Since all parents are busy giving their children a variant on the same generic style of upbringing it is a truism that every family at some point has to consider when to bite the bullet, take the plunge, climb the mountain. I am talking, of course, about when to embark upon the dreaded and mystical Orlando vacation. Obviously this is mostly for Disneyworld, but I’m advised that now there’s apparently all kinds of other shit there as well.
The topic of the Orlando vacation is not something a good father ever raises himself. The discussion is nearly always thrust upon him by his oldest child, but sometimes you can get surprised while offguard by a meddlesome grandparent, so be cautious.
You may or may not be a Disney fan. I haven’t been as an adult, so I’m not really sure if I am a fan, but regardless of whether you like it or not, the key goal of any father when it comes to Orlando is simple: go to Orlando as many times as you want, but make sure that you only pay for it once. If you personally purchase plane tickets to Orlando three or more times, you’re a horrible failure and, frankly, you’re raising the bar for the rest of us, and the organized dad community is going to have to blacklist you. No more letting you admire our grills and stereo systems and shit like that. You’re getting the Miller Lite in a can at the cookout while we enjoy a Red Hook or Great Lakes brew. Consider yourself warned.
So how to scheme so you only have to pay for it once? You have to try to go at a time when your youngest child is at least 5 or 6 so that they’ll remember it when they are older and don’t try to claim that you photoshopped them into Disney vacation pictures to trick them. So the main key is delaying that first visit.
After that, a few years will go by and the youngest will whine about going again, but by then your oldest will be in high school and will think Disney is uncool. So they will do your dirty work for you and put the kibosh on any Orlando vacation for you (this is one of those situations where the oldest mocking out the youngest at the dinner table for wanting to go see Mickey Mouse “like a baby” needs to be deftly ignored by you).
So how to delay the first visit? I could only come up with one solution: Socially retard your oldest child. You need to make your oldest child a giant pussy. When they’re seven years old, tell them how the rollercoasters normally “kill probably three or four people a day” due to “flying offtrack on the hills.” So when they’re eight and Disneyworld comes up you can say “Sure, but are you ready to go on the rollercoaster, yet? We don’t want to go now when you aren’t ready for the rollercoaster, yet!” Normally this will shut them up for at least six months.
This is a strategy you can use in any number of scenarios; not just Disneyworld. A problem a lot of families have is, when going to the movies, the 12-year old wants to go see the PG-13 superhero movie that would completely freak out the 6-year old, whereas the 6-year old is still up for the G rated fare. How to get around this problem? You need to introduce nothing to your 12 year old until absolutely necessary. Stretch Teletubbies out until age 3 (it will be very painful, but worth it in the long run). Sesame Street stays on until age 9. Resist your impulses to share Star Wars and other cool movies with your oldest. That way your oldest will have no problem when you make him go see the latest Winnie-the-Pooh movie at age 9 along with his 3 year old little sister.
A handy guide I use is to THINK MORMON. When it comes to my oldest child, I ask myself “Would Tagg Romney let his son or daughter do this?” If no, I don’t let my oldest do it either.
Of course, the flip side for those of us with 3 children is to make sure that the youngest is raised a little bit ahead of her time. She needs to figure out Spiderman and Batman movies and be ready for the PG-13 slashers by age 8 or 9 at the latest. I’m pretty sure this is why although she’s only 18 months old, my wife is making sure that she has a good handle on most of the swear words out there.
June 27, 2008
June 20, 2008
Roofing It
(Settle down; no, this isn’t a blogpost about a date rape drug. jeez … this is a parenting website for chrissake)
Most of the things that I do with my children tends to fall into two categories. Category One is in the “pure fun” category. Sometimes I’ll just go for a ride on the public transit trains (in Cleveland, we call it The Rapid) with my son just because he loves it. Or we’ll go to the drug store and buy a bunch of licorice or play music and dance or play video games. Category Two is the “crap that has to get done” category: taking them to school, getting clothes on or off; brushing teeth, picking up the playroom, etc.
But like most parents, I try to do things aren’t just fun and aren’t just crap that has to get done (although it doesn’t happen as much as it should). Like most parents, however, one of the things that we do that is fun AND good for them is reading. Early after the birth of our daughter, my wife informed me that, if we were an English class, she was “literature” and I was “grammar.” Translated, this meant that my wife would read to the kids all the time (which she does), but she was looking to me to do the heavy lifting when it came to actually teaching them how to read.
I had some educational training (of dyslexic kids) right after I got out of college, so I just happened to have a professional set of phonics flash cards in my old teaching box. And so when my oldest daughter was three and showed an interest in reading, I started showing her the sounds the cards made and taught her a dozen cards or so and started going over them with her, without thinking about it very much. And then, all of a sudden, I realized that I was using flash cards with my three year old child.
Certainly this crossed the line. Doing this seemed like what we call a “strict liability” offense in the legal profession: if you are using flash cards with your children, it doesn’t matter what your excuse is: the judge doesn’t want to hear it, you’re guilty of overparenting and that’s that. Commercials make fun of behavior like this.
And so I put the flash cards away, intending not to use them, but my daughter requesting the “sound cards” and so I ended up using them 50 or 100 times with her as she was learning to read. Yet another principle of mine out the window.
After 6 or 9 months of enjoying this, she eventually plateau-ed and stopped getting better at reading. It got a tad frustrating for her, so she stopped wanting to try to read, and so it got frustrating for me as well and I’d sometimes nudge her (“come over here and lets finish the cards”). And I think she sensed my frustration and that led her to establish some unfortunate negative associations with reading. What kind of father makes their child dislike reading? The kind that uses flashcards, I guess. I felt awful.
After letting things go for a while, I eventually wanted to start reading in the home again. Thus, I resorted to a parent’s last resort: bribery. Simple candy or toys seemed just too cheap. I wanted to offer something better, and so I said “if you will read to me, I’ll let you read to me on the roof.” This got her attention.
In our old house, we had a screened in side porch that probably ran 10 feet by 18 feet, but there was no house over the porch, so you could climb out of our second story bedroom window onto the lightly pitched porch roof. The trees hid the street. It was actually really really nice. And I could take my 5-year old outside with a book and a bag full of grapes and she’d read for 30 minutes or more. The roof was magic. Her little brother would complain about us getting to go out on the roof, and I explained to him “when you are ready to read, we’ll go out on the roof too.” This was going to be my magic bullet.
But there was a downside (there’s always a downside).
My wife is one of those people that loves a good breeze, the windows always have to be open in the summer unless the air conditioning is on. Unfortunately, some of the screens in our old house were tough to put down. So one day, walking through my bedroom, I heard someone say “Boo.” I whirled around and say no one in the room. I heard laughing and looked out and saw my three year old son, hanging out on the roof by himself. He hadn’t even taken a book out with him. With that incident, my wife brought a swift conclusion to roof reading.
Of course, in our new house, the accessible part of the roof is flat and bigger and really safe. And my four and a half year old son has stalled out on his reading …
Most of the things that I do with my children tends to fall into two categories. Category One is in the “pure fun” category. Sometimes I’ll just go for a ride on the public transit trains (in Cleveland, we call it The Rapid) with my son just because he loves it. Or we’ll go to the drug store and buy a bunch of licorice or play music and dance or play video games. Category Two is the “crap that has to get done” category: taking them to school, getting clothes on or off; brushing teeth, picking up the playroom, etc.
But like most parents, I try to do things aren’t just fun and aren’t just crap that has to get done (although it doesn’t happen as much as it should). Like most parents, however, one of the things that we do that is fun AND good for them is reading. Early after the birth of our daughter, my wife informed me that, if we were an English class, she was “literature” and I was “grammar.” Translated, this meant that my wife would read to the kids all the time (which she does), but she was looking to me to do the heavy lifting when it came to actually teaching them how to read.
I had some educational training (of dyslexic kids) right after I got out of college, so I just happened to have a professional set of phonics flash cards in my old teaching box. And so when my oldest daughter was three and showed an interest in reading, I started showing her the sounds the cards made and taught her a dozen cards or so and started going over them with her, without thinking about it very much. And then, all of a sudden, I realized that I was using flash cards with my three year old child.
Certainly this crossed the line. Doing this seemed like what we call a “strict liability” offense in the legal profession: if you are using flash cards with your children, it doesn’t matter what your excuse is: the judge doesn’t want to hear it, you’re guilty of overparenting and that’s that. Commercials make fun of behavior like this.
And so I put the flash cards away, intending not to use them, but my daughter requesting the “sound cards” and so I ended up using them 50 or 100 times with her as she was learning to read. Yet another principle of mine out the window.
After 6 or 9 months of enjoying this, she eventually plateau-ed and stopped getting better at reading. It got a tad frustrating for her, so she stopped wanting to try to read, and so it got frustrating for me as well and I’d sometimes nudge her (“come over here and lets finish the cards”). And I think she sensed my frustration and that led her to establish some unfortunate negative associations with reading. What kind of father makes their child dislike reading? The kind that uses flashcards, I guess. I felt awful.
After letting things go for a while, I eventually wanted to start reading in the home again. Thus, I resorted to a parent’s last resort: bribery. Simple candy or toys seemed just too cheap. I wanted to offer something better, and so I said “if you will read to me, I’ll let you read to me on the roof.” This got her attention.
In our old house, we had a screened in side porch that probably ran 10 feet by 18 feet, but there was no house over the porch, so you could climb out of our second story bedroom window onto the lightly pitched porch roof. The trees hid the street. It was actually really really nice. And I could take my 5-year old outside with a book and a bag full of grapes and she’d read for 30 minutes or more. The roof was magic. Her little brother would complain about us getting to go out on the roof, and I explained to him “when you are ready to read, we’ll go out on the roof too.” This was going to be my magic bullet.
But there was a downside (there’s always a downside).
My wife is one of those people that loves a good breeze, the windows always have to be open in the summer unless the air conditioning is on. Unfortunately, some of the screens in our old house were tough to put down. So one day, walking through my bedroom, I heard someone say “Boo.” I whirled around and say no one in the room. I heard laughing and looked out and saw my three year old son, hanging out on the roof by himself. He hadn’t even taken a book out with him. With that incident, my wife brought a swift conclusion to roof reading.
Of course, in our new house, the accessible part of the roof is flat and bigger and really safe. And my four and a half year old son has stalled out on his reading …
June 16, 2008
Father's Day
As I hope most of you remembered, it was yesterday. I had a good one this year. After my first few Father’s Days, I began to think that passing down crappy Father’s Day traditions was something that women are really good at. What I’ve now realized, and what new fathers need to know, is that Father’s Day is one of those days that just takes your family a while to get right.
The thing about Father’s Day that still seems just wrong to me is almost too embarrassing to mention because it feels so selfish. What seems wrong is that your wife will do stuff for her dad and you have to do stuff for your dad. It’s like sharing a birthday with a disabled uncle or something and having to go to Chuck E. Cheese for your party at an inappropriate age because that’s what they want to do. You don’t begrudge them: they deserve their happiness. But you kind of feel ripped off. And, I mean, c’mon, it’s not like your dad or you father are still doing any day-to-day parenting, dammit. (Even typing this just seems like inappropriate whining, but at least I was able to get it off my chest somewhere, and my dad and father-in-law are very good about this).
One reason that Father’s Day can be a flop for new dads is that I suspect what happens is that most wives remember doing things for their fathers – picking them flowers; making them pancakes; or buying them ties – and, if their dad was a good actor, they remember that their fathers seemed to like it. So the first few Father’s Days, they just go on autopilot and have the kids do the same stuff that they did, without stepping back to think that maybe their own dad was faking his enjoyment of nasty M&M pancakes they used to make. Another potential pitfall is the actual real budget-busting gift that costs twice as much as you would’ve spent on something (and you’re just paying for it anyway).
But this year, everything was golden. I got to sleep in past 10 a.m.! The kids got me a big jar full of Bottle Caps, my favorite old school candy, and a nice video thank you. And we went to see the Indians and C.C. Sabathia beat the Padres and Greg Maddux. And then I went and bought myself a new grill (the old one was 9 years old and on its last legs, so we were going to get one anyway). That’s quite a day.
The thing about Father’s Day that still seems just wrong to me is almost too embarrassing to mention because it feels so selfish. What seems wrong is that your wife will do stuff for her dad and you have to do stuff for your dad. It’s like sharing a birthday with a disabled uncle or something and having to go to Chuck E. Cheese for your party at an inappropriate age because that’s what they want to do. You don’t begrudge them: they deserve their happiness. But you kind of feel ripped off. And, I mean, c’mon, it’s not like your dad or you father are still doing any day-to-day parenting, dammit. (Even typing this just seems like inappropriate whining, but at least I was able to get it off my chest somewhere, and my dad and father-in-law are very good about this).
One reason that Father’s Day can be a flop for new dads is that I suspect what happens is that most wives remember doing things for their fathers – picking them flowers; making them pancakes; or buying them ties – and, if their dad was a good actor, they remember that their fathers seemed to like it. So the first few Father’s Days, they just go on autopilot and have the kids do the same stuff that they did, without stepping back to think that maybe their own dad was faking his enjoyment of nasty M&M pancakes they used to make. Another potential pitfall is the actual real budget-busting gift that costs twice as much as you would’ve spent on something (and you’re just paying for it anyway).
