Kids

Easing them into life

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

My friend Ron stopped feeding one of his sons today.

I think it’s a great idea.

I hadn’t thought about doing this specific thing, but I’m going to add it to my agenda for my own kids. I have been allowing Oldest to make more of his own choices mistakes, which is good. He’s got enough knowledge and experience in his head to be given some free reign and jurisdiction over himself. We still guide him and sometimes we have to make the decision for him, but in the end the consequences (good and bad) are his to receive, and any mistakes are his to deal with.

I have felt that when 16 years old comes around, we won’t buy any of the kids a car. If they want a car, they pay for it. I might go in half with them, we’ll have to see how prices are. But things like gas, insurance, money for whatever fun they want to have… they have to get that on their own. Basically, if you want things in life, you gotta work for it and earn it. It’s how life is (or at least, is supposed to be), so get used to it.

Also once they can start to drive I want them to take at least one class at the local community college to get used to how they are. Again, easing them into the real world.

Anyway, thanx for the idea Ron. Good one.

Ah, kids

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

The neighbor kids are over, playing with my kids. The joys of Spring Break and nothing for them to do all day, eh?

They all have their Nerf guns out. In the hallway. Outside my office. Setting up barricades. Plotting strategy. Choosing teams.

I hear them talking about each other’s Nerf blaster.

“How much capacity does yours have?”

“A lot.”

Sounds of “rack, click, pop” as suction cup darts go whizzing about, sticking to the walls and windows.

I’m all tempted to go down and start to show them some tactics, but I know it’ll be instantly uncool for me to do so. 😉

 

BTW, today’s Nerf blasters are pretty awesome.

 

Update: I come downstairs. The kids are now outside playing, but evidence of their past exploits remain. Three guesses whose “compound” this was.

The free exchange of ideas

/ hsoi

…. so long as we approve. (h/t to SayUncle).

…but that the school was unwilling to allow any pro gun rights speaker to come speak to her class, out of concern for how the parents would react.

Did you ever think parents might react negatively to presenting lop-sided arguments? to providing anything less than an actual education to their children? This of course assumes the parents spending their money to send the children to this school care about such things.

One promising thing is the exchange with the teacher… the teacher seems to understand the value of things, and it sounds like the students might actually be thinking — more than can be said for the school administrators. Hopefully the kids will learn a little extra from the whole experience… a “teachable moment” if you will.

Children and shoes

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Oldest’s shoes died a quiet death this past weekend. A little duct tape was used to keep them in play for a bit longer, but there was no question they were gone. Plus he’s growing and his toes were scrunching, so without question he needed new shoes. Darn these kids… they keep growing for some reason. 🙂

Oldest wanted some Dad time, so I took him shopping. Had lunch at Carl’s Jr. (they just opened here in Austin, tho I’ve been to them before when visiting California… it’s a burger, but it’s novel for the kids), then off we went for shoes.

Shoe Carnival? Nothing. Payless? Nothing. Wal-Mart? Nothing. Target? Nothing. JC Penny’s? Nothing. Then we hiked it across town to the Mall. Finish Line? Nope. Sketchers? Nope. Journey’s? No. Vans? Nope. Foot Locker? No. There’s a store or two that I’m forgetting, but they were “no” as well. Why so many failures? Well, some were just lack of selection… I tell my wife that Payless is great for women, and it is, but that’s all. Also Oldest’s feet seem to be at a stage where he’s maybe youth size maybe adult size (size 6), but either way there isn’t always enough available in his size. So when we can find a store that’s even plausable, then there’s nothing he likes.

Me: So what do you think?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: Well, did you see anything you liked?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: Did you see anything you didn’t like?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: *sigh*  Well, you said that pair you maybe liked. So… what did you like about it?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: *sigh* The color? The style? The fit?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: *sigh*

And so on… the conversation went. Yes… those teenage years are upon me. I suppose this is my penance  for my teenage years, right? Karma’s a bitch, man. 😉

So I explained to Oldest about guiding through decisions. How you gather information. If you liked this, what did you like about it? color, style, fit, etc.. If you didn’t like this, why didn’t you like it? Again, take a catalog of it. Make an explicit bit of work to figure that out. Tally it up. Eventually, if you pay attention to what you’re doing, you’ll figure it out.  I kept working with him to help him figure things out, to help him sort it out, but letting him ultimately make the choices.

