[lit-ideas] Re: Is there a Sanity Clause?
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:39:38 -0800
On Mar 12, 2007, at 10:58 AM, Paul Stone wrote:
David Ritchie wrote:
> What a sad tale, made more so by the "of course."
Reading this reminds me of something I've been grappling with for
about 8 months now.
As well as the fact that Freelists keeps arbitrarily kicking me off
the list, another reason that I've been relatively "quiet" in the past
little while is that next month, I'm going to become a father [for the
first time] and, despite what women will report, men also have a
harder time during pregnancy -- something which is HARDLY ever
mentioned, and if it is, it's just a laugh between women.
I don't see the need for competition here. That fathers have an
adjustment to go through doesn't have to mean we have a "harder" time
than women. But I take your point that the adjustment is not much
acknowledged by the world that surrounds us. You are in a liminal
state, about to come out the other side as a new being, a father. I
wish you the best of luck.
So I guess my question to the group is: is it deprivation to let a kid
grow up without this childish nonsense? If it is... what exactly am I
depriving him of?
I'm not a softie like Geary. I believe in discipline and much of the
stuff that he says you don't need. Further, I believe in honesty, as
well as the value of magic and mystery. So how to deal with the Santa
Claus issue? My, somewhat Jesuitical, solution was to tell the girls
that the best thing to do would be to consider the evidence before
them. If presents arrived in the middle of the night and if cookies
and brandy were gone, we all had a duty to figure out the best
explanation we could. I told them the truth--that I had gone to bed
and that I hadn't heard anything after I fell asleep--but not the whole
truth.
I have found that honesty is generally best, and that children are very
good at letting you know what level of truth they are ready for.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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