sharing the wisdom

Aug 052013
 

Look, I’m not saying that I’m a great parent—especially after accidentally closing a car window on my son’s arm earlier today—but I do think I’ve learned a few things along the way that might be of help to those just starting down that path. You know, after “Make sure that the kids are 10 feet away from the car before you start to close windows …”

5 Pieces of Reasonable Parental Advice

1. No means no – Whatever the request—be it from “Can I have a juice box?” to “Can I borrow the car?”—if your wife or partner already has said “No,” then you *damn well* better say no, too—even if the reason is nothing more than “Because I said so!” Because once kids realize that they can divide and conquer, and thus, dismantle your parental authority like Spanish conquistadors taking South America, it’s over. Like vastly outgunned Peruvians, the best-case scenario is that you’re enslaved for a few centuries.

If you’re a single parent—or alone with the kids for an extended period, which can feel like it—if you say no and then eventually relent, you’re done. As it turns out, just like all that stuff they learn in school, they will learn at home that their wills are stronger than yours, and that they can impose it on you.

Hey, if you’re not 100 percent sure, there’s always, “We’ll see.” As my son told me, “That’s pretty much means no.” Yes, but there’s a little wiggle room, enough to buy yourself some precious time to make an informed—and hopefully correct—decision.

2. No does NOT mean “I don’t love you” – Too many times we’re more interested in pleasing our kids rather than raising them. Big difference.

Last time I checked, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Look, just because I said ‘No, you can’t set the house on fire today,’ doesn’t mean that I have stopped loving you or am mad at you. It means that it’s not okay to burn down the house, no matter how many times you ask. It has nothing to do with how I feel about you and everything to do with learning to do the right thing. I still love you.”

That “I still love you” is important to mention on occasion. I found it especially useful when I would get upset with the kids. After yelling at them for whatever transgression had angered me, I would often try to have the presence of mind to add something like, “Just because I’m mad at you right now doesn’t mean I don’t love you any more. Just like you, I get upset sometimes. It’s okay—it’s all part of life. I still love you.”

I’m pretty sure this is something that I’ve culled from my formative years watching Mister Rogers, who might’ve been one of the greatest and finest humans in all of the history of ever. Period.

In short, it’s okay to be friends … but be a parent first. They may not like you today but they’ll love you tomorrow.

3. Find their weakness—and exploit it – When it comes to disciplining children, there are numerous paths that can be taken, but I often found that taking away whatever my sons loved the most (at the time) was an effective tool.

For instance, when he was young, Son #1 loved TV more than life itself, so “Behave or no ‘Teen Titans!'” was a pretty effective tool. However, I found that when I tried a similar approach with Son #2, he just shrugged and walked away. It took a while, but I finally discovered that he loved computer time, so taking that away became the weapon of choice with him.

And it worked because …

4. Kids recognize idle threats, so don’t waste everyone’s time with them – I’m always amused around the holidays by parents who (often in public) will shout things like, “If you keep stabbing your sister, Santa isn’t going to bring you any presents!”

In all my years, I’ve only known one parent—my dear friend Fran—who actually dropped the Santa hammer on her kids and made sure that there was nothing under the tree on Christmas morning. Now that’s hard core!

As I’ve mentioned numerous times, Red Forman is one of my parenting role models, and I like to quote him to my children quite a bit …

Actually, I’ve never touched my angry foot to a child’s posterior, despite being severely tempted at times.

In truth, I’ve always tried to keep my punishment threats to things that I—and my kids—knew I could follow through on. Taking away TV, computer or video game time was easy to do and effective enough to get my point across.

I remember once when Son #2 was being particularly difficult and after an extended time out in the corner didn’t work, I sent him to his room, where I told him that he had to sit on his bed and do nothing. When that didn’t seem to faze him, I threatened to take away everything Power Ranger that he owned—FOR EVER!

I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes as he looked around his room, but he continued to challenge me, so I finally said, “That’s it!” I literally pulled the Power Ranger sheets out from under him, and then took all his ‘zords and other Ranger paraphernalia and bundled it all up in the sheets and put it in my bedroom.

He started crying, which absolutely made me feel awful, but from that point we both knew that when I promised a punishment, it’d absolutely happen.

