children’s games

Wii Are Family

In college, I had a friend named Jane. She was the oldest daughter in a family of tennis players, and they all looked like her: tall and willowy, but strong as thoroughbreds, with defined muscles in their long arms and legs; permanently sunburned noses; and an effortless way of moving that was almost heartbreaking to watch. Even when Jane was just swinging her backpack over her shoulder as she sauntered out of class, she had a way of making it look like art. At her Long Island home, her family walked around in track suits and tennis shoes, without the irony that, for example, a track suit would have conveyed on my plump mother. Someone was always going out to play on the courts or coming in from just having played, toting bags and several racquets and fresh cans of balls that smelled excitingly of gassy rubber. They had kitchen […]

Wii Are Family Read More »

Looking for Eddie Field

Eddie Field had ears that stuck out like mug handles from either side of his head and a face that was a constellation of freckles. He wore his hair in a Boy’s Regular barber cut, cropped close to his head, which only served to emphasize both the freckles and the unfortunate angle of his ears. Eddie and I were in the same grade at school, and our parents belonged to the same summer swim club. I saw a lot of him as a result, but he wasn’t a friend, exactly. The club was a sort of working-class version of a Country Club—no tennis courts, no rolling golf green. It did have shuffleboard courts, though, and one or two of the courts were actually playable, if you avoided hitting the weeds forcing through the cracks in the cement. There was a musty-smelling piano in the clubhouse that retained most of its

Looking for Eddie Field Read More »

Competitive Parenting As Child’s Play

If April is the cruelest month, March has to be the strangest. At least, this March: What a strange few weeks it’s been. Silda Spitzer stands by Eliot; Gilligan’s Mary Ann is a stoner. Then, last night, as I was watching my daughter thumb through a new catalog from a local toy store, I noticed small icons at the bottom of each product description. It turns out that they are “ExpressCodes,” or ratings that indicate “how the product can assist in reaching your child’s developmental milestones.” Yeah, seriously: A basketball, for example, is called out for propelling a kid toward the milestone of Eye/Hand Coordination (“hands manipulating objects, things fitting together, coordination”) and Gross Motor (“physical play, running, throwing, jumping”). A set of plastic dinosaurs promote Eye/Hand along with Fine Motor (“grasping, manipulating, writing, drawing”), Socialization (“cooperative play, making friends, sharing”), and Creative Expression (“imaginative play, artistic ability”).

Competitive Parenting As Child’s Play Read More »