A Dollar and A Dream

Starting in elementary school, my sister and I got a dollar a week in allowance. It may not seem like much now but back then it was enough for two Spider-man comics or four Hershey's bars or a large handful of Bazooka Joe bubble gum. I know because between us, my sister was the saver. There was always something that I "needed." My allowance was spent as soon as it was in hand.

Outside of being told to save it or hearing my father complain about how quickly we run through it, money wasn't spoken about in our house. It wasn't until college when it actually became something seriously discussed. But by then it was too late for me. I had already developed a habit of "need." And that habit would go unchecked even after college when I feeling the weight of my student loans and credit card bills.

I had been living well above my means and it was my sister, the saver, who bailed me out. I don't want to think about what would have happened if things turned out differently. What if my sister had "needs" too? What if she couldn't bail me out? There were alternatives but none that wouldn't have left a lasting scar on my credit report (impacting my ability to make certain positive decisions about the direction my life would take). Given a second chance to get things right, I decided then that I needed to reevaluate my "needs."

My eldest is only starting to learn about money. He is learning to identify the values of different coins and how one coin can be broken down into other coins (e.g. a quarter can be two dimes and a nickel). As a teacher, the act of breaking one value down into smaller values is a "real" hands on way of teaching number sense. As a parent, it is a nice start to frank ongoing conversations about money and its role in life. While you don't want to teach greed or miserly behavior, you also don't want to ignore lessons on budgeting and financial responsibility. Lessons that should not be left until times of fiscal hardship to be taught.

The lead article in the February issue of the ASCD's Education Update (Volume 51 Number 2) stated financial literacy as an "imperative in economic hard times." It described the initiatives some states are taking to provide their students with "strategies to help their students deal with with the real economic world so that it doesn't overwhelm them after they graduate."

While I am disheartened that the program I am associated with was not mentioned in the article, I am happy that personal finance education has hit the mainstream. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic but dedicating the lead story in its Education Update signifies that the ASCD and like organizations are ready to bring the current niche subject of financial education into the mainstream classroom (potentially, as a regular part of the school day). 

Kiplinger editor, Janet Bodnar also writes its money advice column for parents, "Raising Money Smart Kids." While I have not agreed with all of her advice, I do agree with her top six suggestions: "Start early. Start small. Keep it simple. Make it fun. Set a goal. And reward your children's efforts."

As teachers, the challenge of "starting early" is integrating essential life skills in saving  into the growing regimen of high stakes tests. Any program in financial literacy that is adopted would need to provide opportunities for students to practice and hone those academic skills which are rigorously tested.

As parents, the challenge of "starting early" is one of routine. How do we insure our children remember the importance of saving without seeming like we are nagging (potentially causing the opposite effect)?  We also have to readily identify opportunities for our children to practice the money skills we teach them.

My wife and I have taken tiny steps to look for opportunities for our eldest to practice "money skills." Simple things like estimating the change he should get back when he purchases something at the store. We have been trying to implement allowance based on chores and homework. The challenge remains instilling it as habit. It is easy enough when the waters are calm but given a particularly hectic day or two, it can take weeks before we get ourselves back on track. However, we keep trying.

There are a lot of financial literacy materials out there for us to use. In addition to most banks and financial institutions having educational materials, there are also a number of not-for-profit organizations and foundations providing teaching resources. Among them, the non-profit organization, Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. They provide a "clearinghouse" of educational resources and reports on the state of financial literacy in the US.

I strongly believe that the overwhelming number of choices we have in financial literacy materials is a good thing. However, I also believe that the most effective resources at our disposal is good old common sense, establishing effective money habits, and a cliche here and there; "If it sounds too good to be true," "You don't get something for nothing," "Neither a borrower or a lender be," and so on.

Happy 3-Year-and-1-Month Birthday To Us!

So, apparently, we missed our own 3rd blogaversary—-which all of you know is totally uncharacteristic of us Rice Daddies because we never forget our loved ones' birthdays and anniversaries cuz we're cool like that. But anyway, 3 years and one month ago today, on February 6, 2006, a group of Asian American dads launched this virtual place to talk about dadhood and stuff, and spotty posting schedules and disappearing contributors notwithstanding, we're still here.

In the last year, we've welcomed new voices to these pages and welcomed new arrivals into our families. Actually, that's why I missed our blog birthday, since we've been a little busy at the household in a strange land lately. The picture with this post is from last week, of The Pumpkin (at age 4-and-1/4) and her new little sister/best friend/pet/new toy, The Button (at almost 2 months). [You can go here for the reason she got her nom de blog and another reason I missed the blogaversary.]

