A very strange thing started happening once we sent Dalia to preschool for the first time last fall: she made friends. With the cool kids.
This is somewhat unprecedented. My family hasn’t had a serious brush with coolness since some long-ago relative was (allegedly) something of a mob lawyer in 1930’s Chicago. And even then, he was just the attorney for Cool, maybe more Kleinfeld than Carlito.
How can you tell when a 4-year-old girl is in with the cool crowd? Well, the parents of the other girls and boys in her set seem cooler than us. They are fashion designers and self-possessed civil rights lawyers and comely theater people.
Also, by consensus, there are some kids who are already consistently referred to as the “poo-poo-heads.” And Dalia is not among them. Which is a relief, because I recently Googled the boy (a friend of mine, of course) who was most often called poo-poo-head when I was growing up. I couldn’t find out much about him except that he’s got a tidy rap sheet of lesser criminal convictions. “Poo-poo-head” is real, and it is a major predictor of life outcomes.
Another sign that Dalia may be part of the cool crowd is that she has mastered, at such a tender age, the sort of icy rejection that was so often used on me. The school suggested–as many progressive schools on the Upper Breast Side do–that kids have playdates even with the kids they aren’t friends with at school. But Dalia will have no part of it. She wants to play with the carefree girls with pigtails, not the troubled corner-dwellers, and she’ll say so to anybody who wants to hear it. It’s like high school, except there’s no political calculation, just preschool honesty.
This is a major problem. Because if the poo-poo-heads wind up as petty convicts, the cool kids don’t end up much better. I just joined the Key West High School Memorial – for those we have lost too soon page on Facebook, and I have to say, a lot of the cool kids in high school died young. Yes, some of them died from cancer, which really doesn’t care if you’re cool or geek. But others died from guns and drugs or other bad choices that you might expect from people whose glory days crested in high school.
The upshot: I feel compelled to steer Dalia toward a happy medium. Step it down a notch. Find the slightly less-attractive kids, and geek out with them.
But who am I kidding? I can hardly break her will enough to get her dressed in the morning. She’s going to do what she’s going to do, and I just have to trust that she’s got enough dork-DNA to keep her from flaming out too early.
Kids with geek DNA have their obsessions. You just have to figure out what those are and help her geek out. The cool thing about geekiness is that you can explore it in almost any medium. There are even fashion and theater geeks! Good Luck!
Good point, Danny. Since she’s obviously crazy independent–even at 4 years old–best to let her take the lead and just, you know, enable her obsessions. Even if it’s for theater!
Interesting post! Thanks for sharing it.
Nathan,
I think you’re going to have to come to grips with the fact that you are not much of a geek. And neither is your wife. I know plenty of geeks, and you guys don’t rate very highly. I think your whole family is afflicted by a couple of basic problems which hold your geekiness back – good looks and confidence. True geeks are shunned to the corners to read comic books, play D&D, collect stamps, etc., because they look different/funny, and they don’t have the moxie to push out of the corner. If you want to raise a little geek, I think you’ll need to start limiting Dalia’s baths to once a year, and starting sowing the seeds of doubt in her mind. Otherwise, you’re going to have a popular, cute, little smartie on your hands!
DP
the trick is to be able to hang with them all, geeks and cool kids alike! i think she’ll be just fine!!!
love from a dadwagon fan!!
Yes, Juliet, I think that probably should be the goal. Really I betray my own obsessions and insecurities by even buying into the cool-geek dichotomy. Isn’t that what the TV show Glee is all about?
And Dan P., I appreciate the kind words. But already DadWagoner Matt has called me out for being in danger of raising douchebag children. So even if they won’t necessarily become geeks, we could have d-baggery to worry about. Damn if you do or don’t.
Nathan,
Are you saying that I’m a geek? That the fine residents of birdsong were geeks. I put a stinky rotten persimmon on your poo-poo head.
luv,
julie