Brett Berk

Will the questions from parents never cease? The Gay Uncle certainly hopes not, as then he’ll have to come up with his own ideas to keep this silly blog going. So he’s thankful to reader Beth who sent in this query. “Dear Gunc. Please help. My kids Jeff, 4, and Katie, 5 seem to be constantly fighting. Jeff is the one that seems to do the most damage (scratching, hitting, going for the eyeballs.) But sometimes it seems as if Katie wants to start something with him. I put Jeff in time out, which works–when I can keep him in the chair. But I’d like to establish some kind of action plan for peace in the household. What do you recommend?”

First off, the G.U. would like to state that sibling rivalry is perfectly normal, and a certain amount of conflict is to be expected. The sibling relationship is like a marriage, only you enter into it when you’re extremely young and immature, you’re competing for the attention of the gods you believe run the world, and you don’t get to pick your partner. Imagine how your current relationship would go if you were hobbled with those issues in addition to the ones you currently face.

That said, Gunc always posits that the best form of discipline is the kind that’s PRO-active instead of RE-active, and consistent instead of ad-hoc. Imagine yourself not as a fire fighter, but as a fire preventer. Issues often arise between siblings when kids are struggling over some limited resource, so try to have plenty of whatever you’re expecting them to share (many of one kind of toy is much easier to manage than one of many kinds.) Spell out your expectations and repercussions in advance, e.g. “These toys are for sharing. If you can’t share them appropriately, I won’t let you use them today and you’ll have to find something else to work with.” And for god’s sake, keep your rules simple and stable. Young kids have a hard enough time figuring out how the world works without your switching it up on them. Oh, and one other thing: don’t expect your kids to share everything. Give them stuff that’s just theirs and over which they have total control. If your daughter’s stealing your son’s special toy, let her know that doing so will result in her losing the privilege to play with something special of hers. And then make sure you follow through the next time she does it. (Discipline should always be connected directly to the problem at hand, but kids need warnings and chances to get things right before the repercussion is enacted.)

In terms of the physical violence kids commit on their siblings, some of this is connected to the aforementioned quality of being stuck in the same cage with another animal 24/7. But often times it’s not about your child being evil or malevolent, it’s about their not having–or having a chance to practice–functional alternatives. Instead of (or in addition to) constantly trying to react to their transgressions with punishments, walk them through the conflict, discuss it, and insert some alternatives to kicking the shit out of their sister. Suggest that they try using words to ask for what they want, model some appropriate sentences, and let them know that if this doesn’t work after three tries, they can come and get you or another adult to help mediate. Kids need recourse. (Note: this will take about 300 tries before it works. But once they nail it, it’s for life. Think long-term.) Also know that you don’t have to insert yourself into every conflict. If you give your kids the tools and skills to work through things, and they do so successfully–EVEN IF THEY RESORT TO PHYSICALITY AT TIMES–you do not need to mete out justice in the aftermath.

Of course, if you really want the full lowdown on how all this works, you have to buy Gunc’s book. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 all cover this process in detail.

A reader recently wrote into the Gay Uncle for some advice. Apparently, her five year old daughter Ariel has been having a tough time at school recently, acting out toward her teacher with stubbornness, willful disregard, and temper tantrums. The (skin) breaking point was reached this week when the girl bit the teacher on the wrist. Searching for a way to try to communicate her displeasure, the mom sat her child down and told her that, “Miss Robin loves you, but if you keep being mean to her she might stop liking you.” That night, mommy felt guilty that she was destroying her daughter’s fragile self-esteem, chugged three glasses of wine, confessed to Gunc, and asked for help.

The general G.U. take on talking to kids is this: be positive, set up realistic expectations and repercussions in advance, and by all means tell the truth. Sadly, this statement fails on all counts. It offers criticism but no constructive pathways for resolving the problem; it’s reactive and overblown instead of proscriptive and specific; and most importantly, it’s just not true. As a preschool teacher for 11 years, the Gay Uncle knows the classroom gospel: the job isn’t about liking (or especially loving) any of the kids in your class, it’s about treating them all fairly and helping them through things, which means providing the illusion that you care and want to help, regardless of their behavior. It was rarely the kids who acted out against Gunc that he actually disliked–the kids who freaked out, lunged, and had to be restrained. These were the kids who were clearly struggling and needed his help most. (It was more often the kids who were indulged, whiny, bossy, bitchy, bullying, or manipulative that goaded him into fits of hatred.) Moreover, statements like this–what the Gay Uncle likes to pitch into the category of “Not Nice”–are weak and ill-defined, both of which are meaningless to young kids, who need things to be concrete and connected to the situation at hand.