We wanted to remind you of all the ways, besides commenting, that you can participate in this community. Upload your latest kidpix to our Flickr pool, from whence we get the photos at the top of your screen. Give back to the next generation by donating to our Donors Choose Rice Daddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge (and tell your teacher friends about it too). And if you are a Rice Daddy (or soon to be one), and you would love to add your voice to the conversation here, we'd love to have you. Just email me and we'll set it all up (you don't have to have your own blog elsewhere).

Also, I wanted to give you a heads-up about an exciting new project coming from two of our own, InstantYang and RakuMon (plus their compatriot and fellow rice daddy Parry Shen), the awesome Secret Identities Asian American Superhero Anthology. It's being released in April, so check out the website for blogposts, multimedia, and tour updates. It's no coincidence that this project was birthed by a group of Asian American dads, thinking about the legacy of positive images and empowerment they can help leave to their and all our children. [And I'm really excited to have a small part in it as the author of a one-page section intro.]

Finally, thanks to all of you who read and comment and link and come back even when content isn't updated as frequently as you'd want. Thank you for continuing this journey with us, into the fourth year and beyond!

Korean Karaoke

This is too funny for words. I thought you'd all get a kick out of it. All that's missing is a bottle of soju, sliced pineapples, and a plate of ojinga.

Tales of the 2nd Grade Nothing

We should be able to look every second grader in the eye and say, ‘You’re on track, you’re going to be able to go to a good college, or you’re not,’ Right now, in too many states, quite frankly, we lie to children. We lie to them and we lie to their families.

Where were you in second grade?

If you were to tell me 10 years ago that I would be married and a father of two, I would have responded: Really?

If you were to tell me 15 years ago, I would be working on Wall Street, I would have told you: Never!

And yet, here I am. Married with children and working on Wall Street.

In college, I was going to change the world through art and poetry. In high school, I took a career aptitude test that said I would be best suited to be a Forest Ranger or a Radio Broadcaster. In middle school, I failed my first test because it was either that or get beat up for ruining the curve. In elementary school, I stuttered, wore thick horn rims too large for my face, and couldn't do math.

If I were me then, now - If I were eight today - and Arne Duncan came to my school would he let me go to his "good" college? Would I be among his... I don't know... Anointed? Chosen? It's like something from science fiction. Do you remember Gattaca?

What a dumb thing for someone in such a high profile and influential position to say! When I first heard his statements on the news, I was angry as a parent, as an educator, and as a former second grader whose family was new to the U.S., who stuttered, had vision problems, and probably had one or more as-of-then undiagnosed learning disabilities!

I am still angry! But not unreasonable. Sadly, I understand where Mr. Duncan comes from. It is a "know your place" mentality that eagerly pigeon-holes people not like him into serviceable and digestible caricatures and stereotypes. For Asians, it perpetuates harmful myths about our households, our role as citizens, and ignores the impact of educational initiatives/programs on our community.

And of course data will be collected to create and justify the molds that Duncan and his supporters will establish in their "Gattacization" of education. I am not saying data is not useful in informing how teachers teach, how students learn, and how critics criticize. I am saying data is just numbers. Who will be allowed to determine what the numbers mean? And who will be collateral damage in the narrowing definition of effective teaching and learning?

Watching the trailer for Gattaca, it is unsettling how well it reflects the world Duncan and his cronies wish to create. The world where a test or a battery of tests in second grade will determine an individual's future prospects.

Diane Ravitch makes some keen inferences in her post on the blog that captures her virtual dialogue with Deborah Meier, Bridging Differences. She points out that appointing Duncan as Education Secretary extends the harmful policies of No Child Left Behind into at least the next four years. She notes that Arne Duncan chose to visit a charter school in Brooklyn instead of a regular public school. She is peeved about his desire for more testing and greater expenditures for churning out data. And she is befuddled by the very comment I am so angry about.

She writes:

Wow! More testing is needed. In New York City right now, students take a dozen tests a year. How many more should they take? How much of the stimulus package will be used to promote more testing across the country?

Are we lying to children? Deborah, you were principal of an elementary school. Could you look second-graders in the eye and tell them that they were on track to go to a good college—or not? Did you know? Did you lie and say that they were when they were not?