And so, eventually we get to Champs. We stood outside. Oldest was obviously tired and frustrated and wanting to give up in all of this. But I just stood there, reminding him that his current shoes were dead and giving up wasn’t going to solve anything… he’d just have to be back out again, so might as well deal with it now instead of prolonging the pain. We go into Champ’s, and the first few he tried he didn’t like. But we talked, he seemed to catch on to the decision making process. I might ask a question, have him compare to a prior shoe he tried. He’d tell me this felt better or worse, he didn’t like the color on this one, or whatever… so there was a breakthrough here, which made me happy. And eventually he found something. And lo, it was comfortable. It wasn’t too gaudy. Could be something casual but he could even wear them to church. They were in his size, good construction and fit. We had a winner.

Finally. 🙂

And Mom seems happy with the choice too. So, Oldest seems happy. Mom is happy. I got to have some time with my son. I got to teach him about a few things, and he seemed to catch on. So, there’s hope!

A Zen Moment in Parenting

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

This is a great little parenting story.

First, I think the situation was handled perfectly. Sure he could have taken the simple route and spanked the kid, or “time-out”,  or grounded him, but that really wouldn’t directly address the problem. I often find it’s better to address the problem in a manner directly related to the problem. Denying the Xbox for a week wouldn’t address this problem. He was able to help his child see himself, discover his own problem, and correct his problem on his own. All the parent did was be patient and guide.

It’s tough to get people to change by forcing them to change; they’re not necessarily going to change for you. The more successful route to get someone to change is for them to change themselves. It’s tougher for you to do, you really have to take a different tack and approach in guiding them to see things for themselves, but often that’s how things tend to work best.

Of course, there are some things that folks are so emotionally tied up into that getting them to see reason is quite difficult. But just because it may be difficult for you to do doesn’t mean the other person is a lost cause or that it’s not worth making the effort to try. Patience. Devotion.

81st Annual Zilker Kite Festival

/ hsoi

Today the family went to the 81st Annual Zilker Kite Festival.

I have wanted to attend this for some years and for some reason or other it never happened, so I was determined to attend this year. And attend we did!

We took the shuttle to Austin’s famous Zilker Park, and in a way, the shuttle was an event unto itself. The city provided free shuttles to/from the event, and they used school buses for it. This was the first time my kids got to ride a school bus (I rode them all the time when I was growing up), so now they sorta know what it’s like… minus the loud kids, bullying, and other assorted mayhem that comes with the school bus. 🙂  It brought back memories of being on the bus Safety Patrol!

After arriving at the park we went to the “build-a-kite” workshop. It was a free workshop sponsored by HEB and others and you could build a basic kite. Middle child and Youngest child opted to build a kite, and they flew just fine. The wind today was ample for kite flying, but it would die down at times and many kites would be crashing to the ground. Yesterday the winds in Austin were 25-35 MPH steady and gusty, so that would have been some very interesting kite flying weather.

We walked around, checked out many of the kites. All sorts of kites of all shapes, sizes, designs, colors, and variety. It’s almost impossible to describe or even capture on film just how cool it was to look up in the sky and see hundreds of kites flying together. It’s just something you have to experience.

We ate “fair food”, from corn dogs to sausage on a stick to snow cones to cotton candy to funnel cakes. Yes… I can’t pass up a funnel cake, tho the one we had was very oily (I suspect they didn’t let it drain enough). Oh yes, and roasted corn. Mmm. Everything was rather expensive, but all proceeds after expenses are benefiting charities and worthy causes so it’s all good. I think I’m going to have a very light salad for dinner tho. 😉

After watching many kites, flying our free kites, and walking around and seeing all there was to see, we ended up buying our own kite. A nice nylon “triangle-style” (I don’t know what the proper term is). It flew quite well, and I had a lot of fun flying it. It was tough flying tho, with so many kites in the air, so many people around, you didn’t have the total freedom to roam where and how needed to keep the kite aloft. Thus, the most often heard thing today was: *thud* “Sorry!!” “No problem!” as kites would dive down, hit someone in the head, strings tangle around you, tails whipping in your face. But no one got mad; everyone expected to get hit sooner or later. It was a day filled with laughter, smiles, and fun. Good times.

If you haven’t been to the Kite Festival, you need to try it. And do like we did, go in the morning, leave in the afternoon. The lines for the shuttle were unreal, but since we’re early birds well… we were in and out no problem.

Unclear on the concept

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

It sounds like this is one women’s ignorance, so let’s not get too riled up over this. (h/t Xavier). I get the feeling she’s hung up on the pictures and the fact it’s an NRA program and isn’t looking at what’s actually being taught (the article mentions that in 10 years of the school district’s safety curriculum this is the first complaint they’ve ever received).

From the article:

“At 5 years old, anytime you tell a child not to touch something, that’s exactly what they do. It’s in their nature to be curious and to touch and handle things,” said Howe. 

