Brooklyn…home of great kids.
As we say in our book and every time we speak, “Millions of people are raising great kids.” We had ample proof of that last weekend when we were in New York, staying with our friends Bill and Jeanne and their two great kids, Kirstin and Liam.
We’ve know Bill and Jeanne since Bill and Marcy were classmates at the Corcoran School of Art. In fact, it was Bill who introduced me to Marcy, but that’s another story for another book, perhaps. We’ve remained good friends over the years, occasionally vacationing together at Jeanne’s family’s beach house, occasionally staying with them at their loft (this is an understatement) on N 8th Street in Williamsburg.
We’ve always been huge fans of Kirstin’s; she’s a remarkably poised young lady of 14 who has just been accepted into the New York High School of the Performing Arts. She’s clearly a very talented and creative person who is studying acting, music and voice which will hopefully be even more enhanced by her new school. You have to appreciate that a high school student in NYC getting admitted to the High School of the Performing Arts is sort of like your child getting admitted to Harvard, or more likely the Yale School of Drama…it’s a really big deal and reflects much hard work and effort on the part of the accepted student. Kirsten is very excited by this development but also seems to realize that she’s going to have to work really diligently to excel in her new environment…as I said, a remarkably poised young woman.
Liam is Kirstin’s younger brother and the two of them are wonderfully close and loving together. Liam is 11 and still on the small side for his age (he just hasn’t gotten his growth spurt yet) but he has the heart of a lion. On a beautiful Sunday with a bright blue sky Marcy and I went to watch Liam’s team play in their baseball league on a field near Prospect Park, which has always been sacred ground for us as we used to go their with Max when he was an infant and we lived just down the street in our loft at 6th Avenue and Atlantic.
The opposing team had some smoking good pitchers, but Liam’s team held their own thru a low scoring game until the 5th inning (out of 6 innings), when a screaming grounder by Liam triggered a rally that eventually won the game with a score of 7 to 1. Liam is challenged with pretty severe allergies and springtime in the park is a wearying environment for him, but he put everything he had into his play, also catching a grounder and throwing out the runner at first at one point.
While we were watching the game Bill introduced us to his friend, Ollie, whose oldest daughter, Mikela, plays on Liam’s team. Ollie had his youngest daughter Mia, 2 years old, with him and watching his interactions with her as well as Mia’s interactions with Bill just gave me a very warm feeling inside. Mia demonstrated the same confidence and lack of fear of adults that Max exhibited at that age, wandering around behind the dugout, safely separated from her big sister by a fence, gumming foods her dad had brought with them and generally acting like she felt she owned the place. She spent a lot of time in Ollie’s arms but was also comfortable in Bill’s arms and knows him well enough to consider him her friend.
Being surrounded by younger children than our own this weekend was a real treat, but that isn’t always guaranteed. Without reading our book, Bill and Jeanne and Ollie and his wife are raising just the kind of kids we raised, kids who are confident and curious about the world and who are very Yes oriented in their behaviors, outlook and interactions with others.
Last Thursday my great friend Rebecca Ryan did a podcast interview with me for her Next Generation series that will be available here shortly, and she said something when we were finished that resonated with me after our fabulous weekend in NYC. She said that our book is a brief compendium of our parenting experiences that would serve as a new guide for people whose childhood was not one they wanted to visit on their own children. I know that there are millions of parents out there like Bill and Jeanne and Ollie and his wife who are raising great kids, who have given this a lot of thought and who have great empathy for their children and are doing a tremendous job. But there are also parents or parents to be who are searching for a simple blueprint for how to give their kids a childhood that is better than their own might have been…and really, we wrote The Yes Child for those parents, because isn’t that simply what all of us would like to do?
PS The Bill mentioned here is my friend, Bill Harvey of William X Harvey Design Studios. He played bass with Max and Robt and Robin and me in the most recent Urban verbs show at the 930 Club in DC last May and did the book cover logo design for The Yes Child. That concert was recorded by Bob Boilen and can be found on All Songs Considered here.
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2 Comments
“Millions of people raise great kids.” | The Yes Child on June 15th, 2009
[...] it seemed to me that there’s a larger issue here, at least for me. Meeting kids like Emma, Kirstin and Liam and living with Max and Charlie for so many years has given me great hope for the future. And it is [...]
KrisBelucci on June 2nd, 2009
Great post! Just wanted to let you know you have a new subscriber- me!