Parenting is Easy!

If I’m right the current year is 2009, but every now and then I’m reminded that a good majority of our society still lives in the 60’s. I was a completely astonished today by a news article that was presented out of Philadelphia. A day camp, The Creative Steps Day Camp, was denied the usage of their paid membership to a local pool, because the majority of kids that attend the summer camp are black. This all happened a week after they payed [$1,950] to attend The Valley Club once a week for their campers.

“When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”

The next day the club told the camp director that the camp’s membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.

“I said, ‘The parents don’t want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,’” camp director Aetha Wright said.

That quote came from the article Pool Boots Kids Who Might “Change the Complexion” written by Karen Araiza of NBC Philadelphia. But the quick article doesn’t do the story justice. Watching the video below makes you feel the pain the children were feeling over the situation [sorry about the ads, I have no control over them].

This situation is not just directed at the black community of Philadelphia, lets not be fooled. This is an issue that faces everyone that is not white [as you can see, I'm not going to be politically correct in this post].  With myself being Black and Renae Mexican, we have seen a good amount of racism in our lives. And after watching the video above and reading some of the comments following the video, I am completely ashamed of our society and bewildered on how I am going to approach the issue of racism to my girls.

Growing up I knew I was black [the mirror is one hell of a reminder]. And I knew I would get shit from someone because of my skin color at some point in my life. But for my girls, being mixed growing up as Y2K babies, they could be facing more levels of racism then I would have ever faced. I have potentially put them into the situation of being possibly ridiculed by Hispanic’s, Black’s, White’s and I don’t know who else, because they are mixed. I really d0n’t know how to approach this issue.

One area that helped to open the door of talking about racism with PJ was when she was in kindergarten. Her teacher did a great job all year round to make sure that all ethnic holidays were acknowledge and taught in the class. One time I remember listening to PJ explain to me why Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was amazed at the amount of information she was given. But then we had to make sure that PJ knew about and understood what racism was. We didn’t really drill it into her, but we made sure she was aware that some people will not like others, including herself, because of their skin color.

Being a multiracial family, the one biggest thing that we have done with PJ is to make sure she knows of her ethnic heritage. She fully knows that she is a mix of Hispanic and Black. I believe that her knowing this has helped her become comfortable with her own self image. Plus we do not push one ethnic side more then the other. But that still doesn’t help me explain that some might not like her because of her skin. I want PJ and eventually MJ to know this, but I don’t want them scared to love themselves.

This is a hard situation to deal with. And I believed in a my own naive way that by living in Southern California that my girls wouldn’t have to deal with racism too much [I really didn't experience or recognize racism until I was in college]. I figured that we would all just get along. But I was shown today, by those in Philadelphia, that there are some people only willing to get along if they are not around people of a different color or ethnicity.

It is so sad to see this, knowing the values that the United States was founded on. Knowing that America wanted everyone of difference that wanted a new start. This country was created out of our own doing of wanting a difference and now we have people continuing to reject the idea.

- Ken

“When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”

The next day the club told the camp director that the camp’s membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.

“I said, ‘The parents don’t want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,’” camp director Aetha Wright said.  [read more...]

OK, when I first heard about this story, I thought it was a hoax. Seriously, I thought it was some over sensitive twitter fool, spreading nonsense. NOW, I’m flabbergasted!  Just flabbergasted!!

BUT…what’s even more shocking than this story is the comments posted by the Philadelphia community [make sure and scroll down the page of this to see the comments]. The deep seeded hatred and bigotry is astounding.  Needless to say, me and my family….we won’t be visiting the “City of Brotherly Love” any time soon.  If these comments are any indication of the type of “love” our well blended family would receive, then Philadelphia is not for us.

On my other blog, MixtKids, I discuss issues that are pertinent to mixed race and multicultural families [such as ours].  That blog also gives a very personal glimpse of our life as a Hispanic and Black family and the types of issues our mixed children face. So, obviously, the issue of race and racism are very important to me.  Not only from a negative standpoint, such as in this article and video, but also from a positive standpoint in raising loving, strong and smart “mixtkids”. But when I see stories like this, my heart breaks.  Not only for me, my family and my daughters, but for our country.  We think our work is done, but we are so wrong.  Electing Obama was a great start, but this is just the beginning.

When I say work, I’m not talking about converting the bigots.  We can’t change them.  They’re evil to their core.  They ooze pathetic nonsense.  But we can continue to work on the next generation.  We can show our own children, their friends and all the world that all child deserve and are capable of being the smartest, the fastest, the funniest.  Whatever they desire, they can become, regardless of their skin or background.

