Wednesday, February 15, 2012

When your kids love the stuff you loved as a kid


Here's Max, watching Tom and Jerry for the first time and loving it. I got the biggest kick out of watching him, because I was remembering what a laugh riot I thought the show was when I was a kid.

It is really awesome seeing your kids enjoy stuff that you enjoyed as a kid. Like me back then, Max also adores spin art (we have the Crayola Color Twister), Play-Doh (purple only, of course), long baths, giggling, being pushed on the swing for ridiculously long periods of time and as much ice-cream as his belly can hold (although I liked vanilla and he is all chocolate, all the time). Like me back then, Sabrina is into dance class (I was ballet, she's hip-hop), tennis, reading, wearing boy clothes, writing stories, making jewelry from kits and eating anything and everything carbs. She just started loving the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary, my childhood fave.

I passed along my wanderlust gene to both kids, who love to go on planes and stay in hotel rooms. I also gave them the gene that makes you want to jump up and down like crazy on your bed when your mom asks you to go to sleep. I dunno, maybe that's ALL kids.

A few weeks ago, I was at Sabrina's gym and I saw a little girl gleefully do a cartwheel. I wished Max could experience the joys of doing cartwheels. And then I caught myself: I could never do a cartwheel as a kid. And it sure didn't stop me from having a great childhood.

What sort of things do your kids like that you also liked as a kid?

10 comments:

  1. My 4 year old son loves Tom & Jerry just as much as I did when I was his age. And he's also into the old Pink Panther and Wacky Races cartoons - thank you Boomerang. My son also just got into Battling Tops, which my hubs used to play with his brothers when he was younger....so we're totally re-discovering all the fun things from our childhood today thru him and my Hello Kitty obsessed daughter.

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  2. Books! The Velveteen Rabbit, The Snowy Day, The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, the Ramona books, Mary Poppins, Pippi Longstocking, the Little House books, Dr Dolittle! Some of them are, uhhh, more racist or more crappily written than I recalled from my own youth. But some -- TALKIN TO YOU, BEVERLY CLEARY -- are even *better* than I remember. My kids just roll their eyes when I moon about how moving it is to read beloved books of my childhood to them. They think I'm a huge sap. But they love the books.

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  3. Me too, Marjorie! I've only got a 10-month-old, but when I read her Where's Spot? or Goodnight Moon she gets so excited! I love it. I think it's just going to get better and better. And Ellen, I never could do cartwheels but I *thought* I could. My mom told me when I was about 14 that all those cartwheels I remembered doing as a little kid weren't really cartwheels. I wish she'd kept quiet about that!

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  4. It needs to be said: Max has awesome hair.

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  5. I've found some of the cartoons I used to watch On Demand and have had a lot of fun showing them to the boys.
    Sam and Max really like the original Scooby Doo cartoon and The Smurfs. They've also seen some old Disney shorts as well.

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  6. I love Max's laugh! I watched Tom & Jerry as a kid, too, and the Ramona books are STILL my favorite (I still have my originals and am collecting the ones I don't have). It's great when your kids enjoy the same things you do! :)

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  7. I showed my daughter some of my favorite "I Love Lucy" episodes and (except for being upset that "everything is in gray") she *loved* the slapstick comedy bits. I loved watching it as a kid too and am so glad I could share this with her.

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  8. Hi Ellen! It's Stacey! Austin has just discovered the Muppet Show. I bought him a DVD collection and we watch one every day when I get home from work and laugh like crazy at the Swedish Chef!!

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  9. When Chelsea was in hospital as a baby I used to sing (badly) "I could show you the world" from Aladdin to her, I love that it is her fave song and that she loves the movie. The girls love Oliver and Sound of Music (the first movie I ever saw) and West Side Story (which my mom introduced me to). I know I made them watch initially but now they seem to love them too.

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  10. Give me the Bad Parenting award right now, I guess. I loved the 3 Stooges, and so did my dad. Well, guess who watches them with the grandkids? Good old gramps--he's been doing it for years, too. So far, though, they aren't conking each other over the head and they seem to be able to separate eye poking on TV and in real life--everyone still has two!

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Thanks for sharing!



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