As even casual readers of this blog know, Jean and I have been trying to bring Sasha up speaking both English and Chinese. The kid, now 2 and a half, has been going to a bilingual preschool, watching Dora and Spongebob in Chinese, and listening to children’s songs in Chinese.
For a long time, it didn’t seem to be working all that well—or at least, that’s what Jean would tell me. Sasha was speaking English 90 percent of the time, and occasionally even refusing to speak Chinese. When she did say something in Mandarin, it was rarely an original sentence, just a word or phrase she’d heard once and was repeating. Sure, she understood quite a lot of Chinese, but hearing and speaking are very different skills.
The plus side of this was that my Chinese skills were better than hers, and I did often speak to her in Chinese, to tell her to sit down, or take a bite of food, or ask simple questions like, “Who farted?” (“Sasha farted,” she’d coyly answer.) At her school, the teachers and administrators found my Chinese ability amusing—even though I’m terrible at it, I’m probably better than most of the other non-Chinese dads there.
But last Friday, while we were on vacation, Sasha started telling me a story—one of those long, complicated, nonsensical tales that only other toddlers can follow—and she did it in Chinese. I soon realized that it wasn’t just her shaky narration that was the problem, it was the language. She was saying words I simply didn’t recognize, and won’t be able to unless I improve my own language abilities. Which might happen as Sasha grows up and learns more. Or it might not. But at least now I know where I stand, language-wise: I speak Chinese as well as a 2-and-a-half-year-old.
My custody arrangement for JP includes the provision that his mother and I cooperate on hiring anyone who will provide care for him. His mother lives very close to her parents, which means if she needs after school help, she can get it for free. Not that I have any complaint about that, but I also have no control over it. My parents can’t provide the same service, so, for example, we’ve hired a nanny for Ellie.
Under the custody arrangement, say I wanted to step out to the store for a second while the nanny and JP are in the house. It could be considered that the nanny, in those five minutes, was providing care for JP. I would therefore have to let his mother interview, and possibly even approve, this person who I hired to look after my other child. Needless to say I don’t want this.
From the start, then, our nanny has spent no time alone with JP. This has caused some tension, I think. JP immediately understood that the nanny was not there for him–unlike most guests to the house, she wouldn’t be roped into games, or reading him books, or any of the other things he likes. He isn’t mean to the nanny, exactly, just a little cool, as a result.
A couple of weeks ago, I forgot to take money out of the bank to pay the nanny on a Friday. I had JP in the house, Tomoko wasn’t around, and the nanny needed to go pick up her own children from daycare. I decided, in the interest of speed, to leave JP in the house with her and rush to the bank for the money.
I was on the street pedaling my bike for a grand total of two minutes when my ex wife passed me in her car, going the other way. Ten minutes after that, on my home, I received a text message from her stating that if the nanny was watching JP then she would like to conduct an interview and see what she thought. I told her no (although those weren’t the words I used).
Today, though, I had a change of heart. She is going to drop JP off at my house this evening before I get home. She will, then, get to meet our nanny. My understanding is that introductions will be made, but the bodyscan (my ex carries this sort of equipment with her everywhere) will be postponed for another day.
Here’s my thinking: the nanny doesn’t take care of JP because we don’t pay her to do so. Her job, and she does it well, is to take care of Ellie. Does that mean she can’t spend five minutes alone with JP during the very short period of time when we’re all in the house together (she usually leaves when I get home)? I think not. If, by introducing them, I can short-circuit later conflict–giving the dog my ex a bone–then I can only benefit.
Of all the quirks and vile innovations of the Dora the Explorer show, the worst must be the cloying call-and-response that occurs with soul-murdering regularity. It pains me to do this, but as an example, here is a brief snippet of Dora-dialogue, a written record of 2.5 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back:
00:07:37 Will you help us solve the grumpy old troll’s riddle?
00:07:43 Great.
00:07:43 Here’s my riddle.
00:07:45 It’s a toughie.
00:07:47 Solving riddles makes us proud.
00:07:51 How many things are very loud?
00:07:54 DORA: We have to find all the loud things.
00:08:00 Can a drum make a loud noise?
00:08:05 (drumming loudly) Right.
00:08:09 Can a fire truck make a loud noise?
00:08:15 (siren wails) Yeah.
00:08:19 Can a feather make a loud noise?
00:08:25 A feather is quiet.
00:08:27 (whooshes softly) Can a radio make a loud noise?