But this year, everything was golden. I got to sleep in past 10 a.m.! The kids got me a big jar full of Bottle Caps, my favorite old school candy, and a nice video thank you. And we went to see the Indians and C.C. Sabathia beat the Padres and Greg Maddux. And then I went and bought myself a new grill (the old one was 9 years old and on its last legs, so we were going to get one anyway). That’s quite a day.
June 11, 2008
The Last Day of School
Last Thursday was the kids’ last day of school, as I’d imagine is the case for most of you with school aged kids. The approach of the last day is always a tad bittersweet for me. I think most working adults think, even if just for a second “damn those kids are lucky,” and I’m no exception (and I was a teacher for two years, so I also think “damn those teachers are lucky; why the hell did I stop doing that?”). But at least I get a reprieve from my normal help-get-the-kids-ready-and-drive-them-to-school duties, so summer break does normally mean 30 extra minutes of sleep for me, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. And to the extent that I sometimes feel that my stay-at-home wife has it easy with two kids in school these days, now with all three kids home all day well … lets just say she’s working harder than me these days.
We don’t need no education; we don’t need no thought control
That was all they sang, just the one line, over and over. It was simple enough that many of us younger kids picked it up and started singing it, over and over (and dumb kids in my class simplified it further to “we don’t need no education; we don’t need no education”: repeat). That phrase must’ve been uttered 10,000 times at St. Mary’s elementary school in June of 1980.
We don’t need no education; we don’t need no thought control
That was all they sang, just the one line, over and over. It was simple enough that many of us younger kids picked it up and started singing it, over and over (and dumb kids in my class simplified it further to “we don’t need no education; we don’t need no education”: repeat). That phrase must’ve been uttered 10,000 times at St. Mary’s elementary school in June of 1980.
I was thinking of this last week, driving the kids into their second to last day of school. They were chatting to each other in the back seat and I just started singing along. I began to get into it and, before long, I was belting out “Hey, teacher, LEAVE US KIDS ALONE!” I looked in the rear-view mirror to see four eyes staring at me, wondering who the hell their father was talking to.
June 7, 2008
The Kindergarchy and Laissez-Faire Aren't the Only Options
There seems to be a backlash recently (or maybe I’m just paying more attention) to the phenomenon of overparenting and overscheduling kids: people are just saying no to too many activities. An article that came out last week written by Joseph Epstein about how the United States has turned into a Kindergarchy (a term I really like) where Epstein rails against our overly child-centered lives here in the 21st Century. Add this to the “Free-Range Kids” champion, Lenore Skenazy, the mom who let her nine-year old ride the New York City subway unaccompanied (something I support, by the way) and got all kinds of guff for it (luckily the article includes a handy picture for all the pedophiles out there that are looking to nab an unaccompanied minor on the subway … I keed!). And a few years ago, Caitlin Flanagan emphasized in some of her articles in the Atlantic that her mom tended to not pay too much attention to her. There are other examples…
A few things about this. Of course kids should play outside and shouldn’t have scheduled activities taking over all of their after-school time and weekends all of the time. The fact that you shouldn’t overschedule your kids and let their schedule dominate your life is so incredibly basic and such a cliché that it’s hard to work up the energy to even build up this paper tiger enough to knock it down. You shouldn’t be dropping your kid off at the airport at age 9 to spend a month at Bela Karoli’s gymnastics camp. You shouldn’t taking your 9 year old to 5-day a week soccer camp, even if you think he’s the next Landon Donovan. If you don’t get that, you probably aren’t reading this anyway. So on some level Epstein and Skenazy are of course correct in their basic assertions: don’t schedule the hell out of your kids. But 97% of people don’t actually do this (at least for more than one season).
But there are really two over-scheduling issues here, based upon the age of the kids. At ages 5 through 11 or so, the parents are generally in control with respect to the activities their kids participate in. They can pretend that the kids want to swim an extra hour but, at this age, kids will express their preferences. And most kids at this age are hedonists at heart. They make a quick and simple decision when choosing between an second hour of violin lessons each week or using that hour to go outside and play freeze tag with the neighbors. But, at the end of the day, you’re in charge.
But older kids, 12 and up, tend to, well, do what they want. And kids these days, for a variety of reasons, tend to schedule themselves into all kinds of activities. Part of the problem here is cultural. If a kid wants to be a swimmer, the high school invariably instills in him or her the idea that they have to try to be state champs and devote themselves to the sport and come in for 60 minutes before school in addition to the 2 hour practices after school, not to mention the offseason programs and weight training. Many high schools athletic programs resemble the programs that Olympic athletes went through less than 100 years ago.
But if your 15 year old wants to go out for the team, and wants to be good, are Skenazy and Epstein saying that the parent is supposed to forbid it?
I get the sense that the demographic that Epstein and Skenazy really are focusing on is the younger 5-11 bracket; and the younger children of rich people. So really how many kids are they actually worried about?
And they do what everyone tends to do: lionize the past. I grew up in a nice middle-class town of 15,000 people where lots of people had kids and the kids roamed the neighborhood. As the oldest of four kids, my mom often had her hands full and the only enrichment activity I was given was to “go outside and play.”
I vividly remember those days. Kicking around in the driveway for 15 minutes. Deciding to actually try to find a friend. Getting 3 guys together and then finding another … we’ve got 5! … neighborhood kids together and spending another hour trying to get one more so we had 6 guys so we could get a real backyard football game going (anything less than 3-on-3 kind of sucked). And then, when the last guy finally finished his chores, and the game was ready to go … we’d get one series in, and one of the guys invariably would get called in for lunch. And the game would be off, or we’d end up with a less-than ideal lineup.
So there’s 4 hours outside and the end result is a game that lasted all of twenty minutes. Great.
And that was if we were able to avoid the older kids who would steal our ball and teach us the meaning of all kinds of new vocabulary words with never an adult in sight. I guess if this was a good thing, a good educational tool, then I think we should suggest that all adults be mugged, just to know what it feels like, right?
Back then, I just thought getting the ball stolen by Randall just sucked. All it did for me was imprint the notion that life wasn’t fair and treating someone like crap actually had no real consequences most of the time. Isn’t that the opposite of what we try to teach kids?
I don’t doubt that all this no-rules-laissez-faire kicking around the neighborhood kept me busy, and kept a lot of kids busy (and I’m sure that if you are only given 10 books to read in your childhood, you’ll get to know those books very well, and might even appreciate books in general more than someone who has had anything they ever wanted to read). But wishing this mundane existence on the youth of America; nay, demanding that it be imposed upon the youth of America; I’m not sure why anyone would want that.
If such a thing could even be imposed today. I was born after the baby boom ended, but even then, the world of the 1970’s is different demographically from today (and I don’t mean that today there is more crime and some huge wave of sex predators out there; I don’t buy most of that, since while crime rates did spike for a while, they are generally back down these days). Overall, there were a whole lot more kids running around back then, for a lot of reasons. People were having kids earlier, so there were less DINKs out there. People were living shorter lives, so there were less old people with no kids filling out the neighborhood. Families were larger back then; now a family has 2 kids instead of 4. Back then people had less money to spend on outside activities, so they couldn’t afford to be out of the house paying to do things: they were hanging out near the house.
All of these factors combined mean that there were generally more kids running around back then than you see today. If Epstein’s boyhood self hopped into a time machine, I doubt he would be able to scare up much of a stickball game here in 2008.
And so I don’t see a lot of value in giving your child a completely unscheduled childhood these days. It looks particularly valueless when compared to kids’ activities. Indeed, young kids actually really like to have a couple of things to do a week. My daughter has a weekly 30 minute lesson from a piano teacher and, while she’s really just getting started, so far she absolutely loves it. My kids play baseball or softball in the spring, have swimming lessons in the summer and soccer in the fall. They go to art classes and nature camps from time to time. They like this stuff a heck of a lot more than I ever thought they would.
But there’s an entirely different area that Epstein and Flanagan delve into that Skenazy doesn’t seem to touch, and that is the idea that it is somehow debasing for parents to involve themselves in matters that are thought to be childish. Epstein and Flanagan seem to want us to feel shame if we play Go Fish with our kids.
I’m sorry guys, but life isn’t neatly divided into adult activities that exist over here and kid activities that exist over there. I personally have tastes that run the gamut from highbrow to lowbrow to everything in-between. Many of those tastes – complicated literature; European porn (again, I keed) – can’t be properly enjoyed by a child. But other things I enjoy – watching baseball, eating at a greasy diner, hiking, playing chess – are completely accessible to my kids. If I like these things, why shouldn’t I enjoy these things with my family, the people that I love? Why is that debasing?
Writers in many ways devote their lives to the pursuit of influencing people’s opinions on things: Leaving aside the obvious examples of editorial pages and opinion columns, journalism is often the pursuit of giving people more facts so they are more informed. Biography and memoir are often dependent upon the empathy of the read. And I would hope that most people would admit that there is literature out there that changed their outlook on the world.
Yet Flanagan and Epstein, who have devoted their own lives as writers to influencing people’s thinking, seem to be saying that parents should actively try to avoid influencing the thinking of the people that they care about the most: their kids. They want to convince everyone else of the way to live their lives, but they don't want to influence their kids. Does this make any sense at all?
In fact, the unbalanced nature of the parent-child relationship opens all kinds of great areas of conversation. I enjoy baseball games with my friends, but my friends don’t want to hear me talk about the way 2nd baseman is positioned for half an inning. My daughter, however, hearing for the first time how the middle infielders often position themselves based upon the batter, or lean one way or another based upon the pitch that’s called … when I explain that to my daughter, and then she SEES IT …
… she gets a smile of recognition on her face that is beauty and magic and just every wonderful that exists in this world. Watching the light bulb of a great idea go off in your kid’s head: I’m not sure there’s anything better.
I realize that, at the end of the day, it’s a balancing act. There’s no reason why kids can’t sometime be kicked outside, away from the supervision of their parents, and sometimes have a friend over and pretend they’re animals. But there’s no reason that the next day they shouldn’t be sat down and be taught how to play that marvelous game called Euchre, and why they can’t be taken to a Little Gym karate class every now and again.
I don’t want to live in the Kindergarchy. I also don’t want to live in a wholly parent-centered society.
But at the end of the day, no one is asking you to make that choice, and there’s plenty of room in between: and there is the space where most of us raise our kids.
So I hope Epstein and others have a good time beating down that paper tiger. Because now that I've spent 2 hours writing this, I'm going to go play with water balloons with my kids.
A few things about this. Of course kids should play outside and shouldn’t have scheduled activities taking over all of their after-school time and weekends all of the time. The fact that you shouldn’t overschedule your kids and let their schedule dominate your life is so incredibly basic and such a cliché that it’s hard to work up the energy to even build up this paper tiger enough to knock it down. You shouldn’t be dropping your kid off at the airport at age 9 to spend a month at Bela Karoli’s gymnastics camp. You shouldn’t taking your 9 year old to 5-day a week soccer camp, even if you think he’s the next Landon Donovan. If you don’t get that, you probably aren’t reading this anyway. So on some level Epstein and Skenazy are of course correct in their basic assertions: don’t schedule the hell out of your kids. But 97% of people don’t actually do this (at least for more than one season).
But there are really two over-scheduling issues here, based upon the age of the kids. At ages 5 through 11 or so, the parents are generally in control with respect to the activities their kids participate in. They can pretend that the kids want to swim an extra hour but, at this age, kids will express their preferences. And most kids at this age are hedonists at heart. They make a quick and simple decision when choosing between an second hour of violin lessons each week or using that hour to go outside and play freeze tag with the neighbors. But, at the end of the day, you’re in charge.
But older kids, 12 and up, tend to, well, do what they want. And kids these days, for a variety of reasons, tend to schedule themselves into all kinds of activities. Part of the problem here is cultural. If a kid wants to be a swimmer, the high school invariably instills in him or her the idea that they have to try to be state champs and devote themselves to the sport and come in for 60 minutes before school in addition to the 2 hour practices after school, not to mention the offseason programs and weight training. Many high schools athletic programs resemble the programs that Olympic athletes went through less than 100 years ago.
But if your 15 year old wants to go out for the team, and wants to be good, are Skenazy and Epstein saying that the parent is supposed to forbid it?
I get the sense that the demographic that Epstein and Skenazy really are focusing on is the younger 5-11 bracket; and the younger children of rich people. So really how many kids are they actually worried about?
And they do what everyone tends to do: lionize the past. I grew up in a nice middle-class town of 15,000 people where lots of people had kids and the kids roamed the neighborhood. As the oldest of four kids, my mom often had her hands full and the only enrichment activity I was given was to “go outside and play.”
