Making Up Answers

I've always thought that people who say that you should never make up answers for a kid, but should offer to look the answer up online later, don't have very talkative children. (And please, no one get offended, of course I'm joking.)

But seriously, if I tried to look up every single answer to every single question that E asks, and then distilled the answer down into something that he could understand, I would never have time to do anything else in life! The kid seriously has a motormouth and a half. Not to mention, some of these things I couldn't find on Wikipedia: "Mom, do horses go to heaven?" My best policy is always to describe a little bit of what I know, ask him what he thinks the answer is, and then, if he still wants more info, just admit I have no idea. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work, and I am forced into the time-honored practice of just making something up. This, too, however, often falls short of expectation. For instance, this recent conversation between my son and me after reading the book "Cars":

E: "Mom, how do cars work?"
Me: [panic, panic, I don't really know, have I ever known?, how could I describe something like this?, should I call my dad and ask?, wait, it's after nine already, is he just stalling?, fine, I'll just tell him something...]
Me: "You put gas in them, and they go."
Pause while answer is pondered
E: "That is NOT what I meant."

Kids are too smart for their parents sometimes. Ok, most of the time, in my case. However, there are still questions that I know the answer to. Like this one:

"If you're going to be a doctor, who's going to be my mommy?"

Boys Will Be Boys

I always get made fun of for what I let E play with. He definitely is not limited to only "boy"toys, and I've never felt uncomfortable with the sight of my son playing with My Little Ponies and the occasional Barbie, reading Disney Princess stories, and cooking chocolate cake for me in the bathtub.

Kids have the rest of their lives to live by the gender stereotypes of our society. Little boys get teased for being "gay" as early as grade school! E lives in a protected, safe world right now, where no one judges him for playing with girl toys (I mean, at 3, it's the parent's fault, right?). So why should I take that away from him? He still swings swords and shoots pretend guns more often than he sings lullabies to his stuffed animals, so I'm not exactly worried that he's lacking in "man" skills. Besides, studies demonstrate that boys who play house or with baby dolls make better fathers because they develop nurturing qualities at an early age. So there, naysayers. Anything that makes my son a better man in the future is okie dokie with me.

Even if people tend to stare when he loudly demands Cinderella books in the bookstore...

Teaching Compassion to Us

You would think that one of the main drives to be a doctor would be an overwhelming feeling of compassion and a desire to alleviate suffering. Doctors should have compassion towards the ill, the dying, the grieving, the confused, the sad, the poor and the hungry, right? Yet you'd be surprised (or at least I hope so) by the lack of compassion that I sometimes find among my classmates. Oh, the school tries its best to teach us about empathy and understanding, and how to deal with different situations which require compassion (death, terminal diagnoses, unexpected pregnancies, etc.). But I wonder why so many people must be taught this simple feeling at such a late age (ahem, I'm 22), when there are so many opportunities to learn it beforehand. I worry that such a late-onset version is much less effective when dealing with patients, and may hinder students from being the best physicians possible. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so. Be that as it may, I have always tried to teach E to find compassion and understanding for everyone. What is taught early need not be a deficit later.

The other day, we had just left Border's Bookstore and were headed home for an N-A-P (which begs another story for another post). As we drove in the right lane down the busy expressway, the traffic in front of us suddenly slowed. E, always sensitive to the undercurrents of the quality work of Volkswagen innovation we own, worriedly asked why we had slowed down. As we moved forward, the culprit came into view: a man was walking in the street.

He looked to be about 50 years old, and was hunched over and shuffling his feet slowly as he stumbled down the lane. I could see the impatient gestures of drivers in front of me as they swerved around him. He didn't flinch, didn't seem to care, caught up in the singlemindedness of the mentally impaired. When E and I pulled abreast of him, E leaned forward and waved to him through the window. Upon passing him, E sadly said: "That poor man. I think he needs some money."

I was instantly filled with shame, for the thought had not even crossed my mind. I turned the car around, intending to ask the man if I could help him. However, he had disappeared into the convenience store he had been headed for, and the person working there seemed to know him, so I left the man to him/her and started back toward home.

But the incident humbled me. Perhaps the problem is not that we were never taught the feeling, but that we have forgotten the act.

Resuming the Blog-Grind

Once I started medical school, I kind of let this blog and the whole blogging world get away from me. I still have my faves that I read as often as I can, but I never felt the urge to blog myself.

Until recently.

Recently, it seems that my life is suddenly perfect fodder for a comic strip. Therefore, since I can draw with less capability than my three year old, I have instead decided to immortalize my life on the World Wide Web.

Also, I now feel the desire to get some readers...