DADWAGON

I’ve never considered lying an actual health benefit. More like an art, something to which one might aspire to achieve a level of perfection known only to Greeks and the maker of Ron Popeil devices.

Clearly, as with most things, I’m wrong. This just in from the paper that Rupert Murdoch ruined the Wall Street Journal:

What has become clear from studies including the work of Kang Lee, a professor at the University of Toronto and director of the Institute of Child Study, is that lying is a sign of normal maturation.

Parents and teachers who catch their children lying “should not be alarmed—and their children are not going to turn out to be pathological liars,” says Dr. Lee, who has spent the last 15 years studying how lying changes as kids get older, why some people lie more than others as well as which factors can reduce lying. “The fact that their children tell lies is a sign that they have reached a new developmental milestone.”

Interesting. Very interesting. So now, when I tell JP to stop playing ball in the house and he keeps playing ball in the house and I ask him why he has continued playing ball in the house despite my sternly having told him not to and he claims (ball in hand) not to be playing ball in the house and then further gives the cat a good, swift kick in the ass … this is good!

Who knew?

Okay, yes, the article is actually about the mental and emotional sophistication inherent in lying, and that when a child is capable of floating a whopper, only Harvard could be the end result. And yes, I’m not being fair, and no one is suggesting that we enjoy our child’s lies, only that we see them for what they are: a key element of what makes us human—savage, brutal, untrustworthy—but human.

And isn’t that what parenting is all about?

You may remember (the, oh, millions of you who think of yourselves as regular Dadwagon readers, and by millions I mean “dozens”) that we recently made a weeklong series out of the kids-in-restaurants argument. Well, Matt’s employer has weighed in, recommending a few fine-dining places that claim to welcome small children. I have no argument with their conclusions: that some restaurants handle tiny people much better than others, and that the staff at the places mentioned in the story are tolerant and amenable when confronted with same.

But I do wonder. “Tolerant” is nice, and it may be policy, but it’s a long way from actual enthusiasm. You can’t tell me that, somewhere in the back of the house, there aren’t staff members muttering “goddamn parents who bring their kids everywhere, I can’t fuckin’ stand them.” I myself, on the occasions when I have brought our guy to local restaurants,  spot the difference immediately: Either you get a server who genuinely likes small children, and all but smooches the little guy every time he or she comes by the table, or you get the tight restrained smile that says “Ohhhh-kay, here we go. I’m just gonna deal with this table, and move on.” When we get the former, we are a lot likelier to feel like returning.

Speaking of a place we keep going back to, here is one restaurant the Times didn’t comment on, because it’s not serious-foodie enough: the Third Avenue/34th Street location of Patsy’s Pizzeria, the thin-crust chainlet that spread all over Manhattan about fifteen years ago and has been my basic go-to pie joint ever since. Not to offer a blanket endorsement, but one regular weeknight hostess there is madly enthusiastic about small children (or at least our small child) and knows how to make a restaurant feel genuinely welcome. Two thumbs (plus one very small thumb) up.

Like any child her age (1.5 years), my daughter Sasha wears diapers. Pampers, to be specific. With Dry Max technology, whatever that is. Every morning, we get her up, change her, give her a bottle of milk and wait for the smell of her poop to start emanating throughout the room. Then she gets a new diaper. And later another, and another, and another. Damn the environment, this is how it works!

But apparently, Sasha is wearing the world’s most controversial diaper. Thousands of parents around this great country are up in arms about this Dry Max stuff, which replaced some earlier techonology that, I’m guessing, just let pee and poop flow freely down kids’ legs. Or something. But this is a big deal, the kind of thing that migrates from Facebook to a major media shitstorm and, according to Ad Age, brings out the Procter & Gamble PR Strike Force:

Any critics who think P&G isn’t listening to the consumer complaints might be surprised to see how intently it is. Four or so employees are regularly stationed in the brand’s listening post (a term Mr. McCleary said he preferred to “war room”) monitoring and categorizing new Facebook posts and other social-media chatter. Ms. Allen, who used to read through verbatims from the brand’s call center weekly, said she now does so daily.

Honestly, I feel kind of out of it on this matter. Sasha doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with her diapers, so I haven’t had a reason to care, or to wonder what the angry parents want. Is this an Old Coke/New Coke kind of battle? And more importantly, what kind of potentially viral complaints can we launch here to call attention to ourselves and our problems?