I vividly remember those days. Kicking around in the driveway for 15 minutes. Deciding to actually try to find a friend. Getting 3 guys together and then finding another … we’ve got 5! … neighborhood kids together and spending another hour trying to get one more so we had 6 guys so we could get a real backyard football game going (anything less than 3-on-3 kind of sucked). And then, when the last guy finally finished his chores, and the game was ready to go … we’d get one series in, and one of the guys invariably would get called in for lunch. And the game would be off, or we’d end up with a less-than ideal lineup.
So there’s 4 hours outside and the end result is a game that lasted all of twenty minutes. Great.
And that was if we were able to avoid the older kids who would steal our ball and teach us the meaning of all kinds of new vocabulary words with never an adult in sight. I guess if this was a good thing, a good educational tool, then I think we should suggest that all adults be mugged, just to know what it feels like, right?
Back then, I just thought getting the ball stolen by Randall just sucked. All it did for me was imprint the notion that life wasn’t fair and treating someone like crap actually had no real consequences most of the time. Isn’t that the opposite of what we try to teach kids?
I don’t doubt that all this no-rules-laissez-faire kicking around the neighborhood kept me busy, and kept a lot of kids busy (and I’m sure that if you are only given 10 books to read in your childhood, you’ll get to know those books very well, and might even appreciate books in general more than someone who has had anything they ever wanted to read). But wishing this mundane existence on the youth of America; nay, demanding that it be imposed upon the youth of America; I’m not sure why anyone would want that.
If such a thing could even be imposed today. I was born after the baby boom ended, but even then, the world of the 1970’s is different demographically from today (and I don’t mean that today there is more crime and some huge wave of sex predators out there; I don’t buy most of that, since while crime rates did spike for a while, they are generally back down these days). Overall, there were a whole lot more kids running around back then, for a lot of reasons. People were having kids earlier, so there were less DINKs out there. People were living shorter lives, so there were less old people with no kids filling out the neighborhood. Families were larger back then; now a family has 2 kids instead of 4. Back then people had less money to spend on outside activities, so they couldn’t afford to be out of the house paying to do things: they were hanging out near the house.
All of these factors combined mean that there were generally more kids running around back then than you see today. If Epstein’s boyhood self hopped into a time machine, I doubt he would be able to scare up much of a stickball game here in 2008.
And so I don’t see a lot of value in giving your child a completely unscheduled childhood these days. It looks particularly valueless when compared to kids’ activities. Indeed, young kids actually really like to have a couple of things to do a week. My daughter has a weekly 30 minute lesson from a piano teacher and, while she’s really just getting started, so far she absolutely loves it. My kids play baseball or softball in the spring, have swimming lessons in the summer and soccer in the fall. They go to art classes and nature camps from time to time. They like this stuff a heck of a lot more than I ever thought they would.
But there’s an entirely different area that Epstein and Flanagan delve into that Skenazy doesn’t seem to touch, and that is the idea that it is somehow debasing for parents to involve themselves in matters that are thought to be childish. Epstein and Flanagan seem to want us to feel shame if we play Go Fish with our kids.
I’m sorry guys, but life isn’t neatly divided into adult activities that exist over here and kid activities that exist over there. I personally have tastes that run the gamut from highbrow to lowbrow to everything in-between. Many of those tastes – complicated literature; European porn (again, I keed) – can’t be properly enjoyed by a child. But other things I enjoy – watching baseball, eating at a greasy diner, hiking, playing chess – are completely accessible to my kids. If I like these things, why shouldn’t I enjoy these things with my family, the people that I love? Why is that debasing?
Writers in many ways devote their lives to the pursuit of influencing people’s opinions on things: Leaving aside the obvious examples of editorial pages and opinion columns, journalism is often the pursuit of giving people more facts so they are more informed. Biography and memoir are often dependent upon the empathy of the read. And I would hope that most people would admit that there is literature out there that changed their outlook on the world.
Yet Flanagan and Epstein, who have devoted their own lives as writers to influencing people’s thinking, seem to be saying that parents should actively try to avoid influencing the thinking of the people that they care about the most: their kids. They want to convince everyone else of the way to live their lives, but they don't want to influence their kids. Does this make any sense at all?
In fact, the unbalanced nature of the parent-child relationship opens all kinds of great areas of conversation. I enjoy baseball games with my friends, but my friends don’t want to hear me talk about the way 2nd baseman is positioned for half an inning. My daughter, however, hearing for the first time how the middle infielders often position themselves based upon the batter, or lean one way or another based upon the pitch that’s called … when I explain that to my daughter, and then she SEES IT …
… she gets a smile of recognition on her face that is beauty and magic and just every wonderful that exists in this world. Watching the light bulb of a great idea go off in your kid’s head: I’m not sure there’s anything better.
I realize that, at the end of the day, it’s a balancing act. There’s no reason why kids can’t sometime be kicked outside, away from the supervision of their parents, and sometimes have a friend over and pretend they’re animals. But there’s no reason that the next day they shouldn’t be sat down and be taught how to play that marvelous game called Euchre, and why they can’t be taken to a Little Gym karate class every now and again.
I don’t want to live in the Kindergarchy. I also don’t want to live in a wholly parent-centered society.
But at the end of the day, no one is asking you to make that choice, and there’s plenty of room in between: and there is the space where most of us raise our kids.
So I hope Epstein and others have a good time beating down that paper tiger. Because now that I've spent 2 hours writing this, I'm going to go play with water balloons with my kids.
June 3, 2008
Parenting Terminology
There is a whole set of terminology that you’re going to have to learn if you’re gonna be a parent.
Here are just a few of the words and phrases you should learn:
Babisinki Syndrome: Helsinki syndrome is when a hostage begins to develop positive associations with the hostage-taker. Babisinki Syndrome is a similar phenomena that occurs with children that is best illustrated by example:
You’re home alone with your 22-month old. She wants ice cream. You say no. She shrieks “EYE-ZZZZZ KEEEEEEM!!!! EYE-ZZZZZ KEEEEEEM!!!!!” You say “no.” Repeat exchange four times. Your 22 month old then whips herself onto the floor crying and screaming. You walk away. 60 seconds pass. Seeking comfort from her crying, your 22 month old runs to you – the tormentor - seeking to be picked up and cuddled: Babisinki syndrome.
Daylight Savings Time. Multiple definitions. 1. (fall) A time change system designed to ensure that children wake their parents up at 6 a.m. on the weekends instead of 7 a.m. 2. (spring). A time change system designed to ensure that children do not go to bed at a reasonable hour.
Helium Balloon Storage Unit: The part of your house with a vaulted ceiling.
Kid Latin. When your children start using rhyming words because they are banned from using a naughty word. For example, after banning the word “poop” from our dinner table, our children began calling each other “soop.”
Do you have any idea if you’re supposed to punish your son for telling his sister that “she likes to eat soup?” Me neither. Which means he ended up in the corner.
Kiddisonification: When your toddler enters the phrase where they name all inanimate objects. For example, in early 2003, our daughter nicknamed two of the washcloths in the bathtub "Sadaam" and "Starburst.”
Primogeniseat: The seat in your car in the backseat behind the passenger seat. If you want to know which kid is a mother’s favorite, check who is sitting in this seat. From the driver’s seat, you can see the kid in this seat and chat with them while driving. You can hand them snacks. If they drop something you can reach the floor beneath that seat whereas you can’t reach the floor in the seat behind you very easily without being double jointed.
The seat behind you? If you put your favorite kid in the seat behind their kicking of the seat will quickly make them your not-favorite kid.
In child abuse cultures, this seat is known as the Slap Seat.
Pump and Dump: When a mother who is breastfeeding goes out for a night on the town and consumes some adult beverages and then, in order to not poison her child, pumps out the breastmilk and dumps it out on the street for the hoodlums to get at it.
Soft Serve: A description for what young kids’ poop looks like in potty-training books. In real life, it will actually look like this twice annually. You may be tempted to take a picture, but you should not.
Here are just a few of the words and phrases you should learn:
Babisinki Syndrome: Helsinki syndrome is when a hostage begins to develop positive associations with the hostage-taker. Babisinki Syndrome is a similar phenomena that occurs with children that is best illustrated by example:
You’re home alone with your 22-month old. She wants ice cream. You say no. She shrieks “EYE-ZZZZZ KEEEEEEM!!!! EYE-ZZZZZ KEEEEEEM!!!!!” You say “no.” Repeat exchange four times. Your 22 month old then whips herself onto the floor crying and screaming. You walk away. 60 seconds pass. Seeking comfort from her crying, your 22 month old runs to you – the tormentor - seeking to be picked up and cuddled: Babisinki syndrome.
Daylight Savings Time. Multiple definitions. 1. (fall) A time change system designed to ensure that children wake their parents up at 6 a.m. on the weekends instead of 7 a.m. 2. (spring). A time change system designed to ensure that children do not go to bed at a reasonable hour.
Helium Balloon Storage Unit: The part of your house with a vaulted ceiling.
Kid Latin. When your children start using rhyming words because they are banned from using a naughty word. For example, after banning the word “poop” from our dinner table, our children began calling each other “soop.”
Do you have any idea if you’re supposed to punish your son for telling his sister that “she likes to eat soup?” Me neither. Which means he ended up in the corner.
Kiddisonification: When your toddler enters the phrase where they name all inanimate objects. For example, in early 2003, our daughter nicknamed two of the washcloths in the bathtub "Sadaam" and "Starburst.”
Primogeniseat: The seat in your car in the backseat behind the passenger seat. If you want to know which kid is a mother’s favorite, check who is sitting in this seat. From the driver’s seat, you can see the kid in this seat and chat with them while driving. You can hand them snacks. If they drop something you can reach the floor beneath that seat whereas you can’t reach the floor in the seat behind you very easily without being double jointed.
The seat behind you? If you put your favorite kid in the seat behind their kicking of the seat will quickly make them your not-favorite kid.
In child abuse cultures, this seat is known as the Slap Seat.
Pump and Dump: When a mother who is breastfeeding goes out for a night on the town and consumes some adult beverages and then, in order to not poison her child, pumps out the breastmilk and dumps it out on the street for the hoodlums to get at it.
Soft Serve: A description for what young kids’ poop looks like in potty-training books. In real life, it will actually look like this twice annually. You may be tempted to take a picture, but you should not.
May 28, 2008
MRS. 42
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how being a dad, instead of scaring all of the weirdness out of my life, had actually added all kinds of absurdity to it. Another example of this came to mind driving the kids to school this week.
Since I often work late, I make it a point to try to drive the kids to school, and have been successful in being able to do that about 90% of the time over the past 5 years (early morning conference calls, business travel and hangovers account for the other 10%). On the days when I know I’m going to be working particularly late, I realize that the 5 minute car ride to school will be my last chance to hang out with the kids on that day, so the pressure is on to have a worthwhile conversation with them. Unfortunately, I am decidedly not a morning person, and my children seem to be taking after me in this regard, so my attempt to get things started with “What are you going to do at school today?” is often answered with silence, or the shout of “HOW SHOULD I KNOW!!!” If they knew how to swear, this is when they would use that skill.
Our route to school includes a two mile trek down Fairmount Boulevard, one of the swankier streets in the Cleveland area. Trying to maintain the illusion that public transportation is for everyone, however, Cleveland’s regional transit authority mandates that a bus travel up and down the length of Fairmount six times a day: three in the morning and three at night. This bus - Bus Number 42 - is almost always empty or virtually so, since anyone with the means to live on or near Fairmount Boulevard almost certainly has a car (some probably have chauffeurs, even). I happen to personally know how full the bus is because the 3rd and final pass of the morning down Fairmount each day occurs right at the 8:15-8:20 a.m. time that I take the kids to school. So we end up actually seeing (and passing) the bus about once a week.
If we’re a tad early (or the bus a tad late), about halfway along our trip down Fairmount, we see an odd site: someone actually waiting for the bus. Other than a few nuns who appear to be from outside of the United States, I've never seen another soul waiting for the bus.
She's a woman, probably in her mid to late 50’s, standing at the bus stop. Slightly on the smaller side and apparently of some kind of some indeterminate Asian descent. Thick, coke-bottle glasses.
She rides Bus Number 42.
She is Mrs. 42.
When I’m struggling for conversation with the kids, whether or not we are going to see Mrs. 42 is something the kids will talk about. The kids may not want to talk about their day, but they’ll speculate as to whether she’ll be there (they’d probably gamble on it if they knew how ... actually, hmmm...). If I see us approaching Mrs. 42, I have to inform my younger child so he has sufficient time to actually turn his head and look out the window (as all parents of young children know, this action surprisingly takes at least 6 seconds, so you have to tell them to look out the window pretty damn early).
If we don’t see her, my older daughter will sing a song (to the tune of Scooby-Doo):
And if we’re lucky that day, and actually get to see Mrs. 42, well, that topic of conversation will carry us all the way until drop-off. “Is that a new coat?” “She looks tired today” “I think she got a new pair of glasses!” “I like that red umbrella that she has.”
I can only imagine what this woman would think if she knew that there existed a 4 year old and an 8 year old (and a 35 year old) who were experts on her wardrobe, where she likes to stand, her stance, her schedule.