Truly, it begins in our own home.  All of us!  See, an empowered child, who is confident and comfortable in their own skin, will shine.  That is my belief.  Regardless of color, they will persevere, if they believe in themselves and trust in their abilities and are given an opportunity to prove themselves.  There’s always a way [Ken will laugh when he reads this, but he knows what I mean].  How does the saying go?  “If there’s a will, there’s a way”.  Or, even better, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”   I could go on and on, but I won’t bore you with my optimism.

Back to the story at hand.  What would you do?  I mean, your kid could be attending a HipHop Dance camp with a renowned dance choreographer [who might be Black], your kid happens to be White and come with 15 other White kids on the bus.  What if?  OK….just hear me out.  What if the kids that have been attending the Dance class for months and months are all ethnic.  So the Caucasion kids pull up and all the ethnic kids begin to stare and whisper.  And, what if they collectively decided that White kids have no rhythm and can’t dance anyway [I know this is silly and stereotypical, but keep reading], so they ask all the White kids [your kid] to leave?  This might sound silly.  Farfetched, even!  But this, this is exactly what happened in Philly.  One group of people felt uncomfortable with another and therefore, excluded them, simply based on their skin color, nothing else.  Not their actions, not their abilities, not their behavior, but just their skin color.  Just their “complexion”.

As I finish up this post, my 7 yr old is wondering when we can get in the pool.  Before we head out the house and jump in our pool, she needs to see what happened to these children that just wanted to cool down in the summer heat.  So, I’ll show PJ the video, not to insight rage or anger, but to make her aware and to discuss the issue.  To get her opinion and to see what she knows, feels and how she might react in such a situation.  Because, guess what, she’ll have to deal with something like this in her lifetime.  That’s a given!

What the hell happened?  I know it’s been 30 years, but so much has changed.  For me, a huge change is economic.  My parents didn’t have any money, so even if I wanted to go to camp, we could never have afforded it anyway.  Also, I only remember camps where you went away for a week and stayed in some cabin and cried for your Mom.  I think I just watched it on TV and had no idea.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever personally met anyone in my age group that actually went away to camp.  Was it even real?

I also don’t remember all these “day camps” being around back in the day.  I know I went to one “day camp”, but it wasn’t called that.  I can’t remember much but they took us swimming and we got a tshirt.  I also remember playing some games and having a sack lunch, so yeah, we did something similar to today’s “camp” mania.  But today, there’s a camp for everything you can think of.  From cooking to archery to robotics.  If you can think it, there’s a camp for it.

Just this week, PJ went to Mike Hovenic’s soccer camp and it was packed.  Probably 150 kids.  This is like every camp we’ve been to, every summer, for the past 2 years.  Packed!  In fact, we usually have to book our summer camps by April, just to make sure we have a spot.  The recession seemed to make this year a bit more chill, but still, I’m feeling pressure should we decide to do any other camps this summer.

We started signing PJ up for these “summer day camp” things a few years ago.  This was when we lived in the heart of the city and in a neighborhood with NO kids.  PJ, being an only child [MJ wasn't born yet] and me, being a SAHM, Ken and I felt compelled to at least get her some socialization.  I’m a pretty cool Mom, but even I get bored of me, so poor PJ needed a break [ok, I admit, I needed one too].

So, we signed her up for Seaworld camp and a Critter Camp, at the Helen Woodward center.  And thus started our camp tradition.  2 camps a summer.

Anyway, now, we live in a neighborhood with quite a few kids whom play together all the time.  We have a swimming pool, an air hockey table, Wii console games, tons of sports equipment and lots of parks in the neighborhood.  So…why in the world am I paying for camp, as are all the other neighborhood parents?

OK, part of it IS learning.  PJ LOVES soccer and Mike’s camps are very good skills camps.  So, yeah, soccer camp is part learning and part fun.  But I know people who have their kids in various camps all summer long and they aren’t working parents either.  One mom flat out told me, “Well, the kids will get so bored.  And, they’ll drive me crazy!”  Bored?  Crazy?  What kid today could possibly get bored today?  They all have so much friggin’ crap!  Crazy?  OK, that, I buy.  But that’s $150 to $200 bucks a camp!  So much for a recession.

After all this smack talk, I have to admit.  Today, I promised PJ she could pick another camp for the summer, but just one.  She got really excited, then the bell rang.  Off she scampered and forgot all about picking.  Instead, all the kids in the neighborhood piled into our game room to play air hockey, then ran outside to play volleyball and ended the afternoon with “rockband” on the wii.

