Always Another Windmill

When Dr. Sears & all the rest have got you down, this looks like a promising antidote.

The Telegraph, Idle parenting means happy children:

“There is a way out of this over-zealous parenting trap, a simple solution that will make your life easier and cheaper. It will make your kids’ lives more enjoyable and also will help to produce happy, self-sufficient children, who can create their own lives without depending on a Mummy substitute. I call it idle parenting and our mantra is: ‘Leave them alone.’ “

(snip)

I will confess my many parenting errors. I am a disaster-prone, chaotic layabout and so should warn you not to listen to my advice. Certainly my friends say the idea of me advising other parents on childcare is absurd.

With that caveat in mind, let us go forth, throw away the rule books, forget what other people think and enjoy family life and all its joys and woes.

My approach to bedtime increasingly resembles this approach. I secretly suspect that the moment I really no longer care when he goes to bed or if he puts himself to sleep by shouting and singing loudly for 2 hours will be the moment that he starts falling asleep in 15 minutes.

Coversation at bedtime tonight, as I’m leaving the room to let Zag work out his squirming/kicking/thrashing/singing thing out on his own for a little while:

Zag: Don’t go!

Me: I’ll come back when you’re ready to stop fighting with me and you’re ready to try and go to sleep. I don’t want to lie in here and fight with you about going to sleep.

Zag (with a slight hint of incredulousness): You don’t want to fight with me?

Me: No.

Zag: Why not?

Me: I don’t like fighting.

Zag (really incredulous now): You don’t like fighting?

Me: No.

Zag: I like fighting!

Me: Yes, I had noticed.

James MacDonald on Making Light:

“It’s like Barack Obama saw his shadow and we’re going to have six more weeks of campaigning.”

It could be worse; we could be fated to repeat the last six weeks of campaigning over and over until the dems get it right.

So, in spite of all the recent outrage over comments and sermons made by the Pastor of the United Church of Christ church where Barack Obama has been a long time member, a recent survey by the Pew Center finds that there has been little reduction in the number of people who incorrectly believe that Obama is a Muslim.

There is little evidence that the recent news about Obama’s affiliation with the United Church of Christ has dispelled the impression that he is Muslim. . . . Nearly one-in-ten (9%) of those who heard a lot about Wright still believe that Obama is Muslim.

I suppose they must just think the UCC is some kind of Muslim church or something.

(Via Crooked Timber.)

Fafblog, the entire universe’s only source of Fafblog, is back, and now better than ever, after suddenly vanishing almost 2 years ago. Where has it been? Searching for the fabled Ur-Pie? Locked away in Guantanmo, or a secret undisclosed location? Traveling at the speed of light to distant galaxies? We may never know.

“The triumphant cry of revolution will call out through the streets: Vive Fáfnir! Vive Gibléts!” says Giblets. “Radical Fafbloggists will demand a new era of Fafno-Gibletsian rule over the cosmos, and none will be able to stand in their way!”

Fafblog! back to save the universe.