Bully Mom Attacks!!!

So, it turns out that my son’s bully has come by his shitty behaviour honestly. Via Bully Mom.

 I was accosted by Bully Mom shortly after she confronted Professor D about me calling her kid a bully (see the previous blog for all the gory details). I wasn’t sure if she’d have the stones to go after me, given that Professor D is a mild-mannered sort, and I am not.

Well holy shit was I wrong.

I was at the club, packing up Pre-Schooler N’s sundries when I spied Bully Mom marching towards me with awful purpose blazing in her eyes. Here we go, I thought, putting a relaxed smile on my face and feeling confident that there was nothing this spoiled, middle-aged tennis doyenne could say to upset me in any real way.

Again, holy shit.

I think we’ve all met people who are prepared to go nuclear in order to win an argument: combative sorts who will immediately lunge for the jugular hoping for a quick and easy kill. Bully Mom is one of those people, and I seriously underestimated her. Teeth bared (literally), she played the one card I had never expected – something that my own relatively privileged life, surrounded by progressive sorts in a large urban community, had protected me from over the last couple of decades. But she played it:

The gay male paedophile card.

Oh, she was smart enough to avoid the ‘P’ word. Instead, she went with ‘Inappropriate.’ A lot.

In fact, I lost track of how many times she used that word. But there it was, over and over, as she gleefully informed me that not only did she feel I had been ‘inappropriate’ with children, but that she had been approached by other parents, and indeed some of the club counselors, who confided in her that they felt I had been ‘inappropriate’ with some of the children.

I won’t lie, she’d scored a hit. A palpable hit. Perhaps not a K/O, but enough that I felt deeply shaken.

Because for us gay men, who have for decades been portrayed by conservatives and religious zealots as raging child molesters, this is the cruelest, most effective attack of all. People still lose their jobs, their families and their lives over even the slightest innuendo of this nature.

I was frankly terrified.

I was also incredibly pissed off. I demanded that Bully Mom explain what she meant, and exactly what I was being accused of. I told her that these were serious allegations, and that she should make a formal complaint to the club management so it could be discussed. I wanted to know who had said these things (other than herself), what had been said, and when these occurrences supposedly took place.

Bully Mom just smiled smugly, and told me she couldn’t divulge her sources. Then she then went on to say that they all knew Pre-Schooler N was under the care of a child psychologist, and had been bullying other children at the club. She said that other parents and councilors had confided this to her. Again she refused to elaborate or provide examples.

Now, full disclosure here. We did in fact take Pre-Schooler N to a child behavioural specialist. He was having tantrums over what seemed to be silly things:  not getting a train wheel to look perfect in a drawing, or making his complex block constructions stay upright. It was always over something he couldn’t do properly, and it seemed that his upsets were out of proportion with the situation.

So we saw a very nice lady three times, who gave us suggestions for diffusing these situations before they became tantrums. It was really helpful, and that was that.

Being the kind man that he is, Professor D had previously offered Bully Mom the contact information for the therapist, in relation to her son’s physical attacks upon the other children at the club. Bully Mom rudely refused, and I remember thinking it was potentially risky to disclose our son’s visits with a therapist.

It was interesting, seeing Bully Mom’s strategy unfold in deflecting from her little bully’s actions and raising suspicion regarding one of his many victims and myself. At this point, I knew I had to cut the conversation short.

“We’re done here,” I said, in a horribly patronizing voice that I use when cornered. She kept going, though, spitting out more ‘inappropriates’ at me while retreating. “Sweetie, we’re done. I’m done,” I repeated, in full impervious queen mode, hoping to salvage some of my dignity. Anything to make it seem that she hadn’t frightened me.

But she had. She’d frightened the hell out of me.

I resolved never to set foot at the club again. The idea that this woman had started a vicious whisper campaign with her Mean Girl friends made me sick to my stomach. What if these rumours evolved, as rumours tend to? What could happen to me, to my family?

It was here that Professor D really showed his colours. He marched down to the club to speak with the managers, with some of the other parents, and, finally, with Bully Mom herself. He told them all that this sort of whisper campaign was dangerous, and that it was not to continue. The club managers were amazing, reassuring him that they had heard no complaints regarding Pre-Schooler N or myself. That they had witnessed nothing untoward. That the councilors had said nothing. That this sort of rumour-mongering was absolutely unacceptable.

Bully Mom was, naturally, less receptive. She did back off a little, claiming she had never meant ‘inappropriate’ in THAT way.

