Newsletter #4: We ain't takin' the kids to Legoland that's for sure
We like weird shit. It's true
Heads up y’all! I moved the newsletter to substack, a newsletter tool that’s free and rad and has a lot of cool bells and whistles. So it probably looks a little different.
So yeah, newsletter #4 is here! This newsletter will be closely tied to #5 next week in which I tell you the 5 weirdest places we took the kids on our road trip earlier this year. But first, In this newsletter I explain whyyyyyy we love taking our kids to weird places.
TL:DR; it’s because I like going to unusual places.
Ok lemme unwrap this a bit. A twitter friend responded to one of my earlier newsletters where I mentioned taking the girls to the “World Famous Crochet Museum” asking me to explain why I would take my 2 and 4 year to such an unusual place instead of, say, Legoland. A fair question.
Before I had kids, a parent told me the best advice they ever got was to “integrate the kids into your life, not integrate your life into your kid’s life”. What I took this to mean was to keep doing whatever it is that makes you happy and weave the kids into that (minus the part about going to Vegas and passing out at the pool after drinking 17 mimosas before 10am). Up until our kids were about 2 or so, I thought this was impossible. Really little kids need structure and a consistent schedule (if you as a parent are going to survive those first few years with your nerves intact). But right around 2, specifically around when they potty train, kids become more mobile. More fluid. More adaptable. They’re easy to pick up and take places. More receptive to things outside their comfort zone. They can become little explorers if you push them in the right direction.
It was around this age with Lil that this really good advice that I’d heard years ago start banging around in my head. If I were going to be a happy and fulfilled parent, I needed to live my life and plug my kids into it. So we started to extend this philosophy to everything in our lives. It was the music we listen to in the house (“dad, can we listen to My Morning Jacket?” instead of some kid bullshit music that makes me want to claw my eyes outta my head). And the food we eat (“tonight we’re having fish tacos and if you don’t like it tough”). And our mode of transportation (“yes, we’re taking the ebike. No we’re not taking the car. This is good exercise for dad”). However, it does not necessarily extend to the shows we watch because we let the girls terrorize us weekend mornings with copious helpings of Cocomelon and whatever other dumb shows Netflix injects into my children’s veins. You get my point though; we the parents call the shots and the girls learn to adapt.
This brings me around to the places we visit when we travel. I’ve always had a hankerin’ for visiting things off the beaten path. Whether it was the “center for black magic” in the Republic of Congo or the dolls head trail in Atlanta, I love finding places that may not be the most popular but end up defining the soul of a place.
As my kids got older (ya know, 2 and 4) I got more comfortable taking them to places I wanted to see. At first they groaned about wanting to go to the park (which we still did!) but before long they started to ask what “Mr Kenny” was doing from Robolights or they wanted to see The Babies again (more on these next week). I’m far from being an expert on parenting, but I really do believe that exposing kids to things other than what’s right in front of them helps them realize the world is dynamic and amazing and heartbreaking and fuckin’ rad, often all at the same time.