So tell me again, why am I looking for another camp?  Oh yeah, I know, because we parents “think” our kids will get bored.  We’re so concerned about raising lazy, TV addicted, mush brains that we make damn sure they won’t have a chance to think about it.  But really, PJ seems very content to just watch cartoons till 10, stay in her pajamas till noon and play with her friends till dinner.   It’s me.  I feel the need to organize her life.  Like most parents today.  Is it competition, “keeping up with the Jones” or just habit?

Well, the true test comes in August.  I’m “assuming”, PJ will be somewhat bored by then and a 2nd camp will be a blessing.  The cartoons will be played out, the kids will start getting sick of each other and life will become monotonous.  So, yeah.  I’m reserving one more camp.  I’ll let you know in August, if it was a waste of money or not.

~ Renae

It’s summer time! Kids are out of school. They are excited about being able to sleep in, play video games all day, watch more TV and maybe go outside to play. Parents are scrambling to figure out what to do with these children that don’t have “free” child care [a.k.a. school].

Having PJ out of school now,  I keep wondering if summers are like they were back when I was a kid in 1980? This was back when you could leave your kids at home and have the oldest sibling, in my case an 8 year old sister, watched over me & the house while mom was off working at K-mart. Trying to think back to a childhood summer some 29 years ago has been very hard [my head still hurts]. It was so hard to remember what I did during that summer, that I had to call my mom and ask. I got my answer plus a bit more then I expected.

During the summer of 1980, I was sent to Vancouver, Canada for about two months to stay with my grandmother Mary Beaver. The  details of my stay with my grandmother are foggy, but from what I can remember we visited lots of family, ate lots of takeout Chinese food and mostly hung out in her apartment [I can't remember if it was that trip or another one when I jumped from her 2nd story balcony to the ground below. Either way I must have been pretty damn bored].

To end my summer trip at my grandmother’s home my [divorced] parents drove me and my sister from Vancouver to Los Angeles in a orange 1976 Volkswagen Beetle. To top that, the beetle’s front cargo trunk was filled with ice and steelhead salmon after we stopped at Burnt Ranch in Northern California for a few days of fishing on the Trinity River.

So, how do my life adventures play in to PJ’s life as a 7 year old enjoying the fruits of summer vacation? First thing, definitely no border crossing with anything that might be mistaken as an illegal substance. The other big difference is we don’t feel the need to ship PJ &/or MJ off to their grandparents house in Utah, as my mom put it, “to get a break” [Renae might think differently by the end of summer]. Plus the last time PJ was sent to visit her grandparents in Utah a week ahead of Renae & I, she barely made it 3 days before she was home sick [ok, Mommy sick].

I think the days of shipping your kids off to the grandparents for a month or two are pretty much over. It might happen more when the kids are older. But with people waiting longer to have kids, grandparents these days don’t have as much pep in their step to be dragged all around by kids 5 to 10 years old.

The other big difference my daughters have from my childhood summer activities, is choice. I know I didn’t have a say if I was headed to Canada, Los Angeles, Oregon or wherever when summer rolled around. If the decision was made, my lil tan behind was headed to that destination. With PJ we usually give her the option to do 2 or 3 major activities/camps each summer. Living in San Diego provides a world of options for kid’s activities during the summer break. There are so many options that it’s hard to choose what camp/activity to sign a kid up for.  And now that PJ is 7, that list has doubled.

In years past PJ has gone to camps at Sea World, a wild life rescue, a performing arts studio in Balboa Park, the YMCA & more. This year we were trying to keep is simple. We had planned a soccer camp [which she has started], surf camp and then left it open for one other option. But now PJ remembered something we mentioned in years past. We told her that when she was 7 that should could attend a horse camp. We were all good with it until the price for the camp rared its ugly head. Then we had to go back to the lil boss with a new budget proposal for her summer activities. We layed out the options for PJ; 2 more camps or horse camp. You can only guess what she picked. But it was a good situation to allow her to fully choose what she wanted to do. I have no doubt that she will love it [I also have no doubt that our credit card company will love it also ].

I think it is beneficial to a kids personal growth to allow them to choose their own paths. It does somewhat relieve you, the parent, of setting them up with crap activities that they didn’t want to do and giving them an open door to hate you for next 20 years. Besides that, choice is good. If you have the means to give your kids a choice of what to do during the summer besides sitting on the couch watching TV, then do it. If you don’t have the financial means, there are many program available to help pay for summer activities. An example is the YMCA and Boys and Girls Club. Their summer programs usually rock and they offer many options to those that don’t have the financial means.

Our world is full of options. Let’s start making sure that we are giving out kids enough opportunities to experience these options. I loved many of the summer activities my parents setup for me as a child and I am trying to do the same for my kids in today society while empowering them to be their own lil person.

- ken