In 2008, the Asian Legal Defense and Education Fund released, Left in the Margins: Asian American Students and the No Child Left Behind Act. The report presented the predominantly negative impact NCLB policies on Asian American students. Much to my dismay, it didn't rally against testing enough. Instead it requested additional resources be devoted to preparing students for the tests.

I began the year writing about the need to dream, especially in this day and age. My wife and I have this ongoing argument about what education could be and what education is. She thinks I'm an idealist. She thinks I am well intentioned but ignoring reality. She and many parents like her believe the defining characteristic of a good school is one that prepares students to do well on high stakes tests. Subject matter is secondary. After all, students are not judged on their grasp of subject content but on their test scores.

(There is a difference between content knowledge and test knowledge. The former being familiarity with the subject itself. The latter being only familiar with the components of the content that are most tested.)

To bastardize the line from Gattaca: Where is the test of dreams? Ambition? Innovation? and Resourcefulness?

Keeping with my previous post theme, another slant-eye picture surfaces.

As all of you have probably already heard, Miley Cyrus has been photographed making racially offensive gestures. I recently found out that Margaret Cho wrote a song about it and wanted to share:

"I am so upset by Miley Cyrus, I think it warrants a song!"

Miley Cyrus made some chinky eyes
Standing behind an Asian guy
I don’t know if this should fly
As if there wasn’t enough to despise

I wasn’t necessarily a fan of
Her, her dad, or Hannah Montana
I tend to prefer the songs of Rihanna
Racism against Asians is simply bananas!

Oh Miley!
Chinky eyes make you look wily
prejudice isn’t thought of so highly
it doesn’t make us all smiley

Why is there nothing that Asians can do?
To make fun of other races as easily as you
Why isn’t racism against Asians taboo?
Why are we always so racially screwed!

All you have to do is pull at your face
To make your eyelids resemble our race
This kind of joke has no proper place
Miley Cyrus is a disgrace!

Communal Breastfeeding/Wet-Nursing

Salma Hayek Breastfeeds African Baby
I've never been a big Salma Hayek fan, but I'm not gonna pretend like this ain't hot.

But regardless of the celebrity hotness factor, communal breastfeeding also provides babies with the antibodies necessary to provide immunity to a broader range of diseases. It is still practiced in parts of the Philippines and other parts of the developing world. Interestingly, wet-nursing and communal breastfeeding are making a slight comeback in the Western world, as mentioned in this Time article.

Now if only Angelina, Katie, et aliae would follow Salma's example and demonstrate the benefits of communal breastfeeding in the developing world...

What Can Brown Rice Do For You?

I've been blessed with the Asian gene where I don't have to watch what I eat. Between 3 pickup games (sometimes 4 if I'm lucky) a week and general puttering around the house, I can basically eat whatever I feel like and regulate the waistband. I've gone two driver's license renewals (over 7 years) and still have the same weight on the driver's license give or take 2-3 lbs.

That said, I'm getting that middle age gene where you try (brainwashed?) to eat more healthy. On a whim, I bought a 20 lb bag of brown rice. I've enjoyed brown rice sushi and thought this would be a healthier transition for us. Maceo is cool with rice as long as it comes with a dash of furikake nori. His favorite dish is salmon teriyaki mixed with rice and peas and a dusting of nori. Dude can put it away and hold up his scraped dish proudly.

We're two weeks in. Is there such a thing as rice regret? I think I have it.

It took a damn week to figure out the water-to-rice ratio and I still haven't perfected it. I'm tossing in an extra 3/4 cup of water and it still comes out al dente which blows ass. It doesn't sit well overnight. The tipping point was when I made a pot roast. I made a gravy with the drippings and naturally dumped it over the brown rice. The homestyle treat that appears in many bento boxes suddenly didn't make sense. Gravy is inherently evil in the healthy food department and brown rice sits at the other end of the spectrum. It was like driving to a Green Party rally.

I think this dilemma is going to haunt other tasty specialties I make. Bacon fried rice, my usual go-to leftover rice dish, will just seem odd with brown. Or brown rice Spam musubi. I can't bring that over to the Super Bowl party; I'll get my ass kicked.

Thankfully, Maceo is good for any kind of rice as long as it comes with a nori sidecar. Wifey is OK with it as she's more on a health jag than me but I can tell she misses the white sticky stuff. I miss it too, especially the smell of a freshly made pot of jasmine rice. Brown rice smells like a paper bag or a rolled up newspaper. This may be a quick experiment.

Any brown rice-files out there? What the hell is wrong with me?