We all know what it means when a gay man is accused of being inappropriate with children. And this woman knew exactly what she was insinuating when she said it over and over and over again to me. But I think she got the message to stop, and that it wouldn’t be tolerated or go unchallenged. Perhaps that’s the best we can hope for.

A few good things did arise out of this ugliness. When they found out the nature of this conflict, Professor D’s parents rallied around me in a way I never would have expected. “We would fight for you to hell and back,” his mother said. And I had no idea they felt that way. I was deeply, deeply touched.

Bully Mom did win, though. I’ll never return to the club, for fear of re-igniting the whisper campaign she created. Next year we’ll likely go to the village’s other club, a smaller affair with local kids instead of someone like Bully Mom who doesn’t care who they hurt in their quest for diversion from their own lives. And that sucks.

But sometimes the bad guys win. Sometimes the bullies succeed. And sometimes the rest of us have to retreat in order to survive. We gay folks think we're safe, here in lovely Canada. But we need to remember that we're not, and that we need to be cautious and protective and proactive. My mortification at what Bully Mom did paralyzed me -- which of course is what she intended. Professor D fought back, which is what we all need to do. Still. Every damn day.

However, I know that Karma can be a cantankerous bitch who has a habit of rewarding bullies with a big heaping of righteous shit. And I have faith that Bully Mom and her odious offspring have that glorious day to look forward to.

The Bullying Begins

With kindergarten approaching in the fall, and pre-schooler N becoming more cognizant of how people behave toward him, I’ve been mentally and emotionally preparing myself for the first instance of bullying.

And it’s arrived, right on time.

Actually, it’s a little bit early, as school doesn’t actually begin for another month. But we’ve been members of a summer club in the small Quebec village where we live — a two-month gathering of well-heeled tennis aficionados and their children.

We resisted joining at first. The club has a reputation for being kind of elitist, and we really had no interest in hobnobbing with the tennis set.

Nothing against tennis, but a committed klutz like myself has no business anywhere near a paved surface and steel-framed rackets.

The club has wonderful programs for kids, though, and pre-schooler N’s cousins have been going since birth. And most of the members are down-to-earth and welcoming. So join we did, and that’s led us to our first taste of bullies and the parents who enable them.

Sadly, the boy in question was one of my son’s favourite playmates last summer. Sure, he was a little overly rambunctious, but he was full of energy and naughty fun that other boys gravitate toward. But this year, it was clear from the get-go that things with this child were different.

He was hitting. A lot. In fact, most of the kids in his age group were being attacked on a daily basis with fists, feet, canoe paddles, sticks and rocks. And pre-schooler N was no exception.

At first, my son was diplomatic about it. He said he still loved the boy in question, but that he wished he wouldn’t hit him so much. But as the violence escalated, even my cheerful little guy began to dread seeing the boy. Other parents had approached this kid’s mom (including Professor D), only to be rebuffed. She maintained that all boys hit and that the kids would sort it out themselves. She said her son’s psychologist agreed with this. She was resolved to do absolutely nothing.

I, on the other hand, was resolved to keep my son away from the boy. I wanted him to know that I would stick up for him, and that I would do what I could to protect him from violence and bullying. That worked for about two weeks.

Then shit hit the fan. The boy was chasing after my son, hitting him, kicking sand at him and generally tormenting him. My heart broke when pre-schooler N looked up at me, his brows knit together, and asked why this boy was so mean to him. I told him that the boy was being a bit of a bully, but that we loved him and would play with him again when he learned to stop hitting.

Apparently, either the kid or his babysitter overheard this, and relayed it the boy’s mother.

She completely lost her shit.

She confronted Professor D, claiming I had told her son he was a bully, and made him cry and miss his canoe ride. Professor D, being the mild-mannered, kind-hearted sort that he is, had no idea how to respond to this charge.

I still have yet to be accosted by her, but I’m pretty sure it’s coming. Being a little more bitter (and a lot more bitchy) than Professor D, she may be a little more hesitant to approach me. But I’m not counting on it.

The whole thing has left pre-schooler N feeling anxious about being at the club, and being around the boy. It’s his first taste of bullying, and it mystifies him. He has no idea how to balance his affection and enthusiasm for the boy with his anxiety of being hit.

