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print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized may 23 hold without breaking posted by koun 12 boy holds out his hand to show me a snail he s kind of grunting and squeezing it and i tell him to stop there might be a snail inside there he looks me in the eyes he heard me and then there s a cracking sound and he opens his hands again to show me a broken shell and inside a crushed snail boy just looks confused i tell him maybe the snail can still find a new home and be ok and he finds a good place for the snail in the dirt then we agree that next time we find a snail we should treat him like a friend and just let him go about his business that was last week a couple days ago it almost happened all over again except that this time i was able to talk him down from it barely i m not going to write about how we should be kind to all creatures though i think we should and i hope i can guide our kids toward that same conclusion the snail has me thinking of something else the night that he smashed the snail boy played the scene out over and over in our living room he shuffled around under a blanket and told me in a high voice papa i m a snail i asked him if he was ok he said yes i asked him what i should do he said don t squish me then i asked him if he d found a new shell and he said that he had he said now i m fine i know he wanted it to be so i grew up in montana when i was in 4th or 5th grade my grandfather introduced me to gopher hunting he d drive with me in the mountains to a big clearing where if you watched for a even just a moment you d see little gopher heads popping in and out of sight we would sit next to the road or in the back of his truck with a 22 rifle and just kill them as many as we could as quickly as we could it was target practice and i was a really good shot i did this off and on for two or three summers how many gophers did i kill and why i look back at how cute they were and in that memory i know that i thought so even then when i killed one and another seemingly ran to its friend s aid i felt that was really sweet gophers are neat i d think then i d shoot the friend in fifth grade i shot a rabbit in the stomach with my last bullet it was very alive screaming flipping around and the only thing i could think to do was to go and stomp on it until it was dead that moment gave me nightmares after that i didn t want to shoot for target practice anymore a year later i shot my first and last deer a doe right through the heart but a heart shot doesn t kill right away so i had time to cross the field to make eye contact before shooting her again in the neck i don t think i ve shot a gun since except maybe at a tin can and i don t want to what if that rabbit had died right away what if the deer had would i have just kept shooting things until suffering had sufficiently revealed itself to me or was i just at an age where i was seeing my actions differently i don t know what was fun about it when i read the news and learn that someone just shot some kids at their school or held a human being prisoner or set off a bomb i think to myself how could they do such a thing in the follow up we hear this kind of question a lot and maybe it s ok in that moment of shock to allow ourselves that little bit of psychic distance but the fact is we know the answer we don t know why we can never really know why but we can know how we can know the mechanism of dissociation that allows us to love the life all around us and at the same time to hold it clumsily to treat it as something separate from ourselves something already dead we watch it in our children and if we re honest we see it in ourselves my son loves the creatures of the world this morning he waxed poetic all the way to daycare about all the flowers and how he wants to make it rain so they can grow yesterday for the first time we watched him play with a dog and it was a vision of pure love on both sides but he doesn t know what death is he can t imagine someone else s pain not yet we have to remind him not to hit his sister and we can t save the snails not all of them i want to cultivate the gentle impulses my boy feels all the time but not just that i want to help him to learn how to understand that other part of himself to face his own capacity to act upon others we tell children you can do anything but we mean it in a very limited way you can be a doctor or you can be an artist but the truth of it is so much more than that you are capable of anything the deepest act of generosity you can surpass it the lowest act of depravity you re capable of that too how to learn to own it all to integrate and understand this fragile combustible mix how do we best help those for whom that gap has become too much to bear those who have broken i don t know but i m sure it doesn t come from how can someone do such a thing that s a question we ask for ourselves to feel separate and safe if we want to be of service we need to start with where in myself am i capable of the same my experience as painful as it can sometimes be is that if we re honest we can always find that place always we are snails and we are a little boy holding a snail in our hands this moment decides it share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized may 15 potty zen posted by tracy franz 6 bring it now that my second child girl is nearing two years of age this is exactly what i m thinking in terms of potty training just effing bring it i have seen it all i am prepared for anything with boy koun and i thought he should be ready for this particular milestone pretty early on the conversation went a lot like this so when do we potty train i don t know around six months gosh that seems like a long time to wait surely it s sooner than that ok bear in mind neither of us had had well any prior experience with babies we also hadn t slept in three weeks then we discovered a vast body of parenting literature that advocated for everything from right away really to whenever the child expresses readiness at least by around five years of age five years of age i will be practically old by then i thought sigh that was over four years ago so we sort of split the difference and began our potty training efforts just after boy s first birthday if started is the right word we ordered elmo s potty time from the states and proceeded to watch it on and off with boy ignoring the aap declaration that screens be banned for all children under two yes i was riddled with guilt the experts nowadays seem to advocate a constant state of this just have a look at some popular child rearing books or pay attention to the various pediatric organizations rest assured parents you re basically doing everything wrong more on that later and then we bought an overpriced anpanman potty from our local toys r us we let boy pick it out naturally he gravitated to japan s cutest toddler sized superhero the potty was awesome a convertible number that could be used on the big toilet or as a stand alone there was a bright pee colored