My Daughter Reminds Me That Women Are People, Too

My daughter, Miela, being not quite three years old, does not always get her words right. One place this shows up a lot is in her use of pronouns, in particular with regards to gender.

Most of the time, Miela chooses to use "she" instead of "he," even in places where that's clearly incorrect, like in reference to her brother (who will quickly let her know she is wrong).

That doesn't seem that unusual, given her age, and since she is a girl, she probably has heard she more than he.

But where it gets interesting for me, is when I notice my own unconscious tendencies to correct her.

Certain people or animals or characters are clearly supposed to be he and him, not she and her. Her brother, her dad, my mother's dog, the prince in Cinderella, Kai-lan's wise Grandpa YeYe. I think it's pretty safe to assume all of these are appropriately referred to as "he." So Miela may refer to one of them as her, but I will refer to them as him.

But a plastic elephant? A fuzzy orange monster? An unfamiliar dog across the street? Why the hell do I find myself wanting to refer to these as him? Even after she's just said she about the elephant, sometimes it still feels hard to go along with her choice and stick with she.

This little thing says so much about my ingrained view of the world, and I know I'm not alone in it.

For something to be female, it has to be "special" somehow. It has to be pink, or have a bow or eyelashes. Look at the generic symbols on public restrooms. The men's room shows a person. The women's room shows a person wearing a skirt.

(And let me just put an aside in here that I'm not even going to attempt to make a specific comment about the whole two gender view of the world. I know this doesn't work for a lot of people, and I support that view, and it's related to what I'm talking about, but I don't have clear enough thoughts on that to really say anything, nor do I really feel qualified.)

As has often been noted, it's built into language. It's hard to escape.

I have a very clear memory of being in 4th grade Spanish class and learning the word for boys is "niños" and girls is "niñas" but children, or rather boys and girls together, is "niños." The girls in the class argued about this with the teacher at length. She was sympathetic, but emphasized it was just the way it was. The boys mostly smirked and chuckled.

I remember thinking that there was an entire language where if boys are around, suddenly I don't count.

I'm not trying to pick on Spanish, there are lots of examples in lots of languages. My point is just that we're pretty surrounded by this worldview: males are the norm, females are different.

So here's a genuinely radical idea: stop assuming everything and everyone is male. Male is not normal. Neither is female. We're all basically just people. Or animals. Or cartoon characters or whatever. And actually, none of us are "normal."

And I am completely serious in calling this radical. I believe all big change starts small. And shifting cultural views is freaking ginormous. Be a part of it.

Our First Family Road Trip!

We just got back home yesterday from our first road trip as a family. In other words, this was the first time my husband and I, as well as our two kids, took an extended trip together, that involved a fair amount of driving. My husband and I finally decided it was time to try it.

See, he and I love road trips and driving. LOVE THEM. We once put most of our stuff in storage and lived mostly out of our van for about 5 months. We drove all over about half the country. It was awesome.

So this is something we've been dying to share with our kids, but, well, we weren't sure we were actually up for doing such a thing with our kids.

Our kids are awesome, but they can also be a bit much. Our son, Jago, age 6, is without a doubt a Spirited Child and has super high energy. His sister Miela, almost 3, is not as spirited as her brother but still pretty darn spunky.

But we finally felt like we were at a place with both kids where they could be ok in the car for longer distances. And they do well enough most of the time with following directions about behavior in public. And most of all, we felt like we could do these things and have more fun times than stressful times.

So we planned out a trip around Central and West Texas, which never took us terribly far from our home in Austin, but gave us a wide variety of stuff to see and do, as well as took us into the desert a little bit, something Jago had been expressing interest in.

We intended to do mostly camping with a couple nights at a hotel, but last minute circumstances caused us to change that slightly, as tends to happen on a road trip.

We planned to never drive more than about 4 hours in a day, and most days were less, and never more than about an hour and a half at a stretch. There are so many good places to stop and do things, even in spacious West Texas, and it's good to remember with young kids that even simple things can become fun and interesting.