Not only does Mrs. 42 give me a conversation topic, she provides other benefits. We use Mrs. 42 as a geographic marker now. If the question is “Are we almost to school daddy?” then I can answer, with complete understanding, “No, we’re not even to the Mrs. 42 spot yet.” We use Mrs. 42 as a racial marker. “Y’know the guy that looks kind of like Mrs. 42?”
So thank you Mrs. 42. Whoever you are. And thank you for whatever odd reason exists to make you ride the bus every day, whether it’s that you never learned to drive, a DUI, an involuntary manslaughter or maybe that your car is being repaired by the slowest auto mechanic on the planet. Thank you from the bottom of the morning-hating hearts of me and my kids. You make our morning drive a happy time.
Since I often work late, I make it a point to try to drive the kids to school, and have been successful in being able to do that about 90% of the time over the past 5 years (early morning conference calls, business travel and hangovers account for the other 10%). On the days when I know I’m going to be working particularly late, I realize that the 5 minute car ride to school will be my last chance to hang out with the kids on that day, so the pressure is on to have a worthwhile conversation with them. Unfortunately, I am decidedly not a morning person, and my children seem to be taking after me in this regard, so my attempt to get things started with “What are you going to do at school today?” is often answered with silence, or the shout of “HOW SHOULD I KNOW!!!” If they knew how to swear, this is when they would use that skill.
Our route to school includes a two mile trek down Fairmount Boulevard, one of the swankier streets in the Cleveland area. Trying to maintain the illusion that public transportation is for everyone, however, Cleveland’s regional transit authority mandates that a bus travel up and down the length of Fairmount six times a day: three in the morning and three at night. This bus - Bus Number 42 - is almost always empty or virtually so, since anyone with the means to live on or near Fairmount Boulevard almost certainly has a car (some probably have chauffeurs, even). I happen to personally know how full the bus is because the 3rd and final pass of the morning down Fairmount each day occurs right at the 8:15-8:20 a.m. time that I take the kids to school. So we end up actually seeing (and passing) the bus about once a week.
If we’re a tad early (or the bus a tad late), about halfway along our trip down Fairmount, we see an odd site: someone actually waiting for the bus. Other than a few nuns who appear to be from outside of the United States, I've never seen another soul waiting for the bus.
She's a woman, probably in her mid to late 50’s, standing at the bus stop. Slightly on the smaller side and apparently of some kind of some indeterminate Asian descent. Thick, coke-bottle glasses.
She rides Bus Number 42.
She is Mrs. 42.
When I’m struggling for conversation with the kids, whether or not we are going to see Mrs. 42 is something the kids will talk about. The kids may not want to talk about their day, but they’ll speculate as to whether she’ll be there (they’d probably gamble on it if they knew how ... actually, hmmm...). If I see us approaching Mrs. 42, I have to inform my younger child so he has sufficient time to actually turn his head and look out the window (as all parents of young children know, this action surprisingly takes at least 6 seconds, so you have to tell them to look out the window pretty damn early).
If we don’t see her, my older daughter will sing a song (to the tune of Scooby-Doo):
Mrs. Forty-Two.
Where are You?
Did the Bus Pick you Up Already?
And if we’re lucky that day, and actually get to see Mrs. 42, well, that topic of conversation will carry us all the way until drop-off. “Is that a new coat?” “She looks tired today” “I think she got a new pair of glasses!” “I like that red umbrella that she has.”
I can only imagine what this woman would think if she knew that there existed a 4 year old and an 8 year old (and a 35 year old) who were experts on her wardrobe, where she likes to stand, her stance, her schedule.
Not only does Mrs. 42 give me a conversation topic, she provides other benefits. We use Mrs. 42 as a geographic marker now. If the question is “Are we almost to school daddy?” then I can answer, with complete understanding, “No, we’re not even to the Mrs. 42 spot yet.” We use Mrs. 42 as a racial marker. “Y’know the guy that looks kind of like Mrs. 42?”
So thank you Mrs. 42. Whoever you are. And thank you for whatever odd reason exists to make you ride the bus every day, whether it’s that you never learned to drive, a DUI, an involuntary manslaughter or maybe that your car is being repaired by the slowest auto mechanic on the planet. Thank you from the bottom of the morning-hating hearts of me and my kids. You make our morning drive a happy time.
May 23, 2008
Aunt and Uncle Birthday Wars
It’s hard enough to figure out what your own kids want for their birthdays. I struggle with
whether to buy them exactly what they say that they want (but where’s the surprise in that?), or to buy them something that they would want if they knew existed, or to buy them something that they might not even think they wanted, but will eventually like once they start playing with (that’s the ideal, but failure is common) or to buy them something that’s good for them, whether they want it or not. It can be tough.
Lucky for my oldest daughter, as the first grandchild on my side of the family, she has gotten presents each birthday from all of my three siblings, her aunts and uncles. But she is doubly impossible to buy presents for, for reasons I won’t bore you with.
Her 8th birthday just happened earlier this week. My wife and I struggled to figure out what to get her (thank you Amazon for the just-in-time sale on Flip video cameras, by the way), so we weren’t expecting much success when the presents rolled in from others. If it went like last year’s birthday, she would act appreciative, but never actually play with many of the toys.
And the presents did roll in this year from my siblings. But it appears that all three of my siblings have thrown up their hands and completely given up on trying to figure out what a good present might be for her, because all three of them gave her money.
The danger inherent in this choice is that, since they all gave money, it was easy for my daughter (and, OK, me) to compare and contrast gifts to figure out who is generous and who is cheap. And while that might seem like an easy comparison, we had to grade these on a curve:
My young sister gave $8. Four bonus dollars are awarded to her for actually knowing how old my daughter she is. So we’ll count this as worth $12.
My brother gave $10. Now arguably, this would beat the $8 gift, but he also sent the gift via overnight mail, apparently paying an extra $16.50 in the process. It’s tough to know how to count this one. We’ll award him three bonus dollars for spending the extra cash. But he loses two bonus dollars for forgetting her birthday until the last minute. So this gift is worth $11.
My old (but still younger than me) sister gave $20. This looks like the winning gift. This sister, however, lives in Chicago. $20 in Chicago is only worth $15 here due to cost of living issues, so this gift only counts as $15. Plus, she gave really good gifts in the past, so expectations were high. Deduct an extra $2. Still, at $13, old sister takes the prize.
Accordingly, my old sister and her husband will now be called, to my children, “your generous aunt and uncle” whereas the others will be “your cheapskate aunts and uncles.”
(Note to my siblings: next year, a small separate check made out to me will influence who I deem the “winner” in future comparisons of this sort, and may well be worth your while).
Another good thing about this cash-based-present development is the precedent that it sets. My young sister gave birth to a son in February. So utilizing her logic, next February, he gets a shiny Sacajawea $1 coin for his first birthday. Cheap for me! My brother’s wife gave birth to a daughter last December. Since his philosophy is to spend more on postage than on the gift, and stamps are now 42 cents, his daughter will get 40 cents. As for my old sister? She’s pregnant, with a baby due in a few months. When that baby is born, we’ll give him/her (I know which gender it is, but I’m not telling you) $5 and tell my sister that for poor folk here in Cleveland, that’s a full day’s wages.
$6.40 on three presents next year. What a deal!
whether to buy them exactly what they say that they want (but where’s the surprise in that?), or to buy them something that they would want if they knew existed, or to buy them something that they might not even think they wanted, but will eventually like once they start playing with (that’s the ideal, but failure is common) or to buy them something that’s good for them, whether they want it or not. It can be tough.
Lucky for my oldest daughter, as the first grandchild on my side of the family, she has gotten presents each birthday from all of my three siblings, her aunts and uncles. But she is doubly impossible to buy presents for, for reasons I won’t bore you with.
Her 8th birthday just happened earlier this week. My wife and I struggled to figure out what to get her (thank you Amazon for the just-in-time sale on Flip video cameras, by the way), so we weren’t expecting much success when the presents rolled in from others. If it went like last year’s birthday, she would act appreciative, but never actually play with many of the toys.
And the presents did roll in this year from my siblings. But it appears that all three of my siblings have thrown up their hands and completely given up on trying to figure out what a good present might be for her, because all three of them gave her money.
The danger inherent in this choice is that, since they all gave money, it was easy for my daughter (and, OK, me) to compare and contrast gifts to figure out who is generous and who is cheap. And while that might seem like an easy comparison, we had to grade these on a curve:
My young sister gave $8. Four bonus dollars are awarded to her for actually knowing how old my daughter she is. So we’ll count this as worth $12.
My brother gave $10. Now arguably, this would beat the $8 gift, but he also sent the gift via overnight mail, apparently paying an extra $16.50 in the process. It’s tough to know how to count this one. We’ll award him three bonus dollars for spending the extra cash. But he loses two bonus dollars for forgetting her birthday until the last minute. So this gift is worth $11.
My old (but still younger than me) sister gave $20. This looks like the winning gift. This sister, however, lives in Chicago. $20 in Chicago is only worth $15 here due to cost of living issues, so this gift only counts as $15. Plus, she gave really good gifts in the past, so expectations were high. Deduct an extra $2. Still, at $13, old sister takes the prize.
Accordingly, my old sister and her husband will now be called, to my children, “your generous aunt and uncle” whereas the others will be “your cheapskate aunts and uncles.”
(Note to my siblings: next year, a small separate check made out to me will influence who I deem the “winner” in future comparisons of this sort, and may well be worth your while).
Another good thing about this cash-based-present development is the precedent that it sets. My young sister gave birth to a son in February. So utilizing her logic, next February, he gets a shiny Sacajawea $1 coin for his first birthday. Cheap for me! My brother’s wife gave birth to a daughter last December. Since his philosophy is to spend more on postage than on the gift, and stamps are now 42 cents, his daughter will get 40 cents. As for my old sister? She’s pregnant, with a baby due in a few months. When that baby is born, we’ll give him/her (I know which gender it is, but I’m not telling you) $5 and tell my sister that for poor folk here in Cleveland, that’s a full day’s wages.
$6.40 on three presents next year. What a deal!
May 18, 2008
Why We Don't Party
“Just because we get married and have kids, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop going out.”
That’s what people say to themselves before they have kids. They pledge to themselves that they are going to get babysitters and still go out and have some drinks with their friends once a week, or every other week. They pledge that they are going to keep some semblance of their pre-child social life going. What they don’t realize is that married couples don’t stop going out because they’ve become lame. OK, that’s certainly part of it, but it’s not the only reason people like me stop going out so much.
These are the reasons married couples don’t go out:
(1) $9 beers. If you knew that going to bars would cost you $9 a beer, would you keep going out? Trust me on this one: you don’t want to know what babysitters get paid these days (and most of it is your wife overpaying them to make sure they come back).
Here’s how the math works. The babysitter comes over and you enter the 30 minute transition period where, because your wife needs to show the babysitter where every single thing is in the house is. (just to clarify, don’t get to leave, but you’re still overpaying the babysitter for this time). So the babysitter gets there at 8 p.m. You leave at 8:30 p.m., meet your friends at 8:45 p.m. You’re out for 3 hours and home at midnight. That’s 4 hours of time for the babysitter at, maybe, $9 an hour, for $36. If you and the wife each have 4 drinks during those 3 hours, that’s 8 drinks. Assuming $4 a drink, that’s $32 at the bar, lets round up to $35. But you didn’t really pay $35. You paid double, because you also gave the babysitter $35. So you paid a total of $70 for 8 drinks, or about $9 a drink.
The big problem with this is this: what if some uninteresting topic of conversation comes up while you’re out? In your pre-child life, who would care? At $9 a drink, you care. Every moment has to be interesting and exciting, because it’s costing you! And so having to sit and listen to your wife discuss the wallpaper designs she’s considering for the downstairs bathroom will make you cry.
(2) Getting a Ride Home. What if you really need to blow off steam and you drink a bit too much? You hopefully aren’t gonna drive home. In the old days, you might walk home or hitch a ride with someone less inebriated and then come back to get your car the next morning. But how does that work now? Now, when you wake up the next morning, your spouse can’t just drive you back to your car, because you’d be leaving the kids home alone. You have to go back to get the car as a family. And there’s nothing more edifying than getting to show your kids where daddy got his drink on the night before. That will certainly fill you with pride.
And what if you took the primary family car out that night? The one with all of the car seats? Then, when you drive from home to bar the next morning, you’ll be forced to let the kids ride 70’s-style sans carseats, kids all piled up in the backseat while you go get your car from the bar (now you’re really a good father).
The alternative is even sadder: you have to remember, when leaving the bar, to go back to your car only to get the carseats out, and then hitch a ride home with a friend, while carrying all of the car seats with you in their car. It’s tough to maintain the illusion that you’re a cool couple out for a hip night on the town if you’ve got an armload of empty carseats with you. It doesn’t exactly scream “party.”
(3) OK, You’re Home, Now What. You wanted to avoid the $9 beers, so you figured the best way to do that was to hire a younger babysitter so you could pay her less. This was an ingenious strategy until you got home and realized younger babysitters can’t drive, and now you have to drive her home. So if you get hammered, you and your armload of empty car seats will be sitting up front in the passenger seat in your buddy's car, with the babysitter in back, while your soon-to-be-ex-buddy drives your babysitter home with you.
