Faced with headlines like this, the world is ready, I believe, for a story about a unicorn, and a little girl, and a hat, and a circus.

Dad is not the only storyteller in the Alcott family. This is by Kit (5). As difficult as it is for me to wrap my mind around the idea that my daughter, when, given the chance, thinks up stories about unicorns, little girls, and hats, and circuses, I cannot argue with the sweep and punch of the results.



Hollywood studio executives will no doubt note Kit's grasp of the surprise twist ending. Not content with one, she here supplies us with two.  Or three.  Take that, M. Night Shyamalan!

UPDATE: Fox has just called regarding the rights to The Wonder Unicorn.  They're thinking of Queen Latifah as a streetwise, sassy unicorn and Evan Rachel Wood as the little girl.

 

My son Sam (6) is a natural-born movie buff, and that is a good thing. His younger sister, Kit (5), not so much. Sam wants to know how movies are made, how effects (both narrative and special) are achieved, how "they get it to look that way." Kit is attracted to characters.

I've tried to carefully manage my kids' exposure to movies, not so much to keep them ignorant of subversive material but to present a canon: Star Wars movies are good, Barbie movies are not. Justice League is good, The Wiggles is not. Pixar is exceptionally good, other studios require a more project-by-project assessment. The purposed end result of this cultural editing is that, when they become old enough to choose their own entertainment, they will be able to recognize quality over crap. I also want them to have an understanding of movie history and be able to appreciate older movies (like, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark).

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My apologies to my readers who wait with bated breath for my analysis of The Color Purple.  My son Sam (6) had a day off from school, and my daughter Kit (5) has a school that consists primarily of her being out of the house for four hours, so my wife and I decided to take them to Disneyland.

Sam (6) has discovered money, and the power of money, and the glory of money. Money, he has realized, can buy Star Wars toys, and a great deal of money can buy big Star Wars toys.

So Sam is willing to do just about anything at this point to get some money.

My wife, seizing upon this new capitalistic streak, has put him to work around the house, performing more-or-less useful tasks that pose no immediate threat to his health or to local property values.

Yesterday she puts him to work washing our patio doors (which, to be fair, need washing). For the performance of this task she offers him two dollars. The deal is accepted and he goes to work with a pail and sponge.

Enter Kit, kid sister (5). Kit sees Sam washing the windows and wonders how she ever felt fulfillment playing with Polly Pocket. She now wants to wash windows too -- not for the money, but to be included, and for the sheer giddy joy of it.

In another time, in another story, Tom Sawyer once put the whole neighborhood to work whitewashing a fence because he was lazy and canny, and he knew it would make a good plot-point in a deathless novel. But in the year 2007, kids and household tasks have changed. Kit approached Sam and asked if she could help and Sam became hysterical. Cries of rage and dishonor echoed around the block. Sam was furious, not because Kit might be cutting in on his window-washing fun, but because he was worried that if Kit was willing to wash windows for nothing, the job could be done without Sam and Sam would be out his two dollars.

Just another example of skilled workers struggling to keep their jobs against a tide of newcomers willing to do the job for less -- California economics in a nutshell. And the WGA strike too, I suppose.

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SAM (6): I was wearing my Fancy-Schmancy Ultra Limited Edition Secret Stash In-house Promo Venture Bros shirt today, which attracted Sam's interest.

SAM: Who's that?
DAD: This? This is -- [dramatic voice] -- The Monarch!

(no response)

DAD: He's a bad guy.
SAM: I can see that!

Meanwhile, KIT (4), has taken it upon herself to put together a new lineup of The Beatles:



To those who believe that Ringo is irreplaceable, here is your answer: Ringo is replaceable, if he is replaced with BATMAN FROM THE FUTURE and A SHARK ON A POSTAL DELIVERY TRUCK.

(The TV room, afternoon. Kit (4) is watching The Fairly Oddparents. A commercial is playing.)

KIT: Stupid remote! Stupid! Dad! Da--ad!

(Dad enters.)

DAD: What's up?
KIT: I can't get the remote to work!
DAD: Let me see it.

(He takes the remote. It works fine.)

DAD: It works fine.
KIT: I mean it won't work on this TV show! I can't get it to start over, or skip the commercials, or pause when I need the bathroom!
DAD: Oh, well that's because this is live TV. Here, see, when you press the "pause" button, the little box comes on in the corner that says "LIVE TV?" That's what that means, it means that this is being broadcast right now, it's not a recording, you can't pause it or make it go back.
KIT: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I HATE LIVE TV!