Ahead of time I searched online for some music and stories I could download, and I'd like to share my two favorites I found. Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child is a great radio program I found. It bills itself as "indie music for indie kids" and "for kids and their grownups." Their theme song is by They Might Be Giants. You can download the show as podcasts on iTunes for free!

I found a great site for stories at StoryNory. They have a lovely assortment of stories, but we've mostly listened to fairy tales and myths from around the world. Jago positively loves these stories. He wanted to listen to them almost constantly! And they can all be downloaded for free from their website!

So we set out a week ago for a 6-night road trip, the four of us in our mini-van, to do some exploring and see some new stuff and get out of our regular space. And it was truly a wonderful trip. Completely successful, really. Certainly we learned a couple things, and there were plenty of times I thought the kids were going to drive me nuts (what's new, right?), but mostly it was just lots of fun.

The main thing we learned is that we want to do more! We'll probably do some weekend camping trips to local state parks, but we're also hoping to do more road trips, venturing out farther, perhaps. We did decide we think we'd like to get some kind of camper trailer, so that we don't have to set up and take down our whole deal every single day. That was a bit tiring.

I enjoyed the trip so much, got so much out of it, and took so many pictures (over 700!), I've decided I want to write up every day of our trip with the places we visited. Also I want to encourage other people to go visit and support those awesome places we went. And, I think the Grandmas will love it, too.

So more coming soon!

Fun and Play for All!

Jago turned 5 on Saturday, and we had a party.

Much like his other birthdays, I invited his class at school, our friends with kids, as well as a fair number of our childless friends.  I invite people that Husband and I are close to, with a special emphasis on people that Jago actually knows.

Now Jago's first two birthdays were packed, and that was before he was even at school, but in both those cases he was kind of one of the first babies in our community baby boom, so I feel like people were still kind of checking out this whole kid thing.

His 3rd and 4th birthdays were almost entirely school friends, which was fine.  He had a great time, and certainly that matters most, though I felt a touch sad to not see more of our friends participating in my family's milestones.

Miela's 1st birthday had about 5 adults and only one kid guest.  And I must admit that did make me sad.  She certainly had a delightful time, but I started really strongly recognizing there's this thing that a lot of people don't seem to get, and here's the point of my post.

It is possible for an event to be fun for kids, fun for parents, and fun for childless adults, all at the same time.

I'm even going to say I think it's WONDERFUL when an event has these qualities.

I feel like a lot of adults make this big separation in their heads between kid stuff and adult stuff.  I feel like there's some notion that for adults to have a fun time there need to be opportunities for intoxication and bawdyness, and I think that's a shame.

Certainly I have enjoyed those adult aspects of parties before, but sometimes when I watch other people I feel like they're engaging in those things more because they're trying to prove that they're adults, rather than because they are genuinely having fun doing them.

One of my favorite things about Flipside and Burning Man is how much there is room for all kinds of fun.  There's plenty of so-called adult fun going on, but you'll often see children running around enjoying the weird just as much.

One of my favorite Burning Man images is from the year we were camped next to the kid village.  At the center of it was a giant trampoline, and every time I looked over there, I'd see kids bouncing up and down in their fairy wings and capes, the same gnarled hair full of playa dust like the adults had, and they were just having the time of their lives at this big place to play.

And see, that's my favorite thing about these Burn events: it gives adults an environment to play in.

One of my favorite Flipside memories is this past year's massive snowball fight on the field.  Or another great one was when the Beer and Darts crew invaded Ish, and it turned into a kind of ridiculous mock battle.

Adults remembering how to play is YES.  I do not think there is enough play in the world.

So back to Jago's party on Saturday.  Completely unexpectedly to me, a ton of our childless friends showed up.  It was a bit overwhelming, but such a delightful surprise.

There were adults gabbing away in the kitchen, adults playing with kids in the living room, and the roving band of miniature superheros battling in the backyard.  Adults talking outside, adults being silly in the dining room, children playing with balls and frisbees with various grownups.  A whole lot of wonderful.

And if you ask me, all of that is real community building.  I think one of the best things about being part of a community is having a place where you feel safe to play.

Certainly having people to call on in times of need or when there's work to be done is an awesome thing.

But mostly I just want my tribe to play with.