SD

They're homogeneous: Black Culture, Asian Culture, etc...

"Their mood was shared by those at the UK's inauguration parties, many which involved an element of black culture."

Having lived in England in the 90s, I have a general idea of what "black culture" means in the UK, mainly in a popular-music sense. But I have to wonder what exactly the above quote means when discussing a British celebration of Barack Obama's inauguration. Did they feast on fried chicken, collard greens & BBQ ribs, or Jamaican beef patties and johnny cakes, or dibi with couscous and plantains? Did they listen to Pinetop Perkins and Run DMC, or did they listen to Seal and Corinne Bailey Rae?

It reminds me of a time in college when someone assumed that because I was Filipino, and since Filipinos are Asian, and Buddhism is a part of Asian culture, then my family probably didn't celebrate Christmas.

Then there was another instance in which my wife was working on a presentation about the Philippines, and the director of the organization suggested changing the font to something "more Asian," like what you see on Chinese takeout cartons. Because, you know... just like Black culture, there is only ONE Asian culture.

Getting a CLUE

One of the reasons my wife and I decided to stay and raise our boys in Manhattan instead of joining the homesteaders in Westchester, New Jersey, or Connecticut is we are only 20 minutes away from a unique and engaging cultural event. However, finding the time to take advantage of these events is a different story.

The boys and I finally made it to a Target First Saturdays. Per the museum's Web site, Target First Saturdays "offer special, hands-on programs designed for families with children and young adults 5 to 15 years old, conducted by trained New Museum educators the first Saturday of each month."

The raft ride, walking through the wolf pack, the exploding car, and the spectacle of familiar objects helped make the Cai Guo exhibit a big hit with the boys and the Darger exhibit a disappointment. I enjoyed the latter but it was wrongheaded of me to bring the boys. They still need to interact with an exhibit. Just looking is not enough.

That Saturday at our first First Saturday, just as the curator/educator leading our group said not to touch the paintings, I turned to see my youngest jumping up in an attempt to tap a low hanging corner of a painting. It had been hung at an angle, catching his eye. The moment seemed yanked out of a sitcom. The timing of her statement and my catching my son couldn't have been any more coincidental.

Happily we were not cast out immediately. The talk was brief but focused us on the overall theme of the museum's new exhibit: Color. The current exhibit, CLUE (color location ultimate experience) is a collaborative installation that "adapts to the space it temporarily occupies... at the New Museum, it takes the form of site-specific performance, multichannel video installation, and video projection. The flexible nature of this project embraces multiple arrangements of its parts, allowing the environment to inform its presentation."

The curator/educator successfully drew the children into a question and answer about the paintings that hung around the room. She asked, "What colors do you see? What do you think the title on the painting means? What do the colors together look like?" etc. It was the directions afterwards that had some parents confused (including me). However, even that had its positives as the boys and I wandered directionless through the galleries. As an adult, sometimes it feels good to be able to enjoy getting from point A to point B without the urgency of the usual 9 to 5 deadlines.

Tuning in the teacher in me: The duration of the presentation worked well. Twenty minutes not including the time it took the kids to settle down. While I would have preferred to have been asked one or two guided questions, lead from painting to painting and then asked to apply the questions to what I saw, I wasn't a teacher at that moment. I was a parent who with other parents in the room saw his children excited about being drawn into a new experience.

The highlight of the event for both the children and me was when the elevator doors opened and we went from rooms dotted with color to a bright pristine white room untouched by it. Despite the cold, it was a beautiful morning whose best aspects were preserved in the room. And what resonated most was when the children began to draw. I tried to take some pictures of it but none really captured the spectacle of the process.

The room was so brightly lit and immaculate, it was easy to be awed by the colors that began to seep into the scene as the children used the available crayons to create the iron-on patterns for their T-shirts and a mural on the big blank sheet laid out on the floor. The culminating activity was the creation of a shirt based on the paintings that were introduced at the beginning of the event.

While in my opinion there were parts of the session that could have been better orchestrated, my boys' enthusiasm over their shirts overshadows any negatives of the event. They wore the shirts they made for days.

Affection

My daughter is six and she is jealous.

Recently I had some new friends come to visit from out of town and they stayed with me for several days. It was all impromptu, and I put together a small KAD gathering in their honor (both are KADs married to each other).

This also coincided with some Daddy/Daughter bonding days that I get during the holiday season. Those days are normally spent chasing a giggling girl around the house while she insists that I not chase her, and then screams at me to chase her until I finally catch her and zerbert her belly until she toots. It's a game, okay?