Yes, Ms. Howe, it is in the nature of a 5 year old to be curious and touch things. That’s exactly what the Eddie Eagle program aims to deal with. “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.”  It’s not teaching gun handling; in fact, it is explictly teaching not to touch at all!. It’s not teaching kids how to be killers. Eddie Eagle is teaching safety. I spoken about this before. Like it or don’t, a child has potential to come across a gun sometime in their life. Wouldn’t you want your child to know how to safely deal with the situation?

The Garland, Texas school district includes Eddie Eagle as a part of their safety curriculum. According to the article the Garland I.S.D.’s safety curriculum also teaches about life jackets, bicycle safety, car safety, dealing with strangers. Why should we want our children to be ignorant? Don’t we send them to school to learn? If we can teach them how to be safe with something, why wouldn’t we want to do that?  Of course now Ms. Howe’s child knows to “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.”… the child can’t unlearn what has been learned. But if Ms. Howe thinks this is such horrible knowledge for her child to have, she’s welcome to teach her child differently: “Go head, pick it up, don’t tell anyone, play with it, bring it to school and show your friends.”  Logic need not apply.

Now Ms. Howe, if your 5 year old always disobeys you then that’s your problem as a parent. If you tell your child not to touch or do something and they disobey you and still touch or do it, then well… you’ve got larger parenting issues that need to be worked on.

 

Updated: Sebastian mentions it as well but gosh folks… we probably shouldn’t be extending her 15 minutes.

Range Report

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

As I mentioned previously, I got my XD-9 back so of course I had to go to the range to try it out. Took Oldest Child with me.

The range was rather busy today (one reason I prefer to go on mid-week mornings), so consequently I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do to really try things out. Brought the 10/22 for Oldest, set him up at 25 yards and let him go to town. You can see his results (no, the picture isn’t upside down, I stapled the target upside down since I was in a hurry). Overall, not bad. He’s certainly improving.

One issue we were up against is the scope was loose; actually, the base is loose. So, I’m going to have to fix that. I was having him work on fundamentals: body position, focusing on the crosshairs (since there’s no front sight), good trigger press, and good follow-through. That’s the toughest thing, getting him to follow-through and not go “bangdidihitit?”. As you can see from the grouping, he’s off to the left. This could be a bit of trigger slap (I did work with him a bit on a better trigger press, looking for the “surprise break”), but given how very consistent he was on this and other targets, I’m presently going to chalk it up to the scope being loose and thus off zero. I know it was frustrating for him to not “aim middle of red dot, hit middle of red dot”, but it was a good lesson in learning that it’s more about the grouping than always hitting the middle of the dot (tho yes, that’s important). The wiggly scope gave a good and digestible excuse for today, and this allows to lead into a greater discussion of things like trajectory, zeroing sights, height-over-bore, and so on. Stuff for later. Right now, my main focus is for him to work on the fundamentals, see success, see himself improving, and enjoy what he’s doing. So far, so good. I’m happy with his progress.

 

As for me, again because the range was rather busy I just set up 2 target stands and put 5 6″ paper plates on each stand. No defensive or other “real” shooting, this was to be nothing more than a basic running of the gun to see how she now is. I set them up at 15 yards, which was good because I need to work on 15-25 yard (i.e. greater than 7 yards) shooting, and with these new sights I knew I could get the accuracy I couldn’t get with the XS Sights (the paper plates would disappear completely behind the big front dot). Plus given the way the range was set up, for Oldest to shoot at 25 yards and for me to be next to him, I had to then shoot at 15 yards… so really, it all worked out.

How did the gun do? Better than me. 🙂 The trigger is really tight, in the good way. I will have to do a lot of dry-fire practice to get used to the trigger. My “muscle memory” wanted to have a normal XD trigger, travelling and feeling like a stock XD trigger does, so things felt odd and I wasn’t shooting as well as I normally do, but that’s to expected. I couldn’t help but be impressed with the trigger; again, it’s so tight, and yes I’d like to try it side-by-side with a good 1911 trigger to compare. Bottom line? I just need a lot of dry-fire with it and get used to it before I expend any more ammo at the range.

The Dawson Sights. You have to realize, while it’s February, the temperature today is in the high-80’s. It’s bright, sunny, I put on sunscreen before going to the range. This is an abnormal day weather-wise, but still a great one. And with all that sunlight, the fiber optic front sight just shined like a beacon. You couldn’t help but see it. Thinking back on it, the fact I couldn’t “see” the rear sight is testimony to a cleaner sight picture. As well, the wider notch (well at least the combination of the front and rear made the rear notch wide) well… everything just lines up. Your eye gets pulled to that front sight, which is what you want to focus on, and there’s nothing else to clutter the sight picture. But the other parts that must be in the sight picture are there and are there only enough for you to do what you need to do with them. The greater “whitespace” on either side of the front post might just be thousandths of an inch wider than stock, but it makes such a difference to my eyes in terms of picking up the sight picture and knowing what it is and thus what may need to be corrected to have an ideal sight picture. It’s hard to explain, but this sight picture feels like the sight picture I want. There’s nothing to distract me, my eyes go where they should go and not where they shouldn’t. And my accuracy is far far better than they were with the XS Sights. Again, I’ll need more dry-fire practice with them, but so far I really like them. 

