My Work Here Is Done...

The sixteen-year-old is procrastinating on his eleventh grade homework. He is doing so by reading Scott Sagan's "How to Keep the Bomb from Iran," in the September/October issue ofForeign Affairs.

In this aspect of parenting, at least, my work here is done.

Comments

[save the rustbelt]

If I remember correctly, Foreign Affairs is too small to hide a girlie magazine.

Congratulations, you have done well (unless he is hiding a Gameboy or PDA).

[SqueakyRat]

Give Iran the bomb.

[mickslam]

Nice job Brad.

How does that feel? It has to feel fantastic.

[Bruce Garrett]

Oh that's really wonderful. Be proud.

By the time I was your son's age, I was a voracious news reader too, and at times when I should have been doing something else. I used to put it down to growing up in the news and politics saturated Washington D.C. area. But nowadays I think it was more about growing up with parents who encouraged reading, encouraged my curiosity about the world, and were never stingy about buying me books and newspapers, or giving me time to myself to read.

I recall they seldom read the afternoon paper...we got the Evening Star back in those days...but a paper was brought home every day all the same, pretty much just for me. And it wasn't like it was an assignment or anything. They just knew I liked reading the daily newspaper. So I always got one.

I could never thank them enough for those simple things.

[Darren]

The best thing my parents ever did IMHO was to buy a set of World Book encyclopedias.... I had my nose stuck in those things every chance I got. Once the fire of curiosity is kindled it burns for life.

[Ben V-L]

My work is not done, but I had a glimpse of what Brad describes when my 5 year old brought his dinosaur book to daycare. His buddy had been insisting that T-Rex was the biggest meat-eater, but my son's book had a scale drawing of T-Rex next to Giganatosaurus, showing the latter to be bigger. He presented his evidence, they both agreed it was conclusive, and the matter was settled between them.

[Reality-basedness is good. You have done well, grasshopper.]

[andres]

Brad: Make sure that the kids have plentiful access to National Geographic as well as to Foreign Affairs. After all, the human world has to be learned from the bottom up as well as the top down.

[george 3rd]

Some 30 years from now, the 16 year old's 16 year old will be reading a piece on how to keep the bomb from Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon and Syria et al. But even then, very few people will be drawing the logical line between these countries' desire for the bomb and the US' role in radicalising them to that extreme degree. When your boy understands that stopping the cause is crucial to stopping the effect, then you can pat yourself on the back.