If it makes you feel better, file this under, “Keeping a promise!”

5. Give time off for good behavior – By the same token, even if I went through with a tough punishment, I always gave my kids a chance to redeem themselves. Life is often about second chances, right?

In the Power Ranger example up above, after letting my son be devastated for an hour or three, I eventually said to him, “Okay, here’s the deal: Be good the rest of today and all of tomorrow, and you can get back your stuff.” And he did, and he did.

I often employed that tactic—”took away” all of TV or computer time, let them be really upset for a while, then went back to them with a deal that if they could behave for X amount of time, then they could recover a diminished portion of what they had lost. It worked better than I thought it could.

Anyway, this all sounds like great advice, you know, until one of my sons shoots the president. Then all bets are off …

campfire memories

May 072012
 

So this weekend, my son went camping with his scout troop. On Sunday, I volunteered for transport duty, so I had to drive up to Goshen to retrieve him and a few of his fellow campers.

During the ride up, I made sure to enjoy the peace and quiet because experience has taught me that there’s not a much more chaotic environment than a car full of tween boys jacked up on pixie stix. I arrived at the camp, found where my son’s troop was and proceeded to load my car full of damp gear and three rumpled scouts. Bracing myself, I started the car for …

… the quietest. ride. home. ever!

Seriously, two of them fell asleep after about 15 minutes while the third stared out the window in some sort of catatonic state. At first I wondered if everything was all right, but then, in the silence, I drifted back to my days of camping trips and remembered: Nothing was more exhausting than an active weekend that included, if I was lucky, about 8 total hours of sleep split between the two nights.

Yeah, we were go go go back in the day, and we were even more exhausted after a full week at Camp Sequassen. I wasn’t very good at earning merit badges, but I was always a full participant in other activities, from boy scout-sanctioned activities like hiking, archery, shooting (with real guns!) and using my knife to cut and whittle stuff, to less official activities such as burning stuff, smashing stuff, burning stuff and using my knife to play slightly less dangerous variations of mumblety peg.

But camp was a time of wonder and fun. Among the things I learned at camp:

  • Everything gets damp at camp – I don’t care if you keep your clothes, matches and sleeping bag and in hermetically sealed bags, as soon as anything hits the night air in the woods, it immediately turns to uncomfortable mush. Pillows were the worst—and if you’re a light sleeper than me, nothing would keep me awake like having to flip my pillow over a few dozen times in the hopes of finding a small dry patch. And once things get damp, they never ever dry out.
  • Bears may crap in the woods, but it’s no fun for the rest of us – If you’ve never actually had to do it—and fortunately, I’ve only had to do it a few times—having to empty your bowels over a hole in the ground is about as awful as you might think. At least at camp there were latrines, which I think they gave a fancy French-sounding name to disguise the fact that they were no more than a covered fenced-in pen with a board that had a toilet-shaped hole that barely stopped you from falling into a crap-filled pit. On the plus side, I learned to catch daddy long legs with my bare hands and flick them away while in a latrine because you don’t have many options when your pants are around your ankles and you can’t exactly jump up and move.
  • Kids desperate for something sweet will promise anything to get it – Being a quasi-responsible, cash-conscious little urchin, I used to budget the $10 my parents gave me to last the entire week of camp. That meant I had about $1.40 to spend a day, give or take, which was enough for three 35-cent treats from the trading post a day—one in the morning, afternoon and evening. I was always able to stick to my budget, but other kids usually burned through their money pretty quickly, and later in the week, would come to me begging for cash. Most were good about paying me back, yet for a reason I don’t care to understand, I remember that Billy Olah still owes me 35 cents from a chocolate eclair he wheedled me into buying him. Let’s see … ten percent interest compounded over 35 years means he still owes me … well, almost enough to buy an eclair from an ice cream truck today.
  • Don’t feed the racoons – The first year, Jeff Doering, one of the kids in my lean-to, wanted to see raccoons up close, so he left food out and was amused when the raccoons came around after dark. A few hours later, I was awakened by screams, and when I switched on my trusty flashlight, I saw a giant raccoon jumping up and down on Jeff’s head. They were both screaming, now that I vividly recall it.
  • You need two oars to row a rowboat – Not something you realize until you lose one to some other scouts goofing around and you spend the next few minutes going in circles.
  • Don’t volunteer for the greased watermelon competition – On the Friday of camp week, there always was a camp-wide competition that included various tests of scout skills but ultimately ended in a melee with such carnage that it’d put the Battle of Thermopylae to shame. The rules were simple: There were no rules other than whoever was holding the greased watermelon at the end of five minutes won—everything went. I’m pretty sure there were kids who spent the week smelting metals to forge brass knuckles to use during the adult-sanctioned brutality. I tried to mix it up, but unless you count letting the other kids drown me as a distraction for my buddy Bobby Paradis, who actually won it for our troop one year, I was about as helpful as Jeff getting mauled by the raccoon.
  • Give your son the same name as you if you grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and never learned to swim, that way he can pretend to lose his highest-level swimming tag and then re-take the test in order to get a second tag that you can use – Isn’t that right, Dad?
  • Sex – But not from any actual experience, you sick bastards! One night while a bunch of us were hanging out in one lean-to and one of the older teenaged scouts, Bobby S. told us all in graphic detail about the birds and the bees. Most of us were like, “What? It goes where and *what* happens?! NO WAY!” I thought what Bobby S. sounded a bit farfetched at the time, but it turns out he was 100 percent correct. Who knew?

