{"id":1629,"date":"2012-01-16T19:10:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T01:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=1629"},"modified":"2012-01-16T20:25:27","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T02:25:27","slug":"mlk-day-and-piggy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=1629","title":{"rendered":"MLK Day and Piggy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today, I experienced several of what better moms call “teaching moments.” These are, apparently, times that occur naturally throughout the day with youngsters such as mine. Spirited young men <\/em>need teaching moments to understand the world around them. In lieu of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I tried to stay present and open myself to these opportunities. I’m pretty sure I failed.<\/div>\n
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The first such moment occurred at the playground. We were lucky enough to enjoy unseasonably warm weather for January (66 degrees and sunny!) and combined with the fact that it has been bitterly cold and snowy for the past week plus <\/em>a holiday, the playground was packed with youth just itching\u00a0<\/em>to be taught a lesson or two. As I watched the big kids trampling over the littles, I pulled Milo aside to instill some good old MLK life lessons\u00a0into his budding young brain. You know, something about peace and patience and equality for all. Even the pants-poopers.<\/div>\n
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He nodded and ran off, into the crowd of playing adults and children. And 20 minutes later, as I basked in the sun, sitting on the ground with Emil happily cooing and smiling, Oliver running circles around me singing, “Twy to GIT me, Mom!” I was jostled by a startling battle-cry. I froze, along with the rest of the 6,783,849 other parents, trying to decipher meaning from the war cry. And then, I saw them. A veritable army of young brutes. Eight or nine of them, tearing through the crowds, pushing aside all who may dare slow their attack. Milo at the lead. I watched as my four-year-old, eyes fierce as a hurricane, whooped and jumped, climbed and ran, fast as a flash, boys his size and bigger at his heels. And suddenly, I was mesmerized. Transported back to 9th-grade English when we dissected William Golding’s\u00a0Lord of the Flies… “The creature was a party of boys, marching…”\u00a0<\/em>Savages. My kids are savages.<\/div>\n
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“The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.”<\/em><\/div>\n
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\"DSC_0045\"“‘Maybe there is a beast….maybe it’s only us.'”<\/em>– William Golding,\u00a0Lord of the Flies<\/em><\/div>\n
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Sorry, Dr. King. I’m working on it.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I experienced several of what better moms call “teaching moments.” These are, apparently, times that occur naturally throughout the day with youngsters such as mine. Spirited young men need teaching moments to understand the world around them. In lieu of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I tried to stay present and open myself to … Continue reading “MLK Day and Piggy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[69,68],"class_list":["post-1629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","tag-brothers","tag-jump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1629"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1637,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629\/revisions\/1637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}