Of course, these things rarely come singly, and we got our second taste of bullying soon after, courtesy of an extended family member’s daughter. She’s an older girl, blazingly smart, but with a history of what her parents call “oppositional behaviour.” They’ve spent a lot of love, time and energy trying to negotiate with her, support her, offer alternate behaviours and explain how to be a nicer person. It's not been really effective thus far.  

I’ve generally kept my son clear of her, knowing her tendency to tease and exclude the younger kids. But each year that we see her, we give it another shot. This year that meant my son getting kicked, hard, in the stomach, because she didn’t want the younger kids around her. We of course brought this up with one of the parents, who confessed that physical violence was something that had been happening with their child. We were invited to handle it ourselves, as nothing the parents said would do anything to help.

It felt like a surrender on their part.

So I called pre-schooler N over, and told him to keep clear of the girl — that she didn’t want younger kids around, and that she hits, so to just stay away.

It was when I uttered the words “she hits” that the room imploded with a joint intake of breaths. I was immediately chastised for this, saying that I was making it sound as though the kid was bad, or dangerous. That I shouldn’t say things like that. The message we were getting was loud and clear: suck it up.

It’s brought quite a lot of things into clear focus for me. It’s always been pretty obvious that our wee family was outside of the inner circle — something that admittedly began before adopting our son.

I’ve been removed from wedding parties (my hair was dyed), told that my laugh was too exuberant, that I was too embarrassing to be introduced to family friends and remonstrated for generally acting too gay. All from extended family members. And I dealt with it, because there was no other option. Because to admit that each insult was a kill-shot to my dignity and self-worth was the only resistance I had left.

But watching violence against my son be set aside for fear of hurting a bully’s feelings hasn’t just made me furious.

It’s made me feel terrified.

Because it’s only the beginning. Soon my son is going to notice that he’s treated differently by his extended family. Soon he’s going to question why it’s okay for some kids to hurt others, but not okay for him to do so. And soon I’m going to have to explain to him that there are too many reasons for all of this:

Like racism.

And homophobia.

And effeminaphobia.

And just plain shitty people.

What do I do? Do I fight? Do I quietly encourage him to lay low and hope it stops? Do I hold him as close as I can and hope he makes it through childhood with his own self-worth intact?

I don’t know. I’m utterly, hopelessly lost, and there’s no map here. There’s no apparent solution.

And god only knows how it will all end up.

Sorry Son, But Jesus Hates Us

Mohammed too. And Yahweh. Oh, and let’s not forget the second-tier cast of sky captains: Bahá’u’lláh, Zoroaster and Abraham also think we suck. Hell, even Buddha wasn’t crazy about the idea of his monks hooking up for a little post-meditation frolic with each other.

In fact, most of this planet’s religions spent a lot of time basically shitting all over our existence. I suppose it’s a handy distraction; having a nice, clear cut case of Heathen Sinners to focus on instead of examining their own filthy little impulses.

Thank heaven for the few pockets of homo-friendly creeds. Anglicans seem largely cool with us, and some branches of Hinduism have that whole ‘third gender’ queer acceptance going on. Wiccans of course don’t care who you fuck: man, woman, goat, tree… it’s all good.

But that doesn’t make the reality of religious opposition to homosexuality any less depressing – particularly when the fanatic types spend so much of their free time lobbying governments to put us heretics in our proper place.

It also doesn’t make it terribly easy to teach my son to be accepting of other cultures whose beliefs dictate that his fathers go directly to hell without passing Go.

Because like it or not, if someone is wearing special headgear, jewellery, weapons or face masks, it’s very clear that their religion plays a significant role in their life. And as a gay male, I have no way of knowing how safe I or my son is involving myself with that person. They’re telegraphing that their religious beliefs are fervent enough to mean wearing a big-ass crucifix, a special hat or a full-on beekeeper’s outfit. Does that mean their fervor extends to most religions’ outright condemnation of LGBT folks?

I know that my own history with evangelical christianity plays a big role in my protective instincts. In Grade 10, I fell in love with the beautiful blond boy who sat next to me in art class. He had startling blue eyes and a slightly bad-boy air – all the things that spell disaster to the frail heart of a closeted homo. When he asked me to go to youth group with him one evening, I was ecstatic. I had no idea what to expect, thinking perhaps we’d be playing floor hockey or maybe watching videos of frying eggs while an ominous voiceover tells us that this is what our brains look like on drugs.