And of course, my favorite scout discovery story is this one about the time at camp I learned I would never soil myself in a moment of extreme fear and duress. (Always good to know that, by the way.)

Although I encourage you to read the whole story when you have time, I do offer this aside from it:

Quick aside: I am a pyromaniac. Period.

No joking. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent building perfect one-match camp fires that I would ignite, stoke into raging (yet contained) infernos, then use to burn anything else that I could find around the campsite. This is where I learned that almost anything sent with a child to camp—extra underwear, cereal boxes, cereal—will eventually burn, with the possible exception of toothpaste tubes, and by the flames of Hades, I tried everything to melt those b#stards! (Plastic garbage bags, if wrapped around a stick and properly torched, will drip drops of bright blue-orange flame that are absolutely mesmerizing.) Earlier this year, I took my family to Sequassen for a visit, and even some 20 years later, I was able to build a fire with only bark and sticks that lit with two matches. Then we toasted marshmallows. My kids were a little disturbed that I liked to set my marshmallows lovingly on fire for a few seconds, charring them ever so slightly, before blowing them out and eating them .. .

Maybe I should have a bonfire at home tonight. Hmm …

 

manning up

Apr 222012
 

So if you haven’t quite picked up on it yet, my mad parenting skillz are always “in development.” Many nights as I lay awake staring at the ceiling, I ruminate upon all the ways I’ve undoubtedly screwed up my sons, impaired their journeys to manhood, utterly failed as a father and all the hours of therapy they’ll have to endure to remedy my paternal incompetence.

And then I have a day like Saturday.

My wife and older son were off to a day-long bicycling event in New Haven, which meant it was only me and my younger son for the day. He’s a bit of an introvert and not the easiest to communicate with at times, but once you get to know him and “unlock his code,” so to speak, you discover that he’s terrific company. A day with him is always well spent.

Anyway, like any Saturday with kids, there’s always an activity going on, and for my son, Saturday is karate day. He loves it and has been doing it for years, even picked it over soccer, which he didn’t suck at. He has worked his way up to red belt, and has even presented forms and sparred competitively in a few tournaments. (And no, he hasn’t had to sweep the leg.)

Another tournament is coming and the class has been preparing for it. Last week, my son had an off presentation of his form, and because he’s a Rain Man-like math whiz and had kept track of everyone’s scores, was very upset because he got the lowest for the day. We went over it all week, including one more time on Saturday. It seems better, but that may be wishful thinking on my part.

Usually, Saturday morning is also the time when I really step up on the “man” front and we practice sparring. By “practice sparring,” I mean I sort of stand there with no pads throwing occasional slap punches and half-kicks in his direction while he uncorks on me with all of his might. Even though he’s “only” 11 and wearing boxing gloves and footpads, he punches *hard* and kicks *even harder*—that soccer leg is still in there. A few months ago he caught me clean in the gut with a kick so strong that it dropped me to one knee; since then, like any kid who got the better of a parent, he’s been trying to duplicate it, which means I’ve been battered like Glass Joe.

