Author: Brett

The Gay Uncle is down in Key West this week, visiting with his sister, mom, and nieces. As part of their ongoing tradition of “Uncle Time”–dating back to when the girl could first scream the words UNCLE TIME!!–Gunc and niece Amber (now age 9) spent the afternoon together. They had ice cream, they had pizza, they visited the Aquarium, they watched an insane faux-French man juggle cats on the Sunset Pier. And, like any ideal visit with a pre-tween girl, they went shopping for crappy trinkets at the mall-famous store Claire’s. Later on, he met his sister Roxy for a drink or four, and they eventually got around to discussing U.T. Gunc described how he managed to embarrass the girl–not a very difficult practice with a nine year old–by swishing about, talking loud, and forcing her to toss tips into the buckets of the sunset performers. This was all old hat to Roxy, who shares her older brother’s…performative personality. What she wanted to know was how the G.U. managed to deal with Claire’s a source of endless tension/desire for the mother/daughter team. “Whenever we go there, she wants everything in the store. She nags, she wines, she drags her feet. We end up spending so much time, that by the end, I’m frustrated and don’t even want to get her anything.”
Gunc explained that the trick, like most things with young kids, was to be concrete, and proactive, and set expectations in advance. “Before we even walked in the door,” he told Roxy, “I turned to Amber, and I said, clearly, You have five bucks, and five minutes. If you go over either one, we’re out. She raced around the store, did the math herself, and ended up with some cheap, dangly animal keychains.” He didn’t add that he was campaigning for a fake-rhinestone bedecked headband, or a scrunchy with synthetic blond hair all around. There’s always more Uncle Time.

The Gay Uncle received a note from his friend Lola today titled I’m Just Not That Into My Kid These Days. She wrote: “I have a confession, I’m not sure I like the person that my son became this past week.” Apparently, her nearly three year-old, Lou, had been home sick with a bad cold, and over the course of the four days off from school, both mom and son “started to get a little crazy” with the boy “constantly testing and absolutely not listening.” She ended it with a cry for help.

Well, help has arrived. Here is Gunc’s 5-point strategy for dealing with a home-based, three year-old insurrection, and your own sense of not really liking your kid.

1) Confess: It’s great to admit your frustration to someone (besides your child); it helps relieve the tension. And it’s particularly useful to tell someone like the G.U. because a) He’s an expert b) He thrives on familial conflict and c) He can use these disclosures as fodder for a column.
2) Butt Out: Welcome to the core struggle of three year-olds, the age at which kids become cognizant of their abilities and their limitations, bringing a painful awareness of how their desires contrast with their skill set, and creating a toxic cycle of need, vehemence, and failure. Give your child space to attempt things themselves, and let them know (once!) that you’re there if they need help. But be aware that P.I. (Parental Insertion) is often fuel for the fire–even if you’re just trying to validate their vexation. Practice butting out. Your child needs to get past their frustration threshold in order to figure out where it is and what it means.
3) Loose Strength: The flip side of this is the need to remain consistent about discipline. Be proactive: set up your expectations, parameters, and repercussions in advance, and stick to them. But plan on providing a little extra space and time–one more warning, one more minute–than usual.
4) Sick Sympathy: We all tend to lash out when we feel crappy. (Have you ever visited someone in the hospital?) Illness exacerbates all of the above issues–particularly our frustration threshold. With nose-blows, expect blow-back.
5) Break Out: Imagine how you would feel if you were forced to stay home alone with your mom for a week? Your 3 year-old is used to a correlative measure of freedom at school, and being stuck home as the helpless victim of your caretaking runs counter to the pride and independence their regular life brings. Also remember that young kids thrive on routine, and a break like this is a disruption on every level. Returning to school should help. But your kid might also benefit from some extra time away from you. Plan a playdate, hire a sitter, send them to the movies with their Guncle.

