DADWAGON

It was, as usual, another cheery week at DadWagon.com. We began with Theodore’s “Whoa”-filled reaction to the Twittering of a 2-year-old’s death in Florida, and from there proceeded through drunken baby games, the impossibility of dealing with bratty kids, murderous ninja children, and the general misery of living in New York City. And as Christopher pointed out, sometimes that misery is pretty miserable indeed.

There were a couple of bright points, of course. Or maybe not bright, exactly, but weird enough that they weren’t utterly depressing. I had an enlightening encounter with my doppelganger, Bizarro-Dad, and dreamed of burritos and bicycles, while Christopher amused himself with a Zen koan: “What is the sound of one tooth brushing?”

Nathan, meanwhile, was the thoughtful one, first exploring his babysitter’s crush on his son, Nico, and how that might skew Nico’s relationship with his sister, Dalia. Then he realized that things might actually go very, very wrong.

Oh! And along the way we threw a Tantrum. That is, we took on one of the big parenting questions: TV or not TV? I don’t know if we quite solved the problem, but at least it wasn’t the kind of thing that makes you want to take a rusty razor blade to your arteries.

We’re going dark now for the long Christmas weekend, but when we come back there’s a good chance we’ll have cheered up somewhat. Or not! After all, I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” and am currently distilling that featherweight comedy into a set of parenting principles sure to amuse and delight.

Until then, Merry Christmas!

Just on the heels of my wish that my children would grow up with equal treatment and therefore become better friends and allies, a wonderful example of what can happen when they are not (from Nerve via DadWagon friend Steven E.):

“A girl named Katie found a twelve-pack of beer in her teenage brother’s room and ratted him out to their parents. This is not news in any way, but what young Chris, the brother, did in retaliation after being grounded for three months is funny as hell… and so, so wrong… Not only did he rummage through Katie’s things and find her “hookup list” (aka “blow-jobs-to-hand-out list”), but he published it on his Facebook page… and tagged all of the intended recipients.”

Check out the full vitriolic comment thread between the pwnd older sister and the smug younger brother to witness the end of whatever relationship they might have had.

Of course, I don’t know that this is actually for real. I couldn’t find it on Snopes. Assuming it is real, it leaves us a few questions, namely, what the hell does “v-card” or “bibby bang” mean?

And then it leads us into the murky world of sibling rivalry, which is so rich with meaning that Slate’s Emily Yoffe needed a Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship to unpack it all for Slate. In it, she interviews people with job titles like Evolutionary Behaviorist and Evolutionary Psychologist, positions which qualified them to state that siblings are very competitive.

The Facebook siblings here seem to be operating on theory of negative competition. That is, they’re not trying to beat each other for some prize; they’re trying to rat each other out to avoid the ridiculous sanctions of their parents (three months’ grounding for hiding some beer in your room? Really?). A good reminder: the crazier the parent, the more psychotic the sibling conflict…

The worst thing you can imagine occurred in Brooklyn last night.

The snow, the blood, the small footprints. May nothing like this ever happen to anyone you know.

(Also, a hat-tip to the two guys with the byline. This is old-fashioned newspaper writing, the kind that moves people, and the kind that few people do well.)

(This is the last post in our new series, “The Tantrum,” in which each of our four regulars will address one subject over the course of a week. Read the previous ones here, here and here.)

Reading the other wagoneers’ responses to this week’s Tantrum subject—TV or not TV—has been a terrifying process for me. Unlike Theodore, I have strong feelings about the issue. Unlike Nathan, I’m not recovering from anti-TV Nazism. And unlike Christopher, I have no hope of producing a daughter who’s better and more virtuous than her parents.

The simple fact is, I watch a lot of TV. Too much, probably. I watch shows I don’t like and shows I’ve seen before and shows that I didn’t like the first time around but will watch again because, hey, the sun has set and I’m just too tired to do anything else. I watch crime dramas and terrorist dramas and whatever Fox is planning to cancel. Sasha’s mother, meanwhile, watches anything about marriage, house-hunting, singing, or dancing. We watch TV while eating. We eat TV while watching.

This is probably not good, but Sasha has—so far—mostly escaped boob-tube addiction. In large part, this is because, at 1 year old, she’s not really capable of watching most shows. She’s outgrown the “Look at the flashing lights!” stage but hasn’t quite entered the “I understand and love Dora the Explora” stage. For a long time, we played for her “Baby Signing Time,” a DVD that purports to teach infants and toddlers the rudiments of sign language. And it seems to have worked—she can sign “milk” and “all done,” but there her development has ceased.

Maybe that’s because we’ve cut back on “Baby Signing Time.” For months, it was a great babysitter for her, freezing her in her tracks for 20, 40, 60 minutes at a stretch. But that seemed like too much, so we retired it, striving to be more virtuous ourselves—if only while Sasha’s awake. Now the DVD comes out maybe once a week, and the kid is overjoyed when she hears the first strains of familiar music: “Baby, baby, baby signing time…”

Still, on the rare occasions that Sasha is exposed to actual TV, it’s fascinating to see what she gravitates toward. Judy Garland in “Meet Me in St. Louis” attracted her rapt attention, but Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” did not. SpongeBob gets a bit of a reaction, but most other shows don’t; she’ll happily play with her toy airplane or pretend to read books while I shout out answers—no, sorry, questions!—during “Jeopardy!”

But recently I let her watch “Yo Gabba Gabba!” on my laptop. For the entire show, she was transfixed, slackjawed, a complete pixel-zombie, unable even to bash the MacBook’s keyboard. On the one hand, I was quite happy: It’s an amazing show, one that I can watch myself quite happily, no child necessary. But her devotion, her own amazement shocked me—I had at my disposal a powerful weapon, and one that I must deploy strategically.

Problem is, I lack self-control. I know that a certain stage, the temptation to click play will grow too strong, and zap—the Gross family are pixel-zombies once more. But what can I do? Chuck the TV and the laptop? Isn’t there some value in my being able to watch “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on Hulu?

And so we will sit, and eat, and watch, and wait, trembling before the 720p glow of the Samsung, relishing the poison, drooling as one, wishing we could do better for ourselves, wishing we could do better for Sasha, but, more importantly, wishing there were something better on tonight.

(Got an issue you want addressed in The Tantrum? Let us know in the comments!)