00:08:35 (loud music plays) Sí.
00:08:40 How many loud things did we find?
00:08:44 One, two, three.
00:08:47 Three loud things.
00:08:50 So how many loud things did you find?
00:08:57 I can’t hear you.
00:09:00 Three!
00:09:01 Three.
00:09:02 That’s right.
00:09:04 You’re really good at solving riddles.
My children like Dora, alas. And they also like Diego, though my boy calls him Dego, gleefully cursing Italians as if he were cranky old Sean Connery in the Untouchables.
But one thing I haven’t been able to understand: they like the show, which consists mostly of Dora telling you to count things or say something and then staring and blinking out at you from the TV screen, but they never answer her. They don’t count, they don’t point to things, they don’t shout ‘jump higher!’ or ‘climb, baby llama!’. They are total rejectionists, just sitting slackjawed and blinking back at little Dora.
Finally, I just had to ask. “It’s not interesting [to answer],” said the daughter, while her little brother looked confused. “I don’t know why.” I spent the next five minutes trying to get something else from either of them. No luck. They are stunned and silent about their perpetual stunned silence.
And there you have it: a TV character who talks too much, and her fans who talk too little.
Is there any early-parental activity as fraught as potty training? Breast-feeding, maybe, but the anxiety that entails usually engulfs just one of the parents. No, getting your child—who might be a year old or 2 or 4—to micturate and defecate in the appropriate place can be maddening, and success or failure seems to dictate what kind of parent you are: the kind who confidently guides streams of urine into plastic or porcelain bowls, or the indifferent, incompetent kind who allows their spawn to run, piss, and shit wherever they will.
I say this after having tried, and failed, to potty-train my daughter, Sasha, while on vacation in Cape Cod last week. Jean and I are, apparently, the latter kind of parent.
It all began with such high hopes. Jean had discovered a potty-training regimen that held out the promise that we could housebreak Sasha in a mere three days—a sort of toilet-bowl boot camp. With vacation on the horizon, in a place where Sasha could run outdoors, bottomless, we made plans.
And it all should have gone so well. We hadn’t pushed the subject much, figuring that Sasha, a smart little toddler, would just decide one day to be toilet-trained. And she’d already been making tentative steps toward using the potty. At school, she bows to peer pressure and takes her turn on the miniature toilet. At home, she loves reading books about the potty, and can even be coaxed into sitting on it once in a while, for a few seconds at a time.
But up on the Cape, where we let her run around pantsless, it just wasn’t working. She’d hold everything in just fine, and sit on the portable potty for long stretches watching one, two, three consecutive episodes of “Yo Gabba Gabba!” and then, five minutes after standing up and wandering away, she’d let loose with short dribbles of pee on the floor. Or, worse, we’d get in some kind of argument with her—she’s 2 and a half, so everything is an argument, from putting on her sandals in the morning to going to bed at night—and in the depths of her temper tantrum she’d open the floodgates. “She shat in anger,” we’d joke, as if it were the title of some seventies exploitation movie.
As the three-day boot camp stretched into eight straight days of fury-piss, there were small successes. Really small, in fact: Once, while sitting on the potty, Sasha produced the tiniest turds I’d ever seen. Still, we cheered.
But that was about it. Seven days went by, and Sasha was still no closer to being toilet-trained than before. Actually, things were almost worse than before, as now Sasha, charmed by books like “Princess of the Potty,” considered herself a “big girl” and wanted to wear undies instead of diapers. To paraphrase a line in “Go the Fuck to Sleep,” how come you can do all this other cool shit, Sasha, but you can’t fucking use the potty?
Finally, on Saturday night (or was it Sunday morning?), while staying in a fancy-ass hotel on the way back from the Cape, Sasha made progress. Once again, she’d just watched two full episodes of “Yo Gabba Gabba!” while sitting on the portable Potette potty, when she decided to get up and stretch her legs. Two minutes into her bottomless stroll, I suddenly noticed a stream emerging from between her legs. Leaping into action, I nudged her two feet to the left, placing her over the potty. “Sit down!” I yelled—but she didn’t. Instead, she just stood there, peeing directly down into the Potette, amazed that this was happening. She was using the potty! Incredible!
Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter—who pees standing up!
After which, we put on one of her overnight diapers and bundled her into the car for what became a five-hour-plus drive home, guaranteeing she’d have nowhere to shit but her own pants. Awesome.