The Gay Uncle is now writing two monthly features for the hip, intelligent, online parenting magazine Babble. The first is a “Dispatch” essay about a topic of his choosing–so far he’s written about things like mediated divorces, gender development, and lying to kids. But it’s the second we’ll be discussing here, a new column featuring his interviews with young (3-8 year old) kids, in which he asks them for their advice or ideas about different issues. Last month, it was The Economy, this month, it’s Careers. Since the shtick has a sort of “man-on-the-street” quality to it, Gunc has to go to places where there are crowds of kids (schools, playgrounds, libraries, Pinkberry) and because interviewing children requires parental consent, he has to walk up to total strangers and ask if he can talk to their kids. This might be easier if he were a) a woman, b) pushing a stroller, c) not insanely gay, d)wearing something besides a long, belted trench-coat. (This last bit is a joke; he never belts his jacket). As it stands, he often ends up having conversations with parents that go something like this:
G.U.: “Hi, my name is Brett. I’m a writer for Babble the parenting magazine, and I’m working on a monthly feature where we interview kids about a topic, and then publish their responses along with a photograph of them. I’m looking for kids between the ages of 3 and 8 to interview. Do you have any kids in that age range who might want to talk to me?
Mom: [Glancing around nervously] “Security!”
or
Mom: [Holding hand to chest] “You scared me.”
or
Mom: “This playground is for parents and children only. Are you a parent?”

The G.U. then has to explain that he’s an early childhood educator, that he ran a preschool, that yes, he indeed wrote the world famous instructive non-fiction book The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting. At which point, some moms soften, and others seem even more suspicious. He offers up his business card, he gives out his phone number and email address, he shows his driver’s license. He refuses to talk to the kids without the parent’s introducing him and remaining present. But some parents still keep up their guard. Dear readers, you know that Gunc wants only the best for all children (and to finish his damn assignment and get paid). Do you have any ideas about how to convince moms that he’s “safe”? Should he get one of those pre-screening cards they have in airports? Should he wear a wig and carry a fake baby? Should he get himself castrated? Let him know below in COMMENTS.

It’s official. The Gay Uncle loves his little niece, Cake. It isn’t only because the girl is very developmentally advanced, beginning to take her first steps well before her first birthday. Or because she’s been a point of care-giving communion for his three other similarly-aged and rivalrous Key West-based nieces Amber 9, Faye 10, and Lucia 8. Or because she’s made his sister Roxy and her boyfriend Nick so happy that they’ve bought a house down there, one with a guest room for him to stay in. No, he loves the baby girl because, when watching one of the videos he recently made for his Vanity Fair automobile column Stick Shift she reportedly cracked up. Of course you know by now that Gunc loves an audience, so that might have been enough. But after she laughed, she pointed at the screen and said the magic word…“Uncle!” Now, whenever anyone says the word “Uncle”, the baby guffaws. Once he heard this story, the G.U. immediately got online, cashed in some frequent flier miles, and booked a ticket down there. He’ll be reporting from the beach next week, and should have loads of good new anecdotes and observations from all your favorite Conch Republic characters.

The Thanksgiving holiday is over. The less intelligent of your loved ones spent most of it gorging, napping, in gastric distress, and trampling–or being trampled–at the nearest big-box store. But not you. You’re too smart for all that. You’ve decided to do all your holiday shopping online. And here’s a chance to get that special someone in your life something truly special. Just in time for the gift-giving season, The Gay Uncle is offering a special package deal on his amazing parenting book The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting. Sure you can buy it from any online bookstore, like our stellar partners to the right, or pick up one of the thousands of used copies that someone’s tossed aside after receiving it at their baby shower, but for a limited time only, you can also buy it RIGHT HERE. And if you do, the Gay Uncle himself will personally inscribe it with a witty note to your loved one, and sign it with his signature…signature. $15 includes everything: book, inscription, collectible bookmark, and even first class shipping. Just type up what you want inscribed in the Inscription field, and click the Buy button. Perfect for every mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, uncle, aunt, or generic gay relative on your list. Much better than another impersonal gift-card. Much more useful than an ugly sweater. And good for the environment. Click and buy below.

