a long telegram

Where to start? Almost eight years in I have finally cracked open some books on parenting. It hasn't been the most pleasant of reading experiences. Books for parents feel forced, oversimplified, and I keep finding myself thinking, "This guy pretends he knows what he is talking about, but he actually beats his kids when nobody's looking."

Both of the books I have skimmed, leafed through dealt with what is termed as active listening, reflecting back what is told to you while coaxing the child to find his or her own solution to a problem. This is the core of Thomas Gordon's Parent Effectiveness Training and Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish's Siblings Without Rivalry.

At first glance, it seems a little ridiculous. Marta says, "Anna took my doll." And you are supposed to say, "Anna took your doll, huh?" And then Marta says, "Yes, she did." And then you say, "You must be pretty frustrated that she took your doll." And Marta answers, "Yes, I am." And that's about as far as I have gotten with this active listening stuff. I have noticed that it reduces tensions in certain situations. By getting Marta to talk about her feelings, she does calm down a little. But I still have no solution to the main issue, that Anna took her doll.

Another gem is to pay attention to the child being hit in a dispute. If Marta hits Anna, I pay attention to Anna. "Did Marta hit you?" And vice versa. I can already see that the "hitter" dislikes the attention that the "hittee" gets in the situation. Still not sure where this is going.

There's a lot of discord around here. Marta and Anna fight like crazy. They just fight to fight. Other times they play nice. Maria Leena has some idea of what is going on, but she's mostly concerned with being fed and having her diaper changed and sleeping.

With Maria I have had my first experience with what some call "name remorse." Except it is not that I am not happy with her name or could think of a better one, it's just that I find it hard to say it sometimes. I call her "Anna" by accident. I wonder, should we have given her another one? Well, too late now. I think the problem is that Maria Leena is rather pretty and ladylike, and not always befitting of a small round child that lets out enormous farts and whose hair sticks up in the middle like some kind of Cirque du Soleil clown.

So I was playing around with nicknames and came up with Mämmu, which is a child's word here that means something like "yummy." Mämmu seems to do the trick, and I no longer call Maria "Anna" by accident. I don't call her this all the time, only sometimes, but I like it.

Oh, I am tired now. It is past 1 am. Being a father is tiring because all the little ones want you to meet their needs. Get me this, fix this, pay attention to this ... I'm in demand. That's always good.

I am excited about Christmas this year. We're not doing the flight to New York and our home is very cozy (last year we were in a different apartment that was less cozy). I want to get a nice tree and decorate it. The girls have already been making gingerbread cookies almost every night. I feel like I haven't done Christmas "right" the few times that we have been able to do it on our own. But, I am getting older, maturing, and I know I can get it right this time.

We went to see the Nutcracker yesterday and we loved it. Other than a few sporadic arguments between Marta and Anna all went well. They paid attention to the whole thing. I fell asleep during the first part but was awake for the second (which, in my opinion, was the best part). I kept thinking of how Tchaikovsky wrote all of that music, what a gifted person he was, how he was from Russia, how that world, the tsarist era, is so completely lost. It's a shame.