Despite his success in kicking my butt in the basement, in the past few weeks, he’s been struggling in class. He twice had the wind knocked out of him by kicks from older black belts—they were going easy, but sometimes accidents happen—and then he had a series of poor matches against other kids his size, including one very good student named Gabe, who is a little dynamo. Consequently, his confidence has been at zero. He has constantly been backing away from opponents, almost to a comical point one time where he was literally running in circles to avoid getting hit.

Fortunately, his sensei has gotten him through the worst of it and his confidence has been slowly ebbing back, but it’s not to the level where it used to be. He’s still been a bit combat shy, and it doesn’t help that he’s among the smallest kids in the group. Still, he always wants to go to class, which is good. I think.

On Saturday, after he finishes beating me like a rented mule, I try to pump him up. I remind him how he’s scored against everyone in class, and that the kid who regularly pummels me in our basement is in there and needs to come out and pummel others. He looks at me and says, “No offense Dad, but you’re not a black belt hitting me back.” Grrrr!

We go to class, and his sensei announces that both sparring and forms are on the agenda. A small knot forms at the base of my stomach. No escape this week.

Like any father, I want to see my kid enjoy success for his own psyche, but like many of those dads who scream mercilessly at their kids on baseball, soccer and football fields, I guess I’m also living vicariously through him. I could deny it here, but the truth is that on some level that’s probably higher than I want to admit, I see his struggles and failures as mine, as self-absorbed as that sounds. Of course, I like to think that I differ from those Great Santini-type dads in that rather than scream and abuse, I’m trying to guide my sons to manhood through positive reinforcement. You know, to a point.

So forms are first. Except while waiting his turn, my son is called out by his sensei to do 20 pushups for fidgeting too much. Not a good start, I think as I watch him count them off. Fortunately, his turn comes quickly, and he goes out there and presents his form. Maybe it’s me or the pushups, but he’s more focused and it’s much better than the prior week.

The sensei and older students agree, giving him higher scores. As he goes to sit back down, he glances over with an almost smile on his face. Nice!

After everyone is done with forms, it’s sparring time, and as my son gets on his equipment, I lean in close. “Just like we practice,” I whisper. He nods and scrambles back out onto the floor. The sparring starts, and as the sensei starts pairing the kids, a new knot forms in my gut as I see my son is going to have to square off against the dynamo Gabe.

The match starts, and as Gabe goes forward throwing wild punches, my son starts backing away. Aww crap, not again, I think as my heart sinks. But it’s only for a moment—as I have been telling him, his feet are dangerous, and if he can connect with a kick or two, it will stop anyone’s attack. Sure enough, he’s backing away to bait Gabe, and is able to connect with a solid kick to slow the assault and score a point. From there, he stands tall and battles Gabe hard. The three-minute time limit expires and the one point stands. Winner, winner chicken dinner!

After sparring, he comes over and gives me a fist bump before taking off his equipment. On the way home, he says, “That was a good class.”

I nod, and suddenly feeling a Mike Brady-like zen and that I should strike while his confidence is high, announce that we’re going to the old gravel track to work on him learning to ride his two-wheeler.

For a number of reasons (maybe I spent too much time playing games while on my butt?) he has never really been interested in riding a bike. Not wanting to make a big deal over it, I never pushed the issue until last summer. After having spent hours running alongside him helping him with his balance, he was getting close to riding on his own but wasn’t quite there yet when we ran out of decent weather.

Now, when he hears my suggestion, he makes a faint protest, but agrees. We get to the track and no one’s there but us. We roll out his bike, and I briefly mention how close he was last year. He gets on and grabs the handlebars, and I get ready to put one hand on the seat to steady him but … he just rides off!

I stand there stunned for a second, and then run after him.

But he really doesn’t need me—for whatever reason, something apparently has just clicked and he can suddenly do it on his own. He asks me stay near, but it’s all good. Before he thinks about it too much, he’s gone one, two, three quarter-mile laps without incident. Near the start of the fourth lap, however, he wobbles and crashes hard, ripping up his knee.