cloth seat cover perfect for the cold winter months and three buttons on the jolly bean filled breadbun inspired face played the cartoon theme song and adorable catch phrases great for entertaining the child while he waited for that gotta go feeling to overtake him once we got it home boy did not like the potty at least not for using it as it was intended he loved playing with the thing though dragging it around the tatami and pushing at those buttons over and over that is probably the single loudest toilet i ll ever encounter though this is japan the birthplace of the toto otohime or sound princess so you never know sometime after that for a brief period bathing with our son in our japanese style shower bath became an adventure in defecation not will he or won t he but how big and where we swore off family onsen for the time being it was not long after that when we all contracted norovirus the intestinal bane of cruiseships we found ourselves koun and me hooked up to ivs for a couple of days and then boy for a full week i will not write the full description of how we wound up in this predicament but know that it was ugly so very ugly as he moved toward the ripe old age of two boy still hadn t gotten the hang of it and we wondered if potty training much like language learning has an optimal window and we d missed it completely our child would never be fluent and we d be out millions in diapers we started blaming the potty so we bought another one and then another one we had a real collection going there for a while a putty colored stand alone with handlebars just like the potties used at our kids daycare a convertible ladder type dealio in primary colors a plush lilo stitch toilet topper for itty bitty bums boy rejected all of them in the end deciding that he preferred sitting on the big people s potty just like mama and papa we began talking about all things toilet with boy mostly as a way to get him excited about using the potty and for the first time in my near decade of living in japan i began to appreciate the weirdly adorable poop cartoons in public toilets politely requesting patrons to keep things neat and tidy unko san goods in case you were wondering are also widely available for purchase here in japan the perfect gift for all ages when boy was about three we introduced the potty present box perhaps the name explains it all make a deposit in the toilet get a present from the box it seemed like a good idea we had some success but then we started getting re gifted for our own good works lately boy has it all under control but his humor has turned to the profane unchi and oshikko poop and pee punctuate many most of his sentences it comes up a lot at the dinner table we have only ourselves to blame meanwhile girl has become fascinated with the potty only the big one of course she has taken to announcing her desire to pee pee stripping completely naked asking pointedly for company then sitting cheerily on the toilet for a very very very very long time she does not urinate into the bowl but i think she s getting the alphabet song down pat i used to have a shy bladder i ll admit it i didn t especially enjoy using the potty in the company of others and i certainly never did so in front of others as a kind of display now each w c visit is social and a teaching moment how many times in the past couple years have i sat on a toilet with a child sitting on my knees or holding my hands while singing the full totoro soundtrack or sliding the lock open while i clutch to no avail at both child and door too many times sometimes this communal business really does go too far to illustrate while visiting california s illustrious stanford university this past summer boy and i felt the call and we quickly located a public bathroom i have no doubt that my son s loud assertion deeply traumatized those in the neighboring stalls mama you pee out of your butt thanks boy you keep me humble i have to say that overall i ve learned a lot from this particular journey with my kids for instance i learned that it s possible to pee on one s own face in fact it s a likelihood for boys it s also possible to fall into a poo filled toilet even if one appears too big physically for this to happen my biggest take away though is that there is very little that koun and i can control in this process we can t force it we just need to create opportunities for practice and be prepared with wet wipes for anything to come so go ahead girl show me what you ve got share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized may 08 karma 2 0 an open letter to facebook posted by tracy franz 8 dear facebook for the past few weeks i ve been trying to understand you desperately you have become my burning question as a teacher as a mother as a human ever entwined in the vast web of technology when i first joined your user ranks in 2009 i quickly denounced you as shallow as the traumatic pregnancy and then joyful birth of my first child garnered many many many fewer likes than say the reported online gaming scores of my various fb friends later you broke my heart again and again by offering two suggested friends one an acquaintance and one a dear friend of many years who both died too young and suddenly tragically i began to think a lot about branding and marketing how in simpler times we were not required to consider ourselves to be commodities now we protect the brand and build recognition and this instinct protection is probably the right one when so much is at stake careers relationships futures fb who am i to you your algorithms may point to a handful of my hopes and dreams my base human desires but do you really know my mind the quality of my character how have you distilled my real complex human life into posts and a timeline we are so easily tricked by advertising compelling stories essentially yours is an advertising campaign of the ego purporting to tell the full story of our lives but often not always the heartbreak and struggles are missing we re really just supposed to keep it happy aren t we we use you to craft our personalities and in doing so you use us we know this but we are natural voyeurs and egoists we keep showing we do not look away i know that you will evolve sooner rather than later and that we will evolve too our local and global cultures our habits our patterns of thought yes even our bodies will bear the mark of your influence what does this mean for the future for our children even now my toddler presses her thumb against images in her picture books screaming with rage when they do not react to her touch how did she learn this what happened one seemingly innocuous app transformed my child into a mini cyborg flicking through photos as if my iphone were simply an extension of her body and worse i see this and think should i post a picture of her cute distress what unforeseen challenges will you gift boy and girl in 10 years or 15 when unbridled social drama and new sexuality will rule their hearts true you ll have a different name by then and a different form this does not comfort me ...