Proud dad post of the month

OK, maybe I'm a little bit slow on the uptake, but you've got to remember I don't live with her. Seemingly overnight, Samantha has become a little person. She's emerged from the black box of toddler-hood with her own tastes, her own way of handling problems. I can have conversations with her, for heaven's sake. About history, about world affairs. She has a sense of past, present, and future. Sure, she's immature in many ways, but she's an amazingly fast reader, she knows her times-tables better than me, and her vocabulary is so extensive that it's scary. Not only that, but she has opinions about things. She can explain to me why she chose to study the clarinet over the flute. We can have lengthy conversations about music and art.

Last week, over dinner, she was telling me about the research she's been doing on Poland, where her mother's side of her family is from. She knew about the Jewish pogroms, about the Jews that came to the States, about the people who live in Poland now. She was eager to go to Ellis Island to trace her family history, and even remembered that my side of the family is Italian and German.

Where did this person come from? A couple of years ago, all she could talk about were her Kelly dolls, and she needed my help dressing and undressing them.

There is a trade-off. She won't allow me to kiss her in public any longer. She's busy all the time, and she finds talking with her friends much more interesting than talking to her smelly old dad.

But...

That's as it should be.

***

Sometimes it's possible to trace the development of consciousness in a linear way. More often, though, there are these static periods where nothing seems to be happening, followed by quantum leaps or metamorphoses. A long night of unconsciousness is broken by sudden flashes of light. This is like the dawn of the Renaissance after five hundred years of the Dark Ages. And as corny as it sounds, it's like the butterfly emerging from the cocoon after all that time as a caterpillar.

And people say my child is grandiose???

CPB's Ken Bode: "No hint of balance in 'Breaking the Silence'"

An ambudsman for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting wrote yesterday in a report:

"My conclusion after viewing and reviewing the program and checking various web sites cited by critics is that there is no hint of balance in Breaking the Silence. The father's point of view is ignored as are new strategies for lessening the damage to children in custody battles. There is no mention of the collaborative law movement in which parents and lawyers come to terms without involving the court, nor of the new joint custody living arrangements.

"The producers apparently do not subscribe to the idea that an argument can be made more convincing by giving the other side a fair presentation. To be sure, one comes away from viewing the program with the feeling that custody fights are a special hell, legally, emotionally, psychologically. But this broadcast is so slanted as to raise suspicions that either the family courts of America have gone crazy or there must be another side to the story."

Read the whole thing.

Thanks to Men's News Daily, whose link I followed, and to Glenn Sacks, whose campaign efforts must have had a lot to do with this.

I think we should follow up with another request to provide balance by asking PBS to do a story about high-profile battered men. My nomination for the poster child of battered men would be Stephen J. Hawking, who was the focus of a lot of controversy last year when allegations surfaced that his wife had broken his arm and forced his nurses to watch them having sex. (You can read the full New York Times story here.)

Of course, there is one problem with doing a story about Hawking's alleged battering. The problem is that, unlike Sadia Loelinger -- the documented child abuser portrayed as a hero in the PBS documentary -- Hawking denies he's a victim.