kids

(repost from my personal blog www.tertia.org)

When I first started the egg donor and surrogacy program here in South Africa, I would get enquiries from gay couples and singles from overseas. Many of them would start their email with "I am not sure whether you deal with gay couples...." and the first few times I was all like "huh? What do you mean?" Of course I deal with gay couples, why wouldn't I? And then I realized how often gay couples were discriminated against. And what a tough time they had accessing the things we take for granted.

No parent wants to see their child stumble along in life. No parent wants to see their child fail. Much like a coach on a sports team, parents sometimes will watch their child go along in life and, having the advantage of watching from the sidelines, see the mistakes they are making and what consequences lie ahead. We want to rush in and guide them in the way they should do. The difficulty is letting your child go headlong into that mistake as they attempt to spread their wings and fly.

If you have a son or daughter around six or seven, you may have already heard about Club Penguin. Club Penguin is a virtual world (think Second Life) for little kids. Kids choose and name a penguin character to act as their avatar as they move around the Club Penguin site and play games to earn coins. These coins can be exchanged for clothing and other items. The site says it’s for kids 8-14. There are 700,000 paying members worldwide and over 5,000,000 visitors per month.

Gay DC Today published a great article last week stating that gay marriages won't hurt kids, which we all already knew.

"Vermont’s leading mental health and human service organizations joined in support of gay marriage Monday.

William: What does a purple flag mean? Purple flag at beach?

Me: It means there are dangerous animals in the water.

William: Like jellyfish.

Me: Yes.

William: And stingrays.

Me: That's right.

William: And dragons.

Me: Dragons?

Faith: Yes. Some people believe there are dragons and monsters in the sea, but I don't.

William: Well, I do.

Ray: Roaaaaaaaaarrrrr!

I have a blog at lifeisbetterthangood.blogspot.com. Yesterday, I found a new friend, Dena, at the Normanist Theory. (Read her. She’s in my list of blogs that I follow.) I’m borrowing her idea for this post. I was struck by her, “To my eight year-old self.” Storm is 8, so that is probably a good part of why I find this so intriguing.

Yesterday, we loaded up the kids who were out of school again for no good reason (something about the teachers going to New Orleans for a conference (Mardi Gras)). We were on the way to Mobile on I-10 when Dawn very calmly said, “That was a Wild Boar.”

“A what?” I said