It was when the first pimply youth broke out in tongues, spewing equal parts gibberish and saliva while the other kids wailed “Praise Jesus!” that I realized something was a little off. Three hours later, I had committed my soul to Christ, renounced sins of the flesh and realized that hanging on to the new love of my life meant hiding even deeper in the closet that I had before.

Every Sunday I sat through hour hours of wailing, shouting and weeping, as the pastor railed against Jews, Catholics and pop music – the order frequently varied. But the big climax was always the same: The Gays.

The Gays wanted our children. The Gays were actually hosts for demons. The Gays needed to submit to the punishment of AIDS that Jesus had so kindly sent in response to a good christian’s prayers.

Now, years later, I can see that it was my own self-hatred that kept me there. My parents were atheists, but they hated The Gays too. Hell, I hated The Gays – but most importantly, I hated myself for being one.

Homosexuality has become THE cause that unites all these fundamentalist religions. Each may believe that the other is destined for hellfire, but they can all at least agree that The Gays will suffer most of all.

I’d think it was laughable if it wasn’t still so freakin’ dangerous to me and my ilk.

Recently, a doctor in Michigan refused to care for a newborn child, because its parents were lesbians. She cited her religion, saying she had “prayed on it” and that it became clear that the Hippocratic Oath didn’t apply to the six day old daughter of two women. And, thus far, she has gone unpunished.

Because it’s her religion.

Three years ago my son attended a daycare where one of the workers wore several layers of headscarves and other paraphernalia. The woman never made eye contact with me, would only respond in short sentences to me, and basically shunned me. At first I thought perhaps this was just her personality, until I saw her warmth and openness with the other moms and dads. Sure, I felt like shit, but I also felt deep alarm at how she may treat my son because of his ‘sinful’ same-sex parents.

The thing is, I really don’t trust religions. None of them. I think it’s a dangerous way of controlling people, of channeling their frustrations and fomenting hatreds towards the disenfranchised, of keeping power in the hands of a few hungry hands. And when I see people making showy public statements regarding their religion, I automatically check myself, knowing there’s a pretty solid chance that my community is on their shit list.

And that makes it hard to encourage curiosity and celebration of other cultures in my son. I’m not sure how to explain to him that he needs to celebrate their beliefs, when so often those convictions dictate the oppression of his family.

Or how a seemingly gentle, lovely man named Jesus talked about loving one’s neighbour and not judging, but apparently added a codicil advocating the persecution of gays and ownership of semi-automatic weapons after his death.

Or how women are somehow magically capable of corrupting a man’s soul if she sits beside him on an airplane or exposes so much as an ankle

Or how men are so intrinsically savage that they will be inspired to sexually attack said ankle.

The reality is that we LGBTers have made – and are still making – huge leaps in the quest for acceptance and equality in North America and other parts of the world. But most countries on this planet still outlaw our very existence, dealing out harsh punishments and social pariahism if we venture out from the closet. And religion is the tool used to mete it out.

So sure, son, we need to accept other cultures and creeds – it’s the right thing to do. But we need to be aware that they’re not always playing by the same rule book as us, and that even the most banal church lady may already be visualizing your parents roasting in hades.

But someday, I really hope that things like this are less rare than they are today:

David Hockney Can Suck My Gay Parenting Activist Dick.

So David Hockney thinks I’m boring. Not only that, but the septuagenarian artist snarked this week that I and my LGBT parenting peers were single-handedly destroying gay culture.

Wow. If I’d known I wielded that much power, I would have begun my campaign against men’s plaid shorty-shorts back when they made their first unfortunate appearance at a Pride Parade.

 Hockney made these hackneyed comments (see what I did there?) earlier this week, while bemoaning the demise of the glorious gay times: drugs, booze, sex and ciggies (he’s also a big pro-smoking advocate). He mocks me and my ilk for wanting to be normal, to be accepted, to fit in.

Well, newsflash Hock: we gay parents don’t fit in. Not even a little.

You know where I would fit in? On Church Street, or, really, anywhere else in the downtown Toronto area. It’s easy to be a gay man there. Sure we might catch the occasional flak from Oshawa tourists who have strayed too far from the Skydome, but by and large we’re as ubiquitous as leather chaps at a Dyke march.

But try parking your ass at a daycare parenting meeting, where some parents (and occasionally the administration) equate male homosexuality with pedophilia, and treat you like a Weight Watchers alumni set loose at the church’s annual bake sale.

