<\/p>\n
What happened<\/strong><\/span> to Sylvia Rimm? She used to be on public radio, dispensing childrearing advice. Rimm told my wife and me to subsume our individual personalities and create a united front to raise our kids. We didn’t. My wife, Alice, quoted Sylvia Rimm endlessly. Alice also quoted Eleanor Weisberger, Spock, Braselton and every other childrearing guru.<\/p>\n Alice wanted our kids to acquire a \u201csense of mastery\u201d — of everything. Like going to Disney World was garbage, according to Alice, because our kids wouldn\u2019t learn anything there. Actually, the kids learned a lot there. Teddy single-handedly planned the whole Disney World itinerary.<\/p>\n Our kids had so many lessons. I mean, ping pong lessons, tumbling lessons, Hebrew lessons, accordion lessons . . . Capoeira<\/span>. What’s that?<\/p>\n My wife now gives lessons in everything.<\/p>\n Our youngest kid, Jack, learned to juggle by age 10. Our daughter, Lucy, became a Division 3 college athlete in diving. We didn\u2019t allow much TV, except Mr. Rogers<\/em> and once in a while The Simpsons<\/em>. When our kids grew up, they immediately got TVs and watched every show made in the past 40 years.<\/p>\n I liked<\/strong><\/span> Bettelheim’s A Good Enough Parent<\/em>. I liked the title. I swore at my kids. Was that so horrible? Probably hit my kids. Blocking it. One of my teenage kids took my car to an SAT test, and I needed the car for a gig because my music gear was in the trunk. I went to the SAT site and swore at the kid. An adult said to me, \u201cHey, ease up.\u201d My outburst cost my child at least 30 points.<\/p>\n I snitched on some delinquent neighborhood kids who were very loud and rowdy. I called the police. The cop said, \u201cHey buddy, you\u2019ve got a pretty short fuse.\u201d<\/p>\n Are you perfect? Are you “slightly imperfect,” like my underwear? Are you good enough? Or are you a complete failure?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What happened to Sylvia Rimm? She used to be on public radio, dispensing childrearing advice. Rimm told my wife and me to subsume our individual personalities and create a united front to raise our kids. We didn’t. My wife, Alice, quoted Sylvia Rimm endlessly. Alice also quoted Eleanor Weisberger, Spock, Braselton and every other childrearing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age","category-family-history-not-boring","category-kinder-the"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27327"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27434,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27327\/revisions\/27434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}