And even if you were OK to drive yourself home, there’s a moral difference between being willing to drive yourself home after 2-4 drinks (but still within the legal limit) and feeling OK about driving a young babysitter home after those same 2-4 drinks. So now you’re drinking about two beers when you go out to make sure you don’t push it. I don’t think this is what the pre-child version of you had in mind.
A similar potential problem arises with younger babysitters in that they’ll ask you when you’re going to be home. One time my wife and I hadn’t been out for months and got an 8th grade babysitter that lived a few houses down from us. The wife and I planned to hit a bar and grill a mile from our house for dinner and drinks with friends. We were excited because we knew we didn’t have to drive her home and told her we’d be home “around midnight.” She informed us that she “had to be home by 10:15.” Wow, a night out that ends at 10 p.m. The pre-child version of you would not consider this “going out.”
(4) Wake Up Call. They say that one effect of alcohol on the central nervous system is that your body essentially doesn’t get much benefit from sleep until much of the alcohol is out of your system. This means that if you’ve been out drinking and get home at 1 a.m., the sleep you get for the first few hours – say, from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. -- is pretty much worthless. So even if you manage to get a cheap babysitter that drives herself, and even if you go out to a bar within walking distance and can get yourself home, you still are gonna be screwed when your kids wake you up at 7 a.m. or so. And God forbid one of them has a nightmare.
I’ve considered trying various things to try to figure this out.
I've tried having the babysitter to keep the kids up extra-late (until 11 p.m. or so) in an effort to get them to sleep in! Although this seems like it should work, it invariably fails for at least one kid. And the kids are whiney and cranky the next morning, which is excellent for keeping your hangover going.
I’ve considering buying happy meals in the McDonalds drive thru at 1 a.m. and “getting breakfast ready early” by leaving it on the table at 1:30 a.m. so that it’s there for them when they get up 6 hours later and hopefully will just eat and leave me alone.
I’ve even considered sneaking into the baby’s room and moving her from crib to floor in the middle of the night so she won’t wake me to get out in the morning.
And I’ve actually tried sleeping in an undisclosed location so I couldn’t be found, which unfortunately only causes your kids, with a handful of cold fries, to wander outside in their pajamas looking for you, which never improves your standing in the neighborhood.
(5) Breastfeeding. Drinking is a doubly-dirty business if your wife is still breastfeeding. She has to pump in advance, save up the milk, and then has to undertake the dirty business of the pump and dump the next morning, where the alcohol-tainted breast milk is expressed and tossed. There’s just something much more tawdry and depressing about drinking alcohol when it causes you to dump breastmilk down the drain. The health effects seem much more real to you.
************
So there’s five big reasons why we – those that are married with younger children – don’t “party” any more. And those that are child-free with schemes for how they are going to go out once they have kids, well, maybe you guys ought to go out extra for the next few months and get it out of your system.
That’s what people say to themselves before they have kids. They pledge to themselves that they are going to get babysitters and still go out and have some drinks with their friends once a week, or every other week. They pledge that they are going to keep some semblance of their pre-child social life going. What they don’t realize is that married couples don’t stop going out because they’ve become lame. OK, that’s certainly part of it, but it’s not the only reason people like me stop going out so much.
These are the reasons married couples don’t go out:
(1) $9 beers. If you knew that going to bars would cost you $9 a beer, would you keep going out? Trust me on this one: you don’t want to know what babysitters get paid these days (and most of it is your wife overpaying them to make sure they come back).
Here’s how the math works. The babysitter comes over and you enter the 30 minute transition period where, because your wife needs to show the babysitter where every single thing is in the house is. (just to clarify, don’t get to leave, but you’re still overpaying the babysitter for this time). So the babysitter gets there at 8 p.m. You leave at 8:30 p.m., meet your friends at 8:45 p.m. You’re out for 3 hours and home at midnight. That’s 4 hours of time for the babysitter at, maybe, $9 an hour, for $36. If you and the wife each have 4 drinks during those 3 hours, that’s 8 drinks. Assuming $4 a drink, that’s $32 at the bar, lets round up to $35. But you didn’t really pay $35. You paid double, because you also gave the babysitter $35. So you paid a total of $70 for 8 drinks, or about $9 a drink.
The big problem with this is this: what if some uninteresting topic of conversation comes up while you’re out? In your pre-child life, who would care? At $9 a drink, you care. Every moment has to be interesting and exciting, because it’s costing you! And so having to sit and listen to your wife discuss the wallpaper designs she’s considering for the downstairs bathroom will make you cry.
(2) Getting a Ride Home. What if you really need to blow off steam and you drink a bit too much? You hopefully aren’t gonna drive home. In the old days, you might walk home or hitch a ride with someone less inebriated and then come back to get your car the next morning. But how does that work now? Now, when you wake up the next morning, your spouse can’t just drive you back to your car, because you’d be leaving the kids home alone. You have to go back to get the car as a family. And there’s nothing more edifying than getting to show your kids where daddy got his drink on the night before. That will certainly fill you with pride.
And what if you took the primary family car out that night? The one with all of the car seats? Then, when you drive from home to bar the next morning, you’ll be forced to let the kids ride 70’s-style sans carseats, kids all piled up in the backseat while you go get your car from the bar (now you’re really a good father).
The alternative is even sadder: you have to remember, when leaving the bar, to go back to your car only to get the carseats out, and then hitch a ride home with a friend, while carrying all of the car seats with you in their car. It’s tough to maintain the illusion that you’re a cool couple out for a hip night on the town if you’ve got an armload of empty carseats with you. It doesn’t exactly scream “party.”
(3) OK, You’re Home, Now What. You wanted to avoid the $9 beers, so you figured the best way to do that was to hire a younger babysitter so you could pay her less. This was an ingenious strategy until you got home and realized younger babysitters can’t drive, and now you have to drive her home. So if you get hammered, you and your armload of empty car seats will be sitting up front in the passenger seat in your buddy's car, with the babysitter in back, while your soon-to-be-ex-buddy drives your babysitter home with you.
And even if you were OK to drive yourself home, there’s a moral difference between being willing to drive yourself home after 2-4 drinks (but still within the legal limit) and feeling OK about driving a young babysitter home after those same 2-4 drinks. So now you’re drinking about two beers when you go out to make sure you don’t push it. I don’t think this is what the pre-child version of you had in mind.
A similar potential problem arises with younger babysitters in that they’ll ask you when you’re going to be home. One time my wife and I hadn’t been out for months and got an 8th grade babysitter that lived a few houses down from us. The wife and I planned to hit a bar and grill a mile from our house for dinner and drinks with friends. We were excited because we knew we didn’t have to drive her home and told her we’d be home “around midnight.” She informed us that she “had to be home by 10:15.” Wow, a night out that ends at 10 p.m. The pre-child version of you would not consider this “going out.”
(4) Wake Up Call. They say that one effect of alcohol on the central nervous system is that your body essentially doesn’t get much benefit from sleep until much of the alcohol is out of your system. This means that if you’ve been out drinking and get home at 1 a.m., the sleep you get for the first few hours – say, from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. -- is pretty much worthless. So even if you manage to get a cheap babysitter that drives herself, and even if you go out to a bar within walking distance and can get yourself home, you still are gonna be screwed when your kids wake you up at 7 a.m. or so. And God forbid one of them has a nightmare.
I’ve considered trying various things to try to figure this out.
I've tried having the babysitter to keep the kids up extra-late (until 11 p.m. or so) in an effort to get them to sleep in! Although this seems like it should work, it invariably fails for at least one kid. And the kids are whiney and cranky the next morning, which is excellent for keeping your hangover going.
I’ve considering buying happy meals in the McDonalds drive thru at 1 a.m. and “getting breakfast ready early” by leaving it on the table at 1:30 a.m. so that it’s there for them when they get up 6 hours later and hopefully will just eat and leave me alone.
I’ve even considered sneaking into the baby’s room and moving her from crib to floor in the middle of the night so she won’t wake me to get out in the morning.
And I’ve actually tried sleeping in an undisclosed location so I couldn’t be found, which unfortunately only causes your kids, with a handful of cold fries, to wander outside in their pajamas looking for you, which never improves your standing in the neighborhood.
(5) Breastfeeding. Drinking is a doubly-dirty business if your wife is still breastfeeding. She has to pump in advance, save up the milk, and then has to undertake the dirty business of the pump and dump the next morning, where the alcohol-tainted breast milk is expressed and tossed. There’s just something much more tawdry and depressing about drinking alcohol when it causes you to dump breastmilk down the drain. The health effects seem much more real to you.
************
So there’s five big reasons why we – those that are married with younger children – don’t “party” any more. And those that are child-free with schemes for how they are going to go out once they have kids, well, maybe you guys ought to go out extra for the next few months and get it out of your system.
May 12, 2008
Numbers of Relationships
I was watching my two youngest children interacting the other day. We were on a short walk, and my 4-year old son walked over and grabbed the hand of my one-year old daughter. It was a cute moment, and made me pay attention the rest of the day to how they interacted, what they said to each other, what they played. It was really interesting to me to really just focus on the two of them and how they related.
I mean, before I had kids, my family had a single relationship. Me and my wife. ONE. That's it. One thing to focus on (or obsess about, at times).
Once you have a kid, however, you increase the number of relationships in your family. Now there’s you and your kid, you and your wife and. of course, your wife and your kid. That’s three relationships right there. And the dynamic is always different if all three of you hang out, so if you count that, then when you have just one kid, there are four completely different ways your family could interact together instead of just one.
This is what makes “the family” so much more interesting than “the relationship” (which is what marriage is before kids). There’s just so much more going on in a family once there are kids around.
Adding more kids makes these numbers explode. If you have a second kid, you go from three two-party relationships to six two-party relationships (you&wife; wife&kid1; wife&kid2; you&kid1; you&kid2; kid1&kid2). Also, there are now eleven ways your family can interact if you add in three and four party relationships.
Three kids means ten two-party relationship and a mind-boggling 26 ways that you can hang out in groups of two or more. Four kids means 15 two-party relationship and 56 total ways in which you can hang out in groups of two or more. 56!!! (I’ll spare you by not listing them).
If you’re the type of person who liked people-watching or stuff like that back in college or high school, you can kill some serious time watching and analyzing the myriad ways in which your family members can and do interact with one another.
This may seem like a funny math point or something obscure, and it is, but it really does open up whole new worlds. You’ll realize that you and your oldest and youngest are perfect for going shopping together or something like that, and you wife and you son can hang out and work in the garden or something. The combinations matter.
It’s fascinating stuff.
I mean, before I had kids, my family had a single relationship. Me and my wife. ONE. That's it. One thing to focus on (or obsess about, at times).
Once you have a kid, however, you increase the number of relationships in your family. Now there’s you and your kid, you and your wife and. of course, your wife and your kid. That’s three relationships right there. And the dynamic is always different if all three of you hang out, so if you count that, then when you have just one kid, there are four completely different ways your family could interact together instead of just one.
This is what makes “the family” so much more interesting than “the relationship” (which is what marriage is before kids). There’s just so much more going on in a family once there are kids around.
Adding more kids makes these numbers explode. If you have a second kid, you go from three two-party relationships to six two-party relationships (you&wife; wife&kid1; wife&kid2; you&kid1; you&kid2; kid1&kid2). Also, there are now eleven ways your family can interact if you add in three and four party relationships.
Three kids means ten two-party relationship and a mind-boggling 26 ways that you can hang out in groups of two or more. Four kids means 15 two-party relationship and 56 total ways in which you can hang out in groups of two or more. 56!!! (I’ll spare you by not listing them).
If you’re the type of person who liked people-watching or stuff like that back in college or high school, you can kill some serious time watching and analyzing the myriad ways in which your family members can and do interact with one another.
This may seem like a funny math point or something obscure, and it is, but it really does open up whole new worlds. You’ll realize that you and your oldest and youngest are perfect for going shopping together or something like that, and you wife and you son can hang out and work in the garden or something. The combinations matter.
It’s fascinating stuff.
May 8, 2008
Roughhousing: A Guide
One humongous benefit of having children is that you now are allowed to wrestle with people! Pre-children, you likely have far too little wrestling in your life (not counting special wrestling). Children give you wrestling partners for at least a decade. And, unlike in middle school, this is satisfying wrestling, as you’re wrestling with people whose asses you can kick at your leisure.
Honestly, apart from the benefits for you from burning off a little end-of-the-day stress, it’s a lot of fun for the kids to have their father throw them around. In fact, if you’re a little on the rough side so that it’s actually a bit dangerous, like tossing them 5 feet or so through the air onto a couch (or a pillow), they can sense the danger and they really like it. It psyches them up and gets their adrenalin pumping even more. In fact, in my house, if a roughhousing activity ends with a kid crying and injured, that’s what they want to play the next time.