Trust me, there are enough crucifixes and headscarves proudly on display to let you know that religion plays an important role in these families’ lives – and my people are generally not amongst the Almighty’s chosen ones, no matter what the ecclesiastic flavour. After all, nothing unites God’s diverse flocks faster than the shared hatred of homos.

Also interesting when filling out medical forms. Or registering my son for school. Or visiting the dentist. Or taking him to sit on Santa’s knee. Or trying to arrange playdates with the suspicious mother of your son’s favourite friend.

Fit in? As if.

If my sole desire in life was to fit in, I would be sitting on a Church Street patio, drinking martinis and debating whether Madonna is a brave pioneer for middle-aged women’s sexuality, or a tacky has-been who should seriously reconsider wearing a matador outfit in public.

If all I wanted was normalcy in my life, I would avoid all family gatherings, and focus on the close group of friends I’ve gathered through the years who don’t make snarky comments, exclude me and mine, or treat non-heteros like second (and frequently, third) class citizens.

I did not become a parent to be normal. I didn’t want to have a life ‘just like everyone else.’ And I certainly didn’t imagine myself to be striving for some sort of heteronormative lifestyle. How utterly stupid to even conceive of such a thing.

I became a parent because I love kids. I love watching them grow. I love teaching them. I love learning from them. And I wanted to be a part of that in a close, intimate way.

I will state unequivocally that it is harder to be a gay parent. You never fit in. You are never totally accepted. You will never be seen as legitimate. You will hopefully be tolerated, occasionally supported and rarely celebrated. 

You fight for every right, and dread the inevitable opposition from religious nuts, bigots and just plain ignorant folk. You out yourself in potentially hostile situations every time your kid says “Papa” and “Daddy” to yourself and your partner in public. Hell, when you’re as femmie as I am, just holding your child’s hand in public is enough to get stares and the occasional sneer.

Gay parenting is not for the faint of heart, or for those looking for normalcy and an easy life. It is activism, every goddamn day, in the most unexpected forums and environments. You don’t want to do it? Mazel tov. Whatever floats your boat. More power to ye.

But holy hell, do not try to tell me that some famous artist rolling around in mounds of cash and his own self-importance has any say over whether or not I am killing gay culture.

I am gay culture, you absolute bastard, and if you don’t like it, you can suck my gay parenting activist dick until you spit rainbows and fart unicorn piss.  

Sorry Virginia, There is no Sanity Clause

But there used to be. Seriously, what the absolute fuck is going on in that godforsaken state? Granted, the standard of sanity was already set fairly low, what with its reputation for gun fanatics, school shootings, removal of protections for LGBT folks and anti-choice legislation. Toss in a healthy dose of climate-change deniers and it’s clear that America’s tenth state is populated largely by mouth breathers and inbred families with plenty of ‘Uncle Daddies’ and ‘Cousin Mommies.’

And now there’s this latest push to legalize refusal of hospital care, education, emergency services or emergency pedicures to poofters and carpet munchers that is so extreme that it could almost be satire.

But it isn’t.

Virginia Governor Bob Mcdonnell’s recent removal of state protection towards LGBT citizens rescinds an amendment made by previous Governor Tim Kaine in crafting in the state’s anti-discrimination laws. Bye bye sanity clause, hello “No Gays Allowed” signs.

It’s hard to imagine any sane legislators looking at the international uproar over Indiana’s recent anti-gay legal push and thinking “Yeah, let’s get us some of that there! Those corporate boycotts and expressions of rage against legislated bigotry are sure to make our lives better!”

Idiots.

The scary thing is that Virginia’s further descent into born-again nutjob territory has managed to make Indiana’s efforts to ‘protect’ Christian businesses from gay customers look positively quaint in comparison.

And so we cross yet another safe travel destination off our list.

Now, I’ll admit, Virginia didn’t exactly rank high up on our list of desirable vacation spots. It’s humid, dull and populated by people who think it conceivable that there were dinosaurs present at the nativity (what with the earth only being 6000 years old). But then again, Professor D’s mom and her relatives are all from this inbred mecca, and there have been several visits over the years for family events, funerals etc.

No more. Can’t chance it with a kid in tow. I shudder to imagine the potential disaster of two gay dads walking hand-in-hand with their adopted son through a mall. Or through immigration. Or anywhere, really.

Harder to stomach are more desirable destinations like Russia, Venezuela, Peru, Egypt or any non-British Caribbean vacation hotspot. A week of Jamaican sun just isn’t worth the chance at 10 years hard labour, nor does a fortnight in Barbados outweigh the high potential of lifelong imprisonment. 

