Caitlin Manicom

After two hot, sweaty months in Beijing, I am returning home to  Canada. Parting with Beijing, however, will be more bitter than it will be sweet. This city is a constant adventure. Saying goodbye to it has never been easy.

When I moved away five years ago, I had just finished 10th grade at the International School of Beijing. I sobbed against the airplane window as the plane left the tarmac and hated my parents for taking me away from the city I had lived in the longest, the place I loved the best. Adjusting to Canada – its public schools, its blistering winters, and its spaces that seemed to be devoid of any kind of history or culture – was far harder than settling in to China to had been. Nonetheless, I eventually gave up resenting my parents, and Canada became home. 

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Reducing Your Carbon Footprint 

Last year’s quality crisis in the toy industry saw babies swallowing magnets, scathing reports of playthings covered in toxic paint and huge shipments of toys being returned to their countries of origin. Since children are renowned for putting anything and everything into their mouths, ensuring that the toys they play with are safe and toxin-free is essential. 

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Getting It Done Without Tears & Strife 

Many countries celebrated Father’s Day a couple of weeks ago; male parenting was applauded and all the nice things fathers do were given recognition. For much of the year, however, children spend more time lamenting the embarrassing things that both their mothers and fathers do than embracing parental quirks. 

In a recent Washington Post article,  Donna Scaramastra Gorman, a tbjkids contributing writer, bemoans the type of father she had growing up – the extremely intelligent, overly helpful kind.  
When asked for the answer to a simple math equation, her engineer father would pull out his physics textbooks to explain the complex science behind her seemingly straightforward question.  

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Bringing Taste Buds to Life

Both my parents were raised in small towns in Ontario, Canada. While my mother’s father was a formidable baker and my dad’s parents grew fresh ingredients on their farm, neither was offered a particularly stimulating dining experience in their youth. Luckily, growing up in a gastronomic wasteland instilled them with a pressing need to try new – and generally delicious – food. 

Growing up in Russia, Pakistan and China, my brothers and I were taught to finish everything on our plates, and to try everything - no matter how unidentified and unappealing - at least once. Upon returning to Canada each summer we were shocked by the squeamish palates of our relatives – one aunt made separate meals to accommodate to her son’s ‘sensitive’ tastes - and bored by the bland food we ate at family reunions; a dainty sprinkling of sea salt cannot compare to Pakistani spices and Sichuan peppers.  

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 After only having watched half an hour of Amir Bar-Lev’s  documentary My Child Could Paint That, I turned the TV off in disgust. The film depicts 4-year old painter Marla Olmstead’s rise to celebrity status. While she grins at the camera, refuses to be interviewed or sloppily spreads globs of paint around a canvas larger than her “pint-sized Pollock” body, the darker truth surrounding her artistic ‘genius’ is revealed.

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I once dated a guy who compulsively tested and re-tested his IQ with online quizzes. When his scores rose each week I assumed he was a self-involved cheater, not a genius. Maybe I should have given him due credit for finding loopholes in the system. Perhaps cracking the codes of the interweb is today’s claim to genius status – after all, who needs complex symphonies and mind-numbingly difficult mathematical equations?

The truth is, society searches for composers and mathematicians – everyone wants to be reminded that works of staggering genius exist. Geniuses inspire us, Nathan Birch stresses in a recent article, as well as make the general public bemoan their horribly average mental capacity.

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A Summer Sunday Brunch for the Whole Family at J.W. Marriot Hotel

Looking for something to do this weekend? Join the newly opened JW Marriot Hotel  celebrates the beginning of summer at their Asia Bistro with a special family-friendly day this Sunday, June 1!

Family dining can be difficult. Siblings fight over where they want to eat, picky children limit restaurant options and a lack of babysitters makes dining without the kids a difficult affair. Asia Bistro promises to create a restaurant outing that is fun for the whole family.

The Bistro will set up special areas devoted to making sure that children enjoy themselves. Two on-site nannies will keep the kids entertained, as adults enjoy a special Sunday brunch on the outdoor terrace replete with Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese and French cuisine, as well as a Beijng Duck section.

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I have something to confess. As an only (and very spoiled) child for the first two and a half years of my life, I was less than ecstatic when my little brother was born. While my mother breast-fed the wrinkly creature I threw wooden blocks at his head and stomped around the backyard wailing, “Caitlin don’t get ‘nuff ‘tention.” And when my parents were busy cooing over his diapers, I pounded sticky couscous to the kitchen floor so that they were forced to deal with my mess. If only Dr. Harvey Karp had been around to give my parents a lesson in dealing with the primitive species that is an angry toddler.

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