I’ve learned, however, that many fathers, maybe if they were the only boy child or maybe if their father was older, sadly do not understand the many forms of roughhouse available to them. And many wives, particularly women with only sisters, will look at you like you’re crazy when you tell them that you are going to wrestle the children (oops… wrestle with the children … note that adding the “with” makes it sound friendlier and thus more likely that your wife will permit this). My wife has was very much a skeptic but has, over the years, eventually warmed up enough that mommyfesto occasionally will charge in from the kitchen and side with the kids to kick my ass if she feels I’m being a bit hard on them.
So, for the uninitiated, here are some forms of roughhouse experienced in the daddyfesto household (note: although this may appear to be a parody, this is actually serious). Please note that this is only the tip of the iceberg. I tallied at least 20 different things we’ve had going in this house at one time or another (in fact, I tallied so many that it made me realize just how much you’re cooped up inside in the winter in Cleveland and just how much that stinks). Without further ado:
Standard Roughhousing. This is just wrestling, except that instead of trying to pin your children, you are trying to incapacitate them and tickle them. The primary rule that you, the father, must abide by is that if the kids land a solid blow, you have to act stunned (whether or not you are actually stunned). If you are roughhousing with two children, such a blow would permit a trapped child escape (hopefully this will teach your son chivalry). Think Olympic Boxing. It doesn’t matter if the punch hurts, it still scores a point; so if it’s a clean blow, you have to act stunned for a second.
“Super” Roughhousing. The difference between roughhousing and super-roughhousing is that super-roughhousing is nasty. Mainly, I the super version allows punching anywhere except the face and private area. I even allow scratching (if nails have been clipped recently). We’ve had to create additional rules as my son tests out various ways to injure a human being (e.g., no poking daddy in the eye, even if it isn’t a punch), but generally, they get to whale on you.
What do you get? Super-roughhousing was invented after I first realized that if you hit a child square with an open hand in the middle of their back you will (a) make a cool sound, akin to hitting a watermelon with a baseball bat on a check swing and (b) more importantly, not hurt the child. I’m not sure why it doesn’t hurt the child. All I know is that while I’ve never completely “let go,” I’ve probably smacked them on the back harder than I should have, and no crying or game stoppage has resulted (but make sure you hit them square!) Of course, I’m sure there internal bleeding or something, but really, it’s the visible injuries that are gonna get you in trouble, so don’t concern yourself with that.
Super-roughhousing needs to be used sparingly. It needs to be reserved as a reward for the kids getting through tough periods, like having to spent 4 hours cooped up at a wedding and reception. It is for a time when they have too much energy and no good outlet, as you’re essentially volunteering to be a punching bag.
Harry Hungry Bed: When you’re changing the sheets on your bed, take the kids up there. Stand at the foot of the bed and lift the mattress (but not the box spring) into the air, so that the bed, from the side, forms a “greater than” sign. Have your children dart across the box spring while you count down “5…4…3….2….1.” At one, let go of the mattress, then check and see what you’ve caught. If you’ve caught both, pretend to leave the room and go to work. If you’ve caught only one of multiple children, you get to climb onto your bed and pretend to sleep while the remaining child has to pull your fat ass off the bed. If all children are caught, you get to roll around on the bed for a bit while your wife yells things at you involving the word “suffocate.”
When we play this these days, my kids tend to scream louder. This suggests that either I’m gaining weight or it’s time to get a new bed or both.
Fairground Ducks: Pillow-Style. This one is best done in a hall or place with hardwood floors. (Even better if you have a hall that ends with a carpeted room!) Gather up some smaller pillows. Have your children stand at one end of the hall with you sitting at the other. Whip the pillows down the hall in a Frisbee-like motion and have your children leap over them as the pillows fly by. Once all pillows are gone, they have to gather them up and run them back to you for another round. If you get a solid shot they can’t dodge, their legs will whip out behind them and they’ll hit the ground hard (which is why it’s best if you can put them on carpet). Score! Stone skipping techniques work better than you think with the pillows.
Note: Warning! If your child, like my son, has a 2 inch vertical leap, he’s not going to clear any of the pillows and you’re going to fucking annihilate him, a fact I luckily discovered while my wife was not in the house (insert white boy can’t jump joke here).
Walk on Daddy’s Back. Self-explanatory. A definite two-birds-one-stone-situation. Having kids may be worth it for this reason alone. With multiple children, choose the child based upon the severity of the back pain. Some days you need a light 4-year old walk; other days a 7-year old it called for. If you do it on your bed and shake every once in a while so they’ll fall off, you can call it a new kind of roughhousing and trick them until they get bored after about 5 minutes.
Blind Monster. Sit and position yourself in the center of a room with as little furniture as possible. Close your eyes and spin to disorientate yourself. You’re allowed to move but must stay in the room. Using your sense of hearing, your goal is to snatch up the children as they rush in and out of the room. The kids’ goal is to jump onto your back, and if they are successful, they win. There you go.
Explaining to hospital workers that you broke your child’s cheekbone playing a game will be a tough sell, so be sure to swing your arms low to the ground. This is also a good time to break out the standard Obi Wan style father joke: “you are going to smile and start laughing now” which nails the young kids within 5-10 seconds almost every time if used judiciously. Also, make sure the toddlers (and any cats) are out of the room with mom so you don’t clock them.
Have you tried to close your eyes for 15-30 minutes straight without being asleep? It’s not natural. So you ultimately open them inadvertently and the kids cry foul. So essentially this game teaches them that daddy is a cheater. And so it also serves to prove to children that daddy is just a mere mortal man after all. So I guess this is another two-birds-one-stone situation.
Wake Up Daddy. This one was invented by my 20 month old. If daddy is sleeping, or even just resting his eyes and not even asleep, come up and whack him on the head as hard as you can and shout “wake up daddy.” Then run away. Then laugh. Like everything else with 20 month olds, repeat ad nauseum. I normally wake up after about 15 whacks.
Throw Children In Air. Is it never shake a baby or always shake a baby? I sometimes forget. No, seriously, once the kids are old enough so you aren't violating maxims so basic they are printed on the sides of city buses, this one is fun (and is exactly what it sounds like).
One important tip is to throw the youngest child first. If you throw the oldest child first, you might get used to putting some umph behind your throws and you’ll end up with dent marks of your youngest kid’s head on the ceiling.
If you’ve got a room with a vaulted ceiling, it’s extra fun and has the added benefit of actually giving your arms a workout (make sure to do multiple reps of tosses). If you don’t have a vaulted ceiling, do it BowFlex style and tell your kid to put their arms up in the air to keep them from smacking their head on the ceiling. Since they are pushing off the ceiling, it becomes a kind of resistance workout.
********
There you go. Those are some of the basics we use around here, and should get you going. Since your wife likely has sough to retire from the “wrestling” circuit, and since men don’t hug enough, roughhousing will give you the physical contact you need for a healthy emotional state.
Happy roughing.
Honestly, apart from the benefits for you from burning off a little end-of-the-day stress, it’s a lot of fun for the kids to have their father throw them around. In fact, if you’re a little on the rough side so that it’s actually a bit dangerous, like tossing them 5 feet or so through the air onto a couch (or a pillow), they can sense the danger and they really like it. It psyches them up and gets their adrenalin pumping even more. In fact, in my house, if a roughhousing activity ends with a kid crying and injured, that’s what they want to play the next time.
I’ve learned, however, that many fathers, maybe if they were the only boy child or maybe if their father was older, sadly do not understand the many forms of roughhouse available to them. And many wives, particularly women with only sisters, will look at you like you’re crazy when you tell them that you are going to wrestle the children (oops… wrestle with the children … note that adding the “with” makes it sound friendlier and thus more likely that your wife will permit this). My wife has was very much a skeptic but has, over the years, eventually warmed up enough that mommyfesto occasionally will charge in from the kitchen and side with the kids to kick my ass if she feels I’m being a bit hard on them.
So, for the uninitiated, here are some forms of roughhouse experienced in the daddyfesto household (note: although this may appear to be a parody, this is actually serious). Please note that this is only the tip of the iceberg. I tallied at least 20 different things we’ve had going in this house at one time or another (in fact, I tallied so many that it made me realize just how much you’re cooped up inside in the winter in Cleveland and just how much that stinks). Without further ado:
Standard Roughhousing. This is just wrestling, except that instead of trying to pin your children, you are trying to incapacitate them and tickle them. The primary rule that you, the father, must abide by is that if the kids land a solid blow, you have to act stunned (whether or not you are actually stunned). If you are roughhousing with two children, such a blow would permit a trapped child escape (hopefully this will teach your son chivalry). Think Olympic Boxing. It doesn’t matter if the punch hurts, it still scores a point; so if it’s a clean blow, you have to act stunned for a second.
“Super” Roughhousing. The difference between roughhousing and super-roughhousing is that super-roughhousing is nasty. Mainly, I the super version allows punching anywhere except the face and private area. I even allow scratching (if nails have been clipped recently). We’ve had to create additional rules as my son tests out various ways to injure a human being (e.g., no poking daddy in the eye, even if it isn’t a punch), but generally, they get to whale on you.
What do you get? Super-roughhousing was invented after I first realized that if you hit a child square with an open hand in the middle of their back you will (a) make a cool sound, akin to hitting a watermelon with a baseball bat on a check swing and (b) more importantly, not hurt the child. I’m not sure why it doesn’t hurt the child. All I know is that while I’ve never completely “let go,” I’ve probably smacked them on the back harder than I should have, and no crying or game stoppage has resulted (but make sure you hit them square!) Of course, I’m sure there internal bleeding or something, but really, it’s the visible injuries that are gonna get you in trouble, so don’t concern yourself with that.
Super-roughhousing needs to be used sparingly. It needs to be reserved as a reward for the kids getting through tough periods, like having to spent 4 hours cooped up at a wedding and reception. It is for a time when they have too much energy and no good outlet, as you’re essentially volunteering to be a punching bag.
Harry Hungry Bed: When you’re changing the sheets on your bed, take the kids up there. Stand at the foot of the bed and lift the mattress (but not the box spring) into the air, so that the bed, from the side, forms a “greater than” sign. Have your children dart across the box spring while you count down “5…4…3….2….1.” At one, let go of the mattress, then check and see what you’ve caught. If you’ve caught both, pretend to leave the room and go to work. If you’ve caught only one of multiple children, you get to climb onto your bed and pretend to sleep while the remaining child has to pull your fat ass off the bed. If all children are caught, you get to roll around on the bed for a bit while your wife yells things at you involving the word “suffocate.”
When we play this these days, my kids tend to scream louder. This suggests that either I’m gaining weight or it’s time to get a new bed or both.
Fairground Ducks: Pillow-Style. This one is best done in a hall or place with hardwood floors. (Even better if you have a hall that ends with a carpeted room!) Gather up some smaller pillows. Have your children stand at one end of the hall with you sitting at the other. Whip the pillows down the hall in a Frisbee-like motion and have your children leap over them as the pillows fly by. Once all pillows are gone, they have to gather them up and run them back to you for another round. If you get a solid shot they can’t dodge, their legs will whip out behind them and they’ll hit the ground hard (which is why it’s best if you can put them on carpet). Score! Stone skipping techniques work better than you think with the pillows.
Note: Warning! If your child, like my son, has a 2 inch vertical leap, he’s not going to clear any of the pillows and you’re going to fucking annihilate him, a fact I luckily discovered while my wife was not in the house (insert white boy can’t jump joke here).
Walk on Daddy’s Back. Self-explanatory. A definite two-birds-one-stone-situation. Having kids may be worth it for this reason alone. With multiple children, choose the child based upon the severity of the back pain. Some days you need a light 4-year old walk; other days a 7-year old it called for. If you do it on your bed and shake every once in a while so they’ll fall off, you can call it a new kind of roughhousing and trick them until they get bored after about 5 minutes.
Blind Monster. Sit and position yourself in the center of a room with as little furniture as possible. Close your eyes and spin to disorientate yourself. You’re allowed to move but must stay in the room. Using your sense of hearing, your goal is to snatch up the children as they rush in and out of the room. The kids’ goal is to jump onto your back, and if they are successful, they win. There you go.
Explaining to hospital workers that you broke your child’s cheekbone playing a game will be a tough sell, so be sure to swing your arms low to the ground. This is also a good time to break out the standard Obi Wan style father joke: “you are going to smile and start laughing now” which nails the young kids within 5-10 seconds almost every time if used judiciously. Also, make sure the toddlers (and any cats) are out of the room with mom so you don’t clock them.
Have you tried to close your eyes for 15-30 minutes straight without being asleep? It’s not natural. So you ultimately open them inadvertently and the kids cry foul. So essentially this game teaches them that daddy is a cheater. And so it also serves to prove to children that daddy is just a mere mortal man after all. So I guess this is another two-birds-one-stone situation.
Wake Up Daddy. This one was invented by my 20 month old. If daddy is sleeping, or even just resting his eyes and not even asleep, come up and whack him on the head as hard as you can and shout “wake up daddy.” Then run away. Then laugh. Like everything else with 20 month olds, repeat ad nauseum. I normally wake up after about 15 whacks.