No thanks.

There are still some safe places, of course. Apparently Cuba is pretty cool with LGBT folks, while Mexico balances out the homophobia of Chiapas with relative safe places like Riviera Maya and Puerto Vallarta.

And of course there’s always Amsterdam, where tulips and dykes of all sorts are celebrated.

But what about the rest of the world? I can’t help but think it’s going to be a little tricky helping Pre-Schooler N with geography homework, explaining that we can’t go to so many places simply because we’re a Queer family. He’s already fascinated with maps and globes, asking about different countries and regions. It’s only a matter of time before he starts asking why we can’t go to so many of the places his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins can (and do visit).

Which opens up a whole new ball of tangled personal politics: how to explain to my son that the support we experience from our friends and families occasionally does not extend to those freezing winter months when one just simply MUST escape the snow for a little holiday. Of course it’s a shame that the homos aren’t allowed here too, but who could argue with this fifty cent margarita!?

I guess I can’t. Nor do I wish to. At some point my kid’s going to learn that even in the current best-case scenarios, we are still very much second-class citizens. And he, like so many LGBT, Aboriginal, Jewish or African folk before him, will still have to occasionally watch his friends and family hand money over to people and institutions who want us to cease to exist. For a cheap margarita. Or a steal-of-a-deal last minute week in the sun. Or just because they don’t actually give a shit, when it comes right down to it.

So fuck you Virginia. You killed the sanity clause, you inbred hillbilly Grinch. 

Oh, and your state flag is too tacky for words. Nyah.

La Dolce Idiota (and Gabbana too)

“How were we built?”

Unlike so many of the unexpected questions posed by my son (“what if grown-ups wore diapers,” or my personal favourite: “How does Thomas the Train poop?”), this is one I’m sort of prepared to answer. All kids eventually wonder where they came from, and, given Pre-Schooler N’s complicated lineage, there’s been quite a lot of discussion, research and introspection involved in providing a response that will satisfy without adding further confusion.

Plus, at least it wasn’t the granddaddy of dreaded queries: “Why don’t I have a mommy.” That one terrifies me, frankly. So this seemed like a nice, easy beginning. I can’t have him believing he came out of my stomach, no matter how many stretch marks seem to indicate the possibility.

“We grow inside a lady’s tummy, just like Auntie H’s baby did before he was born.”

“Oh.”

Several beats.

Then the return to my child’s latest ablutionary fascination: “Do we wear diapers in there?”                                                                                                     

Easy enough, really. Certainly nothing on the scale of poor Elton John, under attack from gay designer duo Dolce and Gabanna this week, who blithely opined that children conceived through IVF were “synthetic” and unnatural.

Now, as an adoptive parent, I truly haven’t formulated much of an opinion when it comes to In Vitro Fertilization. It was never an option in my quest to become a parent, given my reluctance to pass down a genetic predisposition to insanity, bitterness and turkey-waddle neck. But it was the designers’ view that adoption is cruel to the baby’s mother that did stick with me.

Because I get it. I really do. It is cruel that a child is taken from its mother. And certainly our own country has lots of history when it comes to purloining babies from their First Nations mothers throughout the 60s, 70s and even 80s. It’s cruel and inhumane. But it’s also, in my opinion, absolutely necessary.

Because as sad as such an event is, I believe it is far sadder to leave a child in an environment rife with drugs, abuse both physical and emotional, and squalid neglect. And that’s precisely where Pre-Schooler N would be if the province hadn't stepped in and removed him at birth from a woman whose nightmarish existence had already been visited upon 5 other innocent kids, each one now living safely away from her, but scarred forever by the experience.

I met Pre-Schooler N’s birth parents just once, while we were still just his foster family. The birth mother was frenetic and clearly unbalanced at this supervised visit in the Social Services building. It was an exercise in alarm and panic, watching her jamming food into N’s 14 month old mouth until he choked before trying to take him down the hall on her own. It was the second time she had seen him since his birth, given her penchant for cancelling scheduled visits that coincided with frequent topples off the sobriety wagon. The birth father was there as well: an abusive giant, glowering silently while filming the entire event on his iPhone – an action that haunts me to this day.

That is where my happy, cheerful and loving boy might have ended up. And that is the greatest cruelty of all.