“It’s okay,” I say, splashing some water on the cuts. “Let’s do one more lap.” He reluctantly agrees, but gets right back on and puts in another strong lap. Suddenly, my son can ride a bike on his own!

We get home, and feeling the fatherly testosterone now flowing strongly, ask my son if he wants to help me take apart an old dresser … with a sledgehammer.

“Ohhhh yeahhhhh!” he says. “Let’s smash stuff!”

As he’s breaking apart the drawers, I quietly wipe away a tear and grunt once or twice in approval. As I see it, there’s only one last requirement for the day to earn a full punch on our man cards:

My wife and other son join us for this, but my younger son is sitting next to me during the film. Halfway through it, while laughing like every real guy does at The Three Stooges, he reaches over and puts his arm around me. “This is great,” he says.

Yes. Yes it is.

 

daddy days

Apr 112012
 

This past week, my son was off from school, so I took a personal day to stay home with him. As we hung out, played video games and watched TV, I found myself drifting to the days when he and his brother were much younger and every Wednesday was Daddy Day ….

[*insert “Wayne’s World”-like hand-waving flashback motion*]

Yeah, wanting to be a good parent and not quite understanding what I was getting myself into, I decided after the birth of my first son that I would change my work schedule so that I could be home with him one day a week. In theory, it covered a few bases: I could be part of his (and eventually, his brother’s) life, we could save some $$$ on daycare and I had a four-day work week—sure, they were 10-hour work days, but there was still only four of them, which meant I had 52 more whole days off than I had the year prior! Win all around, right?

Of course, once I actually started staying home with the kids, I learned what generations of stay-at-home parents already knew: That actually working at a desk on any given day is about 100 times easier than being home with two young kids!

I used to joke with my wife that her father’s mother died young because she’d birthed 10 kids and her uterus fell out. I realize now she probably keeled over from pure exhaustion.

Now don’t get me wrong—it has nothing to do with how much I love my kids; it has everything to do with the physical demand of keeping up with them. If you’re thinking I’m whining because I only had to do it one day a week on my own (my wife and I were both home on weekends), well … you’d be absolutely right. But this is my blog and I get to whine here!

So although I would now never trade that time I got to spend with my two sons, there were days where I was so tired all I wanted was for Mary Poppins to magically appear to take charge so that I could lay down and sleep. Even though they were—and still are—terrific kids (shhh!), being solely in charge of them for nine straight hours came close to breaking me once or twice.

In order to get through, I found myself dividing the day up into shorter segments and telling myself, “If can just get through *this* segment …”

Here’s how my day generally went—

8 a.m. – 9 a.m. The first hour of the day was usually play time, and as my wife liked to tease me, I invented dozens of games and activities that I could do while sitting on my butt … you know, to conserve energy.

One of our (my) favorite games was “Bury Daddy!” (In retrospect, the kids shouldn’t have been so excited about this concept; I think my wife liked the idea of it, too. Hmm …) In this activity, I would lay on the floor and they would get all the blankets, pillows and sheets they could find and pile them on top of me. I would rest under the pile, somewhat cushioned, and they would have fun hopping on pop until I rose up out of the “grave,” made some monster noises and let them bury me again. Simple zombie fun, right?

This game finally had to end when one time I was under the pile, nearly napping, and I was jolted by an impact akin to a sledgehammer crashing into my back. When I was done coughing up blood and got my head out from under the pile, I realized that one of my sons had gone Superfly Snuka on me, launching himself from the top of the couch and directly into my kidneys.

After that, I went to board games, books and other activities where the risk of being maimed was reduced.

9 a.m. -10:30 a.m. This was usually the time I let the TV take over for a little while—we didn’t (and still don’t) have it on all the time, in the dream of fostering imagination and other creative play. (I guess that worked to some extent.) When it was TV time, however, I did watch with the kids, and often tried to steer them toward more intelligent programs that I could stand like “Between the Lions,” “Zoboomafoo” and of course, “Hi-5.”

Yes, let’s get this party started! I remember Hi-5 came to the Connecticut Post Mall in Milford and my buddy Bob and I brought our kids to see them. I don’t know who was more excited, the kids or me and Bob—we both sort of had a creepy-old-man crush on Jenn, who was even more attractive in person. … (Hint: It was me and Bob.)