Throw Children In Air. Is it never shake a baby or always shake a baby? I sometimes forget. No, seriously, once the kids are old enough so you aren't violating maxims so basic they are printed on the sides of city buses, this one is fun (and is exactly what it sounds like).
One important tip is to throw the youngest child first. If you throw the oldest child first, you might get used to putting some umph behind your throws and you’ll end up with dent marks of your youngest kid’s head on the ceiling.
If you’ve got a room with a vaulted ceiling, it’s extra fun and has the added benefit of actually giving your arms a workout (make sure to do multiple reps of tosses). If you don’t have a vaulted ceiling, do it BowFlex style and tell your kid to put their arms up in the air to keep them from smacking their head on the ceiling. Since they are pushing off the ceiling, it becomes a kind of resistance workout.
********
There you go. Those are some of the basics we use around here, and should get you going. Since your wife likely has sough to retire from the “wrestling” circuit, and since men don’t hug enough, roughhousing will give you the physical contact you need for a healthy emotional state.
Happy roughing.
May 7, 2008
I Think I Accidentally Wrote a Book
It's surprisingly hard to figure out how many words there are in an average book. Googling the question gives unsatisfying answers.
In any event, by mucking around online and counting words on pages in 3 books, I determined that, roughly, you have maybe 250 words on a page (but I got as many as 400 for books with smaller typefaces and larger pages, and we're still talking trade paperbacks, so I'm sure some books have more). If you figure 200 pages is a book, that's 50,000 words or so. Figure blank pages, chapters, etc., and maybe 45,000 words or so. A book length piece of writing is between 45,000 and about 125,000 words.
And I just checked WORD COUNT in WORD to see how many words I've posted here, and it's roughly 43,000.
(no wonder I feel like I don't have anything interesting to say anymore)
In any event, by mucking around online and counting words on pages in 3 books, I determined that, roughly, you have maybe 250 words on a page (but I got as many as 400 for books with smaller typefaces and larger pages, and we're still talking trade paperbacks, so I'm sure some books have more). If you figure 200 pages is a book, that's 50,000 words or so. Figure blank pages, chapters, etc., and maybe 45,000 words or so. A book length piece of writing is between 45,000 and about 125,000 words.
And I just checked WORD COUNT in WORD to see how many words I've posted here, and it's roughly 43,000.
(no wonder I feel like I don't have anything interesting to say anymore)
May 2, 2008
CSI: Cleveland Heights Edition
I really just don’t care.
That’s what you think when you’re peacefully settling in, doing something you enjoy like reading a book, and one of your children runs up from the basement and tells you the awful and terrible thing that their sibling just did to them.
But you can’t just not care, because you’ve probably told them that this is what they’re supposed to do. You said: “If your sister tries to start a fight with you, don’t hit her. Come tell me or your mother. We’ll deal with it.” That’s what you unfortunately said. And now you’re living with the consequences.
Lots of parents renege on this commitment. They listen to one child’s story and then try to redirect them into another activity. After hearing how their sister hit them, instead of looking into it, they say “do you want to sit up here in the kitchen and color?” Other parents intentionally try to not get involved, under the theory that it’s better if you let kids work out problems themselves instead of always mediating for them (of course, if kids figuring it out without parents is always better, why not let them do everything without parents: fix their own meals, take themselves to school and … hell, why not get them their own place at age 8?)
Unfortunately for me, the 10-year old version of myself made me promise to myself that I would not do this. That I would not be overly hands off when it came to family fights.
For when I was younger, I “clashed” quite a bit with my sister that was 2 years younger than me (note: as used in this paragraph, the word “clash” includes everything up to and including attempted strangulation). We fought a fair amount but, at times, when things were escalating, one of us would have the good sense to back off and run and tell our mother that a fight was brewing. But inevitably our mother’s response was unsatisfying. If you were just sitting there and got hit and told mom, she’d try to redirect you. You’d be offered a carrot and told to play in a different room. But you didn’t come get your mom because you wanted a carrot. You wanted justice.
It quickly became clear to me that appealing to the authorities would get me nowhere. I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. And luckily, in the early 1980s, I had plenty of role models for this endeavor.
And so my sister and I waged some epic battles. Weaponry and shrieking like a female Asian mercenary was involved on her end. Biting was once involved on my end (which wouldn’t be that embarrassing if I hadn’t been in middle school at the time), amongst other sordidness. Ultimately we learned to stay the hell away from one another. And although my sister and I became friends again when older, I can’t help but wonder how much we damaged our relationship during the several-year period we were at each other’s throats.
Looking back, it seems clear that my mom’s approach wasn’t all that bad, but was less than ideal. I mean, for 90% of the kids I hung out with, we really did work it out ourselves. But for 10% of the kids I was around (for my sister and two other younger kids I knew while growing up), it only made us stop involving the parents and take things into our own hands. But all too often, that involved getting so angry that even I knew things were getting out of hand, and I knew deep down that something was very wrong with how mad I got. And so all that led me to promise myself that I would not employ a similar hands off attitude toward my children’s fights.
So now, in my house, when a child comes to me with a complaint about how they are being treated, CSI: Cleveland Heights springs into action. I put on my David Caruso sunglasses and get down to work with a five-step investigative program.
Step one is to segregate the offenders. Place the combatants in separate rooms where they can’t see one another or anyone else. Isolation will weaken the criminal mind.
Step two is to search for eyewitnesses. Unfortunately, in our house, if the older kids are fighting, the eyewitness is 22 months old. And if normal eyewitness testimony is unreliable, I can only imagine what baby eyewitness testimony must be like.
Step three is to review the physical evidence. My wife normally cordons off the area of the fight with police tape and then declares that she will be unable to clean that area of the house for the next month “because it is a crime scene.”
Step four is a thorough interview of each side. It’s best to employ re-enactment techniques here. Use of toddler children as stand-ins is encouraged. Since toddlers love being allowed to be a part of anything, this can double as “quality time” with them.
The fifth and final step is to bring both sides together and subject them to rapid fire questioning (while holding their wrists to utilize pulse-rate lie detection techniques). If you’re lucky, after repeated incidents, one of them will eventually develop a stutter.
Employing these techniques has led to some Perry Mason moments:
“Your baby sister couldn’t have thrown a block and hit you from way over there, as she can only throw things directly into the floor, approximately 12 inches away.”
“But he couldn’t have called you that name, because he doesn’t even know that word!”
“Your sister couldn’t have used her penis to make the floor wet”
Even if none of the kids crack and confess and there is no Perry Mason moment, normally, with enough perseverance, you’ll catch the culprit.
And your kids will dislike your bizarre behavior so much that they will do anything to avoid fighting with one another.
That’s what you think when you’re peacefully settling in, doing something you enjoy like reading a book, and one of your children runs up from the basement and tells you the awful and terrible thing that their sibling just did to them.
But you can’t just not care, because you’ve probably told them that this is what they’re supposed to do. You said: “If your sister tries to start a fight with you, don’t hit her. Come tell me or your mother. We’ll deal with it.” That’s what you unfortunately said. And now you’re living with the consequences.
Lots of parents renege on this commitment. They listen to one child’s story and then try to redirect them into another activity. After hearing how their sister hit them, instead of looking into it, they say “do you want to sit up here in the kitchen and color?” Other parents intentionally try to not get involved, under the theory that it’s better if you let kids work out problems themselves instead of always mediating for them (of course, if kids figuring it out without parents is always better, why not let them do everything without parents: fix their own meals, take themselves to school and … hell, why not get them their own place at age 8?)
Unfortunately for me, the 10-year old version of myself made me promise to myself that I would not do this. That I would not be overly hands off when it came to family fights.
For when I was younger, I “clashed” quite a bit with my sister that was 2 years younger than me (note: as used in this paragraph, the word “clash” includes everything up to and including attempted strangulation). We fought a fair amount but, at times, when things were escalating, one of us would have the good sense to back off and run and tell our mother that a fight was brewing. But inevitably our mother’s response was unsatisfying. If you were just sitting there and got hit and told mom, she’d try to redirect you. You’d be offered a carrot and told to play in a different room. But you didn’t come get your mom because you wanted a carrot. You wanted justice.
It quickly became clear to me that appealing to the authorities would get me nowhere. I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. And luckily, in the early 1980s, I had plenty of role models for this endeavor.
And so my sister and I waged some epic battles. Weaponry and shrieking like a female Asian mercenary was involved on her end. Biting was once involved on my end (which wouldn’t be that embarrassing if I hadn’t been in middle school at the time), amongst other sordidness. Ultimately we learned to stay the hell away from one another. And although my sister and I became friends again when older, I can’t help but wonder how much we damaged our relationship during the several-year period we were at each other’s throats.
Looking back, it seems clear that my mom’s approach wasn’t all that bad, but was less than ideal. I mean, for 90% of the kids I hung out with, we really did work it out ourselves. But for 10% of the kids I was around (for my sister and two other younger kids I knew while growing up), it only made us stop involving the parents and take things into our own hands. But all too often, that involved getting so angry that even I knew things were getting out of hand, and I knew deep down that something was very wrong with how mad I got. And so all that led me to promise myself that I would not employ a similar hands off attitude toward my children’s fights.
So now, in my house, when a child comes to me with a complaint about how they are being treated, CSI: Cleveland Heights springs into action. I put on my David Caruso sunglasses and get down to work with a five-step investigative program.
Step one is to segregate the offenders. Place the combatants in separate rooms where they can’t see one another or anyone else. Isolation will weaken the criminal mind.
Step two is to search for eyewitnesses. Unfortunately, in our house, if the older kids are fighting, the eyewitness is 22 months old. And if normal eyewitness testimony is unreliable, I can only imagine what baby eyewitness testimony must be like.
Step three is to review the physical evidence. My wife normally cordons off the area of the fight with police tape and then declares that she will be unable to clean that area of the house for the next month “because it is a crime scene.”
Step four is a thorough interview of each side. It’s best to employ re-enactment techniques here. Use of toddler children as stand-ins is encouraged. Since toddlers love being allowed to be a part of anything, this can double as “quality time” with them.
The fifth and final step is to bring both sides together and subject them to rapid fire questioning (while holding their wrists to utilize pulse-rate lie detection techniques). If you’re lucky, after repeated incidents, one of them will eventually develop a stutter.
Employing these techniques has led to some Perry Mason moments:
“Your baby sister couldn’t have thrown a block and hit you from way over there, as she can only throw things directly into the floor, approximately 12 inches away.”
“But he couldn’t have called you that name, because he doesn’t even know that word!”
“Your sister couldn’t have used her penis to make the floor wet”
Even if none of the kids crack and confess and there is no Perry Mason moment, normally, with enough perseverance, you’ll catch the culprit.
And your kids will dislike your bizarre behavior so much that they will do anything to avoid fighting with one another.
April 30, 2008
Dddyfsto's Review: Daddy Needs a Drink, by Rob Wilder
DADDY NEEDS A DRINK: An Irreverent Look at Parenting From a Dad Who Truly Loves His Kids -- Even When They're Driving Him Nuts (2005)
I was ready to not like Robert Wilder. There were red alerts flashing as I examined the book cover and delved into the first few pages. Wilder lives in Santa Fe, a town which (admittedly based only on a week long visit there 10 years ago) seems to combine some of the worst qualities of college towns (our politics is pure!) with some of the worst qualities of California (we are just so damn laid back and cool!). Wilder married a woman named Lala, who is an artist (a folk artist even). Wilder doesn’t have cable. He has a very loose disciplinary style. He named his children “Poppy” and “London” and never once feels the need to explain this. The picture on the dust jacket shows a man with longish flowing locks.
And so I was ready for a book that was a little too precious, or that expressed Wilder’s need for a drink because his son was too aggressive or his daughter not earthy enough. And, on balance, the book actually is a bit too precious. For example, there’s a chapter written in mock surprise at how him, him, Rob Wilder! actually shops at Sam’s Club after his father introduces him to it (Really! Can you believe it!? A cool guy like Rob Wilder shops there! OMG!)
But I did like Rob Wilder. Quite a bit, even. I don’t know the man, but I would guess that I liked him because all of the potentially negative signs listed above are outweighed by a simple fact: Rob Wilder is a teacher, a junior high and high school teacher. And I’m sure that contributes quite a bit to his realistic, no-nonsense, grounded, humble perspective on the whole fatherhood thing (and most other topics).
Wilder’s book is divided into around 30 chapters, which are largely independent of one another. In fact, some of the factual background in the chapters is repetitive, so I suspect they were once weekly or monthly magazine pieces or something (I’m too lazy to read real reviews and figure that out). But this makes the book good for travel/bedtime reading, and makes it OK to skip the boring chapters or even put the book down and pick it up a few months later, like I did. Most of the chapters - and all of the good ones - use an anecdotal style, but often step back for Wilder’s look at the big picture, often compellingly, and often about a father’s worries about his children and what, exactly, he’s doing to them. At times, the English teacher within Wilder inspires him to try something different stylistically, with acceptable, but less effective results. (For example, a more "literary" thought piece about crying falls flat). Other stories focus on the nuts and bolts of fatherhood and show Wilder to be an involved and very thoughtful and self-aware dad with some cool ideas worth learning from, like how he had his car painted with chalkboard paint so his kids could draw on it and the aftereffects of that or how he took his toddler son to a burning-man like ritual, but forgot to explain to him that they were going to set fire to what looked to his son like a large person. Wilder draws from odd children outside his own family in three chapters to describe “biters,” kids inclined to poop wherever they feel like it and toddlers that madly run from their parents at every available opportunity, all to comic effect. It rarely makes you laugh out loud, but it makes you smile an awful lot.
