DADWAGON

Despite vast differences in intellectual heft (he wins) and hairline (I win), DadWagoner Theodore and I do have something in common: we are both caught in the maw of the New York public school “universal” pre-K bureaucracy.

Theodore complained righteously about the lack of available spaces, but it’s even worse than he wrote, because you’re not guaranteed a spot in your district until kindergarten (at least according to the hivemind at YouBeMom). For pre-K, you’re only guaranteed a spot somewhere in New York. Which raises the question: how ’bout a 90 minute commute Staten Island each day?

But despite the odds, we will take whichever public school will have us. Dalia was in a private school she loves this past year. They were kind, thoughtful, and progressive. But they just sent a bill for $28,000 for next year’s (full-day) tuition.  It is an astounding amount, and far, far beyond our reach.

I should have known things were gonna get pricey when the school’s headmistress began posting about early childhood education at Huffington Post (no joke). Exposure has a price.

But as sad as we are to be leaving that school (and if you’re a school employee and reading this–we are going to officially turn down the spot tomorrow), I am glad to be getting to public schools finally.

My wife and I were always in public schools, she in Los Angeles, me in a small town (Key West) and a big city (San Francisco). I never liked private school kids. I didn’t really know any, but I projected a lot of my anxieties about money and manners (and my lack thereof) on them. In San Francisco, they seemed so walled-off from the rest of the city, and at such a young age. I just didn’t see myself raising kids in private school.

That’s still true. I don’t understand why people spend a fortune on primary and secondary education. Because the goal is college, right? And if anything, I think going to a fancy prep school can make it more difficult to get into the best colleges. This is debated heavily, and one of the true rock stars of college admissions, Marilee Jones (yeah, I know she had that scandal, but still) wouldn’t admit as much in my interviews with her. But I read between the lines and inferred it a bit, and besides, it’s common sense: If you’re a great student from a hardscrabble public institution, you’re just more impressive than a great student from a silver spoon academy.

It worked for my wife and me, and it’s our plan for our kids.

Staten Island, here we come.

I would like all two of you readers out there in Dadwagon land to consider the image here and ask yourself: Are your little ones actually angels or the cross-eyed smoking/drinking fallen-angel types?

I do not intend to pass judgment on your sweet punk(in), but in case you’re not sure, I would like to leave you with three, admittedly old, statistics from the Harper’s Index:

1. Percentage of U.S. children who say their greatest wish for their parents is that they make more money : 23
2. Percentage who say their greatest wish for their parents is that they “spend more time with me”: 11
3. Percentage of parents who predicted that their children would prefer more time with them: 56

I think of this only because last night JP forbid me to sit next to him at the dinner table (I overruled) and then later told me I wasn’t his best friend (Curious George was). He did, however, want me around when it was time to wipe his bottom.

Such is the life we have chosen.

We here at DadWagon were worried sick when we heard that 17 percent of food-chokings are caused by hot dogs — sending 10,000 kids under the age of 14 to the emergency room each year. After all, we are New Yorkers. Hot dogs are our national dish.

So we called upon the skills of another transplanted New Yorker, the hyper-talented artist and designer Jon-Paul Villegas, to redesign the hot dog. He immediately confessed a fascination with “America’s favorite meat slurry” that kids love despite persistent rumors that they are made out of “clown hearts, corncobs, elf necks [and] hobo guts.” And though Villegas noted that hot dogs will never be all that healthy — even if they become less “chokey” — he still volunteered five eminently survivable hot dog designs, each with his explanations attached. Vote for your favorite at the bottom!

[polldaddy poll=2747929]

From a new Dad Blog called Band of Fathers, which I heard about from my “real world” friend and colleague Charlotte G., comes a debate about a movie called, simply enough, Babies. They pose a reasonable question: would dudes go see this? Or (in my words) is this just meant to be a lushly filmed lactation aid for moms who need to produce more milk?

I will defer on that question. (I actually found the trailer below quite entertaining.) But I am not sure how I feel about the choice of the four babies. They picked one new baby to follow from four countries: Mongolia, Namibia, Japan and the U.S.

That’s the point, right: to show how different (and similar) babies are across the globe. But they really chose the extremes. So the Namibian baby isn’t from Windhoek, for example, which is a proper city of almost 300,000 people. No, it’s from Opuwo, in the Himba heartland, where villagers still mainly wear mud instead of clothing (really). In other words, it’s from an idealized and frankly anachronistic Africa that is much different from the current Africa, which is much more urban, for better or (often) worse. And the U.S. baby isn’t from a regular ole town in the States, but from San Francisco. And judging from the shots of baby dance classes, etc., it’s likely that this baby is also an outlier, being raised on the yuppiest fringes of American society.

Obviously, the director was going for contrast. But I wonder if the film doesn’t slip into stereotype in the process. Just sayin’. Watch the trailer (and the movie when it comes out) and decide for yourself.