Actually Pickle, "wah wah wah" is crying and complaining and you seem to over look the fact that I'm NOT the one complaining but rather responding to other's complaints.
WRONG!!! have you ever seen charlie brown? It sounds like you have not because then you would not have made that comment. When the adults spoke on charlie brown all you heard was "wah wah wah wah" not crying. Just talking that he only paid attention to a few words here and there. When a person rambles on and on, there is less likely hood of most people paying attention.
I don't think there was Charlie Brown on TV when FS and I were kids. My sister who is 46 got a Charlie Brown book when she was little, maybe 5 or so? And that was *my* exposure to it. So maybe also FS never realized there was audio. Personally, I also didn't understand the "wah wah wah" part.
When I looked it up charlie brown has been around since the 50's in cartoon and since the early 60's on TV. FS might be too old to remember charlie brown if she was in her mid 70's now, which I get the feeling she is not.
The wah wah part makes sense if you have seen charlie brown which I thought was a common reference to people who grew up in the the US.
I watched every Charlie Brown special there was, including A Charlie Brown Xmas, am quite familiar with how the adults sound, and clearly and unqusttionably interpreted the post as stating that people were whining. Inserting the arguments that one side made made that perfectly clear. In Charlie Brown, the parents were always incomprehensible. Sorry, but I view this as an ex post facto attempt to justify an offensive post.
AFAIK, the Charlie Brown noise is usually transcribed as MWA MWA or GWA GWA.
. We also "discussed" why one doesn't pick flowers in a park, what it means to be allergic to dogs (which was why I was in the park and not upstairs in his house with THE DOG) and also learned two songs in English. We go over counting in English and Hebrew all the time, and also colors and words beginning with various sounds as a prelude to learning letters. We lie on our backs on the grass and look up at clouds and make up stories about each cloud. I tell him parashat hashavua stories like I used to tell his mother, and he knows already that David in his class is the name of a king as is Shlomo. Etc. etc. etc.
We get all "warm and cozy" by sitting together and talking, not reading out loud.
I don't want to hijack this very important super long thread, but, I NEED help in what things to talk about with kids. What do you tell them when discussing why we don't pick flowers in the park, I don't know why myself, it's just not right, what do you tell them though? What stories do you make up about clouds? There's so much to talk about to connect with them, I just need guidance with what and how, I am soooooo unimaginative and not naturally good with children.
Quck answers as I'm running to a meeting more later.
I don't know any rabbonim who don't say that a man has chiyuv of limud torah daily, there are differences of opinions how much time he has to devote to it as a minumum.
I had no idea that charlie brown was a TV program, I have only seen the comic strips in the newspapers. The "specials" were long after I left america in the early 1970s and on my visits I'd never seen them (Im not exactly there "holiday time" vis a vis non jewish holidays). And in the early cartoons the Wah wah wah is crying (BTW for those of you who aren't old enough to remember the newspaper comic strips). That was my reference. Thanks for the correction. Never knew there was an audio.
Idea for kids - wow I could go on forever on that one. Here are a few off the top of my head as I see the door opening and people entering.
1) clouds - shapes are like what? animals? people? What is the ribono shel olam trying to tell us through those shapes? What are the messages?
2) flowers - you don't pick as they don't grow back. Thats' a whole discussion on sustainability (don't use THAT word with a three year old but the concept they get!) and nature and what the difference is between hurting (bending a flower) and pulling out the roots. And that leads to the concept of roots, what are roots? What are they good for? Do people have roots? Roots you can't see? Do roots give a feeling of shayachus to a place. Can you have "roots" to people like what you feel for aba and ima? What are people roots as opposed to flower roots? And why would you want to take the flower to your home so that only YOU can see it while if you leave it in the park then EVERYONE can see it and that leads to a discussion about YOUR desires vis a vis doing something good for everyone (which is why we don't buy cut flowers, only small flowerpots in our household) and responsibility for the Klal.
Just off the top of my head, on hour's discussion that I had with my grandson.
I haven't read either of the threads, but in case anyone's interested, my fourteen-year-old daughter and her eleven-year-old friend are currently running a day camp for twenty kids aged 3-8. The price is the equivalent of $1.50 per child for expenses. The kids have fun, the mothers get a break, my teen is keeping busy - what could be better? (to be honest, I have sent my kids to "real" camps as well, for various reasons. But I'm just saying that sometimes keeping little kids happy can be very simple.) I haven't read either of the threads, but in case anyone's interested, my fourteen-year-old daughter and her eleven-year-old friend are currently running a day camp for twenty kids aged 3-8. The price is the equivalent of $1.50 per child for expenses. The kids have fun, the mothers get a break, my teen is keeping busy - what could be better? (to be honest, I have sent my kids to "real" camps as well, for various reasons. But I'm just saying that sometimes keeping little kids happy can be very simple.)
Shabbat thanks for the link. It was enough to listen for twenty seconds. OK now I got it. The charlie brown reference was an insult to my long posts. Thank you whoever posted that insult. You don't have to read what I write if you don't like it and find it too long. Just skip. it's a free country.
Ideas for talking with kids - I have them galore if you want pointers.
Saw, as usual you said it short, sweet and to the point.
And with all joking aside, 90% of the posts here that weren't being facitious were really about the same thing.
Jewish and individual family Priorities. Double standards. Communal pressure based on a state of things that began to solve problems and situations that no longer exist (camp for all to get them out of the city in the 50s as summers were epidemics. No air conditioners which made it too hot to sit in schoolrooms and learn or play during the hot summers, etc.). Sustainable lifestyles. A feeling of entitlement that is bolstered by communal standards projected as "absolute" which allow people to ask for zedoko for things with no shame which in the past such people asking for such things with the lifestyle that they have today would have been considered as beyond the pale. the practical role of torah learning as part of daily life.
Etc.
Oh and to the poster who wrote that my list of things that I do or other friends of mine do on a daily basis doesn't include "learning torah" - here's a head's up. That was a list for WOMEN. And as far as I know women aren't required to "learn torah". Not on a daily basis and not at all.
If you want a list for men, well that's a different story but that wasn't what I was writing.
BTW, just wanted to say that while I was so proud of Friedasima a few pages back bringing up the priority of making time for husbands to learn, there are times, stretches, whether weeks or months, when a little extra time at home is needed. Usually during homework/bedtime when kids are little, or a new baby comes, and that's not a bad thing, fathers doing some parenting. Kids do need to see their fathers, after all. So no one should beat herself up for needing some extra time for help, but as a 50-50 shita under all circumstances? Go back to that post I'm referring to.
Certainly there are times that a father has to be home extra! Certainly after a woman gives birth, certainly if children are ill or mother is ill, certainly if there is a problem at home. I remember hearing over and over that during the week I was around three when I was learning to say shma my father who worked very late hours and then went straight to a shiur at the time would come home early from work to be there when my mother put me to sleep so that he would help me learn to say my shma by heart. which meant missing his shiur that week beause it was in the city near work at that time.
I was told that I learned it within a week and then he went back to his normal schedule. So yes, there are always justified reasons. But somehow if you remember that limud torah is a priority, then even if it doesn't always work out in practice, it's always there on top of the list in potential to go back to being practice when the "spceical situation" or "problem" has passed.
