Hi Dadima

Let's go on the choo-choo train

Busy few weeks as the summer came to a close. Lots of things rolling around in my head. Including trains. Lots of choo-choo trains. And, if you can, would you join me in helping out my good friend, John Shayeb?

Anisa and her Dadima hanging out

I was lucky enough to grow up with my grandparents living nearby. They were a connection to extended family in Pakistan, a glimpse into my parents’ life growing up in Karachi. Dada and Dadima were also an extra set of hands for my parents as they balanced raising the three of us with managing a growing business.

These days, watching Anisa light up with joy when she sees one of her grandparents is fantastic. Frankly, watching the grandparents giggle along with Baby Girl is even better. While I noticed this dynamic with my nieces as they grew up, watching it unfold in real-time, in our home, with our daughter, underscores how life-giving the grandparent/grandchild relationship is for everyone.

Realizing there was little data looking at the demographic trends of grandparents, The Economist commissioned a set of research looking at UN age and population data with models of kinship structures in each country. “As a share of the population [grandparents] have risen from 17% to 20%,” the researchers found. “And the ratio of grandparents to children under 15 has vaulted from 0.46 in 1960 to 0.8 today.”

Last year, YouGov found that, “A large majority of Americans say their grandparents have been either very (39%) or somewhat (33%) influential in their lives.” And, “A similar share of grandparents say that in their lives their grandchildren have been very (43%) or somewhat (29%) influential.”

In Kentucky Is My Fate, bell hooks wrote that, “To be a person of integrity one had to always tell the truth and always assume responsibility for your actions.” It was her maternal grandmother, Baba, that taught her, “To live these values then, I would, she taught, need to learn courage—the courage of my convictions, the courage to own mistakes and make reparation, the courage to take a stand.”

Unsurprisingly, in the US, grandmothers are playing a critical role in the provision of childcare. With, “Four in 5 working families that rely on grandma to provide childcare,” the Harris Poll reported that these families felt, “they’d be lost without the support they get from their children’s grandmother.”

There are obvious upsides to this trend. First of all, like me, more kids get a direct window to their family’s history through their relationships with their grandparents. And, the childcare coverage is indisputable, as the Economist wrote, “According to one survey, 50% of very young children, 35% of primary-school-aged children and 20% of teens in America spend time with their grandparent in a typical week.”

Which, according to one survey that looked at American census data, has a real economic impact as those, “Living within 25 miles of a grandmother raised the labour-force participation rate for married women with small children by 4-10 percentage points.”

Depending on one’s relationship with their parents or in-laws, parenting with the grandparents nearby may also make things a bit less lonely. An issue recently raised by the U.S. Surgeon General in a new advisory that found, “33% of parents reporting high levels of stress in the past month compared to 20% of other adults. … Children of parents with mental health conditions may face heightened risks for symptoms of depression and anxiety and for earlier onset, recurrence, and prolonged functional impairment from mental health conditions.”

My point here is not that grandparents should not be a substitute for affordable, high quality, child care. But since, as a society, we don’t seem to give an eff about affordable, high quality, child care, lucky are those who have grandparents in the vicinity.

Growing up, we knew that when we stayed at Dada and Dadima’s, we knew there was a decent chance we would get fresh doughnuts the next morning from the Winchell’s down the street. And, there was also a pretty good chance Dada would pile us into the car and we would drive 45 minutes to Monterey to run across every swing, slide and structure at Dennis the Menace Park.

Which brings me to the wonder of choo-choo trains.

“I love the trains”

Hank Ketcham, creator of Dennis the Menace and resident of nearby Carmel, helped design and fund the park. He was there on February 15, 1956, when the locomotive, SP1285, was officially installed and dedicated as a play structure. Months later, the park officially opened on November 17, and SP1285 served as the centerpiece of this new facility.

For 50 years, kids (including me and my sisters) were able to climb over, under and through the locomotive. It was, hands down, the coolest playground structure of my childhood. In 2012, the city was forced to close access to the train because of mandatory safety standards. (Yea, I didn’t break anything or die on the locomotive, but then again, those were flintier times.)

But the legend of choo-choo trains lives on.

After a couple days on the road I came back to find Patty Shukla’s Choo Choo Train on repeat. With regular interruptions for Baby Shark, of course. (I am going to leave the science of nursery rhymes for another post.)

As soon as Baby Girl hears the opening toot of the train in the song, she gets this look of pure joy, puts her head down just a smidge, bites her lower lip, and starts to bounce along to the beat while she waves her arms, jumps her little jumps and sings along.

“Daddy!,” she squeals at me. “Dance!”

Before I know it, all of us are dancing along to Choo Choo Train. Something that was not on my bingo card four years ago.

Mark Oliver, writing in Fatherly, has a goofy dude-centric explanation for why toddlers love trains. “The reason is testosterone,” he writes” According to the research, “The higher the baby’s testosterone, they found, the more time the baby spent staring at things that roll.”

He is kind enough to conclude that, “If a girl gets into trains and balls at a young age, it’ll have an even bigger impact on her STEM success.”

Well, Baby Girl is already dunking, so thanks for the advice, Mark. Besides, I like to think we are past Simone de Beauvoir’s prescient analysis of the world when she wrote in The Second Sex, "Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself.”

Meanwhile, according to Claire McAteer, “Constructing tracks, arranging train cars, envisioning scenarios, and enacting them during train play can stimulate cognitive development and enhance critical thinking, spatial analysis, and decision-making skills. Collaborative play with toy trains could help encourage teamwork, negotiation, and collaboration, as children share resources, ideas, and play together.” Which makes sense after seeing Anisa play with trains with her day care buddy, Julian.

In any case, last weekend, Baby Girl and I headed to the Tilden Park Steam Train. Once she heard the whistle from the parking lot, she was as focused as I had ever seen. Patiently waited while I bought our tickets, stood in line for the train to come around the bend as she chatted away with the friendly attendants, “Train! Train! Train!”

We hopped into a car near the front, the whistle blew and we were off. A fabulous time was had by all.

The next morning, when she woke up, the first thing she said, “Daddy, I love the trains.”

Reading

For my high-falootin’ Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellowship, read a bunch of interesting stuff over the last month, Beauvoir and hooks, above, among them. Just finished Neil Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane and starting to dig into Renee Diresta’s Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turns Lies Into Reality.

Watching

Very happy my management idol Jackson Lamb is back for Slow Horses Season Two. This WSJ profile of Mick Herron, the author of the books behind the show is fantastic.

FX’s The Old Man, starring Jeff Bridges, is incredibly well written, beautifully shot and amazingly acted

Listening

Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson do a fun podcast, Where Everyone Knows Your Name. This particular episode with the legendary music producer Rick Rubin, is pretty awesome.