Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City (With Lessons on Life and Love for Your Own Concrete Jungle) (21 page)

What else? I believe in not being condescending to children. I’ve always been touchy about respect for one’s intelligence, and remember clearly being five or six years old and livid over the fact that some adult was treating me like an idiot. We’ve always tried to give our children as much information as they can handle, without bombarding them. You can’t speak to a child like an adult; it goes over their heads. On the other hand, we try not to dumb down the concept, just speak slowly and use words they understand. When Simon’s stepfather died, we explained to them what cancer was. Part of this was televised, but the off-camera part involved a constant stream of conversation over a month. What is cancer? Can you catch it? Does it always kill people who get it? Does it hurt?

As a former actor, I’ve always gotten into play-acting and dressing up with my children. Perhaps a little too much. But I’ve taken the opportunity to show off a few old monologues, complete with bounding around like a puppy. If you have knowledge, why not share it? If you happen to know Puck’s speeches from a
Midsummer Night’s Dream
by heart with tumbling and staged sword play, why the heck don’t you share that with your boisterous boys, who love it and run around shouting, “Thou speakest aright!” Perhaps that idea doesn’t work in every situation—I wouldn’t bother teaching them how to beg for more gruel like Oliver Twist or pick a pocket like Fagin, but most things are worth passing on.

Simon

Alex and I both love to make up silly songs and rhymes, and have also done quite a bit of that with the kids. We wanted them to know their names and how to spell them early on, and along with the ABCs would sing these to them: “F-R-A-N-Ç-O-I-S, F comes first and R is next, F-R-A-N-Ç-O-I-S, François, François. And J-O-H-A-N, J comes first and O is second, J-O-H-A-N, Johan, Johan.” Without me standing over you singing it annoyingly into your ear it’s probably hard to appreciate, but it was a little sing-songy tune that the boys immediately picked up.

TOP 10 FAVORITE“DEVELOPMENTAL” THINGS TO DO:

10. Translate simple songs into other languages We sing them Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in English French and Latin Frere Jacques in French English and Dutch etc.
9. In the car ask “What can you see that you’ve never seen before?” In NYC there’s always something Discuss.
8. Parental delaying tactic: If they want some thing that you want to delay giving them make them ask in every language they can before giving in
7. Make a guessing game out of them asking for something Don’t tell me what it is but “It’s red It’s a food It’s got a stem and it’s in the bowl with the bananas”
6. Math games All the time Another good delaying tactic is to make kids “pay” for whatever they’re hassling us for Example—Johan wants a cookie and I tell him it costs two dimes He goes to the toy cash register and retrieves two play dimes brings them over and gets his cookie
5. Almost every parent at some time or another needs to park the kids in front of the TV Sometimes they want a DVD and have seen every title they own five times. I put it on in another language and have them see if they can decipher their favorite superhero movie in French or Spanish Reminds me of living in Italy and improving my comprehension by watch ing dubbed versions of Back to the Future and Point Break
4. François sometimes gets frustrated with the simple word books he has to read for homework but one day he perked right up when we suggested he read them to Johan
3. If one kid needs a time out usually a minute for each year of their age we might have the other boy time keep (i e count to four times for Johan or six times for François)
2. Interview the kids about the rest of the family. I love to ask Johan what he thinks of François the cats, Daddy, me. His juices get flowing and he always comes up with really creative stories
1. Stoke their memories I asked François if he could remember the last time I cried and he said “Yes you cried when you’d been in Ohio for work and when you came home I told you Daddy was sick and I took care of him You cried like a baby!” He remembered this nine months after it happened and it blew my mind Kids remember so much and I love asking them about it

Chapter 13

Urban Wonderland

Taking Advantage of Raising a Child
in the Urban Jungle

Look, Mommy, that man has a big snake around his neck!

Sure enough, the 20-something guy walking past us had a huge yellow and white python wrapped around his neck and upper torso.

Mommy, there’s the man who sings on TV! He has children, too!

One thing specific to NYC and our neighborhood is that many of the children’s musicians whose videos run on PBS Kids, Nick Jr. or the Disney Channel actually live within a few blocks of us and we see them in the park or on the street with their own children, which is another opportunity for education. Both our boys know that although they’ve seen Dan Zanes on television many a time and listen to his CDs often, it’s not OK to leap on him in the street with hugs and kisses (unless it’s Halloween and he has a pumpkin on his head).

Can we go into that shop? That dress in the window is beautiful and you should wear it. And you need a bracelet and a necklace, too.

Both boys have inherited our shopping genes. Part of the walking culture of New York City is that shops are easily accessible by young ones, and storeowners know this very well. We allow the boys to window shop, and it becomes a treat when they are well behaved enough to go inside.

What language is that lady singing? It’s not English or French.