I've rarely gotten any direct flak from others critical of our adopting a First Nations boy. But I shave certainly heard the occasional rumblings, passed on by ‘concerned’ friends and neighbours, delighted to witness any emotional fallout from these second-hand salvos.

But it means nothing to me. Not a damn bit.

Not because I know that we did the right thing in adopting our son and giving him a permanent home, avoiding the turmoil of being passed from foster home to foster home or, worse still, back to his dangerous birth parents.  

Nor because my biological grandfather was First Nations, rendering any race-related arguments moot. And certainly not because I’d rather suck shit out of a cat’s asshole than try to live up to a multi-millionaire clothing designer’s idea of normal.

It was the right thing to do because my son smiles all the time. And laughs with great bellyfuls of air and mirth. And touches my face tenderly at night before falling asleep. It was right because he is the most important thing in our lives, and we would do anything to keep him safe.

And there’s nothing synthetic or cruel about that at all.

Just plain wonderful.

My son's Valentine to me

Pussy Parenting

Everyone has a different parenting style. Some let their kids get away with murder, some make Colonel Klink look like Captain Kangaroo. I’m trying to fall somewhere in between.

I was raised by relatively strict parents. It’s true they didn’t like me much, given the whole mincing effeminacy thing so highly regarded by Prairie folk whose exposure to homosexuality was generally relegated to Paul Lynd on Hollywood Squares or a visit to the hairdresser. But I do truthfully believe that my mother and father’s insistence on good manners, on being responsible for one’s words and actions, would have been constant even if I were the strapping young boyo they had hoped for.

Thus I grew up knowing how to speak with my elders, how to behave in shops and restaurants, and with a fair understanding that any diversion from these manners would mean swift and harsh remonstrance.

You know, spanking.

Now, to be very clear, I do not believe in hitting my kid. I don’t want to teach him that the strongest person is automatically right. I don’t want him to think that we settle disagreements through inflicting pain – that establishing physical supremacy is the way to win.

I don’t want him to thrill at the subjugation of others, be they people or animals or even bugs.

I don’t want him to be the sort of kid who gets his jollies picking on those weaker than himself.

I want him to be kind.

Of course, other parents don’t necessarily share this philosophy. Just recently we attended a rare birthday party along with several other boys of Pre-Schooler N’s age. I noticed some pretty pronounced differences.

For one thing, several of the boys seemed obsessed with guns. They ran around with various toy representations of the instruments of war, making those charming ‘pew pew’ sounds while they chased each other about the room.

My son has little awareness of guns. We made it very clear early on that our family doesn’t play with guns – or “shooters” as he calls them. He’s certainly curious when he spots them in a store, but he’s mercifully quick to hand me the iPad if one of the videos he’s watching on Netflix or Youtube inadvertently shows one. He knows they’re off limits.

“They’re boys,” said one mother to me, when I explained my position. “They turn everything into guns even if they’re never seen one.”

Which of course, is utterly ridiculous. If every child were so psychically gifted to mimic a device completely outside of their field of experience, I would be up to my neck in lollipop makers and automatic butt-wiping machines (my son hates that not-so-fresh feeling).

It’s not relegated to boys, of course. There are several pre-adolescent girls that seem intent on making life a living hell for all those around them. They order their parents around, they scream, they’re rude and they treat adults like their personal servants. So it’s definitely a gender-neutral attitude towards letting your kids basically do whatever the fuck they want.

And I really, really hate it.

I hate it because it makes me dislike the kids themselves, rather than placing the blame firmly at their parents’ wimpy feet.

I hate it because my own kid sees their shitty behaviour, and has enough sense of fairness to question why he gets in trouble while they go un-corrected.

I hate it because it makes it that much harder to keep Pre-Schooler N in line, while people around me stare quizzically at what they believe to be a non-issue.

I don’t  believe kids can just be left to do what’s natural. They have zero clue how to fairly resolve conflict, how to communicate their needs and frustrations in a socially-acceptable manner or how to generally not be a little asshole when left to their own devices.

"Oh leave them be, they'll work it out on their own."

Bullshit. Hasn’t anyone read Lord of the Flies for fuck’s sake?

 Kids need parenting, structure and, yes, discipline. They need to know who’s in charge to keep a sense of security. They like being liked, and knowing that they’re approved of and enjoyed. Mix that with tons of love, affection and appreciation and they’re happier than pigs in poop.

And certainly happier than a pig’s head stuck on spear.