![]() ![]() She brags about how she used to wear tight dresses to get jobs as a TV weather woman. Diane later tells her daughter it doesn’t matter that her bag was on another flight because, “I don’t think wants you in clothes.”ĭiane wears some cleavage-baring outfits. And it’s suggested that “romance” is on the menu when these two overworked parents have a chance to get away. (She’s wearing conservative pajamas bottoms and a spaghetti strap top.) They flirt and kiss. Those admissions pave the way for a renewal of his relationship with Alice.ĭiane also encourages her daughter to spend as much time working on her marriage as she does tending to her children. Diane confronts her husband about his selfishness, and Artie admits that he’s made some mistakes. And she comes to grip with the reality that her overwrought approach to everything in her children’s lives might not be the best way to do things after all.įor his part, Artie is forced to do some growing and stretching too. Along the way, she and her father also (in a poignant way) mend years of damage that his self-absorbed ways have unintentionally inflicted. But in the end she realizes that her parents’ influence has been a positive one. And, truth be told, she has some reason to feel that way. But we see them begin to adapt, even having a few breakthrough moments, such as experiencing the joy of playing a messy, old-fashioned game of Kick the Can.Īlice is deeply fearful of her parents undermining the work she and Phil have done. Lessons can be learned by watching both approaches.Īt first their grandparents prove disorienting to the kids. That, however, has resulted in three very demanding kiddos who always have to have things exactly their way.Īrtie and Diane, in contrast, prize a more fluid, free-form life experience. The rub? These two pairs of adults have vastly different ideas of what that looks like.Īlice and Phil’s approach majors in eliminating risk and tending to their children’s every need. What was that about parental guidance, again?Īlice and Phil want the best for their children. As for Diane, well, she lands somewhere between “free spirit” and “loose cannon” on the discipline spectrum.īut when Phil gets unexpectedly invited to a conference where he might receive an award for his high-tech “R Life” smart-house invention, Artie and Diane are the only ones who can take care of the kids on short notice. For 35 years, his career took him this way and that, with wife Diane and Alice always in tow, always playing second fiddle to Dad’s vocational dreams. No, Alice’s parents-the other grandparents, the ones who are only called in when utterly, absolutely necessary, and probably not even then-raised her a bit … differently.Īrtie Decker is the longtime announcer for the Fresno Grizzlies, a minor league baseball team. That’s not how Alice herself was raised, of course. No raising of voices when angry.įor Alice and Phil, then, parenting represents an endlessly demanding task, lest their precious flowers experience any damage, any disappointment, any discouragement that might prevent them from reaching full, magnificent bloom. No coloring inside the lines (lest anyone’s imagination be impaired). No hot dogs at the games (lest anyone get cancer). No real meat in their “soysages.” No outs or keeping score at Pee Wee baseball (lest anyone feel bad). No real eggs in the kids’ “eggless” salad sandwiches. And it includes making conversation with Carl, an invisible kangaroo who is the companion of Barker, a wild, willful terror who never goes anywhere without Carl-and woe to anyone who acts as if the kangaroo isn’t there.Īnd then there are the restrictions. It includes taking middle child Turner, an oft-bullied stutterer, to speech therapy, where he’s not actually required to speak, lest the demand inflict more damage on his psyche. ![]() It includes making sure 12-year-old Harper gets violin practice done so she can ace an audition to get into a prestigious prep school that will qualify her for Julliard which is the launching pad for a spot in the Berlin Philharmonic. On one hand, they’re so engrossed in their never-ending, boundary-blurring jobs (he’s a high-tech inventor, she’s a website designer for ESPN) that they argue over who needs to put down the smartphone to tend to their three children’s basic needs-like, say, making them breakfast.īut that list of basic needs is longer than it’s ever been. That’s the crux of the conflict in Parental Guidance, a sweet, funny story about what happens when old-school Grandpa and Grandma show up to take care of three coddled-and-sheltered kiddos so that new-school mom and dad can head out of town.Īlice and Phil are the epitome of the contradiction that is parenting in the 21st century. Different generations parent differently. ![]()
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