Raising children with more than one language in their ears can be frustrating, particularly when they go through phases where they say, “We’re in America, speak English.” However, we were ecstatic once, when listening to a song on the radio in German, that François recognized that the language was not English or French but something else entirely. Our boys know that people in different countries have different words for the same things, and that many people from all over the world come to live in New York City and speak English plus the language they grew up with in their home country and maybe a few others.

The Brooklyn Bridge is playing hide and seek!

Living in New York City, we see some of its more spectacular sights regularly if not every day, like the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. The boys were fascinated one morning when, while driving on the BQE in Brooklyn, we could only see part of the Bridge due to heavy fog. A headless Statue of Liberty always provokes a reaction as well!

Because we’re in the middle of it, our children are learning so much since merely navigating the city is a teaching tool. In every neighborhood, different cultures exist, often quite visually distinct from their own. Why is that man wearing a big fur hat with long curls and a white shawl? He’s Hasidic, one of the most observant forms of Orthodox Judaism. Why is there a big paper dragon on the street with people in it? Because it’s the Chinese New Year and we’re in Chinatown. Why are all the people on our street shouting in French and throwing things? Do they need a reason for that? Oh, actually it’s Bastille Day. Why is that lady squatting between two parked cars? Ummmmm, let’s not discuss that one. Aren’t we running late?

Whether it’s the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, planting trees in the park for Earth Day, the craziness of Halloween, the lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center or the shortened performances at the opera translated into English for the young ones during school vacations, urban areas are magical places to raise children during the holidays. At school they get to participate in pretty much every major holiday ritual, and the streets are decorated, depending on the neighborhood, for Christmas, Hanukkah, Memorial Day… you name it.

Mummies and Werewolves at Halloween

Winter Snowman with Ice Cream

We count ourselves lucky every day that we live in New York City, one of the richest cultural resources a parent could hope for. As long as you can make it out the front door, most days you are bound to see something you’ve never seen before. If we had the time and ability, we could do something different every day—although because of the diversity, simply stepping outside the house can be different. There’s always someplace to go on a rainy day, whether it’s a children’s museum, a bookstore or simply the enormous Ferris Wheel in the toy store. Even riding the subway is fun for a kid, regardless of the destination.

Yes, there are downsides to living in a large urban area—you have to really work to see animals (live ones that is), and there are no big pastures outside Central or Prospect Park. However, we don’t really live in a concrete maze. Our neighborhood is full of townhouses with leafy backyards, and trees line every street. We know everyone on our block and even have dinner parties with neighbors occasionally. For the most part, the shops on our main streets are privately owned, usually by a young and hip or old-school family. A Dunkin’ Donuts or a Starbucks may sneak in occasionally, but they coexist with the smaller establishments without choking them out, which is important. We were very lucky to find a townhouse in a great school zone, near literally hundreds of amenities in walking distance. Having lived within 50 feet of a 24-hour gourmet deli, I don’t think I could ever go back. I came to New York because I thought it was the center of the universe and wanted to be in the middle of it all. Why shouldn’t my children have the same experience? We’re not living in Times Square—and one could argue that you don’t get any real picture of New York there anyway, particularly with all the bizarre chain restaurants that have sprung up there during the Giuliani years. I like being able to get a plate of moules frites at 2 a.m. if I want, a Middle Eastern supermarket with every type of sugar-free, dried fruit you can imagine, hundreds of world-renowned landmarks within an easy commute and seeing the boys’ moods improve in an instant when we happen to be stuck in slow traffic on the FDR and they unexpectedly get to watch a seaplane taking off from the East River.

Another upshot of living in an urban environment is that while people make fun of our kids’ names as being unusual, the cultural diversity of New York ensures that there will always be many other interesting names, too.

Simon

When our names first became known across the country many people were shocked that a couple with Anglicized Biblical names, Alex(andra) and Simon, could name their children François and Johan. Accusations that we were trying to be European and pretentious could be refuted, if we bothered, by informing people that they were so-named after their paternal grandfather. (The fact that I had a foreign sounding last name, van Kempen, was always overlooked.) A common theme with too many of these comments was the prediction that in time our boys would be beaten up in the schoolyard due to having names like theirs, regardless of the family origin of the names. While realizing that those ignorant enough to make such accusations are exactly the ones who WOULD punch a kid due to his name, I also laughed at them as they clearly have no idea what it is like to live in New York City. I wonder which of the following kids, with whom François or Johan have shared a school classroom, will be doing the beating: Ombeline, Divesh, Laweeza, Frederique, Taha, Wilhelm, Cosmo, etc., well, you get the idea. The great thing about New York City is that it is a world city, and frankly it’s no surprise that the headquarters of the United Nations is based here. This city, more than just about any other on Earth, has peoples from all the countries of the world and actually in certain neighborhoods like ours there really is not one dominant culture. As you can see among their fellow students, François and Johan are just another two kids in the class. For those who still live in homogenized parts of the U.S. our sons names’ might sound strange, but in NYC (and other large conurbations) they’re no more strange than the rest of the kids sitting next to them in class, which is to say that their names aren’t strange at all.

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