Inscription

It’s official. The Gay Uncle is going to Alaska. And it’s not just to check off the box on the only state he hasn’t visited, to eat wild salmon that hasn’t spent the last eighteen hours on a cargo plane, or to see some icy tundra before it all melts. He’s actually been invited to go North to the Future (state motto) to continue his speaking tour of preschools around the country. As it turns out, a friend of his from high school runs the Jewish Community Center early childhood center in Anchorage (www.FrozenChosen.org) and has asked him to come up and deliver a lively presentation to the parents of her students, and do a workshop with her teachers. This won’t happen until May, which gives Gunc plenty of time to find a super-fancy rustic lodge in which to spend the rest of the week he’ll be up there. He’s hoping that, with global warming, it will be “spring” by the time he arrives, and the roads to the super-fancy rustic lodges will be open. But before he heads out to the world of arctic lava hot-rocks and baby-seal-fat-body-wraps, he’s made a second urban plan. Based on a recommendation from one of his former preschool students–and the sincere needs dictated by the high-profile pregnancies in the area–he sent a signed copy of his stellar book The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting to the Wasilla Public Library, along with an offer to be a guest lecturer at their preschool story time. And in an act of kismet, on the day he received confirmation of his Alaskan JCC gig, a letter from the Library also arrived. “Thank you for your donation of the book entitled The Gay Uncle’s Guide to parenting. I’m also going to pass on your information to our Youth Services librarian with the offer of doing a guest story time reading.” The G.U. will keep you posted on how things go, but he is certainly looking forward to the trip, to the opportunity to help Bristol Palin with her new baby, and to have the chance to answer the question offered up by Raymond Carver in one of his famous short stories. “What’s in Alaska?”

The Gay Uncle wrote about sticking his big Gay nose into other people’s business this week in his Yahoo! Parenting column tackling the subject of disciplining friends’ and family members’ kids. Surprisingly–given his status as a know-it-all/butt-insky–he generally advocates keeping his ideas to himself, particularly in moments of conflict, as outsiders making suggestions often confuses kids, raises parents’ hackles, and ends up exacerbating situations. (Of course, he doesn’t always succeed in staying silent.) Instead, he recommends discussing the situation later, after the fact. And obviously, he’s not about standing idly by if a kid is doing something that might result in injury to themselves or others.

Well, just after he sent this column to his editor, he had a chance to put his advice to the test. He was at a party at a stranger’s house in L.A. and there were a few parent couples with toddlers present, including one pair with a particularly adorable young boy. Though this kid was probably around 14 months old and a fully functioning walker, because his mom was only about five feet tall, he appeared…shrunken, like he’d been washed in cold instead of dry-cleaned. He was, however, just the right size for investigating things close to the ground like people’s shoes, dropped tortilla chips, and the cat’s tail. He was also properly heighted for exploring the cabinets under the kitchen sink, where the G.U. noticed him handling various exciting objects like: a bottle of ammonia, a can of Easy Off, and a box of what may have either been Clorox wipes or toilet-cleaning wand refills. Gunc was fully tempted to go running into the room and gently explain to the boy that these items were dangerous, and redirect him toward some mildly less harmful playthings, like a steak-knife or ball-peen hammer. But then the Gay Uncle noticed that the kid’s parents were standing right nearby–calm as everyone in California pretends to be–and he supposed that if they weren’t concerned, then his own attempts at intervention would probably go over about as well as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He hopes they at least rinsed the kid’s hands off after he finished playing.

The Gay Uncle was minding his own business, having a big gay brunch with his boyfriend at a dumb outdoor café in L.A. this weekend, when a nice-looking straight couple walked by, pushing their toddler in a stroller. Gunc is not exactly sure what happened next–he didn’t see a measles innoculation, an inorganic soymilk tetra-pack, a pile of Phthalates, or priest anywhere in the vicinity–but all of the sudden, the Bugaboo the pair was propelling sort of…went off, and started producing a deafening siren. And it wasn’t any ordinary noise–and it strangely wasn’t coming from their child, whose mouth was closed. It was a glowing, penetrating, electronic shriek, something like a cheap car alarm, but much, much louder, and more shrill. “Excuse me, but what the fuck is happening,” the G.U. asked, looking around, in case Los Angeles was or collapsing into a chasm, or falling victim to a Botox recall alert, and this stroller was the coal mine canary. But absolutely nothing was going on. Nothing at all. Just a bunch of people trying to eat mediocre omelettes, and roasted heirloom potatoes with homemade catsup. Eventually the nice mother and father found some way to make their child’s wheeled conveyance stop its piercing wail, and they strolled by as if nothing had happened–no apology, no explanation–moving toward Trader Joe’s (a.k.a. Parent Mecca) at a leisurely pace. The Gay Uncle looked at his boyfriend and shrugged, as if to say Isn’t this just like life: loud, mysterious, and ending abruptly. But then he glanced briefly over at the couple sitting next to them on the sidewalk: a 70 year-old woman, and what he assumed to be her husband. Catching his eye, the old lady shook her head. “Fucking Breeders,” she said with disgust to her compatriot, revealing themselves to be a cranky old lesbian and her gay-best-friend. “They think they own the sidewalks.” “You should see them at the Farmers’ Market, or the coffee place,” he spat. The woman squinted at Gunc and Tal. “What was that siren all about anyway?” Her brunch-mate shrugged and looked generally befuddled, as did G&T, and soon enough, everyone went back to eating. But as the G.U. found himself mulling over the question, he realized that the weirdest part wasn’t that he didn’t know the answer; the weirdest part was that the kid didn’t seem to flinch at this cacophony, as if the deafening alarm went off all the time. The Gay Uncle believes that–unless his parents are training him to sleep through nuclear attack, or to be a soldier in the endless Afghan occupation–this can’t be very good for his development.

