Early birds

I haven't done a lot of reading about a child's internal alarm clock but maybe I should. Maybe then I would find out why kids feel the need to wake up before the rooster crows? Parents, you know what I mean - no matter what time a child goes to bed, they still wake up at the same time the next morning. I know for a fact that my kids need more than 8 hours of sleep. I've read that much, at least. I know if they go to bed at 11 p.m., they should not wake up at 7. I don't even want to wake up at 7. I've got one early riser and one that will sleep as long as I let her. Oh, and believe me, I let her. When the older one was in school, I loved that the younger one would stay in bed while I got her sister on the school bus. If I could have, I would've hung out with that little snuggle bug until 9 or 10! Why not? She's got nothing to do. No meetings on tap. No solid plans. Nothing slated for the morning hours. So, what to do with one early riser who gets cranky when she's tired and one late riser who will stay up all night partying? How about if I just go to sleep and let them sort it out? I love sleeping. I wish I could sleep more. I could never understand people like Martha Stewart, who need only about 3 or 4 hours of shut eye before feeling energized and tackling a crazy day. Yeah, and that whole "sleep begets sleep" thing? That's fine with me. I'll be sleepy all day. Doesn't bother me a bit. I'm sleepy right now as a matter of fact.

Lifeguards

My dad is sometimes the ultimate source of wisdom for me. Yesterday, he was here while his lovely granddaughters were splashing in the pool. They were doing something "against the rules". I think it was jumping off the ladder or something and they were told not to and my dad just kind of laughed. After the laugh, we got one of the "back in my day" stories. I loooove when my dad tells those stories. You know - the soda, three movies, popcorn, candy bar all for a dime? Those stories. He's not even old (only 64 this year) but it sounds like forever ago. Anyway, he tells about his days back in the pool. When you grow up in a big city, you go to a public pool. No one has a pool in their backyard - usually because you live in an apartment building that doesn't have a yard. So, he and his friends used to go to Tibbetts - that's a county park that has a large swimming pool. They did that when they were about 7 or 8. The older boys would push them under or throw the kids who couldn't swim in the deep end. They would walk to the park or hitchhike (yes, hitchhike at 7) and pay 25 cents. That would get you a towel and a locker and you could swim all day. They would save some money and walk to Yonkers Avenue for a hot dog and then take the bus home because they were too tired to walk. If they didn't have money, they would go swim in the river. The Hudson River. And not the nice, narrow clean part upstate. They would swim with the rats. I can feel you shuddering right now. His point? He said "We never lost a single kid." He doesn't understand some of the rules imposed on kids these days. And, frankly, neither do I. I think we get a little neurotic and we fear all the bad things that could happen to our kids. But, sometimes, all that fear means we're really not letting them live. You have to give kids a little bit of freedom. Otherwise, they'll be stifled and they'll wait their whole lives to break free. It means they'll either do bad stuff behind your back or grow to resent you and distance themselves. It makes me think of a Jeff Foxworthy bit where he said his parents had a 900-pound television sitting atop a metal tv tray when he was a child and that his dad said "let him pull it down on top of his head a few times...that'll teach him." Of course, I don't want my children to learn lessons in that way, but I do hope they fall a few times. If you don't make mistakes, you don't learn how to fix them.

Techies

Is it sad that kids know way more about technology than adults? And I'm not talking about teens, I'm talking little kids. My four-year-old can work the iPod better than me. She has to show me how to play Wii. "Not that button mom. Press the B". What? The kid beats me at every game. I'm so lame. One day, she was playing some game - who knows what - and I tried to look over her shoulder and something went wrong. "Thanks a lot mom. You made me get no stars." No stars? I'm sorry. Is that like getting Ms. Pac Man killed? I remember when I worked as a reporter covering the Rye City School District and thought it was the amazing advancement of a wealthy school district to have kindergarteners using computers. How far we've come so fast. These days, it's non-stop advancement. There is a new device every day. I can't keep up.