Our days are often spent relaxing and watching cartoons, eating delicious snacks, going to fun stores, and coloring or making crafts. Of course, there is always LEGOs and beads.

When our schedule gets changed, the jealousy arises.

I think I first really noticed it when I bought a new house this past year.

I knew that Noodle would be sensitive to major changes (ie. my divorce). So in keeping with those "parenting" guides on raising children, I involved Noodle in the process of buying a house. I took her on the house hunting with my realtor, let her decide which room she wanted in the new house, and gave her free reign on the color she wanted to paint.

I let her help choose the color carpet, her Tinkerbell border for her room, and even how to set up her room. She helped by splashing color on the wall, dripping paint on the floor (we were tearing it out anyway), and running around high on fumes until we bought NO VOC paints from Home Depot.

Even still, there was work to be done. New bathroom tile to select. New faucets. New fixtures of all types. New furniture.

I remember as I was staring at toilets in Home Depot for the fiftieth time in a month, Noodle came up and asked if I loved the new house more than I loved her because of all the work I was doing on the house.

"That's impossible," I said, putting down the Kohler brochure. I kissed and hugged her and started playing our favorite game "I love you more than." She tends to win by saying that she loves me bigger than the galaxy, and I say the universe, and then she says infinity.

Despite my best attempts at assuring her all this, she brought it up several times during the first month or two of fixing up the new house. Once, she asked it sitting in the empty expanse of her freshly carpeted room. Another time, as I was cooking her dumplings and noodles while she sat coloring me pictures of fairies.

And then, one day, she stopped asking. She loved the new house, her room, the hiding places, and of course, having me chase her through it looking for her behind doors or under blankets.

This past week though, jealousy reared its head again. I had taken the KADs out for a small micro-mini gathering for Thai, and brought Noodle along. There, she was adored by everyone and did real well with new people. Even the next day, she seemed to enjoy them so much because they paid attention to her, played with her, and entertained her. So I wasn't expecting it, and didn't realize it until she mentioned the same thing on consecutive nights.

On the first night she wrote me a message on my white erase board that said, "Dear Daddy, I love you. I hope you like your new friends. Love, Noodle."

On the second night, she was spending time with the mommy and when she left she said, "Bye Daddy. I love you. I hope you like your new friends."

I replied, "I like them, but I love you more!"

Later that night, I received three messages from her on my phone. Her sweet girly voice was just saying "hi" or "goodnight." But, I could tell she missed me and wanted to hear me tell her I loved her.

Her mommy said that Noodle thought I told her I liked my friends better than I liked her.

Ah, what children will hear.

So that meant spending Saturday with Noodle. I picked her up and took her to the "fishy" park, a place she loves but that we hadn't been to since last summer. The "fishy" park is a giant fish like sculpture playground ladder that the kids climb over and across and hang from. The park is generally busy on weekends, and this Saturday was no exception.

She was overcome with giddiness and ran from play area to play area (the park is over one acre in size with five distinct play areas plus a picnic area and passive field). I chased her around the park, through the 50 some children running in haphazard fashion, and past perfumy mothers with Gucci sunglasses and Bugaboo stollers. It was traffic at 5 pm on the DC Beltway, and Paris Hilton had caused a fender-bender.

She went across rocks, down twisty slides, up walls, sideways and upsidedown. And in the midst of all the bustle she remarked, "I'm so much better than I was last time I was here! I must really be growing up!"

She was taller than many children, and she was growing up. She could do things I had wished she'd do when she was younger. She took risks, took off on her own, and didn't ask for my help.

Voices came upon me from the past 6 years.

"This is payback for all the cute girls' hearts you broke."

"You better lock your windows at night when she gets older."

"Want to borrow my shotgun?"

"She's going to be the death of you."

I stood there, watching her zip across the hanging steps, realizing she was older, knew more, felt more, and could express herself in action and words.

I found myself imagining that some day, it would be me feeling jealous. Jealous of watching her leave on her first date, having her first kiss, and falling in love. I imagined myself an older, wiser, more patient father, who let go of his jealousy, to free his daughter to the sky she had dreamt.

She jumped off the end of the playground, and raced toward me, and gave me a hug. Then, she tore away from my grasp and bolted for another slide, her hair streaming behind her, her feet swiftly kicking beneath, and her arms like wings lifting her in infinite love.