Interesting that Theodore should include a photo of Oscar the Grouch in his post calling me a liar. I’ve long blamed Sesame Street for my inability to fight or otherwise express anger and aggression. That is, whenever the beloved show deals with negative emotions, it’s all about controlling them or channeling them into productive outlets. Even Oscar’s just a Grouch—his is the whingeing of a nonconformist, not the outpouring of inner torment. (And when will we meet Arnold the Bully, his dickwad cousin?)

This is a great strategy to use on children, of course, except when it doesn’t work and instead creates massively repressed anxiety monsters who have more built-up negative emotion than can possibly be released through, say, regular intensive long-distance runs. Not that that’s me (anymore). I’m just saying.

All of which is to say that I’m not good at conflict, in part (perhaps) because I saw so little of it at home growing up. (And I am not lying.) When my dad read yesterday’s Tantrum post, he wrote me to say that neither he nor my mom had any memory of the fight I witnessed. So, maybe it didn’t happen at all and was really just in my head. At the same time, he did remember my mom once coming home from a long day at work and getting pestered about dinner. “She blew up, we all apologized, and later we had dinner,” he said. So it goes with the Grosses, in that generation and this one.

My question to Theodore, I guess, is: What do you fight about? What happens between you guys that gets your hackles and voices up?

When I try to imagine really going at it—yelling and everything—it seems so draining, such a pointless waste of energy at (most likely) a time of day when I would have no energy anyway, that I think: Why bother? Jean, I’m pretty sure, feels the same. The fact is, we’re both just way too lazy to yell at each other, let alone in front of Sasha, whose shocked tears we’d then have to deal with.

So, Theodore, yeah, maybe we’re boring. But I think we’ve got enough drama in other aspects of our lives that it’s nice to come home to a conflict-free household where at worst we’re grouchy.

Front page of the Times today reports an “explosive” study from the world of education: that a good kindergarten teacher appears to make a huge difference in a child’s life, in everything from future family life to adult income. I have to admit, I’m skeptical, at least until I see more about the study’s methodology. From the Times capsule description (and we in the profession certainly know how imprecise journalistic shorthand for anything scientific can be), it appears that the study is only somewhat able to control for economic and other conditions at a child’s home. Right there, you’ve gotta wonder.

But even if it’s only semi-plausible, it comes at a time when teaching, as a profession, is under assault. As my colleague Bob Kolker smartly noted two weeks ago, we’ve taken to demonizing teachers these days, in particular when it comes to their opinions on education reform. This will almost certainly accelerate over the next couple of years, as state budgets are cut and the unions howl, and as Obama tries to re-reform No Child Left Behind. And it is sure to affect thinking about universal pre-K, a Dadwagon hobbyhorse about which you can read more here.

Anyone got an life-changing-kindergarten-teacher story for us? Comments are, as always, open and waiting.

Nature or nurture?

I wanted to react briefly to Matt’s contribution to this week’s Tantrum on yelling in front of children.

Matt claims that he remembers only a single instance of serious argument between his parents when he was young, and that his memory  only comes to him, as if in a dream. This provokes several responses from me:

1. sarcastic skepticism
2. utter disbelief
3. envy
4. a desire to make jokes at his expense

Let me start with point number one: one argument! Come on, that simply isn’t possible. Once? Only once? Here’s why that doesn’t pass the sniff test, Mr. Gross: if there was only one, it wouldn’t come to you in some foggy haze of not-very-importantness—it would be seared into your psyche! Thus, we can conclude that Matt is lying. (I love blogs—my argument only has to convince me.)

Point two: basically the same as point one.

Point three: Given one and two, I’m not sure that there’s very much envy to cop to here, but if it were true, and his parents (and him and Jean) never fought, that would be nice … and a little boring. I grew up in a very loud household. My parents split up when I was young (it’s hereditary), and fighting was commonplace—but so was loud joking, pointless arguing, erudite debating, merciless teasing, and questionable criticizing. If Matt’s story is to be believed—and it’s not—I would bet he missed out on much of the more pleasurable aspects of a rough-and-tumble family life. In short, he grew up in “Leave It to Beaver” and I grew up in “Good Times.” Which would you rather have?

Point four: Should I really make fun of Matt simply because his childhood was boring? Is it his fault that he’s deluded about his memories of his past? Does he deserve this kind of treatment at the hands of his blog colleague and friend? Probably not, but I truly can’t do otherwise. It’s a family tradition!

A while back, we ‘wagoneers considered the question “Should you put your kids’ photos on the Internet?” We looked at a range of possible consequences, from stalkers to simple shame, but there was one result we failed to take into account—that your kid’s photo could become a Japanese Internet meme.

That’s what happened to Stephen, who was a newborn in 2000 when his father, Allen S. Rout, posted online a picture of his happy countenance. Today, that image has been reworked a thousand times by web-savvy folk in Japan, who’ve morphed Stephen’s face into everything from Kurt Cobain and Elvis Presley to an 8-bit videogame and a real-life sculpture. Pretty wacky stuff, but I guess that’s what we’ve come to expect from the Japanese.

I don’t know how Mr. Rout feels about all this, but for me, the Japanese meme-ification of Sasha would be the culmination of all my hopes and dreams.