witch, I’m no queen and I’m not an evil-stepmother.
Despite this, I seem to have a princess and a frog in my charge. Over the weekend, I decided that I’d see if a parenting book could help me become a more effective mother.
The exercise of going out to find the book only reinforced how much I need it.
While I perused the parenting books – none of them seemed to endorse the duct-tape method of discipline – the frog had built a pricey tower of books that included a book of essays about Rick Riordan’s “Demigods and Monsters” series.
I thought my son would be better served with my favorite childhood mythology book, “D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths.” We debated a bit, then both went into the stack, even though I suspected this would be a no-no in the parenting book I had in my hand.
Meanwhile, my daughter had become fast friends with a brown horse and a white horse who could not be separated and was looking for a book to read to them. I did some mental calculations, dragged her to the bargain rack and did some negotiating before heading to check out.
As we waited for the cashier to be able to figure out how much to charge me for the white horse, which may actually have been some poor child’s lost toy, I thought about letting her off the hook. The thought of having a pouty princess extended my patience, though, no doubt to the dismay of the cashier, the manager and everyone in line behind me.
Um, I think it could be argued that I’m a bit overindulgent.
So what parenting method helps you become the parent you want to be? I practiced attachment parenting when the kids were young. It fit in perfectly with my mindset and there’s no denying that my kids and I are quite attached to each other.
Unfortunately, there’s also no denying that my kids are both strong-willed and feeding them on demand, letting them share my bed and slinging to my chest every time we went out did not prepare me to be the kind of mother who can comfortably set limits. Quite the opposite, in fact.
As I head into my 12th year of parenting, I feel like I’m back at square one. I’m a busy working mom who overcompensates by trying to be a helicopter parent in her spare time, and that’s not doing anyone any good.
Thanks to No Child Left Behind, my son has homework to do before the new school year. My daughter needs to make the transition for preschool to kindergarten. Me? I’m going to take a crash course in effective parenting.
As I walked through Costco yesterday, I couldn’t help wishing that I was the mom in charge of paper goods.
Instead, I’m the mom who forgot to stake out a specialty for the fundraiser tomorrow and got reminder via phone from her son at 2:30 p.m.
By that point, the only things left to sign up for were hot dogs and Spam musubi.
“We’ll do hot dogs,” I told him quickly before someone else snapped them up and I was stuck making musubis all night.
As we drove to Costco, I asked my son how many he needed.
“Fifty?” he suggested with a shrug.
“FIFTY?”
“Uh, 25?”
It turns out that you can buy hot dogs in a 50 pack at Costco for less than $7. But, as in all hot dog related issues, you can only buy the buns in packs of 24.
“Do you want 22 extra buns or do you want two extra hot dogs?” I asked my son.
As I reached for more buns, he stopped me. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re not the only ones.”
In the end, it turns out that the prospect of making 50 hot dogs before 7 a.m. was more daunting than the reality of it.
Memorial Day is right around the corner and I haven’t made any summer plans.
Well, I know what I’m doing. I’m working.
My daughter is finishing up preschool and heading straight into kindergarten without taking a breath.
My son? Well, he’s turning 12 and…
It used to be easy. I’d moan about having to drop a ridiculous amount of money on day camp, then rest easy as my son was taken care of for the summer.
Day camp is cool when you’re 6. It’s okay when you’re 7 or 8. Apparently, about the time you start approaching double-digits, though, you start realizing it’s just glorified babysitting.
A couple years ago, my son thwarted my efforts to get him to tolerate one more summer with “the kids” and — after I’d already paid in advance — he convinced his grandfather to let him come over every day. The waste of hundreds of dollars plus the stress of getting from town to Kailua and then back to town by 8 a.m. did me in.
Every year since, we’ve managed to figure out something that was okay, but not ideal.
When it came to trying to figure out what to do this summer, my son and I couldn’t agree on the perfect solution, and, as I mentioned earlier, all of a sudden, it’s just about a week before summer vacation and I’ve got nothing lined up for the kid but a summer writing program that will occupy him for two hours a day for exactly one week.
Maybe he’ll end up with a true “break” this summer.
I’m trying to figure out why these days that seems like such an alien concept.