Personally, I think Wilder is at his best when he tells a story that involves fatherhood, but isn’t really about the father/child relationship (or at least not primarily about that). For one example, in a chapter about baby monitors, Wilder talks about how (prior to the birth of his first child), he set up the baby monitor in the window, and how it picked up the lovemaking sounds of his neighbors … for the next few weeks. Another chapter talks about his son’s obsession with the word “pussy” and it’s impact on his life during that period. In another part of the book, Wilder talks about the intolerance that other people have for kids on airplanes, and while he spends part of the story ranting about that fact and defending his kids, part of what you get out of the story is how he himself got a bit irrational and overreacted to the entire situation. Lots of the time you can almost picture Wilder looking, hoping even, that fatherhood will be more interesting than it actually is (you can almost picture him getting excited when something bad happens to him), and running with the idea of it becoming interesting perhaps a bit further than is warranted. But his eagerness is what gives him his awareness, and his awareness is what lets him notice quite a bit of good stuff.
It seems to me that most books about fatherhood are largely interesting to fathers-to-be, or are interesting to fathers of small children, where the father can read the book and look forward to or learn about what lies ahead. Many of us with older children live that stuff: we don’t always want to spend our free time reading about it more; we’ve had our fill. Wilder’s book, by contrast, because it focuses on the cool and neat stuff on the margins of parenthood, holds something even for those with kids older than toddlers (But this also means that it is far from a how-to book, and those looking for that should look elsewhere).
The quality of writing is generally good, with interesting (but sometimes baffling) references and sentences that sometimes make you work to unravel. A little too often, Wilder takes it a bit too far and his writerly way of saying things drifts into groaner territory (on page 128, Wilder notes that he said “said 'huh' like a Midwesterner at an authentic Chinese restaurant”… p. 271: “studied so much feminist theory in college and grad school that it made my penis shrink”… yikes!). And at times he seems to be in a contest to see how many punchy details he can pack into a paragraph. But despite the writing missteps, Wilder paints a reliable and authentic picture of the cool stuff about fatherhood, including on an emotional and personal level, and does so in an interesting way.
This isn’t a book that will change your life or really teach you anything. But it is a pretty good description of a guy enjoying his kids and his life and noticing the cool stuff that comes his way. To me, that made it worth the read.
And so I was ready for a book that was a little too precious, or that expressed Wilder’s need for a drink because his son was too aggressive or his daughter not earthy enough. And, on balance, the book actually is a bit too precious. For example, there’s a chapter written in mock surprise at how him, him, Rob Wilder! actually shops at Sam’s Club after his father introduces him to it (Really! Can you believe it!? A cool guy like Rob Wilder shops there! OMG!)
But I did like Rob Wilder. Quite a bit, even. I don’t know the man, but I would guess that I liked him because all of the potentially negative signs listed above are outweighed by a simple fact: Rob Wilder is a teacher, a junior high and high school teacher. And I’m sure that contributes quite a bit to his realistic, no-nonsense, grounded, humble perspective on the whole fatherhood thing (and most other topics).
Wilder’s book is divided into around 30 chapters, which are largely independent of one another. In fact, some of the factual background in the chapters is repetitive, so I suspect they were once weekly or monthly magazine pieces or something (I’m too lazy to read real reviews and figure that out). But this makes the book good for travel/bedtime reading, and makes it OK to skip the boring chapters or even put the book down and pick it up a few months later, like I did. Most of the chapters - and all of the good ones - use an anecdotal style, but often step back for Wilder’s look at the big picture, often compellingly, and often about a father’s worries about his children and what, exactly, he’s doing to them. At times, the English teacher within Wilder inspires him to try something different stylistically, with acceptable, but less effective results. (For example, a more "literary" thought piece about crying falls flat). Other stories focus on the nuts and bolts of fatherhood and show Wilder to be an involved and very thoughtful and self-aware dad with some cool ideas worth learning from, like how he had his car painted with chalkboard paint so his kids could draw on it and the aftereffects of that or how he took his toddler son to a burning-man like ritual, but forgot to explain to him that they were going to set fire to what looked to his son like a large person. Wilder draws from odd children outside his own family in three chapters to describe “biters,” kids inclined to poop wherever they feel like it and toddlers that madly run from their parents at every available opportunity, all to comic effect. It rarely makes you laugh out loud, but it makes you smile an awful lot.
Personally, I think Wilder is at his best when he tells a story that involves fatherhood, but isn’t really about the father/child relationship (or at least not primarily about that). For one example, in a chapter about baby monitors, Wilder talks about how (prior to the birth of his first child), he set up the baby monitor in the window, and how it picked up the lovemaking sounds of his neighbors … for the next few weeks. Another chapter talks about his son’s obsession with the word “pussy” and it’s impact on his life during that period. In another part of the book, Wilder talks about the intolerance that other people have for kids on airplanes, and while he spends part of the story ranting about that fact and defending his kids, part of what you get out of the story is how he himself got a bit irrational and overreacted to the entire situation. Lots of the time you can almost picture Wilder looking, hoping even, that fatherhood will be more interesting than it actually is (you can almost picture him getting excited when something bad happens to him), and running with the idea of it becoming interesting perhaps a bit further than is warranted. But his eagerness is what gives him his awareness, and his awareness is what lets him notice quite a bit of good stuff.
It seems to me that most books about fatherhood are largely interesting to fathers-to-be, or are interesting to fathers of small children, where the father can read the book and look forward to or learn about what lies ahead. Many of us with older children live that stuff: we don’t always want to spend our free time reading about it more; we’ve had our fill. Wilder’s book, by contrast, because it focuses on the cool and neat stuff on the margins of parenthood, holds something even for those with kids older than toddlers (But this also means that it is far from a how-to book, and those looking for that should look elsewhere).
The quality of writing is generally good, with interesting (but sometimes baffling) references and sentences that sometimes make you work to unravel. A little too often, Wilder takes it a bit too far and his writerly way of saying things drifts into groaner territory (on page 128, Wilder notes that he said “said 'huh' like a Midwesterner at an authentic Chinese restaurant”… p. 271: “studied so much feminist theory in college and grad school that it made my penis shrink”… yikes!). And at times he seems to be in a contest to see how many punchy details he can pack into a paragraph. But despite the writing missteps, Wilder paints a reliable and authentic picture of the cool stuff about fatherhood, including on an emotional and personal level, and does so in an interesting way.
This isn’t a book that will change your life or really teach you anything. But it is a pretty good description of a guy enjoying his kids and his life and noticing the cool stuff that comes his way. To me, that made it worth the read.
5 out of 7.
April 27, 2008
Socialization of Your Children
At some point, everyone begins to worry about their children’s socialization. You want your kids to go out into the world and bond with other children; to enjoy friendships and everything that goes along with it: games, sharing, conversations about things of interest, etc.
If by three years old or so your child isn’t thinking about interacting with other children and making friends, then maybe you figure that there might be something wrong. Of course, although your child should think about making friends at this age, any actual success in making friends should not be viewed as any kind of victory.
My wife and I were very worried about our son’s ability to make friends. We’d ask him who he played with on the playground after pre-school and he’d say “nobody.” We’d ask him if he wanted to have another child over after school and he’d say “no.” We were a bit concerned.
Then one weekend we went to a school picnic with all the parents and children and I actually got to watch him and his pre-school classmates. After watching the many children run around and abuse one another for a day, I realized that his unwillingness to bond with these children was not a problem; it was a sign of intelligence or good taste even: I wouldn’t want to be friends with these kids either.
You sometimes forget that young kids – even the good ones – are oftentimes beastly, narcissistic animals, particularly at ages 3 or 4. At this young age, lots of these kids have very little conscience. And the worst one have morals comparable to humankind’s worst dictators. And so, just as you would be upset if your child found Sadaam Hussein or some other despot to be friendworthy, you should be happy if your child refuses to make friends until ages 5 or 6, when at least some of the kids that age begin to evolve out of their animalistic phase. Kids that make friends at age 3? Those kids are at times like the sad, low-self esteem chubby girl from high school who was willing to take attention from anyone, even when it was a bad kind of attention. Or if not that, then what they are making is not really a "friend" but a "fighting partner" or "someone to boss around" (which is what our daughter was looking for in a "friend" at age 3) or "someone to boss them around." So I wasn't too concerned that my son remained and remains, at 4 and a half, wary of making friends yet.
Whenever it happens, when your kids first start to make friends, however, you will soon realize that it is more interesting to you than the best Real World episode, the best tabloid, the best US Weekly story. Rumors of your children’s social interactions will be crack cocaine to you. You’ll ask the teacher at parent/teacher conferences who your kid is hanging out with. Another mother will mention how she stopped by school and saw your child talking to another child and you’ll demand to know who. If she doesn’t know the name, you will demand physical descriptions and when you get home, you will pull out the class picture and engage in rampant speculation with your wife over who your kid is talking to. Ultimately, my wife and I were reduced to bribing our oldest with candy to get out of her who they played with that day. It will be a part of your life that you care desperately about.
And one day you will realize that you are obsessed with the social life of a 4-year old. (If this isn’t a sign of how pathetic YOUR OWN personal social life has become, I don’t know what is.)
Luckily, ultimately you’ll realize, after observing your first child’s social life over a period of months, that it’s inanely and incredibly boring. It’s probably kind of like what it would be like to actually have to watch the Real World / Hills / whatever people all day long (personally, I find that when the condense a whole week into 60 or 30 minutes, it’s insanely boring, but my wife begs to differ). And so you’ll stop worrying about it and you’ll act like a regular parent and not give a good goddamn about your kids social life until they get to Junior High (when I’d imagine I’ll have to start chasing away the kids that come to your door smelling like smoke, or worse).
If by three years old or so your child isn’t thinking about interacting with other children and making friends, then maybe you figure that there might be something wrong. Of course, although your child should think about making friends at this age, any actual success in making friends should not be viewed as any kind of victory.
My wife and I were very worried about our son’s ability to make friends. We’d ask him who he played with on the playground after pre-school and he’d say “nobody.” We’d ask him if he wanted to have another child over after school and he’d say “no.” We were a bit concerned.
Then one weekend we went to a school picnic with all the parents and children and I actually got to watch him and his pre-school classmates. After watching the many children run around and abuse one another for a day, I realized that his unwillingness to bond with these children was not a problem; it was a sign of intelligence or good taste even: I wouldn’t want to be friends with these kids either.
You sometimes forget that young kids – even the good ones – are oftentimes beastly, narcissistic animals, particularly at ages 3 or 4. At this young age, lots of these kids have very little conscience. And the worst one have morals comparable to humankind’s worst dictators. And so, just as you would be upset if your child found Sadaam Hussein or some other despot to be friendworthy, you should be happy if your child refuses to make friends until ages 5 or 6, when at least some of the kids that age begin to evolve out of their animalistic phase. Kids that make friends at age 3? Those kids are at times like the sad, low-self esteem chubby girl from high school who was willing to take attention from anyone, even when it was a bad kind of attention. Or if not that, then what they are making is not really a "friend" but a "fighting partner" or "someone to boss around" (which is what our daughter was looking for in a "friend" at age 3) or "someone to boss them around." So I wasn't too concerned that my son remained and remains, at 4 and a half, wary of making friends yet.
Whenever it happens, when your kids first start to make friends, however, you will soon realize that it is more interesting to you than the best Real World episode, the best tabloid, the best US Weekly story. Rumors of your children’s social interactions will be crack cocaine to you. You’ll ask the teacher at parent/teacher conferences who your kid is hanging out with. Another mother will mention how she stopped by school and saw your child talking to another child and you’ll demand to know who. If she doesn’t know the name, you will demand physical descriptions and when you get home, you will pull out the class picture and engage in rampant speculation with your wife over who your kid is talking to. Ultimately, my wife and I were reduced to bribing our oldest with candy to get out of her who they played with that day. It will be a part of your life that you care desperately about.
And one day you will realize that you are obsessed with the social life of a 4-year old. (If this isn’t a sign of how pathetic YOUR OWN personal social life has become, I don’t know what is.)
Luckily, ultimately you’ll realize, after observing your first child’s social life over a period of months, that it’s inanely and incredibly boring. It’s probably kind of like what it would be like to actually have to watch the Real World / Hills / whatever people all day long (personally, I find that when the condense a whole week into 60 or 30 minutes, it’s insanely boring, but my wife begs to differ). And so you’ll stop worrying about it and you’ll act like a regular parent and not give a good goddamn about your kids social life until they get to Junior High (when I’d imagine I’ll have to start chasing away the kids that come to your door smelling like smoke, or worse).
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