One thing I want to do is head to the local indoor range to get a better feel for the sights. The indoor range has the targets on a track so it’s very easy to adjust distance from 0 to 100 yards, and to do so without having to get the entire firing line to stop while you dance around with targets. This way I can get a better idea how the sights are zeroed and how they perform at various distances.

All in all, I’m pleased with how the custom work turned out. The gun itself seems good, it’s now just me that needs some work.

In related news, I ordered a SmartCarry and it came in the mail today. Can’t wait to try it out.

Updated: Talking about the day over supper with the family, I remembered a few things:

  1. Oldest got to learn about malfunctions! He had at least one stovepipe, 3 duds. 
  2. I kept working on that Todd Jarrett “grip 20% harder” technique. Man, that works. But I still have problems with my grip: one I know what to do about, one I don’t. The one I know what to do about is to just get a stronger grip… building those muscles up. The one I don’t know what to do about… it’s getting my left (non-shooting) hand to really hang on. Eventually my right (shooting) hand just works its way out of the left. I have felt that I need to thicken the grip up a bit so my big hands can better fit, leaves a little more “empty space” on the grip so the heel of my left hand can rest more “meat” on the grip (shooting an M&P with the big backstrap was great in this regard). Or maybe it’s just a matter of grip strength. 🙂

Weird ending to the Apple Shareholders Meeting

/ hsoi

I’ve been using Apple computers since I was a kid, so I’ve a bit of a soft spot for the company. I just read about their shareholder meeting and the interesting ending to the meeting.

Ah, the Parent’s Television Council. Y’know, I don’t necessarily have fault with what they do because they’ve got every right to do so — they’re welcome to speak their mind, they’re welcome to busy themselves however they see fit. What gets me about them is if they’re all about helping parents well… why aren’t they helping the parents actually be parents? And can we trust their information is objective?

If you don’t like what you’re kids are watching on TV, be the parent and turn the TV off.

If you don’t know what you’re kids are watching, you should sit down and preview it before you allow them to watch it or at least watch it with them. Discuss it with your kids. If it doesn’t mesh, it’s off limits. If it does mesh, still revisit the program now and again because 1 episode may not be enough to get a proper picture and/or the show can evolve over time.

If you don’t know what your kids are watching, why don’t you get a little more involved in their lives and find out? If it’s because they’ve got a TV in their room, why do they have the TV in their room? Take it out.

Who is in control here? the parents? or the kids? Far too often problems are because the kids are in control and the parent gives up their control. Parents, you are not your child’s friend, you are their parent. Act like it.

Always turning to someone else for opinion about what you should do. Can you not think for yourself? Is your moral compass in lock step with these others? What else can they start to feed you that you’ll blindly accept?

Look… the world is filled with people of all ages, mostly adults. Do I think television (and the world) needs to be sanitized for children? Nope. All the things we’re supposed to be doing for our children is preparing them for “the real world”, for being an adult, for learning how to deal and cope and survive and thrive on their own. To sanitize everything to “keep them safe” does them no long-term good. Better to give them the skills to cope, the morals to know right from wrong, the ability and courage to say “hey, this isn’t the sort of show I should be watching… I’ll change the channel or turn the TV off”. The world is full of ugly things, and while there’s something to be said for trying to rid ugly things from the world, you still need to give your children the skills and ability to deal with those ugly things. I’d say that’s even better, since it not only let’s them deal with the ugly, but is putting some beauty into the world as well because a well-adjusted kid is a beautiful thing.

Kids and cooking

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

My daugther just came up to my office with some bread in hand. And not just any bread. It’s a recipe she found herself. She made it, baked it, everything. I’m having a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (never had one before, very hoppy), and the taste of that in my mouth, the fresh-baked bread… and it just needs something like apricot or peach preserves. Mmmmm.

If you don’t know how to cook, you should learn. If you do know how to cook, you should teach someone else how to cook. If you know how to cook and have kids, you should teach them how to cook. You don’t have to be a gourmet, just as long as you like and eat what you cook. With kids it teaches so many things: chemistry, safety, following directions, creativity, self-sufficiency. When you cook together, it’s great time spent together. So much goes into worrying about building up a kid’s self-esteem… teach them how to cook, watch that self-esteem grow. Don’t believe me? Try it.