define "rich". if you can afford to be an artist, then you have more money than a lot of people.
people who don't want children perhaps ought not to have them. i admire him for being honest, i guess, but that article really gacked me.
what bothered me about the article was not the kid's behaviour, we're all savages (in the beginning at least) and not even the overwhelmed, exhausted and selfish parents -- i am overwhelmed WATCHING child rearing (and i'm psychologically sophisticated enough to know his behaviour is not necessarily their fault anyway).
it's 3 things:
1. read closely, particulary at the end, Mr. Pollack sort of nudges the "bad parent" tag onto his wife.
e.g. he understands the kid because he had a "turbulent" mind as kid, the wife wails "he's difficult"; the only instance of someone successfully minding the kid is him, the kid bites the wife; and finally when his wife says something like i don't want him around, when he's around our marriage suffers. Mr. Pollack heroically responds: (and i paraphrase): Well then our marriage will just have to suffer.
2. to show your own child in such a poor light (indeed in my opinion in any light) when the kid is so young is an invasion of privacy.* if the kid grows up to be a normal child, teenager or young adult and has a scrape with authority, he's already been indicted (and by his father no less).
3. i don't think any educator ought to be derogatorily referred to as "superstar" particularly when she is attempting to help a child, who by his own admission, his parents don't want to care for.
btw, i was serious about my respect for SAC. he respects his children's privacy (and it's not like his readers wouldn't welcome more info about them -- i for one am dying to meet the skateboarder. i guess i'll have to wait until he goes to columbia and moves to the lower east side).
I was all fired up to write a big response to Pollack's piece yesterday, I even got a kick ass first graph, but today I can't be arsed. I may write something about how little boys are absolutely not tolerated by the almost exlcusively female and childless daycare staffing community. Probably not, though.
you know i bet that's true. they require a great deal of energy; girls are more tractable and can be made to play quietly (unfortunately). too bad we have such a prejudice against teen-aged boys minding children.
The problem is that child minders have given up minding children. My brother Michael was a serial biter, pencil in the eye stabber and general bastard at two. My mother bit him HARD, he never did it again -he realised it hurt, the experience was directly self-referencing - bite and be bitten.
I used to torture cats. Now I don't do that anymore. Otherwise the Judge will send me back to the centre. And I don't like the centre.
But then what of the great and glorious family name?
How typically New York.. If the parents spent a bit less time blogging and a bit more time making money and parental alliances - or living in a place they can afford - we wouldn't have to wallow in their self pity.
Commenting by HaloScan