So what to do instead? Well, since the kid is 5, it seems she should be capable of having a discussion about what happened, going through the responses and labeling them appropriate or inappropriate, and coming up with some solutions that don’t involve trying to chaw a chunk out of Miss Robin’s arm. Since a tantrum–and biting, for that matter–are just about always atypical responses to emotional overload/exhaustion, and thus require room for the child to freak out and work through them without any further input, some part of the solution might involve expressing an understanding that the child is going through tumultuous time, and allowing parents and teachers to give her room to do so without trying to solve for it, lest they end up exacerbating the situation. (See GUG Chapter 8, “Pouring Water on a Grease Fire: Tantrums” for expert advice on how and why this works.) Finally, given the fact that making mistakes and testing boundaries is how young children figure out how the world works, kids need to be imbued with an understanding that–short of shanking their brother or intentionally pulling the legs off the family pet–if they fuck up, the people around them will continue to be there for them. This is particularly true of their primary caregivers–parents, teachers, babysitters. It’s not about liking, or loving. it’s about these people doing their job of helping kids develop. Oh, and make sure Miss Robin is up to date on her shots.

While in Alaska last week, giving a reading from his stellar book The Gay Uncle”s Guide to Parenting, Gunc had the opportunity to engage in a Q&A with some parents up in The Last Frontier. Turns out that they generally have the same questions as folks in the lower 48 (though they tend to have more bear meat in their freezers).

One universalizable issue that came up up north revolved around playdates. In a small community like Anchorage””where everyone seems to know each other, and where (like everywhere) some folks are annoying, intolerant, or insane””parents worried about engaging their kids in friendships with children whose parents they didn”t personally like.

You read it here first. The G.U. sayeth: You are not required to be friends with the parents of your child”s peers. In fact, it can be beneficial to forego connections to them and let your kids make friends ON THEIR OWN. Why? How? Click on over to his weekly MOMLOGIC column to discover five killer reasons.

The Gay Uncle returned home from Alaska to find that a backlog of magazines had piled up in his absence. Being compulsive, he spent a good portion of the weekend catching up. And lo and behold, he discovered a piece in The New Yorker all about little childrens. It concerns a series of experiments designed to test kids’ ability to control their impulses and delay gratification, and shows that this is an excellent predictor of success later in life. The Gay Uncle obviously knew this already, but it was good to see proof of the benefits of not indulging a kid’s every whim and desire, and helping them to understand the utility of planning, waiting, and reserving resources for future use (and the costs of not doing so) spelled out and proven in a clear (and often humorous) way. In keeping with the G.U. credo–which posits that it’s never too late to make a change–the piece also indicates that just because you have a child with weak impulse control or you’ve been incapable of helping them figure things out by setting clear limits and providing and following through on repercussions thus far that your kid is doomed to a life of poor choices. It actually advocates for overtly instructing kids on these relevant skills and helping them see the positive outcomes. Given his dabbling in understanding the teenage brain–which includes discussions with Harvard Med School faculty Neuroscientists, as well as ongoing contact with many of his preschool students, who are now teens–Gunc can only say that providing neural pathways that foster impulse control now when your child is young will pay major dividends later, when their frontal lobe–the control center for risk management and cost/benefit analysis–needs all the help it can get. Plan ahead, parents!

This week in his MOMLOGIC column, The Gay Uncle teaches you how to (respectfully) staunch the flow of garbagey grandmotherly gifts. Check it out.

The Gay Uncle is safely home from Alaska. And he wants to share some knowledge with you all regarding the struggles parents suffer through up there in our nation’s last frontier. Here’s a list he collected from his new friends in the extreme Pacific NorthWest. He wants folks to feel free to add others if they’re up there and feel he missed something important.

