Branding

There's a chain of stores in town, named Rex, and they have no other logo or information on the buildings telling what they might sell. While driving past one day, doing impromptu reading skills with the boy, he read the name and asked what they sold there, dinosaurs?

The obvious choice

Some things are so obvious that not even I, famous for my ability to state the obvious, feel the need to state them. But I do anyway.

Thing one: If you leave a bag of carrots beside a child playing video games, he will eat them. Same for a bag of donut holes.

Thing two: Movies with less profanity sell better than movies peppered with vulgarity. I'm sure somebody out there whipped off a quick #%@%#! after reading that report. I'm not sure why some people cuss. I used to, and I can't give you a one-sentence, good reason for it.

I quit swearing after realizing I wasn't really saying anything. Better to say nothing and figure out exactly what to say. And that's how we are raising our son, to figure out why he's happy, sad, mad, exasperated, whatever. Unfortunately, Hollywood has other ideas. We can't even watch network television without hearing two of George Carlin's seven dirty words, plus two or three more that weren't on that list but which are not ones I like to hear coming from my six-year-old.

And it's not only television, it's video games. Why do they have to go for that added "realism" of having soldiers cuss? Are game creators too short on creativity to figure one more thing out that would make their game great?

Back in the good old days, we had our violence and we laughed at it, like the Three Stooges or the old Warner Brothers cartoons. Who didn't howl with glee when the anvil fell on Wile E. Coyote's head after a half-mile fall off the cliff? And did he cuss afterwards? No. He held up a sign, teaching reading to young minds.

Yes, people curse, and why some (such as this writer) find it so offensive is a mystery I have no time to solve right now. Since I don't haunt a lot of public places, I can't remember the last time someone in public cussed where I could hear it. Come to think of it, I almost never hear any cursing outside of television.

Diving into the future

Jordan passed his deep end of the pool test today and is allowed to jump off the diving board as much as he can stand, as long as there's a lifeguard on duty.

He was super proud of his green band, and displayed it with a wide smile, leaving me twice as proud as he was, and very impressed with his progress this past couple of months. When he got in the water to do the first part of the test (swimming across the deepend) he zoomed off, barely making a ripple, getting to the other end in seconds. He can tread water for over a minute, longer if it's a contest, I'm sure. And he's begun his practice at diving.

So, hats off to the boy. His bravery and abilities seem never-ending. He's been taking lessons this year for three months, and he took three months' worth last summer. By the end of last summer, he thought he could swim, and he could, sort of, but not like he does now. We started him back up this year to keep him busy through the winter, and he's made superior progress, as evidenced by his ability to tread water, swim four different strokes, and jump off a six foot diving board.

Bucket babies

I've almost finished the Scientific American myelin article I mentioned in this post, and it reinforces several things that many of us have heard before.

Foremost, the earlier children begin to learn certain things, the easier it is for them to become world class practitioners. It likely makes sense to you that if you're 30 or 40, you'll probably not become a famous ballet dancer, baseball pitcher or football quarterback. But if you start when you're three or four, you just might make it.

The article says that those who begin to learn a foreign language when we're toddlers will probably learn it well enough to speak it without an accent. Wait till teenage, and you'll sound like Inspector Clousseau trying to speak English.

As a homeschooling dad, this gives me added motivation to teach my six-year-old son more regularly in Spanish and music, two areas I've neglected lately. As for sports, we have no problem. Jordan takes to the physical world extremely well. I want to add gymnastics, maybe even dance, as well as get him back into karate in a year or two.

Seems like we need to fill him with as much stuff as possible as often as possible while he's young. While a lot of it spills out, a surprising amount stays in. He's like a bottomless bucket.