“You were a child once, too”

I was nudging around online and just happened upon this excellent article by Tom Junod from a Nov. 1998 issue of Esquire Magazine here

You have to understand that I’m from Pittsburgh, where Mr. Rogers is a revered institution, and I once had the great good fortune to meet Fred and Joanne Rogers at one of my parent’s Christmas Eve parties (Yes, we lived in Mr. Rogers Neighborhood) and he wasn’t a hero of mine at that time, but he became a hero of mine when I would watch his show with Max and Charlie when they were very young. And what I recall most about meeting Fred (he insisted that people call him “Fred”) was how very much in person he was the same character he portrayed on his TV show. I mean, it was the same guy! Which I thought was especially cool, here’s this guy in my parent’s home on Christmas Eve, known to everyone at that party and just about everyone around the world and he was no different from the way he was on screen, the same tone of voice, the same polite, happy interest in everyone around him, the same guileless grace. Anyway, I love Mr. Rogers as he’s portrayed here.
In the article Junod writes that Fred Rogers was asked by an association of ophthalmologists to write a chapter in a book they were preparing on how to make kids be less afraid of visits to their offices. Junod writes,
“An ophthalmologist is a doctor who takes care of the eyes. Sometimes, ophthalmologists have to take care of the eyes of children, and some children get very scared, because children know that their world disappears when their eyes close, and they can be afraid that the ophthalmologists will make their eyes close forever. The ophthalmologists did not want to scare children, so they asked Mister Rogers for help, and Mister Rogers agreed to write a chapter for a book the ophthalmologists were putting together–a chapter about what other ophthalmologists could do to calm the children who came to their offices. Because Mister Rogers is such a busy man, however, he could not write the chapter himself, and he asked a woman who worked for him to write it instead. She worked very hard at writing the chapter, until one day she showed what she had written to Mister Rogers, who read it and crossed it all out and wrote a sentence addressed directly to the doctors who would be reading it: ‘You were a child once, too.’
And that’s how the chapter began.”
“You were a child once, too.” I think that about sums up our book and our inspiration for writing it. As Marcy said just the other day, “Sometimes I just like to be held.” and don’t we all. I wish Fred were still around. We could use his example in scary times like these.

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.