Anyway, as the kids got older, their tastes in TV (as molded by me) got better. I still say that “Teen Titans” was the Best. Animated show. Ever.

10:30 a.m. – noon Outside time! Although I tried to teach them games like baseball and soccer, I also was not afraid to delve into the “sit in one place” playbook, which included old favorites such as “Red Light, Green Light” and “Hey, why don’t you take this shovel and dig up the backyard for a while.”

In the winter and snow, we’d all bundle ourselves and go sledding. The hill on the side of our house may not be impressive to most, but for young kids and their dad who didn’t want to repeatedly trudge up a large incline, it made for a good sledding experience.

Of all my Daddy Day time with the kids, getting out in the snow and on the sled probably brought me back to my own childhood most because once I started lurching down the hill, it was the same exact experience—I didn’t care how many of us were on the sled, I just wanted to go down the hill faster and farther than the run before. If we could hit the fence at the back of the yard with some serious impact, then it was a good ride! And then there were the visceral elements—snow eventually getting under your clothes, your nose running like a frozen faucet and the numbness setting in your extremities when we stayed out too long. Ah, the simple joy (and pain) of frostbite!

This was also the period of the day when they got older where we would venture out into the world for adventure. At first, I’d take them to the mall—free, air-conditioned, plenty of bathrooms—and then when they were more mobile, we hit places like museums or the beach. I tried a few hikes and walks, except they involved hiking and walking. I never got around to teaching the proper way to make a sweet, sweet fire and properly burn things, although this would’ve been the ideal time.

Noon – 12:30 Peanut butter jelly time!

12:30 p.m. – 2 p.m. This stretch was “No Man’s Land” when they were young, as it seemed like it should be closer to the end of the day, but it was only barely halfway through. Every minute during this stretch could seem like an eternity.

It really made this segment the toughest part of the day sometimes. We did all sorts of activities during this time but they were all fraught with the danger of extreme meltdown because crankiness—and the all the joy that comes with that state of being—was in play so close to nap time.

When the kids outgrew their naps, this time became the computer and video game zone—half an hour each, or one total hour of what should’ve been a semi-break for me but often was spent either helping in the conquering of electronic challenges or calming frustrated nerves from the inability to conquer electronic challenges.

More than once video game time was ended early. I blame that whore Princess Peach—if she didn’t tart it up so much, she wouldn’t be kidnapped all the time. Oh, speaking of kidnapping …

2 p.m. – 3 p.m. Nap time, glorious nap time!

For a year or two, both kids would sleep at the same time, so wanting to … uh, set a good example, I would snuggle down for a quick power nap myself.

I remember when my older son grew out of his nap, I’d occasionally give him “secret bonus TV time”—i.e., sit him in front of the better babysitter with a sippy cup while I’d continue to try and set a good example for my younger son. I’m a giver like that.

[On a side note: The Spanish have it right—there’s nothing more rejuvenating that a 20-minute siesta. Why doesn’t every “civilized” nation do this? I think it’s time to start a movement—I’m going to set up a cot in my new cubicle … warning to co-workers: I snore. Loudly.]

Anyway, to this day, in honor of this tradition, I pop open a can of Coke at 2 p.m.—or “a nap in a can” as my wife calls it.

3 p.m – 4 p.m. TV time redux. On the plus side, I kept it to only an hour in the afternoon (not counting secret bonus TV time—again, shhh!), and often I’d multitask—my younger son wasn’t as content to just sit in front of the boob tube, so I’d have to actually interact with him. Go figure.

4 p.m. – 5 p.m. The final period of free play. We’d head outside when possible, and knowing that the finish line was in sight, I’d have that final burst and kick to get through, so this was usually a spirited segment.

Again, as much as I love my kids, sometimes nothing was as sweet as seeing my wife’s car coming up the street at the end of the day. Not that I ever dumped the kids on her and ran off when she came through the door—seriously, I never did—it was just good to see a face that wasn’t covered with snot or drool and to have someone else in the house who was (mostly) potty trained.

The good news is that those days are gone, but my kids are still here. And it’s sooo much easier to hang out with them when they don’t have to bury me to pass the time.