i am dad

How Donald Duck got my 5-year-old hooked on drugs

 

 

 

 

Any day now. The Child Welfare authorities are going to come knocking on my door.

I can only hope that they'll believe me when I say that it was Donald Duck who got my little son hooked on drugs, and this is a problem that is historical and dialectal, not of substance!

 

Master J has always been obsessed with signs. From the moment he could wield a pencil, he wanted to make them himself. Figuring this was an excellent way to sieze on emergent learning principles, his mother and I have always been accommodating, writing the words out for him to copy or (increasingly now) spelling them out for him orally so that he can write them out for himself.

It started with road signs. All over the house we had stop, give way, slow down, roadwork ahead, drive safely and even wrong way go back!

And then just about anything J saw on a screen or door was potential sign-writing fodder. Exit, Private Keep Out, Dangerous Chemicals, Do Not Touch... the list is endless.

 

Then, thanks to some of those old classic Donald Duck cartoons (which we found for J on YouTube alongside a lot of other cartoons), we started getting things like Test Pilot Donald, Giant Redwood and -- believe it or not -- OLD RELIABLE GEYSER ERUPTS AT 12 O'CLOCK.

 

Unfortunately, it was the archaic Donald Duck cartoons which also gave J his 'drug problem'. Take a look at the clip for yourself, and take note of the sign that appears at about the 3:00 mark...

 

 

 

Harmless, really. Right?

I mean, writing DRUGS on a bit of paper couldn't hurt that much, could it?

But why, of all the signs and words he might become 'hooked on', did it have to become this one?

 

J's been asking us to help him with DRUGS. He's been looking for his DRUGS. He left his DRUGS in the bedroom. He really likes DRUGS.

 

Oh sure, laugh it up if you will... I found it mildly amusing until he brought home a picture he'd done at school, and there in immaculate writing in the corner was the word DRUGS.

I saw the scene...

 

"Oh, what's that you're drawing, J... and -- oh. J, do you know what this word is?"

"Sure, Mrs. K. It's DRUGS."

"Right, yes... Well, why did you write that, J?"

(Shrugs casually). "I just like DRUGS."

"Yes, okay then... Do your mum and dad know about this?"

"DRUGS? Yes, of course they do. They give it [meaning "spell it for"] to me."

"They do, do they? Okay, just wait here for a minute, J. I need to make a few phone calls... Got some extra clothes in your bag? Good -- might be staying with some new friends tonight, that sounds like fun, doesn't it...?"

 

With this sort of exchange in my head, when J wanted to make another DRUGS card tonight, I thought I better tackle this and do something about it.

So how in the name of all that is holy do you explain to a five-year-old that, even though the word came from one of your favourite cartoon shows, you want them to stop using it? Especially at school!?

My approach was to be honest all the way and not attempt too many shortcuts.

 

"J, those Donald Duck movies were made a very, very long time ago, and that word DRUGS meant something different then."

"What did it mean?"

"Like, MEDICINE."

"Medicine? Okay... Drugs is medicine?"

"Well, yes, they are... but these days it kind of means something different. Something that is often bad."

"Bad? ... Bad medicine?"

"Exactly! That's exactly it! It now means bad medicine that can do bad things to people."

"So why does Donald Duck like it?"

"Because, as I told you, it was a very long time ago and the word just meant medicine then. Now it kind of means bad medicine. People don't really like to hear that word."

"Oh.... What about... RUGS?"

"RUGS?"

"Yes, RUGS. If DRUGS is bad medicine, maybe RUGS is good medicine?"

"Erm, ah, right. Why don't we just say medicine?"

"No."

"No?"

"It's a really loooong word, I think. It will take me all day to write that..."

(Strangled noises come from father)

 

Anyway, we're getting there.

And in the meantime, I need your advice...

Should I try to explain all this to his school teacher?

And what about the parents of all his friends???

 

I mean, if J came home one day and said his best mate T spent all day talking about doing drugs...

 

You catch my drfit, I hope!

 

 

=D

 

 

              

P.S. I'm sure anyone out there familiar with the old Disney cartoons would raise a flag of warning about letting today's children see some of them. But that's another topic for another day, perhaps...

                                  

 

IAGOLP

 

 

Worlds of wisdom on parenting?  Image: Sarah Gilbert

 

 

No. It's not a new app from Apple catering to golfing enthusiasts based in Korea.

IAGOLP stands for Imaginary Authoritative Guidelines On Laudable Parenting.

You see IAGOLP everywhere these days. Whole sections of mass-market bookstores are dedicated to them. They're a regular fixture in newspapers, magazines and on those plasticky hosted morning television shows. And sure, you can find them all over the Internet these days in the form of sites and blogs.

Apparently, the act of parenting has been such a colossal mass failure over the past 40,000 years or so that we need a constant stream of authoritative experts (many with impressive tertiary qualifications, and many whose children have already in fact grown up and left home) to help rectify this sad situation.

I'll be referring to IAGOLP in many of the posts I add to this blog.

To me they're like a set of standards that are fuzzed enough to apply to everyone (and therefore, nobody in particular), and make parents feel like they're doing something noble and dedicated by being willing to buy a book on the subject. There are of course the occasional highly relevant tips and tricks, but IAGOLP can also be brilliant for stoking the guilt you already feel about certain aspects of your parenting, and turning you into a paranoid parenting android.

It can, of course, be a very positive and proactive thing to read around and listen to advice. But not, I think, at the automatic expense of drawing on your own common sense and just applying eyes, ears, heart and grey matter to the context only you and your family can ever really hope to understand.

Besides that, I don't think I've ever seen anything in a self-help book or on a talk show that came remotely close to the accuracy and relevance of advice or anecdotes from everyday friends and acquaintances. People who weren't trying to sell it to me, basically.

What do you think? Am I giving the voluminous parenting 'self-help' industry (and our collective infatuation with it) an unfair rap?

I mean, book sales don't lie, do they?

 

 

=D