Brother's Day

Growing up, I sometimes asked my parents why there wasn't a Children's Day.  We celebrated Mother's Day and Father's Day, even Grandparents' Day, why not a Kids' Day?  My Dad's crusty reply was "Everyday is Kids' Day."

Now that I'm a parent, I understand where my Dad was coming from.  We put so much time and energy into our children that it seems there's little left over for ourselves.  Yet, with conventional parenting, children have very little say in all of that energy spent towards them.  All 365 of those "Kids Days" don't feel very special, with the exception of a birthday.

So when Andy asked me, "Can we have a Kid's Day?", I replied "Why Not?"  I've been influenced by Joyce Fetteroll's advice: "Don't drop all of your parenting rules at once.  Just say yes more!"

Today we celebrated our first Brother's Day.   Andy wanted to go fishing at Loch Lomond, pack a cooler full of Popsicles (what else?), play Magic the Gathering at home and eat popcorn.

He caught two little Bluegill and one small Bass.  Mike gutted them at home and fried them up in butter.  Andy actually tried a bite.  We picked through the bones with our fingers.  I found the fish moist, flaky and surprisingly sweet!

Speaking of sweet, I am growing wary of the sugar part of our unschooling experiment.  Andy asked for two more boxes of Popsicles--one box of the high-fructose corn syrup kind--and he bought Skittles at the lake today.  In all, he had three Popsicles on Brother's Day.  That's three more than I'd like him to eat.  The good news is that he decided he doesn't like the "Air Head" artificial-everything Popsicles, after all.