DAD. Kit, I love your new drawing!
KIT (4). Thank you!
DAD.  What does the "TM" mean?
KIT.  That means nobody can steal it!

KIT (4): Waaaaaahh!  Mommy ruined my drawing!!  Waaaaaaahhhh!
SAM (5) (genuine concern): What happened, Kit?
KIT: Waaaaaaah!  I asked Mommy to draw a sweater on my girl and she drew long sleeves!  Waaaaaahhh!  She ruined my drawing!  She ruined my WHOLE DAY!  Waaaaahhhh!
SAM: It's okay Kit, we can scan it and fix it in Photoshop!

"My children find the windows in our apartment far more fascinating than the T.V." -- urbaniak

This will change, and sooner than you think.  When the change comes, you will want to move fast.

It is, of course, extremely important that your infants be able to identify and watch television programming at the earliest possible age.  Hopefully you exposed them to TCM while they were still in the womb, so that they will already have dim racial memories of George Saunders and Claudette Colbert.

When they are what Chuck Montgomery refers to as the "canned ham" stage of life, just about anything will do.  My son Sam was perfectly content to watch Kurosawa when he was three or four months old, and the two of us once whiled away an afternoon watching Rififi, which held the child spellbound through the 25-minute wordless heist sequence.

However, soon, say four months from now, your matched set of tykes will demand entertainment, and they won't have the patience for Twentieth Century or the world-weariness to appreciate Citizen Kane (my five-year-old son upon reaching the end of Jurassic Park: "Ah well, another happy ending").

(Honestly, the kid is a born comedian.  Last night, as he was going to sleep, one of our cats came in and did something crazy.  Sam, on the edge of sleep, sighed and said "Cats these days...")

Anyway, before Clockwork Orange, before Venture Bros., before Kim Possible, before Scooby-Doo, before even Teletubbies, there is Baby Einstein.

I cannot recommend this series highly enough.  They are utterly homemade, the early ones anyway, feature non-nauseating Honest-to-God classical music and, most importantly, do not feature a narrative.

I don't actually know how when kids start to "get" narrative, but a good indicator is that a two-year-old can watch War of the Worlds and not be particularly frightened, but a three-year-old will cower under the sofa at an episode of Winx Club.  It has to do with identification with the protagonist.  If the protagonist is frightened, about anything, the child with the dawning narrative skills will be frightened as well.  Before that point, it's all just input, honestly you could let them watch Reservoir Dogs (although that's probably too talky).

Anyway, Baby Einstein.  I recommend starting with Baby Mozart and Baby Bach.  Here's what you get: Some Guy playing Popular Classics on a synthesizer, and random shots of toys, colors, faces, clocks, more toys, puppets, etc.  Babies will find it fascinating.  And the nice thing about a lack of narrative is, you won't get tired of watching it either.  Because there is no content.  There's nothing to get hooked on.  And if you get that Mozart sonata stuck in your head for a day, well, that's better than the theme song to Magical Do Re Mi.

There are some later Baby Einstein videos that stretch the concept a little too thin, and the Baby Newton video features a rhythm-and-blues song about shapes that is a little too catchy (and involves a clown), but these well-worn tapes have saved more than one afternoon in my house.

Anything with animals.  There is one tape called something like Mozart Nature Symphony or something and it's just about perfect.  30 minutes of Mozart and gorgeous "how'd they get that shot" animal photography.  There are two Baby Doolittle animal tapes, which mix live animal footage, some quite good, with skits involving animal puppets which are reductive in the extreme.  Like, Beckett's Act Without Words II kind of reductive.

Oh.  And Koyannisqatsi.  One night when Sam couldn't sleep, this movie kept my hands from around his neck for over an hour.  I don't think he made it all the way through it, but who could these days?

But this brings me to the real point.  These videos claim to be "teaching" something to your infants.  Maybe so, maybe not, and I don't really care.  The benefit, as far as I'm concerned, is not education, or even entertainment, but survival.  It's that they allow Mom and Dad to have a 30-minute conversation.

I just realized, I showed Sam Jurassic Park but refuse to show him Bambi.  How 'bout that.

My 3-year-old daughter Kit put on a tiny pink tutu the other day. She then proceeded to jump around doing martial arts poses.

MOM: What are you doing, Kit?
KIT: I'm gonna be a BALLERINA. 'Cause they get to PUNCH! And KICK!
MOM: I think you're thinking of karate, Kit.
KIT: No, I'm going to be a BALLERINA!
(punch, kick)