-Too cold to play outside
-Too dark – can’t see on the playground
-Seasonal Affect Disorder Extreme: kids are impacted by the sunrise/sunset times and can’t sleep/sleep too much
-Not enough vitamin D (see too dark): seasonal rickets, etc.
-Crappy produce that’s expensive, requiring a default to canned options; variety is not great; organics are hideously expensive and all the organic stuff we get in winter is shipped and nasty when it gets here
-Everything costs a ton
-It truly seems that everyone knows everyone
-We have a winter festival at the end of February – one can go on the Spin & Puke at -10F and see what happens.
-Transition/displacement (military families, slope workers who are 3 weeks on/1 week off, for instance – either the kids or their friends are constantly moving)
-Moose right outside the door – can’t leave the house on time
-People try to give teachers home-canned salmon as a gift
-When we read “Little Bear”, we have to give the caveat that real bears don’t ask their mothers for hats, and that real bears will eat you.
-On fourth of July, it’s not dark enough to see the fireworks very well. It mostly looks like some light poles are on fire.
-If you try to walk on the coast (off the trail), you can sink in the tidal mud. And die.
-Eagles all over the place (they are scavengers and aggressive)
-We have actual Belugas. Baby Belugas, too. Right in town. Which requires singing that blasted song all the time.
-No “snow days”. Even when we got 12″ of snow in 24 hours.

Just in time for Mother’s Day, here’s a link to an article the Gay Uncle just published about his own mommy. It was supposed to be called, “My Mother is Trying to Out-Gay Me”, but the Advocate had their own ideas for the title (and this illustration). Check it out.

When the Gay Uncle was younger, he had a Canadian friend who possessed an intriguing verbal tic. Whenever he’d use an idiomatic expression, he’d curtail it: skipping the second half, and substituting in the ever so Canuck term, “Eh?” So, for example, when discussing the difficulty of forcing someone to do something, he might come out with, “You can lead a horse to water, eh?” Or when commenting on the superiority of the sure thing, he might opine, “A bird in the hand, eh?” Why is Gunc plaguing you with this information? Because it’s Mother’s Day, and as we all know from personal experience, and/or from watching Schoolhouse Rock, most of the great inventions that ushered in our excellent modern era–including The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting–were born of maternal desperation. In other words, “Necessity’s the mother, eh?”

The G.U. is celebrating Mother’s Day exactly as he should: far away from any parents or kids, in an inn in rural Alaska. But that doesn’t mean he’s not thinking of all you mommies out there. And to you, he raises his Bloody Mary and says, “Thank you! (Eh?)” Without you and your need for his expertise, he wouldn’t have a career. And his life would be boring, empty, and meaningless.

Happy Mother’s Day.

What does it look like in Alaska at 11:30 p.m. in May? Just like this. That’s right, while it’s nearly midnight here, the purple mountains still loom majestically in the daylight, birds twitter, and people are awake and out walking around the lake or fixing their roofs. It’s amazing that the kids can get into any trouble here at all this time of year, since they have no cover of darkness under which to operate. Of course, the Gay Uncle supposes that the opposite is probably true on the other side of the annual spectrum, and that during the long Alaskan winter it’s dark all the time, and there’s nothing for the teens to do but fuck.

The Gay Uncle had a spectacular time at the Jewish Education Center preschool in Anchorage Alaska yesterday (frozenchosen.org) He spent the morning hanging out with the little frontiersmen and frontierswomen, talking about tundra and dinosaurs, and answering their questions about what the hell he was doing at their school. (Gunc: “Good question, Jedediah.”)

Then, that evening, he returned to the school, and took his place up on the Bimah (Altar, for you Goyim) and proceeded to read, make snarky wisecracks, and answer parents’ and teachers’ excellent and honest questions for a couple hours (“What do you do if one of your children is extremely manipulative?” “How do I keep the Kindergartners from ganging up on me?”) He then signed and sold a couple cases of books, which, as far as he can tell, means that he now has influence over about 10% of the state’s population. He looks forward to seeing how this plays out during the next gubernatorial election.