The Gay Uncle spent the entire day at the L.A. Auto Show working the convention center for his Vanity Fair car column Stick Shift, a practice that involved absolutely no children (unless you count the hundreds of other overgrown boys–and the occasional girl–running around, getting in an out of every available vehicle.) But after the show, he had drinks with his friends Kate and Dylan and their two kids Max, 6 and Athena, 3, and while discussing the show (and being shown some of Max’s own favorite toy cars) Kate told him what it was like to bring a child to such an event. Apparently, she’d attended the New York Auto Show a few years before with Max. As with most Auto Shows there were a number of demonstration games (Volvo’s “Safety City” being the G.U.’s favorite this year in L.A., wherein one is instructed to crash into the rear of various computer generated vehicles) there to lure in kids of all ages. After waiting in line for what seemed like hours, she and Max finally made it to the front. The boy was enjoying playing around with the game, which involved trying to get a Volkswagen up to its top speed. But, being slightly competitive, Kate didn’t feel he was succeeding. “Go faster,” she kept instructing from the sidelines. “Faster. Faster. Go faster, Max.” Her son attempted but still didn’t meet his mother’s standards. So, standing over him, she tried to get him to push harder on the pedal. “The one. On this side.” She pointed at his feet, which dangled somewhat helplessly above the controls (he could either see the screen, or press the pedals, but not both.) “No. Harder, Max. Push this pedal harder. HARDER.” Finally, the boy’s car icon came to a screeching halt and crashed sideways into a banked wall. His turn was over. He was sad. Kate was disappointed. “It was only after we left the exhibit that I realized, I had been telling him to push the wrong pedal the entire time. He was trying to hit the gas, and I was screaming at him to press the brake.” She sighed. “I still have nightmares about that moment all the time.”

The Gay Uncle is once again back in California, this time on a dual mission to cover the L.A. Auto Show for his Vanity Fair car column Stick Shift and pitch around some TV ideas. You can follow the progress of both right here. But before any of this gets going, he’s been able to spend a few days hanging out with friends. In fact, as soon as he arrived, he went to see the new James Bond movie with his favorite straight parent couple, Kate and Dylan, and the magical gay pair Ben and Gregory. In order to find the best possible seats (yes, movie seats are reserved in L.A.) they chose a 5:30 showing. This pleased the G.U. to no end, as he wanted to very close to the screen, just in case there was another scene of Daniel Craig being tied naked to a chair and receiving some very belabored testicular torture like there was in Casino Royale. But when he told Ben and Gregory that they’d be attending the early screening, they balked a bit, but then consented. “Okay,” Greg said. “So…I guess in terms of getting some dinner after, we’ll just have to see how Kate and Dylan’s kids are feeling.” Gunc was stunned. Did these fellas really believe that Max and Athena–ages 6 and 3–were going to be attending an R-rated action film, replete with stabbing, punching, shooting, and (hopefully) scrotal smashing? “The kids aren’t coming!” G.U. replied, outlining the types of violence he was expecting (anticipating) as cause. “Right. Right,” his gay pals said. “Of course.”
But when they arrived at the movie, there were indeed a number of young children present in the audience, including a baby that shrieked for about fifteen minutes in the middle. (Justifiably, Gunc might add: this part was very boring.) The G.U. believes that kids take in just about everything they see, regardless of how young or old they are. But he knows that sitters are expensive, and that infants often sleep through shitty films. Still, bearing witness to this made the G.U. wonder, What’s the most inappropriate movie you’ve ever brought your kid to? And why? Let fly below in Comments.